Cal leads me to a shuttered garage on the layer just above the Orange. Late evening in the Vents, it’s dark as ever and shiveringly cold as we follow the alleys around back. Winter reigns on the surface world. It must be snowing, going by the amount of melted rainwater that’s drizzling its way down through the crust of the city. Shoulders warmed by the built-in heating of Dad’s jacket, I wind around small puddles splattered across the concrete and follow quietly as Cal kicks open a rusted door and toggles on her JOY’s light, illuminating a barren space draped in cobwebs and dust. A small toolbox and an Innovator’s portable diagnostic tool lay on a smoothed concrete floor that’s been entirely cleared to make space for a gleaming black autobike.

The bike’s polished frame shines in the darkness as Cal’s light drifts near. Oldtech keys jangle in her pocket. She pulls them out, clicks twice, and the electric engine purrs to life with the trademark hum that I’ve come to associate with everything built from old SHI tech. This one’s a masterwork, a racer made to eat up kilometers in the blink of an eye. I can tell it at a glance, even though I know as much about the bikes as I do particle physics.

“Jolie told you the plan?” Cal asks, running her fingertips down the frame.

“If she’s right about her old gunship being kept in the industrial district, we’re going to need a ride like this reach it,” I say. “Not like I can carry the both of you on my back.”

“This bike can beat a bullet train in a sprint. Even if we’re spotted when we surface, it’ll get us to the evac point faster than any of the Shadows can respond.” Spotting something in the machine that isn’t quite to her liking, she grabs a hydrospanner and crouches down, adjusting a bolt in the front tire. My eyes linger on her hands as she says, “It’s Jolie’s personal ride. Grabbed it from the Counterespionage impound lot when I went looking for your jacket.”

I swing a leg over the bike and saddle up, hands in my pockets. “Would’ve been way more fun to take this to the gala instead of a limo.”

“I couldn’t go showing off all my skills at once. You know me. All about that mystery.” She waves her hands like it’s some spooky secret. Wiping her hands on a rag, she tips her head at the closed shutters. “Want to take it for a spin with me?”

“Got someplace in mind?”

“I can think of one or two, yeah.” Saddling up in front, Cal slots her JOY into a circular hole on the bike’s front console. One twist revs the throttle. Nav data appears in a small projection that wavers behind the windshield. Another click of her keys and the shutters groan open in front of us, just as a snow billow from the overcity dusts the towerside in white powder.

We jet out of the garage with a burst of acceleration, carving through the white. Cal flicks on the lights as she banks to the right, taking the alley corner so fast and low I almost skin a knee on the concrete. Then we’re cutting out onto a lonely thoroughfare and weaving our way into undercity traffic. Gentle ride, gliding through one of the Vents’ few highways beneath a canopy of concrete and data cables.

Neon signs pulse through the light snowfall. Other autocabs and hovertransports drift around us, halogen lights casting golden coronas across the ground. Cal barely has to touch the throttle for the bike to leap forward. Leaning from side to side, she guides us past the nearby traffic smooth as silk, only adding more power once we get away from the high-population blocks and enter quieter, more lived-in layers further from the popular descension points.

I wrap my arms around her and huddle close against the cold. Puffs of breath steam from my lips. Silvery light paints the world as we zip across one of the bridges spanning the Abyss. I crane back and look up, peering through a distant seam in the crust of the city to see the full moon hanging above a sea of stars. But they’re not stars at all. Myriad lights twinkle and gleam in the silhouetted skyline of the overcity. I swallow hard, reminded of home.

Minutes later, we roll to a stop outside an unmarked alley nestled in the heart of a residential neighborhood. Quiet towers, cozy apartments with working lights and half-decent paint, electronic graffiti marking paths of acidic runoff in blazes of color. Small noodle bars open out of the walls of the towers with stool seats in the alleys themselves, adding to the honesty of the atmosphere. And there’s actually people out on the sidewalks. Flame Elementals warming themselves with handheld campfires as they head out for weekend grocery shopping. A lone ki fighter soars down through a hole in the crust of the city, a comet of blue-colored aura that alights on a nearby balcony. Two bundled-up kids with the Magus class share spellbook notes on the front steps of a tiny building that must be a Venter school while their Gunslinger professor locks up behind them.

