Dripping Away

Chapter 1: Homeless Banter

          The sun never woke me. It was the absence of sun that made my eyes flutter open and my jaw clench, and I aroused from the bellows of abandoned buildings inhabited by the homeless. They were all asleep besides a few night dwellers, but I tried not to associate with any of them. They were below me in some respect. Yes, even the homeless had their own social ladder and strange gatherings of the same. I was a nomad, and it was time to deem this particular place marked from my map.
          I never traveled out of the city, however. I had contacts, and my mind was full of thoughts about one in particular. Often, I found myself in this kind of state where my mind wandered to the lab, to the people who worked within it and how I had a home there. Well, some home. I started my walk down the sidewalk in the shroud of the large canopies that shielded me from the rain. And I kept my breath shallow as I turned my face away from anyone stalking out in the multitude of crowds that piled under the many awnings left out by the cafe's. I had a mission to get to lab, and I had no means to serve a sentence in jail again.
           Ranll wasn't going to save me again.
           I pulled myself down a narrow alley that had a plastic awning covering the entire section. I still wouldn't have pulled down my hood even for a second. Obscure the cameras. Keep my eyes to the ground. That was the way I had always ran my life, out of the eye of the Six. The moment those Hell-raisers caught a glimpse of me on one of their cameras, no contacts would dare speak to me. When they hunted me, Ranll was a well-known freak, and most of his workers knew I was always in his work. That made me a valuable asset. And a target.
           I tried pushing that down as I approached the science building colored with a litter of guards. Police officers also seemed to mark that as their spot of interest as caution tape seemed to take up that street. I wanted to guess that it was Trelós, but the violence had been skyrocketing lately.
           I pulled out my pass and passed the slew of guards. They all knew who I was. They hated me, but Ranll trusted me. So fuck them. I passed the entrance without a glance at the familiarity of it with that thought in mind, and then I saw him.
Gawky glasses, blue eyes, white coat.
           Ranll Moskin.
          He noticed me, the glare on his glasses shifting. "Lostin!" He moved away from the tall machine he had been working under, and he embraced me. I pulled my hood down- my one rule I never did anywhere else.
         "The Six are getting worse," he commented with his glasses pushed to his face. "I fear that you might need to stay here soon if they manage to finally find you."
           I was aware.
           But I was stubborn.
           "I'll be fine until they attempt my life," I told him with my hands clasped. "I came in hopes for better news. If that's possible."
           "Not better. Experimental," he smirked. "There is a new machine we've been tinkering with that may be able to stop the rain."
            I refrained from rolling my eyes. It was his life's work that he wanted to do, and I knew the impossibilities of stopping the decade old rain that never wanted to stop. But I helped. And I wanted to, and that was all I needed to realize my voice should be lilted and excited for him.
          "And?" I asked him.
            He pushed his hair back. "Tomorrow night. Can you be here?"
          "Yeah." I kept my questions and doubts to myself. "I come every night."
          "It never hurt to ask."
           He kept a steely gaze on my figure as I had a stern gaze.
          "This will do something," he tried to assure me. "It has to."
           "But you always say that. It's not like I don't believe in the dream of it, but were so far gone," I sighed. "Some say this rain is God's wrath. This is our end."
           His body slumped. He turned away from me to the machine he had settled at before I came in. Something glinted in his eyes. A leap of faith.
           "God doesn't exist," he bitterly grumbled. "If some god or goddess had blessed us, they wouldn't have left us to falter in our own technologies. Our own creation! A god, if any god, would have helped us!"
            I wasn't so sure. The last year we kept on record was 2073. The year the rain started. The world was different everywhere until the rain made it so similar and void. Then people were getting sick by drinking the rain, and they died. Like my own mother. I had always grown up with that idea that God wanted us dead for one reason or more. I wondered if we had done something to bring his wrath.
          "Sorry," Ranll finally exasperated. "You know I don't like to debate these type of things."
           I knew. My body fell into the long wall that was next to me, eyes full of a distinct distance. I cared about everyone here, the scientists and dreamers that crawled across the stairs and elevators. Ranll was on the top of my list of good people- despite our disagreements. He cared because he had some... strange connection to me.
           He had suddenly jumped, making a few of the other crowded people stare at him. And he turned to me.
           "I almost forgot!"
            He had pulled out a box covered in a layer of dust. It was sleek with a shiny number fourteen in deep black lettering. I froze.
            "No," I told him. "That is way too much for me."
           "Consider it a birthday gift," he told me.
           "We don't keep track of years. What makes you think my birthday happened anytime soon?"
           He laughed and pushed the box into my arms. I hated him for it, for selling himself to the Six by buying something ancient and fragile.
            "I know," he sighed. "but we need to keep in contact."
            "I could get an augment from one of the fucking homeless for less than a penny!" I screamed at him.
            "And risk getting sick? Take it! I have it programmed, and it has my number on it. You can text and call. Please, Lostin." He seemed defeated. "I need you to be safe, and I can't watch you from cameras."
             I gripped the box with a sudden hatred for everything. I shouldn't have. It was just a cellphone in a black box, but it was from the Six. The Six. It tugged on everything wrong with me, and I started to realize the first event that would pull us into a downward spiral. My eyes glossed over the clock in the corner of the room. Though I didn't have an education, I had learned the numbers.
           "I have to leave," I said, fingers and knuckles becoming white.
            I pulled up my hood and turned to the door.
            I wish I hadn't done that.