We descend to the Vents at midnight through an off-grid airshaft that was abandoned by Innovator engineers over a decade ago. After spending the better part of two days trapped behind the windshield of a hacked autobike while we tore across the farmland that separates the capital from its ancestral villages, I savor every step I take while waiting for the decrepit lift to rattle up a half-mile shaft to the surface. I only wish I could have stayed longer in that paradise.
Like a caged animal, I pace the confines of a small maintenance garage that Mori claims was once used to store water treatment chemicals, and now sees renewed use by agents of the inter-Sectional crime syndicate, Dynasty. Trademark colors of orange graffiti mark it as off limits and permanently closed for repair, but telltale scuffs mar the concrete floor with evidence of recent passage. Large cargo coming and going. Doubtlessly, some of it was human. It came as a surprise to me to hear Dynasty makes some of its greatest profits from Venter labor contracts that borderline on slavery. The brothels of the Orange are only its most sanitized front. I’m shocked every time I go to the undercity that nothing more has been done to combat the syndicate sooner.
The closer we get to the Vents and our next base of operations, the more our Venter guide’s feet begin to tap. Agitated fingers drum against the legs of her old undercity clothes: steel-heeled leather boots, cutout bodysuit, tattered white-fur cape, that battered revolver always visible at her side. She wears them as defiantly as ever, daring anyone and everyone to stare and play Russian roulette with her temper. The ill-fitted pieces of her character are a puzzle I’m still trying to decipher. Her life couldn’t have been easy in the Vents. The defense mechanisms of her personality could be natural scars from a childhood spent in the underworld.
Awkward tension keeps our party of four firmly planted in the corners of the lift while we descend into the undercity. Smog and sickly white-green lamps drift by outside the glass walls, always heading up while we head down. Only the rare inverted tower around us is lit by occupants. Most are empty; their sides bombed out by decades-old combat and their power stripped away to fuel the parasitic underbelly of the capital in more heavily colonized sectors closer to popular descension points. We’re diving into a part of the Vents near the unoccupied perimeter towers that hang right against the lost sectors: the Shocks. Those blocks furthest from the lights and closest to the inky Abyss are the least watched by electronic eyes, but also the coldest. The air grows thicker with filth. Clamminess cold settles on what little of my skin is exposed as the lift rattles near. I made sure to wear long sleeves this time, but they don’t help much.
Our lift opens up with a rattling, hydraulic hiss. Staticky halogen light blinks behind us as we step out onto a concrete ledge surrounded by howling, Abyssal darkness and the empty yawns of an entire neighborhood of abandoned superstructure. My aura flares to life in instinctual response, spooling out in white contrails that leave crimson hair fluttering near my ears.
Mori’s JOY snaps to life in her palm, feeding electric-blue projections straight to the surface of her eyes. She blinks twice and thumbs over the sphere a few times before shutting it down and slapping it against a magnetic plate on her hip. Her airboard lets out an electronic purr as she slings it beneath her feet.
“Dynasty usually cleans out the gutter trash in an hour. We’ve got until then to get to cover.”
She doesn’t wait for us to follow. Kicking the airboard with her back foot, she shoots across a wide, bridgeless gap between the nearest towers, leaving a thin trail of green light in her wake for us to follow. We set off along the concrete walkway until Ajax points out a peeling section of superstructure leaning over the path ahead. Elemental control drains the rusted, rotting beams and reforms them into a perilous ten-meter footbridge that trails off to splintered threads at its end. He waves a hand for us to go first.
“It’s safe…” The bridge creaks as it shakes. “…enough.”
Jolie sticks her arms out for balance as she crosses. Updrafts from the Abyss make her sway as soon as she leaves the concrete, wobbling from side to side. I fly low and close to ensure both her and Ajax make it to the other side. A quick two-handed blade of compressed ki saws the bridge in half once we’re over, sending it plummeting into the endless void beneath us. I shiver as I watch it fall. Newly-cleaned metal gleams in the light of my aura for long seconds as it shrinks from a fist to a grain of sand before finally disappearing into black oblivion. The Abyss is an unnerving mystery of our world, and one I make a practice of never looking at for long. It’s a paracausal rejection of reality. No one who delves into the infinite dark comes back. Technology stops working once it falls beyond the limits of human vision. Urban rumor claims the void has no end. Sometimes I wonder if the capital was built to cover it. And if it was, what other mysteries still remain in our world and the Sections beyond.
Even if I don’t look down, the Abyss fills the black spaces between inverted towers hanging in my vision. I see it even when I raise my eyes from the infinite dark. Its grip encroaches in the absence of light. Chilling, tightening, settling over my shoulders and deadening sound like I’m slipping underwater. My mind runs haywire with imaginings of what, if anything, fills the depths far below.
