Baldy
000 - 000 - 009
- AKA
- Sienna, Jenovas-Fifth, Idris
The city was never quiet.
Ever since its foundation mere years ago, the land it occupied had never seen a breath, a pause, not one single beat of silence, for the city never slept. The people kept on talking, and plotting, and shouting, and the machines worked tirelessly day and night. The city itself was yet to be finished, and so construction continued on and on, placing together the heart of the city, then the roads and neighbourhoods as veins, and then the people moved in like its blood.
There were plans being argued back and forth about building a giant wall around its perimeter, as had the ancient cities of days before the wars – the idea remained on the knife edge as officials bantered back and forth the opposing ideas of safety inside, and possible expansion outside. The closest you could get to what their ancestors would call "normal" would be the every-day neighbourhoods – rows of housing units that seemed to resemble those of back in the day, if you squinted so you couldn't see that the manicured lawns were all fake and that the glass in the windows was bulletproof. One level up, technology-wise, the commercial areas were like electric ghost towns in that nobody was there to welcome you in or check you and your purchases out – they just flashed their neon lights and the shelves always, always stocked what you needed.
But the downtown was by far a feat of modern science and technology. It was all glass and steel and polished stone, and the doors never slammed – not because there were no angry bureaucrats to slam them but because they had perfected hydraulic systems to slow them down. The skyscrapers finally lived up to their name; some were already so tall you couldn't see the top of them on foggier days, and taller still were they being planned. Buildings big enough to match the egos of their planners.
And the plan to build a wall was losing, because the city was expanding – a giant intake of breath from the concrete, the glass, the steel, and the population swelled as more and more joined the cause of the ones who had started it all in the first place. There was cleanliness, and there were comforts, and there were rebels being "taken out back" due to "disorderly conduct." The magnetic power systems were fun until they taught you that they could get cut and you just might fall screaming down a 500-foot elevator shaft if you failed to pay your bills.
It was industrial, and it was military, and to those who had planned it, it was nearing perfection.
But it was never quiet.
And so in all the whirring and humming and scheming—and the gossip, that too—among all the noise, nobody would think to notice one girl slip in and just listen, from time to time. Not a spy, never a spy; spies couldn't get into the city, after all. They just couldn't. No, she must be one of them – just another one of them. And that's why she got away with it.
Presently, she was hanging upside down a hundred feet in the air, knees bent to wrap around the exposed support beam. She'd been there for hours now, comfortably, lightly swinging back and forth every now and then; her blood never wound up pooling in her head simply because she told it not to.
Presently, she was, ah, "listening" to a conversation being held by two heads of urban development ten storeys down in the already-finished floors of the building. The headset she was using reeked of being a foreign import, because no manufacturer in this city welded metal together in such intricate swoops and curls, after all. They just didn't. But she did.
And presently one of said curls was bothering her left ear, so with a stroke and a pinch of her fingers it was gone, fused back into the whole, and the girl listened on.
Her hair was supposed to be black nowadays, so if anybody had seen her getting up there (which they hadn't,) and taken a look at her now (which nobody did,) they would wonder why it was suddenly short and almost white, such a pale blonde it was. This, combined with her fully white outfit—tight-fitting tank top, loose-fitting cargo pants, and effective ballet flats—and the aforementioned hanging upside down gave her a strange and almost laughable likeness to a giant, albino bat.
The bat with electric hearing, in the city that was never quiet.
The bureaucrats finished their talk and the girl switched the headset off, satisfied with what she had heard for the day. The construction plans were going full-speed, which meant for anybody truly in the know that the city was safe enough to not need to pull out all the machines and workers as militia—because all the machines doubled as weapons, though few knew it and fewer knew how to make the switch. This meant that the city thought there was no threat, which meant nothing dangerous had been spotted in or around the city.
Which meant that the city's government hadn't found any Destrillians yet.
Her quirky, triumphant smile was lost in a whirl of white as she swung back, forth, and up, now sitting on the beam, now reaching above her for the next and swinging onto the floor of the unfinished level. She flitted down the building by simply creating metal landings where she jumped and fell; she was off and running before anybody could have ever noticed.
And she whipped 'round a corner and suddenly her hair was black and flowing (and fake, but nobody else knew that,) and with a graceful, dancing pirouette on the spot, Genevieve slowed herself and sallied forth at a more amiable pace.
And even now, when she wasn't trying, she heard information all around her as the city talked to itself. Plans for buildings, plans for dates, plans for the next big product—plans to take over the world, if you listened carefully. But Genevieve was done with listening carefully for the day, and so the information went in one ear—
—and out the other, you would think. But it never went out the other, because even though Genevieve had the choice to ignore it, the city was never quiet. So she took it all in and was exponentially wiser for it.
