Tap…tap…tap
Some time later, Cecilia's steps echoed between the silver walls, the low lights giving her just enough to keep from tripping over her own feet.
Vending machines sat spaced apart beside scattered benches, their displays glowing softly in the quiet.
Open lounges appeared between them, followed by cafeterias of every size imaginable. Some opened into atriums stretching toward the floors above, their concrete, metal and glass stairways cutting through the open spaces without breaking through the decks themselves.
Small galleries lined certain hallways, selling whatever they could to whoever happened to pass by, while the fancier shops were recessed into the walls behind polished fronts and dim displays.
Rectangular ductwork stretched overhead, pulling and pushing air through the vessel. The constant hum of the HVAC filled her ears, and something about the white noise eased her mind.
"I have no idea where I'm going…I think I've passed this hall twice already."
Her voice barely rose above the steady drone in the background.
She strolled down the quiet corridor, munching lazily on a sugar stick.
Crnk.
Her feet carried her everywhere and nowhere until she passed a narrow opening in the wall. (X)
Cecilia stopped, backed up two steps and peered inside.
At the end of it, two people guarded a door.
Soft light filled the little passage. One guard was a Librei, the other a Mustela, both stationed in front of whatever waited behind the metal door.
Their faces were carved from boredom and mild irritation.
The Librei leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, dark blue gear wrapped around his body with a name patch stitched onto his chest.
Nolan.
The Mustela, on the other hand, sat behind a small desk with a sheathed knife resting on one corner. He scrolled lazily through his phone, his ears flicking with every tap.
Remy.
Crnch...
Nolan pushed himself upright and uncrossed his arms, his stare boring straight through her as she came to a stop in front of them.
"Sup."
Remy did not even look up from his phone. His voice came flat, bored, and completely uninterested.
Cecilia finished off the last of her sugar stick, then tossed the wrapper and stick into the bin beside the desk.
"What do you want?"
Nolan planted himself in front of the door, his gloved hand curling into a loose fist. The once-tan material had worn nearly black from long use.
"Can I take a peek? I won't touch anything. Swear."
Her voice cracked through the stale air, turning it awkward in an instant.
Nolan stared.
"I'm not opening the door for some random girl wandering around."
A long, resigned sigh slipped out of Remy.
He finally looked up from his phone, turned it off, and set it face down on the desk. Dull purple hair fell loosely over his face, while his round white ears forced themselves upright like even they were tired of being there.
His exhausted eyes settled on Cecilia.
"You don't even know what's back there. You know curiosity's what killed moggy, right?"
One of her fingers twitched at her side, and the smile on her face faltered for half a second.
"Can't a girl be curious?"
Remy remained unamused.
He reached across the desk and dragged the tablet closer.
"ID?"
Cecilia's eyes flickered to Nolan when he held out his gloved hand. The spotted pattern of his feathers scattered through his hair, dark against the softer strands.
She opened her clutch bag, searched until her fingers found the card and handed it to him.
"When were you born?"
twich.
"Sixteen O' eight."
Nolan handed her ID back without ceremony.
Cecilia slipped it into her bag and closed it with a quiet snap.
Remy finished tapping on the tablet, then turned the screen around and slid it toward her.
"It's just a couple hundred. Still curious?"
"Unfortunately."
Cecilia dragged her finger across the screen until it would not scroll any farther, not even pretending to read the terms and conditions before signing and tapping accept.
The screen flipped to another window immediately.
Cecilia stared at the paywall.
Then, with a slight twitch of her finger, she willed it forward.
An outline popped up with a string of numbers at the top. Beneath PAYMENT APPROVED, the amount taken from her account flashed beside a minus sign.
-537 Pesos.
A moment later, the screen shifted again.
An opaque bell in the upper right of her vision buzzed red, dancing around without pause.
The bell quieted immediately, its little icon turning yellow before going still.
Remy dragged the tablet back toward himself while Nolan stepped aside and gave the metal door behind him a heavy bang.
I...I didn't think that would actually work.
Her feet moved before she had fully thought it through.
The metal door shut behind her and a second one opened ahead, finally letting her into the room beyond.
Her ears perked at the Rat Pack music drifting through the background.
A handful of guards lounged around in outfits identical to Nolan's. To her left, a small band played calmly, their music blending into the chatter of the patrons scattered throughout the room.
Cecilia moved through the sea of mostly normal-looking people and claimed an empty stool along the narrow counter built into the wall.
For the next few minutes, she rested and soaked in the warmth of the room.
Every so often, someone emerged from the hallway across from the little band. Some returned laughing. Others came out irritated, exhausted or wearing expressions too blank to read.
Cecilia watched another pair disappear inside.
Her eyes shifted toward the restroom sign hanging above the same hallway.
She grabbed her clutch and followed, keeping several steps between herself and the pair ahead.
The hallway passed two restroom doors before bending sharply to the right. By the time Cecilia reached the corner, the pair was crossing another door.
She slowed to a crawl.
His face looked stiff enough to crack, unlike the woman trailing next to him, who was struggling to bury a smile.
Cecilia then looked down at her shoe with a small, exaggerated sigh.
"Aw, damn. My lace came undone."
She lied.
She crouched, untying and tying them while watching the hallway from the corner of her eye.
A tired-looking man stepped out with his face buried in his phone.
Cecilia stood and walked directly into his path.
Thmp.
Their shoulders bumped.
"Sorry."
He grunted without looking away from his phone and continued toward the main room.
Once his back was turned, a grin tugged at Cecilia's lips.
Heh...still got it.
Once he disappeared around the corner, Cecilia opened the wallet and thumbed past a few folded bills, his ID and a handful of other cards until one caught her eye.
There you are.
