11.2
The wind whispered, weaving its way between the pillars of black steel and floating off into the empty distance.
Rain pattered on the flat surface of the bridge as the two men walked slowly across it, their solitary figures suspended amidst the cityscape surrounding them.
The skyscrapers stood menacingly, scrutinizing anyone who stood under their cold glare. Not every structure was the same height, but they were all identical. One could merely take the shortest building, duplicate it on top of itself, and the result would be a tall one.
A few of the windows had light shining through them–the rest were either dark or shuttered. As a result, the sides of the buildings formed a checkerboard of glowing yellow squares.
There were no exterior window frames or balconies–in fact, the exterior of every building was completely bare–so the squares of glass looked as if they'd simply been plastered onto the rough, black metal.
In line with the design of the buildings, the skybridges were perfectly straight and square with no visible additional supports. If the bridges were much longer, they probably would have collapsed, but the buildings were close together. Any two that were separated by more than a few dozen yards simply didn't have a bridge crossing the gap.
The bridges that had railings looked unsafe, and the bridges that didn't have railings were no more than a flat steel slab hanging hundreds of feet in the air.
The one that the two men were standing on happened to have a railing–just one–and Kwame set his hands on it as he leaned out over the eerie city.
He gazed at the ground of pure concrete and the black pillars that grew up out of it like weeds.
There wasn't a single living organism in sight.
SNAP
Both Kwame and the bridge spiraled through the air, plummeting towards the ground some two hundred feet below.
All he could see was a blur of the world around him.
In a last-ditch effort, he fumbled for his pockets, desperately praying he would find something to save himself.
Lollipops.
A few grape lollipops were the only items he had.
His bid at survival was cut short.
But the culprit wasn't the solid ground beneath him; instead, an unknown force pulled against the gravity that was so eagerly tearing him down to die.
His body's downward velocity dropped rapidly, until he stopped abruptly in midair, floating just a few feet above the ground.
Why this always happen? he thought sadly.
He struggled to contort himself so that his legs were facing downward, but his efforts were hopeless as he was simply too high to reach the ground
Still, he extended every joint in his body, straining to reach for the safety of solid earth.
Finally, he looked up in defeat at the bottom of the bridge high above him and the smirking face that stuck out over its edge.
"I 'preciate you, but can you let me down now?" he yelled upwards in as clear a voice as he could manage.
But instead of feeling the weight of his body again, he felt a rotational force that slowly tilted him forwards.
"Zero, put me down!"
His requests fell on deaf ears and he began spinning, head over heels in midair.
The rotations were slow at first, but their frequency increased at an exponential rate. Feeling the small amount of content in his stomach flooding up into his chest, he fully extended his arms and legs in an effort to increase his inertia and slow his spinning speed.
He was suspended just low enough that his hands smacked against the concrete beneath him with every revolution.
No matter how hard he grasped at the rough surface every time his palms scraped over it, he couldn't do anything to fight against the force that was torquing his body.
His mind started to go fuzzy.
Lollipops.
In between rotations, he managed to raise a hand to his face and pull the lollipop out of his mouth.
Channeling his authority into the candy, he grabbed it tightly in both hands and thrust it above his head.
The spinning stopped just as quickly as it had started.
As soon as his feet found the ground, Kwame staggered to his right and tumbled to the ground. Although he had stopped spinning, the rest of the world seemed to continue revolving around him, fading in and out of focus.
Unable to cope with the nausea any longer, he emptied his stomach onto the pavement.
Zero, landing lightly on the ground beside Kwame, calmly observed his companion and declared, "This reminds me; we haven't eaten in a while. Why don't we go find a restaurant?"
He looked at the lurking towers and into their yellow eyes.
"Although, it's kinda hard to imagine food existing here. Where do they even get it?"
While Kwame clutched at his stomach, Zero examined the lollipop.
He put his hand on his chin, as if thinking deeply, and said, "Good thinking, Kwame. Who knows when I would have let you down otherwise."
The lollipop had grown to nearly ten feet in length and its stick was embedded deeply into the ground, leaving the concrete around it with a mess of deep cracks.
Zero grabbed the massive lollipop stick and wrenched it out of the street.
Holding it at arm's length, he observed it, just as one would observe a fine work of art.
"Wow, this thing is massive. You should expand our candy more often."
Kwame rubbed his eyes and then rolled over so that he was sitting with his hands supporting his weight behind him.
"You didn't have to do all that, Zero," he muttered in a drained voice, struggling to keep his balance even as he sat.
"Ohhhhhhh," Zero said, as if he'd had some sudden realization.
"You wanted to die after all, didn't you? Ahh, or maybe you didn't want that excellent opportunity to test yourself. No, no, no, no, no, no… maybe you just don't like candy. Could that be? After all this time you've spent enjoying it?"
Zero pretended to puzzle over this for a few more moments before concluding, "No, Kwame, those are all good things! You must be joking around with me."
Kwame slowly hauled himself to his feet, putting his arms out for balance as if he was standing on ice. "Look, I 'preciate you savin' me, but you didn't have to do all that spinning."
