Chapter Twenty Two: Bad First Impressions

If there was ever a way to not go about gaining information, it's starting a brawl with my closest neighbour, a girl so muscular she looks genetically enhanced.

But of course, that's precisely what I do.

I can't help it. I've been in such a bad, bad mood all day. One of those moods, the one that festers the longer you leave it, like mouldy cheese. The mood that leaves you with an automatic frown and a mouth that feels hatred towards smiling.

(That sounds like my natural face, but I digress.)

My bad mood began at my forced removal from Hadrian, who half of my hopes are pinned upon to convince his brother-- once we find him-- to allow me back above the waterfall. Blondie had finally gotten some sense, and she was wondering why there's a god turned up in her neck of the woods, and frankly, I was wondering why Hadrian didn't get the hell out of there earlier, too.

In my head, my thoughts were crashing like the waves that had consumed me, days ago.

Does he actually want me to come back with him?

Is he going to seriously, truly, help?

Why?

Over the top of Blondie's head, I caught Hadrian's stare. He was only a few metres away, but I could see a new, concerned look, outweighing his usual frivolity. He stood with his arms folded, and his foot tapping. When the blonde girl tried to engage with him, his stare was thunderous.

But of course, she had sent me away, and she had kept Hadrian, thunderous stare or not. It hadn't perturbed her in the slightest, nor had she raised any alarm regarding the god before her. No-- she was too busy staring at his abs for that.

In fact, she looked suspiciously triumphant as I followed the man walking away from the middle of the square, the two of us heading towards the slum backstreets, foreboding and dark. I looked over my shoulder only once to see her eyes, boring into mine, an odd look flashing there; as if we were in a fight, but I'd just walked out of the arena and surrendered.

But Hadrian was behind her, looking lost and confused, and I wondered if it might not be quite so easy to bed him as she thought. The guy was notoriously stubborn.

It certainly was harder for me to get what I wanted, much more than I had anticipated when I'd sacrificed myself in the hopes of finding my brother. Contrary to what I imagined, finding my brother wasn't quite like wandering around until you found the right pub-- it was a lot less certain, and a lot more at stake, and the easiest answer seemed to be to have sex with Hadrian and share his power.

Until he had refused me.

Now, I have hope of my own power, independent of the handsome king that I'm not sure who's side he's on. To me, it sounds a far safer plan than having to hope on something as unreliable as passion and love. As long as I can make it to Chronus, I'm confident that I can convince him to let me back up the waterfall, to leave Elysium-- even if I have to bargain my life once more. Surely finding a sorcerer set on summoning the dead is something that benefits Chronus, if only because he has more workers reaching this hellhole to bully the crap out of.

Speaking of-- the living conditions here are awful. The streets are filthy, probably due to the sewer system that is backlogged and pouring out drainwater from the pools in the middle of the roads. There's no carts or horses for the outer district, Morgan tells me. Punishment for sin has stripped us all of every dignity there is.

The living blocks are the epitome of a bored and poorly creative architect. They stand ten flights tall and longer than several houses put together, but for all their largeness, they house so many souls that they're full to the brim. Morgan explained how everyone is split into their specialty work. First, the blacksmiths who weld most of Elysium's iron. Then there's the quarriers, too exhausted to notice that they live, eat, work and sleep all with the same people, mining ores and supplying stone to the kingdom. Labourers exist to build and mend the walls of the districts, to build new houses, to repair and extend these ugly apartments, and then go and live in their own construction. The sewer workers are one of the many underground sections that spend most of their daylight buried deep beneath the city, mending leaks, fixing pumps, shovelling shit.

Morgan took me to my bunk on the eighth floor of apartment block N, and I had only a few seconds to pity the small, cramped bed with a sheet, devoid of any other personal effects. A trunk was stashed beneath the bed, one for me, the other for the person that slept in the bunk above me.

They're even economical about their air here.

After the brief tour, Morgan told me that the workers will be returning soon, so he would show me where to go in the morning and who to report to quickly, before they could all leave. I didn't protest; my plan was to get access to the sewers, and find out how to navigate through them. We left the apartment block, and continued down the street.

The entrance to the sewers is directly across from the quarry, where an enormous amount of noise can be heard, at all times, streaming from the open gates. The day shifts weld into the night shifts; something the sewer workers luckily escape.The sound of digging and shouting drowned my ears in a swathe of sound, and I squinted to see the hundreds of people, all stood in lines as they worked on their patch.

Morgan nudged my arm, gesturing toward the dim, lamp-lit entrance to the sewers. There were symbols on the door, symbols which universally mean "caution", "danger", "hazardous", and "why-bother-coming-in-here". Beyond the door, there was a small, cramped cloakroom where plastic biohazard suits in a bright and conspicuous orange were hanging against the walls. Morgan looked at me appraisingly, before trotting across behind me to some of the smaller suits. When he handed it to me, my eyebrows shot up.

'I wear this?' I asked. I already knew the answer, but I wanted him to deny it. I hoped and prayed he denied it.

