It was quiet and dark. Which was normal, it was night after all. He felt around looking for a certain something. He found it. He took a little pin and swiped it across the Arc of the door. A panel opened up and Josef quickly got to work on trying to figure out the code to the door.
He heard a soft sizzle which indicated that the door was about to open. Good. Once it did open he slipped quietly inside and quickly got to work taking anything he could fit in his bag (he had managed to snag one of the good ones, the ones that were specifically designed to be deceiving in the way that they looked small but could fit a ton of stuff in it. It was very expensive and usually only reserved for nobles and Royalty but Josef had managed to grab it from right under their stuck up noses).
This time it was a grocery store, he always felt sort of bad for the 1s and 2s who would most likely get chewed out by their most likely 3 boss or the CEO who was probably a 5 but it was life, he had to, so that he and the other members of the Black Diamond could survive.
Josef did however, find solace in the fact that the society he was taking from wasn't exactly the kindest to people like him, with the attitude most people with abilities had about 0s, thinking them a useless waste of space and therefore didn't deserve jobs, or a place to live or food made it a whole lot easier to steal from them.
As he was grabbing a medicine bottle he heard the wailing of a siren start to go off. 'Son of a bitch' he thought as he quickly stuffed it into his bag, zipping it up and took off running.
The door to this section of the store was starting to close so he ran as fast as he could tossing the bag to the other side of the door and using all the momentum he had built up he slid under the door just before it closed and grabbed the bag continuing to run.
He dodged many traps and winced putting a hand to his eyes once he managed to get outside. His eyes weren't used to the bright light having gotten accustomed to the darkness of the inside of the store. Wait... light... no that couldn't be right, it was still nighttime.
He removed his hand blinking a few times as he did so so that he could see better before swearing under his breath at what he saw. It was the authorities. He flipped his hood on over his head, not to hide his identity, they already knew what he looked like, but rather to shield his face from the brightness of it all.
He took the bag and hoisted it on his shoulders before scaling the building and making his escape. Josef jumped from rooftop to rooftop, hearing the sounds of the authorities' footsteps behind him. He'd have to lose them.
He made many twists and turns thankful that his black clothing blended into the night surrounding him. When Josef was positive that he had completely lost the very last one he ducked into the shadows and made the last few twists and turns before reaching what seemed to be a crumbling old bridge to the untrained eye.
He ducked underneath the bridge before seeming to to do something fidgeting with one of the rocks and the scenery completely shifted. The scenery was rather beautiful with buildings made out of stones similar to those in the ancient ruins around the world (Josef had always wanted to go to at least one ruins) but also were blended into vines and had moss growing on it.
Despite having moss and vines growing on the houses they weren't worn down, but rather helped the whole nature aesthetic and helped blend in the houses without being in the way.
Josef walked up to one houses feeling a breath of relief leave his body when he saw that the lights in the house were off. Meaning that THEY were most likely asleep so he could easily just sneak back in and go up into his room.
He opened the door as quietly as he possibly could before heading for the stairs that led upwards towards the second floor and his bedroom. Josef placed a hand on the stone railing and was just about to climb the stairs when he heard a flick of a light switch being turned on.
He froze.
"Josef Denik Kalifin where were you" Ravina asked him as if she was his mother and she had just caught him doing something that he shouldn't have been doing, which, in all fairness, wasn't too far off... he did consider her a mother figure.
She, with her husband (who also happened to be a 0) had stepped in to raise him and the other three 0s who'd entered their home, something that was very common for an adult 0 who was apart of the Black Diamond to do seeing as they knew what it was like to be cast away, unwanted, left to die at the age of 4 just because they had no abilities, just because they were labeled as a useless liability to the messed up society of this planet.
He tossed the bag onto the the floor watching as it slid to a stop right next to Ravina's feet. "You already know the answer." Was his only reply.
It was pointless to lie to her, he had done this enough times for Ravina to figure out where exactly he'd been, she wasn't dumb or ignorant after all. And besides, she was just one of those people who it felt wrong to lie to, like guilt eating you from the inside out.
"Josef, you could have been captured, or worse killed! Did you even think about the possibility that they could have followed you? What then? You just led them back to us all! Not only do you constantly risk your own skin on these nightly escapades, but you're also putting others in danger as well!" Ravina whisper-shouted just loud enough for him to know that she was upset with him but not loud enough to wake up any of the other residents of the house.
Which, knowing the people who lived in the house only Estel was actually asleep because she was known to hit the pillow at 8:30 without fail. Zua was, without fail, waiting upstairs to rip him a new one because, since she was the oldest of Ravina and Rafael's "children" she thought she could get on to him. Rafael would be awake because he was worried and as a nosy 13 year old, Chester would try to stay up to see what was going on and there was a 50/50 chance he would fall asleep.
"Josef you know that-" Ravina started before he cut her off.
"I made sure no one was following me an' I only got what was necessary, I don't know why you're so worried. Besides, when're we going to actually do something about our situation instead of sitting an' twiddling our thumbs?" He asked defiance evident in his voice.
He mostly got any medicine, food and technology that they could not get themselves seeing as The Black Diamonds had to keep a low profile as a group lest the authorities get involved.
"When we have the numbers Josef, you know this, we only have 384 members, even less who are full grown adults, it would be suicidal to try to take on the system at this stage. It's the Great Council's orders, not mine."
"Well I ain't going to wait until then because at the rate that us 0s are born that day'll never come an' I'm aiming for justice for us all an' I don't want to keep living like this." Josef retorted.
"I... well... still," she sighed in defeat and exasperation, "Just go to your room please... an' try to NOT put yourself an' others in harms way when you don't have to Josef, I'm worried 'bout you" she finished.
He simply nodded his head before trudging up the stairs to his room and when Zua was leaning at her door giving him a look with her arms crossed he merely gave her one back seeming to say 'don't'. The 19 year old went back into her room.
He went into his room and shut the door all the way making sure it was locked before he took out something that he took painstaking efforts to hide from his family. He opened the piece of paper up to look at a copy of the map of Salina castle, the residence of the Royal family.
It was almost time for the big show, the all or nothing. But first he had to somehow find out which rooms were which since the jumbled squiggly lines didn't make any sense. In the meantime he just had to continue to make sure that no one discovered it, after all, what they didn't know couldn't hurt them.
1544 words.
Sorry this took so long I had zero motivation to write but had the entire chapter in my head for like weeks. Hope you have a great day.
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Numbered
FantasyA dystopian tale of a society were your number means everything. Due to a virus known as *info redacted* society has turned into a number system based on what power you have. Some are more dangerous than others. The rarer your power the higher your...
