When I was a kid, my parents would take me to ride the trains for the simple joy of riding it. I would run up and down the cabin, for reasons that only my younger mind could comprehend. Though if I had to guess, I would say the bliss of having fun without borders were as welcoming as ice cream on a hot day. The tracks were empty now. With the tunnels cleared, I was pushed into station alone. With only a torch to guide my way, I climbed onto the station platform. A thick layer of dust had coagulated into a black smirk on my hands and I wiped them against my pants.

The walls of the station were filled with graffiti. Apparently, despite the dystopian would outside and the sensory field borders, or the passage of time, teenagers were still teenagers. Sprayed over every single available space were words like 'SILK' and 'GOOSE' and other phrases that were nonsensical to me, most of which I took as the equivalent of 'cool'. A single graffiti however, was plastered over every other, but split separately so they covered all three major walls. The number '139'. Probably a sign for a gang or something similar.

I headed towards the exit, where the once automated access gates were now defunct, rusting slowly with time. I had to manually push the rotary bars, which proved little challenge, despite the spine shrivelling screech from the rust.

“Oh...” I let out as I neared the closed shutters of the main hall. Even though I had not physically felt anything in weeks, I could sort of sense a tingle, perhaps psychological, down the length of my arm, and I knew that the sensory field was marked by the same shutters.

I approached the gates, and saw one had bright white light shining through the bottom, likely unlocked and served as the entrance for the aspiring graffiti artists. Using my robot arm, I easily lifted the shutter over my head and stepped out into a brightly lit...

“Park?” I said out loud, the shutter crashing shut behind me as I let go of my grip.

Park goers turned to the sound of the crash, which meant that all eyes were now on me. So much for stealth.

There was clear blue sky, with a few fluffs of clouds and the bright white light of the sun shining down on me. Lush green trees populated the grounds with not a building in sight, even after the horizon. There was a playground to the far east where children swung on swings and slid down slides. Families had picnics on small mounts of hills and joggers ran the paved tracks. In the middle of everything was a pond, where elderly threw crumbs of bread to feed the fishes.

“What?” I voiced in confusion. I had expected to be in one of the underground tunnels. The world overhead, flooded with Mist, was supposed to be uninhabitable. “I must be dreaming.” I wished I could pinch myself to test it.

“Excuse me, sir!” I turned to two officers, dressed in police-blue uniforms, walking towards me, hands on the tasers at their hips. Immediately, I could tell that both their left eyes were cybernetic implants, the crystal clear darkness and shifting lenses giving them away. “What were you doing in there?” they asked. That's right, they. I am addressing them as a single being, because I can.

“I'm uh...” I turned back to look at the shutters where the sign 'SENSORY BORDER: NO TRESPASSING' was plastered across it. “I was...doing...the...” I tried to think on my feet, but the otherworldly sight of a park had broken my concentration.

“I'm sorry sir, but we will have to take you in for questioning.”

I could hear my heart beating against my chest. Getting caught at that point would be detrimental, not just for me, but for the people who followed me here. Amelia, John, Lindsey, all of them would be put at risk. Yet, the more I thought about it, the less my mind wanted to work.

“He's with me.” I turned to the voice. A woman, dressed in a long sleeved dark green shirt, blue jeans, brown work boots, with medium length, frilly blonde hair, walked up to us. Her face was lean and sharp, her maroon eyes rugged and steeled.

“And who might you be?” the officer asked.

From her pocket, she pulled out a laminated card. “Chief engineer of the F.R.C. This man was helping gather some fault data from the underground tunnels.” The officers took the card and a red light flashed from their mechanical eyes as they scanned the credentials.

They passed the card back. “My apologies madam.” They turned to me and nodded in approval. “You two have a lovely day.” They proceeded with their patrol, leaving me with the mystery woman.

I turned to her, and though wary, I uttered, “Thanks. Whoever you are.”

She ignored me, looking at our surroundings and back towards the officers, making sure they were a distance away before saying. “Walk with me.” She headed to the west.

Mostly out of my own curiosity and partially because of my lack of choices, I followed. Before I could ask a question however, she fired the first shot.

“What are you doing here?” she questioned with an annoyed tone. Instantly, I felt a certain familiar antagonism with her.

“I don't...” I tried to wrap my mind around the situation, but decided to just play by ear when my thoughts went nowhere. “I don't think I should answer that. Who are you anyway?”

She ignored me and continued, “I've been tracking you all morning. The moment you crossed the border into Roagnark territory, pings were going crazy on my system. You're lucky no one else knows who you are, Milton Jones.”

“How did you know my name?”

I was getting increasingly irritated when she again skipped my question and said, “I'm taking you to a safe place until I can find a way to get you to the Cryo-Tube.”

“Wait? What? No! You can't do that?”

And for the first, she replied, “Why not?”

“My grandchildren are being held hostage right now. I can't abandon them.” I did not think it was smart for me to have revealed my situation there and then, but something inside me slipped, and my gut was also yelling at me to trust her, despite her being slightly irritating in my honest opinion.

She stopped in her tracks and turned to me. “Milly and John is here?” I stopped walking as well.

“You know them?”

Again, she went back to ignoring me, instead thinking out loud, “If they are being held hostages, there must be some sort of demand. What's the demand?”

“Wait!” I finally exclaimed, my frustration with being ignored having hit its peak. “You are going to tell me who you are and how do you know them, right now!”

She looked crossed, her brows furrowed. She turned away from me and continued walking. In the distance, I saw the 'sky' cutting away at the edge of the park, and a glass door that led to a different darker street was cut into it. Apparently, the park was just an artificial simulation. The 'sky' a virtual dome.

She continued, “If you want my help, you're going to have to tell me what are the demands. You're not some pampered hero anymore, Milton. Time to sack up.”

I clicked my tongue at her. I could not help but feel that we had met before, for her attitude was annoyingly familiar. I gave the proposal some thought, and concluded that I was indeed a cornered rat between Jason and The Forum. I needed all the help I could get. “Fine. The rebels have Amelia and John and a girl called Lindsey. They demand that I help them sneak into the city and lead them to an E.M.P bomb.”

The engineer stopped walking again, this time though, her eyes were wide with what I could only say was shock. Maybe even fear. “E.M.P bomb?”

“Yeah. Sneak in, use the bomb to disable the city. No casualties.”

“No casualties?!” she exclaimed, stepping up and grabbing me by my collar. “I cannot allow you to do that! Do you even know what an E.M.P bomb will do to us?”

I pushed her hand away, her allegiance now even murkier to me than before. “Nothing happens, alright? I got hit with one of them and it shut down my implants for a few minutes. That's all. Everyone will be fine. But if I don't do this for them, my grandchildren will end up dead!”

She grabbed a hold of her own shirt collar and I noticed that her left and right index fingers were shining metallic. She pulled her shirt down, revealing a metal plate grafted over her left breast, right over where the heart would be.

Her teeth was gritted as she spoke, trying to get me to see how dire the situation really was. “Yours are just attached to muscles. But half of the city has cybernetics connected to vital organs to keep them alive!” My eyes stretched wide with shock. “If an E.M.P bomb goes off near us, it will kill over a million people!”

I stood speechless. My brain ran through the scenario, scanned her face. Was she lying? She did not looked to be lying. “Who are you?” I asked again, knowing that her answer would decide our next move. “How can I trust you?”

The woman pulled her shirt back up, and with a sarcastic tone that I had only heard from one other before, she replied, “Who else?” She took out the laminated card again and handed it to me. On it were her name and information on her next of kin. “I'm Clover Parker. Doctor Greene Parker's granddaughter.”