007 - Freedom

It didn't take long to get to the edge of the Underground and once there, the line wasn't very long either. It never was, there weren't enough people with money or business to leave. Daven felt his palms begin to gather sweat and he gripped the steering wheel tight. He had done so much to get here, yet he forgot the most important thing. To get out of the Underground without paying the one-hundred-thousand credit toll, you had to be on a business trip. What business did he have going outside?

The line moved up, there were only three cars left.

He couldn't just say he felt like leaving.

Two cars left.

He couldn't just say he wanted to go rob the rich.

One.

What the fuck am I going to say?

It was his turn. He pressed the window button and a small panel of the cockpit window opened inward. The man at the gate looked at him dully, clearly bored and not caring about why Daven was there. “State your business or pay the toll,” He said, not even looking Daven's way.

He cleared his throat. Shit, shit, shit, shit! He was choking. At the very last step, he was choking. He felt the pain in his shoulder. He had been fucking stabbed to get here and he was going to choke here?

“My business is, um...” Daven trailed off. The guard looked his way now. The massive assault rifle in the man's exosuit-equipped hand now getting pushed into the man's shoulder. Daven didn't know what to say, it was over. Everything was going to be over because he choked at the last goddamn moment.

“Our business,” Vamil's hands touched Daven's shoulders, squeezing them. “Is of our own,” Her voice was sly, almost mystical.

The man's eyes went wide. The gun slackened and his hand waved them by. “Oh, sorry, I- I didn't know you could make one of those want to do our business.”

Daven had his signal and he began to go forward. As they left the man, she told the soldier, “You just have to know how to treat us.”

They went forward into a tunnel lined with red lights, reflecting off the black onyx walls. “What the hell was that about?”

She sighed, letting go of Daven and walking back toward the couch. “The IV in my arm when you saw me. It took my blood. Not because my blood is anything special, but because the walls of my race's arteries create a certain molecular chemical that can control matter. Mostly, it can control air or anything just as light. And, it can also be taken and used to create drugs I've heard. Ones much more potent and much more expensive than the ones in the Underground. That's what the tunnel was for, to keep people from robbing Howard and his crew.”

He nodded. So he was right about the drugs after all, just it also involved smuggling blood. Gross.

Controlling matter, that's what she did. She somehow controlled the air and blasted it into Howard and Tim. “Did you have any training on your, um, ability?”

He looked her way. She shook her head, looking down at her feet. “No, we were...taken out before I could've been.”

“Oh, I see. Do you have anything else interesting about your people?”

“I’m blue.”

He turned to look her way. “Was that…a joke?”

She cracked a small smile but didn’t say anything more.

The hallway ended and now they were greeted with a wall that opened up, revealing a massive elevator. Daven steered his ship inside and suddenly the ship shut down, forcing his stilts to come out. He felt the blood in his head rush toward his feet, causing him to become lightheaded as the elevator rocketed toward the surface. it stopped abruptly and he felt his whole body snag against the seatbelt. Vamil wasn't so lucky, her body went up and fell onto the floor.

“You okay?” Daven asked, looking her way.

“I guess,” She groaned.

They were still inside the elevator. He couldn't feel that at any moment, the alarm would be raised about what he and Vamil had done and suddenly turrets would come out, raining fire on them. It didn't happen, though. Instead, the entire elevator opened up like a box.

What Daven and Vamil gasped at the same time. They were here, right in the middle of downtown. The buildings were absolutley massive, each one at least a hundred levels tall. All of them were made of glass with marble white outlining them. There was a street in front of them, revealing the sun that was apparently setting, bursting off through the clouds emitting a beautiful ray of purple and orange before hitting the towers, reflecting across the windows. Just in front of the sun, there was another tower, this not as tall as the rest, but much wider. It had columns of it's own, starting only a few levels tall but gradually getting bigger with each column, building into a blocking pyramid with three sides. Instead of being just like a pyramid, however, the middle portion that would make the sides was missing, instead of that was a plaza with a massive waterfall and a garden all around it. People stood around it, taking pictures, goggling it as if it were a world wonder. Which, of course, it was.

Stolen story; please report.

Hanging off the top of the building was a massive banner spanning the with of one column, going all the way down to the double-doored entrance. The banner was purple with golden, jagged outlining with a golden star in the middle of the banner. The Anxia Empire flag.

The elevator turned red and a loud beeping came from all around. His monitor and the screen in his eyes gave a bright message: Move from the elevator!

Taken away from his trance, he hit the stilts button, lifting the ship back into hovering mode, and slowly drove off of the elevator. Immediately, Daven saw through the monitor the cameras on the sides of his wings, displaying the black elevator become a box once more before shooting down into the Earth.

There were people all around the elevator too; though, these people weren't tourists but soldiers. Daven made sure to go through here slow but steadily, lifting off the ground toward the sky where there were many other hovercrafts. Upon lifting up, his ship's locking system drove him into a designated hovercraft and spaceship road. As soon as it did, there were many ships flying by him, honking their horns as they did so.

