Story Snippet: The Sphere

This is a story snippet as part of the June Writing Prompt issued forth from the ritual den of @NocturnalNarrator. If you would like to read more on the writing prompt use the following link: June Writing Prompt

I hope you enjoy and remember to pay your resident ghosts a visit. They do more than haunt, you know.

Setting: Abandoned Mall / Rural Gas Station

Theme: Revenge

Genre: Urban Horror

The world is not like it used to be. Streets on the surface have become forests. Buildings rise from extensive high-speed subways called the Trams pretzeled on top of each other like a twisted carnival ride. Most everyone is beyond the motion sickness, but it's the necessary tradeoff for high speed travel. You can cross the city on a whim — minutes for what used to take hours. What's built underground stretching for miles is rivaled by vertical architecture. Skyscrapers aren't alone as the modern marvel. Atmoscrapers have been popping up in rapid order due to the advent of the SpaceTether and the rampant, but now legal, labor abuse. They say there's plans to hit the Kármán Line within 5 years. Most people live underground nowadays. If you generate six zeroes a month on your income, you can rent a floor higher than 120.

Two e-cycles dust along the tramway tracks stirring up the muck and sending glances from every concourse they pass. They need to reach E438 before midnight to snag a dead drop and it's going to be close.

Helo has mid-length brunette hair with a left-side gold moneypiece and green eyes. She is comedic, boasts a jovial demeanor, and values kindness. The nickname Helo comes from the samaras that use to fall from trees and her father described them to her. Her left arm has burn scars from welding gigs and she goes nowhere without her pocket kit. Helo has two partially missing fingers on her right hand, ring and pinky, and walks tall despite clocking in at three-quarters the size of her peers. She's a welder/mechanic by trade, but also a master with a lockpick and loves claustrophobic spaces. She, however, refuses to use the Trams without her best friend, Lichen, even though they mostly travel by e-cycles.

Lichen has dark green hair, hence his nickname, and stands just shy of 5'10" with blue eyes and a cleft lip. He is a bruiser, but level-headed — no nonsense with a witty, dry sense of humor. Lichen is a math whiz and a carpenter by night. Daytime is for sleeping. Lichen and Helo have been roaming together since the Trams Collision of 2304 that killed their entire block. It was a tragedy for 24 hours before the riots were quelled and business was back.

They live within the Tramways rather than the sector housing projects. It's dangerous. The Trams stop for nothing. If you're lucky enough to become soup underneath one as your final moment on Earth, they still make their destination on time and your remnants are documented on a 3x5 inch certificate of death with a conductor's stamp. No morgue or medical examiner required.

Skidding to a stop, Lichen rushed the gas station doorway. This E438 pit stop is considered the end of the line and a relic of the past. The building is barely holding on in more ways than one. It looks like its been days since someone passed through, but the casual jingle plays out onto its lonely concourse with lights beaming through the shades. 'Gas station' is actually a misnomer as gas-based anything is gone but the name stuck. Nowadays, they're also commonly called juice-ups. Lichen opens the door and approaches the counter.

"Hey man, can we get a double order of saltbeef and sweet potato fries." The mechanical arm whirs to life and spins a fryer into action without any food and passes Helo a package to her out-stretched hand. Outside, they tuck to the corner and open it. The dead drop has a note and metallic sphere with a separation line at the equator which allows the two halves to rotate independent of each other. Lichen hands the sphere to Helo who spins its two halves toying with whether it can be opened while Lichen opens the note.

"You gotta be fucking kidding me, Helo. He marked this dead drop as a Baton. We gotta take it all the way south to the Hundreds' Mall."

"Yo, we can't go there — he knows that!"

"We have to go, and Gingko is calling us out. It's time for a revisit to the block. We can't flake. He'll know that, too. Plus the next dead drop is our last, Helo. We are right there and we know we can't outrun this."

