Her feet kissed the brim of the open ledge, the cool of the concrete escaping through the broken rubber soles of her canvassed sneakers. She remembered they were green once, but were so stained with mud and dirt that they were almost black- their laces replaced with cable ties.

Her feet were small, so she could slip in and out of them with ease regardless.

It was cold so high up but she didn't care much for it, only pulling her jacket closer to her subconsciously as the wind hit her in short sharp gusts, her fine dark hair dancing about her head, catching the light in glimpses of brown and gold.

She took the hair tie from her wrist and threw the gauntlet back in a rough ponytail- she needed to concentrate if she was to do this right.

She leaned forward slightly to gape over the edge. She wasn't afraid of heights, but this had once been the tallest structure in the entire city, even now it still leered over the demolished roads and neighbouring sites; her initial angst soon becoming more than a little unsettling.

But this was the only place she could do it. This was the only site for a clean fall.

Staring at the ground, she wondered if it would hurt.

A flicker in the slow diminishing light of a late sunset caught her eye, causing her to start counting backwards from 30, her arms opening out for better balance as she teetered on the edge, judging the distance again as she always did, scanning the open chasm of total emptiness.

She secretly hoped it would feel like flying, but it felt silly to seem so childish.

Her hands began to clench and unclench feverently as the clock ticked down to 20, then 19, then 18…

She wondered if she should step out into the nothing, but her mind knew that she'd escape the shredded glassed side of the building regardless.

A strange noise began to resonate from a far distance off, almost like the turbine of a jet engine.

It was coming closer.

10, 9, 8…

Her muscles began to tense as she exhaled a large breath of air, the anticipation building into a small dread throbbing at the back of her thoughts.

"Five, four…"

She inhaled another large breath, hoping to all hope that she had made the right decision.

The sound, once a murmur had now built into a loud roaring, echoing through the streets and off the faces of buildings.

It was now or never.

"One."

Her body pitched forward suddenly, a look of complete calm across her face and she was falling. The sound of the wind as it whistled past her ears deafened her senses as she savoured the joy of freefall.

She closed her eyes and smiled ever so slightly at the sensation that ran through her body, from her head to the very ends of her fingertips and toes, filling her to the brim.

It felt like freedom.

Opening her eyes, she twisted her body so that she was now plummeting backwards. She began to count again, but this time from 3. She had spent weeks of estimation preparing for this moment, she knew the times and braced ready for the impact.

"Two, one."

Perfect.

In a flurry of movement, she landed effortlessly into the piles of canvas and hessian being transported by a Dreg, a large turbine driven sky tanker that transported equipment in a train of smaller similarly powered containers.

Recovering, Lia laughed with delight as she pulled her way through the blankets of tarp, situating herself on the edge of the container she was riding.

"It worked, it actually worked!"

She punched the air at the joy her small victory had brought to her face. She knew the timetables well enough to know the Dreg always passed the Lionheart Tower at exactly ten minutes past six.

The issue was timing. If she jumped too late she would miss the haul completely and plummet to the streets below; if she jumped too early she would have either fallen in the joints between the containers or into the haul of gravel next to hers.

A painful option to say the least.

She rubbed her shoulders tentatively, having not planned for the rough impact; the items in her backpack bruising her back when she landed. She thought to hold the bag in front of her next time.

But apart from slight ache, she was jubilant. Her plan had worked and now she had a far easier way of moving between her load arrival points. She could drop off her first on the far side of the city whilst using the Dreg to make it to the subways for her last delivery before curfew.

It was another fifteen minutes before the Dreg stopped where she needed to get off, so she lay back and soaked in the final warmth left by the diminishing sunlight, covering herself under a few layers of canvas to camouflage her form.

The Dregs were entirely self automated, which was why they adhered so strictly to their inbuilt timetables, all calibrated to work under the same watch, leaving and arriving precisely when recorded. They were like trains; there was no stopping them once they got their momentum going, slowing only for their stops.

She lay listening for a while as the propellers whirred, oscillating to stabilise the flight path of the convoy, the containers groaning as the turbines of the Dreg propelled them to follow.

Needing something to do, Lia unstrapped the ties of her backpack from around her chest and waist and eased the main straps from her shoulders. She unzipped the main pocket to check if all her belongings had survived the fall.

