Chapter 2

The gondola lurched and jerked farther up into the air as it left the station. It had been over a decade since Sel had arrived in Capital City. However imperfect and sad his life may have been there, it had still been home. There was misery there, sprinkled with spots of hope and joy. A few of those years had been with Elo. Hope was more consistently present when they had been together. Sel was surprised by the pit in his stomach and the tears in his eyes. Part of him felt like leaving was giving up, like he was leaving Elo behind. She left you years ago. You can't wait forever. The thought was not enough to snap him out of his maudlin state. As the gondola trudged along through the air, Sel sat in silent mourning for the death of the most important bond in his life so far. Children ran through the gondola, laughing and bickering. A middle age woman read a book directly across from him. A young mother cooed to her baby as the gondola rocked the baby to sleep. A professionally dressed man scrolled through spreadsheets on his data pad, highlighting things on the screen and muttering about how late he'd have to work tonight. Sel relived his mistakes in silence while the rest of the world kept going, impervious to his loneliness.

Sel looked out the window of the gondola, longing for the end of the ride, so he could get moving again. These liminal spaces were torture. He had hours yet to go. The landscape near the gondola was covered in snow. Strange animal tracks dotted the ground, but as far as he knew, the fauna at this altitude were relatively docile compared to those in the valley. Anything was more docile than what was in the valley. A shiver ran down his spine as he remembered the beasts in the valley. Even the plants were dangerous, moving in the night and consuming those careless enough not to take precautions against them. To avoid a horrifying death by suffocation, the nomadic tribes in the valley needed to post guards and light fires along the perimeter of the group's camp. The heat and the light were usually enough to keep the flesh eating plants out, but you could never be sure that there were no gaps in your circle of dotted flame. Sel had never heard of anyone living long without the safety in numbers provided by a tribe. It was a wonder that he and Elo had survived long enough to get to Capital City.

Then, there were the beasts to consider. It was hard to build a catalogue of the bestial threats found in the valley. If a person came across one of the beasts, it was almost certainly a death sentence. This was yet another reason that a tribe was essential for life in the valley. A group of people stood a slightly better chance against the beasts, but even then, the odds were slim. More often than not, when a beast found a tribe that was the end for the tribe. In these rare moments when Sel was forced to be present, when he had nowhere to go, when he had no Chill to take his mind to other places, he was either overcome with shame at his failures or awe at all that he had made it through. He felt as though he was a walking contradiction. When he was sober, he recognized this dichotomy in him, and it unsettled him. He did his best to shove down the part of him that railed at this inner dissonance and tried to sit in that state of awe. In this tranquil moment, with the unremarkable unfolding of a normal day for all the other passengers in the gondola, Sel found a moment of peace for himself. As the gondola jerked on the cable and gently swayed in the wind sweeping between the two mountains, he fell into a light sleep.

The camp was quiet. Sel could feel it in the air. Things were still. The valley was only ever this quiet in anticipation. Heart racing, mind jumping from point to point. This was his fault. He had been on guard. He had fallen asleep. It took all his restraint to keep from dashing up toward his spear. He opened his eyes and scanned his surroundings as well as he could without moving his head.

FLASH.

Elo walked into the camp, beaming. She held her shirt out in front of her like a drooping basket. It was full of berries. "This is a good spot," she said. "I saw so many of these on the other side of the lake." Sel was skeptical, but part of him hoped they could get some rest here. He would need to find a better, more secluded spot for their camp if they were going to…

FLASH.

Cold. Sel was so cold. The elders had warned the tribe of the dangers of going up on the mountains. They told tales of vast wealth in those cities but also of evil that never slept. No one ever came back from them. What if the elders were wrong? Sel hoped they were. Elo was hurt. She wouldn't last long out here in the cold. Sel needed a miracle. Maybe there was medicine in one of these cities. If not, if there was only the nameless mist and malice that ol' Kretch had warned him of as a boy, so be it. Elo was definitely dead in the valley. There was hope, though shallow, on the mountain.

FLASH.

So cold. Sel could not feel his feet. He saw a city in the distance. He thought he could see people walking at its edges. Were they really there? Probably not. His mind was probably playing tricks on him like some sort of snow mirage. He had yelled until he was hoarse, trying to get their attention. It was all for naught. If the people were really there, they could not hear or see him. He was going to die. Elo was going to die.

FLASH.

Floating. Sel felt weightless. A muffled wind blew in the distance. He could hear it. He feebly reached out for Elo. Where was she? He still couldn't feel his feet, and now he couldn't feel his hands either. Hurried voices. Who was that? Distant wind. Floating.

FLASH.

The gondola had stopped. He still felt it swaying as he opened his eyes, but it was definitely not moving forward. He felt tears streaming down his face. He wiped them away and looked around. No one paid any attention to him. All the passengers had crowded to one side of the gondola, their gazes shifting from the gondola's former direction of travel to the direction of the valley. "Look at them go, mommy!" one of the children exclaimed. Sel had heard of this before, but he had never had the opportunity to ride a gondola. He got up and sheepishly joined the crowd, all too aware of his filthiness and now the lines the tears had left as they had rolled down his dirty face. The crowd pressed in as he approached, partly to get a better look and partly to get away from the dirty homeless man.

