Chapter 5 (Rewrite)

Jade looks for the Rat’s Nest.

Peeking around the corner of Labour street, and looking east and west down Old Fourth Ave, I surveyed the state of the street’s nightlife. The street was more well kept than the other places I had visited in the Underlow that night. However, with the cool, post rain air flowing in, an musty odour was coming to life in the muggy grunge of the slum.

Crowds, now dwindled. Abandoning their stations at the various pubs and clubs of Old Fourth, and moving to more economic places to drink. Catching sight of a few disheveled individuals huddled in the space between two buildings, around the glow of an ignition patch, it occured to me that at least some of the population of the street had abandoned their post as habitual drinkers, moving instead to tricone.

Tricone, I shuddered at the thought of that most destructive of substances, as I seamed my jacket up tight, and adjusted the hood over my head. Taking one last sidelong glance to the east, I then turned west toward the closest column, looming like a semi-distant skyscraper. Keeping my head low, I walked at a brisk pace, being careful not to rest eyes on the gathered addicts that grew in distribution as I continued along the cheap, refabbed sheen of Old Fourth.

Walking the sidewalk became more of a hassle the further down the street I went, as it became the resting place for many a junkie. Taking care not to provoke unwanted disturbances, I took instead to the rubberized asphalt of the street proper, hopping between numerous potholes as I went.

It did not take long to return to the state of decay that the Underlow was known for. The plastic sheen of the refab buildings soon vanished, being replaced by falling over sandbrick, sometimes completely sectioned off at a corner, with rubble collapsed into the street. The junkie population also dwindled, and with it, the street took on an unnerving state of destitution. 

The smell like wet cardboard remained omnipresent, as did my heightened states of awareness, and worry. My personal wellbeing, a constant concern as I darted my eyes around the depopulated shanty town. A perfect place to get mugged, or snatched, I worried.

Truly, this place was the home of Chyunda’s forgotten. My exposure to the Underlow’s most westerly zones was minimal up to this point. However, I knew, as all did, that the further one got from the Scraps at the eastern boundary, the more hopeless was the environment. 

Looking back east, over my shoulder, I sighed with relief at noticing I still wasn’t being followed. Though, the relief was short-lived, as I noticed the horizon had been completely taken over by the collapsed skyscrapers of the Scraps, and the Midway plate. The living city beyond the Underlow was obscured, totally.

The absence of the city made me intimate with the awareness of being alone.

More than halfway to the column, I took note of the numerous shacks at either side of the street. Huddled together, they replaced any hint at planned structures, instead forming a favella of crowded living spaces hobbled together with walls of refab scraps, canvas tarps, and synthetic-ply, roofed for the most part with rusted sheet metal.

Making my way down the narrowing street, I caught sight at two distant forms walking in the opposite direction -- toward me. I wrinkled my face with concern, and ducked in the space between two of the lean to homes.

Making my way into the dark space, I made long steps over heaps of trash, taking care not to cut myself on some unseen nail or shards of glass. The smell of rot and must were almost overwhelming. Nevertheless, I held back my desire to gag, and plugged my nose between index and ring fingers.

I inspect my comm once more, praying again to the stars that it would be working again. An internal backlight flickered as I tapped the screen, but otherwise it remained unresponsive. Where in the Underlow can I find a working comm. I thought of Erk, and how I was desperate to hear from him, as I peeked round the corner for a look at the two approaching in the street.

I swallowed, feeling a lump growing in my throat as they neared and tension rose. They were heavily armed, wearing army fatigue armor that had been tagged with an insignia on the chest. It was a familiar look for security goons in the Underlow, and not one that helped to comfort me. I stared on, anxious to see the insignia. Hoping to the Centaur’s light that it wasn’t part of a crew who had been at the tech den when the thug, Hadley arrived.

“Want some ‘cone?” a haggered voice, crackling like bubble wrap forced me to jump and turn around. Pulsing with fight or flight instinct, heart pounding in my chest, I stared into the darkness, seeing only a heap of trash. Narrowing my eyes, the heap resolved into human features. It wasn’t a pile of garbage after all, but an aged woman, camouflaged in scraps of the same stuff littering the dark corridor.

