Ember grabbed her change of clothes and trainers from her staff locker before heading into the toilets.
She slipped out of her uniform of black trousers, fitted pale pink shirt and ballet flats and swapped them for her shapeless jeans, sweater and trainers. She pulled on her puffer jacket and zipped it up to conceal her feminine form before tying up her long hair and tucking it beneath her baseball cap.
She’d always classed herself as fortunate not to have the kind of looks that instantly grabbed attention like Casey’s did. It had certainly become a helpful survival tool in Lowtown. Being a woman alone on the streets of Lowtown was still a risk though, making blending and keeping a low profile essential.
Collar up and baseball cap down over her eyes – ears kept free to any prospect of being followed – Ember kept up a steady pace as she made her way home. It was less than a half an hour walk and primarily across the quieter parts of Lowtown near the Midtown border. She nevertheless always kept to the main streets and, as there were several routes back to her place, regularly interchanged between them so as not to create a discernible pattern.
Being in the quieter area also thankfully meant no one had ever really shown much interest in her apartment. Housing in Lowtown had become a serious issue after the Global Council had discovered that less people than they initially thought measured up to the rigorous screening process. As well as protection rackets now being rife, forced landlordship for extra profits had not become uncommon either.
She headed towards the narrow lane that ran down the side of her building, once a small hotel before it had been converted into apartments. Her entrance was around the back: left into the alley, then the next left around to the rear. The external door to her and her neighbour’s place was adjacent to the dead-end.
They were the only two apartments accessed from the rear now: hers and Cam’s. Or what had been Cam’s. She hadn’t seen or heard from him for almost two months now, leading her to believe he was one of many who left one night, never to return.
People regularly went missing in Lowtown and the authorities couldn’t keep up. At the last count, less than twenty per cent of cases were solved, and even less than that were ever acted upon at all. Instead of the statistics encouraging increased funding to combat the problem, the authorities chose to finance the demands for higher protection at Midtown’s border instead. As had become the norm – instead of tackling the issue or safeguarding those caught in the middle – they raised the walls and the division further.
So, despite knowing she should have reported him missing, it was obvious Cam’s case would have been one they’d decide not to pursue. Once they’d got a glimpse of his standard behaviour, it would have been deemed a pointless use of resources.
Cam had been a nightmare those past four years: the late-night parties, the sound of his movies and other nocturnal activities oscillating against her bedroom wall on a regular basis. And, because they shared the same stairwell, the set-up had made avoiding him, or his mates, impossible. Both of their apartments were on the first floor, hers directly to the right at the top of the stairs, and Cam’s to the left past the curve of the balustrade. The second floor had long been bricked off. Every night returning home from work, she’d never known who she’d bump into in the stairwell; or whether he’d have left the external door open again, leaving her to combat whatever fate had been awaiting her, as he’d stumbled home too inebriated or high to care.
The last thing Ember needed was any more trouble moving in so had opted to plead ignorant and not flag up to the authorities that the apartment opposite hers was potentially vacant – especially with her application so close to succeeding. What they discovered afterwards was up to them.
Less than fifty feet away from the alley, the tiny hairs on the back of her neck began to prickle, the base of her spine tingle. It had been a second sense since she was a youngster, and had become second nature for surviving there: knowing when she was being followed. She didn’t need to look over her shoulder; every instinct told her that her reaction was far from paranoia – a belief confirmed when she heard the rare sound of footsteps at that point of her journey.
Her stomach knotted. She tried to swallow but saliva wasn’t forthcoming in her arid mouth. This could be it. This could be the night she didn’t make it home. Or, even if she did, the night all her hopes, everything she had worked for, were ruined. Ten years of struggling and this is what it would come to – the irony of being within reaching distance of both her front door and her way out of there and having both snatched away.
Having second thoughts about whether to lead them back to where she lived, she looked ahead to the empty street looming beyond. There were no public places left for her to enter without needing to turn around – and that would take her straight into her follower’s, or followers’, path. She had no choice but to continue. She loathed doing it. But knowing she might not even make it to the next day, she focused on what she needed to make happen now.
Ember slipped both hands into her coat pockets as she maintained a steady pace. She subtly removed her keys with one hand and debated between the pepper spray and her flick knife for the other. She opted for the pepper spray, knowing that would be most immediately disabling and thus buy her more time.
Her ears tuned into the silence. The temptation to check over her shoulder to see how close they were was overwhelming, but any indication that she knew she was being followed could prompt them to up the ante quicker. She needed to close the gap between herself and the outer door first. She needed to give herself a fighting chance.
