The Deep

Above the Waves

8:00 PM, outside the boarded-up building of Kingston's old Queen's University. The city is dead silent, the same decrepit silence that had covered the west for years. Now only the flicker of unmaintained street lights illuminate the area with a dim white glow. The silence is abruptly broken with the flick of a lighter to light up a cigar.

     The lighter shines a warm orange glow around a man. The man had a messy medium-length side part and a Low Fad. A pair of black reading glasses. And a large deep scar over the right eye. He's wearing a long green coat with the faded outline of a patch or a badge on the right shoulder and a name tag Brody, L Marcus. The outline of a gun horizontal on his small of back shows through the jacket. A green backpack is leaning against his leg and a large duffle bag with a logo for Deep Silver Research Company is lying off to the side.

     Three minutes fade away after every puff of the cigar slowly fills the air around him. A faint rumbling sound slowly grows in the distance. The man pulls back his jacket and rests his hand over a set of throwing knives on his hip. Slowly a grey car emerges from the cold black street and pulls up along the sidewalk next to him. The man takes a stance as the window opens.

     "Evening Brody," says the man in the passenger seat.

     "You can say, Marcus, I'm not in the service anymore Dorian," says Marcus, shouldering his backpack and picking up the duffle bag.

     As he gets closer to the car it is now more visible and has the same company logo as his duffle bag. Marcus opens the trunk and sets his duffle bag among a few other bags. He closes the trunk and walks to the back right door, flicking his cigar into a trashcan as he sits down and stuffs his backpack in between his legs.

     In the car are three people. The driver is an older man in a brown leather jacket and a grey flat cap. Dorian next to the driver is a few years older than Marcus and has large scratch scars across the left of his face. He's dressed in all black with a bulletproof vest over a black combat jacket that has a DSR Security badge on the shoulders. Only there to keep everyone else safe from the riots happening at the time. The final person in the car is a short redhead girl with deep brown glasses and wearing a tan dress coat over a white dress shirt tucked into a pair of jeans. She is scrunched into a ball on the seat, using a medical bag to prop her feet up. Her head is almost buried into a book pressed against her thighs. She's almost hiding from everyone else in the car. The novel is titled Biology of Legends. His attention is pulled to the driver who's now turned around facing him.

     "It's good seeing you again Marcus, everyone at the station has missed you... especially the Captain."

     Marcus nods to the driver as he returns a gentle smile and turns around. As the car slowly pulls away from the Old University Marcus unzips his coat and pulls out an old iPhone 6 with some corded headphones. Pretty much ancient tech nowadays, but it still works so it's good enough. He unlocks it and opens the music app, eventually landing on a playlist called The Goods. The playlist is filled with old country and rock music. As Johnny Cash's Ain't No Grave begins, he sets his eyes on the disheveled city. The car drives through the nearly empty city streets, only passing the occasional car. The once lively city now becomes a ghost town by dark.

     After a 40-minute drive, the car pulls onto a Hyper train heading for Vancouver, British Columbia. The 43+ hour drive is cut down to a little over 5 hours using the insanely fast underground trains.

     The whole trip was spent in silence, the driver slept for the most part. Dorian left for the train's restaurant before departure. The woman remained buried in her book. Marcus silently listened to his music while looking out the window at the small hole in the top of the Hyper train cart, where every few seconds he could see the tunnel lights. All through the journey he counted the lights and used them as a way to tell the distance from their stop.