“Not planning on sleeping tonight,” I offered with a smile, trying to conceal my sunken heart.

“You can mix it with isophenin extract to stay awake, dear.” The woman rummaged out of one of the heaps, a jar half-filled with murky liquid that clumped with black grime around the edges of a residue line. I squinted for a better look, and taking notice, she explained, “The black stuff is ground phenal leaf. If you boil this stuff, it’s good for shootin. Really, you don’t have to take any if you don’t want to. I’m just grateful to have the company of someone so young and full of life.”

I peered out of the space and back at the street. The two armoured goons were a little bit closer, but not enough that I could gather more detail. I turned back to my restless companion of the last few seconds.

“I’m Jade. What’s your name?”  I tried to maintain my smile, but my lips started to quiver from the strong odour of tricone washing over the literal junk filled hole-in-the-wall.

“Sephra Dejan.” She looked at me with a face lost in thought. Perhaps recalling a past, hard-lived life, as if it were a murky dream.

“Don’t hear names like that often,” I continued in a low voice.

“Well that name, Dejan… my great grandfather was just a kid when they finished the first level. A lot of folks those days came here from Czero -- they could get citizenship for working on the project.” I had never heard that version of the history, but it could have easily been true. Chyundan public projects always bore ways to fast track citizenship, looking to bring foreign workers in who would do the work for less pay than home grown Chyundans. The trip from Czero would have been easier then too. The fighting between Unita and Neo had gone cold before the construction of Midway. The borders, only tightening up again in my lifetime.

I considered my own desire to see the world, and how hard it would be to go some place. Centros was a large island, but the state of affairs of our neighboring nations made it difficult to travel. As for the islands to the north, which included Czero. They were too wrapped up in territorial disputes by the powers of Centros. Beyond the near island chain, the vast ocean that covered the entire planet made it even more difficult to reach the distant islands of the south.

“Do you know what it’s like on Czero these days?” I asked, trying to further distract myself from the state of the old woman.

“Nope,” she chortled. “Never been there.”

Sizing up Sephra’s state, I thought that perhaps I had been willing excuses for avoiding travel too quickly. Perhaps I was ungrateful, squandering my comparably good life, over fear of challenging my status quo. Perhaps, I needed to reconsider what I was doing in Chyunda, having never left the boundaries of the biggest city on the planet.

“Even my great grandpa was born here,” Sephra continued. “Right up to my kids. I don’t think any of us ever even left Underlow.”

“Wow…” I tried to express interest, but struggled not to speak with a patronizing tone. I was sympathetic to her words. I wondered if this was really the same Chyunda I had lived in my whole life? The diaspora slum, known as the Underlow, was it really just a dumping ground for immigrant workers? I tried to empathize, considering my own grandfather, having immigrated from the distant Neo. 

Maybe, like my father, the itch to leave would eventually pull me away. Pull me off on some grand adventure, never to be heard from again.

I snapped out of my thoughts, remembering to look out for the goons in the street. I took a careful look, and made out the insignia of an orange, five pointed star. The same symbol as Finnic and Dren. The same crew. 

That lump in my throat grew in intensity, and I wondered if they were there looking for me.

“Looking for someone?” Sephra stirred from her gunk enclosure.

“More like someone looking for me,” I spoke over my shoulder.

The woman, saturated in the essence of tricone came closer. “I’ll talk to them for you.” She maneuvered to walk past me, but I grabbed her by a stretch of torn cloth. 

She looked at me, and I shook my head, holding a finger up to my lips. 

She chuckled, “Don’t worry girl, I’ve survived down here long enough to know how things work on the streets.”

Against my better judgement, and thinking of self interest, I released my grip of the cloth fragment. She plodded past, and on exiting the space, I felt weary with the weight of responsibility over her wellbeing. I had silently approved her entering a dangerous situation, on my behalf.

