Wolf in the City

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The United States has been divided by a wall called 'the Gait': a high-security gated community where life goes on as normal on the West, and a devastated, crippling, poverty-stricken life on the East.


If you're on the West, you're lucky. If you're on the East, your life expectancy is 30.

A young Western woman has lived her entire life in the privilege of the Western wing and has known nothing but luxury.

But when her entire family is murdered, leaving the police scrambling for answers, she knows that a killer like this could have only come from the wild and feral East.

Renouncing her own safety, she flees past the Gait to pursue any leads she can discover on her family's murderer. What awaits her on the other side though is more dismal and unbelievable than she ever expected.

She meets and befriends an Easterner of about her own age, who (after some serious convincing) agrees to help her find the murderer in exchange for money -- but both will find they've bitten off more than they could ever chew.

@Hastur​

 

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The story so far: Read it here​

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With the last of Kincade's words spoken, the silence caressed her skin like a cool summer breeze, smoothing her soul and taking away the jagged edges. It had been one hell of a rough day, though it had at least started out nice. With the bandits now silenced, she drank the quietness of the moment in trough every pore, soothed by its meditative quality. Each time a worrying thought emerged, she mentally jotted it down on a notepad, wrapped it in stone, and threw it into the abyss that was the back of her mind. With her anxieties finally leached into the void, she stood wrapped in Kincade's returning hug, cocooned by the thick protective buffer of absolute quiet.

"Yea-" she breathed out as he stepped away from her. "Probably best before we run into any more trouble." Slipping her bag across her shoulders, she patted herself down a few times, just to make sure she had everything. There wasn't much to leave behind, as they didn't have much, but it was still habit from growing up in the West…. did she have her keys? Wallet? Cellphone? Funny, she didn't have any of those things anymore, but she still patted her trouser pockets all the same and it caused her a second of alarm to realize she didn't have them on her person. Because you don't own them anymore, girl she reminded herself gently with a huff.

Stepping out through the front door, Rori adjusted her bag and stared not the fog. It should have still been a little light out, but the city buildings were veiled in the lightest of mists, their walls and windows a sombre grey with sable cracks. Her eye traveled to the edge of the city where they became silhouettes against a blanket of white, as if it was only daylight where she stood, as if she was encircled by twilight. "Quite the fog," she murmured, and quite the fog it was. It suffocated every building, swallowed every distant object, and vanished around every corner. The moisture felt heavy in the air, like it could rain at any moment, but it wasn't.

Meanwhile, in the fog, the city was blurred like an old painting with cement and sidewalks that were cracked and pioneering weeds. The buildings were long overdue for a pressure wash, how fast the lichen colonized the Northern faces. The city-planted saplings exploded in their pots and the smell…. the smell was always the worst. Instinctively, Rori's nose crinkled as her eyes shot back to Kincade. "I shouldn't actually lead the way," she mentioned off-handedly, "I actually have no idea where we're going."

He had mentioned earlier that he had safe houses all across the city, but after recent events with those two punks, she wasn't sure where they were going… only that they were going. Raking a hand through her hair, she inhaled sharply the smell of garbage and rot.

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[Hastur]

[bg=#ffffff] The Wolf turned, looking over his most current 'home' - if it could even be called that - with a sigh and made sure everything was in order. He'd put on his vest again, coat, lined his pockets with what he could carry in bullets, weapons and supplies, and then loaded his bag with the rest. Lugging the heavy satchel over his back, he rested it there and followed her out through the makeshift door, pulling a large sheet of metal back into place after they exited.

The male's eyes, green rimmed in gold, moved across the misty fog that hugged over the buildings and gave everything a strange sense of ghostly eeriness. It had enveloped everything in its thick and milky hues, and the buildings beyond were nothing more than looming, battered shapes.

'Fallen Gods,' he thought to himself, shuddering a little. Whether it was from the thought or the bullet wound in his arm, he couldn't be sure.

"Yeh, it is," he agreed somberly, breath a little heavy in the dank air. It was almost suffocating and humid, and somehow made the usual odor of the streets outside The Wall worse. They hung there, attacking at the nostrils with acrid burns.

When Rori spoke again, The Wolf blinked out of his thoughts and peered toward her. "Ah, yer' right. C'mon," he said, taking the lead and heading forward. "It's a bit of a trek to the next safe place, but it's worth it. Out of the way a bit, but better hidden. And more supplies there, pretty good cache." The words were idle, busy, as if the man was trying to take his mind completely from the house he'd just left.

And so they walked, for quite awhile, The Wolf's thoughts spinning of what they'd do next and how they'd figure out fixing all of this mess...[/bg]

 

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She had done everything in her power to look calm in front of Kincade after the shots rang out. She was too scared that if she brought a hand to her face to wipe away the blood from the small glass incisions, that it would open up a flood of tears, so she didn't. She let the wounds continued to drip blood down her face. None of them were bad—just small nicks and cuts here and there, dancing around the edge of her face, but her chin was scrunched up trying to hold her emotions together. More than anything, she didn't want to be weak and to start crying; Kincade had spent too much time training her, working with her, putting up with her… she couldn't rightfully just unlace in front of him right then over something so minor.

Neither of them had even been hurt, not really.

But the emotions remained all the same, banging at her tearducts and threatening to overflow like a boiling pot that was too close to the top. They began to walk, Rori a stride behind Kincade, and with each step her mind became clearer, more resolute, as if the growing physical distance between them had now become an emotional chasm. As what little nascent sunlight managing to cut through the fog caressed her skin, promising a new dawn, a new beginning, she entombed her memories of what had happened in thick walled ice. Then, abruptly pausing for just a second to close her eyes and take in a deep breath of smoggy air, she steeled herself to only think of her future from there on it.

A future she would mold, build, and direct. A future that she would control and investigate what she had set out to investigate all those months ago. Jim might have been dead, but he was certainly not forgotten and he had been dancing all across her consciousness. Quickly hurrying to catch back up to Kincade, she began to feel more in charge, in command of her own mind, body, and soul. She was a young woman walking into her own destiny, a destiny that lay squarely in her own hands… well, and the hands of a dreadlocked (slightly smelly, but she wouldn't tell him that) man.

"How much farther?" she asked, dusting her hands off on the thighs of her trousers as she nudged a bit closer to him after glancing down an alleyway and seeing a pair of beady, Jaundice eyes staring back at her. "There better be something to eat there," she mumbled, pressing a hand against her stomach as it grumbled with unease, "Because I'm awfully hungry." Her face had relaxed and she finally reached up to wipe the drying blood away from her face.
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