Invisible Ledge - Chapter Four

"Sure. Let's go." I say sarcastically, scarcely believing what she's saying. She doesn't take it very well.

"If this is a joke to you, you can just around and go back to your little dorm." She frowns heavily as she says it, and all the warmth that was so largely present not two minutes ago is gone from her voice. She's really serious about this.

"Sorry, It's not that I think it's a joke..it's just... it can't be done, Christie." I mutter the last words with an apologetic look. She softens up just a little bit at that.

"That's what they want you to think, Andrew. That they're untouchable. That we're all destined to be under their boots for our entire lives..." Anyone could hear the anger in her voice as she says those words, yet I get the feeling only Insurgent like myself, who have seen the dark side of the Risen regime, would agree, or even understand.

"But they're wrong, Andrew. We can be free of them, their lies and their manipulation." She continues, regaining her composure.

"How?" Is all I manage to ask, and she just smiles at me.

"Drop by drop even the biggest bucket will overfill at some point."

"That still doesn't answer my question. Why are you being so cryptic? Isn't the entire point of this to let me know what's going on? Why am I here?"

"Actually... the point of this is to get you to join us." She says it so simply, so calmly... like I have any idea what she's talking about. Which, for the most part, I don't.

"Join what? Join who? Christie, you're saying all these things but won't give me any concrete information!"

She really can't argue with that, even if she wanted to. But, she doesn't. She just takes my hand, sending shivers down my arm and looks at me straight in the eyes.

"Do you trust me, Andrew? I know we don't really know each other, but I feel like... like we're the same. We're both victims of this injustice the Risen have put upon us. I feel like I can trust you, and it's why I vouched for you with Ed. Do you think you could trust me too?"

I was not expecting that, and I think it's quite apparent on my face, or rather, my slightly dropped jaw.

"Of course I do." Is all I manage to say, and take a risk at squeezing her hand. She doesn't let go. Instead, she gets up, still holding me, with a smile this time around.

"Let's go then." She says, and I gladly obey.

We walk the streets for a while, holding hands the entire time which makes my heart race. I'm grateful I' wearing my gloves so she can't tell just how sweaty my palms are.

We talk about everything but what we're actually doing, or rather, where we're heading. I try to make a few jokes to cover my nervousness and she giggles at them, even though I don't deserve it. We're acting... like a couple, it comes to me all of a sudden, which just makes me even more nervous than I already was, if that's even possible at this point.

Conversation ceases when we reach the outer part of the Lower District. Out here the buildings are more spread out, older and run down. Most are covered with seam or are otherwise blackened from the fumes of the nearby Industrial District. Christie lets go of my hand and walks ahead, navigating the barely lit alley without any effort. Anyone could tell she's been here before.

I stumble in the dark trying to follow her while avoiding all the rubble and trash littered across the concrete pavement. After a few minutes we reach a tall apartment building, whatever is left of it in any case, with most of it's windows either missing or broken, and it's door seemingly forced open. The red bricks lay covered with black industrial residue, turning to an almost burgundy color, making it appear even more foreboding.

"Kind of dark here, isn't it?" I whisper in the darkness.

"That's the point." I hear her whisper, though I can't really see her in what's turning to be impenetrable darkness.

We climb the narrow concrete stairs leading to the blown out door, carefully watching our step. She stops at the entrance, looking a bit nervous herself.

"Once we cross this point, there's no going back. You trust me, don't you?"

"If I didn't I wouldn't be here, would I?"

We stand in a spacious, unlit corridor with dirty hardwood floors and smudged mirrors. A chandelier rests in pieces just a few feet away from us and shards of glass litter the space. Every corner is covered in grime and mold, and a pungent, musky scent fills the air. You'd think no one has been here for centuries. I can almost hear Christie say : "That's the point", even though she's walking silently in front of me, leading forward into the unknown.

Christie leads me through the building with nothing but her soft voice as a guide, and a faint chuckle at the few times I stumble and fall face first on the dirty floor. After a few dark rooms we reach a long staircase, which seems to spread to the very top of the building, which has at least forty floors. We climb the stairs in silence for a bit, but after some hundredth step we're both starting to get short of breath, and Christie shows no signs of stopping.

"Just where are we going exactly? There's nothing up there but more rubble, is there?"

She doesn't answer for a while, just continuing to climb. When she finally does it's between strained inhales and exhales.

"I'm not allow to say anything Andrew, you should have guessed that by now. Come on, there's only a few more floors left."

