Chapter Five
CHAPTER FIVE
Olline didn’t make good on her promise to her father that night.
She went straight home. Once there, to keep from going into a spiral, she dove head first into building the specialized data storage units she was constructing as part of her contract.
Building the hardware now was technically ahead of schedule, given where she was in the data analysis and transfer stage. But, well, she could start now, so why not? Theoretically, she would then have more free time later to enjoy the city!
She would stick to that story, should her father ask.
Hardware manipulation was a specialty of hers as an earth caster. She could manipulate the molecular makeup of the natural ore used to make the servers into something new. However, with the complexity and energy required, she could only use her magic in this way for so long without risking catastrophic results to her health. Olline had heard of casters overextending their powers, using too much and becoming a husk that would never wake again without a serious boost from natural power—usually their own stored somewhere else.
Olline eyed her plants as she arranged her materials. Getting that drained and pulling from the other places where a caster’s power was housed was poor planning, in Olline’s opinion. She shivered. She couldn’t even bring herself to imagine using so much of her magic that she would be forced to take it back from her plant babies.
Olline lifted her head from her work, and it was only then that she realized how late it was. Exhausted and proud of herself that she hadn’t thought of Casimir at all during that time— damn, streak broken! —Olline crawled into bed and passed out.
The next day, Olline was once again early to the Government Plaza. Her father, having taken her one afternoon holo-call to mean she was always free at the same time of day every day, was trying to get ahold of her again.
Guilt like barbed vines twisted through her stomach as she glanced at her wrist communicator, her father’s grey eyes and shy smile glowing up at her from the caller ID image. But she knew what he wanted to talk about, what he wanted to ask her about, and it wasn’t her job. The realization made the vines constrict around her stomach, and with a heavy sigh, she ignored the call. She vowed to keep her promise tonight after work, even if just for an hour. Then at least she would have something to tell her father when he inevitably called again the next day.
“An hour out wandering Antal won’t be so bad,” she murmured to herself, swiping more files into the transfer queue before clocking out for the day. “I’ll have plenty of time to work a bit afterward.” With that, Olline marched out of her office and left the building. Relatively on time, too.
She sighed, shoving her hands in the slouchy, metallic gold jacket she wore, and kicked at the pavement with her boot. “I’m not going to find anything around here,” she said, eyeing the well-dressed office workers leaving from higher levels in the Government Plaza. Olline loved her work, but the people she shared an “office” with were decidedly not her scene.
What was her scene? She didn’t know yet, but she convinced herself that finding out would be the adventure she needed.
Grinning to herself, Olline darted across the walkways to the first public access elevator she could find that would take her to the lower levels. The levels that weren’t as artificially manicured, where the things that thrived were a little wilder and more carefree.
Or that was the hope, anyway.
Her hand hovered over the button for a moment, the hairs on the nape of her neck prickling. She had the oddest sensation she was being watched. With a quick glance over her shoulder, her eyes darted around, searching for the cause of her raised hackles. But nothing and no one looked familiar. She narrowed her eyes, then glanced up. There was a security drone hovering above her head. Olline sighed. Her magic was reacting to the pulses coming from the drone. Steeling her spine, she put the sensation from her mind and continued on her way.
Olline entered the elevator and picked a random location about three-fourths down into the center of the city. It wasn’t the lowest location queued. She didn’t dare study the others in the high-speed elevator to guess who was going farther down, but it was as low as Olline dared to venture.
She closed her eyes, battling against the inertia as her stomach struggled to keep up with the descending elevator. Thankfully, the doors soon opened with a trilling ping on the location she had picked on a whim. She inhaled the stale, slightly gasoline-tinged air as if it were a floral breeze, and paused at the threshold.
This low in the city, the air was heavy with a sticky humidity, clogged with the oil and grime from the aerial traffic. A mossy haze shrouded the sky, obscuring the sun and stars, with only the twinkling neon lights of businesses and signs capable of illuminating the gloom. The shadows hugged the mass of moving bodies, making the crowds appear to grow and swell in monstrous formations. Yet there was a vitality here that Olline could feel thrumming in her very marrow.
The earth far beneath her feet was polluted, yes, the soil not suitable for anything other than supporting the mammoth buildings that arched closer and closer to the stratosphere. But the loam had shifted, changed, and was still alive .
The earth thrived off a toxicity that permeated into the people who lived lower in the city. It didn’t feel poisonous to Olline. It held a frantic energy that buoyed her heart, an earthquake in her nerve endings that made her want to dance.
“Move it, bitch,” someone growled from behind her, shoving her out on to the platform proper. Olline stumbled, blinking furiously, having forgotten where she was.
She looked for the person who shoved her, but the sea of people moving like opposing tides all around her made it impossible to find them. Some drifted toward the bars and clubs that were already teeming with activity, others flowed toward the hundreds of kiosks lining the walkways selling all manner of product for a fraction of the price as the same item higher in the city.
The rude shove would not intimidate her. Olline was too full of crackling energy to stand still.
Olline didn’t make the mistake of closing her eyes this time. Focused on that small ball of molten energy in her core, the one that tugged her farther along the path, she headed deeper into the throng of people.
