The Neo-Metropol Heist

3: Edward

Three days after he found himself stood outside the ground of the state penitentiary with his state-mandated fifty credits in the rain and a taxi waiting to take him to a destination that he hadn't yet thought of, Edward found himself wandering down a quiet suburb just outside of the city.
He'd used the credits to buy himself lodging and enough food until he could apply for fundy, the basic state welfare allowance.
The hostel he'd signed into was notorious for waifs and strays, and was located in the sunken end of the island, built on one of the rudimentary roadways built over the water. The room that he had for the next three nights was shared with one other man, but he kept himself to himself and that was perfectly fine with Edward.
With no tasks assigned to him by any kind of supervisor, a system he had grown worryingly reliant on whilst incarcerated, Edward found himself searching old friends on a public terminal in an underpass that stank of urine on his second night of freedom.
He had barely enough free credits left to search more than one name, but he struck lucky with the first search, if you could call anything that had happened to him in more than four decades 'lucky'.
Dante Gomorrah, or 'Dan', was one of Edward's old accomplices in the good old days. Not a bad guy, from what he could remember. He'd dropped out before the last score, the score that was meant to set them up for life, the score that had ended up taking Edward's life.
He found his fists balled up, his nails digging into his rough palms, and relaxed.
He didn't know why he wanted to find Dan. In all honesty, he didn't remember being great friends with the guy, but lacking any other better options, it was as good a plan as any.
It wasn't that hard to find the address - 2223 Granville, and close enough to walk from his hostel. His old bones ached from a live where the only place they needed to take him was to the exercise yard from his cell and back again.
The walk took him a couple of hours, the backdrop to the whole journey a view of the city.
It looked sick. That was all he could think of to describe it.
In the years he had been inside, the island had become overcrowded with new towers - there wasn't a wall in sight that wasn't plastered with all kinds of glowing neon adverts, for alcohol, for the newest sim-game, all designed to distract and pacify.
Vehicles weaved in between skyscrapers like flying swarms of locusts, erratically and in a way that Edward was surprised that he hadn't seen a horrific accident.
The technology that made cars fly wasn't new to him - it had been in its infancy when he'd been arrested. The cars were a different shape now, though, and flew much faster and higher.
He'd noticed on the first night that the stars were masked by the sickly orange veil projected by the glowing island in the darkness. It was less obvious now, in the afternoon light, but the clouds still had a weird shimmer to them.
He arrived at 2223 Granville just after two, and discovered that it was actually an old people's home. He hadn't expected it, but it wasn't surprising. The board outside the front gate said Granville Elderly Accommodation, but even he knew that that was a pretty name for a different kind of prison.
The building itself was several storeys high and set in the middle of a row of boring looking two-up two-down houses built several decades ago, before the city was catapulted into the all-out assault on the senses that the future was. For a moment, Edward couldn't decide whether 'boring' was worse or better than 'retina-melting'.
He lifted the hatch on the gate and began to walk towards the front door when there came a hideous buzzing came from beneath his feet.
Edward stopped in his tracks when a few feet in front of him, a flat panel of glass, barely a hair's breadth in width, rose from the ground and met him at eye-level, upon it, the image of a smiling woman with dead eyes like a fish on ice at a fishmonger's appeared.
"Hello," the computer-generated woman beamed, "welcome to the Granville Elderly Accommodation Home. Are you visiting a family member?"
Edward blinked at the panel for a moment, in a stare-off with the woman's grey, lifeless eyes.
"No," he replied.
The panel flashed red.
"I'm sorry, but only registered family members are allowed access to the home. Please make a formal application online if you wish to make a visit," the woman suddenly stopped talking, flickered once and disappeared.
In her place, the face of a tired looking old man with charcoal skin appeared. Through the folds, wrinkles and visibly forlorn eyes, Edward recognised Dante Gomorrah.
"This ridiculous contraption," Dan grumbled, "easy enough to override, good to have a hobby."
Edward leaned into the panel, seeing his reflection blinking.
"Dan?" He said, quietly.
"Edward Helten. Still wearing that ridiculous hat?" Dan replied.
Edward couldn't help grinning.
"Keeps my head dry," he replied.
Dan raised an eyebrow.
"You should invest in an umbrella. Room 334, I'll open the door."
The panel crackled again, and the face of the smiling woman reappeared momentarily before the panel disappeared into the path once again, only a thin slit in the paving as proof it was ever there.