They say the city of lights never sleeps. Under its smoggy, polluted skies, there is little difference between night and day, and most stayed inside anyways to avoid the acid rain and the occasional outbursts of violence on the streets.
A monorail hummed through a gap in a building, its dull white lights illuminating the drab office spaces within. It slid soundlessly to a stop a few miles down the track. Its doors oppened with a dull hiss, and the monotone voice of an announcer accompanied the footsteps of its disembarking passengers.
In the wealthier inner city, two wealthy women dined in a rooftop restaurant, sipping Granlock wine and dining upon fresh Azarian fish and meat and cheese from Luck’s Well. They chatted aimlessly about this and that, something or other, occasionally pausing to take a sip or a bite. At some point, the conversation wandered to the other cities; one woman expressed delight over her recent trip to Harbinger’s Well, and the other made a halfhearted protest about the conditions of the city’s lower class. They discussed whether or not Drexer was a true city or just some fairy tale made up by Monazite to justify their insanely high rates of disappearances; the first woman scornfully remarked that most of the missing Monazites were probably dead by their own hand, unable to cope with existing in the city anymore, and the second did nothing to rebuke her.
On the other end of town, one of the women’s husband strode down the street, sheltered from the rain by the monorail tracks. He passed by the neon lights of a brothel, and against his better judgement stepped inside, telling himself he was only trying to get out of the rain. He would instead end up spending the night in the bed of a man of the night with beautiful hazel eyes, and would blackmail him the next morning by threatening to revoke his visa if he ever told a soul about that night. He would be back soon enough.
In a cramped one-room apartment a few blocks down, three hackers sat down to work. They were almost finished with their life’s work; soon enough, it would be sitting in the inbox of an older city councilman, one oblivious to the inner workings of the city’s technology. He would click that innocent little file and download a virus that would bring down the entire city’s power grid for three days. The hackers would make off with their weight in wealth; one of them would be arrested and never seen again, and the other two would flee to Rockwell, never to return. But that was not tonight. Tonight, they would work on their virus and dream of a future only two of them would get to enjoy.
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In the city’s insane asylum sitting on an island in the harbor, a man scratched words into the wall. Most ramblings scratched into the walls were plastered over and dismissed; the asylum was less an asylum than a prison for undesirables, many of whom knew things they shouldn’t. The guise of madness made them easier to ignore. This man once worked for one of the largest corporations in the city. Instead of a pension, he was imprisoned, all because he accidentally found evidence of a slush fund meant to make the city council more… amenable to his employer. Now all he could do was scratch his secrets into the wall and hope that someday, someone would listen.
The city council adjourned after a night spent in debate. An upstart newcomer, a hopeful with a stronger will than normal, had spent the entire night fighting a law that would allow anyone with government permission access to the cyber footprints of everyone in the city. He wouldn’t sit too long in his seat; if his will didn’t break before the end of the week, he’d either turn up dead or as an inmate in the asylum. The question was if the others who once held his same ideals would stand up for him, but that was less of a question than a what-if scenario.
Throughout it all the city’s cameras watched, and something else watched through them, lurking inside the city’s infrastructure like a demon. There were only three people in the city who knew what this thing was; one was dead, one was in a gilded cage, and the third was trying to find it, to pick it apart until there was nothing left of it except broken chips and fried circuits. It would never let him, of course, but it rather enjoyed this little game anyways. Sometimes it gave him tantalizing hints, bits and pieces of itself it didn’t want or need, left to lead him astray or fuel his obsession. It was like luring a child into the woods with a trail of candy, and it was, for lack of a better way of putting it, fun. It served a purpose as well, distracting him from the city’s affairs and depriving the council and their supporters of valuable resources, but he didn’t know that, nor could he be allowed to, for who knew what horrors he could do if he were to turn his attention away from his wild goose chase for just a second? No, he couldn't be allowed to look away. But the thrill of the chase was merely a bonus.
The city of Shirou reigned another day.
