The Seething City

= The Seething City = Posted by : Tvrdy on Apr 27, 2018, 5:49am

The Golden Storm. Afternoon, August 21. Rose District.

The doors had opened a mere hour ago and already business was booming.customers from the Twins and other districts seemed to pour through the elaborately wrought doors and throw themselves at the gaming tables with unaccustomed abandon. Sharid paced quietly around the edges of the room, dressed in a conservative dark tweed, watching, wondering. This had been his beat for several months now, and he rarely missed a detail. The pudgy middle-aged man being led up the stairs by one of the girls...he had been in here before, only wearing a wedding band. The dealer on table four always made that face just before he...adjusted...the game in favor of the house. And that shabby man at table two passing out tracts did not belong. Sharid cocked an eyebrow and lengthened his stride. "Hey." The shorter, narrower man...his clothes betrayed him as a factory laborer...glanced sidelong at him, barely looking up from the stack of pamphlets he was arranging. The other guests at the table held the papers loosely, pretending to read them, doubtless to appease the fanatic and get him to stop waving them under their noses. Sharid had seen the same nonsense in posters and broadsides around the city. Drivel. They want a revolution? They want a better future? One look outside the Walls will change that. That is their future ...he forced his mind to focus on the task at hand. "Club policy. No solicitation. Get out." The pamphleteer scrunched his eyebrows together. "My friend are you aware of the oppression endured by the masses of your fellow citizens..." Sharid drew the stun stick from the shoulder holster in one practiced motion. Electricity discharged between the prongs with an audible  SZZT. He held the stick at his side, low, nonthreateningly. "Go." "Ah...yes well I see. Good day." The man nodded and made his way for the door, briskly. Sharid waited until the man was well gone before he holstered the weapon with a nod to the table dealer. Such instances were relatively rare, but, recently...he glanced at a dropped leaflet with a red cog and hammer emblazoned on it...the crazies had come out of the woodwork. Even last night, the explosion had racked Sharid's small studio and he had awoken from deep sleep, sweating and petrified, suddenly  there  again, smelling the sickly savory odor of burning flesh. And then it had passed. He straightened his suit and kept to the shadows. It was going to be a long day.