Touched - Order of Odium: Book One

Daniel Baker - 1

Daniel Baker was rousted awake by two armed guards, his mind still sluggish from lack of sleep. The "room' he was being kept in was little more than a cell, a spartan room with little more than a bed, a toilet, a sink, and a bookcase. His meals were brought to him regularly, and he was not allowed to leave without an armed escort. It was exactly how he imagined prison would be, except this place wasn't a prison per-se. At least not like the prisons they had "below".

Some aspects of being here were even somewhat better than before he was apprehended. In a past life, Daniel had been a mid-level drug dealer, trying to make ends meet, and possibly a little more if things turned out good that week. He was dealing a new synthetic opioid, called Haze by most users. Very similar to the old drug heroin, but without as many side effects. It was addictive of course, there wasn't a way around that yet, and really, why would the maker of a new drug want it to not be addictive? Addiction means repeat customers, and repeat customers meant money.

Haze provided the same effects of heroin without being as addictive and with a very decreased chance of overdosing. Whoever had created Haze had manufactured it to give the user just the right amount of the drug needed for the feeling, while the rest was excreted through urination. Modern medicine was much more advanced than it used to be, allowing for drug companies and others with the knowledge and tools, to target certain areas of the brain and release only the dose needed, while allowing the rest to be excreted as waste.

The vast majority of users of haze were fully functional people. They had jobs, families, all that good stuff, but wanted to relax in the evenings or weekends. Daniel wasn't a big user of the stuff, a "don't shit where you eat" kind of thing, but even he had to admit, haze made you feel damn good. Fucking great, really, but the possibility of becoming psychologically addicted to the stuff is a big reason he stayed away for the most part. He was fine giving it to people who worked under him to sell to others, but Daniel was in it for the money.

Daniel was born into a poor family, many times left wanting for food, and occasionally homeless. When he dropped out of school, left the shitty group home his family was currently staying in, he had found solace in a small community of other like-minded teenagers.

Their upbringings were pretty much the same; different location, different last names, but the rest of the story was the same, ya shitty home life for this or that reason. Sometime before Daniel's decision to leave his family, someone had created a sort of community under the shade of the monolithic building that floated above New York. A place where anyone who felt unwanted or was running from their past could belong.

Each person was required to do certain chores, such as laundry, tending to the gardens, etc... Those with the knowledge were used for finding electrical poles the community could use to splice cables and bring electricity to their camp, a requirement to give the plants the needed light to survive in the dim lift they lived in. Others sold drugs such as haze to help bring money to the community.

The main reason the community was founded there of all places, was because nobody ever went there that felt they belonged anywhere else. The police largely stayed away because they had their own problems to deal with, and those that stayed in the community were bound to strict rules, especially when it came to anything that would bring the police or other authorities to their door.

Daniel had lived there close to six years when he was asked by one of the community leaders to start going to the outskirts of the shade and sell haze. The areas where the sun met the shade from the building hovering over them became an ad-hoc neutral territory, where the "sunners" could meet with "shaders" to trade or sell what the other side wanted.

After being in the dim and artificially lit area he had resided the past six years, being in a place where he could see the sun, was strange. It took his eyes a long time to get used to even the dimmer areas of the "in-between". The first few days he didn't sell much of anything, he stayed in the background and watched. Partially marveling at the sunlight he hadn't expected to see again, but also observing the more experienced dealers sell their wares.

Soon Daniel became just as good as the others tasked with selling haze. He would come back to the community with money figuratively bursting from his account. Once back he would transfer the money to his "boss'" account, and be back at it the next day, eventually advancing and earning more responsibility and freedom.

Daniel's mistake was overestimating how invisible he was to the authorities. One evening he was walking towards the in-between to keep an eye on one of his inferiors who seemed to be using more than he was selling, and the next thing he knew he was being arrested. The inferior Daniel had gone to check on had been working for the police, and had an abundance of evidence against Daniel.

Due to overpopulation in prisons all across the United States, the Order of Odium had made a deal that they would accept all healthy people who would normally end up in prison. What happened to them after, most people didn't know or care. All they knew was that it freed up a bed in an already overcrowded cell somewhere, and that was good enough. The fact that those in the judicial system earned a kickback for each person sent to the Order, was implicitly understood, but despite protests and governing officials trying to change the practice, nothing ever came of it.

Rather than go to trial, he took a plea deal that landed him in the colossal "warehouse" owned by the Order, the same place that cast its shadow over his former living area.

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