This was the first time Daven had ever driven something, he had no clue what he was doing except for what his buttons did in the cockpit. At that moment, he wished he had been graced with something just a tad bit newer so he could put on auto-pilot. Trying to play it cool, he hit the accelerator and tried to keep pace. He got behind a much bigger craft than his own and stayed behind it, hoping no one got too close behind him.

He stole glances from his focus toward the ground, where he saw people strolling through the streets and saw hover cars, ones not meant to go high into the air but instead float on the magnetic streets. In the city, it seemed these were just a natural part of the area, though, he did see a few cars with actual wheels like he had seen in the old magazines he had found as a kid.

“Where are you going?” Vamil asked.

“I have no clue. Can you look through a list of wanted people? Try to look for someone who does robberies or something close to it.”

“Yes, it’ll take me a second. Still getting used to the implants. Not, um, given them when a baby.”

“Oh,” Daven said, genuinely surprised. No matter how poor, everyone born got a Nuerodrive implant put into their brains, it helped the government track people but it also gave access to the internet and general intelligence of the person's surroundings. However, the intelligence the device gave is very selective and the only way anyone can get more advanced options is by paying a steep price. “Well, I'll look then-”

“Oh hell no, you can barely drive as it is!”

“Fine, find somewhere outside of the city, I’d rather not have to drive through this constantly.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” She said. He stole a quick glance her way, the wow factor was already gone, replaced seem something close to anger. He decided to not ask what was wrong, instead, he just kept quiet, making his way out of this sprawling place.

For someone who had never flown before, he couldn't help thinking that he did pretty damn well driving through the city. Sure, he got honked at a few times, took several wrong exits, and nearly crashed into a freighter when traffic came. But, hey, they didn't die. Eventually, the city disappeared and the neighborhood sprawl began. They drove past that and as the neighborhood began to spread thin, he saw in the corner of the lens the flying speed limit had gone up from 60 to 100. He hit the accelerator, feeling the whole ship shift and several parts underneath begin to creak in disapproval, but even so, his old little ship was able to keep up to speed.

He couldn't help but smile at this fact and stole a quick glance toward Vamil. She was holding onto the couch with both hands with her eyes shut and though she was blue, she seemed to look awfully green around the edges. He looked back to the open airspace as the electronic pulling system to make airway roads dissipated, allowing them to go wherever they pleased.

“So, you got anything so far?” He asked.

“Yes, are we out of that mess?”

“Yup.”

“Oh thank the Gods,” She said, sighing loudly. “I found an unnamed man in a town called...” She trailed off, likely looking back over her research. “Hovaldi, the town only has two thousand residents and from our location is about a three-hour flight. Do we have enough fuel to make it there?”

He looked at the gauge, it was nearly full and said the battery had three thousand miles to E, and even then, he could switch over to the hyperspace battery. “Yup, we're fine.”

“Okay, the man himself is apparently known for robbing small-time gas stations and restaurants in the area. They believe it's the same man since he drives a nondescript black Shanoa sedan - whatever that is - but they can't find him anywhere. They put a bounty of twenty thousand credits on him, alive of course.”

Daven thought it over. “You sure there's no one, I don't know, a bit more big-timey?”

“Look, I'm helping because you helped me and I don't really have anywhere else to go. But that doesn't mean I want to be with a crew of a bunch of low lives who murder for money.”

“No, no, no, nothing like that. I'm looking for someone who'd like to be a pirate!”

There was silence.

He looked over toward Vamil, her face was flat, staring at him like he was insane. “What?”

“You want to be a pirate?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

She put her feet onto the couch laid down. Staring up at the ceiling. “Nothing, just never thought you'd be the type.”

“What do you mean?” He said, looking back toward the open road.

“You saved me, pirates don't save people.”

“Sure they do.”

“No, they don't.”

He shrugged. “Well, I do what I want to do, and nobody can stop me. I am going to be a pirate, or whatever the hell you want to call me, and I'm going to make a name for myself.”

“Doing what? Stealing and pillaging?”

“No, well perhaps stealing, but not pillaging.”

He heard her sigh with a laugh. “You are a strange man.”

“You're the blue one.”

“That’s unique, not strange about me.”

“I’d say the same about my pirating ethics.”

“Fair point.”

He continued driving, putting the town into his GPS just from a thought. “You're right on one thing I guess, if I'm going to put together a team. I want a team that isn't going to murder for fun. We'll go to, what did you say the town was again?”

“Hovaldi.”

“Hovaldi it is then,” He pressed the accelerator just a bit further. The metal creaked, and parts shook, but Daven watched on as the speedometer began to read right at 110. He put it on cruise, and let the ship fly them to their destination. As the road flew by, the sun finally disappeared and night fell upon them. Vamil was asleep quickly, snoring loudly. Daven couldn't fathom being tired. Sure, his shoulder hurt, he stunk, and his vision felt fuzzy. But he couldn't have been bothered to go to sleep even if someone took the wheel. He had made it. He had finally begun the path toward his dreams.

Perhaps other people would call it something different but to him, he was going to be a pirate.