The heart of New Ram City was noisy as usual. The streets were filled with v-ehicles rolling alongside walkways dotted with ambling pedestrians. Pedestrians who would pause to peruse the clustered, open-stall stores that appeared every few blocks.

The sun beat down on everyone and everything mercilessly. The smallest of movements would induce sweat. A glance upward would cause temporary blindness. Such was the weather of Aries.

All the stalls had roofs or cloth canvases pulled over them and all the people had hoods pulled over their heads or sun-umbrellas twirling in their hands. In Aries, those items were common wear. To be seen without one or the other would be labeling oneself as a foreigner.

A couple blocks ahead, a v-ehicle swerved onto the walkway and nearly took out a fruit stall. The stall owner catapulted red, ripe fruit at the v-ehicle as it sped away.

Olive didn’t quite understand why so many people bought into the v-ehicle fad. They required extensive use of vitae to power their engines. Whether the driver provided the vitae or a plugged-in, clunky generator conductor did, it still left much to be desired. There was word of a new prototype hitting the markets, however, which functioned with a built-in generator conductor one could refuel at vr-stations.

Olive was skeptical. He had the chance to glance over the prototype blueprints when they’d been handed over to the feudal lord who was the chair of Conductor Development in Aries. It was a pipe dream, for sure. To condense a conductor down to such a small size yet keep its ability to power an engine was practically impossible. Even v-trains had generator conductors that were behemoth in size and had to be refueled every couple hundred miles. Besides, only licensed Conductors could operate them. The market for such things was tiny.

Useless thoughts, Olive realized. Brushing them aside, he continued down the walkway under the blazing heat. It was past noon so the humidity that blanketed the air was especially suffocating. If he pressed his palm against the brick wall to his left, he would burn his hand.

He shivered.

Olive stopped short in confusion—

Was he… cold?

—and shivered more as nausea overtook him.

 Appearances are everything. Deceiving. Nothing left to chance. Wondering. The world is mine to explore. Never let go.  

Olive broke off from the stream of pedestrian traffic and leaned against the wall of a nearby deli stall. Several passersby gave him odd looks, but he didn’t care for them. What he did care for was taming the headache that now screamed from temple to temple.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he turned and pressed his forehead against the sun-bleached wall behind him. The effect was immediate. The heat seeped into his skin and radiated down his neck and through his spine. When he opened his eyes, the pain was gone along with the nausea that came with it. Like it was never there to begin with.

Well, that was unpleasant.

But it was what it was. There was no use wondering about it. If it happened again, it happened again. If it didn’t, then it didn’t.

Olive peeled away from the wall and continued onward. His destination was a small square store that rested in a cul-de-sac a little deeper into the city.

When he entered the store, he was greeted by familiar sounds and sights. A grinding of metal against metal, and an eruption of sparks. Gears, nuts, and bolts littered the floor, and scraps of metal filled the corners of the room. A smog hung low in the room, obscuring nearly everything in sight. The barely visible counter of the reception desk was a faulty barrier to the smoke that streamed out from the back of the shop.

Olive walked up to the counter and pulled out a stool to sit. It was five minutes before a wiry young woman with frizzy brown hair emerged from the cloud of smoke. She had on a pair of overalls that were stained with grease and a pair of goggles that she lifted from her face when she drew nearer.

“What in saint’s name are you doing here?” she asked. “News is you got shot.”

Olive pulled down his shirt and gestured to his bandaged shoulder. It stung with the effort, but he ignored it.

“And you decided to come here instead of kicking back at your mansion?” She threw her head back with a laugh. “I’ll never understand you.”

And that was what Olive liked about her. She didn’t understand him, and she said it clearly. She didn’t hide words or pull back. She was straightforward to the T. Nothing hidden, nothing falsely promised.

“Unfortunately, I’ve got a lot of orders today. Bless the saints—finally! What with the rumor of modified conductors being passed around in the black markets, who’d want to have a conductor made old-fashioned style? Plus, I need to make some finishing touches to my project.” She picked up a wrench on the counter and swung it back and forth. “Anyways, the point is that I’ve got nothing for you to tinker with today.”

Olive raised his brows and gave her three slow claps.

“You could be a little more enthusiastic for me.” She rolled her eyes before pulling her goggles back on. With that, she headed back into the haze of smoke, lifting her hand up in farewell. “You can catch a wink here, though, if that mansion if yours is too high class for you.”

Olive stared after her and considered the offer. Before he could accept or reject, however, the door behind him creaked open. In came two figures.

The first was a young man with jet-black hair and cat-like eyes. A light blue cloak was thrown over his head and hid the rest of his features. It looked expensive. Like it was made out of silk. Must be wealthy, Olive surmised. Odd to see a person like that here.

The young man glanced at him before bowing his head and taking a chair that had been propped up alongside the wall.

And the second figure—

“Ollie!”

His sister. She quickly closed the distance between them with crossed arms.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

She looked insulted at the question. “Why wouldn’t I be?” She studied him. “What about you?” She side-glanced at the young man. “Should you really be here? What if someone tries to—”

“Right, right. I was going to take a nap,” he interjected with a raised brow. “And if someone tries something, let them.” He paused before nodding over toward the couch that lined the wall opposite of the young man. In a gentle voice, he said, “You look tired. You should rest. We’ll head home after, okay?”

“Fine…” She pouted, arms crossed.

He watched as she begrudgingly sauntered over to the couch before he glanced at the young man across from her. The young man was frowning at him with an arched brow.

“Are you talking to me?” His voice came out in lightly accented Common.

Olive stared at him long and hard. The man returned the expression without falter.

“No,” Olive returned. Before the young man had a chance to reply, Olive rested his head back down on the counter and crossed his arms across his stomach. As he listened to the drone of metal against metal in the background, he drifted off.

He wondered, as sleep claimed him, if he should be more alarmed by his circumstances. His headache. His hallucinations. His apparent break from reality. All after nearly being shot dead by a Conductor. A Conductor-slash-assassin.

He figured any normal person would head to a Diverger medical Conductor right away. But he didn’t find any of it strange or alarming. Why? Because he’d been cracked in the head for these past six years already. Because his sister who had died at the start of those six years was sitting behind him.