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Mori’s airtrail long since left us behind. I cajole my sister and Ajax into a jog, uneager to linger for long in the dark. The clicks and clatters in abandoned alleys nearby could just be crumbling concrete. I don’t want to take the risk they’re something like the Mobiak; the most terrifying urban rumor to emerge from the Vents in recent years. Keeping my aura at a constant push, I light our winding path through the walkways and crumbling bridges of the abandoned towers. The splintered shadows and shattered glass of a broken cityscape bleed by on alternating sides, existing only as long as my JOY shines over them.
Ajax and I grow more attuned to the flow of each other’s classes as we settle into the run. I’ve never had a chance to work alongside him for so long outside of combat. His control of metal is an artistry all of its own. Never does he pass an opportunity to curve hard corners or add spiraling supports where straights would suffice; even in places or times so small no one would ever see. He doesn’t even need a focus to direct his will. Where lesser Elementals use hands or words to guide their power, Ajax’s metal bends and reforms like liquid without any outward sign of his control activating. Gleaming titanium winds from stores in his shoes to form a protective barrier over his skin. Gold flowers bloom from circuity beneath the concrete, crawling into the palm of Jolie’s hand. She laughs and casts the flower away before it can distract her from the catwalks. It bursts into petals as it falls. Then the petals melt into raindrops and scatter perfectly across Ajax’s sheathed blade, filling an etched filigree along the hilt while he jogs.
Given time and an army of JOY-augmented terraformists, I know he could transform this dark world into a wonder just like the villages. It’s just another difference we share. My fists are no tools of artistry. That they inspire instead of intimidate is only a byproduct of my personality.
Where Ajax’s strength blooms in humility, mine blasts a warning of our presence a quarter-mile in advance every time I burn hard or accelerate mid-flight. We clash and overextend over each other’s skills for painful minutes before finally achieving a jury-rigged rhythm. I fly us across the furthest gaps and am always there to steady faltering steps. He bridges the smaller collapses and clears paths along the towerside, letting me save energy by not having to blow a metric ton of concrete to rubble. When the first lights of the populated Vents districts begin gleaming ahead, I touch down mid-jog on a concrete bridge beside him and Jolie, nodding to the last gap between upcoming towers.
“Hold on!”
Jolie’s eyes snap open like a deer. She clutches Ajax’s arm in a vice grip the moment before my hands touch them both, knowing exactly what my tone means. My hands press flat against their backs to guide the flow of ki that flashes, tightens, and softly launches the two of them in a soaring arc over the massive gap ahead.
Jolie curls around Ajax and buries her head against him, closing her eyes to the endless abyss they rocket over and the firefly lights they arc towards. I hear a panicked squeak from my sister and an exhilarated laugh from Ajax. His right hand holds her tight. The left reaches out, pulling metal from the derelict remains of a neon advertisement fallen over their destination. Faultless control spools it into the shape of a smooth-walled slide that curls above the darkness like an elongated tongue to catch him. They fall into its embrace with acrobatic ease. Slide down to the dimly-lit border of civilization with hair blown out by the wind and embarrassed laughter shaking its way out into the smoggy air.
Mori waits on the towerside with feet tapping while the two laugh and disentangle themselves at the end of the slide. Jolie’s eyes are wide with excitement while she fixes her glasses. Grinning, shaking my head at the sight, I arc down beside Mori in a flash of light, brushing my hands off. A light nudge from my shoulder almost sends her stumbling into a nearby wall.
She scowls back at me. “What’s your problem?”
“Just keeping your head in the game.”
“Sorry if I’m not swooning over the introverts.”
I hold a very obvious finger to my lips. “Say that any louder and they might hear you.”
“And that would be so terrible.” Mori’s eyes almost roll out of her head. “How the hell is your sister so shy when you’re… you?”
“She was kept an extra week in her growth pod. Got all the brain cells in the family.”
“And let me guess- you got all the looks?”
“Come on, you’re better than that.”
Mori’s head tilts to the side. “I mean, sure, your sister’s got a nice pair of... yeah. Fine. She’s cute. But she’s got the personality of a scalpel. You’d think growing up with a guy like the Showmaker as an older brother would make her stand out a little more.”
“Is that why you don’t like her?”
“I don’t like her because she didn’t like me first.”
“If you want that to change, it’ll mean opening up. Jolie doesn’t have it out for you. None of us do.”
“And there’s the overprotective brother.” Her shoulder bristles against my side. “Newsflash, flyboy. Some people don’t like opening up. We shove our secrets down as far as we can get them so they stop hurting us.” She shivers again and steps away. “So we can get some fucken sleep.”