I watched as she walked up to the armoured duo. Words I couldn’t hear were exchanged, and the crone pointed down the street from where I had come. The weight grew stronger, as if ready to force me into the heap of rancid muck beneath my feet. They continued to talk, the thugs offering hand gestures that conveyed a full range of worked up emotions. One of the figures pulled out a small firearm, pistol whipping the woman till she collapsed on the ground.

I gasped. What have I done?

I waited, heart broken, for the two thugs to passby. As they moved beyond my shadowy hiding spot, they tried at fighting to stifle amused laughter, while I fought to keep from shedding guilty tears.

Once gone, I ran over to Sephra, and kneeled beside her hunched form. “I’m so sorry,” I offered, putting a hand on her back and helping her up. The stench of tricone fumes at that proximity were overwhelming, however, I held my breath as much as possible.

“No need to apologize,” she struggled as she spoke. On standing, she coughed with a gurgling, loose wetness, as if eager to dislodge something from her lungs. She strained to breathe, looking up at me through thoughtful hazel eyes set in a battered face. “They asked for a girl like you, and knew you by name…”, she stopped to take a breath, and spread her lips into a grin. “I pointed them in the wrong direction.”

“They hit you?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice from breaking.

“Well you see, I asked them for money.” The woman squinted her eyes with a playful smirk creeping out from the bruised and dirty face. “Had to make it believable, after all.”

Her deeds made me feel tender, in both a terrible and awesome sense. That she would be willing to go so far for me, I was speechless. I reach my hand into my pocket, palming the credit waiver payment that I had received from BD; my half of the reward money. Seven hundred and twenty five credits, despite Erk’s suggestion that he should get a bigger cut. Taking her hand in mine, I slipped the waiver into hers, and turned away to sprint toward the column.

Eyes watering, I couldn’t turn back. I didn’t want to turn back. The money could help her situation, a lot. And ideally, not as a means to purchase more tricone. The thought crossed my mind, but I had to look past it, sprinting onward to the column.

Humid air hit my face as I ran. I had to get out of that shantytown. Had to press forward. With, or without Erk, I had to see this through.

By the time I reached the column, I’d been spent. Heavy panting, heart racing as if ready to explode. Sitting on the caked layer of dirt surrounding the column, I leaned with my back against the massive towering column. I closed my eyes.

I was back in the hospital. And I was tired. So, so tired. Just a five year old girl who needed to sleep. I held up my wrist, inspecting the tube that I’d come to realize kept me in both a healthy and sedated state.

I blinked, and some time seemed to pass, as a shadow then stood at the edge of the bed. The shadow spoke, and I thought I could hear him mumbling faintly. I was relieved that my hearing was returning, but held onto the anxious panic that it might not get better than this.

I strained, trying to make sense of the sounds coming from the man’s voice. But, it was no use. The man turned by a fraction, and the glint of gunmetal reflecting off of lights in the hallway caught my eye.

Then I awoke. Gasping, and sweating. I tossed my head to either side, and heaved a sigh.

I was still in the Underlow. I had fallen asleep as I tried to catch my breath. I stretched my arms, and followed up with a push off of the column, finishing the stretch through my legs.

I walked, still woozy from my short nap, along the peripheral of the column. Before long, I came across an access doorway, indented into the side of the column. Beside the doorway was an old terminal, with a small keyboard and screen, both coated in a menage of grime and dust. I blew, hoping that I wouldn’t have to smear the screen with my hand. I yawned, weary with disdain as the screen remained foggy, and resigned to wiping it with the backside of my glove.

Booting the system up, and typing away, I tried to access VM in order to shoot Erk a message. However, the system was far too obsolete, and instead I had to rely on electronic mail.

I kept the message short, ‘I’m going under the Underlow. Use the Midway columns.’ Hovering the cursor over the send tab, I exhaled, and hoped against all odds that the obsolete form of messaging would not be picked up by the wrong hands.

I looked up at the plate, still looming overhead, and the comparatively smaller column. Though the column was just one of many massive structures, it held fifty levels of Midway on it’s metaphorical shoulders, before holding up Skyline, with its incredible skyscrapers and mega-spires. Would it all come crashing down one day?