Zero dropped his act and smiled.
"I believe I had every right to do that. I saved your life, after all."
He turned his back on Kwame and walked towards the first building that caught his eye.
"Let's celebrate another day alive with a hearty meal," he announced.
As the two of them walked together in search of a restaurant, Zero began to chuckle to himself. That chuckle quickly escalated, and soon enough, he was doubled over with laughter.
"HAHHAHAHAHA. Hahhhaha. I can't believe it. You fell off the bridge. You really put your hands on the railing, leeeaaned out, and plummeted to your death."
He reenacted the scene, placing his hands on an imaginary railing in front of him.
"Imagine you died? That'd be comical. The most hilarious way to possibly do it."
Zero's grin never left his face as they smashed their way into another building and climbed the floors in pursuit of food.
To their surprise, they found themselves at the entrance to a restaurant on one of the lower floors of the first building they entered. What was even more surprising was that it was packed with people, the first they'd seen since the couple from earlier.
A large portion of the floor was dedicated to the restaurant, and its interior consisted of many large, square tables that were arrayed in an orderly manner.
There was no greeter, so Zero and Kwame walked up to the counter while surveying the people around them.
Families. Families with little kids.
"What is this?" Zero whispered to Kwame. "Why are they all families? And why are the tables lined up like that? It's creepy…"
It was difficult to put a finger on, but the people were odd. Not quite right. Like dolls, or characters in a black and white advertisement, squeaky music playing in the background.
When they got to the counter, they were immediately greeted by a young man in an apron, who, after a slight expression of concern, said to them, "Hello and welcome! What can we get for you today?"
"Hey," Zero replied, raising his hand in greeting. "We'll just have two cheeseburgers. To go, please."
"Oh, I'm sorry, sir," the server replied. "We can't allow our guests to take food outside of the restaurant.
"...That's fine," Zero said after a pause, "but will we need to wait for a table to open? It looks like they're all full."
The server looked a little puzzled and replied, "I'm not sure what you mean, sir. There are plenty of open seats. At table two, for example."
He pointed at a nearby table that had a small plastic stand in the middle of it with a paper that read '2'.
Zero looked at the table, which had a family of four sitting around it, and said, "There are people at that table."
"Well of course," the server said, "but you only have two–is that right? I see two open seats."
Zero smiled.
"Forgive me," he apologized. "I was looking at the wrong spot. Yeah, we'll take table two."
Zero didn't want to seem out of place–or rather, he wasn't supposed to–but there was no denying the fact that the two intruders were out of place. Ever since they'd walked in, the other guests had been speaking in whispers about them.
It was rude to stare, so nobody did. But Zero could sense the reaction to his and Kwame's presences, so he made sure to order as quickly as possible and take their seats at table two.
"Hello there," the father of the family said to them in greeting.
"Hey, guys," Zero replied, nodding his head at the four strangers.
Those kids are quite young, Zero observed, but he couldn't imagine what age they would be.
He tried to remember how old a kid needed to be in order to walk and talk, but the answer eluded him.
Resorting to direct questioning, Zero turned to the kids and asked, "How old are you guys?"
The two boys recoiled at the sight of him, shrinking behind their parent's shoulders.
"Ha ha," the father chuckled. "Don't be shy boys, tell this fine gentleman your ages."
Seconds of silence passed, but eventually, one of the boys seemed to muster up a little courage, and he appeared from behind his mother.
"Fouh," the boy said.
"Ahh, four," Zero replied with a nod of his head. "That makes sense."
Zero turned away to resume eating his sadly small cheeseburger, but he still felt the eyes of the young child staring him down.
That's right, kids are weird as hell, he remembered. It's still cool to see them every once in a while, though.
"Why are your eyes like that?" the boy said, pointing at Zero's face.
Zero looked up in surprise.
"Now, now, don't be rude," the father said to his son.
But Zero could tell that the father wanted to know just as badly.
I guess I should be nice, he decided.
"It's alright," he said to the father and son. "This is just how they've always been."
"You were born that way?" a female voice asked.
He flicked his eyes to the other side of the table to see the mother staring at him with fear in her eyes.
He gazed at her for a moment before softly replying, "Yeah, I was born this way."
"The hair too?" the father asked, evidently forgetting everything he'd said about rudeness.
Zero smiled.
"Shut the fuck up."
The father immediately averted his eyes and remained frozen for a moment. The wife continued to stare at the white-haired, purple-eyed man, and her husband finally got up, ushering the rest of his family out of their chairs and out the door.
Zero's smile faded to a gaze of pure hatred, and the rest of the meal passed in complete silence.
After finishing his burger, he waited for Kwame, who ate at an infuriatingly slow rate, to be done as well. Finally, they both stood and left the table.
Zero walked briskly out of the restaurant with Kwame, who was wary of his partner's dangerous mood, following closely behind him.
"You good?" Kwame asked with an honest concern in his eyes.
"I'm great," Zero replied. "But there are few things that would make me feel even better."
"We did too much already, man," Kwame said, doing everything he could to calm the man.
"Did we?" Zero pondered. "Yeah, I guess we did."