Farraday imported people like cargo. Prostitutes, domestic servants and wage-earners were shipped in on trams and trains under neon lights and smog, all to serve the few who lived in the high-rises, the penthouses - hell, even their own castle. Or whatever counted for a castle nowadays.
There isn’t much of a government. It’s more of an all-powerful corporation that started by making energy-producing windmills. Now, it’s almost impossible to see anything that didn’t at some point belong to the Windsgates. It’s their fault they call it the city of gold. Once they started in architecture, billionaires and trillionaires flocked from around the globe just to live in one of their buildings. But a dense population of rich people means an even denser population of the poor.
The light doesn’t reach the street-level. Highways and high-rises block out enough light that some people never go a day knowing what the sun looks like. Neon and overheads light up the pale faces and dead eyes. There was some old joke surrounding the Norse gods or something, and they ended up calling the lower levels of the city Nore.
It was the oldest of the four children who made a living down there. Shrewd and resourceful, she kept a sort of order around the jobs and the ration cards down below. Her husband ran the police force, and, together, they kept the crime rate in check.
Well—more or less. Ruby was the center of the one place that couldn’t be reached by the Caddocks. All eyes were always on her, all gossip, all bets kept focused on her almost all the time. And when it wasn’t, it only took one round in an arena to shift it back. After her day job, it was the only place to find her.
They were something along the lines of new-age speakeasies, decorated with glass tables and screens surrounding an arena about twenty feet below. Alcohol was too expensive normally, so the owner - a slimy, thin man born of some scandal a couple decades back - had some smuggled in with the new residents. Chocolate and real meat, too. None of that processed stuff that you bought with food cards. And there was just something about illegal food that made it all the tastier. It didn’t hurt that it was made by some of the best chefs the overground could offer, or that all but three of the fighters were half-naked and extremely attractive men.
Ruby, of course, wore more clothes than the rest and bound her breasts so they wouldn’t get in the way. Of course, that didn’t stop the cat calls and the wolf whistles. Not that she wanted them to stop. Ruby loved it, revelled in the attention and the objectification. It meant she was above them, untouchable. It meant that there were men and women who would think they could overpower and fuck her, which they couldn’t of course. She was too quick and knew the human body too well.
It helped her just as well with her day job. Prostitutes were hardly taboo, no matter how often people tried to treat it that way. And she was the best. Ruby was the subject of countless poetry, erotica, and love-songs, an angel in the eyes of lusty men and women who swooned at the sight of her multicolored eyes and a flash of her easy grin. She was nothing if not beautiful. She was everything if not beautiful.
"My, my darling, just how wonderful you look in that suit tonight," she would say to one, and, "Oh, no thank you, I don’t drink on the week days," to another. Her dress was red to match her name, though she much preferred blue. Still, it looked nice against the gold of her hair, the ivory of her skin, and the ebony of the suits around her. She was a ruby in a sea of black and she was beautiful. And she turned around to greet another.
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