Returning my focus to the terminal, I overrode the door lock with ease. A singular droning beep, and click, signified that it was open. I waited for a sliding mechanism to move the heavy door ajar, but after half a minute it became clear that I’d have to move it myself.

Seeing no handle, I examined the crease between door and frame. Realizing I might be able to pry it open, I slid my hand over the hilt of the graphene dagger. Wrapping my fingers around the ergonomic hilt, I yanked it off of its resting spot on my mag-belt, and held it before me. 

The weapon was light, and dangerous. Holding it aloft I examined the razor thin edge of the matte black blade, impressed out how comfortable it felt in my hand. It felt like it was meant for me. It was meant for me.

Turning my attention back to the door, I wedged the tip of the blade between door and frame, and hit the tip of the hilt with my opposite fist. The blade slid in, and I pulled back on the handle, wedging the door open by millimetres until I could fit my fingers in the crack, and slide it ajar.

“That’ll do,” I mumbled, slipping in.

The corridor inside was a metallic affair. I walked forward into the tunnel, which was lit with a slow decay bioluminescent gel, housed in clear plastic casings at the edges of the floor, and centre of the ceiling. 

After just a few metres of traversal through the corridor, my boots would make an audible squish as I tread over a damp, oily floor. The tunnel went for an immodest distance, before opening up into a wide cylindrical chamber, which ascended upward into the column, and down into a dark pit. Leaning over the guard railing, I could neither see the top, nor the bottom, despite the descending rows of bioluminescence -- they were simply too dim to make out after a few storeys of descent.

A clanging echo ruptured from behind, back the way I had come. I spun back on my heels, holding my hand up to my eyes to peer down the corridor. The dim crack of light from the wedged open door was widening. Fearful, I became aware that I had been tracked down.

I leaned back over the edge, and looked down at the dark pit. Under the Underlow, I thought, and began to unwind a fraction of cable from my grappling hook gun. As I worked at tying the cable around the guard railing, a mechanized ruckus echoed through the tunnel. I tied the cable in a knot, such as I learned from the Academy, and began to descend into the pit. Knowing what was coming, I urged myself to move fast.

At the bottom of the pit, I waded in shin high waste water, and looked out as a rhythmic whirr echoed all throughout the chamber. A light hovered high above, shining a beam that traced the grappling gun cable down toward me. Abandoning the gun, I bolted to the edge of the cylindrical room. I followed the circumference of the wall, looking for a way out.

I paused to look at the noisy light source, which had by then descended to my level. It hovered there, splashing water aside in waves with the updraft of whatever technology kept it aloft. With it’s spotlight now following the edge of the room, I scrambled to move fast.

With my hands feeling the way forward, my fingers wrapped around a corner. Yes, I thought, coming into a corridor with more of the dim lighting, and a visible circle of light at it’s far end. Pulling myself onto a finding my way out of the sludge, and onto a raised causeway, that followed at a slight downward slope, alongside a small stream of waste water.

I ran as fast as I could, given the circumstances, looking back only as light flickered from behind me. A semi-autonomous machine system -- SAMS -- hovered with bi-rotors, as it’s electronic brain surveyed the situation.

I looked forward again, and I could make out the change in trajectory as the SAMS’ rotors pitched forward, and accelerated from behind me. The motorized rotors echoed at impressive decibels, sloshing the moving water forward in waves, and flicking loose strands of hair into my eyelashes. A chittering sound came to life in my periphery, like what one would imagine of mechanized insectoids, fiddling with many limbs and mandibles.

Pushing myself into a faster sprint, I felt through my jacket for the Carbex in the front pocket. Feeling it through the fabric, I knew I would soon have to use it. The circle of light at the end of the tunnel seemed within reach.  The opening glowing a gradient lighter with each moment that I drew nearer to the exit.

The circular space exploded into open air, and before me was a vast chasm of skyscrapers and spires, as the tunnel appeared to end in a ledge. I made my mark, with a final step at the end of the corridor, I jumped into air, pivoting my body round to face the SAMS drone at my heels.

The Carbex slid into my hands, as I levelled the sights on the chittering thing before me. 

