Iridescent

Chapter I - Honor Among Thieves

A silent gust of wind whispers through my purple-fading-blue hair as I rush past a cluster of decayed, crumbling buildings. Several loose strands rip free from my messy, shoulder-length braid. My hair resonates with beauty; a perfect blend of color that whips with the chilled wind. As the ombré fades from a deep purple into a fiery blue, the dual mixture almost radiates in the near-total darkness - a stark resemblance to the eerie glow emanating from my bleached skin.

The low, rhythmic hum of my hoverboard reverberates the cold void around me. Silence echoes off the lifeless streets and decrepit alleyways. As the stream of cool air currents shove against me, the magnetic soles of my combat boots keep me tethered and safely secured. Despite the shivering chill that lingers throughout my spine, I love this freedom of being able to fly. I relish the euphoric overdose that comes with it. It is a rare reprieve from my reality.

There is very little lighting this far beneath the metropolis' superstructure. The massive city known as Iso-Karo is where I reside. The lower-city, where my story begins, has been nearly deserted for many years now. When the new infrastructure was built on top of the old, advanced layers being added upon archaic layers, the wealthy and influential classes migrated upwards into their own world of paradise. That left only the povertized and the outcasts to populate what remained. The deepest parts of the lower-city have become known as the under-city, an area completely devoid of life - even as the ancient sewer system beneath it rumbles with automation.

It is in the dark depths of the lower-city that lawlessness becomes rampant and unchecked. Compared to the bustling, well-regulated bazaars and legitimate businesses of the mid-city, it doesn't take a keen eye to notice the numerous black markets, arms dealers, drug cartels and various criminal syndicates that dominate the lower-city. Any form of law and order is virtually non-existent; the golden, unspoken rule of the land is "Every man for himself".

To be willing to live down here was to be willing to die down here. Those who were lucky enough became indebted or indentured to one of the many nefarious organizations, providing manpower, loyalty and allegiance in exchange for food, water and shelter. Those that aren't lucky either starve to death slowly or become one of the countless casualties in the near-constant gang warfare. Luckily for me, I just so happen to be both indebted and indentured.

I am what is known as a 'Drifter', a rather polite term for the lowliest, bottom-of-the-barrel outcasts. At one point or another, my entire lineage was disgraced and wiped from history as we now know it. By legal definition, I am barred from ever seeing the surface or the sky - not that I've ever gotten close enough to have seen them anyway, mind you - with the upper half of the mid-city similarly being out of my reach. My father once served one of the wealthiest families in the entire city: the noble House of Ducat, full of the aristocratic elite under the payroll of the Icarus Gigacorporation.

One drunken evening led to him being hunted by a diverse combination of Ducat assassins and Icarus mercenaries, which in turn led to our family's striking from the annals of recorded time. He spent the majority of his life on the run in the lower-city, later becoming indebted to a drug-lord of one of the most prevalent, infamous criminal cabals: the Rising Phoenix drug cartel. Fortunately, the cartel provided adequate protection and the would-be killers never came close to touching him. Unfortunately, it's because of the cartel that my father is no longer traversing the land of the living.

A well-timed ambush by the cartel left both of my parents dead, with a newly-made five-year-old orphan cradled in my mother's dying arms. I had no family, no home. Were it not for the cartel, I'd be dead to the world. Rising Phoenix took me in as one of their own, raising me as their own blood and training me for the last fifteen years to become an elite, hyper-lethal assassin-for-hire.