Helo solemnly nods. She knows he's right. They fucked up when they crossed Gingko. Granted, they didn't know who they were crossing, but that wasn't really a talking point available when bargaining for their lives. It wouldn't have mattered. This was the only way.

Hopping back on their e-cycles they sped onward as fast as they could. Hundred's was a solid 30 minutes by Tramway but with e-cycles it was easily going to be 6 or more hours. A slog since the Trams don't service that line anymore. They moved away from the block to start fresh.

It was a long night with no stops. Lichen led the way and Helo watched their tail for any tag-alongs. Hundred's was about as defunct as you can get. It had seen so much mayhem over the years. Built like a tank, the complex stood strong but it was a real piece of shit and just as worthless. Old materials, inefficient supply structure, and just the worst lineup of amenities which is probably why it's been closed for half a century. Slop meant to fleece the masses and add another floor to the atmoscrapers.

Lichen walked through the main entry with hand on pistol. The cell rounds in that thing would melt a person inside out. Helo continued keeping watch to the rear. "The dead drop said to head to the central pavilion and then open the doors at Fidelity," he muttered glancing over.

As they walked, they could hear signs of life. Not birds chirping or people laughing around a meal. Thick, heavy riffs from a stereo piercing into the halls and the central pavilion where the two were standing. Right as they were about to start approaching Fidelity, a cellshot rang out and seconds later another one pierced the air. Both hunkered down around a pile of equipment containers to the side and waited for the dust to settle. With the blaring music, they couldn't really be sure what was going on. Lichen peeked the corner and saw two lifeless bodies near the center of the room. With no one else in sight, they approached closer, cautiously. "Goddamn, Lichen, why do you carry a cell pistol when it does that to people?" Helo had a visibly nauseous look and Lichen responded in turn, "Because it does that to them. But look, this guy didn't die right away. I think he shot that guy through the head."

The bodies laid parallel to each other, shoes almost touching, with one laying in an expanse of blood that had a single shoeprint while the other had a cellshot through the soft tissue under his chin and out the top of his head. It was a grim scene they just barely missed and both were counting themselves lucky. Lichen took the remaining cellshots from both of their pistols and searched their pockets.

"I'm guessing Puddles here was on a mission of his own. I don't recognize him though." This other guy, however, look at his neck." Just above his collar line was a trademark fan-shaped leaf tattoo. A gingko. "So you got a nickname for that guy but what about Mr. Hole-in-Head?" After a second, he lightly chuckled. "Hubris. Huey for short." Helo rolled her eyes with a smirk.

She had already started walking over and turned off the stereo. Without it, she could actually hear her inner voice plot through what they were actually here for. "Hey, why us and why all the way out here? This place is a ghost town. It's not like this guy was waiting down here in no man's land for us, right? Wouldn't that be insane? Who could live down here?" Helo was right, the environment was abnormally hostile considering the rest of the Trams and surrounding undergroud cities. This location was off-limits and you were persona-non-grata if caught. It was an economic death sentence to be caught toiling around the scene of a major disaster the largest government-funded company was implicated in.

Lichen walked over and started looking through some containers at the back of Fidelity and he could see a relatively primitive Faraday cage with a ton of data chips lying around and a table with a container on top. The container was ornate metal with a half-sphere recess in the center of the top. All the edges left no gaps so, however it was made, the inside was not meant to be accessible. Like she knew it was her time, Helo walked up holding the small sphere and you could tell it was a perfect fit. "Should I?" she said without making eye contact. Lichen pulled the note that he had found on Huey. "Looks like its what Huey was gonna do; he had instructions right in his pocket — Drop sphere, turn counterclockwise until it finds 'orbit' cycle, leave."

"Should we try and figure out why Puddles was here before we do this?"

"Nah, I got the next dead drop location from Huey, too. We good."

Helo dropped the sphere in the recess and gave it a turn until it set. They hopped on their e-cycles and headed back towards the juice-up in E438.

