CyberCinder
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Chapter 352: Paradise with Riot Control
🕑 Added 2025-10-14 11:02:18 +0000 UTCIt doesn’t take more than five minutes to spot the first ‘ragged edge’, as Call called it. The road that winds down from the risen hangar is lined with signs, warnings, and simple chain link fences that buzz with magical promise. More than enough to deter someone from getting close, yet not quite enough to seriously hurt anyone that touches them.
Except for the dials. Simple little things hidden in the thin layer of perfectly green grass that whir and click so quietly that I wouldn’t be able to hear them without my awareness. Tiny holes ring the disks equally on all sides. Each of those holes feels like a shot of arsenic mixed with brown recluse venom. Then I look a little further out to the glints of cameras secretly hidden almost everywhere.
The dials aren’t set to automatically go off. Someone has to trigger them. To choose to murder whoever sets foot on this place illegally. I’d get it if this was a warzone or something, but… the damn schoolbell’s still clanging off in the distance. People are going to work, not war. All they’re protecting this place from is their own damn citizens.
I roll my shoulder and make a note; if I have to hit somewhere in the city, look for places like this. Places where normal people obviously aren’t allowed to go, and would be punished heavily for disobeying. Those are where the Preservation will hurt the most.
“Sorry about this.”
Call’s voice is slightly shaky as I turn to look at him. He’s obviously trying not to look at all the hidden cameras, and he’s not doing a great job of it. Or maybe he’s trying to warn me about them. I’m going to believe its the second option.
“Why? You saved me,” I remind him calmly and clearly. “What could you have to apologize for?”
He coughs and discreetly motions towards a camera. Then to the dials in the grass. And… then straight up. I frown and follow his finger skyward, the lone non-discreet motion of the three, and finally feel the sun bearing down on my face.
Except it isn’t a sun. It’s a massive light shining from an even larger floating platform. Like the one at the party a few months ago, but… well… cleaner. Squarer. I openly gawk at the massive waste of resources, since the damn thing is blocking the actual sun from shining down on the city.
“How didn’t I see that a second ago?” I ask, genuinely mystified at the prospect.
“It wasn’t in my awareness,” Pearl quietly assures me. “They must have really powerful cloaking tech. Not as good as ours was, or we wouldn’t even be seeing it right now, but pretty good. Bastards.”
“That’s the Overlook. From there, the Preservation casts a watchful eye over the city, keeping it safe from anything that might try to harm us,” Call says with the practiced ease of a tour guide. Hell, it almost sounds like he’s playing a recording for me. “Our powerful leaders and strongest soldiers, the Speakers, are the only ones who can give permission to go up there! So know that if you get chosen to visit paradise in the sky, it’s all thanks to your guardian angels watching from up above!”
He reaches up and taps his helmet when he finishes his sentence, ending it with a soft ‘click’. I raise an eyebrow at him, pretty damn sure that he just played me a recording, but not sure why the hell he’d bother spewing propaganda at me right about now.
Then I feel the person-shaped missile screaming down from above for all of two seconds before they slam feet-first into the path, throwing up stone dust and electrical sparks in equal measure. I cough into my makeshift mask and hide my eyes with my forearm, barely playing up the airway assault that I’m being accosted with. A strong, firm grip plants itself on my shoulder–contained within a hand that’s much smaller than my own, and from an angle that’s decisively shorter than I am.
“Giving the newcomers a tour?! Can I join?!” an unmodulated, and very… young… voice rings out from behind a helmet. “I haven’t gotten to give anyone a tour yet, and Mister Boss said I could have the next group! This is–waaaait. One person isn’t a group!”
Call sighs quietly and pries the newcomer’s hand off my shoulder. “No, it isn’t; that’s the definition of a group. Did ‘Mister Boss’ send you here, Taylor?”
The newcomer nods vigorously and snaps off a salute. “Cadet Taylor, Speaker trainee at your service, Call Sir!”
A soft curse barely escapes Call’s helmet, too quiet for anyone but me and Pearl to hear. This ‘Taylor’ keeps on saluting, swaying from side to side like a tree in a windstorm as… he? She? I can’t tell from their voice alone. They’re just too… young. At the age where puberty can make everyone sound damn similar, if I had to guess.
No more than sixteen. Probably less.
A shudder works its way up my spine. For some reason the idea of that makes me very, very uncomfortable.
“Well, cadet, it looks like it's your unlucky day; all I have left is to relocate this refugee to her dwelling and fill out some paperwork. Next time we get some people from somewhere that isn’t as… destroyed… I’ll call for you.” Call puts a smile in his voice and gently pushes Taylor’s saluting hand down. “Does that sound okay?”
