NaNoWriMo - Memories - Teagan

Awareness came in a sudden jolt, leaving the mind grasping after something which evaded with the ease of air escaping a net.  For a few bewildering seconds, the noise throwing itself forward for acknowledgment was an incomprehensible jumble of sound, prompting the new body to jump to new feet.  

New.  Everything was new!  Odd hints of recognition invaded the senses from time to time, only to fade before they could be fully understood.  Information was flooding in, turning everything white and spinning balance precariously.  Millions of questions where asked by every fiber of the body and soul, answered instantly, giving the new being a sense of physical self even if the sentient question had gone unasked.  Handily, there was a mirror to the left and a figure stepped to it, obeying the intense instinctual desire to know who.  Thankfully the mirror also obeyed and showed eyes a frame which pleased the mind behind them:

Medium height, bipedal, five fingers gracing each hand, opposable thumbs.  The frame of the body was muscular and strong, neither of fragile thin nor lumbering thick, easily manageable.  In the twilight, the color of the skin seemed to be a brownish gray, leaning more toward gray, with no tinge of pink.  The eyes where the same shade precisely and almond-shaped.  Slate, the mind suddenly supplied.  The skin was the color of slate.  The only real shock of color was a mess of unmanageable curly black hair which seemed to cling to the top of the head with all the ferocity of a separate creature.
Clothes where minimal and unimportant.  Feet, torso and legs where covered, the coverings durable enough for use—

“All right, then,” came a voice.  “Had a moment to catch your breath?”

On cue, lungs surged and drew a deep breath into the diaphragm, a movement which encouraged a thump within the chest, followed by several more.  Lungs, the mind categorized, heart.  Valves, veins, blood, oxygen.  The head turned and slate eyes beheld a monster of a man, the dying light reflecting off both polished silver skin and solid green eyes.  Shoulders of broad strength covered by a simple cream shirt met narrow hips clad in brown pants.

“I’m Blaire,” the giant rumbled, towering over in calm confidence.  He was leaning against the door frame of an equally confident and calm building, also framed in cream, brown, silver and green.  “The Innkeeper.  Nod if you understand.”

Everything he had said was in the tones of well-worn familiarity.  Obviously, this wasn’t the first time a soul had appeared flat on their back behind this particular building.  Instead of nodding, the body rocked back on heels and arms crossed over a chest.  “Where am I?”

Surprise proved the metal man’s face was mailable and expressive.  “You’re a quick one.  Most can’t get their heads around speaking for the first solar or so.  C’mon inside, I’ll tell you what you need to know.”

Inside was a large room shaded in comfort.  A bar slid along one side, framed by chairs.  More tables and chairs where peppered around the room and butted up against a staircase.  This followed the far wall up onto a balcony before disappearing into darkness.  Somehow, the darkness was homey and nor forbidding.  There where people set at random intervals, eating, drinking, speaking softly in voices they knew wouldn’t carry.  Private conversation in the middle of a crowded, or relatively crowded, space.
 
Blaire was waiting at the bar.  His expression was now a number of things, speculation being the most obvious.  The speech he gave was friendly and rehearsed and only really contained a couple of important pieces of information, among which where the facts that the Inn was within a large city called, very simply, Sanctuary, and a room would be provided free of charge until it was no longer needed.  The important things, such as any kind of identity, purpose or how the body had come to be laying behind the Inn with only a single change of clothing where greeted with no more than a shrug.  People some times appeared in the Alley behind the Inn.  That was the reason for the mirror and why two rooms where always kept open in the Inn.  

“Elsewhere wants it that way,” Blaire said from the doorway of the provided room.  “Get some sleep.  You should probably decide on a name before you begin, too.”

He left, closing the door behind himself, while the mind was still stalled on the concept of a name.  It didn’t seem right, to name yourself.  Names where things other people gave you … right?

Disgruntled with the while situation, the only thing that could be done was distraction.  With that goal, the window was opened and the body hopped up to the sill, getting a good long look at the surrounding city.  Blaire had been right about one thing at the very least— it was an extremely large city.  So large, in fact, even when standing on the sill with one hand absently grasping the top of the window frame for stability, in no direction could an end of buildings be seen.  

A shout from below caught attention just before the free hand caught the weighted end of a rope, purely by reflex unknown until now.  The shout this time was one of approval, ending with a question distorted by distance.  After thinking for a moment, a shrug shifted shoulders and the body dropped back into the room, rope still in hand.  An anchor in the form of a heavy piece of furniture was created and the body leaned back out the window to signal to the stranger below that all was ready.

“You know,” the guest said once they gained the window, a smirk lighting a silver face from quirky to handsome.  “I could be here to rob the place.”

“Good luck,” was the response.  “Nothing here belongs to me and the man behind the bar seems rather formidable.  I don’t estimate your chances at being very large.”

A brilliant, musical laugh tumbled forth from the newcomer’s lips.  The tone of this and the tenor speech helped qualify him as sufficiently male.  “I like you!” was the following crow.  “So,” he continued, hopping onto the bed.  “You a portal-baby or a true Unknown?”

The two titles meant nothing to the mind and by the newcomer’s reaction, this showed.  “Unknown,” he surmised, answering his own question.  “You know, I’m Unknown, too, an’ technically?  Blaire’s one.  It’s somethin’ you can take advantage of.  He paused to examine the form before him closely.  “If you’re of that sort.  Hard t’tell, when you’re fresh outta the box.”

A hand reached for the rope, freeing it from where it had been secured to one of the legs of the bed.  “You’ll explain, or you’re going right back out the window.  I’m tired of nebulous answers.”

