Eastern Sea. Orange and yellow dust suspended in sheets of ugly, red-veined cloud that flashed lightning identified these. Where they originated and of what they were comprised none knew. But for their duration, bullets of highly acidic, slightly radioactive rain sheered through the days, the drops as hard as granite.
Unpredictable Winter rains howled in from the north rarely, but when they wanted entered unopposed. Harsh, cold winds splashed a black slush onto the myriad streets and thundered against the high-rise glass. Accompanying rapid freezing and thawing crumbled the City’s bricks and streets to ruin. Because of this it was said that the Winter rain was harder on the City than on those who lived within its walls.
The same could not be said for what the spring brought. On occasion Killing rains would come. Terrifying storms screamed up from the south driving tidal waves before them. Hurricane force winds turned the Eastern Sea to froth and mist as the sky roared like apocalypse. People died during the Killing rains-the lowest sections of the City from Zero to Two flooded in areas despite the seawalls, and the ocean snatched people from the sidewalks.
Of the varieties of rain that fell upon the City, two were most common. The first came in on a wind from the west. Desert rain from the wilderness collected over the City in thin gray clouds. They would shed some drizzle, and sporadic sprinkles constantly. The Desert rain accounted for those rare days when no rain came at all. The second was the most common of the City’s precipitation. Nine times out of ten Standing rain was what fell from the sky. It needed no season and bore no special vehemence. Clouds collected heavily over the metropolis, all wind would cease, and a steady, endless rain descended on the cityscape like a dark curtain.
This was the first day of a Standing rain that fell on the heels of three blissful days of Desert. The cloud cover was low, wrapping the tallest buildings in darkness where they protruded from the Carapace-a mammoth patchwork of waterproof materials inlaid with intricate channels and reservoirs. It was added decades before to funnel the tons of water that fell each day and to protect construction workers who coaxed the city skyward. It was dark and gleamed dully with moisture. Humped in places, massive sections of convex graphite and plastic were interconnected by cables and constantly winched upward to keep pace with the City’s growth. It offered poor protection, being tattered in places by savage winds, and was under constant repair. It looked like the broken shell of an ancient monster.
Life in the City was hidden. At first glance, the City of Light’s name appeared to be a misnomer since the glass skins of its many skyscrapers reflected weak gray in the daytime and flickering streetlight at night. At second, having gauged the spirits of its inhabitants, the name would be exposed as a marketing ploy and little more. Perhaps there had been a time when light of a physical or metaphysical nature existed there; but no more.
Beneath the Carapace, the City contained within its soaring gothic arches the very best and last of what humanity had to offer the world after the Change. True there were other cities, other living strongholds in what remained of Europe, Asia, Africa and others; but none could challenge the grandeur that the City boasted. The last of the best resided there, as safe as any could be in the madness that life had become. Most believed that the end had arrived-that human history had halted, others thought some new and terrible age free of human domination was upon them all. Only the insane, faithful and foolish still believed that the Change heralded a new beginning. But the Change had come, and in time so had the City.
The City of Light was the offspring of the dead island-city that now protruded from the Eastern Sea some few miles from shore. This had been flooded out by the storms that followed the Change, and never recovered. Global Warming accelerated not long after the Millennium turned, when the clouds had rolled in, the rain began to fall, and the waters of the earth rose up to permanently drown the world’s coastal cities.
The City of Light had its humble beginning as a mainland borough of the metropolis now submerged. The jagged corpse of its parent could still be seen rising above the water. Though it was impossible to lay the blame on the ocean alone. The early days had seen a valiant stand made by its citizens-massive dikes were built that held. But then came the terror of the rising dead, the horror of the true believers and the violence of the everlasting Jihad. And the fear set fires, and what remained burned before it flooded. The ruins were still inhabited some said, but none who went there returned to say by whom.
The City of Light’s enormous perimeter was guarded by fifty-foot cyclopean walls on the north, west and south, and claimed the sea as its guardian to the east. In its early years, the City had grown outward for many miles, spreading up and down the coast, and marching inland unchecked until its edges scraped terrifyingly against the vast wilderness that was growing there. Something primal happened then, as though the denial that any growth represented could not overpower the truth of what the mainland had become. So much had changed in the world, that the City’s designers were possessed of no valiant response, only the gut reaction of throwing up the walls.
With a perimeter defined by fear, the City of Light had nowhere to go but up. Its early leaders easily covered their cowardice with triumphant words and phrases. “Now marks the ascent of humanity.” Decades after the Change the City’s fathers had laid claim to all the land that once had been North America, and since its population was now disorganized or dead, there were none to argue against the outright exploitation of its vast resources. So the inland cities and states were used as raw material and the City climbed into the sky.
The City of Light grew rapidly. After the disenfranchised millions had salvaged what they could, they abandoned their sinking island city and flocked to the shores to set about constructing new homes for themselves- building on and expanding what they found there. Following the raising of the walls, some twenty years after the Change, ground level had grown dangerously overpopulated and construction began on another level that arched over it on massive legs of steel and concrete. New structures were built upon this, casting ground level into darkness-but electrical power was plentiful then, and city people were acclimated to artificial light.
Survivors kept coming from all points of the compass, and soon this first level was filling to claustrophobic proportions. A second level was constructed, and more buildings launched into the sky on top of this. Another twenty years and then fifty more passed. Level after level was added as the inland population traveled to the coast for sanctuary-their smaller towns and cities dying under the onslaught of the Change.
Years later, long after high prices and scarcity had dimmed reliable electric light for any but the wealthy, the City’s original landscape on its lowest levels was lost. Where its first streets and neighborhoods had been now lurked trackless shadowy paths-ground level had been renamed “Zero.” The oldest buildings had become massive foundations for the terrifying towers built upon them. The City of Light continued its charge upward at the endless gray. Construction was unabated, no sooner would a tower be finished and incorporated into the Carapace, than its designers would begin the blueprints for its expansion.
Such constant, rampant physical delineation and disparity encouraged a social twin. The poor were relegated to the City’s lowest levels: Zero, One and Two. Three and Four were for the middle class. The highest from five to seven were reserved for the rich and powerful. Over the dark shrouded streets alternately hugging the upper levels and swooping down to the streets below were built the arching Skyways, flying ribbons of concrete and asphalt that kept the City’s sky-dwelling citizens from having to lower themselves to the levels and populace that dwelled below. And so skyscraper was built on skyscraper, and tower upon tower. Ever upward the City flung itself, as though its populace feared the very earth that had birthed it.
4 – The Power of Pain
The assassin was not a religious man. Stroking out his final hundred pushups he focused on the primal forces that kept him alive. Metaphysical muttering did nothing to augment his formidable survival skills. There was more truth in the pools of sweat that had formed around his straining hands than could be found between the covers of the Bible or other religious work. And so spare was his existence, so dependant upon the unobstructed view was he that anything that did not directly assist him in staying alive was rejected outright.
Instead he honed his mind and body like a knife-whetting its edge on any obstacle life threw at him. He had to be the perfect machine to interact with other tools-the weapons of his trade. And he was the integral part-the engine for the killing systems he had designed. Religion and philosophy encouraged irrational thinking, and he had no use for it. The closest he possessed to a spiritual life was his knowledge of pain.
He was exposed to its power before he could talk, and had since depended upon it as his sole employer and greatest teacher. He didn’t consider himself able to possess faith in anything else. The assassin had moved through his life with hard actions in an environment too strenuous for anything metaphysical to survive. He was a contract
