Violet's Light – chapter 2
Deep in the belly of the Undercity, under flights of staircases devoid of sunlight, miles below the deepest, thickest rock, monsters stirred in the deep, infested waters.
A blonde street boy, armed with a simple knife, knocked on the door of a long abandoned canning factory.
The pattern was quick and was answered with another knock from the inside. When the door opened, a buff woman with a scowl, looked him up and down, rolled her eyes, and let him inside.
Despite how much Deckard hated the people on topside, he hated coming here too. He believed in the cause, to fight for a better Zaun, but he couldn't help but feel the pressure to measure up here too. The people here were scary. And even more so was the man that led them.
"It's one of our rats, sir," Sevika said from the doorway to the lab.
"Send him in," a deep, sultry voice sighed heavily in the darkness.
Deckard flinched as he was suddenly shoved forward by someone else he hadn't seen in the darkness. A hulking figure with archaic tattoos all over his body and a silver ring under his nose. Deckard shrank three inches under Gustov's meaty hand on his shoulder.
His eyes glanced wildly around the subterranean room, a survival habit he had ever since he was little. He saw a doctor at a desk in the corner. He saw a chair in the middle of the room with a portion of its back blown away as though by a shotgun. Deckard gulped. He would have to do everything in his power to not be put in that chair.
He almost jumped out of his skin as a pink, boney, hairless cat rubbed against his leg.
A skinny man, sharply dressed in a maroon waist coat, stood in front of a large, round window, watching giant, monstrous fish slowly swim by the glass. He answered with his back to him.
"Well? What was so important you had to come tell me in person?"
Gustov squeezed the boy's shoulder a little harder, which didn't help Deckard's voice come out less shaky.
"T-There was an explosion, topside! A bigwig workshop. They don't know how it happened. A girl died. One of ours."
"We were already aware, boy," the man said calmly, walking over to his desk and fiddled with a brass syringe. "Owned by the Kirammans… Yet another injustice to add to our cause. Your information is not new to me."
Before Gustov could drag him out, Deckard stammered. "B-B-But! Vander was there!"
Before the man could aim the needle of the syringe at his own eye, he froze and stood up straighter.
"I saw him," Deckard continued, "He showed up with the chief. When he came out, he was carrying the girl. She had pink hair. A whole crowd saw them…"
The skinny man stood very still for a long time. He slowly put down the syringe on his desk. His grey skin almost blended with the shadowy darkness, dimly lit by the watery light from the window.
"What happened then?" he asked, his back still turned. "What did Vander do?"
Deckard shook his head. "He… didn't do anything. He just… stood there and… cried. I've never seen a man cry like that, before. I almost didn't recognize him…"
The man went quiet again.
Silco looked out his window at the depths of the river, the deathly waters that snaked through Piltover and Zaun. The lifeblood of this cursed city. Somewhere above, the bridge of progress still continued to stand. Just as it was several years ago… yet another soul was claimed in the name of progress.
"Sir?"
He waved his hand. "Get him a meal, keep him off the streets."
Without any chance or reason to protest, Gustov escorted Deckard out.
When the boy left, Silco put his hands behind his back, sighing deeply. His shoulders slumped as another giant fish swam by.
"It is almost ready," a gnarled voice said from the corner of the room. The doctor held up a tube with glowing purple liquid inside with an equally gnarled hand.
"Show me," Silco said, the cold edge back in his voice.
The doctor attached the tube to the water feeder against a glass cage with a white rat inside. He then picked up his hairless cat and dropped the cat inside with it.
When the rat began to drink from the purple liquid, it started to writhe in pain. Its bones snapped as muscles grew and reshaped under its skin, swelling like a balloon. The noises it made… was revolting. The cat had no chance.
The sight Silco saw… made him surprisingly sick.
He had seen horrors before. Horrors even the most hardened criminals of the undercity would have trouble stomaching.
But to his shock, flashes of a woman's face danced in his eyes, a person he hadn't let himself think about in years. And he was surprised the splattered blood inside the cage was making him think of the last time he saw her face, eyes wide and blank, blood dribbling from her mouth.
Silco covered his mouth, fighting the urge to gag.
"Are you alright?" the doctor asked, his voice always so smooth and calm.
Silco wiped his mouth, smoothed back his hair, and went to grab his coat.
"I need some time to think," he said as he walked out of the lab.