She pulled out an inconspicuous card, closed the wallet and slipped it into her clutch.
She stood in front of the plain steel door at the end of the hallway.
Nothing about it looked special.
Cecilia pressed the card against it after some hesitation.
Beep—chk.
She pulled the door open just far enough to slip through, then eased it shut behind her.
The music outside thinned behind the steel, replaced by a dull mixture of voices, clinking dishes and tired footsteps.
Her grin slowly disappeared.
It was a workers' lounge.
Two worn leather sofas surrounded a scratched table in the middle of the room. Jackets and pieces of work gear hung from hooks along the walls, and abandoned cups covered nearly every flat surface.
The same pair Cecilia had followed earlier were already seated near the cafeteria, tearing through plates piled high with food. One shoved down bite after bite while the other idly drank, their face now a different expression.
Someone else had fallen asleep in the far corner, stretched across two chairs with a jacket covering their face.
Their boots planted on the floor.
She stood near the door for another second before glancing down at her clutch.
"I borrowed someone's wallet for this...?"
A small knot of guilt.
"Ah, shit..."
Cecilia opened the wallet again, slipped the access card behind the man's ID and closed it.
A narrow shelf sat beneath the coat hooks near the door, already cluttered with gloves, keys and other things the workers had left behind. Cecilia placed the wallet among them and nudged it into view.
Someone would find it eventually.
Probably.
With the wallet off her conscience, Cecilia claimed an empty chair near the corner and rested her arm on the table.
For a while, she just sat there.
Workers moved in and out of the room, some stopping long enough to eat while others disappeared through another door. Quiet conversations mixed with the clatter of dishes and the occasional burst of laughter from a group of guards nearby.
The person sleeping across two chairs remained undisturbed through all of it.
Cecilia leaned into her hand and watched the room without much interest. Her eyes jumping between faces, plates and pieces of uniforms until they eventually landed on a refrigerated vending machine beside the cafeteria.
Rows of canned cocktails, beer and energy drinks sat behind the glass.
"Might as well..."
She grabbed her clutch and headed over.
Cecilia opened the cooler, looked over the different labels and took one of the cocktails.
A second.
Then, after a moment, she grabbed a third.
She carried the cans to the scanner built into the side of the machine and lifted her wrist.
Beep.
Her bracelet briefly flickered.
A small payment icon spun across it before both screens turned green.
Cecilia gathered the cans against her chest and returned to her seat.
She set two beside her and opened the first.
Tsssk.
Gulk...gulk...
Cecilia slowed for a moment before lifting the can again.
gulp...
Cecilia rested her elbow against the chair and leaned her head into her knuckles, the third can hanging loosely from her other hand.
"Huh."
She finished what remained and reached for the fifth one.
Sixth.
...Maybe ninth.
Tsssk.
gulk… gulk…
The room faded into simple colors around her.
Voices pressed together, faces lost their edges and people seemed to skip forward whenever she blinked.
Cecilia lowered her head onto the table and tried to pull up the time.
A screen flourished into her sight, somehow far away and pressed against her irises at the same time.
Then her thoughts wandered.
The screen followed her will—opening her messages, flashing an unfinished map beside them and eventually collapsing into a mess of icons.
Cecilia tried to focus again.
The time and date finally returned to the top of her sight, though the numbers scattered the second she lost clarity.
She closed an eye, then the other.
And when Cecilia opened her eyes, she was already in her room, staring into a larger screen.
Staring at her laptop.
The cursor blinked halfway through a sentence she had typed twice. Several empty cans rested on the table beside the bed, with another close to edge.
Ugh—damn these papers. Why didn't I do them yesterday? Brilliant, Cecilia. Reeeal smart.
She deleted the repeated sentence and typed it again.
"This is so stupid. Why do I even have to do this?" Cecilia leaned closer and squinted at the screen. "Why'd I agree to this...? I'm s'posed to be on a trip."
She raised her arms high, grabbing one wrist and stretching her whole body out.
Her legs shifted under the desk, agitated.
"Woah...mmnn—haa..."
Cecilia waited for everything to steady before checking the date in the corner of the screen.
January twentieth.
She stared before looking to the side.
Ikade lay curled up on the bed, her long furred tail draped across her face.
Her soft ears barely moved with each breath.
"You could help, y'know..."
She scrolled back through several paragraphs, squinting at sentences that were somehow still readable.
"I don't remember writing half this stuff..."
Somehow, she finished before it became too late.
Her signature came out slightly crooked, but she saved the document and sent it anyway.
She looked toward the light switch.
Cecilia narrowed her eyes until it finally flicked down, leaving her laptop to light the room.
The cursor drifted toward another tab before Cecilia selected it, opening her mail.
Cecilia double-tapped the first one in her inbox.
His message was short.
Read it this time. If anything changes while you're gone, make a note of it. Get in touch when you can.
"Mmhmm..."
Cecilia opened the attached mail.
It swallowed the entire screen—all three hundred and six pages of her medical history laid bare, the rest of the room dissolving into a blurry mess of color.
Medical Report — "Cecilia", Aug 14th, 1608
She scrolled through the sections she remembered until one fractured sentence stopped her.
'Y░u h a—ve...a m▒▓s i n y—our br██a i—n.'
Cecilia read it once.
Then again.
The cursor slipped beneath the first word. It followed her eyes across the sentence, pausing and spasming whenever her focus did.
"...crys...talline...pressin'...pons...var...olii..."
The cursor moved down with her gaze.
"Between...med...nucleus too..."
Cecilia let out a small, humorless laugh.
"Heh...what shit luck."
"Nope. Not thinkin' about my poor life choices till next week."
"Here's to you, I guess."
"Huh..."
glug… glug… glk…
"Haaah…"