She's in the wrong train
2086. 17. 06.
Volx, District Pheisz
No more birds left. No more pop jazz playing in the streets. Just a walk through a selection of rust invaded phantoms of what once lit up the heart of the Central Districts. It hasn’t been that long since it has been this way, but it seemed like deterioration made a pact with the inevitable passage of time.
Bora stood in front of the kitchen counter top, staring at the two tea cups she had just prepared. The ghost of a currently invisible smile never abandoned her features as she grabbed the paper square at the end of the tea bag, submerging the string a few times more before taking it out completely. Pinches of sugar, a final triumphant grin, and the gentle feeling of valerian root and chamomile caressing her nostrils… she’s going to like it, of course, she thought while grabbing both of the cup’s handles and headed towards the bedroom’s door. When she got close enough, the sensor picked up her presence, and the black and red door slid into the wall followed by a tinge of a metallic noise. It sounded like the door had gotten stuck, or hit something it wasn’t supposed to; maybe a replacement was long overdue, but that wasn’t the most important thing at the moment. Her slight smile stayed put as she cautiously walked towards the bed, paying close attention to the force in her steps so no drop of tea would go to waste. The drinks didn’t let her glance at the woman laying on the bed; one arm behind her head, one leg crossed over the other, a finger playing with her lips, eyes locked in the contrast of the inside and the cityscape… thinking. “Here.” She called out without taking her eyes off of the mildly moving liquids.
Bora’s voice pulled Yoohyeon’s gaze away from the window, as well as her distanced conscience. A barely audible thank you preceded the taller one’s shift in the bed, now sitting farther from the edge and higher against the bed’s backboard so Bora could climb onto the mattress. They stayed like that for a while, in silence, enjoying each other’s company in the most abstract, even philosophical, way. Drinking the tea, indulging on the symbolic debris of non kinetic civil unrest. But Yoohyeon couldn’t stay silent nor calm for long. Not even the influence of the ingredients of her favorite tea could clear her mind; “...let’s join the resistance.”
Upon hearing Yoohyeon’s statement, the eldest choked on the bit of tea she had just sipped. Before conjoining the most appropriate words she could think of based on the situation, she put her cup on the nightstand. “We’re going to get ourselves killed…”, she said while turning back to the other woman, sliding a hand across her torso, and laying close to her, “...is what we’re going to do.” She let her arm rest around Yoohyeon’s abdomen, and her head later searched for comfort in the younger one’s neck.
Yoohyeon tilted her head back to drink the entirety of the remaining tea before putting the cup on a nearby shelf, getting rid of it so she could focus solely on Bora. She rested her head against the small woman’s, and, even though a momentary distant cluster of gunshots dared to disturb their headspace, put one of her hands on top of the latter’s. “After the draft, I’m probably going to get sent far away. I don’t want to lose you.” Her voice almost got lost, or disintegrated, in the air at the end of her last sentence.
“I prefer not seeing you for some time than losing you forever.” Bora retrieved her arm and sat up, later straddling the other woman while looking straight into her eyes. Into her soul… a stringent thread of desperation begging to stay hidden; a silent plea, incisive, decisive, an unapologetic attempt at manipulation that only her subconscious was aware of.
“You don’t know what’s going to happen. But you do know what will happen if we stay here… with all that we know…”
“But we can’t risk our lives just like that. Finding you was almost a coincidence. I hate that I’m even saying this right now, but I can’t risk that.”
“What if we succeed in the end?”
“Yoohyeon, no…” Bora leaned down and put her head against Yoohyeon’s shoulder, shaking it a little to further indicate disagreement. She felt a hand caressing her hair, so, somehow feeling guilty, she sighed and delved wherever she thought she would find a smidge of tranquility.
“Where’s that reckless, fearless woman I met at that train?”
She didn’t hesitate, for some reason; she didn’t wait for an ounce of judgement before responding to Yoohyeon’s question by biting her shoulder.
“Ow!” Yoohyeon pushed her with enough force to separate her face from her now pseudo wounded shoulder, but not enough to lose physical contact. An infectious smile invaded her mouth; one big enough to transform the shape of her own eyes and make the older woman’s senses melt at the sight. Bora didn’t say anything else then, but rather leaned back down. This time, though, to rest her forehead on top of Yoohyeon’s, to try to merge their pupils... to try to wordlessly communicate what she was too overwhelmed, or ashamed, to verbalize.