She was right about that, at least. Thirty or so steps after that we finally stop, gasping for air with sweat on our foreheads. I take a brief moment to look at the window which seems to be in tact and see the dim lights of the Lower District expand endlessly in front of me. It's easy to forget just how big the Lower District actually is when you spend you entire life in a small part of it. I can't even begin to imagine the size of the Capital then, considering the Lower District is the second smallest district, right after the Grand District.

We finally exit the staircase, and find ourselves in a corridor not unlike the one on the ground floor. There's only one difference. An elevator door stands open across from us. There's one on the ground floor, but it's command pad was busted, so I just assumed the elevators in this building were out of order. Seems I was wrong.

Christie still won't reveal anything, and just walks into the elevator silently, leaning on it's metallic wall with her arms crossed and waiting for me. Her behaviour puts me off a bit, as I'm not sure I like the idea of jumping into something blindly. Still, knowing there's really nothing for me if I decide to go back, I step into the elevator, and the door closes behind me.

"Where to?" I ask with a glib smile, trying to ease the tension that's building up between us. It doesn't work.

She clicks an entire array of buttons including thirty three, twenty one, fifteen and a few other ones, and just as I'm to as what she's doing, it comes to me as the elevator starts to plummet down. It's a password.

The elevator moves with a frightening speed, causing my guts to climb up to my chest. The floor display is nearing zero... if we hit the ground at this speed the entire building will be leveled, let alone us. I brace for impact, when the display reaches zero, yet we're still moving downwards. I look at Christie with a confused look, and her facade finally breaks into a hearty chuckle.

"Aren't you the brave one? You should have seen your face! Your eyes were as wide as an owl's!"

I want to be mad at her, and say bitter things, but I just laugh at myself. Of course we wouldn't crash, that would be completely stupid.

The elevator finally stops, and I rush out before I loose my lunch, only to have my darkness accustomed eyes blinded by a stunningly bright lights.

I squint as my vision tries to adjusting to the unnatural brightness of the room before me. Everything is a blur, and fully opening my eyes is downright painful, so Christie leads me by hand, like I'm blind, which isn't too far from the truth at the moment. She seems to have no trouble adjusting, however...

"It takes a while for your eyes to adjust to this light, but it's not damaging like other artificial lighting, and we need as much of it as we can get down here..." She tries to explain.

"What is it?" I ask, just as my eyes recover for me to see that we're walking down yet another corridor, only this one is paved in white tiles instead of blackened filth like the ones above, and the walls appear solid concrete...

"It's Xaneon, an elemental gas derived from Neon and Xenon gas." She says casually, but there's nothing casual about that statement when we're standing in a secret underground facility.

We learned about Xaneon and other artificial elements in Advanced Chem. class. It's a pretty expensive substance, difficult to synthesize and hard to maintain. How is it possible that it's all over the place?

The blurring of my vision finally ceases just as we get to a tall, armored door at the end of the corridor we just passed through. It looks like solid steel, molded and shined to perfection. But it doesn't have a handle, or a lock or anything that would indicate where it's open. My ears ring "That's the point." once more.

Christie presses up against the door and whispers something, a password probably, and the heavy metallic barrier slides open, revealing another flash of bright light at the end of a small entrance corridor.

I'm trying to wrap my head around everything I experienced in the last half an hour. Christie's talk of rebellion, all of this... Restricted high technology, armored doors with voice recognition passwords... I wonder what else they have hidden away in here. I get my answer, and my jaw plummets to the floor at the sight of what's in front of me.

I'm standing at the entrance of a complex so large, that it's impossible to see where it ends. The walls are at least five meters tall and appear to be solid concrete, illuminated by innumerous Xaneon lamps everywhere. Tall platforms of various heights stretch through the space, suspended in the air by cast iron columns and connected with glass stairs.

There's machinery everywhere, all sorts of it. From industrial factory robotic arms, presses and cutters, through home appliances all the way to what seems to be a metal frame of the bus on the ground floor. People scurry about the contraptions, writing down in their notepads with sharp, trained strokes of the pen, repairing and cleaning the gadgets, tearing them apart... it looks like a giant factory.

Christie knocks me out of my shock with a gentle shake on the shoulder.

"Welcome to the Molehill, Andrew. And be careful not to catch any sparrows. They might confuse your gaping mouth for a tree hollow."

"Very funny." I say as I look around. I can't tell if I'm either shocked or amazed or both. My eyes run wild around the spacious complex, trying to soak up every last bit of information, every singe gadget and device. How are these guys able to keep a station like this running right under the noses of the Risen? And, more importantly, what the hell are they doing with all of this?

Christie nudges me along the room, sapping me back to reality from time to time with a nudge. There's so much to soak in I don't even we're walking down another well lit corridor that spreads out into others until we reach an intersection of four long hallways. Just how big is this place?

