Urban Fallout (hold)

(2.3) The Market

(2.3) The Market

The sun had just began to ooze above the city skyline when Kael caught the early bus to the central zone. The driver shot her a look as she shoved her change through the slot. A girl her age was guaranteed a Valuit City System card. Was it really that hard to believe she'd left it at home? Or that she was hiding from those who could read an electronic trail like it was a picture book? The bar code scanner sitting near the door was as good as walking into the police station, or the Inposterum science building.

Kael laughed quietly, but quickly caught herself, hoping that the bus's one other passenger hadn't noticed. The pills still sat in her pocket, back in their container, burning a hole. But it just felt so wrong, leaving a mystery like this unsolved. This early in the morning an hour drive shrunk to twenty minutes. Out the window, Kael watched the city wake up. Though the closer she got to the centre, the less it had actually gone to sleep.

The canvas roofs of The Market covered ten city blocks. The thriving economy of Valuit really took a physical form here. Businesses—both legitimate and not—rubbed elbows in the covered alleys, and buildings which had long since been completely taken over. For those in the outer zones, like the one from which she'd arrived, The Market had taken up the characteristics of a bad urban legend. But for those in the central zone it was just a part of life. So confusing was it under the patchwork of colourful cloth that some locals had began to carry maps: maps that Kael felt she would be qualified to create. If she needed something, she knew exactly where to find it. She knew which areas to avoid, not that that really matter anymore—not to her.

She was wound so tight, as she hopped off the bus, that she was almost craving a confrontation. With her hardened gaze she dared someone to challenge her. The power burned beneath her skin. She caught herself again, wanting to hurt someone, and the bottle in her pocket put on a few pounds.

Most of the stalls were still closed, but Kael knew there were parts of The Market that never shut down. As she walked under the shade of the tents, Kael pulled up her hood and shoved her hands deep into her pockets. Her fingers closed around the pill bottle like it was a stress ball.

A woman smiled at her as she passed by. She unloaded vegetables from crates. They were rejected stalk from the greenhouses, thrown away for imperceivable imperfections, until entrepreneurs like the smiling woman offered to buy them up for a miniscule price.

Kael was less than a block away from her destination, when a group of young adults pushed their way out from a particularly dark tent. They barely cast her a second look. Hair was messy, black makeup smudged below eyes. Kael payed them no mind. There it was, looming above, only visible in the crack between two pieces of fabric. The building to which Kael was headed must have once been something else; apartments maybe. Now it was hollowed out like a drum, stalls littering the ground floor, and the balconies that looked down at it on every level. There was no door, and she strode through the frame.

Here, eyes watched her warily. One didn't browse here, like out in the alleys. In an ironic way this place was high class, exclusive. Those who came here knew what they were looking for. Kael couldn't stop her eyes from wandering to a clean area displaying glittering electronics. If she had to hazard a guess, she would say that these were the kind built so they couldn't be traced or listened in on. For a moment she played with the idea of having a phone again, or a computer, but quickly dismissed it. What good was technology when she was dead?

Instead, she headed for the stairs. Three flights up, she stopped. Her destination was different than most things found in The Market, bigger money, higher risk. That should have been evident from the fact that its walls weren't made of cloth. A section of rooms had been left intact to house it.