After stepping out from the capsule for the final time, Nina sighed in relief. Although she probably wasn’t as happy as Jade that their journey had finished, she had still been fed up with sitting in the small but comfortable capsule regardless of how many breaks they had. The number of breaks for that matter had reached four due to Jade’s regular complaint that she needed to step outside and stretch her legs. Nina thought about telling her that the coffee she purchased at each stop wasn’t exactly helping, but decided to let it slide.
Like JE-22, it seemed that getting outside without passing through a checkpoint was necessary. After all, suddenly appearing at KF-14 without registering any previous entry to another station might raise some interesting flags with SuTSU. Unsurprisingly, Jade and Aline knew where they were going as they headed straight for a teahouse. Away from the crowded main platforms and complete with collection of low tables which sat around a small pond, their feet padded across the bamboo mats as they stepped inside. After a quick word with someone working behind the counter, they were taken to a private room where a ladder was pushed against the ceiling. Removing the panel above them, a second ladder stretched away into the dim shaft above.
“It runs inside the wall for about twenty meters, so don’t fall,” Jade laughed as she disappeared up the ladder. Leaving Aline to bring up the rear, Nina followed Jade as she began to climb. Luckily, the shaft was less than a metre square so Nina could lean back on the opposite wall if she needed a break.
“I prefer the tunnels,” Jade sighed above her as they continued to climb. “Can’t have ‘em everywhere though otherwise they’re too obvious for SuTSU.”
“Are there ways out at every station?” Nina asked as she felt her arms begin to tire. They were almost there, but she was reminded that if she was going to be travelling more instead of sitting at a desk, she would probably need to improve her fitness.
“There wouldn’t be, but it’s not like we know about that many of them either,” Jade replied as she reached the top before stepping on a small landing. “They’re hard to find information on, expensive to use, and highly exclusive. The more people that know about one, the higher the chance that whoever is responsible will land in very hot water with SuTSU.”
Thinking that it made sense, Nina waited on the landing as Aline stepped up behind her. Jade pressed a button on the wall without sending her hands anywhere questionable as the group waited for whoever was on the other side in silence. After a brief wait, a woman opened a path for them as they emerged from the inside of an unused wardrobe. Finding that they were in a bedroom of an apartment, Nina smiled in thanks as the trio exited without a word.
“We don’t have to pay?”
“They’ll bill Reina,” Aline said as she led them through another maze of hallways that surrounded the nearby residences. As they had climbed through the wall up the side of the station which spanned five floors, they had emerged on KF-14/7-05, a floor which Nina unfortunately found quite similar to JE-22/7-01.
“We aren’t climbing that far, are we?” Nina asked as Aline swiped their way through another door with a painted cross on it before guiding them to another unused stairwell. Flickering lights illuminated the rusting metal stairs which were covered in a fine layer of dust. Without a breeze in the unused shaft, the air felt stale as Nina looked upwards while wrinkling her nose. Like the stairs in JE-22, they ran in a square pattern around the walls with a void in the centre.
“Glass Heart is on 6-32, so that’s… 97 floors from here,” Jade moaned as they began their ascent.
After a short rest at halfway, the group eventually trudged up the final flight of stairs before staring at the concrete door that read KF-14/6-32. While Jade had suggested that they should take another quick break before heading out, Aline instead ignored her as she set off onto the streets beyond. Nina, who was examining their surroundings as they walked, decided that while the places were certainly different, the overall feel of the floor was rather similar to where The Cloud Orchestra were based. Like back in JE-22, the main thoroughfares were situated on 6-01 and 6-25, so the streets around 6-32 were quite thin and relatively empty. As they walked, the concentration of businesses seemed to decrease as they continued down increasingly narrow paths before Aline stopped to knock on the door of a residence.
“Who is it?”
“A glassblower,” Aline replied before the door swung open in response. Strolling through the door, she smiled before heading through the living room of the residence like she owned the place.
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“Let’s go,” Jade said as she pulled Nina through the door. With little choice but to follow Jade who still held her by the hand, Nina was led through what seemed to be a normal apartment with plain white walls and a concrete floor. As they passed a sitting room, Nina caught a glimpse of an old man watching a TV while smoking a cigarette before they passed a young girl who ran up the hallway in the other direction without a word.