But because she was so busy with her external senses, she never noticed that her internal ones were going off – the ones she had honed to perfection, signaling that one of the people she, ah, "followed" was drawing near.
They were her prey, so to speak – free to stalk at her will. And she did, because they were also her family. So when tiny little raven-haired Genevieve knocked shoulders accidentally with another girl, and felt that shot of something up her spine (almost like vines were creeping up it,) she was almost surprised. Almost.
With the intention of regaining balance, she twisted with a grace that she must have paid a fortune to get implanted in her muscle memory, because nobody who looked that age in this city could move with such fluidity. They just couldn't.
And the other girl did too. And Genevieve's wide, grey eyes locked onto the splatters of freckles across the stranger's skin and she knew it wasn't a stranger. So she felt no need to be awkward.
"So terribly sorry, my dear," she offered, with a head inclination that all who met her said was idiosyncratic because nobody else could be able to look down in a supposed submission and still look so in charge of the situation. "Hope you're alright."
She knew she'd have to make this short, for the girl she spoke to was squinting the slightest bit in vague remembrance, probably of another girl who spoke just like that years ago. And Genevieve couldn't have that connection made, not until she was sure it was safe. So when the girl made her reluctant reply, Genevieve made her final words short but meaningful:
"The name's Genevieve Weatherworm, but you can call me Jen. Careful you don't fall in a place like this, a'right? The city's unforgiving," and with a smile, "but just maybe I'll be there to catch you."
And that was all there was time for, because any longer and the freckled girl who was her friend would understand and Jen couldn't have that just yet. So with a flickering, familiar salute, the girl whirled on her foot and sped away – she barely heard the reply, the call of "I'll see you around," that meant yes, she'd figured it out. Somewhat. But nobody else had, because the city was never quiet and it was too busy with its own talk to listen, and to understand that it was wrong. She was a spy, and the headset was her own, and yes, the both of them could in fact move with a grace frightening to behold when they wanted. It was too loud to have heard her the day she picked out a new name for herself, and to hear the last time she'd said the old one aloud.
The city was never quiet.
And that was why she loved it.
Genevieve had always really meant Idris, anyway.
Ever since its foundation mere years ago, the land it occupied had never seen a breath, a pause, not one single beat of silence, for the city never slept. The people kept on talking, and plotting, and shouting, and the machines worked tirelessly day and night. The city itself was yet to be finished, and so construction continued on and on, placing together the heart of the city, then the roads and neighbourhoods as veins, and then the people moved in like its blood.
There were plans being argued back and forth about building a giant wall around its perimeter, as had the ancient cities of days before the wars – the idea remained on the knife edge as officials bantered back and forth the opposing ideas of safety inside, and possible expansion outside. The closest you could get to what their ancestors would call "normal" would be the every-day neighbourhoods – rows of housing units that seemed to resemble those of back in the day, if you squinted so you couldn't see that the manicured lawns were all fake and that the glass in the windows was bulletproof. One level up, technology-wise, the commercial areas were like electric ghost towns in that nobody was there to welcome you in or check you and your purchases out – they just flashed their neon lights and the shelves always, always stocked what you needed.
But the downtown was by far a feat of modern science and technology. It was all glass and steel and polished stone, and the doors never slammed – not because there were no angry bureaucrats to slam them but because they had perfected hydraulic systems to slow them down. The skyscrapers finally lived up to their name; some were already so tall you couldn't see the top of them on foggier days, and taller still were they being planned. Buildings big enough to match the egos of their planners.
And the plan to build a wall was losing, because the city was expanding – a giant intake of breath from the concrete, the glass, the steel, and the population swelled as more and more joined the cause of the ones who had started it all in the first place. There was cleanliness, and there were comforts, and there were rebels being "taken out back" due to "disorderly conduct." The magnetic power systems were fun until they taught you that they could get cut and you just might fall screaming down a 500-foot elevator shaft if you failed to pay your bills.
It was industrial, and it was military, and to those who had planned it, it was nearing perfection.
But it was never quiet.
And so in all the whirring and humming and scheming—and the gossip, that too—among all the noise, nobody would think to notice one girl slip in and just listen, from time to time. Not a spy, never a spy; spies couldn't get into the city, after all. They just couldn't. No, she must be one of them – just another one of them. And that's why she got away with it.
