Phanya was having a very bad day. That was an understatement, but anything would be an understatement when you've lost your entire life in just 24 hours. At first she was just annoyed about losing the robot; the free help was nice, but Fableton survived just fine before they found it. She was mostly dreading having to comfort Ricky when he inevitably started crying about it, and all the old folks were acting awkward after the encounter with the miners.
Just annoying all around. Phanya knew she shouldn't blame the adults too much, any time Belvidere showed up there was always some new debt to pay, but none of them seemed willing to do anything about it and Phanya went to bed early in a huff.
If that wasn't enough on her plate, why had a massive crowd gathered outside first thing in the morning, blocking the work rush? Why weren't any kids in sight? Why was a sleek, gleaming white hopper shuttle hovering just off the ground in the courtyard? And why did a freakishly tall angel float out of the shuttle on wings of blue fire, take one look at the crowd with piercing blue eyes, and point a finger at her? Phanya didn't even have time to say goodbye to Ricky or Ms. Uxral or anyone, she just bowed her head and stepped onto the waiting gravdisk.
What the manager says, goes. No exceptions.
So, now she was standing inside of the hopper. She was standing inside the personal shuttle of the most powerful man in the world, who was sitting casually in a stark white chair along one wall. Or was it a window? The white walls outside the ship were transparent from the inside, so Phanya could see the entire dumpsite as it rushed past around and below her. But she couldn't pay attention to that because the other man wasn't, he was looking at her. The branch manager of the Cyracorp Recycling Facility #826, highest authority in the land, Caspian Fairbanks himself, was studying Phanya and he looked utterly bored.
Once the shuttle took off and he got comfortable the suit shifted away from its high-tech angelic display. The fiery blue wings and halo winked out of existence and the high collar covering the bottom half of his face flipped down to become a stylized jacket collar, revealing a face that smiled with all teeth and no eyes. More human than his grand entrance, yet his exposed face now set off ancient primal warning signs in Phanya's hindbrain.
Caspian Fairbanks was roughly as tall and lithe as Phanya, a feat in itself, but everything else was a harsh contrast and just a little bit inhuman. His pale blue eyes were just a bit too big, his bright white smile just a little bit too wide. His facial features weren't just sharp, he almost looked creased; his pale skin wasn't just smooth, his flesh held a sheen more akin to porcelain; his platinum blonde hair wasn't just perfectly coiffed, it looked like a solid wedge of hard plastic.
The whole persona was brought together and enhanced by jagged streaks of bright red that grew up his neck and curled around his face, and not as any simple ID tag or tattoo. Sharp red peaks shifted just enough to distract, so he must've had the same body mods only seen in the really high-end advertisements. The red curves in his skin matched the red highlights in his white clothes, where segmented plates somehow added the illusion of a muscular build while also slimming down at the same time. And was it made of actual leather?
But the silence shifted him from uncomfortable to threatening. When any kid gets old enough, Ms. Uxral sets aside all schooling to teach a very important lesson on what to do if a manager tries to speak to them. It's a simple lesson, but Ms. Uxral always stressed that everyone knew the essentials: Don't look them in the eyes, don't speak unless spoken to, and keep anything you have to say as short and polite as possible. And Phanya was doing just that, so it would be great if he could at least say why he snatched her out of the crowd. Until then, Phanya could only hope to make herself small and quiet.
The shuttle came to a sudden stop in mid-air, though Phanya hadn't felt any shift in momentum. She could only tell because the surroundings stopped moving with a massive dome directly under her feet, gleaming white and bigger than the entirety of Fableton. It looked so out of place that Phanya almost laughed at the absurdly giant pearl in the Waste Lands, and when it suddenly rushed toward them a gasp did escape. The shuttle shot downwards, without the manager acting as if he even noticed, and the dome opened a hole the exact size of the shuttle for the exact amount of time it took for the vehicle to pass through.
Phanya's shocked reaction was to freeze, not flinch, so her eyes received a full blast of color once they passed through the dome. Greens and blues more brilliant than any movie assaulted her senses, but before the colors could resolve into discernable shapes and she could tell what was inside the dome all the walls snapped to a soft, opaque white. There was no shifting or warning, just a sudden nothing and an eerie chuckle to fill the void. Caspian Fairbanks stood and straightened his clothes, the small laugh vanishing back into storage once he used up its usefulness.
"Did you really break first just to distract me?" His voice, like everything else about the man, had a level of measured perfection that bordered on the uncanny. So buttery smooth that any emotion slid right off the words, somehow making his voice sound more artificial than the actual robot. But then the manager planted his fists on his hips and shook his head with an exaggerated tutting sound, giving Phanya her first taste of emotion from the man. He pitied her.
