Memento Mori

4.9 - FUNNEL WEB

THE ORANGE looms before me.

Swallowed by the pulsing citrine ambiance of the brothels, I cross a barren pedestrian bridge with Matthias at my side, taking in the full scope of Dynasty's redlight district from closer than ever before. Though we enter far from the main thoroughfares, even in a little-trafficked corner of the block, the architecture looks like it was ripped straight from a village playwright's dream. The depth of detail is staggering. Each pixel has a purpose. From the artificial flora with petals that gradient across every shade of red-orange-pink to the creaking rickshaws, the faint erhu strings that always seems to be twanging from just a little further away, the dirt roads, the wood-and-paper buildings that cunningly conceal the deeper towers built directly into the superstructure of the undercity, the lithe slaves in their sheer silks and the glowering enforcers draped in traditional robes... every piece builds into the liar's handshake that the Orange's patrons willingly partake of. Even the ones who don't go past the electroclubs for the squeamish.

It's so sickeningly clean. So perfectly sterilized from the hell that surrounds it, like a flower grown in a lab. An ungodly amount of technology and Elementals work constantly to purify the air of smog and humidity. Crisp, cool wind ferries untraceable pheromones in an undulating cycle around the block to loosen inhibitions. There's no trash. No homeless. No gangs. No crime. Not a brick out of place. An illusion, a lie, the predatory dream of a monster that feeds on such things. You'll never see the cracks from the outside. Never know what it takes to make a place like this turn a profit. And I've come to kill the singular vision that drives it.

I can't help but swallow in apprehension.

Krey's first salvo ignites on the undercity horizon as Matthias and I arrive at our first real checkpoint. The enforcers manning the outer bridges didn't do more than ogle when they thought we weren't looking. Those who wait past the electroclubs have better things to worry about than rigorously checking our IDs. I summon up everything I remember from my encounter with the Iros in the Vector Seven tower as I suffer their attention. If I could do to them what she did to me, how would I be acting? Probably not giving two shits about these mooks. It checks out.

The enforcers take one look at my false pink eyes, stiffen, let the Iros' clearance go through, then nervously shuffle to the side. It doesn't matter that I'm about a foot and a half shorter than some of them, half naked while they're fully armed. Just the threat that I could turn them into a gibbering mess without even looking at them is enough to keep them in line. We're past the checkpoint and heading down the main dirt thoroughfare in moments. Paper-walled brothels lit with orange and red lanterns line the way on either side. Only a few tired silhouettes drift through them in the early hour. One is hunched over and crying silently. Another drifts out of a floral-themed den to join her coworkers under the wooden awning for a smoke.

Their eyes meet mine as I pad along. I glance away quick, realizing I'm staring. But they're quicker. The closest to the street, a girl who can't be older than I am, brushes a length of silver hair behind her ear and mutters a cover for the others.

"Forgiveness, please."

I'm about to reply when I feel an iron pressure around my arm, a careful tug from Matthias. "Leave it. You're an Iros," he whispers.

I bite down on my tongue, folding my arms under my chest. Wait for us to get out of earshot and a good distance closer to the Orange's central concrete tower, shaped like a geometric hourglass, before I speak up.

"Do Iros not talk to the others?"

He makes a furtive glance in both directions before replying. "They're the chosen elite. Not just because they're good at getting peoples' jollies off, but because they volunteered for a selective process and advanced training to become spies. They don't have contracts like the rest of us. They're... devoted, to the syndicate. It's a path to power for them. One they see the others as too weak to attain for themselves."