“I knew we’d get along,” the small mechanoid stated, flashing another silver grin from beneath an opaque teal visor.  “Let’s see, first things first.  You need a name an’ a set of gender pronouns.  Not so easy t’get around this place, considerin’ all the constructs, mechs, robots and neuters.  For example, my name’s Downbeat, I’m a felon an’ the organics, that’s people with flesh and bone and bloody bits like you, use male pronouns for me.  He, him, so on.  Organics get twitchy when you tell them you’ve got no real gender— it breaks their precious little brains.  You, I so humbly believe, will be better suited with female pronouns, unless you’ve got man-parts hidden under there somewhere.”

“Not that I’m aware of,” she replied, tilting her head.  Something had occurred to her during the silver chiming of his speech and her mind was turning it over before she tried saying it aloud.  It was not quite a memory, but not quite anything else, either.  It was nothing more than a sound she liked and was beginning to associate with.  “Teagan,” she said, liking it even more when said aloud.

“Teagan?”  Downbeat asked, voice thoughtful.  “Teeeeagan.  Teaaaagan.  Teeg.  Teage.  Te.  You know, I like that.”

The small mechanoid, who was half her size, she had noted, but seemed to fit together perfectly, offered a silver hand.  Each joint was intricate and as agile as her own.  Teagan took the hand in her own and allowed Downbeat to gently adjust her grip until they where properly shaking hands.  

“Welcome to Sanctuary City, Teagan.”

**

The most remarkable thing about Sanctuary City, Teagan thought, was the fact that despite the fact that it was so large and so diverse, it was incredibly stifling.  Law, for example, was set down by the First Among each race, on a council whose chambers where on the tripod tower shadowing all but the southern part of the city.  So far as she knew, there was no First Among Unknown, though when she attempted to point this out to the many Limits through the city who stopped her doing anything interesting, they didn’t seem to care.  It was most likely because all of the Unknown save Teagan and Downbeat had eventually figured out what race and-or species they where.  

True, as an Unknown she did have a few privileges not accorded to others, even those born in Sanctuary City, but those waned quickly.  This led to boredom.  

A couple of years had been spent learning to hone her natural affinity for hand-held firearms and knives from the Limits, before her attempts at alleviating her boredom had closed the Limit training yards to her.  After that she had played bully-boy for Downbeat a few times, but what he did was mostly talk.  Subtle threats and standing around looking tough where nowhere near what Teagan considered entertaining.  She needed action of the sort a well-policed city just didn’t seem to have.  In Sanctuary, civilians only out-numbered the main police force five to one and with the emergency additions from the burly Strike’wara and winged Nighkin, this gap became even smaller.

Port Forward, though its police force was much smaller, seemed just about as tame.  Back-alley fights and deep-night crime still happened but with the threat of expulsion from Elsewhere entirely in the balance, most of the merchants and business men who frequented the port for their livelihoods kept a good, tight leash on their guards.  
With nothing else to do, Teagan went exploring.  

The City, she discovered, had once been much more crowded.  There were entire blocks of buildings, perfectly usable buildings with nothing wrong with them, simply abandoned.  The strangest thing about this was that no one seemed to care.  The Limits she, carefully, mentioned this to stated it was outside their jurisdiction and for the soldier-like race, that was enough.  It was one of the things Downbeat constantly picked on the Limits for and partly why they hated him— they had little to no imagination and he knew it.  

Teagan, for a short time, became a scavenger and salvager.  She explored the dead parts of the city, gathering what had been left behind and selling it to trinket mongers in Port Forward.  So long as she stayed away from the shops residents and citizens frequented, she never had a problem with potentially selling some recognizable heirloom.  That was the rub, however.  Teagan’s first priority was the survival of Teagan but ‘survival’ included not the dreaded feeling of boredom.  

Without blinking she had, many times, sold information gleaned from conversations with Downbeat about his work for her own freedom, when, among other things, she had mistaken derelict housing for abandoned.  She made sure never to reveal his name, only what she had figured out.  Teagan knew by now that the small mechonoid was a key player in one of the only black markets Sanctuary had, the one for information.  He was the top information-broker on the most-wanted lists of the Strike’wara, Limit and Nighkin patrols and still more valuable to her free than exiled or imprisoned.  

It was during these explorations of the abandoned tracts of city which she found something incredible:

Tunnels.

Sanctuary City sat upon what all considered to be an impenetrable bed of rock.  Only the Nighkin, living golems made of this same rock, knew the secrets of burrowing into it.  Even they had a hard time of it, or so they said.  The walls surrounding Sanctuary where also made of this rock and had withstood all attacks over recorded time of Elsewhere from a variety of different sources.  No one had ever been able to find so much as a crack along their entire surface, inside or out.  

All sewer and water transport was either on the surface within pipes connecting the buildings at street level or through portals.  If  anyone had discovered the secret of getting through Sanctuary’s foundation and had told enough people to make tunnels of this size and complexity, Downbeat would know.  The information broker, however, always replied in the negative to Teagan’s carefully worded inquiries.    They where dark, dank, deep and unexplored in waking memory.  

Perfect for chasing away boredom.

After marking their location on the map stored in the ident chip embedded on the inside of her forearm between the ulna and radius, Teagan returned to the Inn to collect supplies.  The last thing she wanted was to get lost in a place no one knew existed.  
Exploring the tunnels took a surprisingly shot time.  The first one she had found had been deceptively large, most where much smaller in circumference, only large enough to allow her to stand upright within them.  Most of them opened to different parts of the city and where overgrown or similarly hidden.  Together, they created a network of shortcuts Teagan absently dubbed the Deep Down.  It was what she found a the central point of all the tunnels which held her attention.

It was a small control room, she eventually decided.  It held several large machines, the use of which she couldn’t determine.