It's like an oven; I'm cooking in here. I open my eyes carefully and see that the whole room's got an orange hue. It must be five-ish in the morning, one of my alarms is going off.
I glance down and see Zack pressed into my side, sleeping. He's got his shaggy hair all drowning in orange, looking a bit damp, because damn is it hot in here. He should be home about now, but no, Zack and MT were out again, so here he is. Getting up a bit, I see at the foot of the mattress MT all sprawled out, mostly laying on the floor. He's dirty and smearing some black garbage on the floor with his face. Nice.
I reach down to my waist and pull my tablet from my belt, watching out for Zack's head. It's got a few messages:
Zack 4:31 am: Hey yea. Can you please stop setting alarms at 4:30 if you plan to get up wayy later? Sincerely, the guy whose ears are closer to your alarm <3 Good luck at work today
I'm not even finished reading; Zack's laughing to himself. He looks up at me, smiling, and pulls himself closer to kiss me on the forehead.
"Honestly, that's an MT problem. I need to wake up on time, to think of something witty to say when you leave." He kisses me right on the tip of the nose as he slides off the mattress for me. I'm crawling over him, half-asleep with my knee jabbing into him, and I apologize with a loud whisper "Sorry!...What do you got for me today?" I'm reaching for the door, when he whispers "Slept in too much to come up with anything. Love you, Athene." He slams his head into the mattress too hard and stops moving.
The tram is empty at this stop. For several minutes, I sit alone as the blue dot on the screens gets slowly closer to the centre of pixel-y Algieba. This train's a boring sleek cylinder, with a few of the original blue seats left, and holograms that cast patches of blue on the hardly-white white walls. Outside, the giant cavern I coast through has its size shown off by occasional fires in the distance. I look away, towards the ground, as some people wander in a few stops into the ride. I can hear them touch the panel at the front, talking about some garbage, and walk in the corner of my eye. As we get further, with more stops and more people piling in, I can feel grating along the bottom of the tram. The more they come, the more I'm annoyed with them, with the tram inevitably breaking under their weight before the stop.
Eventually, we grind to a halt far off any station, in a middle of a cavern, and I can hear a bunch of idiots start swearing about the tram system. I push my way through a couple and cram my knee between the doors, and stumble out into the dark. I can see one fire in the distance away from the track, and ahead, a yellow light from a distant tram stop. I let out a tired yell as I drag my feet along and start off my run. I'm not going to let a third tram crap-out get me fired. I run along the track, sweating in my dirty old clothes, with all their holes. My boots feel ready to fall off and dissolve.
I'm passing through one of my last stations, with more cave dwellers yelling into the dark where I'm coming from. I don't even bother looking at my waist for my tablet's time; in about fifteen minutes or less, I am screwed. This close to the centre, the cavern's filled with homeless; fires are spread throughout, breaking up the dark. To my side, far off in the distance and over a city of tents and tin houses, white paint is smeared over a high wall. I can't tell if it's dripping wet or made to look like it. With a glance I see it reads, in large white letters, "Algieba is broken".
At the centre, the change from trash city outside to the white pristine halls is like a blow to my face. My eyes are still adjusting as I pass through sliding doors into the square, wading through teens in nice clothes, old people sitting at tables talking about nothing. I barely look away from the floor through the whole trip and rush past doors in a darker corner of the square. Inside's a cramped hallway with a pile of red work clothes that neatly rolls off a belt onto a steel counter as I get close. Stepping forward, shirt already pealed off, a sporadic shower comes from the ceiling, getting at me as I pass through with an arm in a sleeve, lightly spritzing my left shoulder, soaking my outfit. I pass through vinyl curtains with my zipper being done up and throw a card at a screen behind the front counter. The satisfying smack of the card is ruined by a slapping noise coming from behind the counter; out in the square, silhouetting the busy landscape of the cafeteria, is Ryan with his eyes stupidly half covered by his free hand.
"Hey, Ryan! You can look now. I am no longer apron-less." I squeeze that out a bit grudgingly, that overreacting jackass. He's putting his arm down slowly, like I'm lying. It's a weekday, so he's dressed in his all-white Regulus uniform, sloppily put on since he's got an hour or so before class and needs to impress nobody. He works out an equally sloppy smile, two thirds dedicated to his bit.
"Hello, Athena. How's it been? I haven't seen you since you left school!" He puts both hands on the counter and leans in. I haven't seen him since he noticed I work here a couple days ago. "You look great today!"
I start looking away from him, sort of bored. The square's relatively empty today. A blurry screen behind him's showing generic news about Algieba to about thirty people sprawled about, wandering around aimlessly. No one except Ryan sees how much I look like trash right now. I brush my half-dry hair over my ear as I catch a glance of him still there in the corner of my eye.
