Chartreuse || ONC 2022

▪︎ Digi Log 5 ▪︎

The Night Mare Hotel
Micro-Tokyo, Neo-York
02:16

Two hours to the moment after she fell asleep, Mina awoke. She never could sleep well at night. The daylight hours made her drowsy and called to her to rest, but such was the sacrifice she had made upon choosing to operate as part of a team. Most vampires were lone creatures, and while ideal for sleeping and dining habits, Mina fervently believed this was the reason others of her race ultimately went mad.

Forever was an awfully long time to spend alone.

Emerging from beneath the bed, she carefully folded her velvet sheet and returned it neatly to the travel pack. If others apart from Saito and Ava-1 were to see the red sheet, they may have been quite confused as to its purpose, or perhaps found Mina's habitual need for it humorous. However, Mina could not sleep without it. In all actuality, it was no sheet, but the lining of a coffin. And as whimsical fate would have it, it was the lining from the very coffin Jonathan had purchased for her after her rather unfortunate and untimely final meeting with an eccentric Romanian associate of theirs.

She had been pronounced dead and a coffin had been made. But death had loosened its cold grip on her heart, allowing Mina a second life.

To those few afforded it, a second life was never quite like the first.

Lacing up her high-heeled black boots, Mina left the room without so much as a whispered farewell. Her comrades deserved their rest.

Centuries of practice had perfected Mina's ability to blend with the shadows, and she glided through the city's near-empty elevated streets as nothing more substantial than a fleeting black mist. Not a single late-night dweller was aware of her presence. She passed through the advanced technological district of Micro-Tokyo, into the more industrial sector of Micro-Oz, and past the enormous and looming facade of the Chartreuse Factory. All was quiet. For now.

With irksome frequency and consistency, neon holographic signs appeared on the exteriors of the countless circumambient skyscrapers. Their singular message glared down at Mina as she traveled, demanding to be read:

Big Sister is Watching You

Mina sniffed and continued on her way until she found the highest point in Neo-York. It was not difficult, for the blinding lights and lofty towers of the structure ordained as the "Red Palace" shone like the casinos of old.

"Subtle and practical, of course," Mina said with emotionless sarcasm. "Ava will enjoy this."

A twenty-foot synthetic stone wall served as a barrier between the palace grounds and the rest of Neo-York. The wrought-iron gate was tall and flanked by six armed guards. A Winged Monkey hovered overhead.

"Must keep the riffraff out," Mina muttered to herself.

Steering clear of the gate, she crept along the high outside wall, so black within the shadows that no motion detection floodlights or cameras registered a trace of her. With a strength inexplicable to regular human beings, she scaled the wall and glided along the top ledge. Her vantage point was excellent from this height, and she took in the well-manicured grounds of the palace in a quick search for signs of life. Organic or otherwise.

Posted at the main entrance was a small army of guards. Thirty, by a cursory glance. Mina retrieved Ava's camera from her pocket, adjusted the zoom on the lens, and took a few photos. The oblong gray heads and mechanical joints revealed the guards to be androids.

She continued her jaunt along the top of the barrier wall. More guards roamed the grounds, their pattern of patrol thorough but predictable. These appeared to be human.