Chapter 6 Can I Join the Club? #2
Despite how the rest of The Tower became cheaper and crappier on the way down, the Ground Floor was more like the 700K+ levels in terms of how expensive it was, especially the inner ring.
All those who had a hankering for the nostalgia of the Old World could find that down here, as it was carefully maintained to preserve a chunk of the earth we abandoned to save humankind.
“Sorry, Zade,” I whispered to his HovMo as it drifted on autopilot into the parking bay. Once it stopped in the spot closest to the exit, I selected charge to owner account on the accompanying menu screen.
I’d owe him foot massages for the rest of my life to pay him back for this.
Barf.
Out of habit, I tried to pull up a map on my Visex after dismounting from the HovMo. Nothing happened.
My finger tapped my temple to try and get a reaction from the Visex, an old motion ingrained in my muscles from when the Nexcom required external touch stimulation to activate.
Most of us still tried it like unplugging it and plugging it in again, an IT fix that would have fixed most of the world’s problems once upon a time, despite reassurances from the Administration that it was a useless gesture now.
Still nothing.
Then I saw the plaque by the pedestrian exit:
No Visex, Nexcom, or Lumos usage permitted on the Ground Floor.
Please ask an Attendant for assistance if needed.
“Great,” I groaned aloud. I had not been to the Ground Floor since our field trip five years ago, but it seemed just as strange and strict as before.
Following actual physical signs, a task I hadn’t performed since my Visex upgrade in middle school, I made my way toward Ground Floor Central Station.
If this stupid cult tries to get me to pay them—my nose scrunched at the thought. I’ve had a plan for at least four years now on how to get to Azazel. One little piece of paper comes along, and I’m throwing it all out the window.
Good thing the station was deserted because my internal grumblings manifested in verbal mumblings with an occasional hiss as I trudged along in search of someone who could help me get to Hearth Haven Inn.
But then the memory of the background image from the paper had me peeping down at the mark on my chest. While some people were still born with birthmarks or strange defects despite advancements in genetic modifications, mine was a bit excessive.
Usually, you could get abnormalities removed with cosmetic surgery.
When I was six, they tried to laser it off, but it had absolutely no effect.
When I was twelve, they went so far as to begin a skin graft, but the sample graft failed because the damn mark somehow appeared on the new skin within hours.
Fortunately, the Administration wasn’t so cruel as to put me through that again. They just gave up.
I already stood out enough with my obvious dual-blood appearance, so the mark didn’t make it much worse. It had always just been skin.
Until it wasn’t.
Now it was something associated with a cult trying to bring down the Administration.
My smile inched out really slowly at the idea of me being marked since birth to kill Azazel.
But then I remembered I’d just committed a different serious crime and needed to get my ass moving in case Zade came after me.
Grand Central Train Station was located in the very center of the Ground Floor Level. It only had four lines, one heading in each of the primary cardinal directions. A gargantuan dome-like lobby made up the center of the station. It also happened to be where I ended up.
A woman about four and a half feet tall and eight and a half decades old sat behind a barred window at the desk in the middle of the dome.
Her smile was yellow teeth and dark red gums as she croaked out at me, “Can I help you?”
I cleared my throat and stepped a little closer. She had a red-and-white name tag on her gray blouse, which helped.
“Yes, Merril,” I said and cleared my throat.
“I need a round-trip ticket to the West Gate.” I offered a weak smile and scratched the back of my neck, which only made me wonder if I was going to get that strange feeling of someone watching me again anytime soon.
“Can I get the cheapest price available, please?”
Merril’s wrinkles nearly flattened with how wide her eyes opened for that brief moment.
She clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and then chicken-pecked at a keyboard on some antique folding computer device.
After a burdensomely long wait had given me enough time to scope out the desolate train station again and make sure no one was following me, she spoke without looking up or changing pitch.
“The economy car only costs two credits.”
“Shit,” I whisper-cursed. Then I squinted, with another weak smile, before offering her, “Um, can I give you my brother’s ID number to charge to his account?”
Sorry, Zade. Love ya.
Her eyes clicked from her screen to peek just over the rim of her black, square glasses, “I just found a discount for you. Half a credit for first-time adult riders.”
“W-what?” My jaw hung for a second before the smile split. “Wow! Thank you!”
She didn’t return the smile but only nodded toward the scanning pad on the counter in front of me.
I waved my wrist over it, and a small ding sounded.
My foot tapped twice on the floor before I could still it.
Merril went back to staring at her screen as she droned out, “Your train leaves in ten minutes from Platform W. Car 73. Enjoy.”
“Thanks again!” I smiled, but toward the top of her head this time as she was already back to hacking away at her keyboard.
I skittered over to the map beside the counter to check exactly where Platform W was before I sprinted, because it looked rather far for ten minutes.
The train pulled up when I reached the last tiled step at the wrong end of the platform. As I ran down the line of the train, both the cars and the few passengers that boarded them transitioned from the type you’d see at 700K+ to more like the neighborhood I hailed from.
I squeezed into Car 73 among a large crowd of mostly men. I’m not sure if it was the men who smelled like old cigars and yesterday’s urine, the train car, or both. Even among this crowd, I could still hear the whispers.
“She’s a Mutt!”
“Poor girl.
“Ugly as sin.”
“Wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot pole.”
I couldn’t see out for most of the ride with the men all leaning on the filth-crusted windows, but from what I could see, city life soon melded into wide open outskirts, not too dissimilar to where my grandmother had lived.