-
2084. 30. 12.
Okbo, District Vallarta
A little later than supposed to, Yoohyeon hurried through the streets of her neighborhood. She still had some time to spare until her entry hour struck, but, since the train route that went directly to her work building was closed for maintenance, she had to hurry. “They said they were going to build the maglev here too, but we’re still stuck with the cars…” She shook her head and exhaled harder than usual through her nose. The crowd in front of the train station’s entrance was impossible to cross. After all, too many people from her district worked at the same place as she did, and it seemed like the ones that usually commuted earlier in the morning didn’t get the memo. She checked her wristwatch: 8 in the morning. Still on time. Maybe she’ll end up having counted minutes if she isn’t able to get into the train soon enough, but she couldn't just start pushing people.
Or… “Whatever. I’m not getting an admonition.” And with the force of her body, she pushed through annoyed human barriers until she got to the station’s main entrance. When she was able to stand on the access line, one of her feet started tapping on the ground, and later she crossed her arms over her chest with a constricted face expression to complete the absolute friendliness stance. The scanner android seemed to get slower with each train pass, and Yoohyeon’s impatience grew with every step. Another glance at her wristwatch: only 5 minutes had passed since she last looked at the time. “Are you kidding me…” She decided to take a breath, and, in the process, asked herself why on earth was she so annoyed at this time of day.
“Next, please.” A mildly robotic voice called.
It was finally Yoohyeon’s turn to scan her train pass, so she walked towards the android and showed them her work pin. After everything was settled, she rushed downstairs to wait for the vehicle. It wasn’t long until the train car arrived, so, now sitting inside, she closed her eyes and tried to relax. Eyes open again, and the train still wasn’t moving; what are they waiting for now… she thought. She took a deep breath, as if it would help in some obscure way, and looked around to distract herself from the resurgence of irritation. It was all the same, though; the same people, all dressed with their suits, coats, and blazers, the same face expressions, the same materialization of lingering exhaustion that almost invisibly scurried through their pores… pretty ordinary things expected from the masses of Okbo. Yet, even though she had experienced this sighting for uncountable days since birth, she truly had never seen a flash of red and black moving fast through the premises. It definitely caught her attention, what seemed like a person jogging and breaking through the crowd like she had done minutes ago. Her eyes locked on the figure that turned out to be a woman that ran towards the vehicle’s doors while hugging a backpack on her chest. Weird, because her face exuded nothing remotely close to desperation. Why are you running then?, Yoohyeon thought as she continued to inspect the stranger, successfully creating a diversion to ignore the annoyance that started to settle.
“Ma’am, this is your second warning. You shouldn’t be here without the appropriate pass. Next time, make sure you bring it.” Yoohyeon overheard one of the staff talk to the woman that had all her attention at the moment.
“Ah, I know, I know. And I’m sorry. I’m just in a rush these days, you know? With all the changes going on in the district. You get it.” The woman grinned and hit the security staff’s shoulder playfully, talking fast and with a set of movements and a tone that would convince anyone of anything she was saying. Charisma coated sentences and eyes seemed to be the specialty of this stranger, who now had piqued Yoohyeon’s interest even more.
“Do you have your district identifier, at least?” The man sighed and asked with low energy, definitely already tired of working with people in the hot hour of public transit.
“Sure. Here you go, sir.” She smiled and showed him an Aquas Vieux identifier.
This woman is definitely not from Aquas Vieux, Yoohyeon thought, raising an eyebrow out of intrigue and amusement. She stopped looking at their interaction to avoid being caught, and decided to look out the window, only to immediately spot a man frantically stopping people to ask them if they had seen something. She saw the man pointing at people’s identifier papers, and going away when they shook their heads. Yoohyeon bit her lower lip and mildly widened her eyes, not being able to tell if the sight entertained her or made her want to turn the strange woman in for theft. She focused her attention on her again, and saw that she had managed to enter the train and sit almost across her. Her brown hair was in a high ponytail, she was noticeably shorter than most of the people she normally knew, she was apparently a thief, and she was still holding that bag hermetically close to her chest. Who the hell are you… Yoohyeon never stopped thinking while looking straight at her, almost too lost in her head to notice that the woman suddenly fixed her attention on her also. That startled her, as if she got caught subconsciously gossiping about the latter, so she lowered her gaze and played with her fingers to relieve the embarrassment. Still, she looked up after some time. The woman looked at her again, but this time she winked and briefly put her index finger in front of her mouth. It made a slight smile grace Yoohyeon’s features, because the woman didn’t seem to know how to wink at all; it looked like a lagging blink instead.
