When Mary woke up, she couldn’t see anything. Occasionally, the darkness would get a little bit lighter and then go pitch black again. She could hear things too but couldn’t focus on them enough to tell exactly what they were. She tried to move but found that her body wouldn’t respond to her. She tried wiggling her toes, bending her legs, rolling her shoulders, or even opening her eyes, but nothing happened.

“Oh no. Am I dead?,” she thought to herself. If she were dead, how did she die? The last thing she remembered was the ambassador standing up, and then… and then, everything was sort of hazy. Did he kill her?

“That bastard,” she growled internally, “When that alien bastard dies, I’m dragging him down here with me.” She thought for a moment. Where is here? And why did she assume it was down and not up?

She couldn’t move, and the space around her was pitch black, so she made the assumption that she was in hell or the afterlife or something. Before she could contemplate her ethereal nature, a splitting headache began to ravage her skull.

“Ahhh, that hurts! It hurts, it hurts so bad!” Maybe she was in hell, and she was being tortured for everything she had done. She then felt herself being jostled around, and then her body was still again.

“Someone just moved me, I’m still alive…. I think!” She pleaded with her mouth to open and alert whoever it was of her imprisonment in her own body. Unfortunately, she was unable to utter even a word.

She realized that, as she woke up more, she could tell what the mysterious noises surrounding her were. She picked up on the rustling of fabric and some heavy breathing near her left, no, her right ear.

A voice then entered the bleak darkness through her ears, “Hey, Daniel, I set her in the break room to lie down on the sofa. I want you to keep an eye on her until she wakes up. If she doesn’t wake up by 5:00, we’ll take her to the hospital.”

A younger voice, presumably Daniel, responded quietly, “Why take her to the hospital? Can’t we just leave her here? There’s some pretzels in the corner and coffee from the machine if she gets hungry.” The older voice chuckled quietly. It sounded so familiar, but she couldn’t place her finger on it.

The first voice continued, “I’d love to do that, but I think she’d fire all of us within the hour if she woke up in the middle of the night in the breakroom.”

Mary scoffed internally, “Damn straight I would. If they leave me here I’ll make sure they are the ones going to the hospital, not me.”

The headache came back and bulldozed its way through her train of thought. She groaned from the pain as it began to assault her constantly.

The second voice pitched up an octave, “Crap dude, did you hear that? It sounded like she was saying something!” Mary tried to scream out something, anything to make her consciousness known.

“Listen, there it is again!”

The older voice gasped audibly, “Well then, Danny boy, I’ve got to get going. Got to process the meeting transcript and do some other … stuff.”

“Dude I know you don’t have anything planned, it’s your lunch break,” the younger voice protested.

“Hold on, I’m getting a call from the city. Remember what I said, I’ll check back up with you in a few hours.” She heard the sound of feet hitting the ground hard followed by the squeak of a door. The young voice, Daniel, sighed in resignation.

“Come on dude, not cool. And it’s almost my lunch break too!” Mary heard the squish of a body hitting the old faux leather of the breakroom chairs.

“Well,” Daniel began, “it is illegal for the company to deny me my lunch break. I wouldn’t want to set Bastion up for any potential legal problems, so I should probably take it just to be safe.” She heard the young man stand up and make his way in the same direction as the other person.

“Take care Mrs. Farris, I’ll be back in an hour.”

She was indignant at what she was hearing from the man. “He’s leaving me alone for the next hour? That’s not fair! Plus, lunch breaks are only supposed to be thirty minutes long!” The door clicked back into place, and she was left alone in the darkness with nothing but her thoughts.

///

The walk from the coffee shop to downtown would’ve been ten kilometers, so our group opted to take public transportation. I had been on the magnetic transit lines when I was younger and remember thinking it was as scary as it was magical.

The magical part seems pretty self-explanatory to me: Giant, glossy white passenger cars floating magnetically a meter off the ground while travelling half the speed of sound. What was there not to like?

A younger version of me would’ve said that all of those things are what is not to like. I had a habit of getting anxiety about unprobeable worst-case scenarios. What if something goes wrong and the passenger car runs off the track? Aside from a nationwide travesty and a million lawsuits, you would have effectively made a shotgun that fired human bodies instead of lead pellets.

Lillia, who was sitting in a chair next to me, did not share my old reservations. Her father told me that they make this trip often, but she never gets tired of the magical train ride through the massive city.

It was a bit eerie with the young girl being silent for the entire ride, but I took it as a chance to unwind before the day really kicked off. I looked to my left at the city as we flew through it.

I’ve always had mixed feelings about the architecture in the downtown area. Some parts of it, like the sleek modern skyscrapers with their gentle curves, were appealing to me. I especially liked how, no matter how tall the buildings got, you could always see the sun. It was either straight in front of you or reflected off the mirror-like windows of some towering construction In my opinion, this made the city always feel a little more bright and a lot more lively..

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

What I’ve never liked, though, are the antique brick buildings that spent their years rotting with no one to care for them. They made the otherwise lively city seem wrought with an invisible disease, like a decay growing on a tree leaf. I understand their historical and cultural value, but they are simply unsightly.

At the speed we were going, which was about 40% max speed, the modern buildings were like radiant gemstones and the old brick ones were the imperfections reducing the gem’s value.

I noticed the blur on the buildings decrease as we started to slow down. The mag lines needed less space than you would think to slow down safely, but it was still a distance measured in kilometers, not meters.

As our vessel through the city came to a halt people were already lining the doors to escape. I stood up and moved next to Rick and Lillia. Lillia was holding her arm up to grab her dad’s hand.

When she saw me approach, she smiled lightly and offered me her hand. I pretended not to notice and waited for the doors to open.

It wasn’t easy, but we managed to force our way between the shifting crowd and in the direction of the city center, where the central government was located.

