Ordinaries

Chapter 22

We hurried down the streets of Elys, having rushed out of the hospital after receiving golden tickets of health—using fake names didn't stop the hospital from trying to get their money. All around me swirled a world that was an odd cross between the one I'd left behind a year ago and the one I'd left a week ago.

The Elys I knew was calm, quietly bustling with life, as if someone had put a blanket over the city to muffle its noise. The university's tall gates and walls were visible in the distance, making it easy to find even if Lindsey hadn't been with us. But that wasn't what made its presence apparent—it was the thunderous booming and thumping coming from the campus, echoing across the cityscape and overshadowing all of the noise coming from the rest of the city. It was like the blanket had been removed fifty times over.

When we'd jogged about five blocks from the hospital, we slowed to a walk, and I was able to take in the streets and building of Elys that I somehow still remembered. Unlike Ether's eclectically colored apartments, Elys housing was all white. I passed office buildings and businesses, all composed of metal and glass and white bricks. Beneath the see-through sidewalks, sturdy electric blue tubes transported a wealth of power throughout the city, lighting it up and powering various facets of Elysian technology—floating restaurants and bowling alleys kept elevated by constant streams of highly pressured air, barriers that extended across traffic stops to prevent accidents, electric-powered, Necrose-subsidized vehicles on every corner for the convenience of Elysian citizens.

At least, that's what Elys was normally like.

But during Ether Week, Extraordinaries abandoned the order they lived by in favor of chaos. The holiday always made me wonder if Extraordinaries truly did possess greater emotional control and mental tenacity. Within the first day, people were robbing grocery stores, being detained by containment officers before they made it five feet; any open bars or restaurants turned into zoos, bodies tumbling from the windows of airborne structures after trying a new drug, or drinking too much because they'd never done it before and didn't know their limits; cars crashed against the barricades at intersections, tow trucks and containment teams cleaning up the messes. It was chaos, sure—but even still, it didn't begin to come close to how Ether had been. Because in the midst of all the parties, and the crime, and the death, and the disorder, there was still one thing that Elys had that Ether hadn't: Extraordinaries. And that meant the Necrose would clean up the bodies, and prevent crimes, and save lives if they could. Because in their eyes, these lives mattered.

The streets were packed as we walked, but I knew that they would fill up just as much as Ether's the later it got. A few people were coming towards us on the sidewalk, but most of the traffic consisted of people peeling past us, both in cars and on foot.

Jade finally spoke as we passed a flock of flamingo's pecking at a puddle of what I was pretty sure was vomit. "Good lord. Since when do exotic birds roam—"

"HEY! Let's stop for these guys. That guy's hot."

"Yasmine! Let go of my steering wheel!"

By instinct, I pulled Noah and Lindsey back from the edge of the sidewalk as a truck swerved off the road and jolted to a stop where they'd just been. In the flatbed, a young girl in denim shorts and a tank top stood staring down at us. In the driver's seat, I could narrowly make out another girl with a bored expression on her face.

The girl in the back had badly dyed platinum blonde hair, a horrible fake tan, and violet eyes, probably made that way by cheap colored contacts. For some reason, Extraordinaries liked to change up their appearances during Ether Week, and sometimes even their names. I guess they thought changing their personas would allow them to come out of the holiday with their reputations unscathed. Or maybe they thought they'd be able to strip off their behaviors from Ether Week along with their disguises.