Liùyuè 4th 250X Cont.

Sirka and Akeem travelled to the Medical Centre via black tram. The dark coloured vehicles were designated for military personnel use only and were a stark contrast to the dirty and cramped conditions of the civilian trams.

They waited at the tram line, standing in the heavy rain next to a gated pass-entrance leading to Venae stop 14-EP. Sirka pulled her plastic hood down further over her head before looking up at her father. He was talking quickly and in military coded speech.

Sirka realised that Akeem must have the communications chip activated in his ear and was currently on the line with someone, probably another member of staff from the Polis airbase.

Akeem was also wearing a small black breathing mask known colloquially known as a 'face frog'. The efficiently designed contraption crouched over the wearer's nostrils and mouth, filtering the polluted air into something more palatable.

The comparison to a frog had been employed due to the guttural croaking sound the wearer inevitably made when exhaling. Face frogs were hideously expensive and the replaceable filters even more so. It was also against the law to wear them inside buildings, so every time you entered a shop or restaurant or place of work, the mask had to be unattached and stowed.

Only the rich bothered to wear the devices nowadays. There had also been a propaganda drive a few years back in which a radical Council party had tried to encourage people to remove the masks and all breathe the same air in a bid for a feeling of communal Polis pride.

Sirka smiled softly to herself as Akeem paused his communications call to breathe out with a rattling ribbet-like croak.

Sirka glanced back down the street, taking in how different it all looked from her usual vantage point on the balcony. It was clearer on street-level, less like staring down through a murky puddle trying to spot tadpoles.

Here, the tadpoles revealed themselves to be wiry men and women dressed in black, wearing wide brimmed hats and dragging rickshaws behind them. They were either on foot or ensconced on bicycle-like contraptions.

Epsilon zone was a relatively wealthy area compared to the rest of the Polis and the streets were dwarfed by towering apartment blocks of concrete and glass. Unused balconies, a reminder of a time when the air had been clearer, jutted from large windows like stacked totem poles of yawning mouths.

The buildings were always being renovated, their massive constructions of cement and iron took it in turns to be shrouded with scaffolding. Sirka looked up at one such project when suddenly a rickshaw hurried past, wheels skidding across the road and sending up a splash of brown puddle water.

"Damn!" Akeem exclaimed before pressing against his ear. "Hold on Lieutenant". He pulled a small device out of his pocket that was about the size of a matchbox, before passing it to Sirka with an assessing look. "Think you can manage to activate the nanos?"

Sirka nodded unsurely but Akeem was already speaking to the lieutenant again. She fingered the small copper coloured rectangle, hesitating for a moment before moving to slide the raised clip across the front of it.

"Wait," Akeem touched her shoulder lightly before reaching to press his thumb against the underside of the box. There was a small responsive beep and a light display appeared on the shiny surface.

Akeem nodded in approval, "Just checking it's recorded both our DNA signatures, I don't want one of us to get wet while the other is toasty dry."

Sirka smiled in response and after reading both the names 'Akeem Morcos' and 'Sirka Morcos' she pushed gently against the clip.

The box immediately disintegrated in her hands, deconstructing itself into what appeared to be a small handful of metal filings. A moment later, the shimmering powder shot out from her palm and enveloped both Sirka and her father in a near invisible nano cloud.

"Yes," Akeem chuckled over the line, "I just had my daughter activate a silica sheet, can you believe this weather and in the month of Liùyuè at that?"

Sirka pushed her hood back off of her face and looked up at where the water droplets were now being repelled away from landing on either her or her father.

The fabric of her pale green coat had already darkened from the damp and the attached plastic hood dripped a steady stream down her back. A few minutes later, a rumbling black tram pulled up, the doors pistoning open with a sharp whoosh of hydraulics.

There were only a handful of other passengers onboard, all in their military uniforms and a couple in ASD flight suits that Sirka eyed with envious interest. As soon as they spotted her father they stood up to salute, bowing was really only required in more formal situations.

Akeem led Sirka to the seats at the back of the tram where Iskra was already waiting. The fractal was kicking her legs out impatiently and wiping at the grey smudges of water and smog on the fabric of her white dress.

"So Sirka," Akeem began, clearly having finished his conversation with the lieutenant. "How are you feeling this morning? It would be understandable if you were apprehensive, Medic Poulter tells me you're hoping to start the first round of Panacea injections today?"

