This is an excerpt from my nanowrimo project. I've not finished; I didn't make the requirement and I'm still working on it. Also, it's not edited so it's pretty rough; normally I write slow and well, but nanowrimo has me writing all sloppy. But as requested; here goes:
Dusta had worked miracles, finding all those likely involved. Arly had been following anyone that Dusta pegged as likely accomplice. Most of those that they hade investigated turned out to be just regular old people (or in the case of two of them, non citizens); of the rest, most turned out to be involved in one innocuous, less respectable trade or the other. Honestly, Arly found it very intriguing. She had always wondered about the lives of less prestigious citizens of the Princeps. Apparently they had their own little world. She had never given them much consideration despite the fact that she saw many of them everyday.
Dusta had done well by starting the search at the lowest ranking people throughout the University. They had a certain amount of invisibility. Since they weren’t involved in important affairs, they were afforded the ability to get in and out of places. She hadn’t thought about them; her mind would have gone for the educators and officials.
She waited until she was outside to pull out her NetPad and bring up the map. She pulled up the straightest path of travel to catch up with the person, then took off running to make it on time. The night was cool and she was regretting that she didn’t bring a jacket; the Chilled season was approaching. She direction took her through part of the University that she didn’t regularly pass by. She hadn’t been through this area in a long time, not since she had shown the entire University to Endo. There wasn’t anything here worth stopping to see. The grassy area was well maintained, like everywhere else, but it lacked the fine touches of other areas. In short it looked…deserted.
Across the way Arly could see a figure, a mere silloute against the moons, trudging along. Instead of directly intercepting him, which would have been stupid, she walked parallel to him so that she had plenty of cover from the hedges. Maybe he was just going to visit a friend. Deliverers didn’t live inside the University. There was lodging for them when they made trips there, but they didn’t live there so the man in question couldn’t have been going home.
His profile also made Arly suspect he was up to something. The man had been a Provincial child who had joined the army at fifteen. He had served his time and ended up being granted citizenship and then was assigned as a driver. His wife had the same sort of story. Provincial born who gained citizenship were rarely anything of importance. As much as Arly hated to admit it, the people of the Princep did not view them as the same. It was reasonable that anyone who had worked hard for citizenship would not take well to being given fewer privileges on account of their birth.
She continued to followed the delivers movement on her NetPad, discomfort washing over her with slow realization. He was headed to her old neighborhood. Elrin and Endo were the only ones she knew still living there. It could be anyone of the other neighbors, but she doubted it. She ran for the house. This was bad.
“Well, I must thank you for your help Arly,” Elrin said smiling. “What with the investigation going, I would have never completed the file transfers successfully. Whatever it is you were doing, you tapped into some important data and have created artificial trails to many people. Enough to give me time to complete all I needed to do.”
Arly stood there, face flaming, incensed. “You have violated your oath to the Princeps!” She said. Not at all afraid of what he could do to her. “I thought it wasn’t true!” Tears stung her eyes. “I did all that because I thought it wasn’t true.”
His smile faded slowly, ghostlike, leaving behind a man who looked so very said. “You poor child. You know so very little. Now I suppose the Princeps will be coming for me.” He rubbed a hand down his face. “The world is much bigger than the Princeps as are my obligations.”
She didn’t know what he was talking about. “Does this mean that I’m a traitor too.” The last thing she needed was to be labeled a traitor. All over trying to get him vindicated. “I was trying to help you! I was so sure that you didn’t do anything wrong, that you weren’t the traitor.”
“And you were so very wrong.” He said. “You know what happened to the last. Reverend of the Nectoral? He was expelled from his position and arrested for not supporting the conscription of Province children.”
“We give them opportunities!”
“No we don’t! Every once in a while we throw a favor at one so that people like you, Princep ideologues, can rest assure each night that our way is the right way.” He said loudly. It was the first time she had ever heard him raise his voice. She didn’t like it. Worse than that was knowing he was right. “You know, my entire life was the Space Colonies. We were Princep citizens just the same as you were. They didn’t give my grandparents a choice. The just selected families to go live ‘out there’. As soon as they built us a suitable, sustainable accommodation, they turned their backs on us.” He paced back and forth. “Sure, once a week they give us message logs and such, sure every once and a while they would send soldiers to check up on us, but we were not allowed back here. Our duty was to be on display, to show all races in the cluster that we had some sort of off world presence. And we didn’t question it. I didn’t question it. Then one day they came with their soldiers and said I was to come back.” He looked at her, hard. “Do you know why the picked me?”
After he stopped talking for a moment, Arly realized the question was not rhetorical. She could have said no, but she would be lying. She had been digging around enough to learn some stuff, some serious stuff. And what she hadn’t learned in her digging, she had figured out based on what hadn’t been said. “Because it would show good faith between us and the Space Colonies. It would also show everyone that we were not hoarding power.”
“Smart you are.” Elrin said. “You know, we’ve been gone so long that they no longer consider us part of their little society. And deny it all you want, but you are a part of this.”
“I am not!” Arly yelled. The last thing she wanted said about her was that she was like the others. She was a lot of things, a lot of bad things, but she was not like the others. She believed in the Princep, she believed in it’s right to spread. But the Princep was more than people; it was ideals. The people had left behind their ideals, but still paraded around like they were the Princep. In a way, she had been disillusioned about the Princep for a long time. But she had to hold on to something.
Elrin shrugged. “I suppose you’d like to be here when they arrive as to collect whatever achievement you get for turning me in.”
Arly shook her head. She couldn’t do it. She had known when she first saw the man turn into his house that she wasn’t going to turn him in. She sniffed, and dried the tears from her face. This place was suffocating her; she needed out.
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