Authors: Kyra Anderson
The Significant
Copyright © 2016 by K.J. Amidon
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S.
Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a
database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher
Website: www.kjamidon.com
Published by K.J. Amidon
ISBN: 978-1522730118
Cover Art by K.J. Amidon
Printed in the United States
Kailynn had to use all of her
self-discipline to get out of bed that morning, scurrying across the room to
grab her clothes, cringing when she felt how cold the garments were after being
strewn about the floor the entire night. A groan behind her caused her to turn,
though she lost her balance as her head spun. She pressed one hand to her face
and quietly cursed herself for drinking so heavily the previous night.
“Where ya runnin’ off to?” a voice,
gravelly with sleep, mumbled from the bed.
“Some of us gotta work,” she said,
pressing her clothes to her chest in an effort to warm herself. “It’s
freezing
in here…”
“Heat’s out again. What’d’ya expect? I
live in a dump.”
“Raffy,” Kailynn groaned, “you could get
a job and
pay
for stuff to work.”
“I work,” Raphael defended irritably.
“I wouldn’t call lifting credits from
tourists work,” Kailynn murmured, throwing her clothes on the bed to search for
her panties among the tangled mess.
“Got you out of trouble with those loan
sharks,” Raphael said into his pillow.
“That was my brother’s shit deal, not
mine,” she growled, snatching up her panties and pulling them on hurriedly. “I
gotta go home and change,” she muttered, pulling her pants on, jumping when she
could not get them over her hips. Raphael glanced at her and laughed.
“Jump some more.”
“Shut up, prick,” she snapped, finally
succeeding in donning her pants.
“You’re getting a nice ass,” Raphael
noted, turning on his side and propping himself up to look at her. “I guess all
that lifting at work has done some good.”
Kailynn pulled her shirt on, leaving her
bra slung across the bed.
“I’m so late. Brad’s gonna kill me.”
“No, he ain’t.” Raphael shook his head,
flopping back to the bed. “He’s got the hots for you. Just smile and show some
cleavage and he’ll forgive you.”
Kailynn grabbed her jacket from the back
of the door to the one-room flat and swung it over her shoulders.
“Hey!” Raphael called quickly as she
opened the door. “Am I gonna see you tonight?”
“Don’t you always?” she chuckled, ducking
out the door and closing it behind her, shivering as she huddled into her coat.
Winter was having difficulty leaving that year. Tiao was generally a cold
planet to begin with, but it had been getting worse the last few years, each
winter lasting longer than the one before.
The street became dark in the early
morning hours. Every night, the street lit up with neon signs and scrolling
advertisements, enticing tourists to the Walking District. Even though tourists
who came physically to Tiao and visited the capital city of Anon were part of
high society, there were still few curious enough about the darker
neighborhoods, looking for drugs and prostitutes.
The Walking District was known for
catering to those with salacious appetites. It was considered part of the slums
of Anon. Those with money were very conspicuous and were often the targets of
mugging and pickpocketing. Anon residents who frequented the bars and brothels
knew how to keep their money safe. Tourists were not as fortunate—Kailynn never
cared about the tourists. The money Raphael stole from them had always been
welcome.
She left the Walking District, crossing
the district border through an alley into the district of Trid—the non-citizen
district that Kailynn called home. While Raphael, her close friend from
childhood was lucky to live in the Walking District, despite being a
non-citizen Trid as well, Kailynn was never able to scrape enough money
together to keep rent on a place in the flashy Walking District.
Border Patrol was sleeping, as usual. The
one conscious guard, who had likely lost a bet with the others on his shift,
was nursing a beer, grumbling about his job and the cold winter. Kailynn
slipped by him easily, slinking into the shadows of Trid as naturally as the
winter breeze.
She passed a few underground bars where
Trids sold products they managed to lift off transport vehicles going in and
out of the Walking District. Of course, with the Trids being so broke, nothing
was paid for in credits, but in services or sex.
That was the way of Trid.
Kailynn greeted a few friends as they
stumbled home, numb from alcohol and drugs. She squeezed through the broken
doors of the building she had called home for six years and ascended the
stairs, being sure to avoid the large hole in the third step. There were a few
others who shared the building with her, but they never spoke to one another.
They would look at each other nervously, never sure who was coming into the
building and never exchanging words with the other squatters.
Kailynn fought to get the door open that
led to her room, where she had an old mattress with every blanket she had ever
collected—the number totaled eleven. Kailynn knew that she could always get a
warm place to stay and a decent meal by cozying up to someone who clearly had
money in the Walking District, but after a childhood friend was killed by
Officials fighting arrest for illegal prostitution, Kailynn decided it was not
worth the risk.
While prostitution was extremely common
in Trid, the Walking District was still part of the illustrious capital, which
meant all prostitution had to be regulated. Many Trids had been imprisoned or
killed in the Walking District for pretending to be legal prostitutes.
Instead, Kailynn spent her nights with
Raphael. He may have lived in a dump, but at least under the covers with him,
it was warm.
