"Almost Green"

Peace Sells Pt.2

That day, there was a lot of buzz on the streets. Andy wasn't sure whether it were the uneasy waters that had somehow spilled from behind a door he left haphazardly closed, or the sound of a storm creeping past the horizon, a tragedy in the making, yet not there quite yet. The air felt heavy, thick with tension that could easily be cut with a knife. His head kept spinning, yet he himself wasn't sure of his own emotions. All he knew was that there was blood all over himself, all over Croissant, and they needed to leave.

"... Baws? Ya alright?" Her voice was a little more tentative than usual. He could tell she was shook for this or that reason, probably something to do with the fact their cheerful little escapade took a dark turn.

"Yeah. Yeah, everything's good. Just fine." Andy messily threw the words back, occupied with finding an exit route to the more known parts of the city. They were deep in the snakes' pit, a tangling mess of old, half finished skyscrapers and overran tenement buildings piling up atop one another, creating mazes of dusty walls and large sandcastles – exteriors caked with a batter made of water, vomit, blood, sweat and sand. Lots and lots of sand. He's never been or seen this side of Lungmen, this hidden oasis of poverty, even beyond the initial market of sorrows. If the curly-sheet stalls from before were any indication of what lay beneath the city's flashy surface, then these buzzing anthills were a confirmation – a clear answer to an unasked question, a means to an end, a whole community of people shuffled under a rug. They took a detour, throwing themselves into an alleyway between a few tall walls prickled and peppered with tiny windows, from which lazy Lungmenites peered down at the bustling slum life, smoking their cigarettes, or hanging out wet laundry. Andy couldn't help but stare at the hundreds of wires slung across the corridor of buildings, all of them housing thousands of clothes, cloths and fabrics. They all swayed with the wind, and the buzz of a thousand cheap air conditioning units.

"... Ya reckon they still followin' us?" Croissant asked, then took a glance behind her shoulder, against her better judgment. It was better to simply look forward and not dwell on the past. Andy didn't even notice the fact he kept clutching tightly onto her hand, his other one pressing the folder of forecasts flush to his chest.

"They could be? I don't– I don't know. We just need to get the hell away from this place, that's all."

She narrowed her gaze. Andy could already tell something was up, but couldn't quite place it. "Do we even know where we're goin'? I haven't ever been here, and Baws, I've done my fair share 'a slum dwellin'..."

"No. No idea where we are." His voice wavered. Lost in no man's land, with a posse of armed vigilantes on their backs, he had no idea where they were figuratively and literally. "... I can call someone. I could call Lem? Texas? Ping our location, ask them to pick us up."

"..." She returned a nod, the gesture less confident than he'd like it to be. They shuffled away a few towels hard as cardboard, dryer than a Sargonian desert, then slid into a little space between the walls. The passing grade B citizens kept throwing them curious looks, most of them especially fixated on admiring Andy's pierced halo. Just as it was at the marketplace, so it was there, a Sankta with a desecrated light always caught some strange glances. He fished the phone out his pocket, as Croissant took watch, guarding the alley from behind a corner.

"... They pickin' up, or...?" She asked, nervously fidgeting with her ponytail. Andy glared into the tiny box and its bright screen, but nothing seemed to come of it. Each time he pressed the contact lovingly named "LEMMY", or the one right beneath, formidable and daunting with its mere presence, "TEXAS", the lazy operator mumbling words into his ear would keep replying with the same "No reception" message, over and over. "DANI", "SORA", even "BOSS/PL" and finally "BOSS/WORK" repeated those exact same words, the words that eventually drew a long, shaky exhale from his lungs. Andy closed the phone and slid it back into a pocket.