Lichen hadn't been fully honest with Helo. Gingko took the classic route; Huey had orders to kill them both. As for Puddles, Lichen did know who he was. He was a sector official when everything went to shit for the Block. When the Trams situation really spun out, he was vilified in the media for failing the community and was the scapegoat. The assumption at the time was he had died like everyone else and the company saw that convenience factor. Can't defend himself from tactical blame if he's dead. Lichen kept that to himself because he knew it was a fluke that the 3 of them survived. There weren't others and it wasn't worth being hopeful. Mostly he felt obligated to protect Helo. And the best way he could see how, right or wrong, was to keep the info on Puddles to himself.

Lichen walked back into the juice-up and approached the counter a second time, the automaton turned to look him in the eyes. Biometrics were all stolen long ago and real names held nothing but vulnerability. The new way to stay protected was to be free of tech requiring any kind of login and to simply not tell people your real name unless you had the deepest layers of trust. These automatons were basically reporting tools. Thankfully, since this was a dead drop, Lichen knew this had been tampered. Was the feed going to Gingko? Who knows. But the purchasing had to be done. He'd taken a couple data chips from the stakeout where Huey was and used those to pay for a couple orders of fried food and a few nutrient-dense energy drinks that they bought regularly. In addition they stocked up on some food cubes and filled their backpack bladders with water.

Heading outside, they paused for a moment. "What do you think that sphere did when we set it up? Could it be a bomb?"

"I don't know. Doesn't seem like the right type of fit. Why blow up an already obsolete location? It doesn't make sense."

They sat down together near the rails and listened to the water trickling from the surface hitting all the pipes, rails, and mechanical workings on the way down. A rare cacophony normally drowned out by the bustle.

At that moment, they heard a terrible ruckus coming from inside the juice-up. The automaton smashed the windows and made an agonizing series of motions while its circuitry wailed. The sporadic flailing obliterated the shelves around it, lights that weren't busted flickered from the electrical load, and in a roar of sudden overheat the automaton caught fire and came to a halt. A tormented death any bystander would never wish to see happen, to a living being or otherwise. The two stood shocked in equal measures of distress and confusion.

"What. The fuck. Was that?"

"I have no idea, but we better get out of here. Lets head to E437 quick."

Those e-cycles screamed forward and through a series of construction sectors for new lines. Arriving to the concourse, Helo and Lichen were struck by chaos, most every kiosk had some kind of emergency being addressed. The only one that didn't was the guy cooking rats and other beefed up critters found around the city. All the others were either in flames or essentially EMP'd. "Let's get back to The Nest."

The Nest was below the Trams. It was a series of tunnels and waterway pathings to keep water off the lines. A buildup of too much could short equipment or cause derailments if left unchecked so a series of drainage channels were built that gathered water under massive evaporators to keep the lines clean. Some of these culminated into large cylindrical silos where the evaporators were low enough to allow for people to build above them. That's where the Nest started. Below it are the evaporators keeping the water levels at bay while the Nest was built using any and all scrap material. About 40 people call it home. Lichen and Helo consider them family. Besides having each other like bastard siblings, it's as close to the real thing as either can get.

Upon arrival, the two approached the gathered crowd. Pushing through, they came to what everyone was standing in front of. Larynx, a local techie, was connected up and going about his usual duties when the chaos must have started. His body wasn't given the freedom to flail chaotically like they witnessed at the juice-up in E438. The screen in front of him was blood splatter, his arms had deep scarring and burns that spread like lightning and charred over. His face was a grotesque misrepresentation of human features, but what he experienced before his demise showed through. Terror, agony, brimstone. Larynx's right hand was fused to an analog stick and his eyes were hollowed out burnt craters. He looked as if he would break apart like charcoal if anyone touched him and the smell was verifiably foul.

Lichen backed away and walked to the far end of the Nest and Helo followed.

"Lichen, we did this... the timing's too convenient."

"I know, I know..."

"Hey — let's go. Time to pay a visit to Gingko."