Read Online Saints of the Void: Atypical by Michael Valdez - Free Book Online

found pleasing. If the steel tracks were still here, he
would have tried to make a more complex pattern by combining the
gravel echo with reverberation from the metal. He laughed in his
head at what Trenna would have thought after seeing the being she
worshipped dancing like a child to funny noises.
    After a few meters on in the gap, the nylon for the
curtains crisscrossed above the travelers. Beaded bracelets of
varying colors and patterns were strung up near where the girl
jumped down, and Dastou had to stop himself from taking the pretty
things and stuffing them into his pockets.
    “It was like we woke up near here one day,” she
added, bringing Dastou back from fantasy land. “A lot of us went
back for mementos, pictures of family and stuff. It was bizarre.
Our belongings were still there, but everyone acted like we were
strangers if they saw us. Like we were, um...”
    “Deleted?” suggested Dastou.
    “Yes, sir, that fits I think. It was heartbreaking
for some. The ones that couldn’t cope, though there were only a
few, they...”
    “Chose another way out,” said the Saint, interrupting
the girl’s pause out of a sense of politeness.
    Trenna swallowed to give herself a moment for
composure. “Yes, sir.”
    “How many of you lived here?” asked Nes, trying to
keep Trenna from focusing on the negative.
    “Thirty-one total as of the last time I remember
being around, which was maybe last night, but I’m not sure how long
I was knocked out. We were all close, some more than others. I
think we had to be for survival. None of us could endure in the
world without the help of the others. We shared responsibilities in
getting food and other basic supplies, or to figure out where a
group was being hypnotized so we could take advantage.”
    “Take advantage as in steal everything you can, I
bet,” said Nes in a light enough tone so it didn’t sound like an
accusation.
    “Yeah, that’s a big part of it,” admitted Trenna with
no shame at all. Nes chuckled at her response.
    “And I bet living in the subway made it convenient,”
said Dastou. “A fast and easy to understand path to a lot of places
that was also technically invisible due to being unused.
Clever.”
    “Uh... thank you, Mr. Dastou,” said Trenna,
stuttering a bit after the earnest compliment.
    The trio got to the tunnel edge and walked only a
couple of paces before stopping to look around. Despite the grime
on the inside of the glass above, a decent amount of light was
coming from the dome ceiling windows of the place, where the
Mover’s Garden was. It made nearly all of the open space clearly
visible.
    Just like the smaller boarding area that led them
here, there were platforms for people to stand and wait left,
right, and center. Sets of escalators flanked the large space,
leading to and from the second floor. A pedestrian bridge was about
thirty meters ahead and above them, used to link the upper tier and
give a clear view of the entire station. A third set of escalators
was dead center of that elevated walkway, serving the middle
platform.
    Long-ago-shuttered businesses lined the second tier
on both sides, where people would socialize before their train
arrived, sometimes long before. Dastou always guessed that maybe
the people subconsciously understood they were being herded to
work, and plenty of socializing made them feel better. Left-behind
tables, chairs, and other amenities for the shops and restaurants
littered that second floor. None of it was useful enough for the
Social Cypher to recycle when compared to making newer items, so
Trenna’s group will have scavenged it more deeply and more
recently.
    Something that might help with all that tedious
scavenging were those five huge construction lights visible
on the second floor. They were the kind that held six rows of six
powerful bulbs and featured a bulky generator at the bottom instead
of a quadropod stand. One was on the pedestrian walkway, slightly
to the left of that centered