Taking a left down the alley at the side of her building, she caught a glimpse of them in the corner of her eye: two of them and, from their stature, most likely male.
Her stomach vaulted.
Turning left again into the back alley, she cast a wary glance into the ten-foot square recess on her left that contained the large industrial bin – a recess she had always hated passing in the darkness.
She needed to get to the end of alley. If she got through the outer door and managed to lock it, she’d be safe. Failing that, she might at least be able to fend them off in the stairwell and get into her apartment.
As she continued to maintain her steady pace, the back alley narrowed in on itself, the darkness intensifying as her portal to safety seemed too far down the end of an ever-increasing corridor, the ground beneath her like a conveyer belt pulling her in the wrong direction. Her thighs felt sluggish, weakening by the second as her anxiety intensified. When she was less than twenty-five feet away from the door, she knew it was all or nothing. Ember sprinted with everything she had.
Her chest and thighs instantly burned from sudden exertion, despite having always kept herself fit for that very cause. She skidded to a standstill outside the door. She shoved her key in the lock.
Her stomach flipped as an arm locked around her neck, yanking her backwards. Her hand gripped the mace as she was spun away from the door. She instantly sprayed the canister in the face of her second attacker.
He cursed under his breath, clamping his forearm over his eyes as he stumbled away.
Shutting her eyes, she turned her head away and sprayed behind her to try and blind her restrainer too. But the mace was knocked from her hand. She was slammed face-first against the wall opposite.
But she was not being taken down that easily.
Shoving her hand back into her pocket, Ember withdrew her knife and stabbed it into his thigh. With gritted teeth, she twisted the blade as she simultaneously used the wall for leverage to shove him, and herself, backwards.
He lost balance, taking her down with him. She promptly scrabbled to her feet, brought her foot down hard between his splayed thighs without hesitation before bringing the heel of her trainer down onto his face.
Seeing her other attacker attempting to blink away the pain, she smacked her knuckles hard into the bridge of his nose, advantaged by his watery eyes still partially blinding him.
She reached the door again. She turned her keys still hanging in the lock. Stumbling across the threshold with haste, she fumbled to remove them. Succeeding, she slammed and locked the door from the inside just in time for a shoulder to reverberate against the other side.
Heart pounding, light-headed, she fell back against the wall beside the door, directly at the foot of the stone stairwell.
Lit only by the narrow, meshed opaque window above the door, the electrics having burnt out years before, it took her eyes a few moments to adjust. It was the one thing she hated about that space. More to the point, she hated the pitch-blackness of the utility area recess that lay out of sight under the stairwell itself.
Her heart pummelled her ribcage. All she could hear was her blood thrumming in her ears, her rapid, shallow breathing amidst the backdrop of curses and threats muffled by the thick metal door as if she were under water.
For now she was safe.
For now she…
Ember flinched. Her breathing snagged. She pressed her back tighter against the wall as she detected the mass half way up the stairs in front of her, less than ten feet away.
Despite the abuse beyond the door escalating, it suddenly felt like a gateway into a world of lesser risk. Because as she pieced together a human form, size and stature alone told her it was most definitely a male lying face down in front of her. Cam. Cam had returned – drunk and unconscious on the stairs like she’d found him countless times before. Because he was unconscious. He didn’t stir or flinch even as her two furious attackers pounded the door outside.
As her vision adjusted further though, she could see this figure was more svelte than Cam’s stocky frame. From what she could tell, he was taller too. Neither did this stranger dress like Cam; Cam always having opted for gregarious and oversized clothing – brightly coloured harem trousers and T-shirts mainly – whereas this guy was in darker, more fitted clothes.
Someone else had moved in. Someone who, up until then, she’d known nothing of. Because based on her having to unlock the door, whoever it was had entered by legitimate means. This was not a random break-in. This was not someone opportunistically taking shelter for the night.
Regardless, more significantly, she could no longer be sure they were even human.
Willing her attackers to go away and not wake him, Ember glanced up towards the security of her apartment. There she could safely call the authorities out of earshot. Because there was no way she could turn around and go back out, nor did she have anything left to defend herself with in there – trapped in the bottom of an isolated stairwell with a potential ticking time bomb.
As her attackers finally fell silent, the emptiness of the stairwell was exacerbated – not least because of how far she was from anyone capable of hearing her screams or cries for help.
Threading her two keys between her fingers as a makeshift knuckle-duster, breath held, Ember didn’t dare take her gaze from him for a second as she took her first step up.
Pressing her back to the wall opposite the rusted metal balustrade that he laid closer to, trainers silent against stone, she ascended, her free palm brushing over concrete and flaking paint.
Finally in a position to see his profile though, she froze.