Thread: To the Last Syllable (Mr. M & Bathos)

She was more datacard than woman by the time she tottered out of the suite of offices, heaving two full boxes in her narrow arms, an additional bag slung over each shoulder. Her eyes, big and blue in a way that might have reminded her great grandparents of smogless sky, barely peeked over the top of her load. The automatic doors parted to make way for her as she made her exit, which was more than could be said for just about everybody else . The docking platform was full to bursting with day workers just off from work, waiting with varying degrees of patience for the next available taxi, and nobody seemed at all concerned with the overburdened secretary being jostled and moved with the ebb of the crowd. This was the story of Lyla's life, and since she didn't foresee a turning page in the near future, rather than fight against the weary mob, she dropped her pile of patient files right in the middle of the platform and took a seat on top of them. After all, she could afford to wait out the crowds. There wasn't much waiting for her back at her apartment. Close to an hour had passed before she got her chance. The hordes had decreased to just a small handful of people, all of them too nice or too dumb to push or weasel their way to the front of the line, when a fairly dinged up yellow hovercar pulled up to the platform. The back window was busted out and the motor sputtered and coughed when it came to a halt. It idled for a moment and, understandably, no one moved to take it. When the car began to pull away, Lyla hopped to her feet. Wait! She gathered up her bags and boxes, nearly overbalancing and pitching forward in the process, and sprinted after the car. Wait! she called again, as the car was still in motion. She looked quite a fright that way, running in tiny, shuffling steps, weaving right and left so she could see around the stacked boxes, shrieking at the taxi. Her hair, once smooth and hanging calmly down to her chin, now blew in all directions as she left the shelter of the building, giving the vague impression that her head was on fire with all the myriad shades of red illuminated under the artificial lights. The hovercar stopped and Lyla struggled to get the door open, smiling breathlessly as she peered inside. The driver looked her over dispassionately and didn't bother smiling back. Level four? Lyla asked through her smiling teeth. A lot of cabs didn't go that low, not even for an increased fee. It was a long way down, and there was essentially zero chance of picking up a return passenger. And besides all that, it was dangerous in the lower levels, full of surface punks and freaks on the lam. But that was where Lyla lived, and perhaps the major reason why she didn't bat an eye at the sorry state of the car. Get in, the driver said at length, and she did. Their descent was slow at first, due to all the rush hour traffic, but the longer they traveled the more deserted the airways, until they were the only hovercar in the air. I'm in the Willow Building, Lyla told the driver when they were approaching her level. East side, unit- Hey, why are we stopping? They were between levels four and five, not even in a designated parking space, and the driver twisted in his seat. That was when Lyla saw the glint of a blade. Credits, he said, and Lyla could now see a cold hardness in eyes where she had previously only noticed boredom. Fear prickled down her spine and her eyes went wide and horrified. Um, shouldn't we wait 'til my stop? The driver laughed. Honey, this is your stop. Lyla gulped. In that case, if you just pull over a little further, I can walk the rest of the way, no problem. Don't play dumb, lady, the driver said, and as he was speaking her eyes slid slowly to the side, seeking an escape plan. The building to their right was abandoned, but there was still an old landing platform. It was anybody's guess how sturdy it was, but it beat getting shanked and thrown out of the car at four-and-a-half levels. The impact to the surface would leave her in pieces, and that was only if she was lucky enough to land on a hovercar. Then there were all the files. If she lost her life over the files, sure, that'd be tragic. But if she lost her job over the files, that would be a step beyond heinous. She'd been working for Dr. Halford for two months now and already, due to no failings on her part, he thought her completely incompetent. If she lost all those patient files, she'd be out of a job and then even her level four apartment would look like a palace compared to the depths to which she'd descend. This is a pickle, she said under her breath. A pickle? Lady, this is a fuckin' robbery. Gimme your bags. No! Lyla wailed when the driver reached for one of her overloaded bags, and she slapped his hand away. In the moment he took to be baffled, Lyla threw open the door and launched her bags out of the car. They sailed through the air and landed on the nearby platform, spilling out across the floor. You crazy bitch! What are you doing! the man barked, reaching for her, catching Lyla by the hair. She kicked the boxes out the door, even as her head was wrenched painfully back. Her heart sank when seconds passed, ticking by like independent little eternities, and she never heard the boxes crash into the platform. She'd missed. There went her job. There was no time to consider that, however, because pain was blooming bright in the back of her head where the driver-cum-criminal had yanked it back against his headrest, twisting Lyla awkwardly in the small space. Let go! she demanded, and flailed as much as she dared with the blade pressing ever closer to her throat. It was about that time she got the brilliant idea to bite the man's face, and though seconds later she would realize that it was possibly the weakest defense ever employed against a razor-sharp blade whilst several hundred feet above the ground, she was desperate, and not entirely sure whether she was going to be raped and killed or just killed, but it seemed like a good idea, at the time, to pull out all the stops. For her troubles, she was shoved out of the hovercar. There came a moment, between the fourth and third levels, when Lyla realized she was going to die. There was no life flashing before her eyes, nor was there the dead calm that was rumored to come over some people in their final moments. There was the thought, oh, shit, and then there was the thought, fleeting as it was, of just how unfair it all was. Then the shock wore off, sometime between the second and third level, and there was only horror and a bright white pain right between her eyes, just before everything cut to black. --------- The datacards rained from the upper levels in a sudden, tightly knit shower, clattering to the ground and busting into thousands of little pieces, must like hail. Back when the surface saw authentic precipitation, not that anyone remembered those days, anymore. What came next wasn't all that uncommon. From accidents and suicides alike, bodies found their way to the lower level in various states of disrepair, some mangled by bumps along the way, some in perfect shape before they were destroyed on impact. The redhead who fell from the upper level wasn't all that different from those who had come before her, with one major exception. The closer she got to the surface, the slower she fell. There were other exceptions, too. Minor little details, like how the hovercars in the area all swerved toward her at sharp angles, even ones that were never running. How the signs all bent with the screech of protesting metal. One Plexiglas window even busted out. Everything was moving toward her, as if she were pulling at the very sky, scrabbling for purchase without aim or skill, and drawing everything along in her wake. That was until she hit the ground, moving so slowly by that point that a mild concussion would qualify as an extreme worst case scenario. She landed on her back, in a heap in the road, unconscious. She looked as if she'd stopped there to take a nap.