The City that Bleeds Green

Chapter 1 - We're the future, your future

In 2178, a coalition between the Neo-Anarchist Brigade, the radical fringe of the Social-Transhumanist Party and the Secret Army of Mutant Dignity took up arms and overthrew the neo-fascist dictatorship in Lutecia-II after ten years of civil war and seventy-eight years of brutal totalitarianism, eugenic policies and systemic genocide against "degenerate demographics". At the end of the war, political organizations large enough to claim to govern - such as he aforementionned, but others as well, such as the Independant Libertarian League, the New Christian-Communist Coalition and the Communist Party - failed to reach to an agreement or set up a temporary transitory government. In a speech that would mark history, Them-Patris Filithoma of the Independant Libertarian League made it clear that, given the situation, only the continuation of the civil war would determine who would rule the city. Spoken up with thunderous rhetoric, the question was resolved unanimously: in the face of the horror of recent years, no one, not even the representatives of the recently overthrown and notoriously violent New Evolutionist Party, maintained their claim to rule. Thanks to their unexpected decision, the new-evolutionists bargained their right to even exist by a landslide, in exchange for the public execution of the former government and their then-executive office, at their own expense. Since then, no government has been established in Lutecia-II.Only the corporations, relatively unaffected by the war, maintained a flourishing activity that everyone was content with, since without them, food, entertainment, clean water, basically every vital and secondary services would collapse and the megalopolis with it.

SKJANA

2 of april, 2198

8:37 a.m. By the aircraft's window, Skjana gazed into the dark blue waters of the Sène river progressively turning green as he approached his destination. Lutecia-II, the city that one writer once called the city that bleeds green because of the hue of the water in all the rivers and canals around the city. Skjana didn't know exactly when this color had appeared. He once heard that some time during the civil war, over thirty years ago, an airborn chemical weapon had spreaded in the city's water, and that the algae had been contaminated and becoming luminescent, to the point where it was said that there was no longer even any public lighting needed by the rivers. Rumors said that the chemical was spreadt in too small quantities to contaminate the water beyond a few kilometers upstream and downstream out of the city. Of course, rumor also went on that the contagion was spreading from one seaweed to another and risked eventually to reach further until it reaches the ocean and as far as the Loire and the Sène rivers ran into the land.

Since the Civil War, no one had the means to study these matters seriously anyway. There were still scientists and experts, but most of them were isolated, cut from any network that mattered, scattered in small-scale laboratories. All forms of administration and municipal government had collapsed. No infrastructure, no one decision maker and, of course, no one to toss a single dulutetian consortium credit (CCD), local currency, into a single research program. That any single hospital, universities and businesses had taken the decision to take control of their activities and were operating autonomously against the odds, site by site, with their own rules was a decisive turn yet an utter miracle for the city's existence. But as far as luck and self-relience goes, if anyone with a chemistry degree had fun studying the spread of the chemical agent in the algae, there was no one to read the reports and take measures anyway. Rumors went with the wind, some saying that algae was being distilled into poison by secret societies, others that it could be used to concoct powerful hallucinogenics.

At best, the extraction of luminescent algae for traffic could be redeployed to the borders of the affected areas to reduce their expansion, but life in Lutecia-II had sunk into socio-political lethargy since the civil war, too content to have reached a point of relative equilibrium between corporations and political organizations. The average dulutecian was too busy thriving one day at a time to worry about water pollution or air-ground vehicles' speed regulation.

Law and order rested on a patchwork of turfs and wards where militias funded by political organizations enforced their laws, which implied that the jurisdiction regarding different lucrative activities were nowhere the same, sometimes even from one block to the next. To work in peace with the authorities, one had to know the city well, know where to hustle and where to live, and make do with each territories' own conveniences. But apart from the Elisé ward, the real estate sector had collapsed, and between squats and slightly better-equipped low-rent apartments, you almost had to knock on every door in search of a carpet corner to find a home, with no certainty on safety and salubrity.

Skjana sighed. In his headphones, the gravelly, hypnotic infraguitar riff of Green Blood by Poisön Charge IV guided his daydreaming by the window. On the horizon, the titanic skyscrapers of Lutecia-II were now in sight, and the Sène river glowed green, like he had only seen in photos until now. The more he put together what he knew about L-II, the more he expected life would certainly be no picnic. In any case, he had no degree whatsoever, no plans for the future and in consequence, no job or graduation planned. A great leap into the unknown. Only one light glimmered at the bottom of the pit : his childhood friend Day, who had been alerted to his arrival and would welcome him into his home. At least housing was a settled matter.

