Jazelle, Orb, and Orb’s Mother descended deeper and deeper into Grave-Downe. The architecture of Grave-Downe was complex. The building and skyscrapers were connected by clusters of diagonal staircases sweeping between buildings. When Orb, Orb’s mother, and Jazelle first looked at the towering height, they wondered how they would get down. Jazelle contemplated for a bit before settling on a make-shift solution.

​

She listened to the sound of tinkering machines. They spoke to her. The staircases were intricately linked — a system of moving parts. She accessed her Mind’s Eye and tuned herself into the varying depths of several frequencies. Jazelle paused; a sound was fainter than the others. It contained a clicking mechanism with a turning cog. She focused, listening to its static tune. She tuned into its frequency, lifting her hand, tracing several shapes in mid-air. Jazelle dialled down her mind. She focused on the top of the staircase, sensing the ticking of its dial. There were three sounds. One was ticking faster than the minute, the other was regularly turning in and out, and the third was smoothing back and forth like an engine being revved. Jazelle tuned herself into the sound, navigating herself through various lines of frequency and static. The sounds crescendoed, fading in and out.  

Lock. Rotator and Spanner.

She spun her hands and lifted some of their fingers, tracing shapes in midair, and soon, all heard the cogs untangling. They heard one mechanism break, twist, and turn, and soon the staircase unravelled. There was another level. A platform unfolded and emerged from the edge of the staircase. Jazelle extended her hand to allow Orb and her Mother to pass, and the platform attached to the staircase rails creaked as it extended down like an old-fashioned tram past tall, emerging buildings. Jazelle, in the meantime, took the old-fashioned route. She walked down the barred, crisscrossed steps. The metal steps were old and worn, and through the gaps in the bars she could see the city's frightening height. The city was dark, busy, and foreign. Vices here weren’t the same as Sun-Downe; they were exposed out in the open, for all the world to see. The citizens were dressed in glamour, a contrast to the city's grungy nature.

​

Orb, her mother, and Jazelle descended through various flights of stairs until they reached the ground level. Upon reaching ground level, Jazelle connected her mind to the metallic staircase and executed a series of gestures. As she completed each gesture, the platform collapsed back onto itself.

​

As she completed a series of movements, a piercing sensation hit her head. Jazelle’s skull was bursting open. She clung to her head tightly with her hands…Threading. And. Piecing. Each. And. Every. Single. Thought. Her head throbbed. She heard the mechanical sounds of Sun-Downe. Grave-Downe. Everything in between. There were sets of mechanical sounds. They trampled one after the other. Jazelle staggered, her head collapsing under the heavy pressure of noise, static, and arrays of movement. The taste of copper stuck to the back of her throat, trapped, like grease that stuck on, or like a hand gripping her by the neck, choking her onto a threshold.

Orb wheeled her wheelchair over. Jazelle’s head was grasped in a deadlock. Sweat was dripping from the top of her head, trickling down in beads through strands of her splintered hair.

Orb talked. “What are you experiencing?”

Jazelle steadied her breath. All she could see was the floor. Her vision blurred, and noise rang in her ears, attacking her wave after wave.

“S-Sounds,” Jazelle said. “The g-gears. They’re talking to me.”

Orb spoke. “Focus on my voice, you need to find something, anything to pull you back.”

Jazelle closed her eyes. She focused on her hands. She focused on her hands, grasping her hair. The pulling sensation. She drew her breath in, then exhaled. Jazelle did this several times. Slowly, her mind detached. The pull of gears stopped, the sound of airships, previously damp, sharpened. Previously, the pain had been ringing in her ears, but now it had stopped. Now, she can see the ground clearly. She looked at the rising ridges of metal beneath her feet.

“All abilities have a kickback; you need to be careful of that,” Orb spoke.

Orb looked at Jazelle with her ominous eyes. Jazelle snickered.

That was easy to say, difficult to do.

​

–

​

Lior emerged from the tunnel and entered Grave-Downe. She emerged, solid, fine as sculpture, immaculate as glass. The wind cut through the long fringe dividing her hair. Her leather coat served as a shield against the wind.

She looked at the edge of the platform. Lior had been here many years before. She had been here with the lady who was her mentor.

Lior had a mentor, a mentor who led her here many years prior. The lady wore a beautiful silver half mask. Her stature was wide. Wherever she walked, she stood out. The lady always walked wearing an emerald green coat. Her hood covered her face, obscuring parts of her face as she walked by.

Lior remembered the lady had approached him at the facility, one-on-one, while a young Jazelle was away.

The facility.

The rooms in the facility were barren and cold.

Lior still remembered it as clear as day. She closed her eyes; she didn’t want to remember those days. But those early days…they were part of who she was.

She took a breath and closed her eyes, washing herself in a sea of fragile memory.

The walls were painted in white and pale blue, and the facility was divided into pods. Pods filled with children, holed up and housed together, like mice trapped in cages.

Lior was lucky compared to most. She knew the system. At four, she uttered Jazelle’s name so precisely that she managed ensure they were grouped. Not many children were able to utter their siblings' names at such a young age, and unfortunately, due to circumstances, they were ripped apart from each other before they formed their earliest memories.

Many viewed the pods-cages as a sanctuary, but to Lior, that wasn’t enough. It was true, Lior had spent many days in peaceful confinement with Jazelle. Jazelle, trapped within the pod, enjoyed playing Tantreez, colouring in picture books, and, across the glass pane of the pod, loved looking at other children fiddling with their brightly colored block toys, building towers, castles, bridges, and various other things that resembled a city.

