This – Luna gazed once more around the gleaming plaza she'd found herself in – was Rhizome Nine? Now that she knew, certain features of the landscape began to fit into place. The monorail that ran out from the station building turned to traverse a valley that looked a great deal like the chasm that Rhizome Nine – her and the Doctor's Rhizome Nine, that is – had been built into. And at the far end of the plaza the street began to climb into a hill. A hill that Luna recognised as the lip of a crater: a crater where, after the end of the Nonary Game, she'd been tasked to clear away the devices and supplies left behind by Dio. The topography of Luna's surroundings was all familiar to her.
This plaza – no, this city – was Rhizome Nine. But it was not her Rhizome Nine.
There was only one possible conclusion: Luna had somehow ended up in an alternate universe. An alternate timeline, one she knew nothing about.
With that realisation she became self-conscious of the looks that the people passing by were directing her way. They weren't for long; just brief glances before the person in question turned back and continued on their busy schedule. But the suspicion was palpable. Did they know?
Luna took a moment to look herself over. She hadn't had the chance when she'd first woken up, and that horrific chamber had been too dark to examine herself even if she could have. So now she ran her eyes down her body, trying to see if there was anything that was drawing this scrutiny from the passers-by. A twinge of discomfort accompanied the fact that she wasn't wearing her usual dress. Instead she was in a hoodie, the purple fabric so dark as to be almost black. Parts of her clothes were stained with dust and dirt and streaks of black grease, products of her fall in that underground chamber and her climb back out. But that wasn't what had caused her unease.
What did have her worried was this: if her clothes had changed, would anything else have been lost? Luna's hand grasped at her chest for her necklace, and found nothing. A mournful gasp escaped her lips as she felt the absence. But then came relief; a small weight shifted in the hoodie's central pocket, and when Luna reached inside she found the golden cage ornament there, blue bird perched on its stand. No necklace attached to the top of the cage, but the memento was still in her possession. That was the important thing.
Huh? As Luna turned the cage over in her hands a small, folded piece of paper slipped out between the spindly bars. What had that been doing in there? Luna didn't remember putting it inside herself, but she supposed that didn't mean much.
When she unfolded the paper she found text written there. Not much: just a date and the words 'Green Sun Bar'. And there was a symbol drawn underneath with flowing, elegant penmanship. It looked like an upright cross except for the top strut, which had been replaced by a simple but striking loop. Luna checked the date again: '4th February, 2074'. That was the same date it had been in the timeline she'd left. Luna had no idea if she'd arrived at the same point in time in this universe, but she'd have to assume that was the case.
Either way, at least Luna now had an idea of what to do. Maybe she'd find answers if she followed this note's suggestion.
o-0-o
After tucking the notepaper back where she'd found it in her ornament, and the birdcage safely back inside its pocket, Luna looked up. She appraised the crowds still striding by at pace. Then, after a perfunctory attempt to remove some of the dust from her clothes, she took the plunge, heading straight towards the person she'd best guessed would be able to answer her question.
"E-Excuse me?" Her voice came out hesitant and weak. This was the first time she'd ever spoken to anyone she didn't know by name. So Luna wasn't surprised when the man walked right past her without stopping.
She picked another person out of the crowd, another hopeful chance for assistance, and tried again. "Please?" she asked the woman she'd stepped in front of. "Do you know the way to –?"
But Luna was cut off once more. The woman let out a derisive snort, her expression utterly hard. As the woman raised a hand to performatively brush dust off the shoulders of her crisp black business suit Luna saw the filaments of interwoven silver that ran on the back of her fingers; the moment after that, Luna spotted that the woman's eye was artificial when its lenses spun as she de-zoomed. Then the woman stepped by just as the previous man had, leaving Luna's words to carry ineffectually into her back.
Three more attempts failed. Each time, Luna noticed more and more of the enhancements on the people she approached, from the reinforced arms of one wiry little woman to the inbuilt communicator in the ear of the man who was too engrossed in a conversation on it to even react to Luna's question, even one stocky man who appeared to have replaced whole parts of his head leaving visible, faintly glowing seems. When Luna appealed to a small family – one of those groups of passengers that had disembarked from the monorail that had arrived as Luna emerged – even the two young daughters had small computer screens implanted in their forearms. Though Luna wasn't able to see more of what they were doing with them after the parents protectively ushered the children away.
It was just more proof that this wasn't her universe.