The train had passed Aquas Vieux station, and, as Yoohyeon suspected, the other woman didn’t get out there. Instead, she sat still, now with the backpack laying on the floor beside her seat, looking at the passing landscape. The taller one followed her gaze, and focused on the conglomerate of buildings that stood proud with all their intricate details and status significance; District Vallarta’s specialized intellectual hub, with prestigious educational institutions that carried their culture, class, and history forward into the future. She smiled, absorbing the pride that such scenery emanated without even trying. A great amount of the knowledge that flowed in her family, as well as most of the Central Districts’ residents, came from attending schools and universities here. Still indulging in some kind of honor, her eyes found their way back to the woman, and her smile faded when she saw that the latter had almost evident disgust plastered all over her face.
As the train advanced, the panorama began to change. That is, less of what Yoohyeon was accustomed to see, so she lost interest. More trees, more copper, more smoke, more saturation.
-
Currently Unknown Sector and District
Another stop at a station, this one being the strange woman’s destination. Yoohyeon didn’t really pay attention to her surroundings; her focus was entirely on the short woman who just walked past her to get out of the train. She wondered if she would ever see her again, and a trace of unimportant grief settled in, based on the fact that a mystery would go unsolved forever. The encounter would just be a coincidental unusuality.
She hummed and got over it before it could disrupt her morning further, until her eyes scanned the place where the woman sat. The bag she held so protectively still laid on the floor.
Agh… She whined in her head as her eyes went from the bag to the door, to the bag, to the door. She checked her wristwatch once again: 8:30 in the morning. Still on time, technically. Her entrance time was 9 on the dot. There were some accomplishments she took pride on, and, somehow, in her head, just one slip could cost her a drop of her hard built reputation. She had perfect attendance, and her punctuality served as proof of her flawless competence and lifelong dutifulness. But the bag… But I don’t know her… She thought, still debating on whether she should just follow the stranger, and then having to make up a whole story for her boss, or just let it go and risk something she would never find out. “Okay…” A defeated sigh marked the decision; I don’t have any active assignments at the moment anyway.
The door almost closed on her when she ran out of the train to try to look for the strange woman. Now outside, she tiptoed and looked around the crowd to try to spot her target. Upon seeing that the train was already taking off, her hurry to locate the woman seemed to intensify. This station was evidently more crowded than the one in her hometown Okbo, which made a whit of uncomfortableness start to creep up inside the depths of her chest. Too much noise, too much chatter, too many people… it wasn’t even the amount of people, but the atmosphere. Yoohyeon felt strangely out of place, even if she didn’t really know where she was.
She got pulled out of her ascending spiral when she finally spotted her target going up the stairs of the subway. “Hey!” She exclaimed, but called out almost everyone but her. Frustrated, she started pushing through the crowd so she could get to the stairs quicker. The train pass scanner line was completely disregarded by her, earning a couple of angry looks from the commuters. Fortunately, the android in charge seemed permissive. Odd.
Already out in the city, she tried to focus on the small woman, but the striking difference in scenery couldn’t be subject to indifference. Her eyes explored her surroundings for a few seconds, taking in the predominantly grey, red, and brown metallic buildings, the smoke coming out of some alleyways, the puddles on the roads, the resounding merge of conversations… the hover vehicles. Where am I? She thought, looking for any type of street label that would indicate where she was. There were none. Her heels spun on themselves, tiptoeing again to have a clear view of everyone’s heads; looking for a brown high ponytail.
