I knew where I had to go the moment I left my house. I needed a place to sleep and a way to get out of this city. Both of which I would get in the outskirt of this city. The city I lived in had no official name on the map, the existence of all these residences were just the collection of the result of a modern feudal system with corporate heads in the highest level and poor jobless ones in the lowest level. Though as the population grew the significance of this poor city grew too, it was a home to every homeless person and so "All-roof" was the name this city got. A roof for everyone, a positive meaning, but it did not mean that everything was fine and welcoming in this place and neither did it mean that every homeless person considered the other as his family.
"Where are we going?" Ayden was walking beside me when he asked. We in the outermost part of the city and you can call it ruins. It was a wasteland, with buildings completely dissimilated and fallen down, parts of wall and ceiling all fallen over each other, moss growing over these long forgotten building, stretching far long and wide.
"We need to get away from this city and I have heard that there is a person by the name Ally who can take you through the border so we are going to that person," I jumped over a broken sink.
"That is the eleventh sink you have jumped over and the twentieth one I have seen," Ayden spoke to seemingly no one. Unlike my estranged father, I do not hate him or hold him as the culprit who took my mother away, but I still have some uneasiness around him.
When I am with him, I feel like the one in charge and this feeling is unfamiliar to me. We walked for a little more in silence after which I finally spoke up just to escape the silence, "Were you really keeping a count?"
"Yes, of course," he told as a matter of fact and continued, "I have been keeping count of everything that we have come across to fend off my boredom."
"Really, now then you would of course be able to tell the number of times we took a left turn," I asked him with a grin on my face, I knew the way like the back of my hand because I have planned for this for months, albeit I never thought that I would have a company.
"We turn fourteen left turns," he said. I gulped he was right. He was actually right! I was very surprised; I was unaware that he was so observant. When I think about it I realise, I hardly know much about him. What is his favourite colour? I do not know. What is his hobby? I do not know. I know that he likes marshmallow a lot because I used to make it for him when we were still not in these slums and father had not lost our job.
I did not reply and we walked for some more time and when we finally reached our destination, I noticed that the sun was rising and the sky was violet.
The amount of security over there surprised me. Ally"s gang had taken over a whole abandoned building and the violet did not provide much view but I could see that even though he was living in this poor area his building was almost as good as any another normal building.
Three men stood in front of the main door forming a triangle and each of them had face that looked like they would want to rip you off from the face of the planet this instant. "Why are you here?" The man in the centre asked.
"I want to get to the next city," I answered as Ayden stood behind me, I rolled my eyes sideway, "He looks scared, but he is holding his emotions back."
"You have money?" He asked me without even looking at me as a robot programmed to execute some commands.
"Yes," I said. Then that man gestured the other two bulky men to move away and let me go through, "Second floor."
The first things that I noticed that the cracks on the walls were sealed and looked newly made from the level of reconstruction, floor was clean and lights were working fine. It was better place than what I had in mind for a gang"s base to be like.
The second floor was just a very big room, the result of totalling down all the rooms in the floor to make the room. In the far end of the room, there was someone sitting on a nice chair with a broken, wooden worktable behind, looking away from me and out of the window, which was now just a hole in the wall without any gla.s.s. There was another wooden table beside it on which two men sat, a black sofa opposite to it on which another man dressed in all black lay down with a final guard standing tall beside the window behind the person who I a.s.sumed was Ally.
"Hey chirp, what do you want?" One of the two men sitting on the table asked me in a irritated voice.
"I want to go to order some pizza!" What else could have come to this place if not to go to the next city, but I did not want to make any unnecessary trouble and simply said, "I want to travel to the next city."
Hearing this, the person sitting in the chair turned around and it was a big surprise to me, maybe even more than Ayden"s surprise, it was a girl! Not that I am s.e.xist but in a place filled with big men I just thought that the man with the most muscle would be the boss. Leave muscles, she was just a teenager like me.
She had brown eyes that were accentuated by her eyelashes extending into the corners of her eyes. Her most distinctive feature was her long, untamed, dark pink - almost red - hair that fell past her shoulders with long parted bangs framing either side of her face and one between her eyes. She wore a pink wool sweater that was a couple sizes bigger for her and the sleeves hid her palms. Under the sweater, she wore a black, baggy cargo pant with many pockets.
"Two thousand per person and if you keep ogling at me, I will make it three," her voice was shrill and mean. "I have known her for just under a minute and I already hate her."
"Okay," I saw no room for bargain and obliged. "I have a kid with-"
"If he has a head and a torso then he counts, even if it is a dead ," she hissed, but did not end, "Well. You"re annoying as h.e.l.l. Make that three thousand a person." The girl smirked, her eyes curving into crescents.
"What! Six thousand! That is outright robbery," I shouted to which the men who were relaxed got up and turned to me.
"It is your choice, don"t like it? Get out of my sight then." She smirked.
I wanted to just go out of here, but then I looked over Ayden. There was no way I could feed a child properly in this city, so I gritted my teeth and said, "Fine."
"That"s the spirit!" She and her larger-than-her minions laughed.
"I swear I am gonna make you pay double!" I was sure that I will not just succ.u.mb to her superiority and extortion. Obtaining power is one of the reason I ran away from my home. "I just have to wait for the opportunity to come."