Then, on his right, a voice muffled by the music in his ears derailed his train of thoughts. He was startled and turned his pale grey eyes towards the chair next to his. A pair of minnow eyes met his, and he guessed that the person next to him had just spoken. He removed one of his earphones.

"I said, are you all right?" sputtered the speaker of the synthetic expression module that hung around his neck. "If you're anxious, you can ask the staff for an anxiolytic," they said. They had long, messy black hair and a face distorted by what looked like old deep burn marks.

Skjana didn't answer right awat. Their two pairs of eyes plunged silently into each other. There was so much they could read into each other's. Fire, blood on the walls and bullet holes were still warm, settled in the depths of their gazes. The other suddenly shuddered and looked away.

"No thanks, I'm fine." said Skjana hurriedly. The other let a short silence pass. Then he turned his head to Skjana.
"We're probably thinking the same thing. L-II isn't ideal. But Rouan is no longer safe. The newvolves would have killed us without the help of the soc-trans." he said slowly, massaging his temples thoughtfully with his fingers. "We did our best and we'll have to do just that there. My name is He-Mathie Fililaurens, by the way." he said with a smile. His modulated voice was robotic and impersonal, but he seemed to know just how to bring his words to life with a seasoned play facial expressions.
"He-Skjana Filisylve" Skjana said back.
"Nice to meet you." his seatmate replied.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of chewing-gum. He featured a second hand growing on his wrist, just at the base of the other. He handed the box to Skjana.

"Here, have one," he said. "Lemon and mécodeine. That should help you ease off. I don't know exactly what you might have seen in Rouan, but it's normal that it stuck with you. You know, there's no aircraft, not even one frigate that will take you far enough and fast enough that your memories won't follow you. It's hard, but you just have to live with it."

Skjana sighed again, grabbed a piece of gum, and stammered a "thank you" before shoving it into his mouth. His head fell forward loosely, his pink curly hair swaying along. He glanced out the window. The capsule was now flying over the first scattered slums on the outskirts of the megalopolis. The capsule was beginning to lose altitude, and landing on the omniport runway was only a matter of minutes away.

He buried his face in his hands. His last hours in Rouan came back to him in flashes. Gunshots, bodies, buildings on fire, screams, people pleading for their lives. Friends and family he left behind. To add insult to injury, he actually was one of the better off. Not everyone is lucky enough to be picked up by the soc-trans network. If you had a vehicle, it took many hours to reach the borders of the megalopolis. After that, you had to pass through the roadblocks with a pass or sneak away on foot, then walk for months to L-II or Bordo in the south. It was obvious that most of them would die on the way. There was no civilization left outside the cities. Only ruins and small isolated communities, some of them hostile. Skjana felt tears welling up in his eyes.

"Do you have a place to go?" the man asked, absentmindedly tapping the back of his hand with its twin one.
"Yes, yes." Skjana answered in a dizzy voice. "In the Gouge ward, northern district."
"Ah, that's a relief !" he replied with a smirk. From his other arm, the one with only one hand, he pulled out his phone and held it out to Skjana. "I'm moving into the Tourbière ward, practically next door. You pulled the best you could, the northern district is far better for mutants. Give me your contact, if you like. We need to stick together, after all. I already know the area, so if you need a service or advice, don't hesitate."

Skjana tediously turned his head towards Mathie. He could already feel the mécodéine kicking in. His senses were dull and his anxiety drifted away to merely a flicker in the distance. He raised the phone in his hand and tapped Mathie's phone. A beep signaled that the exchange of contact was made. His neighbor's loudspeaker let out a hum that was surely the closest thing he had to a sigh.

"But if we're on with advice," he added, "Next time you're offered something, read the notice before you accept. I said the gum was mécodeine. It could have been something else. You're lucky I don't mean you any harm."

Skjana let out a grunt in place of a response. But Mathie was right. In L-II, caution will be mandatory. Skjana layed back in his sit and grimaced. Because of his genetically hypersensitive hearing, the roar of the flying machine's engine overwhelmed him like a flow of crushed glass shoved in his eardrums. He put his headphones back on and fell asleep right away.