He didn't. 'Yeah. Everyone in the sewers needs the suit.'

Damn, I thought. At least this way, I can't be missed if my body goes missing.

How reassuring.

Picturing Hadrian and Blondie curled up next to one another and filling out "forms" for the newcomers made me pull the suit on angrily, legs first, then zipping up my body into the swaddling, noisy material. Fecking blonde and fecking dark-haired flirt. Then came the hat; orange all over, except for the face, which had a clear visor.

I was ready, but for what, I wasn't sure.

'Ready?' asked Morgan, and I nodded. Without explanation, the man stalked away, through the double doors that would lead us further down. Sure enough, once opened, they revealed a stairwell that travelled deep below the city.

As we descended, the air became heavier. My bodysuit was cumbersome, and I nearly tripped several times following those winding stairs downwards. After about five flights, we reached the first floor, which Morgan introduced as Headquarters. Inside, desks and mechanics sat side by side, all running the sewers and organising day to day life. The smell of coffee was greater than any other aroma which was a pleasant surprise, and it wasn't hard to see why. Hundreds of workers were pouring over sheets of paper and pictures of tunnels, plans and reports.

Then, a few floors below that, level two.

The level was in greater disarray than its shallower counterpart. According to Morgan, level two is all across this district, and the lower levels go deeper into the city. The deeper it gets, the more dangerous; rockfalls, flooding, death by stench...

Typical.

But, I was optimistic about getting inside. Getting to level two had been undoubtedly easy. I just had to keep going down a level for each district, the palace being the lowest.

If only.

Morgan reminded me that the lower levels are off-limits to newcomers like me. We're too dangerous to take lower, and he has a fair point: I do plan on breaking the rules and I am deadly. Somehow, I didn't imagine it's quite what he meant.

Meanwhile I cursed the person who designed the levels to split us all up.

Who I met shortly after.

Morgan led me across the expansive floor, where workers were dashing around. At the end of the corridor, I could see men and women working on lever pulleys for the lifts, channeling children and adults up and down floors. They appeared to be the focus of the work; tools and materials were dragged to await arrivals, and then handed quickly to them to carry back to their levels.

The two sides tapered off into two large, spherical tunnels, at opposite ends of the space. More workers were disappearing and reappearing into them, disheveled and dirty. It was horrendously fascinating.

Morgan led me to the woman in the centre, a bronze-skinned girl with dark, curling hair and a build like a world record athlete: powerful and in top shape. Her chiselled chin pointed down at me, her eyes glaring from high above. Her eyes were so dark, and her lips so full, that it took me a few moments to realise that she'd dismissed me.

I gaped at her, and she snorted and repeated herself, tossing her waving black locks into my face as she turned to leave.

She told me to stay on the first floor.

With all the other weaklings, she said.

Weaklings.

Morgan took my elbow, leading me away from where I was seething on the spot. The woman had already left, surrounded by a gaggle of people clamouring for her attention, her opinion.

I snort, because I became so angry I attacker her later, after Morgan telling me I was on the first floor and would never get access to two or below. Morgan had tried to console me, but my anger was unabatable. We returned to the first floor, where I was put under some guy's care, although I doubted he would ever speak to me to tell me what to do. He lost eye contact with me the moment he'd told me his name, and told me to arrive in the morning at first light.

And being on the first floor meant I had no hope for getting out of here, unless Chronus came looking for his brother, and decided to let me out. It was a slim hope.

So after that humiliating dismissal-- in front of many of my co-workers-- and the frustrating feeling of difficulty, I did not take kindly to meeting my bunkmate and Level Two Command, Britta. The name Britta was so discordant with the real person it was comical; Britta was rude, blunt and strong.

Britta, the girl who had disdainfully sent me away with no other reason. And seeing her, her pinched face, and her perfect, tamed-yet-poofed hair, only inflamed me further. When she caught sight of me, a wide grimace split her face, leering and pitying.

'Well, well,' she laughed, 'If it isn't you, little One.'

And I just sprang.

If I could say one thing in my defence, it was that she had it coming.

I flew at her with a grunt of upset, merged from the day's disappointment and the bitterness I felt towards her. I flew at her wonderfully shaped hair, and wrenched at it with my nails. As the girl shrieked, I scratched and punched and let my emotions consume me.

Looking back, I roll my eyes. The shock on her face had been priceless, even though pairs of hands had grabbed me and held me back, it felt like every hit had landed.

In reality, none of my hits had landed.

I am in a bad, bad temper.

Hadrian is...somewhere, being Hadrian, whilst I'm assigned to sewer duty.

And I'm never going to get out of here, at this rate.

Sour mood is a mild way of putting it.

A/N: Sorry for a short update but I have gone back to university now. Long days of hospitals have returned! :(

Hopefully next chapter will have more Hadrian and Nerissa!

What did you think? I know you lovelies already comment so much, but I'd love some improvements.

(although, take pity. I was falling asleep trying to write this. So difficult to concentrate!)

Larissa

xxxxxx