The cold concrete veins of Nox were alive with the steady flow of citizens bustling about their business. After all, work alone could not support life within the great cavern of Magna Spelunca. While roughly half the city’s millions toiled away at the tasks assigned by the administrative caste, the remaining citizens were free to pursue their personal passions and hobbies. That is, until the current fifteen hour period comes to an end. Then all the people flowing through the streets would report to their job sites to relieve their compatriots. The pattern repeated like clockwork, twice a day, 20 times a deka, 60 times a mensis, 600 times a cycle.
The exception would be those in situations like Rathaniel Bright. Every fifth day was a work holiday, alternating between Service Day and Recreational Day. Rec Day was a complete thirty hour period for citizens to pursue social commitments or individual interests. Service Day was devoted to the general maintenance and upkeep of the city and, once a mensis, recharging a citizen's organic nanite interface during the shuffle into a new work assignment. In theory, the administrative caste shifted and staggered the schedules in such a way that the citizens of Nox were churned into groups with new and unfamiliar faces. In practice, members of the same caste, in the same sector, were far more likely to be shuffled into the same work detail.
Contrary to his concerns before the shuffle, Rathaniel found himself preoccupied not with who he might share his next assignment with, but rather who would be absent. His trip down the empty street outside Administration Building C had done little by way of calming his agitation or soothing the anger burning in the pit of his gut. The most frustrating element of all was the lack of a true target for his ire. It felt like his focus changed with every foot fall, unable to decide if he should be more angry at Ovid, Jared, or the Administrators themselves. In a way, he was the most angry with himself for standing by and doing nothing in the face of an uncaring and inexorable justice system.
Lost in thought, he barely noticed as the solitude of the tertiary street he traveled gave way to the ever increasing crowd of a major thoroughfare. While Rath wrestled with the realities of life in Nox, off duty citizens, dressed in solid white jumpsuit, began to populate the street around him. As the foot traffic increased, so too did the variety among pedestrians increase as well. Though the people of Nox had been locked in the city’s protective embrace for generations, there were still signs of their diverse lineage. Blonde, black, brown, and auburn hair, no longer than shoulder length, splashed color across a canvas of bland concrete. Likewise, the bodies beneath the jumpsuits ranged from ebony to ivory and every shade between. Rathaniel had heard rumors that the Imperium had tried to remove different skin tone and hair color from the population generations ago through the application of selective breeding. The failure of that program had sent the city teetering on the edge of collapse. Only the destruction of something called the clergy caste had saved the city. Growing up in the Dormitory, Rath had dismissed those stories as seditious fiction. It sounded like exactly the sort of thing the law against unlicensed print protected the citizens from. In the years since his graduation, especially in the face of what he’d witnessed today, Rath found himself wondering if the laws weren’t so much intended to protect as they were to control.
Now, several blocks away from the admin building, Rathaniel was little more than a face in the crowd. For the first time, his hazel eyes swept across people in uniform on their trek to or from the tram station ahead. Most wore the same gray coveralls he did. A succinct reminder that the labor caste was, by far, the largest in the city. But that didn’t mean the other castes were completely unrepresented. Sprinkled through the press of humanity were people dressed as he was except in the green of an analyst uniform instead of laborer gray. Rarer still, he saw two administrators dressed in their unmistakable red robes. That sight almost undid the work of his sojourn and sent his thoughts spiraling back into a seething pit of frustration.
Unexpectedly, the sound of his name rising above the muted roar around him snapped Rathaniel out of his vengeful thoughts. The grim line of his lips softened into a tired smile when he recognized the voice shouting his name from across the street. With a thought he bottled up the swirling anger inside himself and turned toward the welcome sight of an approaching friend.
“Rath! Oh for the love of the light, Rath!,” shouted a dark haired young woman, all but dragging a man through the street who was even taller than Rathaniel. Mary Devereaux had her chocolate brown eyes fixed on Rath like a cat preparing to pounce on a particularly plump rat. Heedless of the crowd, the young woman tugged insistently at Marco’s much larger hand while she wove through the throng toward her target. For his part, the blonde man behind her projected a defeated look that appeared to be depressingly well practiced.. The big man glanced Rathaniel’s way, but spent the bulk of his time murmuring apologies to the irritated folks Mary shoved out of her path. “Rath! I’ve been shouting at you for two blocks! Two!”
