━━Calamity¹

two.

chapter two
new hope

The red light still flickered on her ankle band.

Alina leaned at the corner of a grimy restaurant building near a dysfunctional vending machine that flashed numerous faint colours. A faint fog dragged through the dark street and obscured the flashes of lights dangling on the overhead straight roofs of a nearby few buildings. Behind her footsteps sounded over a metal stairway that stretched onto the terrace of the restaurant, all bent at the edges and painted in blotches of red.

I miss my bed. Why'd I agree to this? Alina thought as she slid her hands into her jacket and shuffled her feet through the grime while a figure approached through the faint fog.

The figure, Felix Alvarez, dug out a package neatly wrapped into newspaper and handed it to her, his dark eyes flashing with either warning or worry before he departed toward the other end of the street, stepping directly into the line of patrol robot buzzing through.

Alina slipped the package into her pocket and separating from the wall, headed toward the other end, following the line of straight roofed houses through the darkness. All of them were partially the same - with those slithering wires overhead, metal walls that smelled of dust, bent stairs and boarded up windows.

She slipped into an alley between two buildings at the end of the street, speeding toward a door on the left immediately behind a dumpster. The door screeched as she opened it, Alina cringing at the sound before she slipped inside.

Th room that welcomed Alina smelled of smoke, its walls had become yellow and the only furniture was a bare mattress, a table in the corner and countless ragged pillow. A woman laid on the mattress, around her at least six more people scarcely dressed in raggery.

Her gaze lifted as she spotted Alina.

"You got the goods?" She asked, barely clambering upward from the mattress, and accidentally elicting a groan from one of the people sitting about her who she had hit while approaching Alina.

Alina coughed at the smoke and dug out the package. "All settled."

"Want to join us?" The woman said, flicking a strand of dark hair away from her sweaty forehead.

Alina glanced briefly to her ankle band wordlessly. Finally, shaking her head, Alina handed her the package and sped out of the house without a backward glance.

Outside, she found Felix standing at the door she had previously taken, wringing his fingers and glancing ever so often at the dark street ahead. He beaconed her over without a word and never caring to see whether she followed, ran out into the street.

She caught up a moment later, walking briskly alongside him the way she came as she watched him gaze around every second or so as if spying for anything or anyone strange. "What happened?" She whispered.

"We've been found." Felix answered.

"Found?! You said this was safe!"

"I said safer!" He looked back, Alina following his gaze toward two individuals following Felix and her, masked in the partial darkness and fog of the street and with only their long coats fluttering as they walked. "Just follow me." Felix sighed.

They slipped around the corner and clambered onto the stairs of the restaurant's terrace that shook underneath their steps, and hurried among the strewn tables and chairs all shattered, splintered and painted over. Felix shouldered the door open with a glance toward the figures that had just rounded the corner, and ushered Alina into the dusty restaurant.

The windows were brown from mold and grease, newspaper clippings pasted onto them and metal rods boarding up their frames. The darkness was prominent inside, no light streaming through as Alina made a beeline toward the counter cluttered with empty bottles and shattered plates, picking up a red cushion from the ground and settling behind the bar while Felix moved around the strewn tables, checking every hole in the walls for the sight of their pursuers.