Before I can escape, he goes on. "I think M's been going through people's homes, stealing valuables. Are you making enough with this job? He's sharing with you, right? With whatever he's doing. I know he could be buying drugs or something. He steals weird things, like silverware instead of cards, so I'm not sure what's going on." He's shaking a little now, especially in the arms. When I get what he's on about, I nearly glance at my own, but face him instead.
I let out as strongly as I can, "he's not a thief," as I turn into the kitchen, so I can get on with starting work, not dealing with that bullshit. Around the corner, I pull my tablet out by the curtains, out of Ryan's vision. I don't know what to make of MT doing shit, but I know he's been shadier since he left school, coming home late and sleeping all day. I turn on my tablet, and see tons of messages scroll by. Fifty or so, all from Zack.
Zack 5:23 am: COME HOME
Zack 5:23 am: DONT GO TO WORK
Zack 5:24 am: ATHEN
This goes on for several messages. I see they all say similar things as I flick through them. A new one is sent, sending me to the bottom.
Zack 6:33 am: BACK HALLWAY CRAWL OVER COUNTSR
He's never done this before. I peak over, looking over the counter past Ryan. Out there, it's calm. A young couple get up slowly, hug quietly and whisper something unintelligible. It's calm outside, but the atmosphere, it's chilling now.
The tablet gets put back, the apron peeled off causing beeping from behind the counter, and clamber over the counter, nearly crushing Ryan's hand, and rush around him back to the side entrance. He lets out a stupid sound behind me. My quick steps echo out in a strange pattern, as panic sets; I can't hear anything else now. Far off, around a corner and in the dark, Zack is crouched between some boxes. His hair is drenched; his face unreadable. When I get close enough, he pulls me from the shoulders roughly with both hands, nearly slamming our heads together.
He whispers, "I need you to listen to me. Oxygen is off in this entire section...You hear that?" He looks blankly at nothing behind me. The hum of the station is completely gone. I nearly glance back, but he starts again. "Nothing. Absolutely gone. They're going to close doors and this will be a deadzone in an hour or less. A deadzone, no air. Trams are down. All doors are getting welded shut. Soldiers are watching. They're looking for me, expect me here. Are you listening?" He glares at me. Before I can take it in, he shakes me violently, hurting my neck.
"Listen to me!" I start to cry, but I nod.
"You can not talk, not now. No questions. Do absolutely everything I say, exactly. They're closing off the entire section, but I know a way out. I know exactly what to do, but you need to listen. Follow me, now...Okay?" I nod in an instant. He kisses me on the lips, shakily, then grabs my arm, pulling me with him.
The square is completely empty. Ryan is gone, and the screens have all went black. We breeze by the counter, hand-in-hand; approaching a growing sound of discordance. Far off in a dark corner, we stop at the edge of a massic crowd, before a vast couple of white doors reaching dozens of feet to the ceiling. A hundred people slam on them, some yelling out to others, calling on tablets. Zack lets go of me, and pulls at his hair with both hands. He's facing the doors, and reaches out for a small black box at his waist, then walks past me to the square. He stops, turning before I make a step, and grips my shoulder tightly with a hand.
"Do you see that spot on the wall between those two doors?" He points to something to my side.
When I try to glance, he yanks me closer. "Sit in that spot, in that crevice. Do not do anything but sit there. Now!" He pushes off me slightly before he sprints down the corridor where we started. Taking a breath, I trudge to the wall on the side, but when I get close, a lady grabs me.
"Did you see my boyfriend? You saw where he went, didn't you?" I imagine it's the girl from the square. She's got bright red hair down to her waist that's hard to miss. She's obviously been crying, with makeup running, and is making a strange hiccup noise. I don't make a reply, I have no idea what the guy looks like, but mindlessly start to pull her to the wall with me by her wrist. I'm stealing glances at the doors as I inch towards the wall with her, and see that several people have taken up trying to peel the two doors back with whatever they can find, trying to break through.
The lady turns and sees it too, and starts pulling out of my grip, gravitating to where we both guess her boyfriend probably is; behind the doors, and I slowly take steps to join her at the back of the pack. Nearly everyone is helping, pulling at the people in front of them in a desperate attempt to get a crack for new air. I look back, and see a distance crowd of some people in the plaze, and think for a moment that's where Zack is, but they're all too tall; Zack is nowhere nearby. Some are joggin out to help from the corners of the plaze I can't see in, but I still can't see him. I rest my hands around the red-head's waist and start to pull in tune to her movements and the pull of the crowd, as I want us to break free, so Zack can be safe.
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