Her blue metal torch seemed in tact, though it never worked to begin with, its batteries having died years ago. Her bottle of water had severely deformed but thankfully remained closed, though the pair of sunglasses she had found had been crushed and the handle from her flask had broken off. She tossed this and the fragments of glass over the side of the container to the open air.

When she checked the pocket next in front, she found that her main lighter still worked and three of the back ups were fine, though a fourth had begun to leak. She took the case of an old empty lighter and poured the fluid into that one, closing it and testing the flame. She then discarded the broken holder off the side of the haul as well.

She peered over the container ledge to watch it fall, tinkering off a shredded mail box and sliding into one of the craters that tore through the decimated roads.

The city had a strange beauty to it that could only be contemplated by a mind that had existed in this chaotic silence long enough to forget how it had been before.

She knew it wasn't natural for the streets to be so empty and she knew it wasn't normal for gaping holes to litter the sides of buildings and yawn across road ways.

But it was home.
It was her normal.

She took a breath of air. It smelt of burning and of smoke and of mud and of water, if it had a smell. It wasn't a clean smell, but it still felt right. There was a familiarity behind it that affected the senses, much like a moment that evokes an old memory, one you can't quite pick out; but it was a good feeling and she held on to it for as long as it lasted.

She wondered sometimes how they got here, how days like this still made her feel so peaceful.

The Dreg started to putter as the turbines powered down and the propellers adjusted their spins, making its slow descent towards its destination. A low moan sounded as it lurched plaintively towards the massive complex that took up the length between two street corners, through the open vaulted doors of the city's main bank.

The building was a large hollow modified to fit up to two Dregs side by side and the maximum capacity of four containers beneath the roof. The building to the right of it had once been a fire station, hollowed out much the same, used for hauls and sorting them for the next Dreg or smaller Road-hover Automated Machines, RAMs. The office building to the left of the station was used to store the repairs equipment and machinery.

Lia threw the straps of her backpack over her shoulders and held onto the rims of her container as the Dreg hovered lightly for a moment and then dropped to the surface with a large thud, causing the light fittings to shudder and dust to fall from the high arched ceiling.

As she made her way down the ladder sided next to the container, the Dreg began to clink and creak as pistons worked to release the joints held between each haul. The sound of metal against metal followed her as she made her way back towards the front of the building, escaping through the frames of a broken window as she heard the blades in the Dreg's turbines warm up for its next journey.

Outside was a different story to the effortless glide through open air.

After watching the Dreg catapult itself into the sky, Lia scanned her surroundings looking for the entrance to the subways. Clambering over the burnt out remains of a car wedged between an upturned truck and decimated slab of a buildings top two floors, a sign above an intersection of traffic lights pointed her in the right direction.

Meandering through the street, attempting to avoid the debris cast across the tarmac, she spotted the stairs that led down into the subway. Crawling beneath the remains of an army tank, she saw at the stairs was a package waiting for her. It was a smaller package than usual, about the size of a basketball, however testing it she found it weighed about as much as a small child.

Curious, she sat down, crossing her legs around the box so that her face sat peering over the top. She took the blade she had holstered on her belt, unfolded it and twisting open all four screws, threw them into her bag and then carefully levered the top off the small crate. Inside we're small metal balls, each exactly alike. She couldn't understand their significance, perhaps bullets?

Reaching into the box, she picked out one of them, sizing it to be about the size of a large marble. She brought it closer for better analysis, realising that the small imperfections in the rounding of the ball was actually shapes and symbols delicately carved into each of them.

"Chosen gate brings chosen fate, seek grim and truth will wager."

That was her rough translations that she understood of the symbols; the ability to break through such a language barrier seeming a ruse if even the English translation didn't make sense.

The nature of these rounds troubled her, but however she held or twisted or attempted to warp the shape, nothing happened.

Assuming her investigation a lost cause and the symbols written for merely ornamental purposes, Lia dropped the ball back into the box, taking the screws from her bag and twisting them tightly so the lid seemed undisturbed.

"Bunch of weirdoes," was her only comment as she stood lifting the box and made her way down the stairs, careful not to trip on the loose ledging.

It was cool in the concrete halls of the subway and it was very dark, save for the bloom of orange light that glowed from small lanterns made of wrought which hung haphazardly from the roof of the platform.

