Tap…tap…tap
Some time later, Cecilia's steps echoed between the silver walls, the low lights giving her just enough to keep from tripping over her own feet.
Vending machines sat spaced apart beside scattered benches, their displays glowing softly in the quiet.
Open lounges appeared between them, followed by cafeterias of every size imaginable. Some opened into atriums stretching toward the floors above, their concrete, metal and glass stairways cutting through the open spaces without breaking through the decks themselves.
Small galleries lined certain hallways, selling whatever they could to whoever happened to pass by, while the fancier shops were recessed into the walls behind polished fronts and dim displays.
Rectangular ductwork stretched overhead, pulling and pushing air through the vessel. The constant hum of the HVAC filled her ears, and something about the white noise eased her mind.
"I have no idea where I'm going…I think I've passed this hall twice already."
Her voice barely rose above the steady drone in the background.
She strolled down the quiet corridor, munching lazily on a sugar stick.
Crnk.
Her feet carried her everywhere and nowhere until she passed a narrow opening in the wall. (X)
Cecilia stopped, backed up two steps and peered inside.
At the end of it, two people guarded a door.
Soft light filled the little passage. One guard was a Librei, the other a Mustela, both stationed in front of whatever waited behind the metal door.
Their faces were carved from boredom and mild irritation.
The Librei leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, dark blue gear wrapped around his body with a name patch stitched onto his chest.
Nolan.
The Mustela, on the other hand, sat behind a small desk with a sheathed knife resting on one corner. He scrolled lazily through his phone, his ears flicking with every tap.
Remy.
Crnch...
Nolan pushed himself upright and uncrossed his arms, his stare boring straight through her as she came to a stop in front of them.
"Sup."
Remy did not even look up from his phone. His voice came flat, bored, and completely uninterested.
Cecilia finished off the last of her sugar stick, then tossed the wrapper and stick into the bin beside the desk.
"What do you want?"
Nolan planted himself in front of the door, his gloved hand curling into a loose fist. The once-tan material had worn nearly black from long use.
"Can I take a peek? I won't touch anything. Swear."
Her voice cracked through the stale air, turning it awkward in an instant.
Nolan stared.
"I'm not opening the door for some random girl wandering around."
A long, resigned sigh slipped out of Remy.
He finally looked up from his phone, turned it off, and set it face down on the desk. Dull purple hair fell loosely over his face, while his round white ears forced themselves upright like even they were tired of being there.
His exhausted eyes settled on Cecilia.
"You don't even know what's back there. You know curiosity's what killed moggy, right?"
One of her fingers twitched at her side, and the smile on her face faltered for half a second.
"Can't a girl be curious?"
Remy remained unamused.
He reached across the desk and dragged the tablet closer.
"ID?"
Cecilia's eyes flickered to Nolan when he held out his gloved hand. The spotted pattern of his feathers scattered through his hair, dark against the softer strands.
She opened her clutch bag, searched until her fingers found the card and handed it to him.
"When were you born?"
twich.
"Sixteen O' eight."
Nolan handed her ID back without ceremony.
Cecilia slipped it into her bag and closed it with a quiet snap.
Remy finished tapping on the tablet, then turned the screen around and slid it toward her.
"It's just a couple hundred. Still curious?"
"Unfortunately."
Cecilia dragged her finger across the screen until it would not scroll any farther, not even pretending to read the terms and conditions before signing and tapping accept.
The screen flipped to another window immediately.
Cecilia stared at the paywall.
Then, with a slight twitch of her finger, she willed it forward.
An outline popped up with a string of numbers at the top. Beneath PAYMENT APPROVED, the amount taken from her account flashed beside a minus sign.
-537 Pesos.
A moment later, the screen shifted again.
An opaque bell in the upper right of her vision buzzed red, dancing around without pause.
The bell quieted immediately, its little icon turning yellow before going still.
Remy dragged the tablet back toward himself while Nolan stepped aside and gave the metal door behind him a heavy bang.
I...I didn't think that would actually work.
Her feet moved before she had fully thought it through.
The metal door shut behind her and a second one opened ahead, finally letting her into the room beyond.
Her ears perked at the Rat Pack music drifting through the background.
A handful of guards lounged around in outfits identical to Nolan's. To her left, a small band played calmly, their music blending into the chatter of the patrons scattered throughout the room.
Cecilia moved through the sea of mostly normal-looking people and claimed an empty stool along the narrow counter built into the wall.
For the next few minutes, she rested and soaked in the warmth of the room.
Every so often, someone emerged from the hallway across from the little band. Some returned laughing. Others came out irritated, exhausted or wearing expressions too blank to read.
Cecilia watched another pair disappear inside.
Her eyes shifted toward the restroom sign hanging above the same hallway.
She grabbed her clutch and followed, keeping several steps between herself and the pair ahead.
The hallway passed two restroom doors before bending sharply to the right. By the time Cecilia reached the corner, the pair was crossing another door.
She slowed to a crawl.