Houses grew sparser and trees more frequent, though never wild.
Nothing ever was in The Tower. A few intentionally planned hills soon rolled in among the fields where our food supply was grown and tended by nanos.
Despite our frequent stops, no one seemed to disembark, and with no Visex to use, they all either stared at me or tried to nod off.
I bent my head low and worked to bury my nose in my backpack, now hanging in front of me.
The position served to both hide me from their view and from the smell that was beginning to stick to the back of my throat.
I filled my head with all the possible ways I would confront this cult about how they knew of my plans to kill Azazel and how they could help me.
Only twice did my mind flit back to the interaction I’d had with Thaddeus and the heat that had washed over me under the severity of his gaze. Both instances came and went with ease.
Finally, a good chunk of the passengers filed out once we’d reached a stop called Minder’s Data Mining INC. The stench lightened, and I could breathe again.
Only four other passengers remained, and it wasn’t much longer before the automated voice sang into the cabin.
“The train has arrived at the last stop on the West Line. Please disembark in an orderly fashion. If you are visiting the Gate, please respect the posted signs and do not cross the guard line. Moderators are standing by for your safety. The Bike Depot is located at Exit 3F. Have a pleasant day.”
The doors parted, and I followed a scruffy man with a potbelly and a rancid stench out of the train. He moved toward an elevator on autopilot. I waited for the next one to avoid passing out from having to stand in a confined space with him.
The ground floor was almost as empty as the platform had been.
A floor-to-ceiling screen broadcast talking heads on Tower News Network.
Other screens played advertisements for genetic enhancements and sensual experience immersion, but no map.
Two armed Moderators guarded the lone exit, and a boy around my age in a gray tweed uniform with a matching hat leaned against the glass booth.
His thick, curly hair poked out from under the cap, and made it look too small for his head, but all I could look at was a scar that stretched from the brow of his right eye down to his chin.
I immediately thought of Marsha Walton from the day before. Strange how their lives were so different yet so similar. They were both disfigured beyond redemption. One lived in luxury while the other was stuck working down here.
Looks mattered in The Tower, but in the end, money talked and blood ran thick.
The boy smiled, full of crooked teeth and oversized gums that should have been fixed a long time ago.
“How long you gonna stare?” he asked more casually than his words or my staring warranted.
“Oh, uh—” I shook my head and looked around the station with a flame of embarrassment now creeping up my neck. “No, I—erm—I’m just looking for a map?”
Not entirely a fib, but I was now mostly trying to avoid looking at his face again.
“You’re not a very good liar.” The boy laughed and stood up straight. A scowl replaced his smile. “You’ll have to get better at that.”
“Huh?” My eyes snapped back to him, brows furrowed. “What is that supposed to mean?”
He shrugged, and I noticed his name tag now.
Adriel ran a hand down his face and then recited his droning pitch, “Will you be needing a guide for a visit to the West Gate today? We have a tour package that includes the history of The Old World and local landmarks that were salvaged before the Void.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m sure you’ll find it very interesting. ”
Another laugh. This one sounded like beads bouncing across marble after someone pulled too hard on a bracelet until the string snapped.
Someone like Adriel shouldn’t have been laughing at others. It was no wonder he had to work out here in the middle of nowhere with an attitude as ugly as his face.
I mirrored his unamused expression and sighed.
“Can you just tell me where Hearth Haven Inn is?”
His eyes narrowed, and he hesitated. “That’s not part of the tour.”
“I don’t need you to take me there. I need to know which direction to head in.”
Adriel shook his head and went back to leaning against the wall.
“Good luck with that. You can find the Bike Depot just across the street if you need one.” He pointed with his thumb over his shoulder even though it was not the direction of ‘across the street’.
I huffed out a, “Seriously?” under my breath.
Clenching my teeth, I marched toward the exit while trying to appear more confident in what I was doing than I actually felt.
Just before I could wave my wrist over the exit gate sensor, the screen to my right flashed to life with breaking news.
“All Citizens are to be on watch for any sightings of a known terrorist who has recently been spotted at Nian’s Ice Cream Parlor,” Bora Rockefeller announced in her skintight jumper.
I whipped around so fast that the muscles in my neck were going to need a sit-down with me later.
Sure enough, the girl with the nasty scar was glaring out at me from the screen.
Bile simmered in my stomach at the sight of Marsha and her scar.
“She has been using a stolen identity belonging to Marsha Walton,” the newscaster continued. “Her real name is Veda Ambani, and she is a dangerous criminal. She was accompanied by an unknown male using the stolen identity of Thaddeus Tsai.”
An image of the gruesome giant replaced Veda’s. The CCTV screenshot was not the best angle, so most of his features were too dark to see. But then a zoomed-out image of them at the ice cream parlor included the top of my head as I handed over an ice cream cone.
My throat closed up, and I couldn’t breathe, much less swallow.
Shit.
This is the opposite of what I need right now.
“They are believed to be members of a known cult determined to upend the Ad—”
The screen went black, and I sucked in a breath.
Adriel made a sound in the back of his throat, and I turned to him with my eyes round and my ears thrumming.
Does he know that was me?
He smirked as if he did. “Keep going past the Bike Depot, and you’ll find it.”
Something like a “Hm?” slipped out. I tried to wet my lips to ask what it was I was going to find, but Adriel was already disappearing through a metal door that read Staff Only.
Find what, dammit?!