Season 03 - Episode 02

‘gloom these days’

The lighting unit outside Ny's room has gone again but now so have most of the rest. Cautiously, he steps out of his room into the corridor and enters a twilight world of permanent gloom. These days, he cloaks himself with raggedy old grey blanket whenever he goes out. The blanket blends him into the fuzz edged shadows, helping him slip through the crowds.

His lonely left hand clutches the blanket tightly, a frail fist at his throat, so that he struggles to close and lock the door one-handed without the blanket falling. Eventually he manages and then sets off slow, hunched and bunched, short step shambling.

Many of the doors he passes have been permanently sealed with steel shutters, including those on either side of his own. The rooms beyond are bare, stripped by EnFo's after their occupants fled or were arrested. A steady stream of people still walk past these doors, but now exchanging furtive glances rather then words.

At first glance, the sides of the corridors appear to be heaped with refuse. Dark, amorphous shapes spread onto the floor and creep up the walls. As Ny passes these shapes however, they move, revealing themselves to be people. Hands even thinner than his rise up, stretched out pleading, sometimes accompanied by hopeless voices blandly begging.

“I'm sorry, I have nothing,” Ny whispers again and again, now a kneejerk mantra.

Just a few weeks ago, when the world was entirely different, anyone sneaking into The Levels from The Scapes to beg would have been chased back out by the EnFo's. Now however, with all the EnFo's busy fighting The Church and The Scapes overflowing with refugees, the desperate and starving are everywhere.

He shuffles on, hardening his heart to those at his feet, pushing away the sorrow as he pushes through the crowd. Rounding a corner he notices a stationary knot of people ahead, standing close together and talking low. As he passes, one of them breaks away to follow him, calling in a heated whisper.

“Hey!” hisses the man. “Hey, old man! We're looking for The Resistance. You know where we can find them? We want to fight!”

“They're a myth,” Ny says desperately, shuffling faster. “There's no such thing.”

“Come on,” the man wheedles, still following. “You must've heard something...”

Ny says nothing more and eventually the man gives up. For a while he shambles on through gradually quieter, emptier corridors, until he finds himself alone. Then, another corner, another figure. A young man, a boy really, steps from the wall to block Ny's path. Ny stops and squints at him with desperate, watery eyes.

“Everything you've got!” says the boy, his voice not quite steady as he reveals a long bladed kitchen knife and checks over his shoulder. “Quick!”

Ny continues to look at the boy sadly, sighing and sagging. Then he straightens his back, growing visibly taller before the boy's widening eyes. Ny's own eyes sharpen up as, from under the blanket, his right arm rises, a gloved hand reaching out.

Quite calmly, Ny watches the boy as the thumb and first three fingers of the glove curl around the blade and slowly, easily, crumple it like paper. The little finger sticks out straight, strangely delicate beside such raw power. The boy drops the ruined blade and turns to flee.

“Look for Es's Magic Soup Kitchen,” Ny calls after him. “She'll feed you for free.”

The boy flees round the corner. Ny stretches his neck before drawing his right arm back into hiding and folding in on himself once more. He shambles on, looking pathetic and broken, circling back through the crowds and eventually arriving back at his door. Stepping inside he finds Mo, the young monk, hard at work, drawing out diagrams from memory.

Mo looks up, startled, but relaxes again upon seeing Ny.

“How was it?” asks the monk.

Ny carefully removes the glove to reveal a rough mess of metal and plastic. Three long fingers sprout from a bracket at his wrist, flanked by a thumb. Every individual joint and part is a slightly different material, all scavenged textures and random hues. He turns his new hand back and forth, marvelling at it with a grin.

“Incredible,” he whispers. “Just incredible.”

“Good,” says Mo. “Come and look. I thought we might build this next.”

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