Antumbra - A Lost Cause

Pertinent Reminder - Chapter Forty Eight

Marcus checked his car's map, ensuring the route it was taking him on was correct. He was in unfamiliar territory, as he didn't usually go this deep into the Habitat, preferring the outskirts and more open lands where the houses were fewer and the view of the sky was greater. The hustle and bustle of dense city life didn't suit him, and the traffic was almost unbearable. Yet the congestion ironically served to mask his movements, whereas the kind of business he was undertaking would be more evident in the less populated areas . Here, at least, he blended in with everyone else coming and going, and he knew the Administration wouldn't look too closely inland. They wouldn't suspect something right under their noses, and so he suffered the quiet indignity of being held up during rush hour, waiting his turn to inch forward with the rest of the flow. As the monotony began to bore him, he uncharacteristically rested his elbow on the window frame, and held his head in his hand. Marcus grew bored easily, but unlike his brother he tried not to show it, but he felt comfortable that nobody important would notice this lapse in sophistication. From a young age he had been instructed on the importance of formality. To poorly represent one's self was to poorly represent the family name, and so one must always be well-dressed, well-spoken, and carry themselves with an ego Marcus detested.

He watched people scurry about on the sidewalks, so invested in their own lives, no doubt feeling the same pressures he had. Everyone kept to themselves, walking past one another with little regard. He scrutinized their body language, the character they exuded. Teenagers carrying cases full of school work, business men and women talking on their earpieces, officers marching at rigid attention as if they were still on base, all disconnected from the world around them. Marcus watched an elderly woman drop her bag and struggle to bend down to retrieve it, with not a single passerby stopping to help. One individual even scoffed at the fact that she interrupted the flow of foot traffic, much to Marcus' chagrin. These small moments of inhumanity spoke of the larger state of the Habitat. The people here were, by their nature, self-absorbed. They basked in the modern amenities and comfort technology and wealth gave them, all ignorant to the suffering around them. They had what they wanted, and that was all that mattered. In a way Marcus could hardly fault them, this self-serving mentality was institutionalized in the outdated traditions that still ruled, but it didn't make it any less wrong in his eyes.

Traffic finally began to move, and soon Marcus was able to pull onto a side street. The clean sidewalks and well-kept buildings began to give way to more hard-edged and industrial surroundings, and car and foot traffic was replaced with hover-haulers and the echoing footfalls of powered loaders. It was one of the reasons Marcus had the machine he recently rediscovered moved to this location. There were all varieties of mechanical suits and machines at work in the area, and the whole sector was owned by his family, or more accurately his brother's family. They were highly esteemed, and owned many sectors just like this one across the whole Habitat, so the loyalty of the workers could be trusted, and running tests would go unnoticed or simply be explained away as worker mechs. The perfect haystack to hide a needle in.

He parked his unmarked car a few buildings down from his destination, in a closed lot not visible from the streetside, and stepped out. He adjusted his plain clothes which felt more uncomfortable than his dress uniform. Marcus didn't want to attract too much attention, so he opted for a more casual ensemble of a jacket over a plain button shirt with no tie. The monthly polls had just come in, and the public had voted on mild weather with a cool wind in the morning, so he wouldn't be conspicuous roaming around in multiple layers to hide his military physique. A short walk later and Marcus arrived at his intended destination: a large building with tracks leading out from under a massive door. Two men in worker attire smoked casually next to the side entrance, their loaded service pistols carefully hidden beneath their safety vests. Marcus gave a courteous nod which they reciprocated as he entered, only to have to stop before another door. He retrieved a card from his pocket and held it over a small terminal on the wall, and the door in front of him clicked and buzzed, allowing him to enter the building proper. Said building was nearly totally hollow, with the majority of space taken up by gantries surrounding the Argonaut they had transported from the castle.