Bit by bit, the flow of foot-traffic began to sweep Luna away. It wasn't in her to collide with people, even by accident, so as the press of commuters around her grew denser and their pace increased Luna found herself obliged to move along with them down the plaza. She pulled the hood of the clothing she was wearing over her head – at least her hair was in its usual neat braid and fit comfortably inside – out of an instinctive worry of how all the people surrounding her were reacting when they looked at her. Even with that precaution, Luna found herself buffeted one way then the other as people veered off in disorienting directions. It was seemingly random as far as Luna was concerned, though it was the product of these people knowing this city and where they were going like the back of their hands.
Luna gradually made her way to the edge of the stream of people, finally making it to an area near the side sheltered from the stream of the crowd. She slumped as she leaned against the wall, despondency overtaking her. That had been futile. She was no closer to finding out where this Green Sun Bar was, or how she could possibly make it there. And she couldn't help but agonise over what the reactions of everyone she'd approached had meant.
But she couldn't give up. Not in this strange place. As one last effort, Luna looked past the crowds to where they'd been carrying her, past the plaza's end. There, as the marble pavement of the plaza faded away in favour of smooth tarmac, she saw a row of what could only be taxis lined up on a road. Luna wasn't sure if she could make use of them, as a stranger to this world. But the drivers would certainly be able to point her to her destination, if anyone could.
Luna pulled together her courage and made her way over.
At first, staring at the window of the first taxi in line, Luna hesitated. Would the driver favour other customers over her, just as the people she'd tried to ask for directions had shunned her? But it didn't seem like anyone else was looking to use the taxi. Luna stepped up and lightly tapped the front window.
The window slid down with an electric whine. Luna got her first glimpse of the man inside, who had a thick, messy beard and a glass eyepiece clamped over his right eye on which Luna could spy some sort of road-user heads-up display. The driver glanced her way as she gingerly leaned over to peer in.
There was a small moment of silence. Was he about to rebuff her? This close, the purple hoodie wouldn't help to conceal her features at all, whatever it was about her that people were reacting to. But then the driver grunted, "Get in," and the rear door opened with a clunk.
Luna slipped inside. When she was comfortably seated, she looked up towards the front of the car. "Can you take me to the Green Sun, please?"
"Payment first." At least this time Luna had gotten an entire sentence out of someone.
Luna raised her arms around her face and simpered, trying to look innocent. How was she supposed to pay? She'd never used money before, and she hadn't found any cash on herself even while rummaging for her birdcage.
The taxi driver had noticed her hesitation. He turned in his seat to glare right at her. "Your sort? Payment up front."
Her sort. So the driver knew what Luna was. Luna tried to appear unperturbed, even as her apprehension intensified over how exactly she'd comply with his request.
"I'm sorry. I'm not sure –"
The driver's hand jolted out, gripping her left hand. Luna was too shocked to resist as the man yanked her arm forward over to the front half of the car, until her left wrist was positioned directly over the central divide. It was held there, firmly, for a couple of seconds. And then something in the central pillar beeped, and the top surface turned green.
"Huh," the driver muttered as he released Luna's arm. "Guess you're good for it." He turned back in his seat to face the road and placed his hands on the steering wheel. "The Green Sun it is."
Luna looked around for a seatbelt to buckle herself in: that was what Sigma had informed her you had to do in a car, as an aside whenever he retold the story of how he'd first been kidnapped. But before Luna could get very far in her search two webs of plastic erupted from either side of her seat. They crossed over her chest, intermeshed, and then formed around her shape to hold her in place. The driver up front didn't seem to find it strange, so Luna tried to keep the surprise off her face as well.
The taxi began to pull away. As they picked up speed Luna took one last look out the window, back at where she'd come from. The plaza stretched out behind her, gleaming chrome and marble shimmering like the mirage of a sea, the crowds that had pressed on her now little more than a crowd of black dots. Now that Luna wasn't stuck in the middle of that she was able view the entirety of it at once and appreciate the skyscrapers as more than just towers looming over her. And she could look past them too, following the thin line of the monorail over the chasm to the other side where an ornate building – that Luna could only think of as a palace – surveyed the city laid out before it.
And finally, though even at this distance Luna was unable to see to the top of it, Luna looked back at what stood in the very centre of the plaza. The door Luna had emerged from underground through was embedded in an imposing stone plinth, built to elevate what stood on it above the crowds of pedestrians passing by. That was the statue of a man, colossal enough to loom even over the skyscrapers, one finger pointing out towards the horizon. Spinning around his waist was a holographic banner of metres-tall text.
'Our Founder – Father'