Chapter Text
Shiloh kept her head down and walked quickly, the sound of her boots slapping on the slimy concrete echoing off the alley walls. Her hair fell into her eyes and she tossed it away impatiently. It had grown surprisingly fast and was now becoming a hindrance, long enough to fall into her eyes, but too short to tie back without looking ridiculous. Thankfully, despite it being bothersome, her new, raggedy hairstyle had an advantage; the appearance of maturity. In her old wig and smock she could've been mistaken for twelve. Now pushing eighteen, she felt she finally looked her age. Trying to fit in helped too. Adapting to the city, she'd traded in her smocks for skirts, wore more leather and less lace. If you wanted to remain unseen, it was best to dress like those around you, even if it isn't quite your style.
Shiloh turned a corner and almost collided with a couple, a tangle of limbs and breathy moans in the dark. She averted her eyes and carried on, trying not to blush. However ignorant Shiloh had been to the "love market" when she first moved, she had gotten an unwanted education every time she stepped outside her door. Hardly anything surprised her anymore. But it didn't mean she wanted to see.
Shuddering, she kept her eyes trained on the ground, avoiding looking at the entwined bodies in doorways and niches. Occasionally, she had to stepped over a drugged up junkie, almost blue with cold and barley breathing. She used to try helping them, but it was no use. Sometimes they lay there for days. Sometimes they never got up. The cold would get to them, and body snatchers would carry them off before they stopped breathing.
Body snatchers were becoming a growing problem in the city, along with several new markets that had bloomed on Rotti's death. Body snatchers would take the freshly dead, or even the drugged living, and use their organs in backstreet surgery. And since one hand washes the other, they worked in conjunction with the graverobbers, who supplied them with zydrate. They pumped their patients so full of the glow that they usually became addicts within week of the surgery. If they lived, that is.
Shiloh had just reached the graffitied doorway of her building when her bracelet signalled an incoming message. The bloated face of her landlord hovered above her wrist, and she felt a cold jolt of panic run down her spine. Sure enough, when he spoke, he did not bear good news.
"Ms. Wallace, you are over two weeks late with your rent. If you do not deliver the required payment within two days, I will be forced to send you a notice of eviction," here his nasally voice changed from the official recorded message, "There are plenty of people out there who would do anything to have that apartment. And I mean anything." His voice made her shiver, "so find so way to pay up, or pack up!" The transmission cut. Shiloh stepped into the lobby and leaned against the door, sighing heavily. She couldn't pay. She knew what he intended by his last sentence and the thought made her sick. She glanced back in the direction of the street and shuddered. No, she didn't have the strength to live that life.
She took a deep breath; the air smelled like urine and mold. She told herself the concentrate on the simple things, until she could think clearly. Simple things, like choosing between the filthy stairs to get to her flat, or the rank elevator.The former was more attractive. Yes it involved several flights of stairs that creaked and felt like they were going to collapse at any time, but the elevator was generally used as a public toilet, and occasionally as a "working area" for some of the less picky hookers. It also had a tendency to shut down erratically and Shiloh detested small, confined spaces. With those options unnecessarily weighed up, she headed towards the stairs, but hadn't even made the first step when the doors of the lift grated open. She wouldn't have given it a second glance but for the smell.
Sickly and sweet, bringing with it memories of the opera and a feeling of guilt and shame she had tried to forget. Her eyes were dragged towards the lift and she clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle the scream.
A Repo man was standing before her, black leather gloves dripping blood, eyes unreadable behind mirrored goggles, shaded beneath his wide-brimmed hat. Shocked, she stepped back and met the stairs, falling painfully as she scrambled to get away. This man wasn't her father. If he wanted he could kill her and no one would even know or care. A small, sarcastic voice in Shiloh's head thought at least that way she wouldn't have to pay the rent. However, the majority of her mind was a roaring void of fear. She was unable to move, or think or scream, she could only stare at the mirrored goggles, and listen to the blood rush in her ears. He regarded her blankly, and then walked past her, opening the door to the back alley and out into the night.
Shiloh exhaled and slumped against the dirty, rotten stairs, her relief as palpable as a wave of ice water. Adrenaline pounded through her body as she forced herself up, winching at her new bruises. she crouched on the bottom step, pressing her shaking hands over her eyes. She forced herself to breath slowly, deeply, despite the smell. It was in this darkness behind her eyelids that she realized that the scent of blood was still strong in the air. Slowly, fingers forming a lattice of windows, as if it would cushion the blow, she turned towards the still-open elevator.
Lying in a pool of her own, still-warm blood was a young woman. For the second time that night fear spiked violently through Shiloh's body, this time laced with revulsion. She struggled to fight the bile viciously climbing her throat, clapping a hand over her mouth. The girl in front of her was still oozing blood, her throat coated in viscous red, her head almost severed from her body. But that was just a sign of the repo man's mercy; her belly was sliced open, entrails torn out and scattered across the floor in his serh for her overdue organ, there was no surviving after that. Finally bringing herself to look the dead girl in the face, Shiloh felt her heart twist in an emotion she couldnt quite describe. Despite the twisted death mask of the corpse, beneath all the blood, she recognised her. She was one of the nicer escorts that frequented the area; at least, nice as in she had never spat in Shiloh's direction as she passed, and had nodded in greeting at least once before.
Her name was Li, and she had been hooked on zydrate for three years. Her skin, deathly white beneath the red coating it almost darkened to purple along her arms and neck, pitted with needle marks. It was the least Shiloh could do, but hope she was high when she died, so she didn't feel anything. But by the look on her face, she doubted it. A purse lay next to her, its contents strewn across the now sticky, blood-stained floor. A scattering of condoms, a tube of lipstick...and a little glass vial.
"Zydrate comes in a little glass vial." His voice, low and deep, spoke from a memory. Zydrate. The little container glowed an eerie blue, reflecting oddly off the dark substance that coated the lift floor. Shiloh had to make a choice. Soon the body truck would be round, or possibly, the body snatchers. Money was needed. Zydrate was expensive. And people needed zydrate.
Shiloh glanced one last time and the dead girl, crouched down and gently closed her eyes for her, forcing back a shudder. Then her fingers closed around the cold cylinder and she ran from the lift and up the stairs, trying not to think about the noise she was making or the girl left behind her, all her thoughts were on the little bottle of liquid and how she would go about selling it.
"Zydrate comes in a little glass vial."
"A little glass vial?"
"A little glass vial."