A few cars up, there was a handful of men and women dressed in glide suits. They had climbed through the hatch on the top of their gondola and were taking turns jumping off the car. As they plummeted, they would spread their arms and legs apart, exposing the webbing between their limbs and activating their suits. One had to get the settings just right. If the upward propulsion on the suit was too high, the wearer would feel like he or she was floating, and the thrill would be all gone. If the propulsion was too weak, the wearer would fall to the ground and be faced with almost certain death. The most daring of the Flyers would jump with no propulsion at all and turn it on at the last second, skimming just above the ground or trees at hundreds of kilometers per hour. Elo had been captivated by these people. Sel didn't know if it was this particular group, but a group of Flyers had been responsible for saving Elo and his lives.

There was supposed to be a marshal in every few cars to keep things like this from happening. Ideally, there would be one in every car, but the Police Authority didn't have the manpower for that. Very few people relished the idea of working for that tyrant of a Governor, bleeding the people dry with taxes at every turn. Sel noticed a man at the back of his car, speaking quietly but quickly into a phone connected to the wall of the car. They were lucky this was just a group of Flyers. No one had the audacity or stupidity to do it, but an unmentioned fact was that any group of malcontents could set up multiple teams in multiple cars along any particular cable route and easily take the whole line hostage by threatening to cut the cable. It would be disastrous and would mean certain death for whoever was doing the deed. Everyone knew it could be done, but no one had even attempted to do it. The cities relied upon each other for supplies. The terrorists wouldn't just be killing the people on the line. They would likely be killing thousands in the cities. Their logistics network stood on the edge of a knife. "Worries for another time," Sel muttered to himself.

The last of the Flyers jumped off the car ahead of Sel's. This one was showy. He or she (It was impossible to tell from this distance.) tucked their arms close to their body, racing to the ground like a meteor. At the very last moment, they spread their arms and legs. They flew just above the trees and headed down into the valley. Sel wondered how they would get back into the city. There were ways. Sel had used many of them. If the general populace knew how wide the gaps were in the "defense" the Police Force provided, they would not have their unfounded sense separation from whatever was "out there."

The gondola began moving again, and everyone made their way back to their seats, some more quickly than others. Sel sat back down in his seat, thinking through what he would do when he got to Pretick City. The first order of business was to find out where Adem was. That should be easy enough. His machine shop was probably listed in the public directory. Sel could use one of the kiosks outside the gondola station, assuming Pretick City had kiosks like Capital City. He hoped he could make it there before dark. If Pretick City was anything like Capital City, it wasn't a good idea to be out after dark. The Governor, through the Police Force, had strictly enforced a curfew on Capital City. This rule was actually in place solely for the good of the citizens. Things happened at night in the city. There were places one simply did not go. Sel had never seen anything happen at night. No one did, but if you were out at night, you might feel a nameless presence watching you from just over your shoulder. People disappeared too. Most people knew about it. Most people didn't talk about it. Despite the unsettling presence in the night, the city seemed safer than the valley. Sel could personally attest to that. Still, he caught himself shuddering at the thought of being out at night. He did his best to push aside such thoughts. He would get to the kiosk and then to Adem's shop before dark. Sel fought the anxiety as the gondola kept moving kilometer by kilometer closer to Pretick City.

Hours later, Sel finally got off the gondola. The architecture in Pretick City was different. Where Capital City had disjointed, mind bending angles that made one think the whole building might fall on them, Pretick City had crisp corners and right angels. The spirit in the station was one of efficiency and cleanliness. Sel had not expected this. It was disorienting. It was hard to tell what the mysterious, nameless builders of these cities had been like or what their intentions were with many of their structures and design choices. It was now clear to Sel that Capital City was a place of art, and this was a place of martial discipline. These were not conscious thoughts. The very air of the place seemed to push these impressions down onto Sel. He made his way to what looked like the exit to this massive, crowded, organized station. There was an orderly line formed at the security gate. It was moving quickly. This place was such a well-oiled machine, and everyone was moving so quickly that Sel never noticed the men standing in inconspicuous places around the giant room, scanning the crowd. They had in crisp block letters on their coats the words "Pretick City Royal Guards."

He scanned the card that Rob had given him. The light on the gate turned green. The gate went down. A display near the scanner showed him that he had no credits left on the card. Rob had given him just enough to get away, just enough to start over in a new city. Sel muttered a quiet, sincere thanks to his friend. He walked out the door into the fading sunlight. His eyes fixed on the closest information kiosk. As he approached, another man, tall and clean with slicked back hair and shining white teeth, started using the screen on the other side of the kiosk. Without preamble, the man said, "Can you cook and grind?" Sel froze. He could, in fact, cook and grind. It was how he had lived in Capital City after he had been fired from the Police Force. Grinding up Ice Flowers and cooking them into Chill had been very lucrative for him until he had become desperately addicted to the stuff. "It's okay. The surveillance systems can't hear us right now. I have a passive jammer. PCRG will just hear the normal din of commuting traffic taking people home and pedestrians walking and chatting as they try to get indoors before the curfew. I am a very successful businessman here in Pretick City, and one of my cooks was killed outside the city while foraging for Ice Flowers. You know how dangerous this business is. Anyway, are you looking for work? I pay well."

It was tempting. Sel was feeling the effects of having no Chill at all that day. He stood there, speechless, for seconds that felt like they were stretching into hours. When thought came back to him, he did the only thing he could think to do to keep from falling head-first back into that seedy world. He ran.