Black Night, White Light

Summary: Cyberpunk!AU. In a country occupied and ruled by a military dictatorship, the Guardians, a young thief is just trying to provide for her family and survive under the brutal regime. When her sister mysteriously dissapears from the hospital, she has no choice but to make a deal with one of her executioners, a Guardian with unfinished business, leading him deep into the city's underground network.

Raffe/Penryn of course.

Rated T for violence, language and adult themes.

Prologue

Two years ago

The smell of gunpowder hung in the air.

Not that that was anything exceptional. It had become a conventionality these last month, since the attacks had gotten more and more frequent.

The people are getting rebellious, Penryn thought. The Guardians need to act.

She tried to ignore the consistent fear that always seemed to follow her around these days, a sort of foreboding feeling that welled up from inside her chest every now and then.

It doesn't matter. If they drop a bomb here now, you'll be powerless to stop it anyway.

"Stay close to me," she called over her shoulder to her mother and sister. They looked no less intimidated than she felt, their pale faces like beacons in the sea of brown colors around them. Brown clothes. Tanned skin. Dark dirt on every face that passed them. The southern district wasn't a place the Young family usually visited. Much less the black market. But they had no choice.

"And pull up your hoods."

They obeyed and despite the stifling heat, Penryn covered her own head with the dark cloth of her scarf, pulling the stiff fabric over her forehead and chin. It wasn't enough to mask her appearance, but at least a passing guard wouldn't immediately be able to make out her face. Though Penryn doubted that there were any guards in this place. And if there was one, they were all dead anyway.

Penryn reached back to take her sister's smaller hand in her own, making sure that her mother held onto the other side of the little girl. Taking a deep breath, she lead them into the dense crowd. They just needed to reach the small hut that sold and bought scrap metal and sell the clocks. Then they could leave. It couldn't take too long.
She navigated her family through the narrow streets, throwing a glance back at them whenever her sister struggled to keep her footing on the wet cobblestone or coughed at the steam that hit them in the face. The steam seemed to come from , in the Southern District, where most of the industrial lots stood, it was everywhere.

If the Guardians don't kill us first, we'll all die of lung poisoning in a few decades.

They passed a stand that claimed it was selling real Guardians' technology and weapons. Of course, citizens were prohibited to carry firearms of any kind to diminish the risk of an armed uprising – not that they'd ever stand a chance – yet many people carried a gun hidden away in the folds of their coats or tucked into their boots, anyway. It was simply safer in these part of the city. And if you ever got your hands on any Guardian technology, you could buy your family a whole year's worth of food.

"There it is," Penryn said with some relief and tugged her family toward a small tin shack on the side of the street.

Penryn doubted that the shed was large enough for all three of them, so she gestured to the to wait outside and ducked through the low doorway.

The inside wasn't as tiny as the outer appearance suggested, but it was still dark, damp and crowded, and she wanted nothing more than to get this over quickly and go home. A stocky man sat on a wooden box at the end of the hut, slouched over a table with various metallic objects on them. He looked up when she entered.

"Seller or shopper?"

Penryn cleared her throat. The stank of petrol and sweat made her eyes water. "Seller."

The man grunted. "What do you have?"

She let her bag drop from her shoulder and reached inside, pulling out one of the complicated clockworks her father had made before he left them. One of the few he hadn't taken with them. She handed it to the merchant. For a moment, his eyes widened in surprise, before he masked it with a fake mask of boredom.

"Hmm," he uttered, scratching his protruding belly.

How does one stay fat in a place like this? Penryn wondered.

"A broken watch, not of much use. Mediocre metal. I give you ten credits for it."

"What?" Penryn had expected the merchant to offer a payment below value, but ten credits wouldn't even buy her little sister a decent meal. And she'd seen the man's face when he saw the clock. He recognized her father's handiwork. Before he left, taking almost all his possessions with him and leaving his family with half a dozen of broken clocks and no money, he'd been a somewhat well-known and somewhat wealthy watchmaker. Every single one of his watches brought in at least 200 credits.

"How many of those things do you have in that bag?" The merchant asked, as if he hadn't noticed her enraged reaction to his offer.

"Seven," she said through clenched teeth.

He grunted again. "I really don't know what I'm supposed to do with seven useless watches, but I'm in a good mood. I'll give you sixty credits for all of them."

Penryn was seething. She stared at the merchant, noticing his red, watery eyes, his wobbly chin, the way his shirt stretched over his belly. Where did he take the money for all the food that he seemed to stuff into his mouth? Couldn't he see that she and her family were practically starved?

