Reunion (Pt. 1)

The lights of the city flickered in the windows as the car Ken sat inside ripped down the pavement. The purr of the engine working to maintain their pace gently vibrated the doors, roof, and chairs. His heart raced in his chest as he stared out the window.

This area of the city was eerily quiet for this time of night. He supposed that there were three camps of people: those who believed Irina and gave up, those who believed her and decided to live to the fullest, and those who simply didn’t believe her, continuing to march through their cold, mundane lives.

The car jerked around a corner, then slowed to a stop in front of an alleyway.

The man sitting to his left in the driver’s seat said nothing. He simply stared at Ken expectantly.

Ken got his meaning, stepping out of the car. He placed a foot on the curb, but turned around, frowning. “Hey, where—”

The car peeled away down the street, interrupting him and leaving him coughing in a cloud of dust. He waved his hand in front of his face in a futile effort to clear some air.

“Well,” he muttered, turning to face the buildings behind him, “I guess she’s here somewhere…?”

The concrete facades of the neat rows of buildings clawed at the night sky high above. Many of them were tall enough that they blended into the low-hanging misty clouds of the night, silhouettes fading to nothing against the grayish sky.

He turned his gaze to the alleyway Marcel had dropped him off before. They had not exchanged even a single word on their drive over, and Marcel hadn’t said much of anything when he’d picked Ken up. So he had no idea what to even look for.

And he wasn’t about to walk down that alleyway at this hour.

But as he stood in the cold, breezy night, the city air nipping at any exposed skin, it seemed more and more like the shelter of the alleyway was where he wanted to be.

Reluctantly, and only intending to escape the cold for a moment, he stepped into the alleyway.

The uncertain light from the dim street lights behind him cast faint, swimming shadows across the walls of the buildings surrounding him. Trash littered the ground, dancing lazily across the ground at the breaths of the weak breeze flowing in from behind him. Mechanical units he could only guess at the purpose of hummed along in their trivial task, connected to the two buildings on either side at regular intervals. It embodied this city, in Ken’s mind.

Ken still stood uneasily at the beginning of the alley, but, with the passing of a harder wind, the faint steamy mist billowing from the machinery cleared. It wafted clear of the back wall, giving him a glimpse of something shining there.

A faint light radiated out from a window, cutting through the misty dark like a plane through cloud.

God, I hope that’s why I’m here, Ken thought, starting down the corridor.

His eyes flicked back and forth from wall to wall, concentrating especially hard as he passed by the humming heaters and other miscellaneous machines dotted around. But as he passed each one, each of their shadows was just as empty as the last.

HIs heart pounded as, finally, he reached the door at the end. The light pouring from its single window was clearer now, and cast a faint glow onto him and his surroundings.

He reached for it.

It creaked as he pushed it wide, revealing a rundown, dusty space that was illuminated by faulty overhead lights. He shuddered at its likeness to the corridor before Irina’s secret office weeks before.

“Irina?” he called. It echoed faintly, nothing in the room absorbing the sound.

It was filled with shelves and tables, dotted along the walls and around the room. The shelves were covered with equipment, some with which he was familiar, but most that he was not.

All the tables had handwritten and printed pages strewn about their surfaces, many of them bearing the marks of on-the-fly corrections.

The space overall starkly contrasted Irina’s pristine office space from before. It unsettled Ken deeply.

He picked a paper up from a table beside the door. Skimming its contents, he found… it was familiar.

He read it again. There was no doubt. It was the same as one he’d read just earlier that day. And it had her runic symbols meandering about it.

“Irina!” he called again, louder this time.

That same faint echo reached his ears.

With a sigh, he turned around to leave.

“You actually came…” spoke a voice, tired and flat.

And there, as he turned, leaning against the doorframe, was the person he’d been waiting a month—or even longer—to see again: Irina.

He tossed the papers in his hands onto the table-turned-lab bench on his right. “You’re actually here,” he said, grinning.

“I am.” She walked down the steps, sitting on the bottom one. And though her expression was the same blank stare he had been so used to, he could still tell the emotions under the surface.

She was relaxed. Relieved. A rare display for her.

But he knew she would never admit it.