Chromium

5.2

Unedited/First draft

The train picked up speed, running on the rails as an old steam locomotive, the noise produced like an infernal racket compared to the silence in Dia's mind.

The darkness of the tunnel started to retreat little by little, replaced by the glittering lights of shops and houses, the advertising holograms reflected on tall buildings. They finally left the slums and reached Fideon prime beating heart: the Undercity.

It almost looked like the imperial capital at night, a multi-level city close an onion; its lower and upper layers divided and isolated from each other. The districts were almost like self-standing entities, micro-cities connected by the main roads: huge traffic routes slithering around the city as they went up. Every one of them converged on the same place, that tall tower, the highest building in the city.

Everything seemed familiar and oddly normal, that's why it was so disturbing. As the train kept going up, Dia could see a multitude of men and women, people of every kind, crowding the streets below. They seemed completely unaware of what was happening in the slums, just a few miles away from them.

Unfortunately, Dia couldn't forget what she had seen.

Maybe it was because she was in shock, the weight of what had happened finally catching up with her, but she was having trouble breathing.

Despite the low temperature, she was feverish, her hair sticking on her skin and her forehead so hot it looked like she was on fire. When the men around her started to take off their helmets, she started doing same, but someone stopped her.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." Reyes said, furrowing his brow as he looked at her.

"W-what?" Dia stuttered, panting while she tried to regain control of her emotions.

"The atmosphere is toxic."

She knew, of course, she knew, but it took some time for her brain to understand what he was saying.

"They are not wearing it." She pointed out.

"They don't need to. They were born here and like their ancestors, they learned to adapt to the environment. They had to."

"Adapt?"

"Yes, adapt. The people here are more resistant to the cold and their respiratory system is a little different from that of a normal human being."

"This is..." Dia said, searching a word for something it was hard to describe.

"Incredible? Amazing?"

"Impossible" Dia said, giving him a dirty look.

Reyes just chuckled.

"So what is it? Something close to natural evolution?"

"Natural?" Reyes laughed mockingly. "There is nothing natural about this, Dia. And it's not evolution, but more like a mutation, something much more frightening."

"Frightening?" She repeated the word slowly, carefully, like she was weighing it. "What you mean?"

"That, unlike evolution, mutation is way more unpredictable and its effect not always positive. The inhabitants of this planet learned to live here, but it wasn't without a cost. Malformations, cancer, tumors and another dozen diseases are common here, the last legacy of your great empire"