His face looked stiff enough to crack, unlike the woman trailing next to him, who was struggling to bury a smile.
Cecilia then looked down at her shoe with a small, exaggerated sigh.
"Aw, damn. My lace came undone."
She lied.
She crouched, untying and tying them while watching the hallway from the corner of her eye.
A tired-looking man stepped out with his face buried in his phone.
Cecilia stood and walked directly into his path.
Thmp.
Their shoulders bumped.
"Sorry."
He grunted without looking away from his phone and continued toward the main room.
Still got it.
She waited until his footsteps disappeared around the corner before opening it. Her fingers slipped past folded bills, an ID card and several useless scraps until they found something worthwhile.
Cecilia pulled out the access card, folded the wallet shut and tucked both into her clutch.
Chk—krrt.
The change in noise hit her first.
The music outside thinned behind the wall, replaced by the mixture of voices, clinking glasses and footsteps.
"Huh…not bad at all."
In front of her sat two old brown leather sofas with a table between them, all three sunk into a shallow depression in the floor. A handful of people lounged there—chatting, drinking or wasting time one way or another.
To her left stretched a small cafeteria, busy with people tearing through meals of every size.
Groups clustered together, some clearly guards assigned to the vessel, others from similar lines of work looking for fresh regions to wander into.
Cecilia slipped the stolen card into her clutch before anyone could notice it in her hand.
A few minutes later, she found herself sitting alone near the corner, one leg crossed loosely over the other while her bag rested against her.
For a while, she just sat there.
People came and went around her, both in slow and fast forward. Some spoke in low voices, others ate like they had not eaten in days. Near the cafeteria, a group of guards laughed among themselves.
Her eyes drifted from one corner to the next, picking up small scraps of entertainment where she could for minutes on end.
She pushed herself up with a quiet sigh, grabbed her bag, and headed toward the small cafeteria.
Cecilia slipped past the tables full of people and stopped in front of a refrigerated vending machine.
Rows of canned cocktails, beer and energy tonics sat behind the glass, their labels bright beneath the pale interior light.
She picked one.
And another.
And, after thinking about it, a third.
Cecilia carried them to the scanner built into the side of the vending machine.
She lifted her wrist.
Her bracelet flickered awake, and a small payment icon spun before turning green along with the scanner.
Cecilia gathered the cans against her chest and wandered back toward the corner seat she had claimed earlier.
One by one, she opened them.
Tsssk.
gulk… gulk…
gulk… gulk…
The background slowly softened, the voices and people blending together until nothing held its shape.
Cecilia rested her elbow on the arm of the chair and leaned her head against her knuckles.
Once more, she lifted her bracelet awake, the time and date glowing dimly against her reflection as a screen materialized.
She closed her eyes.
And when her eyes opened again, she was already in her room, staring into a larger screen.
The cursor blinked on the document in front of her.
A few empty cans rested on the small table beside her, beside the bed.
Ugh—damn these papers. Why didn't I just do them yesterday? Now look at me. Brilliant, Cecilia. Real smart.
She complained on repeat even while she typed away.
"This is so stupid. Why do I have to do this anyway? Why'd I'd agree to this in the first place...im supposed to be on a trip?"
She raised her arms high, grabbing one wrist and stretching her whole body out.
Her legs shifted under the desk, agitated.
"mmnn—haa…"
Blood rushed to her head, forcing a yawn out of her before her gaze drifted to the date in the bottom-left corner of the screen.
January twentieth.
Her gaze slid toward Ikade sleeping beside her.
Ikade lay curled up on the bed, her long furred tail draped across her own face like a soft blanket. For once, her ears hung loose and floppy, instead of twitching at every little sound.
After almost an hour of typing, rereading, deleting, and typing again, she finally reached the end of the document. She tapped the screen, signed the dotted line at the bottom, saved it, then sent it off to a certain old dog.
"You'd think they'd have something better than email by now."
She muttered under her breath, casting a glance toward the light switch near the door. It flicked off, dropping the room into darkness.
The glow of her laptop lit her face when she opened the first message in her inbox.
It was from the doctor—Mann.
Cecilia double-tapped the email he had forwarded again.
The message was short and painfully simple: a reminder not to ignore him, followed by a warning that if she kept delaying, she might end up dying before he could do anything about it.
She scrolled down just enough for the attached file to appear.
The file swallowed her entire screen—all three hundred and six pages of her history laid bare, the rest of the room dissolving into a blurry mess of color.
Medical Report — "Cecilia", Aug 14th, 1608
Her fingers forced the pages downward, skimming past the parts she had already memorized and the ones too useless to read again.
'You ha ve a m░▒▓ss in y our br██a i n.'
She slowed to a crawl, reading the lines once, then again, then again. Each detail cut through the haze in her head as the meaning settled in.
"…crys…talline…pressin'…pons…var…olii…"
"between...med...nucleus too..."
"Heh...what shit luck....Nope. Not thinking about my poor life choices until next week."