It's so normal, I could almost forget we’re in the Vents. Never seen a neighborhood like this down here. There’s scuffs and wear, of course. But it’s living proof that not everything in the undercity is on a path to becoming another piece of the Shocks. Makes me wonder just what caused this part of town to be so different.

Sliding off the bike and motioning for me to do the same, Cal props it up on the sidewalk, keys it locked, then takes a quick glance both ways down the street. My kinetic sense roves over the apartments nearby. The little sparks of light inside them don’t feel very malicious. No more than the usual, at least.

Cal skips across the street to go chat with an older man running a bakery and armory. I watch through the store’s glass front while she points back at me and the bike. He nods. Asks something back. More talking. Cal leans against the counter like a native, getting more animated. My toes shift, cold nipping at my nose where my air mask doesn’t cover. The guy laughs uproariously at something she says. He bags up two donuts and hands them to her without payment. A holiday bell rings as she jogs back across the street, cheeks ruddy from the store’s warmth. She cocks her head at the alley we parked beside.

“That’s where we’re going.”

“Into the unmarked alley where you’re totally going to dump my dead body?”

“And here I was thinking you trusted me.” Grinning, she hands me the bag of donuts and fumbles her JOY out of her pocket. “I had a lot of free time at the range; spent some of it digging through all those old papers that were laying around. I didn’t find us a real Relic… but this was a pretty close second.”

Interest piqued, I tug down my mask and start eating one of the donuts as I follow her through the mouth of the alley. Thin brick walls soon open up into a square dead end walled by copper pipes ferrying gas, water, and electricity down from the overcity. Humidity and heat sticks to the air. Stepping past a leaking pipe that hisses cloudy gouts of steam, Cal counts her way around the space, stopping at one pipe that’s got a plethora of scuffs near the base. It comes free from its clamps with a hard tug of her hands. A cleverly made fake. Behind it, a dark passage heads onwards into the concrete superstructure of the city.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

My glow is the only light we need. There’s enough room for us to walk side-by-side. Our hips keep bouncing off each other until we round a shallow corner and the tunnel begins to widen. The humidity of the pipe plaza quickly fades. In its place comes a sweetness I haven’t tasted in ages: air, fresh and filtered of smog. Gentle eddies of an unseen breeze flow past from deeper within, rippling my hair out behind me. My steps come faster as my breath starts coming easier. Soft, silvery light beckons from around an upcoming bend.

Around that corner is a pocket of paradise.

Cold, clean air kisses my face and caresses my hair as I stare out over a sea of green. Raw moonlight shines inside the cylindrical walls of a vast intra-city airshaft, cascading down hundreds of meters from the surface of the capital to paint a hidden field of flora taken straight from my home. Lilies and sunflowers and daisies grow over a clover-strewn carpet of evergreen grass that covers the floor of the airshaft. Rising from a small clearing in the center of the circular field is a sight I never imagined could take root in the Vents. Its bark and boughs are wrought of pure silver metal. Its leaves are the colors of a sunrise to remember: pink, silver, gold, and the dawny between, rustling in the silent breeze. A living Lungracian tree.

Overripe peaches hang from the tree’s branches, and more lay scattered between its roots. If I didn’t look beyond the tree to the metal wall that surrounds us, I could almost be back in the villages. Home. Even the air smells like I remember. Earthy, humid on the nose, interrupted by the buzz of a lonely pair of cicadas. I find myself walking into the field without thinking, my shoes lost somewhere behind.

“I… didn’t think anything like this could grow in the Vents,” is all I can manage.

Cal steps to join me on the grass. “It doesn’t show up on any map of the undercity that I could find. Just those notes from the range.” She walks out further, moonlight falling across her face. “Whatever it is, no one’s been here in years. I think we’re the first ones to find it.”

“It’s beautiful,” I whisper.

“I knew you’d want to see it.” When I glance over, she’s already watching me with a small smile. “Happy birthday, Tay.”

I smile back. It turns into a happy note of laughter as I run a hand through the pale sunflowers. “You don’t have to call me that, you know. Tay- Taylor- is my middle name. Tetsuka is fine. Or Tets.”

“Isn’t that rude where you come from? Using the given name.”

“Only if I don’t know you well. We’re way past that.”

