To wake up in a different place from where you fell asleep is always a disconcerting experience, but when you move from somewhere familiar to somewhere equally safe, it’s somehow softened, somehow less frightening. When Cass awoke in her own bed, in her own apartment, she had no reaction other than to curse the light of day. It was fairly typical morning behaviour. She put on her sunglasses before she’d so much as opened her eyes, and shuffled out of her room to search for breakfast.

It was a pretty standard layout for a single-inhabitant box: a shoebox bedroom, a front entranceway, a kitchen the size of a shower stall, a sitting area that doubled as the eating area, and a midget-sized bathroom. The smallness of the space was not improved by her crass sense of décor... Curtains made from the old country flag with its wretched tri-colour stripes, mismatched metal chairs and end tables, and a ridiculously gaudy orange bedspread, and brushed-metal countertops. It seemed that all the clashing colours and patterns were trying to hide the fact the apartment, no matter how small it was, had been barely filled. It was a self-satisfying sort of lonely.

On the dining table, which also served as the work table and the coffee table, there was a small note, written on soft cream paper. Min always wrote on paper-- she said it had “a classical flare.” Everyone knew found it totally pretentious, but they went along with it anyway. On this particular piece of times long past, she had written: “Dear Cass, sorry for yesterday, I got something for you.” Under it was drawn a single heart and nothing more. So was her way.

And underneath that, the alleged gift lay quietly, awaiting further action. It was an AutoPlay, a fairly standard medium for most sorts of advertising. She pushed the button, and a small film clip projected on the nearest wall. It was a little cheap and grainy, but it was good enough to be recognized. A blonde man strummed a guitar with earnest intensity, and a noise-heavy song belted from its tiny speakers. An announcer began screaming incoherently over the music: “You’ve heard them on the Network ports! You know all the words to their songs! Now, for the first time ever in City 27, see Coup de Grace LIVE, at the one and only Hall of Peasant Kings...”

He continued on, blabbering about ticket prices and specific showtimes, while Cass stared violently at the screen. Next to the blonde man, singing at a ridiculously loud volume, was a dark-skinned woman with brilliant pink hair. She belted a high note, and the commercial ended.
“Would you like to replay this message?” the AutoPlay asked pleasantly.
Cassandra threw it out the nearest window. It sailed down all two of the eight stories before hitting a pigeon on the head, and needless to say, some homeless man ate well that night.

~*~*~
Celeste was not the sort of person you would want to get angry, however, it was a very easy thing to do. Vain, proud, and undeniably fussy, she was a short fuse, typically burned at both ends. To show up thirty seconds late, to lack any degree of “courtesy”, to walk too close or too far from her: all of these were suicide, socially or otherwise.

There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that she was a diva in every aspect, right down to the diamond-studded manicures and gold-foil lipstick. However, no one could doubt her fantastic singing voice, either, so they put up with the foul behaviour. A musical journalist had once discussed the irony of “the devil with the angel’s voice”, and the morning after his article was published, he was found strung up by his underpants on his balcony, crying for mercy and vowing to never write again. He got off lucky, too.
But, aside from the minor flaw of being a complete bitch, she was perfect. Her hair, dyed bright pink and set to exact angles, quickly became a global fashion trend for screaming fans: both female and otherwise. Flawless cocoa skin was accented nicely by the most expensive clothing on the market, and of course, the most flawless boyfriend on the market. Well, flawless to many.

His hair was long and blond, more often than not hanging in his eyes, which were a striking shade of gray. Residual stubble coated his face in yellow-brown fuzz, and he could rock the axe like no one else. His name was Conrad James Valentine, more often known by “Just Kurt.” He bore in mind a certain other Kurt, from times long since passed, but no one really noticed or particularly cared. He was a young man, barely an adult, plucked completely alone from the darkest recesses of some ghetto; she was from the upper middle-class, well educated, with an entire family supporting her every word and action. Well, almost her whole family, save for one rather disgruntled older sibling. The black sheep of the family, the one who had no appreciation for the finer things in life, the one who had the nerve to run off and join a low-pay piece of the government...

“Cassandra!” Celeste exclaimed, throwing out her arms, “Ma soeur, comment ça va?”
“Fine.” The response was blunt and monotone. “What the hell are you doing here?”

They had met in Celeste and Kurt’s shared suite, a penthouse hotel room on the top floor of the Hotel Fortune, one of the finest in the metropolitan centre. From its tinted windows, you could see what was supposed to be the best view of the city-- the best view of the limited wealth, the ornate buildings of business moguls and diplomats paid to do nothing. The windows were tinted blue to try and colour the gray-washed horizon.

“I do not know vy you are ze, shall ve say, the rude?” She looked genuinely hurt, lip trembling through broken English, expensive mascara all ready beginning to run down her cheeks.
“Don’t pull that ‘sensitive’ shit on me,” Cass snapped, “And speak English properly. You’re just as good at it as I am, and you know it." Celeste visibly stiffened from her perch in an antique beaded chair. Cassandra stood up and strode purposefully to the window, back turned to her indulged sibling. She lit up a ChemCig, and let the green smoke waft lazily around her head. This was a good, pleasant one, somewhere between mouthwash and candy cane.

