Nina's eyes narrowed as she looked at Reina across the table.

“So that’s why you said that you could take me back.”

“It is, yes.” Reina’s warm smile quickly disappeared to be replaced by a slightly more serious face. “To be honest though, it cost me quite a sum to purchase your drop location,” she sighed as though lamenting her decision. “When I saw your profile pop up on the Network, I thought you would fit in quite well here.”

“The Network?”

“The Network is an organization that handles most of the intelligence for other organizations that fly under SuTSU’s radar. They tap into other systems to build a live database of the activity happening on the three plates.”

Tap? More like hack, Nina thought. “They can pick up on where SuTSU forces are?”

“Yep, it’s their flagship product you could say.” Reina’s attitude improved when she noted that Nina seemed to be unfazed by the fact that she had declared that she had essentially bought rights to her.

It also explained the attitudes of everyone yesterday, she realised. She had been annoyed that everyone was already putting her under Reina’s umbrella, but now she understood why they had. If Reina had paid to see where she was to be dropped and then picked her up, anyone else recruiting her would be seen as taking a slice of Reina’s lunch.

“So why did you pay for my location after seeing my file?”

“Because you’re beautiful,” Reina replied. Seeing a tinge of red creep across Nina’s face, she burst out in laughter. “I’m joking! We can’t even see pictures on the files we look over. That’s half the fun, seeing the person for the first time.” Waiting until her chuckles subsided, she added. “You are quite beautiful though. If we could get you into some local wear, you would look great.”

Reminded of the comments that she would occasionally receive from her coworkers above, Nina calmed herself and looked at Reina.

“OK. I liked your file because you’re quite young for someone to be picked out by SuTSU. You’re also a woman, and we don’t have anyone in the team that is from Caecus yet either. Three out of three in my book,” Reina smiled.

“What makes you think I will join?” Nina thought that unlike what she had previously gathered, she might actually have a small amount of bargaining power. Reina had already invested to get her to this point, and it was clear that Nina was someone that she was interested in.

“You can’t be sure of anything in life,” Reina said as she picked up the teapot once more. Seeing that it was empty, she set it back down with a sigh. “That being said, I don’t think you will find anyone around here that can offer you what I’m offering you.”

“The chance to return home?”

“That’s only part of it Nina,” Reina leaned forward as though closing the distance between them could make their relationship closer. “You’ve already heard that you can only go down, there is no going up. People are reluctant to leave because chances are, they would never make it back. Some plates are easy to pass through, but others are impossible for normal people. Not only do you need a network of people that can help you all the way through, you need absolute trust in those people. Imagine if we dropped into the Luesa Badlands below only to find that our connection had disappeared and we were stuck. It isn’t easy to make your way through the plates, otherwise everyone would be doing it.”

Letting Nina think about it for a moment, Reina sat there. Then, reaching her hands out, Reina clasped Nina’s hand between her own. “Join us and I promise that if you still want to leave once you have paid off your dues, I will drop you back home myself. Between then and now, I can show you the world Nina. Not just the different countries on Caecus, but a million things that you would have never have known about. There’s so much more to life than what you had before, so why don’t you seize that opportunity to see things with your own eyes?”

Seeming to snap out of it, Reina released her hands before leaning back against the couch once more. “If you don’t want to, I can’t force you. If you want to join Dari Corp instead, I can arrange for you to see Hala and Cross.” Standing up, Reina strolled across the floor before moving behind the counter. Standing in the doorway, she paused. “Their work is safer, and the risk is lower. But honestly, once you have experienced moving from plate to plate, the rush of the freefall… it’s hard to forget it. That’s why we are The Cloud Orchestra.”

Leaving the room, Nina heard Reina’s voice drift through the doorway as she left. “Once you’ve decided, the bell is there. Think about it.”

Nina listened as the heavy door at the top of the stairs shut with a thud before a mechanism ticked over. Left in silence, she looked at her tea cup which was still half full. Ignoring it, she sighed and flopped back on the couch, arms limp at her sides.

