Niah

"Okay," Tye says, "follow my lead; the crossing isn't far. Hood up, remember."

I tuck the hood close so that even a stray breeze couldn't tug it away and follow Tye as he exits through the front door. He secures it behind me before turning out onto the street.

It's busier now. The streets are lined with residences giving way to commercial buildings. People bustle about their business. On a nearby street corner a tired looking shop keeper haggles with a harried mother. A young man steps into a store with scrolling advertising running down its fronting windows. In pairs, or small groups, people dart across the road, zigzagging through traffic. I step aside as a narrow, slipstream vehicle zips past. The solar panels across its surface reflect the light from the artificial suns.

I glance up, realising the suns are high now. The circuit is passing. I worry about Wish and the deadline but Tye moves ahead as if everything is going to plan.

As we reach a boundary, Tye lifts his head even higher. He strides forward with confidence, as if he makes the crossing every single circuit. I watch how he presses the credential through the device. It chimes, giving a tinkling ping. He moves through the unit and continues walking.

I try to follow his lead. I'm less confident and perhaps more conspicuous because of it. I fumble with the card and it drops from my fingers to the floor. "Oh, sorry." I say, then remember I'm trying to pass for a man. I clear my throat as I crouch to pick up the card. I slam it through the sensor and then rush through the unit.

Tye's steps have slowed almost imperceptibly but he keeps walking as I catch up just behind him. The Stalkers at the border barely acknowledge us. We move past them, into the street beyond, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

Tye throws me a sidelong look. He raises a cheeky eyebrow. "Fun, hey? Wanna do it again?"

I chuckle, feeling the tension leave my shoulders. "Not any time soon. First hurdle's the hardest, right?"

He laughs at that. "Hardly. But we can do this."

We weave through the crowds gathered in the streets that lead through the Inner Circle. There appears to be some kind of market stall here. Vendors sell everything from foods I've never heard of to games and plants. All of it significantly more extravagant than in the Outer Circle.

The people are more extravagant, too, dressed in fine silk and lace that has been cut and sewn to fit their slender frames. Their hair and faces are impeccably made up and every person seems completely in their element, in their place, as if they each belong. By contrast, I feel like an imposter, lingering in the shadows, portraying myself as one thing when really I'm another.

The streets continue in a weave that crisscrosses the city. Tye keeps moving steadily toward the Palace in the distance.

As we move away from the looming walls that divide the Inner and Outer Circles, the tablet I tucked into the satchel at my side begins to bleep. I glance around, alarmed that we might be noticed by the odd noise. A couple of people glance up but their interest swiftly fades. I pull out the tablet and glance down at the screen.

After flipping through several settings, I work out that the device seems to be recording some strange details, but it's coded in a language I've not seen before. I pause under the shingle of a nearby building and try to decipher the scripts that are running. The dimensional plane of the code feels wonky and I wonder if perhaps it has something to do with the curving plane of the planet's surface or the dome above us. The telemetry unit is definitely running some sort of diagnostics and statistical imaging but I'm not sure exactly what the data represents.

I sigh, giving up on making sense of it right now, and tuck the tablet back into the satchel. I glance around for Tye. My heart sinks and my chest tightens when I realise he's nowhere in sight. I dash forward through the streets, trying to catch up, but still can't find him.

"Tye?" I call out. A handful of people gaze at me and I drop my chin, hiding my face from their curious glances. "Eagrim's beak, now what do I do?"

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***

Tye

"Niah?" I shout again. I must have wandered and backtracked for at least a factor or two but still can't find her. I kick at a discarded bottle in the street when I really wish I could kick myself. "How in the nine-voids could I lose her?" I mutter to myself, then grimace. "Niah!" I shout again.

I gaze around. The few people remaining in the streets give me an odd look. It's not normal for someone to be shouting here. All of the adventure happens in Virreal, so circuit-to-circuit life in the Inner Circle is relatively dull. In the solar, that is; at night it's a different story. I give a wary glance at the solars which are swiftly diving for the horizon.

While the Outer Circle is full of hard working men and women who go home to sleep after dark, lights out in the Inner Circle brings out the troubled and the defiant. With too many staples to lead sensible lives, they splurge on warraroot, a powerful opiate that warps their minds, or spend too many factors sipping tallow nectar at the nectar bars and casinos along the wealth strip.

