Sanctuary

Chapter Thirteen - Senna

"Nigel! Nigel! You won't believe what happened yesterday!" Senna greeted excitedly after class, already changed into her work clothes with her vinyl uniform shoved rather haphazardly into her bag on top of all of her books.

"Happy Senna is back, I see," Nigel commented, leaning up against the clear walkway wall as he waited for all of the other students to filter past.

"Yeah, well that's because I have a friend AND my Mom and Zed brought my bike in from the Rim!" She bounced as she spoke, the braid of her hair energetically echoing the motion behind her.

"Bike?" Nigel raised an eyebrow, waiting for the inevitable clarification.

"Yeah, my bike! I made it myself from scraps! See on the Rim I was an apprentice at Wrench's shop, it was kind of a combination of a mechanics shop and a junkyard, 'cause it's really convenient to have all those parts laying around, you know? Anyway, Wrench let me take whatever parts I needed to fix this bike frame I found there and I did and it took me like a whole year to do and I had to fit some parts from other things and stuff, but I did it and it works awesome! And it doesn't run as hot as you'd expect from something that's steam powered! I managed to fit an old part from. . ."

"Woah there, cellmate. You're going too fast. We've got plenty of time today, you know."

"I know, I'm sorry. I'm just really excited! Have you ever built anything?"

"Nah, not really my thing," Nigel admitted with a bit of a shrug.

"Well. . . what is your thing?" Senna asked back and Nigel snickered. "What?"

"Nothing. . . nothing." He responded quickly with a wave, doing his best to muffle his snickers. Senna had the distinct feeling that there was joke there she wasn't getting. "I guess, uh. . . I fancy myself a defender or something. But as far as jobs or something. . . I haven't really thought about it. I figure there's no point in thinking about my future, you know? I'm just a Grunger. It's not like they're going to let me do anything fancy. Maybe after I graduate from here I can get a job doing something on the Rim. Who knows?"

"Well that wouldn't be so bad. There's a lot of good jobs out there and the people are really nice," Senna offered with a smile, trying to be positive about it. He smiled back at her, then glanced around to see that the crowd had started to thin out.

"Yeah. I suppose it wouldn't be bad at all." He pushed himself up off of the wall and gestured for her to follow him. "Alright, this way."

He lead her down one of the clear paths, following it straight past a turn and out of the main flow of traffic. He kept going until there were no other people around, then took a sharp turn to reveal the hidden doors of a service elevator.

"I work part time in 'trash services'," Nigel explained as he swiped a card through the reader and pushed the button to call the elevator. "Which is a fancy way of saying that I unclog trash chutes, save any recycling thrown into the garbage by mistake, and make sure the incinerators don't need maintenance. It gets me a keycard for elevators like this and helps me support my family. I mean, the wages aren't much, but..." He shrugged as the doors slid open before him. He never finished his sentence, deciding instead to gesture for Senna to step into the elevator first.

The ground floor was exactly as Senna had remembered from the auto ride. The city still looked more impressive from underneath, where it towered over them and shadowed all the light from the dome while providing its own gentle blue glow from some of the lower walkways. The labyrinth of alleys they were in wove between the buildings, but Nigel seemed to know them all like the back of his hand. He led her around for a few minutes and though they hadn't traveled far, she was already lost. Everything was large curving turns around the buildings and she had a hard time keeping track. It didn't help that everything looked the same. Blank walls, sometimes a dumpster, then more blank walls. Over and over again...