"Every single one of those clocks is worth at least thirty credits. I'll give you all seven for 200 and no less, because I'm in a good mood."

She bit her tongue. She was in no position to negotiate, and she knew it. Plus, angering a merchant of the black market could be a big mistake.

The man's face pulled into a grin. "200 credits for a bag of junk? You have a big mouth for such a little girl. I tell you what. You give me the clocks and an hour to find out what else you can do with that mouth of yours and you'll get your 200 credits."

The merchant rose up from his chair and came around the table. Fear welled up inside her chest again, but it wasn't as strong as the rage that rolled over her in waves.

"Excuse me, what did you say?"

"I said-"

She slammed the heel of her palm into his face. It was an instinctual move, one of self-preservation but also one of assertiveness, and it would either show this thug that she was not to be messed with, or cost her much more than a few lousy credits. She heard bone crunch as his nose broke, blood welling up under her hand. He stumbled back, bumping into the table behind him and knocking it over. Metal spilled over the floor.

The man swore and covered his face with his hand to try and stop the blood, but made no move to advance on her. At least not anytime soon. It was as Penryn had suspected. Fat and lazy. There was no doubt that he could get in some pretty bad hits should he attack her, but she was a good fighter and he'd have his hands full with her – and not in the way he wanted.

Penryn looked around and spotted an open tin box on one of the other tables, stuffed with violet bills. Credits. She walked over to it, not turning her back on the merchant, and pulled out four 50-credits bills.

"200 really is too little for these clocks and you know it," she said to the man on the floor. "I suggest you accept the deal and leave it at that."

With that she dropped the bag on the ground and turned, leaving the hut. The merchant made no move to follow her.

Outside, she was met with the worried faces of her family. No doubt they'd heard the noise from inside.

"What happened?" her mother asked.

"It doesn't matter. I sold the clocks for 200 credits. Now let's get out of-"

It felt like a blow to her chest, but infinitely more powerful. While she flew backwards, crashing into the hut behind her with such force that the skew tin construction collapsed on top of her, Penryn wondered for a second if the merchant had finally decided to attack her. But she immediately knew that that wasn't it. It hadn't been anything solid that touched her. It took her a few moments to come out of her daze. She blinked, her eyesight blurry.

Over the ringing in her ears she heard the explosion – the second one, that is – and muffled screams, as if her ears were filled with gauze.

If they drop a bomb here now –

If the drop a bomb here now –

Drop a bomb. Here. Now.

A bomb.

Penryn struggled to come to her senses. Her entire back hurt, and her left arm felt numb, but she managed to struggle out of the heap of metal planes that she lay in.

"Paige? Mom?" she screamed. The smell of gunpowder was sickeningly strong now, smoke obscuring her surroundings. Apparitional shapes moved through the smoke, and she stumbled to two silhouettes close to her right with a pounding heart.

"Penryn!" It was her mother's voice, the desperate, helpless panic in it, that finally ripped her out of her trance. Her mother was standing a few steps away from her, slumped over, and at her feet lay… lay-

"NO!" Penryn fell to her knees in front of her sister's limp body. "Paige? Paige, can you hear me?"

Hectically, she pressed two fingers against her sister's neck, searching for a pulse. Behind her, her mother began wailing.

"She's alive," Penryn gasped out, feeling the faint throbbing under her fingers. "She's alive."

Her mother's wailing didn't stop. Penryn threw her a quick glance to make sure that she wasn't hurt – physically at least – then carefully scooped Paige into her arms and got up. "We have to get out of here."

For a moment her mother didn't move. Penryn didn't know what she would do if she didn't come along. With Paige in her arms, she had no way to drag her mother behind her and getting her sister to safety was her first priority. But after a moment, her mother turned and followed her. Together, they made their way through the charred alleys, trying not to step onto the bodies of the injured or dead that lay in the street.

I'm finally publishing this. The idea for this has been sitting in my head for such a long time. I started working on this story a while ago, but it took some time to work out the plot and world and get some basic work down. I'm a huge Cyberpunk fan, and I would love to see the characters of Angelfall in a dark and gritty futuristic setting. I said it's a Cyberpunk AU, though it's strictly speaking going more for a Dieselpunk direction, but same difference.
This is going to be a longer story, and I hope you find the concept somewhat interesting.

Please let me know what you think!

~K.