Twisting around the crowds, Olline didn’t register faces or the smell of musky body odor as it flitted by her nose. She only paid attention to the tug in her core. But she was walking and walking farther from the public access elevators and fewer and fewer street lights were working the longer she meandered down the sidewalks, causing the hair on the nape of her neck to stand on end again.
With narrowed her eyes, she glanced up. There were security drones above her, even here. Old, clunky things, but they were there, so she pushed the uncomfortable feeling away once more. She was about to give up when the tug turned into an eruption, and she stopped abruptly where she was on the sidewalk.
Two larger buildings surrounded the club, with its door being almost too narrow to walk through. But the sound coming from inside . . . there was a band playing! Alongside a synth-bot to help the dancers keep going, but real musicians all the same.
Like her coffee and her plants, Olline was a sucker for things that were nurtured, created by living hands.
It was dark inside the club, or maybe it was more of a bar? Olline wasn’t sure of the difference in this instance. The air was so gritty she could feel it all the way in the back of her throat. The red and yellow spotlights cut through the haze of smoke and heavy breathing, filling the room with shadows that concealed people as easily as alcoves. There was only one bar, the bottles of liquor suspended in different glass boxes that a robotic bartender called down as needed. It allowed the bar to be small and gave the raised platform off to the side those precious few feet with which to house the band.
She weaved her way to the center of the crowd, wondering if there was a caster on stage, using their power to draw people in. One had the horns of a seersha, but beyond that telltale sign, she couldn’t tell if they had magic. All the others were humani and had holographic visors over their faces that obscured their eyes.
Olline’s body moved, bouncing and swaying to the seductive pull of the singer’s throaty voice. Her body rolled along with the heady beat coming from the drummer and the synth-bot that amplified it all. While most of the people on the dance floor were either shirtless or wearing tiny scraps of clothing, Olline didn’t feel out of place. No one seemed to note her arrival, nor that she was one of the few people dancing without someone firmly pressed against her.
Olline lost track of time. A fine sheen of sweat coated her body, making her glisten. She kept her jacket on; the sleeves pushed to her elbows as she raised her arms and dipped her hips. Her bright purple crop top rose, showing off more of her torso and the curve of her wide hips around her low-slung jeans. That was when she felt a hand trail along the small of her back, sliding to her navel before the owner came into view.
Her magic hadn’t even warned her that someone was that close.
A man with greasy blond hair that poked out from underneath the ratty hood he had pulled low over his forehead, obscuring his eyes, held a drink out under her nose. “Give that body a break, honey. Come sit with me a minute. I’ll buy you any drink you want.”
His voice was reedy, barely audible over the music. Her body recoiled against his touch, leaving a trail on her slick skin that made her feel clammy. “I’m good, thanks,” she replied with an apologetic smile, twisting away from him.
But he moved with her, that glowing amber drink in his hand tilting up, like he’d force her to take a sip. “I’m just being nice, honey, no need to be so cold. You’re too pretty not to have someone buying you a drink. Allow me. I’m a nice guy. You can trust me.”
She moved away more forcefully. “No, I said I’m fine,” she said again, putting more iron in her voice, letting the smile slip since he didn’t seem to get the hint. “Leave me alone.”
He moved to grab her arm, and she jerked away, glancing around at the other people on the crowded dance floor. None of them cared that she didn’t want whatever this guy was trying to offer her. Plenty noticed, and were avidly watching the little drama unfold, but none stepped in.
Ice water filled her gut as she began backing her way out of the club, only to find a wall of moving bodies blocking her exit, trapping her with no way to navigate around them.
“I was asking you nicely,” he said, his moist lips tickling her ear. Olline shuddered. She didn’t know how he had moved so quickly or quietly to get around her so fast. “You shouldn’t turn down a man who’s just being nice to you.”
Achan had said similar things to her. That he was being so nice to her, so she should do more for him. She should be grateful, because he was trying to help her. Her throat tightened, memories of Achan choking her until she swore she felt him breathing down her neck, his cold, deceptive touch sending a sickening chill through her once more. Panic threatened to overwhelm her, lost in a past she was working so hard to heal from.
Olline couldn’t smile her way out of this or pretend that it would be easier to go along with it until she could disappear. And she didn’t want to, not this time.
She called her magic to the surface, let it coil around the iron in her piercings. Olline put steel in her spine and whipped around. “Back off, asshole!” Olline shoved the man as hard as she could. The sound of a grunt chased after her, but she didn’t stick around to see if she had knocked him over. She turned to flee; she’d punch and kick the patrons blocking her path if she needed to, would let her magic clear a path if she had to.
“Cunt!” she heard the man yell. Then there was a whoosh of air behind her, and the firm grip of a hand around her wrist.
Olline clenched her free hand and spun, flinging her fist blindly and hoping it connected. She was lucky; her fist cracked against a sharp jawline as hard as granite.
A pair of familiar deep red eyes flared back at her.
Olline’s stomach tightened, and she sucked in a breath. “Oh, shit.”