Urban Fallout (hold)

(1.2) Apartment Complex

(1.2) Apartment Complex

They called it Valuit City. It was the biggest urban centre in the western world, almost three-thousand square kilometres in size. There were parts of that monstrosity of a city that never went to sleep, but this was not one of them. It was a good area, as far as any area in Valuit could be classified as good. It was the zone known for scientific research and discoveries, but that by no means meant that those who inhabited it all cleared the poverty line. A red light blinked melodically at the top of a thirty story office building, the tallest one for a couple of blocks.

The streets in this zone were empty at two o'clock in the morning, traffic lights blinking red. Four teenagers walked along the sidewalk, the only sign that there was life within the hulking structures of metal, glass, and stone. When the exhaled their breath condensed into quickly dissipating clouds of steam. All four wore thick coats, hands shoved deep into pockets.

“You sure this is going to work?” asked the shortest among them, a dark skinned boy in a knitted hat.

“Don't worry about it,” said the boy in the lead, looking back over his shoulder. “We do it all the time.”

Lance was his name, and his stubble had just passed the point where it could now be considered a thin beard. It suited him, obviously having been trimmed with care, and it was honestly a good deal cleaner than his slightly greasy hair.

“That doesn't make it any less risky,” said Snow, the only girl among them.

Her light blonde hair was styled straight so that it stuck out just a bit below her ears, the tips dyed a rose pink.

Lance lead them across a surprisingly empty parking lot towards a stone apartment complex. Near the back there was a hole in the building, an arch, so that cars could reach the additional lot on the other side. In the tunnel a set of stairs lead past a green dumpster and to a metal door. Yamir, the only one among them to never have been to the spot, found himself wondering how they'd discovered it, how they'd found the one apartment building in the entire city that always had an unlocked back door.

“Just keep walking,” Lance said. “There's one camera, but I smoke in here all the time and no one's ever noticed.”

The four teens pulled hoods from heads, and hurried across the hardwood floor to a small set of carpeted stairs. In the first floor hallway, they waited at the elevator bank.

“My hands are fucking freezing,” Snow said, to no one in particular.

“Mine too.” Yamir blew on his fingers.

Lance hushed them. “Be quiet you idiots.”

The elevator dinged. Lance hit the button for floor ten, the highest floor accessible from the lift. There was also an L level, where the had entered, and two basement floors.

“Those are the cheep apartments.” Lance jabbed his finger at the buttons. “My brother had a friend—a dealer—who lived down there. It's how I found out about this place.”

“We used to have a key to the roof,” offered the previously silent fourth member of the party.

“Those were the days,” said Snow.

“Sad I missed them.” Yamir was sincere. No matter what adventures they took him on, the stories of the ones they hadn't were always more tantalizing.

Jamie was the fourth member of their group, a red haired boy with a spattering of freckles and intense green eyes. He rubbed his arms for warmth, as the elevator rattled upwards, but also from excitement. No matter how many times they came here, or did something similar, the adrenaline always greeted him. He loved it. He loved these people who pulled him into their world of teenaged adventure. The most self aware in the group, Jamie viewed what they did as what it was: a game. They were playing the city, and whatever guard had been tasked with watching the cameras. They were playing their parents, who would have found it preposterous that they were hanging out at two in the morning, who would have smelled the weed smoke if they'd smoked in one of their houses. And they were playing the cold, that threatened to confine their midnight debauchery to the summer months.