INTERWOVEN ADVENTURES | Circadian Earth: Book 1

Chapter 13

Cybal groaned, keeping hold of Alice's hand as she ran towards what had just caught her interest.

"Cybal, look! What's this?" Alice was pointing at a sign.

"Huh... this is one of the places where the inter-city transport stops in Skycross." Sure enough, the road here was significantly smoother than all the other roads in the city.

"So we can go somewhere else?" Alice asked. "It looks different to the one we took."

"Looks like it. This one is for... the green line. It goes to Esterwood."

"That green place in the south?"

Cybal stared at her sister. "You remembered. Not like you. But yes, it's the place where a lot of Trialian food comes from."

"Why can't we eat it?"

"We can, but it doesn't benefit us. So we don't."

"Oh, okay. We survive on the crystals."

"Yes, yes we do. But we could go to Esterwood if you want."

"Hmm..." Alice had to think. "Nah. What about where you want to go?"

"I have no specific ideas."

Alice looked at the sign. "What if we wanted to go somewhere else?"

"We'd have to find the other stop." Cybal pointed to the lower section of the sign, which had a map of the area. The other stop was some way to the east, back towards where Izzy lived.

"Huh, okay. What are the other places we can go?"

"Purple line to Stasis, a smallish city in the centre of the main island, or Nasrica, the main home of the Nasrics."

"Oh, we could go to Nasrica then! We're Nasrics, after all!"

Cybal shook her head. "We are, but we're different. We're the only Nasrics of our size."

"The others are small like Citrine?"

"Yeah."

Alice looked at the map again. "Any other lines?"

"Red to Lila, a remote city in the east. Pretty sure just Trialians there. Cyan goes north through Amset, Kliyset and Ezhanta, three more smaller cities, then goes further to Azledo, which isn't suitable for robots at all, and finally, yellow goes north, bypassing the smaller cities, ending at Pronio, which is... probably the most suitable place for us."

"Yellow to Pronio then!" Alice said, beaming. "Are there a lot of robots there?"

"Pretty much exclusively robots, according to rumours."

"Okay then. Lead the way!"

As the streetlights turned on and Trialians headed home from their business, the two of them headed through the more uneven streets of the city in mostly silence, until they eventually found the other transport stop. Cybal looked at the timetable.

"We're in luck, it would seem."

"Oh? Why's that?"

"Well, each line only runs once a day each way. Turns out, because Pronio doesn't like humans or Trialians, the yellow line runs in the middle of the night," Cybal explained.

"So it'll here soon?"

"A few hours."

"What do we do until then?"

"I think we should wait here. Maybe you can even sleep, you haven't done that since before we left Izzy's."

Alice sat down on the ground next to the sign. "That's not a bad idea. What about you? You haven't slept either."