Nightfall had already cast over West City like a sheltering veil, and those who had labored away during the day were finally granted rest. But one such laborer, a factory worker from Gamma Sector who slaved away at a manufacturing line, found no solace in darkness. As the strong, tan-skinned man held to his trembling wife, he hushed her quiet sobs and rocked her to ease with little success.
"Please, Noni, don't cry. I think I may have found a way to get us out of this." As he clutched to her gently, one of his large hands cradled her stomach, which was bulging and looked to almost be splitting from the seams. "The chemical infusion is working. They have not detected the pregnancy, so as long as you stay inside, everything is going to be okay."
"You don't honestly believe those rumors, do you? The Kaneren know everything. They see everything. If there really was a place where humans go to escape the life of a number, they would have found it and made sure it was destroyed. It'll only be a matter of time before I go into labor and the infusion will no longer hide my hormone levels. There is no life to be lived, for me and this baby. We are going to die."
"No." The man roared, grasping to her shoulders rather roughly. "I will not allow that to happen, do you hear me? The enforcers will take you and this baby away over my dead body. They're not rumors, it's the truth. There is a safe place we can go, and I'm going to get us there."
"Don't you see, Jedd? We are cursed. The Kaneren engineer the water in a way that keeps us from breeding, and yet here we are, popping up all over the place. And what happened to those other women? They were killed, on the holoscreens, for all the city to see. That doctor is putting all of these...ideas in your head. Let us simply enjoy the time we have left."
"Have you no hope at all? Don't you give up on me, Noni. For your own sake-..., no, for my sake- for the baby. Be strong. We're going to get through this-" Jedd saw a glimmer of red from the corner of his eye. He covered Noni's mouth with his hand and brought her low to he floor behind the side of their bed. A red line seemed to scan across the room; on the other side of their window, a small droid hovered in the air and focused its lens of an eye, examining the domicile. Though its visit was short; it left almost as quickly as it had arrived, whisking itself away to another adjacent building. After uncovering her mouth, the pregnant woman exhaled with a shudder. There were no more words to be had that night, that much they knew. Jedd and Noni simply stared at each other, conveying their grief with weary eyes.
~*~*~*~
Another day had begun, and Jedd went through his usual routine once again. He got up, kissed his wife, had as big of a breakfast as was allowed, and took a car on the airway to get to the plant. They built all sorts of things, there: mostly household and office machinery. The parts came to him one after another and he assembled them in a foggy haze, daydreaming of a better life. He used to think of what it would be like to live in Alpha Sector, where riches were abundant and many lived in decadence. Now, Jedd could only think of his wife, who had thrown in the towel and was ready to die. After a few hours had passed, he made his way to the medical ward. The factory required weekly examinations, and his turn was up.
The examination room was far less ghastly than the rest of the factory. Everything was a pristine white, clean and without a single spec of dust. When the doctor had entered, a woman, clad in a coat of the same perfect white, the man looked to her as if she may have the answers to all of his woes. As the door closed behind her, she spoke confidently.
"If you treat a condition for too long, eventually, the body begins to resist the, 'cure,' just as it is with antibiotics. What astonishes me is that the Kaneren have allowed this to go on without taking action. It's almost as if they wanted a few slip-ups to make an example out of them."
"Have you met with the gatekeeper, like you promised?" He pressed right to the point, waiting for her response like an eager child.
"So long as you hold up your end of the bargain, I shall hold up mine." She reached into the pocket of her lab-coat, retrieving a standard, white envelope. However, its front was marked with the inked image of a canine-like beast. "You will show this to the gatekeeper. He will not take it from you; you will carry it with you to your new home. Gather your wife and head into Delta after dark." The woman reached back down into her pocket again and pulled out something else: two small pieces of metal that resembled computer chips. "If you place these in your wrist modules, they will keep you off the enforcers' radar. However, they will hardly do any good against other humans, so do not venture out unarmed."
"Thank you, Doctor Rena. Thank you, thank you." The tall man took her slender hand and kissed the back of it in earnest gratitude. "You have given us hope."
"That envelope needs to safely reach the hands of your new commander. Do not lose track of it."
"I will guard it with my life-..., you have my word!"
"I wish you luck, Jedd from Gamma. But for now, you best get back to work." She handed him a piece of paper resembling a map of Delta Sector as her final offering. There was an area marked; surely, Jedd and his wife needed to go there. Parting with the factor worker, the doctor slid a hand through her silky, auburn hair and exited back into the halls of the medical ward like a white ghost.
~*~*~*~
"I don't know why you keep clinging to this dream. All you're going to do is get yourself killed, bringing me into Delta. How do you know you can even trust this woman?" Jedd wrapped his wife up in a lengthy, black coat and pulled its cowl up over her thick locks of brown hair.
