“I don’t want to come here again…” Charlotte said as the door to the kitchen closed at her back.

Her eyes moved through the almost desolate room full of scree and Helms, shuddering at their sight. “I’ll forget about entering this department, I don’t want to be enslaved by that thing again.”

She walked around the room close to the grey wall, keeping herself away from the tables, until she arrived to the sole wall which didn’t have a door. She clearly saw the marks where it opened but there were no buttons or handle to open it. She tilted her head before knocking on it but nothing apart from the sound came from it. She then put her hands on it and pressed on the wall-door as hard as she could. Nothing.

Charlotte frowned and turned back to see the room again, eight grey doors in total without counting the stone wall-door and three men, along with the screens on the tables, was everything in the room. After deliberating for a moment, she walked towards one of the doors. She knocked twice and stood in wait for a response.

Noise came from inside the room as things were being moved and soon after that a tired voice answered. “Yes?”

“It’s me, Ch-Hiro. Can you open the door?”

“Hiro? Oh! That boy! Yes yes! Wait a moment.” After answering, noises started to resound through the room again. Alphonse opened the door after a minute. “What a surprise! I didn’t know you were still in here! Do you need something?”

He answered showing her his blackish-yellow teeth in a face covered of oil and dirt. Charlotte looked past him to the room for a moment and then back to his face.

“Uhm, I want to get out but I don’t know how, can you help me?”

“You don’t know? Well, it’s easy! You just need to go to the resting room and open the exit with the panel in there!” He knocked on his head before continuing. “That girl sure is forgetful, not telling you something that important.”

“She had other things to do, I believe. Thank you very much, I’ll be leaving now. Bye.” Charlotte smiled and turned around to leave.

After she took three steps, Alphonse spoke again. “Are you sure you want to go back?”

“I’ve got a place where I can comfortably sleep in, yeah.” Charlotte looked at him over her shoulder after she halted her steps.

“Well, yes, but I don’t mean that. This section of the city is quite lawless, even more at night. Going back is quite dangerous for someone as young as you.”

“Oh.” She turned her body completely to face him and put her hand under her chin as she looked down for a second. “I believe it’ll be alright, I’ve got this one with me already.”

Alphonse saw she patting on her back and nodded in response. “Alright then, come back here if you need something. But I’m still curious, why don’t you spend the night here? There’s a sofa in that room you can use and tomorrow morning you can go back.”

“Ah,” she scratched her left cheek and smiled weakly, “I don’t know, but I feel suffocated in here.”

“Suffocated? This place has a quite good air system, you know?”

Charlotte shook her head as she smiled. “I don’t mean it in that way. It’s just… I feel as if I’m in a prison, and those Helms are weird, like, I mean, I don’t know how to explain, they cut off my senses? Time flew way too quickly and I didn’t even notice it and then I was scared when I took them off… It just was so weird I don’t want to stay here.”

“That’s a weird way to put it, but yeah. I think I get it. They’re too comfortable people often get way too attached to them.” Alphonse nodded with his eyes closed. “Alright then, see you later… Ah! Do you have it loaded? I believe I took out all of them.”

“Huh? Loaded? Oh, the gun. I didn’t check it, can you gimme some?”

“Yes! Wait a moment!” He rushed back into the room and rummaged through the boxes in there.

She waited a couple of minutes for him to come back with a small metal box. “There are fifteen in here, normally you’ll need to pay for these, we have a point system here you can trade them for, I guess Olimpia didn’t explain this to you either. But I’m giving these for free! You should be grateful! Really really grateful!”

“Thank you! I’ll be leaving now, bye~” She waved him goodbye and went to the wall opposite to the wall-door where the resting room Olimpia showed her was. On this wall were only two doors. The other one had a control panel which prevented anyone unauthorized from going in. She looked at the panel for a moment before shaking her head and entered the resting room.

Inside were two sofas with an old stereo system which played music all the time, it had more than ten thousand different melodies, with the objective to relax the ones inside of the room. There was also a water dispenser and a wardrobe with table games to spend time with others. All of this she heard from Olimpia. There weren’t any electronic ones, though.

I wonder if game consoles are prohibited in the city… I’ve not seen even one these last few days.

She walked to the end of the room where a door she didn’t notice at first was. She stood in front of it, looking at the automatic door while her eyes twitched. She put her hand on the panel at its side only to get the same answer she had speculated as soon as she saw it.

“Unable to grant permission, please call an administrator.” Resounded from the old stereo with its music still going on.

Can I hack it? Yeah, but I didn’t bring anything with me and I don’t think I can do it without making the alarms going off otherwise… I didn’t teach Prism any technology relate stuff… Another thing to do in the future. Alright, back to square one, I guess.

