New World Order Re-Written (TNE)

(8) Jasmine Pt2

Jasmine was back at her desk job. She noticed that along with everyone else, the day had greeted her with an envelope containing money in her desk compartment. Upon unwrapping the envelope she was surprised to find that $10,000 was contained upon it. Immediately, she began to boot up the 3d printer in the side of the office space, just in case it was manufactured with that. She had never been good at telling counterfeit bills from real ones. Oddly enough, she had never served a job working directly with cash where she would be able to learn about all of that. If she had received $10,000 in a job like that she would have smiled with glee from ear to ear, but in this job she just felt empty. The money had clearly been handled by The Unknown as it still had an oily texture reminiscent of their tentacles.

The day had no direct meeting, so she wasn't forced into any direct conversation with Daxton. There were a few close calls though. Daxton went to grab a few paper clips from her desk at one point as he was busy putting together a proposition for Chief. Jasmine looked everywhere besides his face while handing over her bowl of paper clips, but she could still tell that he was trying to retain eye contact with her. At the front door people began knocking to enter the building and Jasmine was sent out to put up the blockade against the horde of monsters hungering for shelter. The outsides of the building had been crushed from the night's brawling and the cafe that Jasmine had briefly attended was now torn to shambles, yet strangely the bouncers still sat in the rubble. After finishing the barricade Jasmine gave in and turned to face Daxton. What's the worst he could say anyways.

"I want to rebel," Daxton muttered under his breath. At this point Daxton was looking at Jasmine's designer shoes and completely avoiding her eyes. Caught off guard, Jasmine looked down to her shoes as well and realized that they had become dirtied from the soup kitchen. The next moment Jasmine fully processed what Daxton had just said.

Prism City might still have a chance.

"I'm going to send you an email. Make sure nobody hears you open it."

Jasmine bounded up to her desk and began to look around the room. It was filled with people working on various projects, whether relating to the monsterification experiments or not. There had to be some way for them to get away, without the sight of so many on-lookers. That could seem suspicious in it's own right though, she would have to work on her project while disguising it as productive work. She would have to send Daxton his email in a form of code that would make it seem like work on the project.

Chief and The Unknown had explained days before the path that the civilians had taken down to The Botanist's Village. The Botanist's Village was now holding the majority of the population of Prism City, exactly as The Unknown had been ordered to instruct. The mass marketing through newspapers had worked flawlessly. The rest of the city's population was primarily divided between two other groups. In the outskirts of Prism City it had long been known that there was an uninhabited desert where any attempts at civilization had been abandoned from the unbearable heat. For those with extreme elemental abilities, they had found house and home in this previously uninhabited desert area. Their leaders were a group of bikers who used their abilities to create sandstorms, effectively landlocking the area. Citizens of the desert area called it "HavenSun" and it was an absolute anomaly for Jasmine and the rest of her team.

The third path the civilians had taken was most puzzling to the group. The third path lead to the airport where a group of psychics had worked together to keep the area permanently lifted above ground as a floating island. Those that lived on the floating island were said to be the most powerful of all those transformed from the gas, scaring even The Unknown when they first heard of it. It is rumored that anyone who approaches the airport's borders will be captured, blindfolded and taken prisoner to the floating island where they will be forced to do battle with one of the leaders. The blindfold is kept on all prisoners to keep the identities of any leaders anonymous to the general public. For those who try to escape from the floating island city, or otherwise lose in combat, they will be stuffed full of energy by one of the commanders and forced to lift up the island. This third division of Prism City was called "UpperGate" as an homage to the idea of heaven's gate.