The drone’s two rotors kept it in place. It stared at me through a pivoting fisheye lense. The machine raced toward me, with four robotic tentacle appendages, metallic pincers on each extremity, reaching out for me. One wrapped around my left boot, while another reached out for my neck.

I aimed with care, and pulled the trigger. The lense of the metallic beast cracked. Three more ball-bearings crunched into its face plate, releasing a spray of sparks and smoke. I unbolted one more shot, and the dented metal crumpled in on itself. The drone’s outstretched tentacle, wrapped around my leg loosened its grip, and time sped up.

I was falling.

Reviews

[Wathanya.5KY3]

Me: whoa! There's a cool abandoned city!
Also me but two minutes later: JADE IS FALLING!!! HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?!

The way you built up to that last sentence was superb, by the way. The moment I lay my eyes on it, I was like, "GASP! That (de)escalated quickly!"

As for the nitpicking, like my first review, there were quite a few technical mistakes:

1. Once in, the system was well past obsolete; access my mobi-comm proved difficult.

- access => accessing

2. ‘Meet me in the Rat’s Nest.’ It read.

- stylistic: I don't think "It read" was necessary since we know from context.

3. It did however, take longer than expected.

- comma after "It did"

4. In the mean time, I simply wanted minimal evidence of my having been here.

- mean time => meantime

5. Closing it all the way however was too difficult, and I had already wasted a lot of time.

- comma before and after "however"

6. The corridor was minimally lit with a slow decay incandescent gel, that had been pasted and spread into small squares in the centre of the ceiling and running a grid the entire length of the corridor - - an efficient long term lighting solution for a maintenance space that did not require regular use.

- not a run-on, but a long sentence. And I'm not sure what the issue with, "and running a grid the entire length of the corridor," is. It just feels a little out of place

7. The trek down the corridor was an uncomfortable.

- an uncomfortable => uncomfortable OR an uncomfortable one

8. I could eventually make out an opening, which after crossing I became aware of a huge hollow chamber at the structure’s centre.

- "which after crossing" feels awkward as a link

9. Both the ceiling and ground levels of the chamber were both obscured far beyond the ability of my eyes to see.

- stylistic: "to see" isn't necessary

10. However, it was too hard to focus, and I could not discern whether I was looking at actual light sources or short lived blips of light from randomly excited cones in my retina.

- short lived => short-lived
+ love this: "randomly excited cones in my retina"

11. Someone had tracked me there, surely.

- there => here?

12. The fumes were on the other hand much more of a drag.

- comma before and after "on the other hand"

13. It was also impossible for me to estimate how close they were, as I had no base point for comparison, and the voices were vague and distorted echoes by the time they could be heard by my ears.

- stylistic: the voices were [adjective] and [phrasal noun]; came-up-on-the-spot, take-it-or-leave-it suggestion: ...the echoes were vague and distorted by the time..."

14. The lighting was even more poor at the bottom, limiting my search for a way forward to just a dozen or so feet ahead of me at any time.

- more poor => poorer

15. The echoes above reached a peak in exaggerated volume, as I assumed the people following me finally reached the chamber.

- comma after "as I assumed"

16. “- -n’t see the girl- -“
“- -grappling gun- -“
“- -get a better- -“

- the closing quotation marks are turning the wrong side

17. The SAMS would jutting out from its path occasionally with fluid motion that suggested it was checking the entrance of maintenance tunnels as it came closer to the bottom.

- jutting => jut
- comma after "its path" maybe?

18. With some luck, the SAMS did not detected the sound waves of my sloshing, but I wondered how long that could continue.

- detected => detect

19. Ahead of me the square light grew bigger, and the darkened pathway grew a gradient lighter with each moment that I drew nearer to the exit.

- comma after "Ahead of me"
+ this sentence is very beautifully crafted, especially the second clause

20. The sound of motorized rotors bellowed behind and I turned to look back toward the chamber.

- comma after "behind"

21. With the marginally improved lighting, I broke out of the jog and into a full sprint, and soon after felt wind kicking up from the rotors of the hunter behind me.