“I haven't been ignoring you, Mary,” Rath answered, stepping toward the corner of a nearby store to remove himself, and the advancing duo, from the steady stream of foot traffic heading toward the tram terminal.
“Then you've gotten deaf in your old age. This time next cycle they'll be shipping you off to an outpost with all the other codgers.” Mary replied, giving him a flat look before finally releasing Marco’s hand to toss her arms into the air in disgust. Peering up at him, she continued in a more conversational tone, “What are you even doing out here in your uniform?”
“His shuffle was today, Mary,” said Marco, preempting Rathaniel’s response in the lowest baritone voice that Rathaniel had ever heard. Marco Fennel had a voice like the sound of a demolition blast rushing up an empty mine shaft. The blonde man continued, “You and Krista were hoping they’d get shuffled to hydroponics so we could be on the same assignment. It’s been four mensis since we’ve all worked together at the same place.”
“You’re right!,” Mary said, glancing back at Marco before punctuating her words with a snap of her nimble fingers. When she turned back to Rath, a vibrant smile had blossomed across her lips to match the expectant shimmer of her brown eyes. “Where did you and Jerry end up?”
The anticipation written across his old friend’s beautiful face sent an icy shard of anxiety sliding straight into his heart. In that moment she looked like the giddy, over-excited child he and Jared had met at the Dormitory nearly twenty cycles ago. The three of them had met Ovid a few of mensis later and had been virtually inseparable until their graduation. Marco, Krista, and the rest had joined them in the cycles since graduation, but Rath couldn’t resist thinking of them differently. The three friend’s he’d shared so much with while growing up held a special place in his heart.
By their reactions, Mary and Marco must have caught a glimpse of the inner anguish written across his face. Somehow that made Rathaniel feel even worse. His friends had been enjoying their Rec time and now he was forcing them to carry a portion of the frustration that was his burden to bear. He was the one who’d stood by and watched Jared disappear into Keeper custody. Some part of him had known he would have to share this story with the people close to Jared. But standing there, looking into Mary's molten brown eyes, he couldn’t find the words to convey what took place. Only then did he realize he’d spent the entire trip back wallowing in his own self pity. All his thinking had been about how Jer’s absence affected him when he should have been focusing on what he could do to affect Jared. Honest as it was, the acknowledgment made him feel queasy and sick to his stomach.
Sensing Rathaniel’s growing distress, Mary stepped forward and began to speak. Before she could speak, Marco’s heavy hand took hold of her slim shoulders with a firm squeeze. “Where is Jared?,” the blonde man murmured, leaving Rath thankful for his friend’s gift for being direct.
“They took him.” Rath’s answer was as concise as Jared’s question. Mary’s quiet gasp broke his heart, but he forced himself to continue, his voice growing more confident with each word.. “There was…it was something to do with Ovid. Whatever he did, it was enough to issue a yellow alert.” He drew in a rattling breath then, finally lifting his hazel eyes from their study of the sidewalk to look first toward Mary’s supportive gaze and then toward Marco’s steady one. “They asked me about him, but I hadn’t seen him in more three shuffles. Jared had seen him a mensis ago. I guess that was recent enough for them to take him into cu…custody.”
His voice cracked at the end despite his best efforts. The sound sent Mary lunging out of Marco’s grip to wrap her slender arms around Rath’s toned frame. With her cheek nestled against the broad expanse of his chest, his coveralls muffled what would have otherwise been an aggrieved shout. “They can’t take him. They can’t. Jer’s a good person. A perfect citizen! Perfect!” Now her voice wavered, like the first hesitant notes of a songbird after a predator prowled past its nest. With a sniffle, Mary shifted, wiping her face on the synthcloth of Rath’s gray undershirt. When she spoke again, her voice was a quiet, delicate thing, “We have to do something. We have to get him back.”