Really out of options, she concluded as she looked out the window. Deciding to go ‘outside’, she hauled herself off the couch before heading out the door. Worried that leaving The Cloud Orchestra would result in her getting lost, she instead chose to sit in the small courtyard between the building and the street. Unlike the main road, where the space above them stretched to twenty floors, it seemed that the ceiling on this street was only half of that. Nina guessed that the further from the main roads you travelled, the smaller the ceiling heights became until the areas descended into a collection of apartment-like residences.

“What to do,” she said to herself as the courtyard was empty. When she thought about it, it seemed that she didn’t really have many options apart from joining Reina. Dari Corp was an option, but she reminded herself that Hala and Cross had dropped her back here themselves as though to say ‘this is where you belong.’

Once you have experienced moving from plate to plate, the rush of the freefall… it’s hard to forget it.

Sitting on the ground against the wall, Nina’s thoughts drifted to the first time she had fallen through the earth. She smiled when she thought back on how scared she had been when she dropped through the horrifying black chute as though it had just been a bad dream. Pinching herself to make sure it really wasn’t a dream, she thought about when The Cloud Orchestra had first descended around her.

Trim riding on her stereo as though she were a DJ in the clouds.

Jade and Aline twisting and turning as though they were one, smiles plastered on their faces.

Svanda looking like the most relaxed person to ever skydive, complete with an assault rifle.

Saela frantically trying to learn the ropes as her face switched between horror and determination.

And then there was Reina. Drifting down in the centre of them all with unreal composure, she looked as though she was the queen of the sky.

What a group, she thought. It was a scene that could have been pulled straight from a fairy tale - a circus in the sky. Travelling through the seven plates, the group saw the world. Evading danger and laughing as they went, even if what they did wasn’t exactly in line with the law, they were a group of individuals that did what others couldn’t do.

And Reina was offering her a place in that story.

She wanted to know more details, but concluded that she wasn’t going to get anything else out of them unless she agreed to join. This wasn’t signing a contract, so the print wasn’t there for her to read. Although she had always buried herself in books that told these crazy tales while cooped up in her apartment, the thought of living it out herself made her feel uncomfortable.

This wasn’t Nina. Someone who had hidden away from the world, scared of change, was being thrust into everything she had spent her entire life running away from. She was an office worker, not a soldier. She was a negotiator, not a smuggler. Even if she thought her skills as a negotiator could have been useful, she was already completely outclassed by Reina.

What did she have to offer? She felt like she had lied on a resume and then been offered a job that she was unqualified for. Her incompetence would show as soon as the waves began to build.

She thought it would be nice if the world could swallow her up right now so that she could avoid the situation, but a wry smile appeared on her face when she realised that she was precisely in this situation because the earth had swallowed her up in the first place. She wanted to return to her apartment, climb into bed, and pull the blanket over her head so that the world could continue without her.

Listening to her stomach rumble, she sighed. It seemed as though it wasn’t going to be that easy. Her savings from Caecus were stuck on a piece of plastic in her pocket that was useless right now. She could run all she liked, but without any money, she was going nowhere.

She knew that a girl with no identity and no money was a perfect target for unsavoury characters too. She didn’t know what kind of crime happened in this place, but by how open everyone had been about illegal activity, she could come to her own conclusions. With criminals on one side and the authorities on the other, what she needed right now above all was food and security in this alien place.

Walking back inside, she stared at the rusty bell that sat on the counter. The noises from the people on the street behind her became muted as she approached, the dust floating through the light as it moved around her. She felt like she had drawn a poor hand and then used all of her cards already, nothing to fall back on and only one direction to push forward in. For someone that had always shied from the unknown, the bell itself scared her as it represented a gateway into a series of events that she would have no control over. However, the door behind her to the street represented even more unknowns, a path that could lead her anywhere, and a path that could turn dark very quickly.

It was the logical decision, wasn’t it?

Nina closed her eyes before taking a deep breath and ringing the bell.