Sanctuary

Chapter Six - Senna

Two weeks had passed since the ball, but Senna hadn't used those days to prepare so much as she had used them to sulk and poke at the HMD. If she could get the HMD to work, she could talk to Wrench. They'd be able to sort the whole thing out. She was sure Wrench had a perfectly reasonable story behind how she came into possession of the first ever piece of bioluminescent jewelry. A story that didn't involve theft and running out to the Rim to escape the cops.

"Do you have your ID card?" Nami asked as she fixed Senna's hair for the second time that morning.

"Yeah," Senna muttered, wincing as her mother gave a relentless tug to her hair, folding one section of the black glossy strands over the other.

The ID card in question was a thin rectangle of recycled plastic that displayed her face, her right thumbprint, her birthday, and her blood type. They had done a lot of blood tests in addition to her school placement tests and a series of vaccines. Fortunately, Senna wasn't squeamish around needles, or that day would have been utterly miserable. Instead she had been curious. What were they testing her blood for? She got the blood typing bit, but the simple answer of 'genetics' for all the rest wasn't good enough. What about her genetics? Were they checking for disease? Did it have something to do with what her Grandfather had said? Nami had told her not to worry about it and in the end all Senna got was the little sheet of plastic saying she was a citizen of Central.

"And your shuttle pass?"

"Yes, Mom."

"And your gym clothes?

"Yeah. I've got it, alright?"

Nami sighed, checking her work on the braid before leaving it be. She spun her daughter around and looked over the school uniform, brushing off the shoulders of the jacket and checking the cuffs of her pants.

"It's clean, Mom, you don't have to brush it off. Where would I have even gotten dirt to get on it?" Senna tugged at the stand-up collar with a hook of her finger, trying to feel a little less suffocated by the stuffy white vinyl.

"If anyone could manage, it would be you."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence." Senna rolled her eyes. "Can I go now? I don't want to miss the shuttle."

"One more thing."

Senna groaned, expecting her mother to nag or pull at her hair some more, but Nami tugged her forward into a hug instead.

"I love you, sweetheart."

"I love you, too, Mom." The fight sagged out of Senna as she returned the hug. Nami held her for a touch too long, then took a deep breath and let her daughter go.

"Alright. Go show them how smart you are. And remember..."

"Listen to my teachers."

"Well, yes, but—"

"Don't mess with my hair."

"That's not what I was going to—"

"Don't try to shake people's hands."

"Have fun."

Senna smiled. She sincerely hoped she would.

-

Public transportation in Central wasn't public at all. Well, it was open to the public, but the design of the shuttles seemed to revolve entirely around isolation. The crowd was funneled into single file lines by frosted glass walls, which lead to individual compartments. Chatter between people was minimal, with most of the background noise coming from the hum of the shuttle as it idled and the 'whoosh' of the doors sliding up to the top of the vehicle. There was an odd flow to the sounds, to how the crowd moved with it. The line would step forward, a person would board the idling shuttle, the door would whoosh down, and the shuttle would shoot off down the tunnel with a 'pop'. Before the hum of the first shuttle could quiet, another shuttle would appear and the process would repeat. Whir, hum, shuffle, whir, pop. Senna grew more impatient with every forward shuffle, fidgeting with her gloves and trying to find anything of interest to look at. Whir, hum, shuffle, whir, pop. It was a constant song that moved at a maddening crawl. The people around her looked almost hypnotized by it all, moving with the flow of it like it was programmed into their being. Whir, hum, shuffle, whir, pop.