"Your fortune for a credit..."
"Wondering what your family is up to...?"
"Food ordered fresh from your home planet..."
Hundreds and thousands of voices rose into the recycled air and mixed to form a steady roar of sound, an invisible but weighty wall that pressed into Evie's ears. And yet somehow she managed to ignore it all, to tune out the cacophany of noise and settle into a place of peace deep within herself. She felt as if she were present and yet not; as if she were hovering over the crowd and inhabiting jer own body at the same time.
A burly alien, his skin a dark purple and eyes a lighter lavender, roughly knocked into her. "Scuse me," he quickly apologized in a startlingly low voice that seemed to reverberate in Evalin's very bones. "And welcome to Sanctuary."
That was enough to bring her back to reality. "How did you...?"
"You got a lofty look on your face. That's how I knew- if you've been here very long you lose your pride pretty quick. We're all the same here, no one more special than anyone else." He gave her a small, almost apologetic smile, displaying a set of alarmingly sharp teeth. "Now I hope I haven't offended yoy. My name's Javen."
"I'm Ali," Evalin replied, using the nickname she had chosen instead of her proper name. After all, being careful was not a bad thing for the daughter of the last Time Lord. "Do you work here?"
Javen touched the metallic namebadge emblazoned with his name and sector number in several languages. "Yes. I am but one of many who seeks to serve. I must be going, but if you ever need anything or if any beings harass you, come find me. Was nice meeting you, Ali."
"And yoy, Javen." The two waved cordially before the alien trundled off, barely avoiding richocheting off others who found themselved in his path.
Sanctuary. The world where lost souls could find refuge and where the hunted and oppressed would be protected. Or at least that was the first rumourEvie had heard about the place. The reality was much less glamorous, of course.
Instead of being a planet, Sanctuary was a fleet of spaceships of all shapes and sizes docked to a skeletal network of atmosphere-filled tubes and corridors. Escape could be made here, but only if those after you did not put a bounty on your head. A disproportional amount of fortune seekers, bounty hunters, trackers, and ruffians skulked through the walkways and common areas, their eyes scanning for a being with a hefty price hanging over their head.
Evie numbered amoung the ranks of trackers. Mostly, she was conscriped to recover stolen jewelery and other small goods taken by disgruntled employees or jilted lovers. Her current job was no exception- the item was stolen from a very rich man who was willing to part with a quarter of a miilion credits worth of pressed gold bars in return for a job well done. Evalin did not like to track, but it was an easy living for her, and she needed the money. It had been quite a while since she had fled her mother- she figured two or three years. Skipping around time and space confused the amount of time that had probably passed for River, so Evie could only hazard a guess.
The current year was sometime in the 423rd century. Time travel was commonplace for the middle and upper classes of the era, with many travel agencies offering excoursins to the past. However, no one had perfected travel that came anywhere close to the mastery achieved by the lost Gallifreyan civilization, and trips carried large amounts of risk and a not inconsiderable price tag.
For a thief, the times had nevet been better. If they had the money, they could purchase a black market time traveling device, take hold of the item they wanted to steal, and disappear into another time.
A tiny chime sounded in Evalin's left ear, letting her know that the device stowed in the shapeless carryall on her back had aquired the signal of the item she was after. The owner had planted a tracking device on it just in a brave being decided to steal it. Thus, Evie's job was that much easier- she simply had to listen to where the signal tranciever told her to go; the pitch and tone changed as the item moved closer or farther away.
One her hands idly grasped the medallion at her throat. Evalin had deactivated it as soon as she fled her mother and her lies of omission. It had been a simple matter of pushing down on one of the circles of Gallifreyan script and twisting the outer rim of the pendant until it popped in half. She removed the strand of her mother's hair and stowed it was, in case she ever had need of it again.
The tracking device gave a series of sharp chirps, letting Evie know that her quarry had gone up a level. She was not about to let that much gold get away, and moved toward the transport system.
Evalin crammed onto a lift designed to hold twenty beings comfortable with fifty others. The mix of various languages and the choking humidity of the air drove her back to the calm place in her mind, where she felt like an observer, as if she was gazing down on Sanctuary. Power filled her veins and for a long instant time itself was laid out before her, and she saw the space station as it was and how it would be in the future.
