Wicked City by Westin Lee

Author:Westin Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Westin Lee

Chapter

Twenty-Two

They made their way through an alley toward the center of the district, and the halls and alleys grew more and more claustrophobic. Felipe pushed on ahead, and Acsey rushed to keep up in the dim light.

“You know where we are now, yes?” Felipe asked.

“Definitely not,” Acsey said. They passed through an area venting some foul-smelling petroleum vapor and she wrinkled her nose, even though she secretly liked the memories machine smells brought to her.

“Really? I am surprised you do not recognize it.”

Acsey looked again but couldn’t place the whitish hallway and uneven, tiled concrete floor. Then, a few minutes later, they reached an open square, which fed into two streets on the far side, and which was clear of cables, walkways, and the typical obstructions all the way to the first platform ceiling, twenty meters above. The roughly cobbled streets cut around a center island with a makeshift rack for bikes and carts, while the outside was lined with factories—textiles, petroleum processing, and of course, metalworking. Every other building was in disrepair or outright abandoned, and the place was eerily empty.

“This is Holdover Square,” Acsey said, her eyes wide. “It’s been so long, I forgot where it was.”

“That hallway we came down was blocked for many years, so it may not be familiar to you.”

Memories rushed back to Acsey now, pastel-color waves of laughter. Childhood.

“Is the building still here?”

“Yes, of course.” Felipe pointed at a squat, green little cube with boards over the doors.

“No, not the school. My old apartment.”

Felipe shrugged. “You were in the neighborhood behind the factory, right?”

Acsey had not been back to the square since she had lost her mother. Their apartment had been on the first floor and looked out over a narrow little sidewalk. There were two other buildings, one on either side, but beyond that, the details were blurred.

Oh, and there were stairs, she remembered. One day, she had pushed down the safety gate at the top and ridden it to the landing like a sled, to the chagrin of her mother.

Once, Rene had cut his leg while they were playing with the older boys in the third building. His parents had been gone somewhere with Felipe. Father had been so angry he had to deal with it, he broke a chair when he returned.

That must have been very soon after the riots.

Acsey rounded the corner she knew, with the tall gate on the left with no matching part on the right. But when she looked for the apartments, all she saw was the sheer, gray wall of a support column.

“Ah, they added this column some time after we left, I suppose. I am sorry.”

Acsey made her way around the base of it. Colorful graffiti crawled by on the massive cylinder. All that was left of her old home was the tattered seam that had once connected her building to the one next to it.

“I remember it being bigger,” she said.

They went back to the school, with its boarded windows and doors, and around to the towering side wall of the factory next door, where Father used to go every morning.

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