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NOW
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FORTUNE CITY
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IN THE RUIN AND RUBBLE where a monumental research facility once stood four years ago, Cain Castello sits under the eternally overcast sky, letting a cigarette burn down to the filter. If he closed his eyes and inhaled the smoke, he could still picture how it all came crashing down.
A long time ago, Velocity Labs could've been considered the pinnacle of scientific research, and now it is in unsalvageable pieces left idle like a scrap yard. A long time ago, Velocity Labs was his home. He felt along the scars encircling his neck, along the burn marks left behind by electric shock collars, a necklace of his own missteps. They weren't pleasant, but they allowed him a shelter. Before that, he had nothing. Was nothing. And though he'd grown up in the sky citadel, soaked in sunlight and the privilege that followed his father's name, it was Warner, his own brother, who continually pointed out that he never belonged, that just because they shared a father didn't mean that they shared blood—Cain's had been tainted, his mother a ghost from the ground. But Velocity Labs had given him something tangible. Something worth holding onto.
Now, though, as he casts his gaze toward the ever-grey sky, Cain can't help but feel that the thread has been severed, the doors slammed shut on him. From the ground, one couldn't see Elysium, only the bottom of it, a screen projecting the illusion of a sky, dark clouds passing by on a loop. The only way to the city was by air shuttle, and only a few people had access. The city blocked all sunlight at noon, and since its construction, the ground had been saturated in its shadow. Under this shadow, Cain feels like a bug under a boot. When the lab went down, they'd been cast out into the dark, locked out of Elysium, his access revoked.
It's merely incentive, Warner had told him. You earn your way back to Elysium once you've found the girl.
But it was more than that. At the nape of his neck, he traces the unnatural rise and slope of his skin, the bump just a finger's width at the base. The chip sat slotted between the discs of his spine, and though it was inert at the moment, each time he was reminded of it, he couldn't help but feel the burn of its presence, a smoking gun of mistrust, Warner's hand clamped around his throat. Even fitted with the power suppressors, the shock collars, Cain was already a threat. Vigilare had seen to that. Warner wanted his Horsemen to be lethal, to be weapons, which explained the years of combat lessons, the tireless training. Without the protective measures, they were outright dangerous. The power suppressors had a limited range of activation, and so, they needed something far more feasible to control from headquarters in Elysium. As such, the chips doubled as both a tracker and a kill-switch, rigged to blow his head clean off his shoulders if he so much as put a toe out of line. It'd been Warner's idea.
