shiver (FEATURED) | ✓

oo8

evanna

Julian seemed very excited to be able to show off the headquarters to someone new. Later on, I decided that Julian was simply more excited to have someone new, and put all that enthusiasm into showing me around.

They made me change into civilian clothes at the library, and then the whole troupe took me into the city. I was content with simply exploring 'Tetrahmon,' as they called it, or, in Julian's mouth 'City of the Fucking Damned' but Julian insisted there was absolutely no time to waste. On the way to Julian's place, I learned that Francis had kissed seven girls in one week, and shagged three of them in the same week. Julian told me that he had the biggest ego out of all of them, and that I would do best to kick him between his legs if he tried to approach me, so that he couldn't brag about another girl he'd kissed. I told Julian, truthfully, that I'd probably shatter his pelvis if I did that, and they simply laughed and said that that would probably be for the best.

Francis had listened to all this with an expression on his face that made him look as though he'd just eaten a lemon.

Alejis, another boy, told me he was openly gay, but not a fuckboy like Francis.

Jumanda complimented my hair. I thanked her, a little confused.

All in all, I learned that the Red Hand Syndicate was made up of a diverse number of young adults such as Francis and Julian, and myself, and their headquarters were home to over two hundred people (as Julian proudly announced), with ages that ranged from one day old to seventy. Essentially, these are a minority of the three million or so inhabitants of Tetrahmon.

"We haven't got many babies down here," Julian explains to me, as they lead me into an apartment on the first floor. The rest of the small troupe follows behind, silent, now. "Yeah, this is one of the old ones," Julian adds on, although I haven't expressed any sort of confusion as to why the walls are concrete, cracked, and most of the inside is either covered in snow or iced over. It's on the ground floor, but as Julian mentions it as being 'one of the old ones,' I realise what that means. All the other, new apartments in the city that are home to nearly the whole population are almost entirely made out of glass. There are blinds, and curtains, but only permitted for resting hours or for anything associated with nudity. Julian told me that earlier.

"Anyway," Julian continues, "nobody's going to knock this down, since there's presumably no money to spare for tearing things down, and besides, the place is big enough to leave a couple of the older buildings as they are. I guess they're just sort of waiting for them to fall apart before they clear up the mess."

"That makes sense, I suppose," I answer.

"Tell her about the babies," prompts a voice from the back. I can hear the laughter in the boy's voice.

"Shut up." Julian leads us towards the back of the apartment, into what looks like what once was a pantry of some sort. In any case, the food shelves are empty. "Just 'round here," they mutter, and lead me to what looks like a dead end.

"No, tell me about the babies," I say, intrigued, although I'm quite confused as to why we're standing in front of a stack of iced-over, half-termite-eaten crates. The termites are probably all frozen, I muse. And then- I hear something. Very faint, but my senses pick it up, and my body also picks up vibrations from underneath my feet. An underground sanctuary, I think. Smart.

"Basically," Julian begins again, "they're pretty noisy things, huh? We'll get rid of the thing if the mother doesn't want it, obviously, but we have a policy for them, if you're planning on getting pregnant."

I nearly gag. "I'm good, thanks."

"Anyway, thought you should know that if the mother can't make the thing stop screaming for over five minutes, we suffocate it."

I'm taken aback, and it seems to amuse most of them. "You suffocate it," I reply tonelessly.

"Yup." Julian carefully shoves aside one of the crates. What is revealed underneath is just bare floor, so I assume you need to know what you're looking for in order to get anywhere here. I have to say, I'm impressed- and a little disturbed- but they're babies. "Better them dead than having our entire place discovered," Julian says, as if that makes up for their baby policy.

"I don't mind," I finally say.

"Good, sweetheart, because that's only the beginning." Julian gives me a grin which I don't return, and lifts up a round slab of concrete. "Whoever's at the back, don't forget to seal it," Julian calls lightly, and starts through the hole that's left form removing the slab. I follow them down the ladder, and slowly, we descend into pitch darkness.

***

I can't see below, and soon enough, the hole above me does no longer exist. As we descend, the degree reader on the back of my mind tells me that the temperature is gradually dropping, by about 0.1ºC, with every hundred meters that we climb down. It's a rope ladder, meshed together by hand, with bits of it that are just rope, at some times. All the Red Hand troupe that I've met so far seem to have no problem with their climbing. Neither do I, unsurprisingly. I bet I could jump down, and land all the way as a splatter on the pavement, but still recover from that. However, I'm not willing to take my chances like that.

"How much farther?" I ask Julian, as my thermometer indicates a 0.45ºC drop in temperature.

"Almost there." Once I drop to the ground, I deduce that we are slightly less than half a kilometre underneath the earth.

"This way." A bright beam of light is thrown before us- Julian is equipped with a torch. Handy, although I can see well enough without it. We resume our walking ,and it's not until another ten or so minutes that anyone talks.

Julian turns around to face me as a yellow glow becomes visible in the darkness. "Welcome," says Julian, "to the Red Hand."