“Hey, stop!” She called out and jogged towards the woman when she spotted her walking towards one of the alleyways. When she got close enough, Yoohyeon stopped her by putting her hand on the stranger’s shoulder. Big mistake, one she realized too late, because, instead of being greeted as expected, the latter acquired an aggressive stance. The woman grabbed Yoohyeon’s wrist as she turned around, making the arm bend in an awfully uncomfortable way, and tensed almost all of her muscles at once. Including the ones around her eyes. “I… uh…” Yoohyeon tried to reason without worsening the woman’s offensive posture. Speechless, definitely, after seeing that, aside from encountering physical conflict, she was being pointed at with a glowing white and blue device that wrapped around the woman’s forearm.
“Why are you following me?” The metallic sleeve’s screen showed a moving purple line, indicating ascending charge.
Yoohyeon inhaled deep and imprisoned the air in her lungs. Regret… pure regret. She didn’t even know what this woman was pointing at her with, but it was dangerous for sure. Her eyes fixated on the expanding and regressing circle of blue light that emerged from the device, hoping that she would never find out what it was made for. “I… I’m not!” She exhaled into her desperate claim. However, the woman just moved her clenched fist closer to Yoohyeon’s face. “I mean… I was, but not for anything bad! Nothing bad. I promise, haha…” Yoohyeon tried to dissipate her nervousness with an awkward laugh, and then put up her free hand. That’s not a gun but it seems like it shoots. Jesus Christ… She’s gonna pulverize me. “You left this at the train.” She shook the bag she held in the hand she put up. Almost instantly, the stranger let Yoohyeon’s wrist go and snatched the bag away.
“Huh, thank you.” She retrieved her closed fist, touched some things on the metallic sleeve’s screen, and everything stopped glowing. “Sorry for that.” She laughed at herself, amused at both the fact she almost wasted a plasma charge, and that she fired up for such a harmless person. “You shouldn’t follow people and sneak up from behind.”
Yoohyeon held her wrist and caressed it a little, since the woman didn’t hold it so gently. So many thoughts crossed her mind, one of them being how she was going to get back to the station. Another, what she was going to tell her boss regarding her tardiness. Maybe she should put a name to it, just in case; “What’s your name?”
The woman, who was already walking away, dryly stopped in her steps and turned around to look at her. Visibly had a debate in her head before deciding to reveal her real name; not many people knew her by it, anyway. “...Bora.” She attempted to turn around again to resume her path, but couldn’t, since Yoohyeon stood there still. She stood there scratching the back of her head while looking around, evidently unaware of where she should go. What an idiot… She thought, and sighed. “Where are you from?”
“Uh… I don’t know if i should say District Vallarta or… The Citadel.”
Bora snorted. “Oh, now it’s comical that you’re here. I’m surprised you were even able to exit the subway’s gates after seeing where you had arrived.” Slight annoyance spit out in the form of a smile.
“What do you mean?”
Bora shook her head and chuckled. “Won’t your shoes get dirty on these streets?”
Yoohyeon looked down at her white shoes; they did get a little dirty. But that wasn’t truly a problem. She saw Bora turn around once again, now touching the screen of her seemingly metallic forearm repeatedly, and then sliding up a device she had stuck on the back of her ear. Something like a bluetooth earphone. Yoohyeon’s curiosity got the best of her, so she decided to stop the small woman one more time. “Are you an android? Or...” She had met androids and cyborgs before. Heck, even her coworker and cubicle companion was one. But Bora seemed different. She hadn’t seen anyone with an attached weapon. And, most importantly, a weapon she hadn’t seen before either.
“Do I look like an android?” Bora asked, finding the question partially entertaining.
“Anyone can look like an android. You just…” Yoohyeon gestured to her own forearm, making Bora momentarily look at the metallic device surrounding her limb.
“Right, I forgot you probably haven’t seen anything like an electronic sleeve.” She stopped to think. “What do you work in?”
“...Tech support for HQ in The Citadel.”
“Hm. You should head out before the wrong person hears you say that.” Bora chuckled and turned around one last time. This time, she completely disappeared into a crowded alleyway.
