Gravity Said To Fly

Planet: Ouroburous

POV: Sienna

I pushed my way through the evening crowd of Terminus City's wealthy district towards the open ballroom event. Ahead of me, passersby streamed into the event, wearing formal suits and dresses under the heavy coats required by the first of Ouroburous's two winters. I was just wearing my dress. I didn't feel the cold - it was one of the very few perks of being me.

Truth be told, I had no idea why I was here. When I told Xan about this, after much prodding from him about what my plans were this evening, I felt faintly embarassed giving credence to the idea by saying it out loud. Yeah, this girl is such a depressed schizo that she's gonna go to a ball and look for human contact there. I usually liked talking to Xan, but today he felt vaguely patronizing so I'd broken off the conversation quickly and left the council chamber.

I was at the entrace now, stepping past guards and peering inside. It was a small and bare room with little decoration, but through subspace projections it had been transformed into a magnificent classical ballroom with arched walls and streamers along the ceiling. A 37th century waltz in the style of pre-Desolation music - or at least the creator's probably very imperfect appreciation of it - seemed to soar through the air.

The main hall was filled with swirling dancers in masks of thousands of different styles and origins. I recognized golden Litany's Inquisitor masks, masks modelled after the students who began the Terminian revolution, those based on a few of the small number of films I'd seen, and even one that bore an uncanny resemblence to a Gloom Walker which very strongly put me off. Dryly, I wondered if we'd finally crossed the threshold where it was ok to trivialize the death of trillions of people. But then again I knew I was different. Ten thousand years ago still felt like yesterday to me.

Around the dancing mass stood a large crowd of observers, mostly with their masks pulled down to around their necks or virtualized into subspace. At the far right of the room was a bar, which I made my way towards immediately. Not that I could actually get drunk - one of the very many disadvantages of being me - but hey, maybe I'd get picked up. Hey, life was strange. I sat down at the bar and ordered something totally randomly from the virtual list that had appeared in front of me. Not really caring about my drink, I turned around to watch the dancing.

Most people weren't very good at it, I observed, happy for the purely petty reasons of not being the only one who was a mess at something. A few were obviously covertly using one of various autodancer apps for their Link to try and come off as a good dancer, but it didn't seem to be working very well - the AI made them contort and wobble and drift all over the dance floor like drunk monkeys sliding on ice.

For a moment, my eyes caught on a masked man standing at the edge of the room, watching the dancing. He was tall and wore a cheap-looking black suit and a mask in the style of Aja's famous Hero of Cerobb mask, smiling to himself like this was a private joke to him and him alone. The memory of Aja throwing the original mask in the ocean after whatever happened to her on Angeleer appeared unbidden in my mind, but I pushed it away and focused my attention again on the man. He was familiar.

Light pink eyes due to his Change. Tousled black hair that looked like he'd tried to comb it and given up halfway. A robotic index finger on his left hand. With a feeling I couldn't explain, I realized I'd always known who it was.

William. Once my only friend in this hellhole of a universe. The traitor. My heart soared, sunk, and danced to a million different tunes at once. I had no idea what I was supposed to do. His eyes locked on to mine from across the room and he began to make his way around the parade of swirling bodies towards the bar.

In desperation, I did a mental inventory of any ways that the council could find out about the two of us meeting. Subspace Link? Offline. Personnel tracker? I turned it off after the last mission. Emergency beacon? Doesn't trigger unless I'm killed. If they ever found out I'd spoken to the opposition, Aja would probably kill me. Or kill William. Or honestly who even knew, that girl was out of her mind.

"I didn't think this would be your scene," William said as he approached, speaking loudly over the ballroom waltz. A few other patrons sitting at the bar looked at him in annoyance, but he didn't seem to mind. He took a seat next to me. Every part of my body was frozen in place.

"I..." managed to escape from my mouth. Yeah, nice going Sienna.