The winding staircase that led down from her tiny office to the city streets wasn't very different from the city streets themselves, really: cigarette buds and broken glass carpeting the ground and a filthy stench permeating the air. The flickering incandescent lights of the corridors painted icteric shadows on the peeling paint of the walls and the rotting wood of the floorboards, but the streetlights weren't much better, even if they at least managed to stay on for more than 2 seconds at a time, shining a pale glow onto the cracking pavement stones.
Jones was used to the unwieldy terrain - she'd walked it more times than she could remember, many of those times even in as frenetic a run as she was in now - but the combination of still not quite awake consciousness and the lack of caffeine in her veins did cause her to trip a couple of times on her way to the bus stop, though she managed to stay on her feet. Somehow, her shoes also managed to stay on her feet - they might just survive another week before she has to invest in some new attire.
«Damn it, my shirt...»
As she rapidly glanced at the passing citizens pouring out of the residential buildings framing the decrepit city streets, she noticed that most didn't look as bad as her. Clean clothes, reasonably well-put together, really. They were all poor, of course - nobody in that neighborhood could be said to be wealthy, after all - but they managed to at least maintain a semblance of health, though the skin of the average person walking out of their barely rented homes did have a certain grey tone to it, perhaps due to the pollution strangling their lungs for their whole lives. Some beggars sat on the cobblestones here and there - a few citizens even managed to spare a few coins to throw in their tin cans - but they were few and far between, and Jones knew that they would be gone sooner rather than later, maybe even before the morning was over, though they would be replaced by new, even if equally gaunt faces come the next sunrise.
The bus stop was perhaps the most well-kept area of the whole neighborhood. The streets were silent and eerie, only the echoing click-clacks of heels stabbing the floor could be heard, and a couple of grunts and moans from the tired workers, but the bus stop was much more lively. Jones couldn't remember the last time she actually had to use the bus to go anywhere - probably the last time she got a call from a client - but she did remember it being a sort of gathering place for all the people looking to go to the factories to get some coin.
"Hey, John! Long time no see! How are you doing man?"
"Good Mary, I'm much better now. I couldn't get that payout, but at least I can move my leg again."
A couple of elderly folk shared a smiley exchange.
"Yo, Mac! Did you see it?"
"Yo! Yeah, it was sick! I can't believe he made that last shot."
"I know, right?!"
Sports, probably. Jones didn't keep up with that sort of thing, these days.
"Ms. Jones, is that you? You stink. Are you OK?"
It was interesting that someone managed to smell anything other than the oppressive poison that permeated the air.
"Hey? Ms. Jones? Detective? Hello?"
«Huh?»
The detective paused her grooming - scratching her scalp and plucking out random pieces of dirt off her hair - and looked around. She was surrounded by the black skeleton of the bus stop. Above her, a floating sign read «New Town Central - 00:05», indicating that her bus would be arriving soon. People were smiling and happily sharing their daily happenings in the meek dawn that still only threatened to break the clouds.
There was, however, a young man staring at her.
He looked tiny. Well, he was taller than the detective by a palm and a half, but his skin was glued to his bones with not as much as a millimeter if fat cushioning the contact. His eyes were sunken into his skull like two ping-pong balls roughly placed into a cliffside. His dreadfully short blonde hair hinted that the man was either extremely utilitarian or worked somewhere where that sort of style was mandatory, which likely indicated the army, considering what the detective knew about the workplace fashion regulations currently enforced in the city. Judging by his constitution, it was more likely he just couldn't afford shampoo, just like he seemingly couldn't afford food. His blue eyes seemed to be trying to peer into her very soul.
It took her only a moment to put a name to the face. The ill-fitting blue overalls branded with «Monty Co.» that the young man wore over his black t-shirt also helped.
"James, how are you? Long time no see."
It seemed she had finally been able to shake the drowsiness from her voice, though it felt like her face muscles weren't quite working yet, so she didn't manage to put on the reassuring smile she had intended to.
"I'm good, Ms. Jones. But how are you? And why do you smell like that? Your shirt... How long have you been wearing those clothes?"
He sounded concerned. He looked concerned, too.
James Mariard, 18, New Town Block 44. A canning operator at Monty Co. by day and a street sweeper by night. Good kid. They had last met less than a month prior, when he showed up at her office talking about his parents. At the time, his face had looked almost unrecognizable, twisted by fury, but he was actually wearing the same overalls, as Jones recalled.
They were murdered at work, according to him. According to Monty Co., it was a workplace accident and they couldn't be held liable for the damages. That's how those things usually went, anyway, and that's how they ended up going that time too. The kid overworked himself to pay for her services, since she knew nothing would come of it she didn't end up charging him, but the kid just wanted some closure regardless.
It really was a workplace accident, turned out. Jones dug around in their guts - or what remained of them - for a little while and read the events. The images flashed in her mind like a movie as her fingers became coated with blood and viscera.
They were both working on moving a new machine to its place in the line. The chains were rusted and brittle. The crane operator was overworked and under-qualified. Really, it was nothing special, it was just... The chains snapped and the few workers tasked with directing the operator ended up being smashed by the giant hunk of steel. Their skulls were flattened, their rib cages snapped. Three people died, two of them were James' parents. Sure, all this was the result of Monty Co. incompetence and the government's refusal to implement any sort of legislation to regulate this sort of business practice, but that's as far as it went - in other words, there was nothing to do. Certainly, if the kid barely managed to scrounge up enough coin to pay for a low-end detective, he would have no shot at getting a lawyer good enough to face Monty Co. - not that such a lawyer existed outside of Monty Co. company retainer, anyway.
"So many questions, kid." She strained her lips and forehead, she focused on the muscles around her eyes, trying her hardest to look relaxed and calm. "I was just caught off-guard by a new client, that's all. I'm going to meet him right now, actually. Are you going to work? Good luck, out there, stay safe."
James looked like he was about to say something, but it was then that the bus finally arrived, and the mood suddenly shifted at the stop.
«Oh, I didn't miss this at all...»
The eyes of every person in the vicinity snapped to the metal cage approaching them. It was creaky and wobbly, with giant wheels barely able to hold up the weight of all the people hanging on in and outside the structure. The bus was way over capacity - they were near the end of the line, after all. The conversation stopped abruptly, and it was as if enemies turned to strangers. A focused atmosphere fell upon the people like a mantle.
As soon as the doors of the bus creaked open, a wave of disheveled beasts rushed in without order or reason. Some screamed, some cried. A few unlucky ones got pushed aside and pulled back as the stronger and fiercer among the wannabe passengers made their way inside or grabbed onto other passengers on the outside of the structure. The bus bent and wobbled as dozens of feet shuffled in and outside its rusted frame.
Detective Clara Jones simply walked to the other side of the bus. Very few people went there, as they would be on the side directly in contact with the violent traffic of New Town. Only ten or so individuals, fear painted on their faces, grabbed on to the feeble framing or the arms and clothes of the passengers crammed inside like sardines to sustain their own weight. Jones joined them, and hoped she would survive the journey.
«Just two stops, just two stops...»