“Tetsuka, then.” Cal mulls over the word. “It’s a mouthful. You make it sound so natural.”

“In the old language, it means metal flower.”

She reaches up, trailing her fingers along the bottom of a Lungracian bough, a thoughtful cast to her eyes. “It fits you.”

We wander for a while before retiring to the softest grasses beneath the arms of the silver tree. Watching the moon, listening to the breeze, side-by-side to stay warm. The steam of our breaths evaporates like flash-fire ghosts.

“Thanks for bringing me here,” I eventually say, breathing in the quiet.

Cal plucks a blade of grass and twirls it between her fingers. “I figured you had to be getting homesick. Wasn’t sure when the right time to bring you here would be until tonight.” She spins the grass into a tiny knot, unwinding it just as quickly. “I wanted to give you a present you’d remember. You’re the first friend I’ve ever done that for.”

I shift onto my side to face her.

“Friend.” She lets out a light laugh. “After meeting you, I feel like I’ve never had a real one before. The people I used to call my friends only talked to me because of what I could give them, or who I was related to. You’re different. You were the first person who’s ever looked at me… just for me. Just for Cal.”

“Took a while to get there,” I softly reply.

“But you did. Ever since we met.” She drifts off, staring at the moon. “You have no idea how much it meant to me, that first night. I didn’t care what I’d been sent to do. It was so… freeing, being around someone who didn’t know a thing about me. I could be anyone I wanted. I could be more than someone else’s little sister. Be my own person, flirt with someone, have her think I’m cool too. Not a second-string sibling too shy for her own name.”

I let her go on, silently watching. Not wanting to interrupt.

“I never thought I’d be trusting you with my life. Much less the real sappy stuff like this.”

“It’s not sappy,” I murmur.

“Not exactly Cal Kyriaku material, either.”

“Are you worried about something?”

Cal lets the blade of grass fall. “What we have is so… fragile. I like it. I want to protect it. Being around you, I feel like I have a chance to start over. Like I don’t have to be what I’ve always been told to be.”

She sighs.

“I just don’t want to do something stupid and mess it all up.”

“If anyone’s going to do something stupid, it’s me,” I reply. “Besides… those things happen sometimes. We’ve already done plenty of them. We wouldn’t be friends if they made us split.”

She breathes out and hops onto her back, nestling into the grass. “Guess so.”

“Were you thinking of doing something stupid?”

Cal keeps her eyes on the stars, refusing to meet my gaze. “…No.”

“Because I was.”

I roll so I’m over her. Cocooning her in the light I shed over a carpet of sunrise leaves. Moonbeams cut through the branches above. Her golden eyes are wide. Her nostrils flared, a breath and a hope caught in the back of her throat. Shock still, running out of breath. That lie she’s about to spin with her voice, reconsidering her choice, I see right through it.

“Don’t change your mind now,” I say.

And I kiss her.

Right there on the grass, my head dips low and my lips press to hers. Softly, hesitantly, holding for the most vulnerable heartbeat of my life.

Then her lips yield, tentatively fitting to the shape of my mouth. Growing hungrier and more fevered as she understands how it’s done, the mechanics of a kiss. She’s a fast learner. Arching up against me as our bodies pour against each other like holy water and black oil. Entangling with molten slowness. Then breathing quicker as the frenzy hits. Her hands find my flank, my back, then pull my hips to hers. Needy instinct rises inside. I nuzzle apart her lips and fill her mouth with the warmth of my tongue. Drinking in her sounds as my hips start to rock, grinding into her while her nails dig into my skin. Reaching for my belt.

I pull away with a final bite of her lip, a string of saliva connecting us. Panting together in the moonlit glade. Beneath me, her face is flushed. Her hair a black river against the grass. Her chest rising and falling. Silver leaves surround her like angel feathers. A need she’s never had filling her eyes, her hands. All that tension between us, those smirking smiles and coy looks, all to forbear from this moment that was never supposed to be. She wants me. She’s always wanted me, her forbidden fruit.

I am her rebellion against the only world she’s known. She is the reason I burn again. Our world would tell us that all there is to our lives is to fight. That greatness, not goodness, is the ultimate purpose. But there in the shadow of the tree of silver leaves, I know there is another reason to it all; our rises and our falls. One I was born to fulfill.

Not to break. Not to hate. But to love.