*Knock knock*

“Yes~?” A tired voice answered from the other side of the door.

“… It’s me.” Charlotte said with enough strength to be heard at the other side of the door but somehow managed to express her reluctance of the matter.

“Oh! Did you change your mind?” Alphonse asked as soon as he opened the door after rummaging throughout his room.

“No… I, am only a guest in here, I guess. I can’t go out alone.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah…” Charlotte answered with a lowered head. She looked up at him with her head still lowered. “Can you open it for me?”

Alphonse brought his oily left hand up and covered the lower part of his face. “… Alright, but don’t do that anymore. A boy shouldn’t do that kind of thing.”

Charlotte looked back blankly. “Uh, oh, yeah, sorry.” She finally said with her tongue out and lowering her head a little. I’m a boy now, different gender means different ways to get things done, right? Heh.

She walked back to the resting room with Alphonse at her back as he kept talking about the gun she had and how well cared it was, she answered kindly but didn’t pay much attention to it.

“Alright, here it is.” He said as he put his hand on the scanning device.

“Thank you, really. Are there more things like this on the way?”

“No, there should be some tracking devices and things to monitor people around, but not about the panels and things like that.”

“That’s good then, goodbye now.” She thanked once again and crossed the door.

Alphonse kept staring at the door once it was closed with a neutral expression. “She wants to pass on as a boy… Really difficult if she keeps behaving like that.” He shook his head and walked to his room once again.

Some minutes after he was back in his room full of weapons, there was another knock at his door. “So many visitors today, huh.” He whispered before going to the door without asking who it was and opened it.

“Hey, Al. Where is Hiro?” Asked the man with overly big glasses on his face.

“Hmm? He just went back to His house.” Alphonse answered with a tired voice.

“Went back? How? Ah, you helped him. Damn, that boy is making trouble even before he gets formally admitted.” He scratched his head sharply and turned around.

“Huh, what do you mean, Tom?” Alphonse’s voice regained some vitality as his eyes focused on the man, Tom.

Tom looked back at him and sighed. “Do you know where he lives? He lives in the southern district of the area managed by the Alliance bunch.”

“Ah… Yeah, troublesome, huh.”

“Yes. I’ll need to call Kamile to avoid anything bad happening to him. Olimpia got really attached to him, how troublesome.” Tom walked away towards one of the screens.

“I wish you luck.” Alphonse just turned around and closed the door. “After being here for a day and so many people are moving around for her, without even being formally registered. What’ll happen after she’s admitted officially? And if she becomes someone essential to us? Something’s changed already, and I know more things’ll change because of her, huh… Charlotte.”

After closing the door of the resting room, Charlotte walked a corridor similar to the one she used after coming down with the help of the elevator. The only difference being the lack of proper illumination and the dirt it had all over the place.

More than a hundred people were there, with almost everyone inside areas I’m not allowed to go in: a cafeteria, sparring rooms and a massive weaponry, they even had two of those war machines in there! So exaggerated… There were even proper bedrooms in there! Why wasn’t I allowed to one?! Damn, I just can’t accept a hard-looking sofa knowing there’re comfortable ones not that far… Ugh.

She arrived to the end of the corridor without noticing. A heavy looking door stood in her way and a camera on top of it recorded her. She waved at it and touched the only thing that was on the door, a button. The door opened inwards, making her take a step back. She touched the door’s frame and opened her hand wide. Its thickness was even bigger than her hand’s width.

Turning her face to the new space, she found it wasn’t much of a room but a small passage going upwards with a spiraling stair. She walked in and looked through the gaps, light shone from the top weakly. She closed her eyes and calculated the distance. Fifty meters… twenty floors?

She started to go up reluctantly but in a steady pace. After climbing for some minutes, she finally reached the top of the stairs. She arrived to a small space around two meters wide with only a door and the stairs she came from. She crossed the door and arrived to a room similar to the one before arriving to the elevator. The only difference being that there was no homeless person in there and a faint light that kept the room away from total darkness.

The room had one window to her left and another door in front of her, which she walked to. Before she opened it, she closed her eyes and searched through the room and the building. Surprisingly, she was on the second floor of a six-floor tall building. Apparently, the stairs she came from was a constant even to the top of the building and after this floor, they were only there for decoration. There were also some people sleeping in other rooms and one man near the entrance.

Opening her eyes, she looked around the room once more and waved at the camera above the door to the stairs. She then brought out her gun from her back and did a quick check to see if it worked properly.

“Alright, everything’s ready. Let’s go.” She nodded to herself and opened the door with a smile plastered on her face and her gun hidden on her back.

