This Isn't About Reya

Chapter Two R

Another high note at the end of the day signaled the close of the ICAE. As the students assembled into their clusters of friends and rode the elevators to their respective levels, the lower-class students were last to board the elevators that would take them to the ground level of Dragotsennost' - the Lower Wards.

The vardlingi, as they were called, waited in small, protective groups, far out of the paths of the upper-class students who might take note of them if they got in the way of the elevators. The middle-class threw pens and wrappers at the clusters of vardlingi as they passed, laughing.

Reya stood alone and furthest away, her body pressed so deeply into the corner of two walls that the shadows engulfed her. Not even the other vardlingi took note of her.

Many minutes after the last bell, the last stragglers of the lower-class rode the elevators down to the Lower Wards, and Reya finally found an empty one. She rode it down through the tiered street levels of Dragotsennost' until its doors slid open at the dark underbelly of the city.

She walked out into the dim moistness of the ground level, stepping into a puddle of dirty water on the street. Reya looked up at the underside of the middle level - the metal-pipe ceiling for most of the Wards, stretching as far as she could see, supported by the Wards' skyscrapers and constantly lit by the dull glow of hardlight and softlight illumination systems. It obstructed the sky, and whatever snow fell above the Wards filtered down through the middle street level as sleet or dirty water, coating the Wards in perpetual dampness.

Where the middle level - or the Midst, as it was usually called - had a fair amount of beautiful Soviet architecture, gleaming white and full of domes, spheres, and curving, bone-like buildings, the Wards were not meant for beauty, but utility - and its dark, metal, industrial structures reflected that fact. All of the buildings, whether professional, industrial, or residential, were heavy and bulging, their forms built into and on top of one another, supporting each other as all of the Wards supported the upper levels. Pipes and wires hung everywhere, tubes drooping in strands from the ceiling to various generator systems, plumbing infrastructure, and weight-bearing supports. The air was cloudy, stale, and rank, and full of the noises of whirring machines and pumping equipment, punctuated by the rumble of life on the layers above.

Reya walked down the sidewalks nearer the street than the buildings on either side as she headed home. The streets were better lit than the alleyways, and sticking closer to the road meant she had more time to react to somebody lunging out of one of the alleyways. She'd never had much trouble, but the Wards were not known for their safety or law-abiding citizens, so she remained cautious.

She walked with her hands in her pockets and her head down, her backpack pulling at her shoulders by the straps. Her eyes watched her feet carefully, but she kept them mobile, glancing back and forth at the edges of the sidewalk in front of her. Every few minutes, she would turn and glance behind her.

It was a twenty minute walk back to her apartment - a dilapidated residential pod that looked like it had been crammed into the side of an oblong brick of obsidian stretching up towards the ceiling. Halfway between her apartment and the ICAE, however, was a gate leading out of the city and into the tundra surrounding Dragotsennost'. It had been sealed shut for almost a month, now, as white-armored NSU soldiers cordoned off the area immediately surrounding the gate and refused anyone or anything outside of the military be allowed passage nearby.

A month ago, a strange, black meteorite had crashed in the woods just outside that gate. It had landed a mere three hundred yards away from the capital of the New Soviet Union. For weeks, people spoke in hushed whispers about a failed attack on the capital by Redeemed terrorists.

But that afternoon, as Reya walked past the gate, she looked over to where a military escort would have normally been standing guard and found that the gate was open once again. There was no sign of any military presence, investigation, or that a meteorite had ever landed there at all.