​

While Jazelle focused on the brightly coloured toys, she couldn’t grasp, Lior looked at the thin hallway separating the Pods, where the children were placed. There were staff, all dressed in pale blue, holding onto stacks of paper. She read words.

Orphan.

Facility.

Monitored.

She didn’t know what those words meant. One time, Lior asked a staff member for a dictionary because she wanted to understand these words, and she got one. The heavy book remained in her hand. Her fragile finger traced and poked along each of the Serif-pointed words as she read words she didn’t know, or didn’t know the definition of, too.

Orphan. She had known her parents had passed away at a young age, but she never knew that word would be associated with them. Her earliest memory was when she was an infant, before she knew how to walk or talk. The memory was blurry, faded around the edges, but all she could remember was that it was warm. She could barely make out her parents’ faces; all she knew was that it was a different world within the cool-roomed facility. All she remembered was being in a crib with Jazelle when it happened. Her parents had been gone for hours. Jazelle was silent, but Lior screamed. She cried and kicked on the edges of the crib, although she was tightly bound in cloth. A door slammed down, and men and women dressed in white rushed in and shadowed over the two babies. There was a muffled exchange of voices.

The parents…

I know…

They’ll be taken care of by the state.

They’re special…

We know.

That was why, when Lior stared at that lady all wrapped up in a green cloak, she found it odd. It didn’t even seem like she blended into the place. Half her face was covered in a mask, the other half was etched with scars. A scar ran down vertically past her eye. She didn’t have arms. Her arms were robotic parts. Her short, choppy hair was shaggy and ragged.

The lady looked down at Lior. Cool light shone behind her, giving her metallic mask and arms a cynical glow.

​

She spoke. “You remember.”

Lior, with small hands, clung to the dictionary. She was six.

“Yes,” Lior said.

The lady looked at Lior; her eyebrows were furrowed. The scars etched into her skin ran like the flowing streams of a river. Rivers that overflowed, and ran and cried like blood, of violence, mess and blasphemy. Yet, her skin was smooth; only the scars made her old.

She lowered herself down, placed her hands on Lior’s shoulders and said,

“One day they’ll come for you.” She fastened her grip. “When they do, call for me, and I’ll assist you — My name is Spectra.”

Spectra. Her mentor. The one who shielded her from harm when she was recruited. She taught her about the world of  ShArDs, the government, and their missions. The intelligence that had crammed into Lior’s brain had overflowed. Delusions about the government, their secret missions, their plans with other provinces…It became a bit too much. The shards within her mind shattered. One moment, she would be reaching for a coffee cup; next, she would be grasping air.

One day, as she scattered all the clippings in front of her, Diane looked at Lior with concern.

“Lior — you should return home.”

Lior looked at Diane. Her soft black hair curled around her, dainty and as light as a feather. Her eyes were like sets of diamonds, intensely focused. They glittered bright against the investigative light that hung from the ceiling.

Lior smiled.

“Not anytime soon, my precious. There are still things I need to do.”

Lior waved her arm in midair to stroke Diane’s face. But it stopped in midair again. It grasped a wall of air.

This time, Diane shoved all the files aside and stood near Lior.

“You need to return home. Now. You can always do this later, Lior.”

Lior remembered these moments. The stacks of paper that weighed that room. Spectre is holding her by the shoulders. Jazelle.

​

Jazelle.

Jazelle.

Jazelle.

Lior looked at the hanging overpass in front of her. She had done this before, multiple times. Her mind was in shambles, but she had to piece back the shards together. Even if it only existed for a while, and even if it was temporary. She turned that shard in her memory, and turned it several times over, pointing it towards herself.

Even if her body was in shambles.

Even if her memory was stretched thin.

Even if she couldn't remember anything in front of her, and her fingertips, which had lost sensation, were being razored slowly like a burning thread over a candle.

At least she can recall.

She looked through her cracked shard of memory.

Spectre.

Ten years prior.

Spectre traced her boots on the metallic overhang, stepping on all the right places. As she did so, the lines on the ground lit up.

Lior recalled those same steps, and as she did, she traced each of Spectre’s ghost steps like a trailing river.

It felt as if Spectre was there right beside her.  

Ten years prior.

And ten years now.

She recalled the exact configurations that Spectre used. She dragged her foot in a curve-like formation. Stepped forth. Stepped back, then left, then right.

​

Lior did it with precision, as if she were similar to Spectre.

The shard dug deeper into her mind. Her body split from her mind. Lior felt as if needles were sticking through the joints in her body; her elbows and knees, she focused on her movements to brace herself against the pain.

​

After finishing the sequence, a holographic cube of light appeared, and the platform shone with a faded tint. Lior opened the holographic door, closed it, and the holographic lift descended below. The holographic lift had a semi-transparent bottom. As it descended, Lior saw the vivid techno lights of Grave-Downe, and the city, like a sinister virus that could corrode and eat her mind at any second.

Every day, Lior feared what the memories would do to her mind. Memories would surge up like a carnivorous creature, destroying her present. One day, she feared she would wake up, blink, and not recognize her reality.

​

As she reached the bottom, her boots reached the ground. Lior strode quickly ahead. Her bones were shattering, barely holding together. Pain washed over her body as she walked.

Her mind was screaming. But her thoughts were clear.

Jazelle.

Jazelle.

Jazelle.