The Veritas Project by C. F. E. Black

Author:C. F. E. Black [Black , C. F. E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-03-15T22:00:00+00:00

We follow Ty out a back door, up a bare concrete stairwell, and out into a parking deck nearly as tall and deep as the mall itself. We crawl into a dumpy old gas burner—a highly taxed classic as Ty puts it—and putter out into the city. He drives us away from the city center, back out into the part of town where cracks in the pavement are more common than smooth asphalt and weeds pry their way between sidewalk stones. We turn in toward a short, many-windowed building across the street from a wide sea of abandoned tractor trailers surrounded by a chain-link fence. Tumbleweeds of trash skate across the parking lot, stopping at the chain link fence, where a small retaining wall of old cans and decaying brown bags has begun to grow. And amid the trash, rats. One scurries away from the car as we approach it.

“Rats?” Pru asks with a definite hiss of disgust.

“They won’t hurt you. They’re just drones.”

Drones?

“Why rats?” Pru barks, clearly horrified.

Ty seems amused. “Because everyone hates them. People see rats and they stay away. Hence the genius of them.”

I’m starting to think this sea of rotting trailers is more than meets the eye. “What’s he got in those things? Gold?”

Ty looks at me like somehow I’ve guessed the next lottery number. “Not exactly.”

We get out of the car and head toward the brick building that looks to be from the era of Watson and Crick. No sleek glass windows, no steel visible. Just mortar smeared on by hand.

We step up to the external stairwell of the building. A few people huddled on the corner across the street from us look up. A boy jerks his head back and smiles, mouth open wide.

“Ey, Ty! Who dat?”

“M’s newest employees! Ooh-a!” He shakes his hands in the air in front of his face, flapping his fingers back and forth, making some kind of ridiculous display.

“Ooh-a!” The boy flips his fingers in the air a few times, too, then turns his head back down. Those around him do the same.

I raise a brow.

“Just saved you some trouble. That’s Wade. It’d be best if you two—” he looks from me to Pru “—stay away from him.” Ty pauses for a second, looking at us with concern. His eyes uncomfortably move down my frame, then back up. “Y’all really don’t know anything about life out here, do you?”

“Of course we do! We’ve been to the mall countless times, you know.” Pretentious of him to think we know nothing!

He shakes his head. “No, you don’t know a thing.”

Ty’s apartment is small, greying in the corners, and in need of fresh paint. The carpet stinks and the sink boasts crusted stains from meals long forgotten. I wonder if rat drones live in here, too. Or real ones. They’d like it. A bookshelf takes up one whole wall, crammed with decaying titles and frayed spines. One book lies open on the table in the center of the room, its pages yellowed and marked with lines.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.