A single wire connected one to the other, trailing towards the dark tunnels; one lonely light the mediator between the diverging tracks of lanterns. They hadn't been maintained properly, probably only ever worked once by their creator on being activated; many had blown or fallen from their perilous perch and many flickered on and off leaving only moments of light and long whispering breaths of darkness.

Reading the destination label on the top of the package, Lia knew she didn't have far to walk- the section for Experimental Weaponry and Gun Tactics was only two stops away.

"Weaponry, I thought as much." She knew she had been right with the nature of the package, but the inscriptions still gnawed in the back of her thoughts.

Lia laughed to herself as she realised that she had momentarily slipped into the old habit of waiting for the train. Without looking she jumped onto the tracks and made her way through the right-hand tunnel. Peering through the darkness, she could almost make out the light of the next working lantern, a massive chasm of black the gateway in between.

"Hmm, looks cosy."

Tracing her hand alongside the left hand side of the wall, she closed her eyes and stepped into the dark.

It was something she enjoyed doing, testing her senses. She listened to the echoes of her steps, every now and then dislodging a stone to skip across the ground. She could also hear the slow dripping of water falling into a small puddle, the sound resonating with each drop.

A draft was coming through from the east and she could feel it tracing cool fingers along her skin, sweeping aside the wisps of hair that she had been unable to wrangle. The stale smell of wet concrete and piping worked its way into her nostrils, the walls of the tunnel forever smooth in her long walk.

"I guess this isn't so bad then."
Lia grinned, she didn't like to make a habit of talking to herself, but there were a lot of times that she was alone and so in these times the sound of her own voice was usually the only company she had. She figured, it was better to make a friend of oneself in times of trouble, than make do with the silence of seclusion; that kind of quiet could be maddening.

She felt a touch of light and warmth fall over her.
Opening her eyes she found herself at another platform much like the first.

"Only one more stop then."  

However, before continuing, she hoisted herself up onto the platform and stood to admire a single piece of wall art that swept over a bare wall on the far side, in between the staircases.

The design was of a dragon clad in armour, holding a sword and with its wings, protected a depiction of the Earth it held in its other claw. An hourglass sat above it and the sands of time were being tipped out over the form, cascading off its wings, being turned into glass by a huge fire trying to attack the dragon.
As Lia stared deeper at the fire she noticed that the flames had a form to them that resembled a large visored monster.

She knew exactly what monster it represented.

At the top of the portrayal was painted a banner with the words "Haud lies per verum , Haud patientia per vox factum." And beneath the dragon, another banner with the words "Una nos es Victoria."

At the bottom of the painting, in small black letters was the translation. Matching the translation with the order of the banners, Lia read aloud the English wording.

"No lies through truth, No suffering through right action."

Pausing, she gave particular thought to the final banner.
"Together we are victory."

She smiled at this saying, repeating it again aloud. This was her favourite saying and she had almost managed to memorise the Latin translation. Whenever walking this route she would visit this mural and awe at the hope it gave her. Looking at the date, she knew that it was six years from today that it had been painted.

"The last days of freedom." She reminded herself.

Turning she dropped down back onto the tracks and continued towards the second platform.

This walk seemed quicker than the last, perhaps because her mind was filled with Latin and the potential symbolisms of what the artist had tried to portray. Her legs seemed to move with a new found determination, her breathing became easier and the crate she carried seemed lighter as her arms felt to increase in strength.

In the dark she practised her annunciation of the Latin verses, attempting to make it sound plausible without over doing the possible accent that might exist with it.

But reaching her destination she soon wished that she had taken her time in arriving.

Waiting for her in the middle of the track was a huge broad form scaling more than an arms length above her head. It stood facing her, brooding, the metal of its armoured suit encasing it entirely in bronze and silver.

The large gauntlets on its hands had long blades resembling those of a buzz saw and jets of steam hissed out of vents in its armour, first from the shoulders, then from the chest, then vents in the legs. Intricate spines clawed their way like vines along its back.

The creature stood tall and fast, breathing like a wild beast patiently lying in wait for its prey. Its helmet enclosed its entire head protectively, a breathing mask extended from the back of the suit to its mouth and it brandished an amber visor with which Lia could not see its eyes.

The huge muscular form was menacing compared to Lia's small slight frame and she was afraid.

"My visored monster." She thought.