Yoohyeon made her way to the subway station, and she noticed a handful of people sometimes stared at her almost as if they had personal problems with her. She tried to ignore everything that surrounded her until she was back in the train, sitting and looking out the window. One glance at her wristwatch: 9:09 am. Great… She knew she was going to be late nevertheless, but the inconvenience still irritated her. Before the train took off, she tried looking for a sign in the station’s walls that would inform her of the sector or district she was in. None, again. Aside from the words that appeared in the train’s destination screen; District Sedova. Great… Just great… She dragged her words in her head and slid down on her seat, sitting in a hunched position of metaphorical greyness.
-
The Citadel
Her steps were long and quick. She would be running, if doing so in HQ wasn’t frowned upon. Through the vast interior garden covered by a wide glass roof, around the spiraling hubristic monument that marked the center of everything, into one of the halls that connected most of the tech support offices… her path seemed longer than ever. All the fancy details of The Citadel were not enough to divert her mind from the apprehension creeping up her stomach. Out of everything that could worry her, she really didn’t want to encounter her boss before she could get to her workplace.
Luckily, her boss was nowhere to be seen at the moment. She got to her cubicle in a dash, trying to be as stealthy as possible. After sitting down at her desk, she sighed with her eyes closed and turned the desktop computer on so she could start the tasks of the day. As she waited for the computer to load, her eyes wandered back to the interior garden. At least my office has windows ‘cause I'd go insane… And then, she looked at her coworker, who seemed to not notice she was already here.
“You spent another night at the pub, didn’t you?” Yoohyeon laughed with a sound close to the letter ‘k’ after seeing a cable going from her coworkers neck to the wall port.
“Shh! No one has to know that.” Her coworker turned to look at her with a wide grin, appreciating that the taller one arrived.
Yoohyeon clicked her tongue teasingly. “Siyeon, keep going to Volx’s clubs every day. Keep forgetting to charge at night, yes. Then one day Minji’s gonna catch you stealing the office’s electricity.” She laughed again.
“Shut up. I don’t go anywhere besides this boring office during the day. Let me live. It’s not my fault there’s like five pubs down in the street I live in.” Siyeon spun her seat to face Yoohyeon and continued the playful banter.
“Hold on, so you think I’m boring?” Yoohyeon feigned offense, which got a laugh out of the other woman. “Of course it’s your fault. You were almost my neighbor, but noo. I chose Volx because of the art and music.” She mocked Siyeon’s words at the end.
The cyborg exaggerated a gasp, and then smiled. “Okay, we’re not talking about this anymore, alright.” They both tried to get back to work, but Siyeon spoke again; “You’re never late. Why are you late?”
Yoohyeon freezed for a second, but decided to come clean with a voice as neutral as possible. “I was at Sedova.”
Siyeon’s irises lit up in blue for a brief millisecond before looking at Yoohyeon with furrowed eyebrows. “What were you even doing there?”
Yoohyeon thought about Bora, ran a hand through her hair, and sighed; “nothing, just missed the station.”
“Isn’t Sedova like 3 stations behind this one? Why would you...”
Before Yoohyeon could answer, the steely click of a pair of heels interrupted their conversation. Without needing to look at the person who approached them, they both understood their boss was here. And by the force of every step, they could also tell she wasn’t in a good mood. Siyeon unplugged herself from the wall and threw the cable under her desk, and Yoohyeon suppressed a laugh at her antics.
“Kim Yoohyeon. To my office, now.” A stern voice cut through the last wave of Yoohyeon’s laughter and instantly made the seriousness in the atmosphere thicken.
“Yes, Ms. Kim.” Damnit, I’m screwed… She thought as she stood up and shot a somewhat worried but joking glance at her coworker. She followed her boss to the main office, and stood in front of the wide glass desk as the other woman sat behind it.
“We have a problem.” The director clasped her hands together and rested her elbows on the glass surface.
Yes, I know. Can we forget about it though? It’s just one day... Yoohyeon played with her fingers behind her back, and panicked while having the most stoic face expression she could muster. “What is it Ms. Kim?”
“We have been experiencing security breach attempts coming from either Districts Haxur or Qwevas. It could even be the northwest. At first it seemed mild, and we thought it would stop after a while… It has been going on for months. Yesterday, the person managed to access HQ’s demography database for some minutes before the first floor cybersecurity team was able to handle the breach. We don’t know if their intention is just collecting census data, or something more. Either way, this type of threat is unacceptable.” The woman went silent for a few seconds, her eyes focused on nothing in particular. “I know this may seem as something that should be assigned to the downstairs team, but now it’s a serious type A. I need you to take the case and monitor every hacking attempt, especially the ones coming from the northern clusters. Understand?” Now, instead of defocus, her eyes pierced into Yoohyeon’s paralyzed pupils.
