Calypso had never been shot before, although she had been shot at. Still, she imagined that the feeling in her stomach right now was quite like being shot in the gut. She stood in the fountain square outside of her appointment as the news broadcasted the crash, her head still ringing from the distant sonic boom, her mouth agape in disbelief as she watched the footage of the crash loop and loop. Already, it was being reported as an accident; every disaster in Arcadia was an accident. Despite this, it struck Calypso as odd that all of the accidents seemed to happen around the poorer districts—although perhaps she had been reading too many ramblings of a paranoid shut-in on the message boards again. Even if there was some grand conspiracy out to get the little guy, she wasn’t concerned about that; she was concerned about her mother.

How many times had she tried and called that woman? Three? Five? Everytime the line went dead, and every message she sent went unread. From looking at the map of the quarantine, Calypso’s neighborhood had been absorbed into Ghajotia, which meant she was now temporarily homeless, but her mom was living in proper Ghajotia. So each unanswered phone call, each unread message meant either one of two things. The first was that her mother was in a Trance-induced coma, dead to the world for the next couple of hours. The second was that her mother was just dead to the world. Calypso failed to keep the tears contained as her phone buzzed, an alert from Capri that she was due to meet her client in ten minutes.

[i]Screw this,[/i] she thought, sitting down on the edge of the fountain. Already she knew that she was going to go through with the job, despite being nowhere in the proper state of mind. The fact of the matter was that she needed money if she was going to stay somewhere that wasn’t in the streets tonight. She had friends she would have relied on, but they were in the quarantine. Perhaps dead. Like her mom. And anyone she cared about. And anyone she didn’t care about. And…

[i]Stop it, stop it, stop it. You can’t control this, but it doesn’t control you either. Focus up,[/i] she thought, patting her cheeks and wiping her tears on her sleeves. 

A few deep, controlled breaths later and Calypso was standing. One or two more heavy sighs and she had started to walk, heading towards the revolving doors of the silver tower in front of her. From the base, it was nearly impossible to see up to the top of the building that was a beehive of offices and research labs. The windows were mirrored and polished to a shine, blinding anyone who stared at them for too long when the sun hit just right. A blue hologram of a woman dressed in a smart suit welcomed visitors to the Jazani Plaza, reminding them to check in with security if they did not have their access chip to their floor. 

The lobby was clean, it was quiet, and it didn’t smell like piss. Already it was vastly superior to the Black Hole Bar; just being in it made her feel slightly better. Calypso liked to imagine a life where she worked in a building like this. However, her fantasies never included her doing any actual office work, which likely would have driven her into a bottle to escape the drone lifestyle, and instead focused more on the glitz and glamour of what she imagined life with a steady paycheck would be like. She thought of things like rooftop pools with hot cabana boys, dinner parties where people were only murdered with words, rubbing elbows with socialites that she couldn’t stand but desired to stand amongst, and other stupid things. 

Normally, Calypso wasn’t the kind of girl who turned many heads, and she personally liked things that way. She was rarely the prettiest person in the place even in Ghajotia, and here where all of the men and women were crafted nearly entirely out of silicon she wasn’t even close to being anywhere in the running. Thus, she knew that when the few people inside of the building’s lobby turned and stared at her it was in the same way someone would stare at a sideshow in a carnival. At least, that was the best she could hope for, because if the security saw her as any kind of threat there would be nothing more than a slim chance to escape. More likely, she’d be dumped out back in a black bag with the rest of the garbage. With that thought in mind, she slightly quickened her pace to the check-in.

The woman behind the desk was a perfectly designed blonde who seemed pleasant enough with her fake smile full of bleached teeth. Calypso noticed the lobby guards shift ever so slightly closer as she approached the desk, ready to escort her away at the first sign of worry in the secretary’s eyes. Calypso pushed her hat up and gave the secretary a pleasant nod as she reached the desk, putting her hands on the edge where the other woman and security could see them. 

“Hi?” said Calypso, adopting a somewhat airheaded accent where all of her sentences rose in tone, “I was told to check in here? I have an interview with Bachman & Clench? Name’s Sara Sampson? Am I in the right building?”

“One moment,” said the blonde, likely assuming that the woman in front of her was wasting her time with an interview considering the way she was dressed. She stared off into space, her eyes seeing something that Calypso clearly could not. A second later her focus returned. “I’ve called an elevator for you. Please, head on through.”

“Thanks?” she said, and walked past the desk. 

Calypso hardly blinked as she stepped through the security scan, knowing that nothing would be picked up on her body that was out of the ordinary—her static pick, which cost a few jobs worth of dosh, was undetectable on almost all scans. She gave the man who waved her through a smile, playing the part of a happy-go-lucky college grad about to be absolutely devastated by the realities of the business world as she bopped by lightly, and rounded the corner to enter into the elevator that was waiting her arrival.  The theatrics did not end until the doors closed with a ding and the elevator began to rise. Calypso collapsed against the wall as the numbers went up and up, her hand shaking as she pulled out her phone and prayed to see a message from her mother. She was greeted with the dancing Capri goat, eagerly awaiting her to confirm that the package had been picked up, and nothing else. Moments later, the doors opened and she choked back her emotions. 

It was time to play her part.