reposted because it's been a year and a half. formerly starlight, but the title still doesn't make sense.
warnings are for drugs, prostitution, gayness, polyamory, eventual violence, and other things of that nature. some of the pairings will be really weird.
i'm obligated to disclaim and say that i own nothing but the plot and maybe not even that. my version of repliku is horrifically my own, though.
the plot will take a while to actually develop. this chapter is just a prologue.
Every day starts exactly the same: wake up in a stranger's bed, smelling of sweat and saliva and sex and searching for my clothes before my eyes have even adjusted to the morning. The person I've woken up beside is never as attractive as the previous night – Arcanum does tend to alter your perception – and usually not as young. A quick, illegal shot of Vita before stepping out of their sleek, fancy hovs to proposition me is a small kindness.
I leave silently, shoving whatever small valuables I can get away with into my pockets as I pass and only pulling on my boots once I'm inside the lift, back on my way to the lower levels. Don't make eye contact, don't draw attention to myself, avoid the authorities. Ten levels, twenty, fifty, back to the worst parts of the City, the deepest levels of hell, and the makeshift family of misfits that call it home. Broken dolls and genetic fuck-ups, androids and anthros and cyborgs, everything society above has cast away. Shattered lives crudely pieced together, every new addition welcomed, every loss mourned. The camaraderie of the damned.
Those of us without permanent residence huddle under ledges when the rain starts, plugged into the net or carrying on murmured conversations or staring at the neon lights reflected in raindrops - I stand just out of reach, creep a toe out and watch the chemicals eat away at my boots, wonder if I'd really melt if I walked into it. The moment when I realize that yes, I will, it's a documented fact, is always the same mild, panicked terror that sends me scurrying back against the brick wall, pulse a bit too fast and little red words blinking in the edges of my vision. I ignore them, sit down and press my forehead to my knees until the rain stops.
I peer into puddles when it's done, magnify it ten thousand times in my head because I once heard tiny little things used to live in water, and I want to know if anything can survive in chemicals that eat you alive. The others laugh, say how silly I am, how naive, how adorable. I give them half-smiles and wander the streets until night - only differentiated from day by the increase in badly-disguised law enforcement and upper-level citizens come to make use of our many services. They hate us, look at us down their noses, but they need us - necessity, for some, is rather dirty business.
I've adapted to being the lowest life form in the city - early on I realized that no matter how hard I tried, existing was the best I could do. And for me, existing was excellent. I settled into a routine of existence and survival, did what I needed to and got good at it. It became constant and things didn't change.
It's an inevitability, however, that things will change. Such is the way of the universe.
The day started with routine - wake up, creep out of a stranger's bed, take the lift back to Traverse Town. Bought too much food and gave half to the little girl with empty eye sockets, lay in the street, staring at the tiny sliver of yellow sky visible between the miles-high buildings until the rain-sirens go off. Sit under my favorite ledge, leaning against the bricks, half watching the rain, half fascinated by the anthro beside me cleaning his catty ears.
Something moved in the downpour, subtly, barely visible out of the corner of my eye. The wires in my brain identified it as humanoid and I nearly stopped breathing. He was taller than most, moving with the mechanical, inhuman grace only androids can manage. My brain spent a moment trying to identify his face and failed - his face was obscured, black coat hooded and zipped from chin to feet. He disappeared into the rainy shadows as I watched, leaving no trace of his existence.
By the time the rain stopped, I'd convinced myself that I'd imagined him - Arcanum tends to short-circuit your brain after a while, make you see things that aren't there, freak out and throw yourself off the upper levels. The paranoia made me rethink my nightly dose of pale purple pills.
It was weeks before I saw him again.
The rain-sirens sounded, I rushed to sit under my ledge. The catboy, who had become something of a silent companion in the previous weeks was replaced by a boy with shocking orange hair and hypodermic needles instead of fingernails. I watched him for a moment, squinting at the blue glimmer across his eyes, trying to subtly discern what netpage he was on. I gave up after a moment, turning my attention instead to the rain, extended my leg just enough for the water to eat away at my shoe again.
"You shouldn't do that." A rough voice, just barely mechanical, unfamiliar. I pulled my foot back towards me, peered up through my eyelashes at the black form standing in the downpour. The material of his coat didn't reflect the neon signs, rather swallowed up the light like a black hole. His face was shadowed, all but a smirking mouth and the end of a sharp nose. I shifted, unconsciously trying to see his eyes. His smirk widened, amused at my expense, and he turned, started to walk away. I scrambled to stand up, almost ran after him, realized just soon enough that just because he could be in the rain didn't mean I could as well. I called out, half-raising a hand, a streak of childish curiosity in my voice. He turned his head towards me.
"How are you out there?"
Half a smile, stark white teeth and a ghost of a laugh. His reply was "magic" and he was gone before I could think of something to say.
The wires in my brain turned everything red, registered my racing heart, flashed little warnings in the margins as I searched for anyone paying attention. Everyone I could see was plugged in to the net, absorbed in whatever it was they chose to occupy themselves with during the rainstorm. No one else had seen him, no one could confirm that I was not, in fact, having Arcanum flashbacks and hallucinating. I muttered obscenities and returned to the wall to wait out the storm.
Over the next few weeks, I took it upon myself to do a bit of investigation. I brought the mysterious man up in casual conversation and discovered that he was something of an urban legend in Traverse Town. Almost everyone had seen him at least once. He'd been nicknamed 'Nobody' by those who were familiar with the sight of him; theories of his origins ranged from 'police hologram' to 'wandering ghost' and dozens of equally as impossible possibilities between. No two people had ever seen him at the same time, no one mentioned him to the authorities, no one looked for him after the rain stopped.
No one else had ever spoken to him. Did my brief conversation with him make me special or foolish? He was an unknown entity, a man without a face - he could have been and officer undercover, singling me out for my less than legal actions. How many of my 'clients' had cameras in their homes, how many had eyes that recorded everything they saw? A fair few.
I was suddenly suspicious of the dolled up old men in their slick silver suits and impeccably straight ties - I declined their generous offers, waited until the early hours when the rougher clientèle came around. So high they could barely see straight, hidden pockets full of little packets of pastel powders, syringes filled with pitch black liquid. They left bruises and bite marks and long angry scratches of fingernails filed sharp across my shoulder blades. Surprising that I liked these gritty, dirty, violent types far better than the clean, shiny, unhappy business men I'd served before. Maybe it was the personality, the willingness to scream when they felt like it and treat me less like a doll and more like... well.
Their roughness appealed to me, and parallel to this newfound fondness was an ever-increasing fascination with the Nobody. Past the suspicion was pure, child's curiosity, an incessant want to know who he was, what he looked like, how he was inexplicably wandering around in rain that ate people alive. The daytime hours were spent mulling over it, daily routines run on autopilot amidst whispers and murmured, worried inquiries.
Several times in those weeks I saw him - just out of reach, taunting me during conversations of mildly increasing length. I asked his name once, he replied by asking mine and disappearing before I could say I didn't have one; he always repeated my questions back to me, never gave me the chance to answer, but I never thought to be irritated with him. Curiosity is overwhelming.
He became part of my routine - three minutes, fourteen seconds after the sirens, every other day, a foot away while I was as close as I dared to the rain, a snide comment on his part and an unanswered question on mine. Traverse Town returned to its normal activities, I resumed existing and surviving and now uselessly inquiring, settled back into monotonous regularity.
But things always change, and, inevitably, they did.