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This was good, so good. Eden felt like her whole body was about to melt under this. She could already foresee how easily she could give in to this, get addicted to it. She had to be careful not to dive in too deep...
Suddenly, something in the room rang. They separated, their lips still a bit open and hesitant, but Dante immediately glanced at something behind her. Eden turned her head to see, but it was a simple clock on the wall. She frowned. Was it that late already? When she turned back to him, only then did she realize her hands were on Dante’s chest. Eden immediately blushed, and she was about to take them off, but Dante took her hand without warning.
“Come,” he said.
She frowned, and he pulled her toward the window wall. Eden couldn’t understand what was going on, but any hint of playfulness was gone from his eyes; instead, the Zodiac was back. His eyes were looking as scary and dangerous as before and extremely serious. She came to her senses right away too. They both walked together toward the glass, Dante still holding onto her hand. That stupid, silly detail was disturbing Eden. He was holding her hand gently, guiding her, but without any intention of letting go, it seemed. She said nothing and kept that little knot in her throat. Dante was already staring outside at something happening in the streets below. Eden frowned and, standing by his side, tried to see what he was staring at with such a dark expression.
It took her a little while to see it. A black Overcraft, landing in the middle of the Suburbs. Eden frowned; she had never seen one of the Core’s Overcrafts with such a dark color before... Was this meant to be some sort of camouflage? Moreover, the arrival of that engine didn’t seem to alarm anyone; no nearby lights were lit on, no one seemed to be at their windows to see what was going on.
“...What are they doing here?” she whispered.
It made no sense for an Overcraft of the Core to be there in the middle of the night. They even had laws for the Core citizens to be back at a certain hour, and they could only come to the Suburbs on certain days too. Eden was sure it wasn’t one of those days, as it was usually the days she would have worked at Jack’s bar. They couldn’t be bringing exiled people either, not at such an hour. Dante remained silent, so she continued to observe. She didn’t like this at all either. The Overcraft had landed, but no one was coming out. Nothing was happening. However, after a few seconds more, and squinting her eyes to try and understand, Eden finally saw it. A slight red ray, going over the building. It was just a red line that went up and down horizontally on a building, but it disappeared. Then, it appeared again, on the next building. She didn’t like this at all.
“...They are scanning the buildings?”
Dante nodded.
“They do this almost every night, each time on different blocks. We first noticed it two weeks ago.”
“...Which territory is this?” she asked.
“Tonight, it’s the Hare’s. Four days ago, they were at the Zebra’s.”
“No one else noticed?”
“If they did, they didn’t share it with me...”
It wasn’t surprising. None of the Zodiacs were on good enough terms that they’d willingly share information on something so important. What the hell was the Core doing? Why would they scan all the buildings in different areas? She kept staring, but no one came out of the Overcraft. Maybe there wasn’t even a pilot or a passenger at all. However, if this was simply about scanning, wouldn’t they have sent drones? Although the drones were often destroyed as soon as they came inside the Suburbs... Eden knew those things were costly, and a lot of people were happy to shoot at them if it meant whoever took it down could get their hands on the parts... Overcrafts were left alone because no one was crazy enough to risk injuring a member of the Core. There was a certain level of retribution no one wanted to handle. The Core had the money, the weapons, and the means to hurt people in the Suburbs.
“...So they just come and scan the buildings every night at the same hour?”
“Basically, yes. Strangely, it’s just one Overcraft, though, and very, very careful not to be noticed...”
Indeed. If this had been a regular operation, the Core would have had no issues sending it during the day and giving some excuse as to why it was there... Eden had an odd feeling about this.
“It’s not just that,” said Dante.
This time, he let go of her hand and walked to one of the shelves to grab a remote, turning on the flat screen on the wall. Eden wasn’t surprised to see him use old technology from the twentieth century. It was the best way to not get hacked, having technology that was too old for that. For a few seconds, she stared at the TV, looking at what seemed like the Core’s regular channel of information. Very few people in the Suburbs could afford a TV, let alone get the kind of network that would give them access to the Core’s news. It was because everything was so white and perfect on that show that Eden immediately knew it was one of the Core’s TV channels. A woman with platinum blonde hair cut in a perfect bob, perfect skin, straight nose, symmetrical purple eyes, and a bright golden dress was talking. Definitely some sort of news anchor. The sound wasn’t on, but the images spoke for themselves.
They were showing images of the Suburbs, but only... violent images. Eden began frowning the more she saw. It was only short sequences, showing nothing but gunfights, violence, and young people brawling. Bottles of alcohol shattered on the sidewalk, a car burning, graffiti on a wall, and... bodies. Eden was shocked. They weren’t blurring images, but showed dozens of bodies, together in a pile, on the street.
“Where is… What the heck is that...” she whispered, taken by surprise.
She read the sentences at the bottom of the screen. “Violence escalating in the Suburbs. Non-Pure population getting out of control.”
“They are trying to show people in the Core that the Suburbs are... out of control? What the hell...?”
Although the violence wasn’t faked, Eden quickly recognized some of the streets in those videos; this was also a very narrow vision of the Suburbs she knew. The Suburbs were violent, it was true, but not out of control. There were no actual killings in this video, and Eden knew some of those young people shooting were probably just aiming at walls for fun like the young people sometimes did in her neighborhood. She liked the graffiti on the walls; it was on every street and, in a way, part of their culture. As long as the Zodiacs were there, nothing would go out of control. There were ten Zodiacs, ten territories, and as many different types of ambiances in the streets. Eden lived in one of the most dangerous ones, and even she couldn’t recognize her daily life in those videos.
“...What the hell are they trying to do?” she asked.
“We aren’t sure yet,” said Dante, his golden eyes still on the screen, “but it doesn’t look good...”
It didn’t, indeed. The Core generally didn’t care about what happened in the Suburbs. They were fine with the mess going on outside as long as it didn’t get inside. And it never did. The Overcrafts dropped exiles outside, but they never ever came in with more people than they had kicked out. It was hard... no, almost impossible for someone from the Suburbs to even set foot in the Core. Eden knew how hard it had been to get out when she was years younger. She couldn’t even fathom how she’d get inside. The Core was too happy to kick anything that bothered them out to the Suburbs and let it be as it was. …So why would they have a problem with the Suburbs now? There wasn’t anything bad happening now that hadn’t happened before. Even Dante attacking inside the Chinese territory was anecdotic, to be fair. How many times had the Zebra and the Hare’s people gone against each other? And the Eagle, the Mexican mafiosos? They were the ones making the most noise.
“...You said ‘we’?” she repeated.
“Since we noticed, I’ve had men watching in a lot of districts or from where we could. The territory they go to the most is the Dragon’s. The south, in general.”