- "felt wind kicking up..." seems to be missing a word before it

22. Time slowed, and as I made the fractional turn to face the SAMS at my back, it’s form quickly took shape in my field of view.

- it's => its

23. Gun leveled, I unbolted and the creature buckled with as an instant dent crunch damage into the chassis.

- comma after " unbolted"

24. It’s legs loosened their grip, and time sped up.

- It's => Its

----------------------------

Other observations:

- Seems like you're putting commas at non-grammatical places to force stops, so I'll turn that radar off for you.

- Your action scenes in this chapter are more vivid than previous chapters, and I love it!

- You're getting better with showing rather than telling and moving closer to that sweet balance between showing and telling. Keep up the good work!

As for my favorite part--if we're talking about the whole chapter--the dagger takes the cake, but if it's just the part I read today, definitely this one: "Ahead of me[,] the square light grew bigger, and the darkened pathway grew a gradient lighter with each moment that I drew nearer to the exit."

See you in the next chapter!

[Wathanya.5KY3]

I could only read half-way through, so I'll review up to that part (where Jade says the dagger was meant for her) for now.

My favorite part was definitely the dagger part: "The weapon was light, and dangerous... It felt like it was meant for me. It was meant for me." The use of a comma in the first sentence was brilliant as it gives readers a dramatic effect while the repetition towards the end of the paragraph further enhances said effect.

Though, "One hundred credits could go a long way for someone in her situation. And ideally not just toward tricone," was amusing.

I'm quite certain inspiration hit you hard in this chapter as there were quite a few technical mistakes:

1. I peaked around the corner of Labor Street, looking into the much depopulated Old 4th Ave that I had entered from.

- peaked => peeked
- stylistic: "...that I had entered from," is a little confusing. A second read helped, but still a little confusing

2. Before long the streets would be nearby empty.

- nearby => nearly

3. The cool post rain air that has drifted into the Underlow was turning into a muggy grunge, complemented by the omnipresent grunge of The slum.

- post rain => post-rain
- air turned into grunge...? Is grunge a Canadian slang for something?
- The slum => the slum

4. The buildings were in similarly in a state of decay.

- in similarly in => similarly in

5. Walking around down there, the word that came to my mind to describe the squalid living space was ‘shantytown’.

- 'shantytown'. => 'shantytown.' (period inside quotation marks)

6. There were a few homes made out of refab materials, but for the most part even those were patchworks of various material.

- comma after "for the most part"
- material => materials?

7. Squatters, junkies, or both I guessed.

- comma after "or both"

8. I looked further down the street to where the noise coming, and made out the shapes of two armoured forms with combat helmets.

- where the noise coming => where the noise was coming from?

9. Realizing that they were even more out of place than I was I hid in the space between two makeshift shacks. It was a tight fit, not much more than a foot in width and it was totally cluttered with heaps of trash.

- comma after "...than I was" and "...not much more than a foot in width"
- if added comma after "...not much more than a foot in width," "and it was" is unnecessary

10. “Wow….”

- extra period after "..."

11. “Just worries someone is looking for me.”

- worries => worried

12. “Don’t worry girl, I’ve survived down here long enough to know how things work on the streets.”

- comma after "Don't worry"

13. I gasped. What have I done?

- I think you meant to put, "What have I done?" in italics, otherwise, the present tense here stands out

14. I waited still more till I knew they were well out of the way.

- "more" is unnecessary

15. “I’m so sorry Sephra!” I said, trying not to gag on the stench of tricone.

- comma after "I'm so sorry"

16. Humid air hit my face as I sprinted away before she could react. I had to get out of the shantytown. I didn’t want to see it anymore. The column was where I needed to go, and I had to get there quickly. With or without Erk - - I really just needed to be with my own thoughts, away from the murk of the Underlow. I just ran.

- the last sentence in this paragraph was unnecessary because you already have the first

17. Just a bit higher up the structure was a line of matte black graphene, which as far as I could tell ran the entire length of the column.

- comma after "as far as I could tell"

----------------- This is as far as I could get today.