Presently, she was hanging upside down a hundred feet in the air, knees bent to wrap around the exposed support beam. She'd been there for hours now, comfortably, lightly swinging back and forth every now and then; her blood never wound up pooling in her head simply because she told it not to.
Presently, she was, ah, "listening" to a conversation being held by two heads of urban development ten storeys down in the already-finished floors of the building. The headset she was using reeked of being a foreign import, because no manufacturer in this city welded metal together in such intricate swoops and curls, after all. They just didn't. But she did.
And presently one of said curls was bothering her left ear, so with a stroke and a pinch of her fingers it was gone, fused back into the whole, and the girl listened on.
Her hair was supposed to be black nowadays, so if anybody had seen her getting up there (which they hadn't,) and taken a look at her now (which nobody did,) they would wonder why it was suddenly short and almost white, such a pale blonde it was. This, combined with her fully white outfit—tight-fitting tank top, loose-fitting cargo pants, and effective ballet flats—and the aforementioned hanging upside down gave her a strange and almost laughable likeness to a giant, albino bat.
The bat with electric hearing, in the city that was never quiet.
The bureaucrats finished their talk and the girl switched the headset off, satisfied with what she had heard for the day. The construction plans were going full-speed, which meant for anybody truly in the know that the city was safe enough to not need to pull out all the machines and workers as militia—because all the machines doubled as weapons, though few knew it and fewer knew how to make the switch. This meant that the city thought there was no threat, which meant nothing dangerous had been spotted in or around the city.
Which meant that the city's government hadn't found any Destrillians yet.
Her quirky, triumphant smile was lost in a whirl of white as she swung back, forth, and up, now sitting on the beam, now reaching above her for the next and swinging onto the floor of the unfinished level. She flitted down the building by simply creating metal landings where she jumped and fell; she was off and running before anybody could have ever noticed.
And she whipped 'round a corner and suddenly her hair was black and flowing (and fake, but nobody else knew that,) and with a graceful, dancing pirouette on the spot, Genevieve slowed herself and sallied forth at a more amiable pace.
And even now, when she wasn't trying, she heard information all around her as the city talked to itself. Plans for buildings, plans for dates, plans for the next big product—plans to take over the world, if you listened carefully. But Genevieve was done with listening carefully for the day, and so the information went in one ear—
—and out the other, you would think. But it never went out the other, because even though Genevieve had the choice to ignore it, the city was never quiet. So she took it all in and was exponentially wiser for it.
But because she was so busy with her external senses, she never noticed that her internal ones were going off – the ones she had honed to perfection, signaling that one of the people she, ah, "followed" was drawing near.
They were her prey, so to speak – free to stalk at her will. And she did, because they were also her family. So when tiny little raven-haired Genevieve knocked shoulders accidentally with another girl, and felt that shot of something up her spine (almost like vines were creeping up it,) she was almost surprised. Almost.
With the intention of regaining balance, she twisted with a grace that she must have paid a fortune to get implanted in her muscle memory, because nobody who looked that age in this city could move with such fluidity. They just couldn't.
And the other girl did too. And Genevieve's wide, grey eyes locked onto the splatters of freckles across the stranger's skin and she knew it wasn't a stranger. So she felt no need to be awkward.
"So terribly sorry, my dear," she offered, with a head inclination that all who met her said was idiosyncratic because nobody else could be able to look down in a supposed submission and still look so in charge of the situation. "Hope you're alright."
She knew she'd have to make this short, for the girl she spoke to was squinting the slightest bit in vague remembrance, probably of another girl who spoke just like that years ago. And Genevieve couldn't have that connection made, not until she was sure it was safe. So when the girl made her reluctant reply, Genevieve made her final words short but meaningful:
"The name's Genevieve Weatherworm, but you can call me Jen. Careful you don't fall in a place like this, a'right? The city's unforgiving," and with a smile, "but just maybe I'll be there to catch you."
And that was all there was time for, because any longer and the freckled girl who was her friend would understand and Jen couldn't have that just yet. So with a flickering, familiar salute, the girl whirled on her foot and sped away – she barely heard the reply, the call of "I'll see you around," that meant yes, she'd figured it out. Somewhat. But nobody else had, because the city was never quiet and it was too busy with its own talk to listen, and to understand that it was wrong. She was a spy, and the headset was her own, and yes, the both of them could in fact move with a grace frightening to behold when they wanted. It was too loud to have heard her the day she picked out a new name for herself, and to hear the last time she'd said the old one aloud.
The city was never quiet.
And that was why she loved it.
Genevieve had always really meant Idris, anyway.
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