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"It's clever, I'll admit, but the first point still goes to me." There was a beat of silence where Phanya felt an expectation to say something back, but before she grew desperate enough to ask what he meant the wall opened in an oval portal without seams or sounds. Fairbanks stepped through without saying another word, and Phanya was not interested in finding out what would happen if she was still in the shuttle when the portal closed.
On the other side was a short ramp that led to a narrow hallway without any other means of egress. No doors, no windows, not even a single sign blemished the smooth walls as they fed Phanya to an archway at the other end. There another man waited, hands behind his back and clad head to toe in a snug dark-gray uniform. At least Phanya assumed it was a man, they wore a blank mask attached to a short-billed cap and she couldn't see an inch of exposed skin anywhere. But this person, or someone else in the same uniform, was driving the shuttle when it picked her up, and now they were speaking to Fairbanks.
The hallway itself seemed to muffle all sounds and Phanya couldn't hear what the two were talking about, despite only being a few meters away, but the men came to some understanding and the driver ducked through the archway. Blue lights in the structure thrummed with the passage and Fairbanks turned back to Phanya, flashing another smile that never reached his eyes.
"Please forgive me if we cannot use the proper entrance, that filter isn't as thorough as the service entrance, and I've always felt that any time spent in that foul air needs a proper scrubbing. Wouldn't you agree?"
Silence hung in the air, pulled taut like a string ready to break at any moment. "Um... sure." It was the first time Phanya spoke in what felt like hours and her voice cracked, making her monosyllabic response sound even more pathetic. "I mean, please don't worry about it. Sir." Her second attempt at speaking at least managed a full sentence and Fairbanks flashed another empty smile before he stepped through the arch, and after subconsciously taking a deep breath Phanya followed. She felt a brief yet intense sensation of resistance as she passed the threshold and the archway flashed a stronger hue of blue than it did for the two men, but it ended just as quickly and she was on the other side.
Phanya wasn't sure what she was expecting, but it certainly wasn't for her to take a bath. That filter, as Fairbanks called it, seemingly did the same thing as her sonic showers back home, only those took an hour to do what this accomplished in one second. Every inch of her skin felt freshly exfoliated and her clothes were noticeably cleaner, with all dirt and grime loosened and whisked away. And Fairbanks felt the need to apologize? Maybe Phanya didn't need to feel so worried, this guy was just a bit odd and he wanted to make a good impression.
Once past the sonic filter Phanya shivered and hugged herself, shocked at the sudden drop in air temperature. Cold and sterile, the air felt strangely empty compared to home. The hallway turned and Fairbanks was nowhere to be found, but another oval portal opened at the end of the hallway into a small round room. Still no signage to help anyone that wasn't already familiar, but this room had a handrail running all along the circumference and when the portal closed behind her Phanya felt the slight shift of upwards movement. It only lasted for a split second so it was either a very fast elevator or a very short trip, but it opened directly to a large room and Phanya had to fight back another gasp.
The strangest decoration in the room came from the lighting fixture, if it really was a lighting fixture. A stream of crystal-clear liquid flowed up near the ceiling, suspended in midair without ever visibly touching any support structure. The actual amount of liquid was probably just a gallon or two, but the whole thing stretched and flowed in invisible currents that took up most of the ceiling space. And within the water hundreds of tiny glowing lights bobbed along the path, bathing everything in a constantly shifting light that made it look like any structure or piece of furniture was liable to pounce when viewed out the corner of Phanya's eye. Not enough to give her motion sickness, but only just.
And for the first time since she was kidnapped, Phanya saw a room with furniture! Or possibly abstract art, either way it was a harsh contrast to the barren minimalism favored in the shuttle and hallways. An open floor with high ceilings stretched in all directions, dotted with furniture/art that twisted in odd ways and made Phanya's eyes water if she looked at one piece for too long.
Every piece looked like it would either buck her off, stab her, or engulf her if she got too close, the effect heightened by the shifting light source. The entire room was porcelain white with sharp red accents, just like the manager's skin, and an involuntary thought of Fairbanks stripping naked to blend in with the room like camouflage made Phanya flush at the absurdity.
Caspian Fairbanks, on the contrary, was not trying to blend in anywhere. The man sat on a twisted mess of stony white branches, the material conforming perfectly to his splayed form but jutting out everywhere else. He looked comfortable, but the furniture looked less welcoming than a pile of rusted scrap metal. He reached one hand up, holding a glass he pulled from within the weird chair, and the swirling silver lights above responded by splitting off a small amount that deposited itself right into his glass without making the tiniest splash.
Caspian capped off the entire performance by taking a long, exaggerated sniff of the drink and turning to Phanya with a small start, as if surprised to find her standing there. "Care for a drink? Tequila from my family's reserve, compression-aged for over 100 years." He glanced up and mused, "The constant motion helps keep the drink aerated. Really quite something, isn't it?"