Dead bodies were scattered on the decks and catwalks of every ship. Blood, red as Earth poppies, green as Taurian sunsets, and every other colour imagineable drained onto the grated flooring, dripping down to lower levels. Figures in the shadows killed and killed some more. They were searching for someone, a special person who could serve their cause and help them achieve destrution on a scale so grand and widespread that it sent a stab of icey fear into Evie's heart. The face as the being they wanted began to reveal itself- glinting, amused eyes, dangerous smile- and them she was cut off from the vision so abruptly that she nearly cried out.
Claustraphobia unlike any Evie had ever felt before overwhealmed her senses and she felt as if she suffocating. Thankfully, the doors of the lift opened just as the panic began to fully assert itself, and Evalin ended up being on of the first out of the overcrowded space, elbowing her way through the crush to escape.
A positive chime sounded in her ear and she smiled to herself. From the frequency of the noise, she was fifty metres of her target. She craned her neck; even though she had sprouted up a handful of centimetres since leaving her mother, she still was not tall enough to see above everyone in the crowd.
Bright gold, glimmering like a mirage in the ship's almost clinical interior lighting, snagged Evie's eyes. She had a visual and began to slide around the knots of beings when she could and through the press when she could not. Several beings shouted angrily after her or tried to trip her, but she waved them off the most pleasant smile she could summon.
Now five metres from her target, Evalin pulled her carryall off her back and extracted a datapad. Battered and over five standard years old, it was nothing fancy- she cpuld send messages, access public databases and take pictures. The camera setting was the once she selected; to get her payment, all Evie needed to do was send picture evidence to the item's owner and assist in reaquireing it from the theives that had stolen it.
As she raised the utterly nondescript datapad crowd, she briefly locked eyes with the thief. He was young, maybe between eighteen and twenty-two standard years old and carried the stolen property on his shoulders- all one and a half metres of her.
Ivva Aboam was the daughter of Zalandi jewel tycoon Isri and his property, as all females of that society were their father's, at least until they were married, upon which time they became their husband's property. She suspected that the girl had run away with the human male to avoid an arranged marriage. While it did not sit good with Evie, a job was a job and it had to be done to put money in her pocket for food and other expenses. She was not there to get personally involved.
With a slight feeling of guilt that Evie easily pushed down, she began to press down the button that would seal Ivva's fate, only to feel a hand grasp her elbow. "Please do not do this, girl." The voice was soft and silibant, rich with a sophisticated accent that Evie could not place.
"Why not? The job is open to all trackers and I'm the first one to get a shot at the gold." Evalin was shocked at how cold and calloused that she sounded, and wondered for the barest instant if her mother would still recognize her.
"This choice would put you on the very path you fear to tread, in the darkest of alleyways and on most desolate of roads."
Evie laughed softly and again prepared to take the picture. "And how would you know that?"
"I know many things, Time Girl. I am burdened with the gift of sight." The speaker tugged effortlessly on Evie's arm until they faced eachnother. She had to tilt her head back to meet the alien's eyes- she stood nearly two and a half metres tall. Her skin was mottled milky white and glistening silver, and her fine hair, teased up into a corona, was so pale it barely seemed to have any substance to it at all.
It was her eyes, though, the intensity of the obviously blind orbs, opaque and swirling like iredescent alabastar and threaded through with tiny veins, that pinned Evie in place. The woman seemed to be gazing into her very soul, and Evalin let the datapad slip from her hands and shatter on the deck as she tried to fight the strange sensation.
"You are blind and yet you see so clearly," Evie breathed.
"Indeed. I am Shria, a Seer and a Teller of Futures. Would you like to know how you die?"
A/N: Chapter four is finally done! Yay! I'll try to update as soon as I can. Don't forget, my dear readers, to review my little story. Reviews give me the encouragement to keep writing; I like to hear what you think of my dialogue, characters, and whatever else you happen to have thoughts on. Please please please don't be cryptic, though. Just say straight up what you think of it. Thanks again and I love you guys!