Swept away by the tide of emotion, Rath tossed a helpless look toward his friend. He appreciated Mary’s support, but it was too much. He was too raw. He refused to break down here on the side of the street but he knew if he felt Mary sniffling against his chest any longer it would end with tears in his eyes. Marco gave a silent nod of understanding and moved forward to guide his paramour away from Rath and into his waiting embrace. The trio stood in silence, the two men sharing a grim look, while Mary drew in a shuddering breath to pull herself back together.
Marco, waiting until Mary had finished dabbing her eyes, spoke in a low, insistent voice, “We need to go home. We’ll take the tram back to building four and then check on Krista. If she’s home, we’ll talk there. If she’s out, we’ll go to one of our places instead. But we need to move. We can’t have this conversation here.” Marco pointedly swept his gaze around to the mass of people flowing past the alley they’d ducked into. It could be awkward for an analyst or laborer to overhear criticisms of the Imperium. Being overheard by a passing Blanket or a Keeper would be far, far worse.
Rathaniel hated himself a bit for allowing Marco to step in and take charge. Even if he needed someone to do exactly that. His mind had been an jumbled mess ever since the disastrous shuffle. Rath's tangled thoughts had been soaked in irrepressible guilt and melted together by the heat of barely restrained rage. He needed a chance to untangle them and the kind of clarity that only time could provide.
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Which is why he forced himself to offer his friend a strained smile when he spoke. “I’m right behind you.” With the speed of a striking snake, Mary’s left hand snatched Rath’s right hand so quickly he almost recoiled in shock. As if sensing this, her slender fingers tightened against his, all without moving from where she nestled into Marco’s arm. Deciding that it wasn’t worth a fight that he'd lose, Rathaniel let Mary guide him down the street. Rath felt like a child toddling down the Dormitory halls behind an overprotective magister.
“Have you eaten?,” Marco asked, remaining focused on progressing through this crisis one step at a time.
“No. You said we’d eat after we walked through Cedar Park,” Mary replied. Any doubt concerning the young lady’s displeasure was dispelled when she leaned back and looked up into Marco’s chiseled features with a look of utter disdain. “Remember?,” she asked, emphasizing the veiled threat in her tone.
Nonplussed, Marco never broke stride as he casually deflected her menacing stare. “I wasn’t talking to you, darling.”
Mary, at least, had the grace to appear chastised. In a display of pique that Rath felt was out of place for her, she turned her head in a practiced motion that tossed the dark ringlets of her hair..
“Of course Ratty hasn’t eaten yet. Nobody eats until after a shuffle,” the young woman said. After her pronouncement, Mary continued to watch Rath’s expression with a challenging gleam to her brown eyes, as if daring him to deny her wisdom.
“How many times? How many times have I told you that ‘Ratty’ is not my name?,” Rathaniel whined, his voice laced with cycles worth of accumulated grief . “I don’t want to bother with an actual meal. I’ll grab a nutrient cube when we get to the lobby.”
“Then we will too,” Marco replied, ignoring Mary’s sputtering sounds of protest. With purposeful steps he led the trio through the crowd toward the tram terminal in the distance.
The debate concerning the greatest marvels of Nox was both ongoing among its citizens and fiercely contested. Many cited the five Helios towers as the city’s greatest collective achievement. Others insisted that the ingenuity in creating the four verdant parks was an unparalleled accomplishment. There was always a great deal of personal bias involved, no matter who was speaking or which wonder they championed. Rathaniel himself had always been a proponent of the aqueduct that kept the city and those within it from succumbing to unquenchable thirst. Immediately below, on his own personal ranking, Rath would have listed the tram system.
As he and his two friends approached the nearest terminal, Rath was, once again, mesmerized by the gleaming silver snake that stretched down the street in both directions as far as the eye could see. There was no true beginning or end to the series of connected cars. Rather it was one long, uninterrupted conveyance. The civil engineering feat it had taken to devise an endless route through the city was only matched by the wizardry of mechanical engineering needed to keep the tram running without interruption.
