The Kingmaker

7 - Liminal

"Mulberry Gardens, next stop."

For all its prosperity, Alexandria certainly hadn't bothered to spend a single cent to improve the shuttle system that ran the routes between the less lavish residential districts. Even the bus itself was the same, marked with the familiar peeling 241 on the front that Eden remembered so well.

"Mulberry Gardens."

The automated voice that called all the stops, too. Couldn't forget those sultry tones.

Eden slipped off the bus with her hands in her pockets and face half-concealed under her hood, which was now furless. She had peeled off the Velcro and discarded it in a waste bin before leaving the bus depot. Riskier than she would have liked - she would have preferred to dispose of it while in transit. But the chances of anyone happening to recognize her through the grainy feed of the low-quality surveillance cameras was almost nil. Banking on the side of probability wasn't such a bad idea, then. She rarely relied so heavily on it, it could stand to carry its weight for once.

"Change? Anything helps. I've got a baby."

Ah, of course. One of the other things that Eden knew wouldn't have changed, the deplorable conditions of the poorer districts in the city. She wasn't even in the seedy underbelly of Alexandria yet; this was just the liminal belt of halfway-slums that bordered the southern edge of it. And yet here were the ragged, battered homeless that huddled on the backstreets with nothing to rely on except the generosity of strangers.

"I've got nothing either," said Eden. "Just enough to take the bus here."

The gaunt, cropped-haired woman gathered her infant to her chest and gave Eden a tight smile. "Shouldn't have come here, then," she said. "Anyone else would have used that money to get out."

"Want to, but can't. This place has me gripped tight."

The woman gave her a nod, and Eden wondered what exactly it was that she thought she understood from those cryptic words. Maybe the mother thought Eden was an addict, looking for her next fix. Maybe she thought Eden had debts to pay, debts she couldn't run from unless she wanted them to follow her. Either way, the woman didn't ask - which was how these things went. The less anyone knew about each other, the safer they were from each other's mistakes.

"Shelters are all full tonight, but there are plenty of men outside Mulligan's. One of them might be able to give you a warm bed to sleep in tonight."

"Thanks." Eden made sure not to let her eyes roam over the other woman too much; excessive interest would either give her away or convey the wrong impression. But one thing was clear. Fresh bruises visible even under the dim streetlight mottling the cheekbones, a swollen eye. Someone had beaten her. "You should try them again, the shelters," said Eden. "It's cold tonight."

"Why? Because I've got a baby? They don't care." The woman took the edge of the worn baby blanket and wrapped it more firmly around the silent infant. "It looks like you haven't been here long enough to find out, but things aren't so easy. Whatever it is you're here for, you don't belong if you don't know that yet, and that's a good thing. You should go home."

Maybe so. Eden had lived a privileged life in an uptown residence when she had been here last, after all. But not all was as it seemed. She'd been here many times before, had wandered far from home too many times and in places she shouldn't have been. But that was a long time ago, back when life had been so decadently boring and unbearable, and she had sought every thrill she could just to feel alive. Now, it was different: there was an object to her recklessness, a purpose she had come to achieve.

"I wish I could," was all she replied with, and then she turned away.

She shouldn't have gotten off for another three stops; she knew that. Sidle off the shuttle onto the right street, pick up her new ID at the designated location for the dead drop - that had been the arrangement. To alter her plans with no warning and end up in a place like this, she was throwing away safety just to satisfy her curiosities.

But it was done, and now it was too late to change her mind. With no more money and no transportation, the only way she was going to leave this place was if she navigated her way back out of Mulberry Gardens on foot through all its grimy streets and shady back alleys.

Yes, it was too late for regrets, but it wasn't regret she felt anyway. A thrumming sense of anticipation, a quickened heartbeat as her gaze darted between all the darkened corners she passed. She had no weapon to defend herself with. All she had was a quick pace, a quicker eye, and a heady awareness that she needed to keep her wits about her if she didn't want to end up dragged into an alleyway by someone who spotted her in the night.

