Nina’s gaze followed the direction that Aline had nodded in to see a group of three men and two women walking along the next platform. Wearing armless grey cloaks that stopped at their thighs and black pants underneath, their white boots marched along in rhythm. The uniforms were surprisingly featureless besides a few pockets, only a small logo that looked like a collection of layered isometric squares printed on their chests. Although their builds were different, they all shared the same jet black hair that was dressed in a variety of styles.

“Attractive, aren’t they?” Jade laughed as they moved towards one of the stationary cylinders.

Nina continued to study the group to realise that Jade was right. While the thin cloaks on the women seemed to tantalizingly hang off their round figures, they also highlighted the powerful broad shoulders of the men. All featuring white skin that was close to being devoid of imperfections and sharp sets of piercing eyes, the group seemed almost celestial in comparison to what Nina had seen on the orange and red floors.

“And now imagine what kind of hardware they’re packing under those cloaks,” Aline said as they approached the white cylinder that sat at the front of the line. Staring at the group, Nina was surprised to be caught as one of the suits turned to meet her curious gaze as though he had detected it. Seeing that she reacted by looking towards the ground in fright, the suit ignored her before continuing onwards.

“Don’t worry, they’re used to it,” Jade smiled as they reached the cylinder. Around two meters high and three meters long with a pointed nose, the white bullet-shaped tube shone under the bright lights that hung high above them. Sitting in the transparent pipe which had the centre of the cylinder sitting level with the platform, Nina wondered if it was made of some form of plastic or if it was metallic.

“In we get,” Aline said as the pressed a button on the exterior of the tube. Once pressed, a hole opened in not only the tube around it, but also in the white cylinder inside it. Watching as Aline ducked into the opening, Nina followed her to find that there were a couple of steps.

Four black seats sat in pairs inside the bullet-like cylinder with a brown coffee table in the centre, reminding Nina of a small sofa setting. With grey carpet and a white wall that featured a single screen to the side, Nina watched as Aline flopped down on one of the seats underneath the single light that was mounted in the centre of the ceiling. The inside of the cylinder was only slightly smaller than it had appeared to be on the outside, which told Nina that there wasn’t all that much space between the interior and the exterior.

“KF-14,” Jade said as the door closed behind her. Seeing that Nina had sat opposite Aline, she decided to sit next to Nina before smiling in response to her cold gaze. “It was just a joke.”

“You didn’t grope her, did you?” Aline sighed as she lay back into the seat. Unlike the public transport that Nina was used to, the seats here were actually quite comfortable.

“Like I said, it was a joke,” Jade said as she mirrored Aline’s action before closing her eyes.

Nina sat in silence as she thought that she felt the cylinder begin to move, although the lack of windows left her unsure. While some of the technology she had seen had felt almost backwards, other things like the boots she had seen, the weapons, and being able to jump from such heights had been far beyond her imagination.

“So where is KF-14?” she asked before they could both doze off and leave her with nothing but questions.

“Oh, right, a map,” Aline said as she pressed a button on a small control panel in the armrest of her seat. In response, the screen on the wall flicked on to display a circle which seemed to consist of smaller circles. “This is called a capsule, by the way,” she added, nodding in reference to the cylinder that the group sat in.

A lot of circles, Nina realised.

“This is Luem, the capital city of this plate,” Jade said as she waved her hand in the general direction of the screen. “Each dot represents a building, with AA-01 being in the centre and following buildings tightly spiraling outwards.”

“There’s so many?” Nina thought back to when she had first descended upon Luem and how it had seemed to be an endless forest of concrete. Now it was beginning to make sense why. The amount of dots that made up the circle on the screen was incredible.

“Well, you can count,” Aline replied as she pressed another button on the panel which caused the map to zoom in. “AA-01, AA-02, up to AA-99. Then you have AB-01, AB-02… you get the picture.”

“So that’s…”

“Around 23,500 towers in the spiral between us and the centre, and then even more outside,” Jade answered her question before she could calculate. “The distance isn’t bad as the crow flies, but the lower transport system only goes outwards in a spiral.”

“So many,” Nina sighed as she looked at the map. Even now after it had zoomed to centre on their journey, dots still filled the screen as though they were simply large pixels.

