Èryuè 2nd 250X

The day after the performance, Prasong was woken up by a sharp rapping on his door. This was followed by the alarming sound of scraping fingernails on splintering wood.

"Come in Sakura," he sighed, letting his head fall back to the sweat-damp pillow. Prasong couldn't remember his dreams but he could pretty much guarantee that they hadn't been pleasant.

The door swung open and Sakura shuffled in, sporting dark shadows under her eyes, her black hair untamed and hanging messily around her shoulders. Clearly the Ringmaster had had her up all night.

"Boss wanted me to wish you good luck," the other girl shrugged, hopping gingerly over to the bed and nestling up against Prasong's feet.

"Don't tell me Kiril bit you again?" Prasong asked drily, eyeing the way Sakura winced in pain with the movement.

Kiril was the Ringmaster's pet dog, a hideous looking creature with half the fur missing on his hindquarters from mange. He was notorious for having almost as wicked a temper as his owner and quite often took it out on his master's other 'pet'.

Sakura raised her head and grimaced at Prasong, "It's the same bite - I think it's infected. Sadly we don't all have accelerated healing like you."

Prasong huffed a grim laugh, bringing his arm up to his face and squinting at the pale light coming in through the window. There was never any direct sunlight any more, but still sometimes the usual grey skies dialled up in brightness, hurting the unaccustomed eyes of anyone out in the streets that day.

Prasong yawned widely before jerking his head back to Sakura, "Wait...good luck? Is that all he said?"

Sakura drew her silk dressing robe up over her thigh and leaned down to inspect an ominously green looking bite mark. "Yeah..." she sighed uninterestedly, "he's away for the rest of the week, remember? He won't see you again before you go to the Vostoko residences."

Vostoko was the name of Bobik's gang in the Tau zone, they were one of the largest in the area and derived most of their profits from the underground fighting rings in that part of the city.

Prasong frowned, he'd known that the Ringmaster had a scheduled Dust sourcing trip that week. The boss was even rumoured to be travelling out of Podolsk Polis, but Prasong had figured...had hoped that he would be going with him. Guess not.

"Oh did you hear?" Sakura looked up excitedly. Prasong shot her a look to convey that given he'd just woken up, obviously he had not heard whatever piece of salacious gossip the other girl was about to impart.

"One of the dancing girls tried to escape last night! You know - Aicha?"

"You're kidding?" Prasong pulled a face as he remembered the other girl hiding out by the stairs yesterday. Evidently Aicha been waiting for the guards' shift to change and for the others to go to bed.

Prasong could never understand why any of the Circus kids would want to run away. Didn't they realise that they were far safer belonging to a gang?

Gangs offered protection, shelter and food - everything you needed to get by in the Polis. Street kids never survived long on their own, the frozen corpses littering the streets in winter proved just that. Prasong's mind flashed to images of small lifeless hands peppered with snow.

"Prasong?"

Prasong looked up startled, Sakura was snapping her fingers in front of his face. The other girl's own hands were painted with intricate inked designs and her nails had been sharpened to points and lacquered in black.

"Don't tell me you've forgotten Aicha already? She's the one with the nose piercing that used to belong to the Uri gang. You gave her your Circus food rations last week?"

"Yes, I remember her," Prasong snapped, pushing the covers back and hauling himself out of the bed.

"Good," Sakura laughed, "I figured for a moment I was going to have to tell you to lay off the Dust."

"You know I don't use," Prasong replied stonily.

"More for me then," Sakura sniffed, causing Prasong to roll his eyes. It was the added 'perk' of being on the Dust runs, you were always tipped a small amount of the wares you were tasked with delivering. Most kids were users, it made the danger more worthwhile, or perhaps in Sakura's case, the lives they led more bearable.

"I already deposited it in your room," Prasong muttered, hating the way Sakura's face lit up at the information. There was very little that could elicit genuine emotion from the other girl, pity that Dust was one of them.

"So what happened?" Prasong asked.

"Huh?" Sakura's gaze snapped back to her. "Oh - with Aicha? Kai stopped her obviously."

Prasong paused momentarily as he reached for fresh clothes from a large wooden dresser. "Right. Obviously," he stated grimly.