As if sensing Rathaniel’s invasive study, the sliding doors arrayed across the near side of the tram closed. Green lights dotting the terminal platform shifted to an eye searing red as the trio ascended the short flight of steps to take their place in line. A familiar hum, like a bumbling bee drifting too close to your ear, filled the air as the magnetic propulsion engaged. A heartbeat later, the endless stream of cars shot forward in silence save for the audible whoosh of displaced air.
“It makes my teeth hurt, “ Mary complained, rubbing her cheek with the heel of her hand. Now that they'd reached their destination, she released Rath to his own devices. Marco would not escape so easily. “It always makes my teeth hurt,” the young woman whined, scowling at the tram cars flashing by so fast they appeared as little more than a sparkling blur.
“That’s the EM field,” Rath said in the tired tone of a mentor who’d repeated the same lesson numerous times. “If it weren’t for the integration of organic lattice into our nanites, that field could lead to a catastrophic failure of the entire ONI system.” His head tipped down, catching her gaze while he struggled to maintain his deadpan delivery. “We learned this in the Dorms ages ago, shadows for brains.”
Mary’s jaw dropped, offering only a series of owlish blinks while her brain rebooted. Her partner’s derisive snort seemed to jump start the process. The young woman tried dividing her attention between the two men before the full force of her dainty scowl turned Rathaniel’s way. “You are the shadows for brains, Ratty. You!” Heedless of the attention her antics were drawing, Mary jabbed a reprimanding finger into Rath’s chest to match the cadence of her voice. “You. Are. A. Dimwit. You are always picking on me for no reason. None! Wait till I tell Jerry.” Overlooking the way Rath stiffened, she continued with a sniff and a disdainful toss of her silken ringlets. “The next time I see him I”ll…he’ll…” Her voice trailed off, aborting her threat with a strangled sound. Mary's eyes grew wider with every mortified heartbeat of silence that followed. Appalled, one hand rose to cover her mouth with an open palm, but it was far too late to keep the painful subject from tumbling past her lips.
“It’s okay, Maryberry,” Rath murmured, forcing his lips to twist into a reassuring smile that didn’t manage to warm the dull luster of his eyes. He hated the growing dampness he could see in her timid gaze. He hated that one of his oldest friends thought him so fragile that she needed to walk on eggshells around him. Most of all, he hated that her concern was close to the truth.
“We’ll get him back. Somehow. Krista will have a plan. Or we'll make one ourselves.” Rathaniel’s voice became more sure with every syllable as he drew from the bottomless well of rage that had been simmering within him all morning. His gaze sharpened, honed to a dangerous edge as he drew fresh strength from the crackling inferno that radiated from the silver bracer on he wore. “I’m not going to let anything stop us,” Rath growled, his eyes focused on something in the middle distance only he could see.
Rubbing at the ONI bracer that felt as if it would melt off his wrist at any moment, Rathaniel never saw Marco move. His hazel eyes snapped back into focus when he felt the pale man’s open palm thump against his back. Acting on reflex, and lingering wrath, he pivoted toward Marco with one calloused hand balling into a fist.
“Whatever we do,” Marco rumbled, “We do it smart.” His blue eyes watched the tension bleed from Rath’s broad-shouldered frame with the kind of scrutiny normally reserved for studying the dying embers in an extinguished forge. “Right now, the smart thing is to get to our flickering home. Can everyone calm down long enough to do that?” For the first time there was a warning edge to Marco’s baritone. A warning that, for the moment, quenched Rath’s unpredictable ire.
“Thanks,” he said , nodding Marco’s way. The word had scarcely left his lips when Mary’s fingers found his hand again. Instead of looking up at him her gaze was downcast and her expression subdued. The grip of her hand was no less intense for it. He offered her delicate fingers a gentle squeeze as well, the gesture serving as both an apology and a promise.