I ask Christie the same question, and she just chuckles.

"Not even I know. Most people think it reaches under the entire Capital. We keep to sector L, which is under the Lower District. We don't really any more room, obviously."

"What is this place, Christie? Where have you brought me?" I ask finally. All the fear I had is gone, replaced with a desire and lust to know more.

"It's home for most of us now, but I think it used to be a military bunker or something similar. Come on, we're running late as it is." She says as she drags me to the right corridor with a single door on it's end.

"Running late for what? Do we have an appointment?" I try to ask in a sarcastic manner, but she doesn't seem to be amused.

"You'll see..." She just smirks and gives me a wink, and I'm not exactly sure what to make of it.

We the only plain thing I've seen, unlike the other things in the Molehill, which seem to be anything but plain. I'm standing in front of an ordinary wooden door. Christie lets go of my hand, opens the door and motions for me to enter.

"You're not coming?"

"No, you'll need to do this one alone." She says simply, and shrugs.

I just and head through the doorway.

From the inside the room looks like an old fashioned office. The walls are covered by tall bookshelves, filled to the brim with messily stacked, leather bound tomes. The air is still and musky, filled with the scent of old dust and sweat. A velvet carpet stretches under my boots, and for a moment I'm almost sorry I'm trekking the remnants of the industrial waste gathered on the soles of my feet on such a delicate piece, when my eyes travel to the center of the room. There's a hard wood desk with two chairs opposite each other. My eyes meet the gaze of the person sitting in the high back chair with their arms folded, waiting for my arrival patiently.

Leaning his elbows of the table with the fingers of his hand intertwined, and his chin placed on them, a tall, masked figure is looking at me with raised eyebrows and a smile showing through his stubble. The entirety of this face, aside from the mouth is hidden by a silver metallic mask, expressionless and motionless. The sight is more than a little creepy...

"Ah, Andrew. It really was about time they got you. Please, heave a seat" He motions to the chair in front of him, but my brain is too overloaded to work, and I stand there like an idiotic idol, not moving, barely even blinking, with my mouth just slightly open. His voice is familiar, yet I can't seem to remember in my confused state of mind.



"Sit, Andrew. I don't want you to collapse on my carpet. I just head it cleaned." He says it with a commanding tone, like he expects I'll just obey like a puppy. Surely enough, I do, and instantly feel better when my feet aren't struggling to support my weight anymore.

"You must have a lot of questions..." He makes a pause just long enough to open my mouth, and then interrupt me. "But you'll have to find the answers to them yourself."

I close my jaw shut and look at him with raised eyebrows.

"Why am I here then?" I ask, crossing my hands. His glibness and arrogance awake a stubbornness and defiance in me, and I just look at him with a stern look.

"I never said I won't give you any information, Andrew. Just that you'll find your particular questions better answered elsewhere, and... " He makes a brief pause "...by someone else.

Not really sure what to say to that I just nod, firmly placed in my chair now and let him continue. The words he utters in the following hour should come as a shock to me, should be some dark and twisted revelation that I've been living a lie. I should struggle to understand, ask more questions, beg for more answers...But I don't. Instead, I can almost imagine the pieces of the puzzle clicking into place, the ones who were hidden from my view in plain sight showing themselves at long last. Finally, it all makes sense.

The Insurgent rebellion was he wildfire who's spark had been ignited long before the conflict. Their conflict with the Risen was just old hatreds flaring up again, old enemies clashing steel an bullet once more. The never ending battle of cat and mouse. The eternal conflict of the rich and the poor...

I listen carefully, sporadically nodding or letting out a "Hmm", but otherwise let him tell his story. He talks about the Risen and Insurgent of course, their fundamental differences, and some other things I didn't have an enough of an attention span to follow. I can't help but feel like in one of may boring social studies lecture, and that I'm talking to a dull old Risen professor, not a damn rebellion leader. When he finishes I'm supposed to have learned something new, but I think we both knew I didn't need any convincing about Risen underhandedness and evil. So, when he asks me if there are any questions, instead of asking about them, or the rebellion, or anything else, I simply ask : "Who are you"

He smiles and slowly takes off his mask, and I can almost hear he final peace clicking into place. Now I finally now why the conversation felt like a social studies lecture, rather than an introduction into a rebellion. It's because it was delivered by the same man whom I've heard blurt out Risen lies for almost two years now. With his cold blue eyes and a sinister smile, Edward, my Cultural Origins professor is looking at me with the expression of a sly silver fox.

"Hello there, Mister Harris."