“Why are we in someone’s house?” she asked as her eyes drifted across a series of framed photos that were arranged in a spiral pattern on the wall. Not only did the household seem to be functioning normally, the occupants seemed to ignore their presence too. It was almost as though they were expected or that this was a common occurrence, but who would let just anyone walk into their home?
“To get to Glass Heart,” Jade said as she pushed through a door at the end of the hall that was slowly closing after Aline’s passage. Following her through, Nina was surprised yet not so surprised at what lay before her.
Glass Heart was a bar, and a surprisingly tidy bar at that considering where they were. In the shape of a cube with sides of around eight meters, the outside of the floor was surrounded in U-shaped booths that all faced a bar which sat in the centre of the space. With sleek black seating and brushed metal tables, the booths gave Nina a clean but cold feel as she followed Jade across the black and grey tiles of carpet to a set of steel stairs. Glancing at the cube-shaped lamps of different sizes that hung from the ceiling on strings, Nina climbed the stairs to realise that there was a second level of booths that sat above the first.
“Glass Heart is a hub for information,” Aline explained from one of the few previously empty booths as Jade and Nina slid in on each side of her. Watching as a screen rose from the centre of the table to face her, she withdrew the rectangular box that she had carried over before sliding it across to Jade. “Bring some drinks back, will you?”
“Fine,” Jade replied before she took the container and disappeared back down the stairs before heading to the bar.
“It’s unique here in that the network is completely closed from the outside,” Aline explained as she pulled out what Nina guessed was a memory drive of sorts before inserting it into a slot on the side of the screen. “If you want information, you have to come and buy it in person.”
“Why?”
“So it can’t be accessed from the outside,” Aline replied as her fingers danced across a small touchpad that had appeared on the screen. “Like how apartments completely surround this place for protection, the network is also completely insulated.”
“That’s why we…”
“Why we entered through the apartment,” Aline pointed at a few doors on the ground floor after completing Nina’s sentence. “The only way inside is through a series of apartments with a password. It makes this place difficult to find.”
“I see,” Nina mused as she watched from the booth as Jade handed the rectangular box over at the bar below. After a quick conversation, she turned around and let the bartender scan the back of her neck in a similar fashion to how Reina had done it before they had set out.
“The key to unlocking the container is stored on her chip,” Aline said before Nina could ask, thinking for a second and then asking where Nina’s chip was. Seeing Nina point to her collarbone where the chip had been inserted, she smiled. “Just like her.”
Just like Reina, Nina assumed was what she was referring to, but decided to ignore it as Jade climbed the stairs with three glasses. Unlike the ale that she had been used to drinking, these blue drinks in small glasses were clearly some kind of cocktail, something that Nina had never particularly been a fan of.
“Cheers to a job complete! Well, mostly complete,” Jade said as she passed two of the glasses over to Aline and Nina. Seeing that Aline was more interested in the terminal that sat before her, she sighed before turning to Nina. “Well, not complete until we get home, but this is pretty close.”
Aren’t you just raising flags? Nina thought as she sipped the cocktail before wincing. Was this a cocktail or was it rocket fuel?
Jade smiled at her reaction as though it was expected before turning to Aline. “Anything interesting?”
“Interesting yes, but not so useful,” Aline sighed as she continued to flick through the available information. “Most of the data doesn’t have any relation to JE-22 or nearby towers. At this rate, it looks like we can just have an easy night tonight and then head back in the morning.”
“Works for me,” Jade smiled as she slouched in her seat while pointing at her glass. “Are you going to buy the general news package?”
“Might as well while we’re here. Reina and Euris usually like to read it,” Aline replied as she pressed a button on the touchpad before downloading the data onto her memory stick. Once complete, she turned her attention to the drink that Jade had placed next to the terminal, her face turning into a scowl when she saw the blue liquid sitting in the glass. “You really got this crap again?”
“It’s great,” Jade smirked at she sipped her glass as though proving her point. About to follow up with another comment about how the cocktail was great, she instead paused as she reached for her pocket before bringing out a small phone. Reading what Nina assumed was a message, she watched as Jade’s eyes widened before she stood up.
“We need to leave, now,” she whispered while turning in the direction of the stairs before quickly disappearing down them without another word.