Mere moments later the tram whispered to a stop. The red lights scattered across the terminal changed to pulse a bright, vibrant green. Once the car doors hissed open, the blinking lights bathed the platform in a steady green glow. On cue, the arriving passengers departed onto the far side of the terminal while those standing with Rath and his friends surged forward to secure a spot on the tram.
With minimal jostling, the trio stepped into a rapidly filling car. At twenty meters long, each car could hold two hundred people at maximum capacity. While it was unusual for a car to exceed capacity, it was all too common for citizens to find transit uncomfortably cramped.
Once inside, a few brisk steps let the trio stake out a corner of the compartment to serve as their territory during the short trip. Though the two men remained standing, Mary chose to claim one of the empty seats. She also chose to claim the seat beside her for Marco, whether he wanted to sit or not. After a couple tugs at his arm and a grumbled comment that Rath didn’t quite catch, Marco abandoned his guard post to fulfill the dubious duty of serving as Mary’s living pillow. Once they’d settled, Rath politely ignored the lovers in favor of studying the wide array of citizens filling the car.
Most of the people settling into the tram dressed in the same white outfits that Mary and Marco wore. Commonly referred to as ‘rec whites.’ But there were always a few, like Rath, who were in their caste uniforms. Halfway up the car, three administrators sat together in silence with a respectful ring of open space around them. Their boundary was thin compared to the ring of empty space surrounding the Peace Keeper. Standing at the far end of the car, with their back to the wall, the smooth, mirrored mask they wore reflected everyone on the tram. By design it was impossible to tell where the Keeper was looking, or rather, who they were looking at. Yet as Rath studied the law enforcement official from afar, he couldn’t shake the clawing suspicion that they were staring directly at him.
It took all his restraint to resist a sigh of relief when the lights flickered red and the doors to the tram began to close. But a heartbeat before the doors sealed, a woman with auburn hair darted through the narrow crack. The slim woman dressed in green coveralls wove her way deftly through the crowded section of the car. Rath watched her progress, expecting her to settle into any of the empty seats beside the aisle, but the woman ignored them all. Her methodical progress didn’t stop until she was an arms length from him.
“Hello,” the analyst said in a soft soprano voice. The woman made no attempt to hide the way her green eyes trailed from the top of his head to the toes of his boots.. “Do you mind if I stand back here? I don’t care much for crowds. At least back here I’m not surrounded by strangers. Just standing beside a singular stranger.” Without waiting for his response she turned to place her back against the wall beside him. “I really, really don’t understand how people can ride in the middle of the tram. Isn’t it gross?”
Despite himself, Rath couldn’t resist a faint smile. “Well, I think the first thing we should do is introduce ourselves? My name is Rathaniel Bright and I really, really don’t want you to think of me as some gross stranger.” He couldn’t resist the urge to mimic her tone. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Marco casually shift his attention from the window to Rath’s new acquaintance. Far less discrete, Mary had given up on pretending to be asleep in favor of evaluating this new arrival with a look that dripped judgmental bias.
“Nice to meet you, Laborer Bright. My name is Abigail Summers.” Abigail said, her cheerful soprano voice a perfect match for the sparkle in her vibrant emerald eyes. “I guess, since you’re in uniform, you must have had a shuffle today? I hope yours went better than mine.” At this, she leaned in closer and dropped her voice to a sultry whisper. “The dimwit Blankets shuffled me into mining logistics! Mining!” The analyst’s voice grew louder as she spoke, each word laced with more bitterness than the last. “I really, really wanted to be back in urban development.”
“But I guess it could be worse,” Abigail continued, letting her emerald gaze flicker across Rath’s gray coveralls. “I heard a rumor that one of you Labor boys got pinched by the Keepers.”
A smile, full of mischief and spite, tugged at the woman’s lips as she leaned close enough to press her body to his. Rath could see Marco shaking his head while Mary tried to rise despite Marco's efforts to keep her in her seat. He wished he could reassure his friends that he knew how dangerous it was to share his experience with a stranger. Unfortunately, the sad truth was that Rathaniel found it very hard to think past the hypnotic sparkle in the analyst’s emerald eyes.
“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that,” Abigail almost purred, “would you?”