“We had a deal.” It was slow, drawn out, and calmly violent. “When I left 25, you promised me you wouldn’t follow me here. This is my city, and I don’t need you to stick your arrogant nose into the way I’ve chosen to live.” She whirled around, lit cig in hand, fists and teeth clenched.

Celeste laughed bitterly and threw back a head of rose-pink hair. She was deathly beautiful when she laughed like that; deathly beautiful and equal parts dangerous. It was frightening.
“You think this is all about you, Cass?” Her accent had disappeared with a moment’s notice. “It’s always been about you, Mommy and Daddy’s little fucked up girl, with the broken body and the diseased mind...”

She ran a manicured nail down the arm of the leather chair, ever so delicately, gazing on it as though she was slitting a throat, and she smiled at that idea. “They were never sure if you were worth the money they spent on you. All that effort and you still don’t turn out right.”
Cass trembled with rage for a moment, but her reaction was a decidedly reserved one. She took the ChemCig, still lit, and ran it slowly down the ivory curtains. A singe mark three feet long burned into the delicate fabric, a sickly green stripe of ashes and mint smog.
“Hmm,” she mused, “Silk, are they? That one’s going to show up on the bill, I bet.”
Celeste stood silent, mouth agape, preparing to scream bloody murder or commit it right then and there. Cassandra smirked, picked up her jacket, and skipped merrily towards the door. “Oh, and before you make any mental illness cracks, you may want to get that drug-addicted boyfriend of yours looked at. That is, if he’s not taking shots of silver dollars off a stripper’s ass.”

She slammed the door loud enough for the sound to resonate across the entire floor, and left in a considerably better mood. A scream ripped down the corridor shortly thereafter. It had been a successful journey, all things considered. If Celeste was frazzled enough, the show wouldn’t go on. And if that were the case, then the personal insults had been well worth it. She popped a light blue pill, the kind to take for family stresses, and an orange one, for destructive behaviour. If all went well, she’d be evened out by noon.

~*~*~
Of course, even the most dedicated of slackers needs to work every now and again, and it seemed like a semi-decent day to do so. The smog was worse than usual, and no one dared go outside for longer than five minutes, should they cough up a lung. The pigeons and crows hid in light-rail shelters and under bridges, and the streets were emptied out. Even the homeless and the street-hustlers had hidden wherever it was that they went when the air became too polluted to breathe. No, it was a good day to sit at a desk and cycle through old documents, and not a good day for much else.

It was for that exact reason that Cass was a little disappointed when Opera told her there were no documents to sort that day. The interns, little keeners that they were, had worked all through the night to finish the backlog.
“So, you mean to say that there’s nothing to do when I actually want to work?”
“In a nutshell.” He shrugged, his podgy chins wobbling in a nearly vulgar fashion. “If you want to do some more hands-on stuff, though, there’s a man in 3F we need to get some info out of.”
“Well, I was going to make a mechanical fly out of discarded AutoPlay cartridges, actually.” She said this as though it were a perfectly valid way to spend paid time. His reaction was not a good one.

Regardless, ten minutes and a minor fist fight later, they were three flights below ground in the secondary holding bay. The Seekers had three holding bays for subjects awaiting interrogation: the primary bay for average civilians, the secondary bay for the rough and rowdy, and the final bay for those considered a threat to public safety.

“Final bay” was established Seeker code, in the field, for “don’t even fucking go there.”

Primary was fairly well furnished and barely pleasant, with cold coffee and all manner of stale pastries available, free of charge. It was bleak and the air was smoky, but it barely looked any different from the office’s facilities. Secondary had the faint air of a low-security prison, with linoleum floors and bare concrete walls, and had a half-dozen “holding rooms”, which were little more than closets with a desk and a lamp. 3F was the last one, furthest room from the door, with a great gaping gash torn in the drywall. It was generally reserved for when Final was full. Cassandra was dubious.
“Look, if we’re dealing with a nutter, can’t we send him off to the cops?”
“They sent him here. His name’s ‘Ghost’, apparently, and he says he had something important to tell the Seekers, before he freaked out and shot off some poor bastard’s arm.” Opera chuckled, spraying spit all over himself. “Quite a piece of work, he is. Anyway, he’s got a full guard, so you needn’t worry too much about it.”
“And why me?”
“Part of the negotiations. He said in exchange for his info, he’d need to speak with a Transitionary, as complete as possible. At seventy-eight percent... Well, that’s as good as we were going to get.”
Cass contemplated this briefly. She had a good chance of having her nose ripped off, but they could rebuild it nowadays, and anyway, it was a boring sort of day. Best get something done.
She lit up, gave a sly sort of grin, and swaggered right into the holding chamber. The sound-proof door shut with a faint click.
“Bitch is bat-shit crazy...” Opera mumbled, wandering off to fetch himself a stale pastry.