Sirka smiled tightly up at him, wishing that she trusted herself to speak. She had felt off all day since being sick that morning and knew that whenever she was experiencing anxiety it manifested itself in her speech, her movements. She couldn't help it, the nonsense that sometimes poured out, that rendered Sirka as incapable seeming as Iskra did to her.

'I'm just another helixed cliché' she thought to herself miserably as Akeem's expression hardened slightly at her silence and he turned to look out of the window.

There was so much that Sirka wished she could say, that she could explain, but before she even had the chance to open her mouth her thoughts would get all confused and the voices would start shouting, none louder than her fractal's.

Sirka thought back to the conversation that she had overhead between Medic Poulter and her father the last time they had visited the Medical Centre. Akeem had been enquiring as to the potential benefits of the Panacea injection with regards to Sirka's helixed gifts.

Medic Poulter had replied that even if the drug successfully stabilised Sirka's condition, which he very much hoped that it would do, she would still most probably have suffered through too much pre-existing cerebral and psychological damage for her to utilise any new helixed abilities that might come to light through the programme.

"Too mentally damaged for helixed powers to manifest themselves."

Sirka had eavesdropped on conversations containing that prognosis before at the Medical Centre. It seemed that many helixed suffered from the same fate, blessed with abilities that they were not capable or conscious enough to use.

"It's like arming children," one Medic had scoffed as he batted at his data tablet angrily, "humanity wasn't ready for any external alien influences on our evolution and look what happened as a result!"

"Well," a female Medic had replied, cocking her head thoughtfully, "it's not exactly like the government went the right way about handling the problem either - I mean we're still dealing with the fallout from the Stain Rains."

Sirka had crept away from her hiding place at that point, not wanting to hear any more about the poisonous showers that had poured down from military planes, designed to target people like her.

"Sirka? Are you asleep?" Akeem's voice startled her and Sirka jolted upright, wilfully dragging her thoughts back into the present.

Glancing out of the window she could see that they were in Nu zone already, where the research branch of the Polis' Medical Centre was located. It was a less wealthy area that her home zone of Epsilon with all its governmental departments and residences. The streets of the eastern side of Nu zone were more densely lined with food carts, pawn shops and begging children.

Sirka heard Akeem click his tongue beside her, "I'm not sure how much life is left in those nanos, but it's only a minute's walk from the stop to the Medical Centre so we shouldn't get too wet."

Sirka copied his movements, standing up and walking to the front of the tram before being let out onto a puddle strewn sidewalk. The smell of frying food hit her as the tram lurched off down the line and Sirka twisted round to see the various eating houses set up along the road.

Her eyes caught with a thin blonde girl standing a few feet away from them beside the corner of the butcher's shop. The girl's cheek was clearly bruised and her swollen lip was scabbed over with blood. Behind her stood a menacing looking man brandishing gold knuckle dusters and a grim expression.

Sirka wondered why they were seemingly stood motionless outside in the downpour, not even trying to seek shelter. They couldn't be beggars as they didn't have any coin cans.

Suddenly, a red headed woman called out from across the street, "Hey Kai - Cody said to tell you to finish up Lilia's shift. You're both needed back in Xi zone."

The fair-haired man nodded curtly before gripping his large fingers around the girl's shoulder and yanking her roughly along with him in the direction of the Nu / Sigma zone divide. As he turned his face, Sirka could see that one of his eyes was completely black.

"Sirka?"

Sirka snapped her head round to see Akeem frowning at her. "Couldn't you hear me calling you? Where on Earth are you wandering off to?"

Sirka opened her mouth to ask her father about the girl with the bruised face when Iskra appeared beside her. The fractal pressed her finger against her lips in a hushing gesture before shaking her head.

Sirka sighed and nodded, it probably was better not to mention it. Akeem always got irritated when she asked too many questions about the goings on of the Polis streets.

"She was a corner kid wasn't she?" Sirka whispered quietly to Iskra a moment later, as they trotted after her father towards the Medical Centre steps. She had seen them before, girls and boys much younger than she was, stood on the street corners in the snow and the rain, burly looking men hovering behind them like angry shadows.

Iskra didn't reply but Sirka was pretty sure her guess was correct.