Losing Time

7 | Maris

                     A/N: Beware, my head is complete garbage right now. I've studied for my neuroscience class all day so there might be more errors than usually. I apologize in advance!

They set off trying to find Tegan, the person supposed to lead them to Merlin, minutes after the moon had risen beyond the horizon, giving them all night to reach the seventh circle. Mars kept her head low, her hood pulled down over her head, almost covering her eyes, as she searched her surroundings whilst Nishi and Chet strode away in front of her and Makeda burned holes in Maris' back with fiery eyes. Sometimes the young woman turned around to throw an evil look at the other woman but every time she turned around Makeda stared at the ground in front of her, her hands buried in her jeans pockets making Maris sneer. The darkness did a great job at hiding Maris' dark figure between the narrow alleys of the fifth circle as she, from time to time, ducked beneath a clothesline rope, making it harder for any possible surveillance cameras to detect her face. Out here in one of the outer circle a dark figure searching its way through the dirt was nothing out of the ordinary, but for the first time, Maris realized what she had her eyes searching the surroundings for - police force. Maris had always considered the police to be an all present righteous force destined to do good, but that seemed to only apply to the richer circles, she barely had to come out here, when she still worked as a cop, for her mother told her that troubles in the outer circles sorted themselves out without legal help. However, Malik had told her that this was true, as long as the trouble wasn't aimed towards the government . 

The moon illuminated her face's side as the group walked north,  always staying inside the boundaries of the fifth circle before they turned west and started aiming for the cities borders and therefore the outer circles that now lay ahead of them. It still amazed her that the three outer circles - six, seven and eight - still made up more room than the first four combined -consequently being home to even more than double the people. The group had walked exactly  123 minutes as they passed a sign telling them that they were now leaving the fifth circle and entered the sixth. They set foot on a small marketplace. Makeshift tents that apparently doubled for stores littered the whole place with people in ragged clothes who passed them on both sides, not bothering to look into their faces, though an odd noise stopped Maris mid-walking. A man lay in his little tent, a grotesquely small and old fashioned screen, it had a display made out of an electric glass like the one she used to have as a kid, sat on a quarter of a pallet, the TV in front of him showing Maris the smiling faces of her family. Her stomach turned as her mouth hung open.

Dias and Medea McCloud accompanied by their three children Icarus, Maris and Ajax as they announced Dias McCloud's imminent run for the mayor's seat. Above the old headline, the date stamp on the right corner and her memory of that day told her so, showed up a short video of the seemingly happy family standing on the balcony of their old family home in the third circle. Maris had totally forgotten about the press conference  that had been held two days before they dragged her into the precinct in cuffs. The news anchor started talking while Maris' smiling reflection stared back at her, almost making the real one puke. She wasn't actually surprised to find the rumours, that the media waited a few days to show any news to the outer circles, out to be true - if they even told them at all. After all, why would these people care who dragged them through the mud and called himself the Mayor?

"Dias McCloud had recently announced that he planned to run for Mayor, which shouldn't be a surprise to any of us since the McCloud family always collaborated greatly to the cities wellbeing," the news anchor kept going about how great her father was as he smiled a smile that never quite reached his eyes and froze the blood in her veins. Her gaze travelled from Dias, to Ici and watched his face for a few seconds, the wrinkles around is eyes, as her eyes narrowed and then moved on skipping her own face and went straight to Jax. Her face relaxed and a small smile tucked on her lips though disappearing swiftly. Her gaze left her younger brother's face and she observed the half sleeping man in the tent in front of her. He seemed to be high on something which explained why he hadn't noticed the woman that stood by his tent watching the newsfeed on his screen.