Familiar. Everything was the same, she thought as she turned another corner and crossed the street. This place that her mother had tried so hard to change for years was even more staunchly itself than it had ever been, and Eden spared a second to pity the woman who had died without even a legacy to protect. What must that have felt like, she wondered, to die knowing that her work was incomplete? The night they had come to kill her, had her last thoughts been of her family or the city she loved so much? Which one had she dreaded leaving behind more?

Funny how her mother had lived her whole life in the upscale heart of the city, but the woman's heart had always belonged to the slums. To the outsiders. Eden had admired it so much, that ability to devote herself to something so...separate.

And there. A fire escape - rickety metal stairs leading all the way up to the roof of the apartment building where Eden knew no one would dare look out their windows even if they heard a little noise. She pulled her hood down a little more over her forehead just in case, however, before gripping the thin, black rails that lined the fire escape. This place where she had never belonged before, this place she had only ever sneaked away to so that she could feel the thrill of danger boiling in her blood. A young child roaming these streets, what had she been thinking?

And what did it mean that she suddenly felt more at home here than she ever had anywhere her entire life?

The first step on the rusty black stairs gave off a piercing screech of grinding metal, and Eden held steady and motionless for a heart-stopping moment. But no one came slinking by, no one pulled aside their curtains to shout at her. Good. She took another step, and this time the squeak of rusty steel didn't make her freeze and tense. The third didn't even creak at all, and after that, Eden didn't even care. She pulled herself up the stairs, winding left and right and keeping her eyes trained to the very top.

When she reached the roof six stories up, it occurred to her that it had taken her far longer than when she had been fourteen. She had been quicker on her feet then. Less fearless, more decisive. Young Eden would never have let the sound of rusty metal make her flinch - she was out of practice, too in tune with the weaknesses that living a sheltered life on the outside had taught her.

It was time to unlearn all that, she thought to herself. She stood on the far ledge and looked over the darkened district, looked for all the things that she knew she was missing. All the things her past self would have seen immediately despite the conspicuous scarcity of functioning streetlights, despite the murkiness that pervaded the whole of this dilapidated urban jungle.

And then little by little, she began to see. There, in the far alleyway next to the tobacco store, a quiet exchange going on between a man and his dealer. On the other side, three homeless youths huddled around glowing embers in a trashcan, desperate for whatever heat it could provide. Elsewhere, a man solicited a p********e wearing a sparkling sequin top that glinted just enough to catch Eden's attention from the rooftop.

She didn't fool herself. She knew she wasn't seeing as much as she should, as much as she used to. But she was seeing more already than she had a minute ago, and soon, she would be seeing everything she needed to. Alexandria had been her mother's city, which meant Alexandria belonged to her now. Politics and legalities be damned, that was how it worked in Eden's world. Her inheritance since she had been allowed nothing else.

She would dissect this city from its rotten underbelly to its bejeweled surface, cut it all the way open and lay out every ounce of filth onto the ground before her and then grind her heel into it. Reduce it to a splatter on the pavement, spit into it.

Her mother had wanted so desperately to save every part of this city, from the abject poverty in the slums to the rampant corruption in the town hall and all the way to the crime dens whose endless iniquities spilled over onto the streets and ran them red and green with blood and dirty money. She had wanted to change Alexandria, to save it.

Well, Eden didn't. Alexandria belonged to her now, and she could do whatever she wanted with it. Save it? Please. She was going to use it. She was going to use it to get to the people who had dared to hurt her, dared to leave the thick, corded scars under her skin that only grew with every passing day. She would use this whole city to exact her vengeance, whole and true, even if that meant destroying everything and everyone in it.

"I'm coming for you," she told all the ears that weren't listening, all the ears that couldn't hear her vow in the night. "I'm going to find every single one of you who f****d me over, and then I'm going to do worse to you than you did to me."

All of them. Every single one, she promised. She didn't know who they were yet, but she would find out and she would make them pay.

Slowly. Agonizingly. In tears and in blood.

"I'm coming for you."