Dripping Away

Chapter 6: The Twins

          Twins. It was a twisted fate to have more than one child at a time where everything was all about survival, and yet I knew someone who had twins before that wouldn't ask for more than their precious lives. I guess I understood that in a motherly sense, because at that point you survive for your children. Nashirme showed us a screen capture of some surveillance footage that had two little blonde-headed kids playing around with electricity in their hands. Kids. They weren't too young, but the rest of us were in our twenties at least, so it irked me that Lekereianale would put this kind of burden on us. Twins.
          Nashirme told us we should try and get them now while the night was young, and she said she wasn't coming. She had a business to run at this time, but I knew she just wanted to escape me. That was fine. With the location and description of them given to us, Nashirme's job was practically done for the moment. We split up, and I watched Nashirme disappear and reappear in between the drops.
          "We're still going by our fake names in public. Put on your mask, Voshkelp," Abers  demanded.
           I did as he asked of me and followed him out onto the main street. It had been a time since I'd seen it, but I could feel that it had not changed. The rain was heavy, obscuring my vision of what was across the way besides the faint glow of ads. I heard them ask if anyone had seen Lostin Rotsitt's corpse, which felt odd to me in all the wrong ways. The ads also asked for people to turn in the homeless to the six so they could be protected from the rain, which was a terrible, terrible lie. I wondered what they did to the homeless, really, and if I didn't have such a record where I would be with them.
          "Halt! In the name of the Six, I order you to stop!"
           I stopped dead in my tracks and waited to feel the power of a taser against my back for a moment before Abers was looking back at me all strange. In an instant, two Six members were running by us to two other people who were just walking as normally as us. I was afraid for a moment. No one was scarier than the Six, and the moment you were under their radar, you were better off dead. Probably. A lot of bystanders stopped to watch what the Six were doing, and Abers and I decided to do the same.
            The one man that was being interrogated was small and feeble, and his clothes were tattered. "I can assure you we're not homeless."
           "Where is your house?" the Six officer asked. "I must see it before I can identify you as a citizen."
            They didn't have a house. Anyone could see that from their appearance and how they carried themselves. A part of me wanted to do something.
            "Well?" the Six officer snapped.
            The other man was much burlier than the first, even taller than the Six. "I-"
            "Tamello! Bornek!" Abers shouted out, taking a step forward. "We have to get home soon, so why are you making a scene here?"
            Tamello and Bornek looked at Abers and seemed to carry loads of thankful nature in their steps. Abers pulled out a card I had never seen before, a citizen card clearly faked to fit the face of his mask and registered to say he had some house and three kids. I assumed... I was the third. The Six officer looked at it and nodded with his empty stare.
             "Sorry to cause such a commotion," the Six apologized.
             Abers only nodded. "It is your job, after all."
            Abers and I walked with these two men down the street some before turning down an alley as if we were going to that house Abers mentioned on his citizen card. Where did he even get one of those? It didn't matter, because we stopped before the alley flooded any deeper to other alleys, and we stood over a sewer grate.
             "You're Sewer People, aren't you?" Abers asked.
            The skinny one nodded. "Yes. We're sorry we caused you any trouble."
             "No need to worry about that. By all means, it's my fault you people must hide down there."
             Abers peeled away his mask and they didn't seemed shocked by it. I pulled mine away, too, and they just nodded like they understood. It was the silent agreement of keeping secrets. The thin man shook Abers's hand, and the other man began to open the sewer grate.
             "When you need us, the password is sugar," he said, pulling from Abers. "I'm Arkeshta and he's Narmelin."
              Narmelin was already heading down and Arkeshta was starting his departure. Sewer People were new. Real new. Abers didn't say anything as he put his mask back on, and I did the same without really trying to think all of this through. That's where the rest of the homeless were, down there below the corrupted city where they couldn't touch them. That meant the sewer wasn't flooded anymore. There was a civilization of people down there, thriving on the confines of nothing but themselves.
              We walked back on the street and kept going on and on towards where the Church grounds were, but Abers attitude was lax. He knew where we were going, so I just kept my feet in tow with him. No Six officers stopped us from walking this way or kept us from going towards the Church. Just before the city ended, Abers stopped against one of the glass windows that led into some sort of coffee shop.
              "From the footage, they're Church kids," Abers mentioned. "Once we go in, we have to stay off of any main roads."
              "What's with the Church?" I asked. "They seem like their own entity almost."
              "It was a time ago when there was a Forever Spark that landed in the middle of the land there." Abers pointed where the city ended was where these hills began, and in the middle was a large Church that glowed on the inside. "They believed it was the work of God, that the spark never died, and they created the Church around it. That, the Forever Spark, is Lekereianale's.
              "Oh."
              Abers pushed himself off of the wall. "I think that's why we have this power."
             Forever Spark... I followed Abers out into the open, walking towards the small collection of houses. They were all together in a crevice between two hills right underneath the lonesome Church on the top, and I noticed that it was covered in a large awning that pushed the rain to these long containers. The containers were draining somewhere else, banging against the metal. It was almost as if I could hear it from here.
            We walked into the town and it was apparent Abers was uncomfortable in this setting. There were men and women both that served God walking and surveying the streets as they greeted everyone they passed. There were no alleys to hide in, no places to go unseen. Abers found a tight space between two stores and removed his mask to breathe, but I kept mine on and looked out to the street. So many people were with the Church, like surveyors of those beneath them.
           "There are more resident houses down the way," Abers told me. "but this town is deadly."
            "Deadly how?" I asked.
             "The Church plays by different rules here. The Six don't touch them, and they sacrifice people to God when they're uninvited."
             "Like, a public sacrifice where this whole town gets to watch?"
             Abers looked at me funny. "Yes. Why is that important?"
              I've taken enough risks in my time to know exactly how to find these kids without getting caught or causing some public outcry. All we had to do was get caught first, and I was going to manipulate that Forever Spark. Somehow. I just had a feeling in my gut that it was possible to manipulate whatever the Forever Spark was. It was electricity, it was Lekereianale's. I pulled the mask from my face and stared at Abers.
             "I have an idea, but you're going to hate it," I told him.
             He glared. "What are you planning?"