“KF-14 is only 2,764 towers away, so it doesn’t take that long,” Aline laughed as she adjusted her position on the sofa. “Get comfortable though.”

Not that long? Nina thought. Either the towers themselves were tiny or the capsule that they were travelling in was capable of traveling at insane speed.

“Here,” Jade said as she pressed a different button on her own control panel which replaced the map with a new set of information.

Time to destination: 5h 5m :: Current speed: 925km/h.

About to exclaim that they were traveling so fast, Nina paused as she saw that the current speed continued to increase past 1,000km/h. Watching with a mixture of unease and awe, she waited until the current speed seemed to reach the maximum.

Time to destination: 5h 3m :: Current speed: 1202km/h.

“So fast,” she murmured as she watched the display bounce between 1,200 and 1,205. Despite the fact that they were supposedly traveling at a speed that was frankly insane to Nina, the ride was as smooth and as quiet as when they had first left the station.

“The systems up top are supposed to be even faster,” Jade sighed as she curled up on her chair before mumbling that they should have bought snacks. After Aline told her that they would stop for a break after an hour or so, she smiled before placing her feet on the table and closing her eyes.

Aline’s proposal had also pleased Nina as she had been concerned about being stuck in the small sitting space for five hours without a break. Although she hadn’t had much to drink this morning, she had still been concerned that she was going to have to ask some awkward questions about what facilities were available. Relieved, she sat back and began to do some simple calculations in her head. At 1,200km/h, it told her that they were travelling around 6,000km away from JE-22. If there were around 2,750 towers in between them, each tower was probably only around 2km square.

Only, she thought as she inwardly sighed. While it seemed small at first, she had to consider that The Cloud Orchestra was already almost 100 floors from the ground, and that was still considered low. Svanda had told her that there were yellow, green, blue, purple, and white floors above them, so if there were 70 red floors and only 45 orange floors, she guessed that higher colours had even less.

“How many floors are on each tower?”

“Usually 240,” Aline replied although her eyes were closed. It seemed that the pair of them had the intention to doze through the first leg of their journey and as Nina didn’t want to disturb them further, she returned to her own thoughts.

Although she understood that the pair was essentially walking her through her first job, she didn’t have much of an idea about what they were exactly supposed to be doing in the first place. If it was as simple as dropping some stuff off somewhere else, she didn’t see why The Cloud Orchestra were even needed. Sure they had dodged the security at the station, but Nina had a feeling that there had to be more to it than what she had been led to believe.

What exactly that was, however, was a different question. Why wasn’t this job assigned to someone like Dari Corp who specialized within Luem? She thought that maybe Reina was simply a shrewd businesswoman if she had started The Cloud Orchestra while she had been at the orange level, but chalked the idea off. Reina didn’t seem the type to run errands, and she was going places. She was young and it was obvious that she had already climbed quite far, so would she end up heading in the direction of someone like Julia who was obviously a few cuts above the other people they had been dealing with?

Probably not, considering that she seemed to enjoy the orange level. If it was nostalgia, that the crowds that split apart for her, or the ability to hide from SuTSU that kept her there, she could only guess. What she did know was that she needed to just do whatever was asked of her until Reina ended up taking her on their adventure through the plates. Once that happened, they would have to pass back through Caecus, and there she would have an opportunity to take matters into her own hands. Did Reina even know where she had lived anyway? If she lost them and disappeared home to bury herself under the blankets, would they find her?

They might not, but SuTSU might if they had done it once before. The fact that SuTSU might find her while Reina couldn’t wasn’t something that sounded particularly appealing to her either. While Hala, Cross, and Reina had all told her that she would have been taken by SuTSU to be used as some kind of unpaid workhorse, Nina imagined for a moment that she had instead been recruited to be a suit. Her figure might not have been as fantastic, but with her hair and pale face, she thought that she could have passed with a little work. Would she inherit that lofty air that others seemed to be mesmerized by? Would she become someone with an air like Reina if she slipped that grey cloak over her head?

Like I would be brought down here to be some cross between a soldier and a police officer, she thought as she closed her eyes. Unfortunately, it seemed like it was going to be a long trip.