The building was small. Two stories high. Minuscule compared to the two besides it. A shake would be the best way to describe it what look like. Wind sharms hung across the entrance with runes across the walls. Walking up to the door he smelt sweet herbs and candles that would make even trash smelt decent.
"Shit this going to be a pain" Florian thought to himself.
Knocking on the door in a beat like pattern. Then the sound of crows came from afar. He wait a second as the door creaked open. He walked inside.
The humidity hits you first—a thick, cloying breath of damp soil, ozone, and the powdery sweetness of night-blooming jasmine. The lights don't hum here; they breathe. Flickering neon veins of toxic pink and bio-cyan pulse along the ceiling tracks, casting long, wavering shadows across the cluttered battlefield of the shop floor, while old-fashioned filament bulbs wrapped in tangled vines give off a dim, amber warmth that makes the metallic mannequins glisten like wet stones.
Dresses choke the aisles and cascade from overloaded racks—some razor-edged synth-weave with ballistic plating, others delicate holographic silks that ripple with pixelated constellations when you brush past them, their torn scraps draping over rusted chairs and broken fiberglass limbs like a haute-couture graveyard.
But the plants are winning the war against the concrete. Massive ferns erupt from cracked ceramic pots, their fronds tangling with the dress hems; creeping ivy scales the support pillars, strangling exposed wiring; and glowing, bio-engineered orchids nestle in old combat boots, their petals pulsing with a soft violet light that cycles in time with the heartbeat of the city outside.
At the heart of the chaos sits the register—a brutalist slab of repurposed steel and concrete bolted to the floor like a bunker, its flickering holo-screen glitching through fabricated inventory lists, with a worn-out stool behind it, the padding split and weeping yellowed foam. Tucked tight behind the register, half-hidden by a curtain of weeping moss and beaded data-cables, is a door—a slab of recycled blast-plating with a manual wheel-lock and a smudged retinal scanner, the kind ripped from an old airlock, guarding whatever lies beyond.
On the far left, hugging the moisture-streaked concrete wall, a secondary staircase rises into the gloom—a narrow, spiral thing of riveted iron mesh, its steps groaning under their own weight even when untouched, coiling upwards around a massive exhaust vent until it disappears into a heavy blackness where the neon doesn't reach. A single flickering sign—the numbers 9:51—is bolted beside it, casting a sickly green glow on the rusted banister, the steps leading to a heavy trapdoor in the ceiling sealed with a deadbolt. Nobody who works here ever talks about what's up there; it's where the old files live, where the owner sleeps with one eye open, watching the district below through a cracked telescope lens—her sanctuary, her armory, her final line of defense.
"Ohh if it an't the preacher son. What do you need a job finnaly, Mr.Tin fired you"said a voice sweet gentle feminine.
From the stair case walked a women. Purple makeup covering her face long white dress flowing.
She came stumbling down the stairwell, the concrete grit catching under her heels. Her face was a glorious disaster—slathered in bruised, electric purple makeup that bled past her lips and smeared up to her temples, the kind of reckless, post-gig war paint that screamed three nights of no sleep and a stolen bottle of cheap tequila. Eyes where colors of the storm clouds. Grey hollow and unnatural. The eyes where robotic fake eyes made and design by a craftsman.
But the dress? The dress was a dagger of pristine white. It choked her throat with a rigid, high-necked collar that stood stiff and unforgiving, holding her posture straight no matter how loose her limbs felt. The sleeves were massive, blown-out clouds of crisp cotton that ballooned around her arms, heavy and dramatic, only to be yanked back into tight, buttoned cuffs at her wrists—like the dress was trying to keep her from completely falling apart.
It cinched hard at her waist, pulled tight like a corset holding in the chaos, before flaring out into a defiant, stiff mini skirt that cut off sharp at her mid-thigh. Two oversized, square flap pockets sat on her hips like industrial pouches, strange and utilitarian against the otherwise sculptural fabric. Her boots were stark white, pointed and solid, clacking down each step with a brutalist rhythm that grounded her wild, purple-eyed haze.
She looked like a punk poet who'd wandered into a high-fashion gallery—messy, magnetic, and completely untouchable in her crisp white cage.
"Gorgeous as ever Mrs.Bái how have you been?" Asked Florian
"Oh my dear Florian mother has taught you well,"Bái voice distinctly deep rough
A robot no more the five feet tall with his lower body being a wheel. As in the center of his chest was a screen. Came up to him with a glass and a bottle.
"No thank you bud," said Florian as he pats the robots head as it walked away heads down. "Maybe next time"
"Worry not he just want people to taste his new flavor of wine, anyways what can I help you with," said Bái
"I came to ask if you give my sister a job?" Said Florian
"That I did, a job in the city in the Stack, but I told her not to go it's been dangours over there," replied Bái
"What kind of danger, cause I haven't seen her in a days and she hasn't been answering her phone," said Florian concern took his voice
"Well there's been an attack on the stack and presumably there prince Marco has been kidnapped," said Bái
Then in that second the message in the group chat hit him. The though ran in his mind.
"Wait, then where can, she be?" Questioned his voice cracking in fear.
"No clue, the inner city is dangerous, especially that the families might go to war,"said Bái
"War? The hell is going on, shit I need to find her" said Florian
Then the door fling opened two man walked insides. One covered in bandages and wrapped in cloth as the other covered an a body suit.