Inside, there were two men waiting-- one was large, authoritarian-looking, with broad soldiers and the uniform of the Elite Police Service. He had red hair, Martian red, shaved down to a bare minimum. His eyes were wide-set and his expression was grim. Upon entry, he scowled at Cass.
“They had the nerve to send a woman in to deal with so violent a criminal? Truly, you Seekers have gone downhill. On my planet, they would never allow such--“
“That’s enough, Grineloff, please try and be professional.”
He face turned as red as his stubble, and muttered a mumbled apology. She paid him no mind, and instead turned to the man who sat at the table, who looked every bit like a drowned rat. He was short, wiry, and his gray eyes darted anxiously across the room, looking everywhere but her. His skin was metallic in patches, and his left hand was mechanically jointed. It reeked of bad oil and burnt wires. His face was partially obscured by matted brown hair, but under the tangles, his yellowed smile emerged with a gleam. It was hungry, animal, and all together frightening. So was the face of a man who had nothing in the world to lose.

He licked a slimy tongue over his teeth, flicked it in and out twice, and spat at Cassandra.
“Ungrateful scum,” he howled, “Why do you not share your glorious body with the world?”
She smiled, took a long drag, and exhaled a lazy green trail.
“Not every woman is a slut, sir.”
“You know right well what I mean.” He snarled, straining to stand. Grineloff shoved him roughly back into his seat with a smug smile. It was the best part of the job. “Show me you’re a real cyborg. Show me you’re not a useless cosmetic, like the rest of them.” His voice was pleading now, bordering on desperation.

“A proud transitionary wouldn’t use ignorant terms like those.”
It was stated firmly, but very quietly. There was silence for a moment, and Grineloff coughed. Then, she continued along, with a sudden tonal change: “You said you have something to tell us. Are you planning on wasting government time?”

Ghost was squirming around uncomfortably in his seat, chewing at his blackened nails. His eyes widened, then narrowed, and his lips flapped without making a sound. He held his hands to his face, and began rocking back and forth, to the best of his ability.
“Please...” It was barely a whisper, uttered from lips too dry to speak. “Please, let me see...” He made a faint motion towards her face, and instantly she understood. She removed her sunglasses, held them to her chest, and opened her eyes to his face.

They were all one colour, lacking pupil or iris, and they were metallic gray, brushed steel. They were inhuman and cold, like staring into the workings of an engine, but her expression was still altogether worried. He gazed into those metal eyes and smiled, through a daze.
“They come in flashes... You know how it is… You’re doing good, surviving, and then they hit you again... They don’t stop ‘til you’re through... Then it goes away again.” He laughed, wheezing and coughing. “But they show you the loveliest colours... D-d-d...”
“Drugs.” She finished, “It’s all right. We can get you help for that. What did you want to tell us?”
“Drugs ain’t the problem with this city. They are.”

~*~*~
The ambulance arrived promptly, and from there out, it was just an issue of fitting the sheet over his head and guessing which forensics lab wasn’t too busy to deal with another useless bum. The official written cause of death: “drug-induced heart attack.” It seemed to be getting more and more common, these days, what with the trade in full swing. It had steadily worsened in the past five years: a chemical compound, called CMT-479, had hit the streets to devastating effects.

It was produced in the form of a silver-tinted cream, to be ingested or applied by anyone with bio-metal organs or tissues, and was known for creating a high that was long, intense, and potentially deadly. The Police Service called it “trouble,” but the rest of the world called it “silver dollars.” It was pricey stuff, too—about 90u per hit. In a moment’s notice, it could steal away a man’s wallet, a man’s health and a man’s mind... Whenever someone spotted a puddle with a glossy ripple on top, they knew it was the bad part of town. By some sick twist, it had given transitionaries a bad name as drug addicts and thugs. In a sense, she was an addict too, but only to legal tipples: prescription drugs, mint cigs, and the city rush. Times of stress led her to indulge in all three, by standing on the balcony, smoking and popping pills, where she could stare down at the traffic and sigh.

That was where Opera found her, tapping sickly ashes out into the smog.
“It’s difficult, isn’t it?” She mumbled, staring out towards the distant skyline, “I wonder why we bother.”
He looked out at the obscured sun on the horizon, piggy eyes tearing at the stench. Maybe it was his endless years in the service, or his memories of better times, but he couldn’t find the beauty in the city anymore. It was gone with a handful of silver dollars.
“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” Cassandra mused.
“Yes,” he lied. “Glorious.”

He paused for a moment, rolling the words to follow over in his mouth.
“Don’t worry too much about him. You’re better than that, and everybody knows. You’re not the same as him-- as them. Not at all.”
And she smiled, and replied: “Maybe that’s the problem here.”

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