Urona was one of the last megacities remaining on the North American continent. The rising cost of livings associated with big cities was prohibitive to incoming people. This meant there were no longer as many people coming into the cities as before.

This was really only noticed in the last few decades as the older generation of urban residents started dying off. This time period from the 50s’ to the mid-to-late 60s’ was marked by a distribution of power across all of the cities in North America, rather than it being focused in large urban locations.

Now most of the large cities were forced to wait out their days until they couldn’t support themselves and died under the weight of their internal infrastructure. It sort of reminded me of whales, who either died on beaches or by sinking to the bottom of the ocean floor.

“I really wish they’d get rid of those old buildings, “ I said to nobody in particular.

Rick responded to my open statement, “I don’t know, I think they’re kind of quaint, you know? They have a sort of charm you can’t really explain.”

“I don’t see it, personally,” I added flatly. “It’s just depressing to keep them around. Are they trying to constantly keep everyone aware of the war?”

Rick frowned slightly, “I don’t think it’s negative to think about it. Having scars like these reminds us of why it’s so important to maintain peace. It wouldn’t be right to just wash away every mistake after we make it so that no one knows it happened.”

I said nothing to this and just kept moving forward. We were moving from the business and industrial parts of town to the more grandiose, bureaucratic areas. The tall steel skyscrapers transitioned to white marble and concrete.

Rick motioned us to move off of the large sidewalks and towards a back street. Lillia seemed confused by the change in route but didn’t consider it otherwise.

“This way is faster,” Rick explained as we moved away from the busy streets. The side street wasn’t decrepit but wasn’t as extravagant as the main street. There were numerous mundane buildings lining the road, with a small one-way street running down the middle.

I noticed some movement ahead of us and saw a woman emerge from one of the buildings on the side of the road. She was wearing business-attire and had her blonde hair in a tight bun on the back of her head.

The woman stepped down the stairs, her heels clicking loudly as she went. She turned her head and saw our group, but her face didn’t change.

What did change was the gait of the two people I was walking with. Lillia slowed to a crawl and Rick stopped entirely, his arm being pulled ahead of him by his daughter’s hand.

Lillia broke the silence first by shouting, “Mommy,” at the top of her lungs. She then broke free of her father’s hold and ran to the businesswoman.

Rick also spoke up. “June? Why aren’t you waiting for me in the office?” He seemed confused, but not taken completely by surprise at seeing his wife appear on the street before him.

The woman, June, bent down and caught the running Lillia in a hug. Instead of smiling as you would expect, the woman held a neutral stare forward, locking eyes with Rick.

“Rickard,” she began, “I thought we had agreed to meet in the waiting room.” Her voice was icy, and it contrasted harshly with the loving embrace she shared with her daughter.

Rick waved her off with a forced laugh. “Come on love, we were going to get there just fine. We were just going to take the scenic route so I could show Olivia here the old district.” Rick then looked to me.

“Olivia, this is June, my wife. June, this is Olivia North. She’s a teaching assistant at Urona.”

I looked back at his wife somewhat skeptically. “Nice to meet you June.”

“Likewise,” she responded diplomatically.

Something about this situation was starting to feel off. What plans did they have, and why was it such a big deal that Rick broke them? There was something going on between the two of them, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a part of it.

“Listen honey,” Rick began, “I was planning on doing Olivia here a favor by showing her directly to Margie and getting her paperwork issues sorted out. You remember Margie, from the holiday party-“

June cut him off, “I don’t give a shit about Margie, Rick. She’s just some fucking stranger. Is she really worth sticking your neck out for?” Lillia stopped clinging to her mother and looked up at her with wide eyes.

“Mom! Olivia is my friend, she’s not a stranger. Be nice to her!” She then hit her mom lightly on the side of the leg. June did not seem enthused, giving Lillia a stern look.

I wasn’t liking how things were developing. Did June think Rick was cheating on her with me? She couldn’t be that stupid, as who would cheat on their wife right next to their workplace with their daughter in tow. Maybe it was their anniversary? Either way, I was going to start making my way out of this, as it was getting awkward just standing there.

“Hey, I think I’m just going to go take the main road instead, so don’t worry about me.” All of the eyes present focused on me, making me feel out of place.

June spoke first, saying, “I think that’s a wonderful idea Ms. North.” She then turned to her daughter. “I think Lillia and I are going to go into the office and have a talk about respect.”

Just then, I made a realization. How did Rick know my last name? I remember introducing myself as Olivia alone, and the father-daughter duo also didn’t share their last name with me.

It was entirely possible they had heard my name one of the times we were at the coffee shop at the same time, but then again, why would they have cared to remember my name at that point?

June then grabbed her daughter’s hand tightly, her motherly grip brooking no arguments. She then opened the door and gestured inside. Rick looked like he wanted to say something but stayed quiet.

Without saying a word, I silently took a few steps back from the man in front of me. The amiable man was seeming less and less trustworthy by the moment. I apparently wasn’t very quiet, as he whipped his head around to look at me.

Unlike before, his face was a mask of resignation with no smile. He didn’t seem surprised I was trying to leave, but seemed hurt, nonetheless.

“I’m sorry, Olivia. Just know that I tried, I really tried.” Rick’s voice was cold and distant in a similar way as when he got that phone call in the coffee shop. I decided that this situation was too weird and started speeding up my departure.

I sped op and turned around to leave when I noticed a large shadow on the ground behind me. Before I could even turn my head, I felt an impact to the base of my neck, right below my skull. A sharp pain emanated from the location, but soon began to fade away.

It was not the pain that was fading, but my perception. The last thing I remembered seeing were the tall glass buildings lining either side of the side street. Unlike anywhere else in the city, I couldn’t see the sun anywhere.

///