“Aww… fine…” Taylor says dejectedly and turns to leave, kicking a chunk of rock he broke as he does. “But remember that you promised! I want to give someone a tour before my next mission!”
Call holds up a hand to his heart. “I promise, buddy.”
Taylor nods and trods away, still obviously bothered by… his, I think… lack of giving a tour. I watch the kid’s back as he walks, hunched and pouting just like someone his age would do.
“How old is he?” I ask with an icy edge in my voice.
“Thirteen,” Call replies, his voice straining to be neutral. “He just got his Class Coin a few weeks ago, but he hasn’t been called to the other world yet. The Preservation found some way to stall that for a little while while they train them.”
‘Them’. That word turns an icy shudder into a full-blown icicle acupuncture session. I turn to Call, eyes wide with horror, and see tension that far outrivals my own. Something he said a while ago pops into my mind about the Preservation grooming kids for Class Coins. Either they pushed things up way ahead of schedule… or Taylor isn’t from the group of kids he’s talking about.
He gently taps my shoulder and starts back up walking, gingerly avoiding the kid-sized crater Taylor left in the ground. I follow him along the winding road that branches off from hangar to hangar, each probably containing different vehicles for the Preservation to leave this place with, until eventually we come to a simple suburban road. One that looks like it’s made for cars.
Something a city made after the apocalypse definitely shouldn’t have. After all, they’re smart enough to keep all the high tech vehicles this far away from everyone else. Having actual cars cruising through the city, always at risk of something failing and putting innocent people at risk of… of…
I stare down at the ground in the distance. At a park where a young father, eyes darkened by lack of sleep, sluggishly plays with two very young children. And hidden in the grass, albeit a little better this time, is another dial. Dozens of them dotting the green space that only serves a single use; recreation.
“Monsters,” Pearl whispers, putting to words what I can’t risk saying aloud. “There’s no reason for this.”
Control. Control is the reason, and even if they’ve never used this on their own people before, it means they’re ready to if they ever find the need. I stare blankly at the park while Call leads us across the road, which is actually painted with neat dotted lines for traffic separation, and right to a building that could be anything from an office to an apartment complex. Actually going inside doesn’t help with the illusion; a woman with a lanyard around her neck sits behind a desk, nods at Call as he walks in, and shoots me a mildly annoyed look.
“Another refugee, then? Where’s this one from?” she asks as if I’m not standing right here.
“Does it matter?” Call calmly shoots back. “Once they send someone, there won’t be any secrets. Let’s give her a few hours of calm before that, yeah?”
The woman stares blankly at Call, then shrugs. “Whatever you say, talky-guy; your boss isn’t my boss. Rooms eight-through-fifteen are free on the third floor. Sit her in one of those and I’ll send up the reader when they get here.”
Call gently grabs my arm and leads me through a wide archway. It starts to beep for the shortest of moments, just enough for the woman to look up, but Call waves a hand at the thing and sighs.
“You know I have permission. Get someone in here to fix this thing.”
“Me? Why would–” the woman starts.
Call clears his throat. Not in a polite way, but in a ‘remember your place’ kind of way. The woman blanches and apologizes profusely as she lowers her head and starts typing away at a keyboard that doesn’t look like it’s up to post-apocalyptic code. I hold my tongue until we get to the elevator, which looks… like we should take the stairs.
“Stairs?” I ask quietly.
Call nods in agreement. “Stairs. A little advice; don’t trust any technology that doesn’t look perfectly up to code. We have plenty of air purifiers in here, but things have been getting a little…”
He looks over his shoulder at the woman typing away, then hurries me into the stairwell without finishing his sentence. The moment the door closes behind us he sprints off, taking the stairs three at a time with his suit and Class enhanced abilities. I keep up the act thanks to all the tiny cameras I can feel with my awareness, struggling like someone in my cover’s position would with every step. Call audibly winces and hurries back down, offers me a hand, and helps me the rest of the way up the stairs.
I sweep the third floor with my awareness as we exit the stairwell. There are plenty of cameras here, but… something feels off about the ones near the rooms the woman at the desk listed. There’s more magic in them compared to all the others we’ve seen. Call doesn’t seem to notice, and how could he? None of them have caught us on film yet, though, and something tells me that we do not want to be seen by these. I stick my hand in my pocket like a nervous person would, glance over at the elevators to throw the other cameras off my trail, and summon my Class Card to quickly type out a message.
Call’s card receives it with a beep. He sighs in annoyance and signals for me to stop, pulls out his Card, and quickly reads it. All at once, his body language shifts to far more enclosed and defensive. That is not a good sign.
He sends his Class Card away, but not before a message pings onto mine.
‘I honestly don’t know how, but someone’s already onto us. Don’t do anything even slightly incriminating from now on. If we want this to work undercover… then I’m going to need a lot of your help starting right now.’
