The Sky Has Fallen

| Chapter 08

We stepped off the Chicago blue line with no real plan. I hadn't thought of one. I told Vera I would, promised I could, but as the train took us downtown, I found it harder than I originally thought.

David had refused to help me think of something. He wouldn't tag along, either. He argued, in his defense, that with his police record, he couldn't go anywhere near the city center. If they somehow managed to connect him to what happened the night before, they'd arrest him for sure.

While I wasn't going to argue with him, I couldn't understand how much trouble he'd get into if it was just trespassing. It wasn't like he'd been the one to dismantle the side of the ship.

"This is—" The city center showed up on my phone's GPS. After walking for five minutes under the summer sun, my automated assistant alerted me of my destination being on the left. With my phone in front of my face, I looked ahead, squinting against the sunlight.

All I saw were buildings and people walking around without anything to navigate them.

Shit.

"You really don't know where you're going, huh?" Vera came beside me, clutching the sides of her hood around her face. She had picked one of David's black sweaters and an old pair of joggers as her disguise. The waistband was pulled tight to keep them from falling, yet she still stumbled over them.

I had to admit, she looked ridiculous, but teens weren't all that different. Just baggy clothes, not a care in the world.

She's got to be eighteen. I scratched the side of my face as I glanced back at my phone instead of staring at her. Or nineteen, like me, right?

"It's that building right there." Vera placed her hand over mine to cover the view of my tiny map. Rather than follow the point of her finger, I looked back at her face. The shades did nothing but make her mysterious.

I liked mysteries.

"Not me." She chuckled and shook her head. She grabbed my chin, forcing me to look down the street. With her other hand, she pointed straight ahead. "Do you see it?"

I saw buildings, yes. That was all downtown Chicago had. Tall, lively, record-holding buildings.

"It's the one with the statues in front of it. They look like cows. I think you guys call them cows."

Cows. There were in fact statues in front of a building, four of them. I wouldn't say they looked like cows, but they were obscure. Once we stood in front of them and got a closer look, I thought I'd compare them to monkeys. Maybe horses?

I scratched my chin. "What do you call them?" I asked, looking back at Vera with curious eyes.

She glanced up at me, blinking. "Call who what?"

"Cows." I faced her.

Vera didn't answer me. She laughed, instead. And with a tug, she pulled me towards the center's main entrance.

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The automatic doors shut behind us. Before we could step all the way inside, a tiny machine rolled our way, blocking our entrance. With Vera at my side, I glanced at the light that appeared above it.

City holograms.

Big cities found ways to cut corners, that was common knowledge. They crafted machines to do the tasks humans could do on their own. As the image of a woman smiled at us, unnatural but polite, I was reminded of one of their lazy attempts at the future.

"Welcome," the hologram said. "This is Chicago's main city center. How may we be of assistance?"

I looked at the hologram for a moment before scanning the open space around us. There was a receptionist's desk with two workers behind it. Large windows gave them all the sunlight they'd ever need, even with the faux plants casting slight shadows on their faces. On a screen hanging over their heads were images of Chicago and all its glory.