She followed the path she found with Prism’s help and exited the building through the main door. The man guarding it didn’t move when she approached him. She saw he had his eyes closed and his breath was steady and slow as she walked past him that. Once she was outside, she stood rooted with the building she just came out of at her back.

Where’s this?! I don’t remember being here at all! Where’s this morning’s building!

Around her were a block of packed up buildings, all right next to the other without leaving space between them. She was on a dark street with only two ways, her right or her left, and no alleys around. More importantly, what she could see at any of the two ends of the street wasn’t something she remembered from the morning. She stepped back until her back hit the wall of the building and closed her eyes.

“Hey Prism, help me out here.”

She then reconstructed the structure of the underground base of the Luxuria group that she saw before and completed it with the road she believed she took in the morning. That she didn’t enter the colorless space before was a slight mistake on her part. They completed a basic structure of it after two minutes.

Charlotte opened her eyes and looked around her. So I need to somehow cross those buildings… She said with her eyes fixed on the row of buildings in front of her, there were as many as her eyes could see in both directions and not a gap between them for her to cross to the other street. She started to walk to her right after pondering for a while.

After walking the empty, almost dark street for some time, she finally arrived to a crossroad which had a road to the left. The street didn’t have lights and was shrouded in darkness, Charlotte paused after two steps of her body being in total darkness and went to the closest building to rest on its walls. She then entered the colorless space and scanned her surroundings.

Three other men in the next hundred or so meters and some others in their houses… Hmm I need to be cautious in here, right? I need to keep this turned on, but how’ll Prism inform me if anything comes to me? I don’t want to come here constantly.

“Prism can use my energy to do things in the exterior too, right?” After White Prism answered in a positive way, Charlotte thought of multiple ways to keep them connected without much use of her energy. “Then, if someone moves towards me pinch my head in the direction where he’s coming from, and if there’re more than one from the same direction pinch the number of persons on my chest… Also, as you can still get my thoughts while I’m not here, if I ask something and the answer is a yes then the right hand, the left if the answer is no. Alright? Five seconds.”

She opened her eyes after two minutes and started to walk through the dark street as silently as she could. One minute, two minutes. As she approached a street with some lights on it, she realized it was probably the one she walked through in the morning. Suddenly, she felt a pinch on the back of her head, and three on her chest. Charlotte gritted her teeth and started to walk faster.

Before she could take the fifth step, she heard the chasers hasten their approach. Damn.

“Stop!” Someone shouted from behind her.

Charlotte continued for a few more meters before pausing and turning around. “Who’s there?” She put her hand on her back, over her shirt and started to pull it up so she could get access to her gun at any moment.

“That’s what we’d like to know! Where’re you from! This’s Luxuria’s territory, if you don’t answer truthfully, you’ll get in trouble!”

“I know.” She answered as she could see three silhouettes already twenty meters from her. “I’m part of them, and you?”

The trio halted their steps for a moment before one started to snicker. Another one spoke. “You kiddn’, no? Show us your badge then!”

… Badge? They didn’t say anything about it… Then.

“What’re you talking about, there’s no badge at all.” Charlotte slowly grabbed the gun with her hand and started to pull it out of her pants.

The assailants paused for a moment while the one in the middle said “jackpot” and started to spread to the sides.

Charlotte froze for a moment as cold sweat started to pour down her back. Are they armed…?

*Pinch.

She smirked. “Stop moving, or I’ll shoot you.”

“Heh, cut the bullshit!” Said the man at her right.

“No, she has a gun, be careful.” Said the one at the middle.

*Bang!

She felt the gun recoiling up as the men at the sides froze for a moment.

“Agh!” Shouted out the man in the middle. “Get that bitch!”

Oh, fuck. I shot him! Before she could continue on her thoughts, she felt a heavy pull on her head which made her tilt her body to the left. Right! There’s no time to think!

Readjusting herself, she ran forward to where the shot man was. She pulled the trigger of her gun without thinking, making a bullet fly across the street into a building. She was hit on her right as she came close to the man, which made her miss on a step and she fell to the floor.

Her head felt dizzy and the arm which had her gun ached. She was on the road after rolling a few times. Clenching her hand, she felt something was missing but her mind didn’t answer what it was. She tried to stand only to feel the lack of strength on her body. She turned around and faced the sky. She saw the sky, the cloudy sky, tempting to rain at any moment. A small light could be seen through them, one of the moons was trying to shine down the earth but was being blocked by the clouds. Charlotte felt such a dark and gloomy night to be beautiful, something she would never appreciate.

“Boss! Are you alright?!” Someone asked near her loudly.

“Yeah, she did a number on me, but only a scratch. Heh, we’ll…” He interrupted his words. “Damnit! Someone is coming already! Let’s get out of here, forget her!”