Kai was one of the Ringmaster's personal goons, large and gnarled with a short temper and a predilection for lashing out. One of his eyes was completely black, rumoured to be a result of his mother ingesting Stain chemicals whilst she had been pregnant with him.

"But being the empty waste of head-space that he is, Kai decided to decorate the girl's face."

"What?" Prasong snapped as he whipped round to face Sakura. The other girl had now lain down fully on the bed, her exhausted-looking form dipping into the grooves Prasong had left in the mattress.

"Yup," Sakura replied, popping the 'p', "such an idiot right? I mean how is Aicha meant to cover up those bruises for this weekend's big show? No one likes their dancers to be black and blue. It's just lucky that the Ringmaster left late last night before it all went down. Well, lucky for that Neanderthal Kai."

"How is Aicha now?" Prasong asked as he zipped up his boots. There was no response so he glanced back over to Sakura. The plump girl's eyes had closed and her lips had parted gently. Prasong sighed and went to pull the covers up over his sleeping friend before padding quietly out of the room.

After breakfast, Prasong decided to go on his zone rounds early so as to get all his tasks done before having to leave for the Vostoko residences.

Not having been given any prior warning regarding the transfer meant that he would have double the workload that day - trying to allocate his daily duties to the other kids and Circus members.

The Ringmaster had taken a shine to Prasong right from the beginning, calling him his 'Little Doll'. At first Prasong had assumed he was going to become another one of the Ringmaster’s 'pets'. However, the gang boss seemed to have other plans for Prasong after seeing the single ring in the young boy’s wide eyes.

Prasong had taken to the trapeze like he had been born to leap and twirl between the suspended metal bars.

He was able to train harder and faster than the other performers and it hadn't been long before he had been tasked with delivering the drug known as Stardust on behalf of the gang.

Prasong always been quick on his feet and could easily get from one side of the city to the other whilst avoiding the police scanners present in the underground Venae.

As Prasong rose up the ranks of the gang he was also given the further responsibility of recruiting new stray kids, it wasn't a bad job and it wasn't like they would be any better off alone on the streets.

The fight training, Prasong figured, was just another way for the Ringmaster to try and utilise Prasong's abilities - his elevated senses and increased healing.

The Ringmaster was right, it was unusual to find a helixed who could be of any use nowadays - most of them suffering from crippling hallucinations and fractals.

Prasong still spooked every time he caught his reflection in a mirror, lifting his hand slowly to check that it was really himself that he was seeing and not a helixed manifestation. It seemed that perhaps his one ring wasn't strong enough to elicit any real problems, nor any real powers.

Not that Prasong was ungrateful for that fact, he would rather be an average street rat than a helixed Asylum inmate.

Prasong sighed as his mind wandered to thoughts of his impending transfer to the Vostoko residences, wondering how he would fare in the notorious fighting rings of the Tau and Phi zones.

Hopefully he would survive long enough for the Ringmaster to satisfactorily line his pockets before reinstating Prasong to the Dust runs.

Prasong shivered as he went to cross the street, although it was probably less of a result of the chill pervading the Polis air and more to do with anticipatory images of screams and scarlet blood splashed over an eager ring-side audience.

Prasong noticed a wetness trickling down the side of his face, squinting upwards he realised that it had started to rain. There was an old Polis saying that you should never look up when it rained and that you should always keep your mouth shut, lest you swallow some of the water droplets.

Prasong guessed that it was a hang-up from the days when the remodelled crop dusters were spraying the city and people feared the 'Stain Rain'. The initiative was implemented some years after the Breeding Laws were passed.

The formula was cooked up in a government lab somewhere - a liquid chemical solution that was meant to target only the helixed and execute mass sterilisation.

The project was an unprecedented disaster. Not only was the sterilisation inconsistent in its results and in many cases temporary, but long term exposure to the rain led to chemical poisoning known as 'Stain Sickness' in both helixed and non-helixed.

This subsequently caused widespread fatalities and mass panic. Squadrons of heavily armed riot police had been released to quell the spiralling public protests and civil unrest.

You still saw people suffering from the effects of the spray sometimes, the blackened eyes and discoloured skin indicative of Stain Sickness. It did things to people, nasty things.