» Two weeks later
Zeri stepped into the alleyway with purpose, her heavy boots making not a sound as they hit the cracked Undercity cobble beneath her. Her eyes flickered upward, toward the chemical lamps that shone a dull, almost sickly yellow down onto the dirty street below.
The lamps were a recent, welcome addition to the dingy, overbuilt streets of Southside—being far more luminescent than their fungi-powered predecessors. Her city was moving up in the world.
Newer, more efficient chemicals had been created during her time away. Her city's latest and greatest innovation. More power burned from less fuel—a wonder for the resource-starved underground.
Wherever this new compound had come from, nobody cared. One day it wasn't, and then suddenly, it was. That was all anyone knew. It was the closest thing to a modern miracle you could find down in the dirt of Zaun.
Inevitably, access to more electrical power led to even more production than there already was, and even more production led to the need for expansion.
The decrepit Outskirt slums that lay between the districts weren't suitable for that need. The all-but-abandoned stone buildings of Southside, however, fit this bill all too well.
The intelligent people with power within the underground seized this fresh opportunity almost immediately, all claiming a piece of the fat Southside pie for themselves.
Eventually, inevitably, fighting broke out between these figureheads, as peace only lasts as long as it stays enforced. Territorial disputes started, and gang wars and the like reigned rampant until only the topmost dogs of Southside's very extensive food chain remained.
These people later became known as the Chembarons, and formed a council of sorts to protect their common interests—the place that had now become known as Zaun's industrial district.
Zeri walked onward, her pondering of Zaun's latest history coming to a close as her keen yellow eyes locked onto a victim of this new chemically-ruled regime.
Brown tattered rags clung to the man's almost skeletal frame, shifting unevenly across his mottled skin as he shuffled toward her.
Chemical power wasn't the only thing that'd been "Innovated" during her time away.
An edge slowly began to pollute Zeri's walk as the man got closer. Her stride quickened imperceptibly. Junkies corrupted as badly as this one unsettled her.
No, they disgusted her.
The man passed her by, swaying and murmuring as his eyes raked across her simple, but expensive-looking clothes. Thankfully, he didn't try anything. She didn't want to dirty herself with that acidic, alder-coloured blood ever again.
Shimmer was well on track to snuff out Zaun's brief, but inventive spark. A drug so potent even topside had opened its borders for a taste.
When used in trace amounts, when properly diluted, it served as an incredible stimulant that blew its competition out of the water. In excess though, it became a powerful, hallucinogenic that permanently damaged both one's mind and body.
Most, if not all shimmer junkies slowly decayed. Their bodies fell apart after reusing the drug again and again until they eventually died of it.
Rare few were hyper-responders—becoming stronger, faster, and more aggressive with every dosage. Her fellow Zaunites had dubbed them as Wraiths. They were the shadows cast by her city's progress.
Ultimately, these wraiths too died of decay, only slower. Or they were put down like rabid dogs by the Chembarons who didn't appreciate the destruction they left behind in their wake.
Still, either or in between weren't her problem to solve. She'd learnt that the hard way.
Zeri's mind kept wandering as she navigated her way through Southside's winding streets. Her thoughts switched aimlessly between topic after topic, reviewing and relearning things she already knew—just as Callian had taught her to.
She took pride in reinforcing that lesson. A happy pride. It was like that for everything he taught her. Every lesson was a treasure. Each and every one of them dedicated solely to her.
Even the thought of that dedication made her go giddy with happiness. And for a moment, she allowed that feeling to pass. She was always grateful to him for his help. Always so grateful.
Zeri glanced right as the street evened out, stepping forward onto a cobbled intersection.
Her searching gaze landed upon a massive building ahead of her. A massive one.
It was tall—so tall its top seemed to intersect with the dark, shadowed stone of the cavern above her.
Zeri's eyes jumped between the building's storeys. All five of them. Underground. It might as well have been a tower.
Not a single neon sign decorated its outer walls, unlike most, if not all other establishments in the Underground. Only crude black stone with blacked-out, barred windows lay across its exterior.
In any case, whoever the owner of the production line known as Glasc Industries was, they clearly wanted to stay well under anyone's radar. As much as one could while owning the largest building in the district.
Maybe that was one of the reasons why Callian had sent her here.
She was told to get in, look around, and get out. Without being seen. Anything irregular she noticed within the building had to be recorded and reported back to him.
Callian had said he had business to attend to topside—a meeting he had arranged with someone of some significance. One that he would not renegade on.
He'd told her to investigate the tower in his place.
Zeri may have lacked a name to pin on this mystery man he was meeting, but ultimately, to her, their identity didn't matter. In the end, the result was the same. The meeting had left her to investigate this in Callian's place, alone.
She didn't know why Callian couldn't postpone this scouting and do it later. He'd be able to do it far better than she would anyway. She knew that. She knew he knew that too.
He was testing her.
The stress of that thought slowly crept its way along the back of her neck as she stared onward, the wave of heat spiking down into her skin.
This was the first real thing Callian had asked of her so far, so she was more than happy to oblige. She should've been happy to oblige. But all she felt was afraid.
She didn't want to let him down. She really didn't want to let him down. She owed him too much to fail the first request he'd ever made of her. Far too much.
Failure was not an option.
The blackened tower loomed ahead, silently beckoning her onward.
Zeri took a single, sharp breath, and stepped forward.
It was time to go.
✦ ✦ ✦
» In Piltover's Industrial district
Callian strolled through Piltover's dockside industrial district, his violet eyes flickering between every face that passed him by.
There were workers, sailors, tradesmen—the latter of whom possessed a distinct foreignness that set them apart from the rest of the common crowd. None were bothered by the light smog or the tang of iron lacing the air however.
All those who frequented Piltover were used to the smell that was so aptly named the 'Price of progress'.
Callian's meeting was scheduled for twelve in the afternoon. He was set to arrive punctually early—a habit that he knew his future colleague also had a preference for.
Given the method he had used to arrange this meeting, however, Callian didn't expect this small courtesy would help to change the woman's already poor opinion of him.
Blackmail felt so distasteful when used against friends.
An unexpected trill suddenly sounded from within Callian's jacket, drawing his attention back toward the present.
It was an unwelcome, unplanned sound that attracted more than a few looks from the passing mob.
He moved to retrieve it immediately, withdrawing the timepiece from his pocket and lowering his gaze toward its glassy dial.
Callian's violet eyes flashed a brief, telling pink upon reading it. He stared down at the watch's surface for a moment longer before stowing the device back into his jacket pocket.
The people who had any amount of closeness to him felt a sudden, fleeting sense of foreboding that quickly disappeared as his mood tempered once more.
The device had detected a surge in this world's time stream. Another, secondary presence of advanced temporal machinery had just entered the present time.
Fortunately or unfortunately, however, that exact frequency was the one his own watch emitted.
Callian's eyes flickered with a dull, calculating light as he made his way forward.
One way or another, somewhere down the line, something had gone wrong. Wrong enough to warrant that kind of investment.
Callian considered this development for a moment longer, then pledged to move his thoughts onward.
He did not make impromptu decisions. That was not something that would change with any amount of time. He would entrust this problem to his future self.
Still. He was at three strikes out of four now. There was a finality in that.
One last jump left.
✦ ✦ ✦