Kailynn tossed her blankets aside,
desperately trying to find the jumpsuit she had to wear to work as well as some
clean panties and a bra. She was able to find her stash of clean underwear, but
the jumpsuit was not around the bed. Cursing and hoping she was not too late to
work, she tore the bed apart one more time, finally finding the jumpsuit
tangled around one of her blankets.
She stripped quickly, pulling on the new
panties and then grabbing her jumpsuit, shoving her legs in and zipping it up
to her waist before trying to find a bra. That was when she remembered that she
had a habit of leaving her bras at Raphael’s place, because she was always late
for work after staying with him.
Kailynn rolled her eyes and put her
jumpsuit on completely.
“Fuck it, bras are stupid.”
She dashed out the door, hopping to put
her boots on again as she reached the top of the stairs. She ran out into the
cold and used the well-known route past another Border Patrol station to return
to the Walking District and to the warehouse where she worked.
“Kailynn! You’re late,
again
!” a voice bellowed from the
check-in desk. She waved briefly before running into the back and finding her
supervisor, Brad.
When the tall, brown-haired, green-eyed
man saw her, he sighed heavily and shook his head.
“Kailynn…”
“I know, I know.”
“…we’re working on school rations today.
Transports Three, Four, and Five.”
“Thanks, Brad,” Kailynn said, running to
join the rest of her team at the loading bays.
Kailynn had been lucky to get a job at
the Hunter & Leo Packing Warehouse. She was not educated enough to work in
the actual plant, where they made the food rations, but had managed to talk her
way into the distribution center. If a crate would break open, Kailynn would
sneak a few of the silver-wrapped bars for herself, even though she hated the
chalky taste. She never understood why the Hunter & Leo Rations were
distributed so widely over the planet when their ration bars tasted like cement
compared to Kieble Rations—of course, those ration bars were more expensive
because they used ingredients from the food they harvested in their greenhouses
rather than just putting the proteins and nutrients into a mush and heating
that into a bar form.
Kailynn hoped that she would get an
assignment soon to go with a transport team to another part of the planet. She
had never been out of Anon, but had a very strong sense of adventure and had
always dreamed of getting out of the capital, or even off of Tiao to visit the
other planets of the Altereye System.
She was disappointed that she was, once
again, not on a long-distance transport. She had been on the Anon Schools Route
at least one hundred times. It was boring.
Kailynn helped move the crates onto the
transport vehicles, sorting them based on type and school, working
methodically, laughing at Jenn’s story about her sister giving a lap dance to a
rich tourist and slipping seven hundred credits off his account when he paid
for her time. Of course, Jenn’s sister also owed a shark nearly three thousand
credits, so the seven hundred was only a small dent in the amount keeping her
dancing tables in the Walking District’s club.
As the group was loading the final crates
onto the transport vehicles, Brad’s voice caught Kailynn’s attention.
“Kailynn, you got a visitor!”
“What?” She poked her head out of the
transport.
“I said you got a visitor!”
Kailynn was surprised to see a very
familiar sandy-haired man standing next to Brad.
“Theo?”
She began walking to her older brother
when Brad caught her arm.
“Look, I don’t mind if you wanna chat
with your friends while you work, but I don’t pay you to stand around talking
to Johns.”
“Lay off, Brad,” she groaned, pulling her
arm out of his grasp. “He’s my brother. I’m gonna take a smoke break.”
Brad rolled his eyes and watched her walk
to the side door of the warehouse, her brother in tow. When the door closed
behind them, Kailynn pushed her hand into her pocket and pulled out a crumpled
pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
“What the hell, Theo?”
“Nice to see you, too,” Theo laughed
brokenly.
“What do you want?” Kailynn asked. “I’m
already on thin ice with this job. I can’t have you comin’ here and pissing off
my boss.”
“You keep not wearing a bra and he won’t
mind,” Theo chuckled, nodding to her jumpsuit where her nipples were clearly
visible, hard from the cold outside air.
“Don’t be an ass. What do you want?”
“Lynni,” he smiled excitedly, “we’ve got
a great plan.”
“Oh no,” Kailynn groaned, rolling her
eyes, her entire frame slumping. “
No
.
I’m not gonna be part of any of those half-baked schemes you and the Heart of
Trid gang come up with. I had to beg Raphael to pay for what happened last time.”
“No, this is different!” Theo insisted.
“Look at this.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out an identification
card, handing it to Kailynn. She sighed, holding the cigarette in her lips as
she took the card and looked it over. When she saw the emblem on the card she
groaned and tried to hand it back.
“Yeah, right, you got one of the Elite’s
ID cards.” She sighed. “You’re a fuckin’ moron, Theo. It’s fake.”
“Did you even see
which
Elite it was?”
“Theo, it’s a damn fake!”
“No, it’s not!” Theo protested sharply.
“You know Liam?”
“The twitchy one?”
“Yeah, he got a temp job working in the
Syndicate Building. He was doin’ janitorial and workin’ in the securities
office where they were redistributing Elite ID cards because there was some
kind of security breach, or whatever. The point is he was around when Golden
Elite Isa’s card was being printed and he took the new one and swapped it with
the old one.”
“That’s bullshit.”