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Chapter 35 - The Price Of A Smile (Part 3)
🕑 Added 2023-01-11 18:09:35 +0000 UTCSomething about the quiet city streets was almost scarier than the boneyard. Where there should have been people, there was nothing but desolate silence.
In the dead of night, as Lan strolled through the city, he was alone. It was almost apocalyptic; there was no nightlife, bustling bars or late buses. Everything was quiet and shut down. Which presented a massive stumbling block to Lan.
'How can I steal something if all the shops are closed?'
He wandered between towering blocks of flats, occasionally glancing up at the ugly concrete buildings. Everything looked the same. The scale was impressive, daunting even, with buildings that scraped the sky. But they all looked much like each other.
The city felt cold and heartless to Lan. It was without personality.
'It's not how I remember it….' He thought glumly. Growing up in the residential area, his parents lived in a flat like these. At the time he had felt wonder at the sheer scale of the buildings, but now they seemed drab. Perhaps he was comparing them to the District on the other side of the wall. In which case, it made sense that the city lacked personality. But even then, it felt lonely.
Every shop he passed was closed and functional. Even if they had been open, he probably wouldn't have bothered going in. All they sold was food, clothes and the bare necessities.
'It's so… bland,' Lan couldn't help feeling a little sad. The city wasn't much better than the District if a little cleaner. Then again, he had never been to the inner city, where the Pathfinders lived.
'I'd bet they have Thumper toys,' A sudden urge to do something monumentally stupid overtook Lan, and he decided to press deeper into enemy territory. As he did, his footsteps echoed on the cold pavement, bouncing off the many high-rise buildings and fading into the night.
He passed over a bridge spanning a murky brown river and froze. A distant, flashing red light was moving slowly up the road towards him. With his heart racing, Lan dived behind a bin and huddled down to make himself as small as possible, waiting with bated breath as the light drew near.
The seconds seemed to crawl by until, eventually, a hovering bike drove past. It had a flashing red light attached to the front and made no sound as it moved. What caught Lan's eye was that the person riding it had an enormous gun strapped to their back.
'Patrols? I don't remember those… although mum never liked to go out after dark,' Lan's heartbeat calmed, and he waited a couple of minutes until the coast was clear before stepping out from behind the bin and continuing deeper into the concrete jungle.
As he walked further in, the patrols got more frequent and the buildings nicer. Instead of skyscrapers, he found beautiful mansions in ornate residential areas with actual gardens. Most of these buildings had their lights off, but a few didn't.
Lan glanced at a few of these residential areas and was tempted to sneak in, but the high, spiked fences warded him off. He had a hunch that there would be more security than just a fence and didn't want to test that theory.
The further he moved into the city, the more prevalent the Bridge became. The city was built in a massive ring around the Bridge. At the centre was an enormous array of high-rise penthouses and fancy hotels, generally only frequented by pathfinders returning from a long trip. These were accompanied by fancy shops and top-of-the-line businesses.
Further out was the pathfinder residences, a sprawling, synthetic suburbia, slap bang in the middle of a city. Pathfinders generally owned a house there and returned once or twice a year, for nostalgia more than anything else. Which meant the area ended up abandoned most of the year, feeling like a ghost town. This was also where most of the academies were located since they used up a lot of space for training.
Then came tightly packed blocks of flats, squeezed together so that not an inch of space was wasted. For the most part, ordinary, working-class people lived in these flats and commuted into the inner city or out of the wall to do manual labour. The apartments weren't cheap, and a guarantor was required to buy one, making it incredibly difficult for someone trapped in the District to move into the city. In general, people were hesitant to vouch for anyone as they ran the risk of getting evicted into the slums themselves.
Finally, came the wall. A five-metre-high slab of featureless stone ringed the entire city, keeping out the unfortunate.
Another red light flashed in the distance, and Lan dived into a bush beside one of the residential district fences, wincing as the fake plastic leaves scraped him. While he waited for the patrol to pass by, he glanced at the fence, taking a closer look.
Something told him he wouldn't make it back to the District if he touched the fence. Lan couldn't really explain why he felt this way, the fence looked relatively normal after all. There weren't any obvious booby traps or signs that read GET OUT in big, bold letters. It was just an instinct he had that if he touched the dark metal fence, he would regret it.
The bike passed by slowly, and Lan waited until it was out of sight before moving deeper into the residential District. He was moving to satisfy his own curiosity more than anything else, having almost lost hope of finding any Thumper toys. All he wanted to was get a better look at the city since he might never have another chance.
Suddenly, a white light split the night, and Lan threw himself into another bush, cursing these people who weren't sleeping. He waited nervously as the soft thrum of an engine neared.
'The bikes don't make a sound though…'
Lan peered out through the bush, watching carefully as a long, black sedan rolled up to a gate in the fence. The car stopped barely ten metres from him, rolling down its window and flashing a white card at a scanner.
The gate slowly swung open without a sound, and the car cruised into the residential District, silently disappearing over a small hill.
Before the gate could close, Lan followed some hitherto unseen suicidal instinct of his and sprinted out from behind the bush and through the closing gate. He had never felt so exposed as when he stood blankly in the open space. There was no cover, nowhere for him to hide. He almost felt naked.
Desperate to get out of sight, Lan ran up the road and after the car. He passed over a grassy hill, where the grass was plastic and the dirt synthetic and stopped beside a patch of fake trees above a small cul-de-sac.
