OGENUS EARTH 🌎 🌊 {Dystopian Sci-Fi Adventure}

Gone Girl

Marcus regretted having told his buddies that he was going to be getting into the deaf Tinker's pants. He hadn't seen her around today, and that meant she was probably cowering at home. 

His (much) delayed understanding of her brush-off had wounded his pride, and worse, was going to make him look like an idiot if he didn't follow through.

After his shift, Marcus traced his steps back to Meg's building; only to realize that he didn't actually know which apartment number she lived in. This meant he had to trek back across Arc City One again to ask one of his buddies to access the information from the city records. Then, he had to go back.

His misogynistic quest undeterred, Marcus could barely contain his anger when he realized that Meg had taken him to the wrong building when he'd walked her home the day before.

That little sneak wouldn't be able to get the better of him now! 

He had her address, he knew her shifts, and he wasn't taking any of her dimwitted excuses this time. Now, she was going to understand the power he had as a Legionnaire.

Marcus was a second-generation of the force that kept the Arc Cities running like clockwork. Like his father before him, he was a simple foot soldier, but there was pride in being a protector of the people, no matter what your rank. Marcus would come to indoctrinate those words as his father spoke them over and over throughout his childhood.

Marcus' mother was a nurse in life sciences and damn near sainthood in his eyes. She was the perfect woman. She never challenged her husband or even bothered to raise her voice in a crowd of more than two people, and she always kept their home spotless. 

There were times when his father would have to remind her who wore the pants of course, but those were few and far between nowadays.

While he still lived at home, for now, all that would change when Marcus took a wife. Then, he would have his own apartment, free to rule his castle as the king a man was supposed to be at home.

Meg could have been his lucky queen. She was quiet and solitary, meaning she wouldn't betray the confidences of a husband and wife when a little discipline needed to be levied; plus, she was pretty.

Meg's ethnically ambiguous face always seemed to halt his clumsy train of thought dead on the tracks, especially when she fixed those watery grey eyes on his lips. They were the color of the china dove figurines Marcus' mother prized so much.

He didn't enjoy feeling flustered, per say, but he was excited at her potential in bed. Her tiny waist and avian bones gave her a delicate appearance, like a living glass sculpture. 

All that was shot to shit now. 

She'd screwed up in Marcus' mind, and that meant she was going to know how unacceptable that was. Her rejection stung, and he wondered if the girl somehow thought herself above him. Perhaps, she thought that her outward appearance gave her the control of deciding whom she was going to end up with. 

That misunderstanding above all needed to be corrected.

Marcus rolled his wide shoulders back as he prepared to knock on her family's door. A meek-looking man, shrunken in his old age with neatly cropped salt-and-pepper hair and a shrewd look in his eye, opened.

"Hello?" Ben asked evaluating the Legionnaire posted on his stoop.

"Is Omega here?" Marcus asked with all the authority he could.

"Is she in some kind of trouble?" Ben didn't step back or give any impression that he was going to invite this brute into his home.

"She missed work today," Marcus faltered, not used to a citizen that didn't seem affected by his prowess, "I wanted to see if she was..."

"Ill?" Ben supplied as the Legionnaire wasn't able to finish his obvious lie.

"Yes, ill." Marcus smiled, trying a new tactic to get this old man to budge.

"No," Ben answered, mirroring Marcus' false geniality. "That's very kind of you, but Meg is not sick. In fact, she's been pulled away on a special project for Arturo."

Ben figured that giving this oaf just enough information would be fine, as he clearly wasn't capable of connecting any dots on his own, and throwing Arturo's name in the mix would (hopefully) give him pause.

"For Arturo?" Marcus looked stunned. "That's..."

"Great?" Ben suggested, a little amused by this man's inability to string sentences together.

"Yes, great," Marcus replied. "Well, fine then. Goodbye."

His business awkwardly concluded, Marcus left, his mind reeling.

Ben closed the door and turned towards his study.

"Who was that?" Laura called out from their bedroom. She had been preparing for her shift at the Hydro lab and didn't have time to open the door to interruptions.

As part of Arturo's brilliant design, the Arc Cities pumped icy ocean water from outside its beveled walls, using it to cool all of the millions of servers and processors that Coeuss needed to function. Without their critical role of monitoring the tubing and jet systems, there could be a blockage, and that could turn their easy existence into a literal pressure cooker.

Thankfully, because Coeuss was even more efficient than any human (including Arturo), they were rarely challenged to solve even minor problems. If there ever were an issue, they usually sent a bot or a Tinker to fix it, so there wasn't much to do but sit around and gossip, which happened to be one of Laura's favorite pastimes.

She tucked a primped purple curl behind her ear and smoothed the remaining unwanted bumps. 

The last thing you wanted was to become the object of her coworker's tittle-tattle. Laura knew that the others used her lackluster adopted daughter, Omega as fodder for their entertainment when she wasn't around. Hence, she tried to keep up as flawless an appearance as possible to stave their insatiable scuttlebutt.

"A Legionnaire," Ben answered flippantly.

Laura's ears perked up at this news. "What did he want?"

"He hadn't seen her at work and he was worried she was ill." Ben made sure to poke his head around the door to their bedroom to give his wife the reassurance that this was nothing more than a social call.

"What?" Laura cried, twisting around to look her husband in the face. "Why doesn't that girl tell us anything? Did you know that she was starting to date? Who is this man? Is he high ranking?"

"No, he looked like a private." Ben chuckled, trying to quash any hope his wife might hold in this potential union. "And no, to my knowledge, Meg has shown no romantic interest in anyone thus far."

"Just like her to keep it from us both!" Laura scoffed, turning back to the mirror to hum a happy tune as she finished her hair.

A Legionnaire! And if he was young (or ambitious) he could climb the ranks. This gave Laura a little rush of pleasure. 

She might be broken, Laura thought, but at least Meg was interesting to look at. This would absolutely give her something to brag about today at work!

Ben was still deep in thought when he was able to close the door to his office and shut out his wife for a few minutes. He continued on to the phone pad on his desk, swiping through the list of the Quorum members until he found Arturo's information. Ben was merely an advisor, but that wouldn't stop him from reaching out to the founding father of the Arc Cities, not when he had Meg.

The first and second calls went unanswered, and Ben reasoned that they must be offsite working from another undisclosed location. His mind recalled the fissures in Meg's normally stalwart expression when Arturo and the others had come over the night before. 

Ben had probed gently, but all Meg told him was that she was needed on a special project for Arc City's semi-centennial.

Now, he felt most unsure about his decision to not press for more details.