There weren’t many places on Etrah where the night sky shone turquoise; this was perhaps one of Novus’ only claims to tranquillity. When the people looked up into the night sky, the stars would flicker as though they were simple illusions. It was presumed that the turquoise glow was simply to suit the city-state's utopian ambience, and the Novians who spent their lives beneath it had accepted this as the truth.
But the truth was it wasn't for ambience at all. The Novian Border was a cold, hard wall of energy that could roast you at the touch, and it was put there to control.
Cassian McConnell was one of few people in Novus who knew this truth. And for good reason. But as she laid on the roof of a derelict department store, sniper rifle pointed over the railing at the streets below, she couldn’t help but feel as though it was about time someone other than her knew the truth of the sky — among many other things.
She was both an open book and a mystery to those who knew her. An open book in the respect that when someone asked her a question, she’d answer.
But a mystery in the respect that those answers were usually lies.
As far as her peers knew, her bionic right arm and complimentary orange contact lense were the result of an unfortunate kidnapping in which Cassian was a guinea pig for ‘nefarious, pro-cybernetic forces’: she never cared to elaborate on the details. It was just as well nobody ever asked - perish the thought that she’d have to start keeping track of these things.
Her eyes closely tracked the orange interface invading her peripheral vision, and she watched as the clock struck eleven at night. She double-tapped her right temple and impatiently instructed this interface - known as the VisoCom - to call Ali: the man who had her in this situation in the first place.
“Alright, you’ve had your funny-five-minutes, mate, where the fuck are they?” Cassian snarled over the VisoCom.
“Cass, as soon as I know that myself, I’ll tell ya,” Ali responded, sounding preoccupied. Cassian assumed he was tip-tapping away at one of his many holographic interfaces attempting to micro-manage the situation, as usual.
“If you’re such good mates with these so-called V.I.Ps, can’t you just give ‘em a ring?” She suggested impatiently.
“And blow their cover? Hell nah! You know they gotta get here undetected!” Ali exclaimed in a hushed voice. “No sudden noises, changes or movements.”
“If they’re plannin’ on staying in this bloody city for more than a night they’re gonna need to learn to fight,” Cassian contended, she contemplated her next words with a giggle. “Think of it as… poppin’ their trouble cherry.”
“You’re gross,” Ali groaned, “Look, we don’t need to give them any trouble, you hear me? We’ll be fighting Purples all night otherwise.”
Ah, yes, Purples. The one gift of living in Novus that just kept on giving.
As Cassian watched carefully over the streets below she could see the pavements crawling with them. In fact they walked everywhere, knowing no boundaries. There were no vehicles to knock them to the ground, no public sector to keep them in line and certainly no mind paid to concepts as complex as law. Because almost everyone in Novus was a Purple, and Purples didn’t think for themselves.
They marched, limped and staggered through the streets, some more ailing and feeble than others. Their beady eyes glowed electric purple through the night fog, signalling their presence. That, of course, was why they were known as Purples, although Cassian often chuckled at how the name sounded ironically close to Peoples.
People are what they once were; average citizens living their lives as any ordinary person would. Working, entertaining, feeling. Those are things that people did, but Purples did not.
Squinting her eyes and examining how the mind-controlled masses ambled below, Cassian noted the scars on the backs of their necks — the entry point of the microchips that changed their lives forever. Some of the scabs festered in the most unsightly fashion and the image made Cassian feel a little sick. Unfortunately, everything about Purples was somewhat unsightly: Their crooked grins, hoarse giggles, scruffy uniforms, even the tracks down their face where their tears would occasionally run, removing the grime from their skin.
Cassian’s gaze was disrupted by the sound of Ali’s success.
“I got ‘em!” He exclaimed, “A transmission from my other watcher.”
“Another watcher, eh? Aren’t you busy, Mr Creeds,” Cassian teased, bionic finger already at the trigger of the rifle, “So which end of the street am I aimin’ for?”
“They’ll be southbound in approximately thirty seconds,” he said. “If it comes to it, you cover us from up there, okay? Don’t come down.”
“Awh,” Cassian smirked, “Makin’ me miss out on all the fun.”
“There shouldn't be any “fun” if we do our job right,” Ali responded.
On the street below a pair of luminescent blue eyes could be seen piercing through the mist of a nearby alleyway. Ali sauntered out into the streetlights and carefully saluted up at the markswoman to avoid drawing too much attention to himself.
“No friendly-fire, alright?” He smirked, pushing his bleached locs out of his face and tapping his own temple twice, ending their visocommunication.
Cassian’s eye met the viewfinder of her rifle and she smirked, muttering beneath her breath, “Oh, I wouldn’t count on that.”
See, if there was one thing Cassian knew for certain about herself, it’s that in almost all situations “no”, to her, meant a challenge, not a command.
Ali was always used to his plans going right, but the prospect of yet another flawless operation, to Cassian, was oh so dull.
Today they would do things a different way: The markswoman’s way.
Thirty seconds slogged by as though they were years. She began to hear voices making quiet chit-chat on the street below and peered back down in time to witness the arrival of the two Outsider men Ali had told her about. Visitors from outside of Novus.
At the same time, a silhouette skipped across the rooftops on the opposite side of the road, coming to a gentle stop on one pointed foot and crouching close to the rooftop. The other watcher raised their masked head, pressing a finger to where their mouth would be and glaring back at Cassian with two neon pink eyes.
The markswoman lowered an ear to the street, listening intently to what conversation she could hear, trying to fill the gaps Ali had left in her knowledge.
“...an unsettling journey to be made on foot,” one of the Outsiders ended with. He sounded upper class; Cassian began to make her assumptions.
The second, lower voice made a comment about “detection”, she could only assume he was referring to the Purples. She, too, was surprised that Ali’s plan to have the two Outsiders make their journey through the Purple-infested streets of Novus on foot had worked thus far.
“... not far,” she caught Ali saying. “We should keep being careful.”
That was enough to tell Cassian that these newcomers' travels had been far too easy. Careful was the last thing she wished to be. She wasn't exactly sure what it was that possessed her to do what she did next, but she'd committed herself to the idea and wasn't about to back down.
Checking first that her pink friend across the road wasn’t looking, the markswoman let go of her rifle in its entirety and allowed it to slip over the other side of the railing, tumbling down onto the street. It wasn’t her gun anyway; it was Ali's on loan.
The rifle clattered against window sills and balconies before finally falling to the pavement with a crash and spraying out a round of electrical pellets which bounded across the street in streaks of blue. Ali and the Outsiders jumped at the sudden commotion. The strategist glared up at the rooftop where Cassian stood, hands clasped to her face, feigning shock.
“You good, Cass?” Ali called up.
“It fuckin’ slipped!” She called back, trying hard not to chuckle beneath her hands. “I’m so sorry!”
As anticipated, Purples up and down the street began to snap out of their default. They turned with purpose towards Ali and the two Outsiders and began to dart in their direction, giggling hoarsely in unison, artificially delighted by the prospect of new captives.
“Okay Cass…” Ali called again, a hint of frustration in his tone. He began to back away from the oncoming horde. “Looks like we might need you down here after all.”
Cassian grinned smugly, “Bingo.”
The chaos had begun.
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