The man started to run in a hurry. The one who asked before followed him. The third one, who was at the other side of the street, also ran in the same direction of the other two, but stepped on her stomach with all his weight before going away.

“Gah!” Charlotte shouted out as air came out of her lungs. She couldn’t inhale enough air to keep her conscious.

“Hiro! Where are you?!” A voice not so far yet not so close came from somewhere.

She clearly heard it, but she couldn’t answer. Her body was starting to produce a static like feeling. She felt how her body started to feel hot and with it, pain. As the person who shouted before came close to her, she felt her body relax and all the pain go away, she fainted…

“Hey, are you awake yet?”

Charlotte opened her eyes as she felt someone constantly hit her cheeks softly. “Who…?” She was astonished by how weak her voice came out of her throat. She wasn’t this weak even at that time where she almost died of malnutrition.

“It’s me, Kamile.” Answered the man as he stopped hitting her cheek.

“Ka,mile…?” She tilted her head a little bit before feeling pain on her side, making her breath in sharply, which caused even more pain to herself.

The man didn’t answer immediately. “Oh, right. I never told you my name. I’m the one who accompanied you this morning with lady Olimpia to the office.”

“Oh… The gun retriever…” She calmed as she somehow felt safe with him.

“Gun retriever… Yeah, that’d be me.” He said before sitting at her side.

“… Where’re we?” She clearly had her eyes open, but she couldn’t see anything at all.

“Not so far from where you were before. Besides a building on the side.”

“… I see.”

“What were you thinking?” He asked after a short silence.

“What do you mean?” She was starting to feel her body again, a great deal of pain cursing trough her right flank and arm and, fortunately, nothing else.

“To traverse this road without any lights and get in a fight with those thieves.”

“Oh, I thought I’d get to the building we entered this morning this way.”

“And? What about those thieves?”

“Dunno? They attacked me the moment I said I was from Luxuria.”

“Figures.”

“Eh?”

“Well, even if we’re one of the biggest groups, it doesn’t mean we’re without enemies. It’s the total opposite, in fact. Because we manage so many things and make things hard for smaller groups, we gain a lot of resentment. Even with other big groups, if they see the chance to make things bad for us, they’ll do it without much thought, more so to a lone worker.”

“… I see. Then it’s better if I don’t say I’m part of your group from now on, huh.”

“That also is bad. You just need to know when it’s convenient to say what.”

“So difficult.”

Silence came again. They sat in the darkness for close to five minutes. Meanwhile, Charlotte entered the colorless space.

“How bad of a shape am I in?”

RIGHT RIBS- RIB 9- CRACKED

RIGHT HAND – HUMERUS – CRACKED

“It’s not broken, at least. And there doesn’t seem to be any other internal problems, a slight pain is fine, I guess.”

Opening her eyes, she turned her head to the sky. She saw the slightly shining clouds in there, but their beauty had been lost along with her unconscious self.

“How long had we been here?” She broke the stillness of the night once more.

“Hmm,” Kamile brought up his hand to his face and thought for a moment, “around ten minutes, I’d say.”

“Since you found me?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright.” She touched the unpaved floor with her left hand and put some strength on it to try to stand. Her body protested in pain but she paid it no heed.

“Hey, rest for a while. You’re injured, right? At least until you feel better. Someone is coming already to take care of you and then we’ll bring you back to the office.”

“Eh, no thanks, I don’t want to go there.” She stood with some difficulty as her breath became rough.

He followed her up and put a hand over her shoulder. “Huh, why?”

“I, don’t like that place. I already told Alphonse the reason… Well, I don’t feel good in there, that’s all.”

“But you can’t go back to your house.”

“Huh?” She turned her head to face him. “What do you mean?!”

“Calm down, it’s not what you think, you can go back tomorrow.”

“Why!?” She took a step back while bringing her hands over her chest.

Kamile sighed as his hand dangled down. “Look at the time, the subway is closed at this time around here. You can’t go back right now.”

“Ah…” She almost lost the strength on her legs but caught herself before it was too late. “Damnit, he didn’t tell me that…”

“Yeah, I was informed. He didn’t know where you lived. Come, sit down. We’ll wait for them to come.”

“Alright… Ah, my gun.” She turned around looked around, everything was dark.

She then closed her eyes and looked for it with Prism’s help. After finding it around thirty meters away, she opened her eyes and started to walk towards it.

“Hou, you can see in this darkness?”

“Ah, no, I just remembered where it fell so I just need to confirm some landmarks, that’s all.”

She arrived to where the gun was and leaned her body to retrieve it before pain shot up from her chest. Damn, this’s going to be more problematic than I thought. She crouched carefully to avoid the rib from cracking more and grabbed it. She then walked back to Kamile and sat with the gun between her hands.