Chapter One: A Way Out
Seraphine Voss, known as "Ser" to most of her friends, stood by the small window in her cramped room, her gaze lost in the urban sprawl of ZULU-13. The last of the megabuildings before the outer wall of the city, ZULU-13 marked the edge of the civilization and the end of the line for most of its residents.
The Zoo
, they called it. A place where people like Ser were penned in by steel, concrete, and shattered dreams. Life in The Zoo was a daily grind surrounded by the hum of obsolete tech and the dull flicker of neon ads that promised futures no one there could afford.
Abandoned drones buzzed through the halls, their movements erratic, struggling to complete tasks that broken parts or corrupted programming made impossible. The grimy passageways were always damp and moldy with condensation, the wheezing ventilation systems not able to keep up with the mass of humanity stuffed into the Zoo.
The air was always thick with the scent of broken machinery, sweat, and the heavy sweet and sour scent that comes from people being too close together.
Ser looked down on the lower levels of the megabuilding just below her window, where the poorest of the forgotten masses eked out their lives. She saw the tops of the makeshift stalls that sold salvaged cyberware, hacked implants, and anything in between.
Everything was for sale in the depths of The Zoo, but one realized real quick that it was buyer beware. Ser sighed and raised her eyes to look at the massive concrete structure that rose hundreds of floors above her, up into the darkness of the upper levels where the wealthy and connected lived. She couldn't even imagine what life was like up there... but she knew it had to be better than this.
Ser pulled her attention back to her room... it was small, utilitarian, and barely functional. A folding bed, a wall-mounted console, and the tiny window with a view of the city's underbelly. But at least it was hers, for the moment anyways. And in a place like The Zoo, having something that was yours was a small victory.
Her wrist-comm buzzed softly, pulling her out of her dark thoughts. She glanced down at the message glowing on the screen, Naomi's name flashing in the dim light.
NAOMI
It's set, babe. Tomorrow.
My father pulled some strings, just like I said.
Don't be late. You'll thank me for this.
Love N!
Naomi Thorne. They'd met a few months ago in one of the nameless underground clubs in the lower levels, where rich kids slummed for thrills and locals numbed their minds enough to forget they were locals. Ser hadn't trusted her at first--who would?
Naomi mixed with the local scene easily enough, laughing and talking like she wasn't from above. But Naomi still had the air of someone who didn't quite belong in the depths, someone who came from the shiny upper levels. Whether out of dark curiosity, or the desire to gain some sort of street cred, she made her way down to the underworld and most likely would be gone as soon as she got enough dirt on her dress or was scared shitless when she finally ran into some of the real predators in depths of the Zoo.
But Naomi had stuck around, and after a few weeks, Seraphine found herself starting to like her. Naomi was sharp, fun, and somehow always seemed to know how to make life a little more bearable. Which was weird, because most of the folks from the upper levels she had met couldn't adapt to life below, they didn't understand the dark humor that served as an escape and mental barrier against the day to day grind in the Zoo.
They had gotten close over the next couple of months, including some fun nights hooking up after the clubs, both with each other and with others they sometimes would bring back to her place.
Those nights led to spending a lot of mornings recovering, mostly laughing about the night before, and talking trivial bullshit each another, but sometime those convos would get deep too.
It was on one of those recovery mornings where Ser had opened up to Naomi about how she sometimes felt dead inside and wanted, no, needed, to get out of the Zoo. Naomi opened up her about her father, who sounded rich as hell but wasn't really in her life much. He had left her living with her abusive mother... Naomi wouldn't go any farther into that subject though. Ser got the picture that escaping Naomi's mother was the reason that she was down in the depths.
About a week ago, Ser hadnt seen Naomi in awhile when she got a message.
NAOMI
Hey... so my father just pinged me.
He's coming back to ZULU-13 for a cpl of days
Im going upstairs to meet him.