The Lord seems to like it this way. Shrouded and protected as he is in his Palace, he escapes into Virreal more often than not for a greater than reality experience himself. He reaps the staples of the Inner Circle and Virreal keeps them tethered to the cycles of the City of Light like batteries wired into a circuit.

All this to say that after lights out the fringes of the Inner Circle are no place to be, especially for an otherworlder so totally out of her element. I dash back down the way I came, wondering again how we'd become separated along the way. If she returned to where we parted ways, I might find her by retracing our path. I was in sight of the checkpoint when I realised she was no longer following.

"Niah?" I call. I ignore the suspicious looks the checkpoint Stalkers give me. They mutter to each other, and when one leans down to murmur something to the other, I decide ignorance probably won't help me as effectively as inebriation. So, I act drunk, or high, or both and give them a cheery ahoy before promptly stumbling over my own feet and then laughing about it like a loon. The Stalkers wave off and I breathe a sigh of relief before ducking down an alley out of sight.

I glance around, wondering where she might have wandered. I grow more and more frustrated when each turn fails to reveal her. How could I have been so stupid? I should have kept her closer beside me. I should have paid more attention. The weight in the pit of my gut keeps growing. If anything happens to her…

I shake my head, forcing out the worst thoughts. "No," I mutter to myself, feeling confidence in hearing my own voice. "I'll find her. She's here, somewhere."

***

Niah

Determined to catch up with Tye and to find Wish, I keep moving toward the Palace rather than away from it. The high walls rise up in the distance several blocks away. As I round a final corner, the whole building spreads out before me. It looms tall with turrets and floors reaching above the nearby buildings. A huge white wall separates the elite from the rest of the Inner Circle.

Outside the inner bailey, a young girl lingers with a small pot in her hands. Her face is dirty and her clothes haggard which, in this part of the city, stands out so completely that I'm curious. I move toward her but a bustle of people near the gates becomes rowdy. The girl darts away from the rabble like a startled rabbit.

A man strides across the courtyard. He turns to shout a command to another man across the way and slams into me. He wears a long black cloak like the one Tye gave me. "Hey!" He snarls at me as if my being there were the cause of the accident rather than his careless step.

"I'm sorry." I don't know why I apologise, perhaps it's the judgement in his eyes or the superiority in his stance.

He grits his teeth and nods but as I go to move past him he shakes his head. "Where you going, moon-skitter?"

I glance to where the girl was standing but she's nowhere in sight.

"Back in line!" the man snaps. It's a command more than a suggestion. He waves to the queue of dark cloaked men who are gathered in formation, then marches to a raised platform overlooking them all. "Listen up, Men!"

The men around me snap to attention like an armed force. I realise then that they're all wearing cloaks like mine. Tye said I was supposed to blend in like a Stalker. Like these Stalkers? I don't want to draw their attention. I don't want to ask for their help. They move with dark determination and the expressions on their faces are far from welcoming. The swift disappearance of any remaining Inner Circle residents is also a bad sign. I follow their movements and try not to draw attention to myself.

I keep my head down, trying to blend in among the ranks of men. The commander yells at the troops for a time but I don't understand most of what he's telling them. Something about shifts and quota. As he falls silent, glaring at the men with a harsh rebuke, the tablet in my satchel bleeps in chaotic frenzy.

Dozens of eyes turn on me, including the dark glare of the commander. I want to crawl into a hole and hide but there's no way to escape their attention. The white line of fury marring the commander's lip is the most daunting of all.

"Stand front!" he shouts.

I pretend he isn't shouting at me and fumble a hand in my satchel, trying to figure out how to mute the tablet without taking it out of the bag.

"Men, seize him!"

I spin, preparing to run, but three set of hands clamp down on my arms. They march me forward and drop me at the foot of the commander. Part of me wants to lift my head to glare at him, the rest of me remembers that I wear Bellamy's face, and right now, being Bellamy could be a death sentence.

I swallow and glance up when the blips of alarm from the tablet stop. The commander's gaze is fixed on me.

"What's your name, Stalker?"

I bite my lip, not sure how to respond. Then I remember the credential Lyris gave me. I pull it out of my satchel and hand it up to him. He snatches it from me with a snarl.

I hear his gasp and then remember. The cred has Bellamy's actual face printed in holographic technicolour. And I was afraid to show my own face for fear they'd mistake me for Bellamy. How stupid could I be? I turn, dart under the hands of the nearby Stalkers, and run for the nearest shadow I can find.