Dreams in Monochrome - A New Elysium Story [ongoing - hiatus]

The Dollhouse

„So, when will you tell me what this is about?"

Theo threw Erika a sideward glance, but she was staring straight ahead, ignoring him, along with his question. He could see that she was uneasy, from the tension in her jawline and her shoulders. The lower levels of Rouge didn't strike him as the kind of place she usually frequented, and her alerted state only seemed to confirm that. It made him all the more curious why she had brought him here.

The large underground area was like a city underneath the city, with its narrow alleys winding in a complicated maze, but she seemed to know exactly where she was going. As usual at this time of the day, the streets were so packed with people that they moved through the crowd at an excoriatingly slow pace. Theo knew a few short cuts that were pretty much deserted most of the time, but Erika clearly didn't, and as he had no idea where they were going, all he could do was traipse after her.

He watched her back as they walked, literally. In their youth, she had been known to not play well by any rules, but he had thought that she had changed after being sent off-world to attend a boarding school. As they continued their descent right into the bowels of the red light district of Eos, his mind was racing as he spun his theories. Was this some sort of underground deal? Drugs, chems, or augments? Was Erika in trouble?

The air down in Rouge was heavy and moist. Vapor of unknown origin seeped through cracks in the shafts that crisscrossed between the buildings overhead and wafted up from exhaust grids. It trapped the heat of engines and people in the narrow alley ways, and condensed on every available surface as a fine mist that made the lights sparkle and glitter.

Theo liked Rouge, much better than any of the other districts. Not just because of the kind of entertainment to be found here, but because the lights were dimmer and more mute, and the confines of the underground area limited the amount of obnoxious airborne advertisement. This was the shady part of the city, in the literal and figurative sense.

Besides the haze, the air was filled with the shouts of street vendors hawking cheap food, even cheaper gadgets or entire plug-in entertainment modules of dubious origin. There was nothing you couldn't get in Rouge, and certain legal and illegal goods that could only be found here at all. Scantily clad figures whispered their invites, offering the other kind of entertainment to passersby. Some people considered Rouge a cesspool of depravity and disease, of both the visceral and cybernetic kind. To Theo, it was the only honest place in Eos. At least here, nobody pretended not to be a liar or scoundrel, like they did in Alba.

"This is it..." Erika muttered, and came to a halt.

The building before them looked particularly run down, even for Rouge. It was a small house, nestled in the shadow of a much taller steel-and-concrete tower that acted as support structure for the ceiling somewhere far overhead. Its windows were painted black – or perhaps they were just too dirty to see inside. A large sign with glowing neon letters hung above the door, written in ornate, illegible letters of some alphabet that Theo wasn't familiar with, and couldn't translate without augments.

Near the entrance, there was a group of ladies and gentlemen of the evening, their bodies more or less covered to varying degrees with leather, latex or merely paint. One among them stood out to him immediately – a woman with the beautiful and delicate features of a doll leaned against the wall and only seemed to listen while the others chattered away. Her sleek black hair was held up in an elaborate hairdo with countless bands and adorned with beads and tassels, and she wore a short silken robe in the style of a yukata – except that it was outrageously short.

She lifted her head, and as she spotted Erika and Theo, she pushed away from the wall and moved over to them with a fluid grace that seemed misplaced in this seedy part of town. As she approached, her eyes lit up with a soft glow in the dimness of the shady alley, in a color he couldn't pinpoint. But he could tell that it was the same as the neon sign above the entrance to the building.