There were ten houses in total, each magnificent in its own way. Some had marble statues out front, and others had shining supercars or beautiful pillars.
'This was a bad idea.' Lan realised. He almost wanted to turn back, but since he had come this far, he might as well return with some spoils of war.
Out of all ten houses, only the one the black car pulled up to had its lights on. The rest were silent and abandoned.
'Only a house with kids would have a Thumper toy,' Lan reasoned, examining the dark street. He noticed that one house had a collection of children's toys on the front lawn, ranging from a bicycle to a rubber baseball bat.
Lan quickly made up his mind to try that house first and slunk around the edge of the cul-de-sac, making sure to keep his distance from the house with its lights on.
He finally arrived at the house and almost exploded from happiness when he noticed its backdoor was lying open.
'No one would ever do something like that in the district,' Lan crept up to the ajar door and peered into the gloomy house, 'But they don't have a giant fence around their houses, so….'
Lan suspected a kid lived in this house and had left the door open after playing on the lawn. The fact that it hadn't been closed meant that there shouldn't be any adults with the child, which was perfect.
He pushed the door open and slipped through, finding himself in a spotless, white kitchen. Marble tabletops, a fridge that made ice, and a cooker that looked like a poorly disguised transformer made the kitchen seem otherworldly to Lan. He suspected every plate in the room cost more than he would.
Unable to stop himself, he walked over to the tall fridge and opened it, feeling cool air wash over his face. Presented before him was heaven, an endless array of delicacies that would make god weep. He stuck his hand in and grabbed a block of cheese with his fist. It was kind of soft and smelt extremely pungent.
Lan bit into the cheese like an apple, moaning as he swallowed the mouthful. "So that's what cheese tastes like…."
He grabbed something else from the fridge, taking a swig from a hot sauce bottle and washing it down with pickle juice. There was no rhyme or reason to the things he grabbed. As long he could get his hands on it, he would eat.
Lan was so wrapped up eating that he didn't hear the soft pitter-patter of feet on the hardwood floor.
While biting into an onion, Lan heard a soft squeal. He whipped around and found a young girl sitting on the kitchen floor, staring up at him with wide eyes.
The onion slipped from Lan's stunned grip, and he stared, transfixed, at the girl.
She looked like she was about to scream, and he suddenly wished he had shut the door before coming in. If she made a sound, the entire neighbourhood would know something was wrong. A neighbourhood full of pathfinders.
"Wha-"The girl started to say, but Lan leapt forward, covering her mouth with his hand.
He was crouched over her like a big cat, breathing heavily. "Please don't scream," He hissed.
The girl bit his hand.
"Ow!" Lan recoiled, feeling pain shoot up his arm.
"Hel-"The girl opened her mouth and started to shout, but Lan threw himself on top of her, sending them both sprawling on the kitchen floor.
"Please!" Lan begged, "They'll kill me!"
The girl didn't stop struggling, bucking, and thrashing with everything she had. From the looks of things, her age was about the same as Lan's. She was a little shorter than him and had light blonde hair with pale green eyes. There was also a birthmark on her cheek that looked kind of like a spider web.
"Get off me!" The girl wheezed, scratching Lan with her nails.
He ignored the pain and grabbed her neck, squeezing. "Please stop, please!" He had never killed someone and didn't want to start now, but the girl wouldn't stop. She kept struggling and thrashing, kicking at Lan viciously.
Strangled yelps escaped her throat as Lan squeezed tighter, "I'm begging you, please stop!" Lan croaked desperately.
But she wouldn't.
Even when he knelt on her arms, she started trying to bite the hands around her throat, snapping like a wild animal.
"Stop! Please,"
As the light left her eyes and her struggles dimmed, Lan felt a horrible, sickening sensation loom over him. He was going to murder someone, and they weren't a pathfinder. She wouldn't stop struggling, and if he let go, she would scream. But if he didn't stop soon, she would die.
He suddenly felt a rough hand on his shoulder. Its grip was so firm it made steel look flimsy.
"That's enough," said a soft male voice.
And that was that.
The girl passed out, and Lan's hands left her throat involuntarily.
He couldn't muster the courage to turn around and look at the person who was about to kill him. But from the strength in the man's hand alone, Lan knew he was a pathfinder.
"Quite a performance you put on there," The man said softly. "I'm impressed you managed to get In here,"
Lan clenched his teeth, "Just kill me," He spat.
"Wow, I like the attitude," The man's voice had a tinge of mirth like he was enjoying this.
Suddenly the hand on Lan's shoulder clamped down, and he was picked up off the girl and whisked through the air before being plopped down on the kitchen's marble counter.
Before him was an old man, or a young man, Lan couldn't tell. On the one hand, the man had stark white hair and a long scraggly beard. On the other, the man's skin was flawless, and his back was straight. He looked more like a young man pretending to be an elderly person than someone truly old. Even his eyes twinkled with youthful exuberance.
Lan felt dread as he looked at the man. He knew what came next. First, the mockery, then the torture.
The man suddenly smiled, peering so deeply into Lan's eyes that he may as well have been able to see through them. "Don't worry, I won't kill you," he said gleefully.
"You won't?" Lan echoed, not understanding what the man was saying.
"Of course," The man fixed Lan's rumpled shirt, brushing it with his smooth hands. "I would never kill a talented student,"
