Insomnia

22

Esme tried in vain to stare down the concrete jungle around them. It looked almost like a prison, each floor rising to form a symmetric honeycomb of shabby single room apartments, connected by dingy walkways with torn handrails. The ground was inexplicably sticky and there was a strong smell of cigarettes. The law required that places like these be given aesthetic flaws to reduce demand for the services they provided. Esme lauded the intention though the heavy traffic streaming in and out suggested the policy was woefully ineffective.

Grungy men and women stumbled in and out of the complex, a faint look of ecstasy on their faces. As they walked up the many flights of stairs, Esme noted figures with exaggerated proportions leering suggestively at her. She shivered.

"Relax," Ceres muttered. "They're just Wets. Nothing to be worried about. Unless you recognize someone soliciting them. Then it can be awkward."

"I just... they make fantasies, alright? Sexual ones."

"So? It's perfectly legal. Doesn't hurt anyone."

"I just... it's dirty."

"Because they make fantasies for people just like you do?"

Esme turned her glare towards Ceres. The older woman laughed.

"Alright, alright, I'm sorry for ever comparing an artist like yourself to these 'amateurs'."

Esme felt both mollified and annoyed by her comment. She'd never been comfortable even talking about Wets, Psions who used their talents to provide other users with a frankly alarming variety of sexual experiences. Most gathered here would be of low skill, incapable of creating a distinct world, more akin to traditional prostitutes.

Esme modified their appearances once she learned where they were headed to meet one of Ceres's informants. She had given herself pale green skin and rounded most of her features into a vague heart shaped dullness. Ceres now looked like an actress that Esme had once seen in a Pre-Disaster romance movie. It was the kind of physical alteration that would be common here.

Esme was worried. More and more she wondered what she would do if the police started digging into her secrets. Her conversation with Lucia began her paranoia about being discovered and tarred with the same brush as the Knightmare. Her meeting with Ceres had only solidified it.

"He's upstairs," Ceres said, stepping around a huddled figure on the stairwell. He was muttering to himself. Neural stimulation of a more direct sort could be found here, and it seemed this man had partaken.

Esme followed Ceres nervously. No one in this place was powerful enough to harm her, but they still made her uneasy.

"Given your repeated voyeurism," Ceres murmured, "I'd never have thought you were such a prude."

Esme bristled at the comment before blushing as she recalled her visit to Phoebe's lurid dream.

"Stop calling it that," she said. "It's not... what you say it is. I observe, and I learn. That's all."

"Mhmm. Sure."

Somehow her feigned agreement rankled more than the original insult.

"Exactly what can this informant of yours tell us anyway?" Esme grumbled, wrinkling her nose as she glanced through an open doorway and saw a flash of the dream inside.

"The Omens have to stay under the radar, just like Wets," Ceres explained, chuckling at Esme's discomfort. "There's a bit of overlap in these communities. Vermillion can tell you more."

"Vermillion?"

"It's his... stage name."

Esme stopped moving.