"Doctor Rena has helped others, I've heard the stories. The gatekeeper will show us the way out of the city, so we can join the rest of them. But you have to trust me, okay? We're going to have to move fast." Reaching into the bottom drawer of their bedroom dresser, the tall man brought out something that made Noni feel pangs of disbelief.
"When and where did you get your hands on that!?" Jedd positioned the high-powered pistol into its holster at his hip.
"Sometimes, we have to make things at the factory we're not supposed to talk about. Now come on, we need to go now." Cloaking chips already installed onto their modules, map in hand, Jedd and Noni left their domicile under that veil of darkness, leaving what belongings they had behind. Making the journey down into Delta would prove to be a difficult one. For the closer they neared its border, the more enforcers were present, and the Kaneren's human rejects would be festering in villainy. Block after block after block, they moved like thieves in the night. When they saw the brightest lights of the slums appear to them, the neon signs of the nightclub, 'Rapture,' they knew they were in the heart of it.
Jedd had only ever been into Delta Sector one time, a very long time ago. He had been sent by his boss to retrieve some parts from a small shop nearby, and he remembered Rapture so vividly. They were dragging a young girl inside against her will, who was kicking, and screaming, and begging for mercy. But mercy they did not give her; his young eyes witnessed the pig-like men tear her clothes off and throw her inside to the wolves, who were hollering, and shouting, and drinking like wild imps. Nothing had changed about that place, that much Jedd knew. It was a hole of sin, and they needed to avoid getting too close. But before the man had time to react, he heard his wife give muffled sound of shock.
"I knew it was a woman! Listen to her groan!" The man who had grabbed her, dressed in tattered rags and covered in filth, laughed and pulled her coat aside just enough to get his hands on her stomach. "Look at her belly! The enforcers haven't gotten to her, yet! This'll be a first, for me!" Jedd swerved and prepared to launch himself at the assailant, but suddenly felt a foreign sensation. Electricity shot through his body from something that had jabbed at him from behind, sending him to the ground in a tumbling heap. Grimacing and grunting in pain and frustration, his eyes stayed on Noni, but he was unable to will his body to move.
There were three of them now, surrounding her. They grabbed at her like vultures as she squirmed and bit at them like a restrained cat. Jedd could only watch and pale as anger surged through him, alarmed and repulsed by his helpless state. "Unhand my wife, or-"
"Or what?" They laughed at him in mockery, until suddenly, shots were fired. One by one, the assailants' faces twisted and distorted in agony as they dropped to the ground like flies.
"Or me." A man approached, slinging something resembling a rifle over his shoulder. He did not look entirely different from the men who had assaulted Noni, but there was something about the way that he walked with such confidence that set him apart from the average citizen of Delta. Noni, free from her captors, ran to Jedd and knelt at his side. The stranger grew nearer and offered something up to Noni in his hand, a small bottle of a blue-ish liquid. "Give this to him. It will get rid of his paralysis and give him enough energy to get moving again. If you guys want out, now is the time."
"Are you the gatekeeper?" Jedd's deep voice was brimming with hope and need. His wife slid the fluid down his throat, which he swallowed eagerly, despite its bitter, tart taste.
"Do you have it?" As the fallen man's paralysis began to waiver, he forced himself up onto his feet. Surely, the stranger could only be talking about one thing. Reaching into his own coat pocket, Jedd procured the envelope that Doctor Rena had given him, displaying the canine-seal to the man. "The Call."
"The Call?" Noni inquired at his words, her husband displaying the same sentiment with a loft of his brow. Though the man who was surely the gatekeeper beckoned them to keep moving with a wave of his hand, and so they followed.
"Rena has given you The Call because she trusts you. And she trusts you because for the last few examinations you have had, she has been administering you a truth serum." Jedd scrunched his face up a little, clearly surprised. As they walked briskly, Noni clutched to her cloak and covered herself, still shook up by their encounter just moments ago. "You can't blame her. We always have to make sure that our recruits are not spies. It's why she has positioned herself as medical personnel; she's more of a scientist, than anything. Brilliant, at that. Best The Eclipse has ever had."
"The Eclipse?" Noni speaks up again with her question. Perhaps she was finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
"Who we are. Who you shall be, should you make it to the Jackal. He's our fearless leader. You'll know him as soon as you see him. Name's Hal, by the way. I'm the gatekeeper: the recruiter. And make no mistake. We're recruiting soldiers, not civilians. If you've never fired a gun before, that's going to change very quickly." After passing through more alleyways than they could keep track of, they found themselves at a place where they could no longer continue on: the wall of West City. It was one of the four barrier walls that kept humanity contained, readily under Kaneren control. The gods of the new world enforced order above all else.
"What do we do now, Hal? How do we get out?" The taller man put a hand on his wife's shoulder, a feeble attempt to calm her nerves.
"Easy." The man in rags pointed up towards the sky. At first, Noni and Jedd looked to each other in confusion, but then, as reality started to creep in on them, they looked as if they had just been sentenced to death.
"Climb the wall."
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