“Yes, Ms. Kim. Definitely. I will get to work.” Yoohyeon ended her statement with a firm single nod, and then headed back to her workspace. When Siyeon noticed she came back, she stared at her with expectation. “I got an assignment. No admonition for tardiness.” Yoohyeon explained, clenched one of her fists and thrusted her elbow down in a joking way. Siyeon chuckled and shook her head before spinning her seat around to face her desk.
The taller woman tried to do the same, but she stopped to look down to the interior garden again. Some type of breath and pause, that’s what it was. Her eyes traveled down from the top floor, to the next, to the next… watching the behavior of the people walking, standing, or interacting in the open hallways. Today was strange. Thoughts never ceased along with her visual exploration. She never stopped catching new details in The Citadel’s infrastructure, no matter how much time she spent looking out the window instead of the computer; today, she noticed the central monument had a sharp top instead of a round one. She travelled down the abstract monument, and learned that, even though the structure resembled a fluid spiral, all of the edges were sharp. Her eyes didn’t stop going down. At least, not until she reached the benches closely situated to the white marble spiral. She stopped, and started standing up because of the sight; brown hair, high ponytail, that bag. “I’ll be right back.” She announced to her colleague, who just hummed in acknowledgement without looking up from her computer screen.
“What are you doing here? How did you enter, and how did you find me?” Yoohyeon approached the bench Bora sat on, immediately directing her inquiries when she reached a close range.
“Correction, you found me. I didn’t even call your attention.” Bora stood up and held her bag close. “How did I enter? Same way you did.” She held a chip between two of her fingers, showcasing her most recent hunt with a grin.
“I’m seriously going to report you. You shouldn’t be here.” Yoohyeon shook her head and looked down on Bora before trying to walk away. The shorter one didn’t let her get away, though. Bora grabbed her forearm.
“You shouldn’t have been in Sedova this morning, but yeah…”
“We don’t have restrictions on what districts we visit, except here. If you don’t work here, you can’t enter.” Yoohyeon crossed her arms on her chest.
“Maybe you mean you don’t have restrictions. You.” Bora gave her a thumbs up. “Anyway, what I came here for. Do you think you’re a trustable person?”
That took Yoohyeon off guard, but she responded before her mind could process the meaning of the question. “Of course…?”
“Okay.” Bora handed the bag over to Yoohyeon, who grabbed it with a confused expression. “You’re in charge of this for now.”
“What do you mean? What is this?” The tall woman asked while holding the bag awkwardly, and later attempting to open it.
“No, no, don’t open it. It’s a bomb.” Bora said nonchalantly and continued explaining; “Once it’s active, you can’t disable anything without my fingerprint. So, don’t open it.” With that, she started walking away, towards the exit of the building.
“Wait, what?!” Panic drenched Yoohyeon’s voice. “Don’t go, the hell!” She tried running after the other woman, but the fear of pushing a button of some sort prevented her from moving too strenuously. “What’s your problem?!” What the hell... what the hell, heck...
Bora turned around and mouthed ‘don’t open it’, then spun on her heels to face the exit with Yoohyeon’s shocked face still in mind. A side smile crept to her mouth as the security android scanned the stolen chip, and, when she was already outside, she let the restrained laugh out. Once she was at the train station again, in a different district and out of corporate sight, she pulled up the long shirtsleeve that covered her electronic device. She touched the screen multiple times, and then slid up the volume control of the earphone attached to the rim of her ear. “Hello, dear friends, I gave her the package.” Her voice picked up an ironically high energy tone.
“You’re an evil bastard, Bora.”
Bora laughed. “Oh come on, Yubin! Loosen up.”
“I guess I’m curious about what she does with it, I admit.” A different voice spoke into the microphone.
“Not much to do with that thing, to be honest.” Bora continued laughing in lapses. She sat back, crossed one leg over the other, and enjoyed the rest of the conversation as the train embarked on its traced route.