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Marker's birth had signified a great shift in fortune. His mother had been ejected from her home commune, some strange and distant village in the second ring. She had found a second home in New Lexington, but outsiders weren't readily welcomed into the city. Her romance with Marker's father was discouraged and she was nearly driven back into the wilds. It was not until the birth of their child that his mother was accepted as a true Lexingtonian. And so she named him Marker, like the signs that had guided her to her new city, when she was lost and alone in the wilds.
It was a spot on his heritage, a story that Marker had tried to forget. When speaking of his family, he focused on the paternal side. The family had a large plantation and holdings in the downtown business district but with each successive generation, the family's wealth had diminished. The estate was carved up into smaller shares and so it was decided that certain descendants would be disinherited.
His father had taken a Lexingtonian wife shortly after the death of his mother. Marker had been unkind toward his half sisters and so they had withheld any inheritance from him. Marker's sisters were not cruel women. They had offered to allow him to stay and work on the land, but in his pride, Marker had refused.
Instead he entered into the soldiery, moving into the barracks, and after a brief training period, he was sent into the wilds. His first deployment wasn't a deep one, a few days from home but well outside of the city walls. In those days, the wilds-folk were especially fierce and accustomed to laying ambush. These attacks were easy to combat, the military set up blockades and swept the outer ring. This was how Marker first met the man named Julian Reeves. At the time, Julian was working as a guide for the soldiery. He could spot the wilds-folk traps and was essential in rooting out their hiding places. The going had been easy with Julian's help, and before long the entire western stretch of ring was under Lexington control. Marker hadn't really known him, but resented that the skinny man was allowed to lead the way. Even later-on when Julian began to criticize the General's decisions, the General had shown a level of patience usually only afforded to officers.
The villages took longer to subdue, but the General wouldn't accept anything other than full surrender. He laid siege to the villages, using Lexington's cutting torches to tear down barricades, eventually forcing the villages to host soldiers and trade with the people of New Lexington. Marker had liked this work, fighting in the ring, never mind that he was, himself the son of an outsider. These were the people who were moving into his city and taking his land, it was their fault that New Lexington was becoming crowded.
He took his aggression out in these initial campaigns, making Lexington a better place. He would soon find that the new colonies meant increased trade from outsiders and even more people moving into the city. He came to resent these new people as their presence grew. Marker would visit his family home, only to find that his sisters had hired some immigrant from Halva Spa to work the fields that should have belonged to him.
He found himself spending more time on campaign. The General had secured the western ring and quelled an uprising that took place in the east. Most recently, the campaigns had taken them to the second ring. On the last campaign, Marker had been injured and given leave to recuperate. But he felt out of place in New Lexington. The town was changing too fast for his liking. With the assassination of General Hewlett, Marker had decided to end his leave early. If he hadn't bumped into Kate outside the barracks, he might be back in the wilds by now, training recruits, or laying siege to some rebellious farming commune. But Kate had snagged him as he walked in, said she needed to hire an escort, and Marker, seeing an opportunity to earn extra money, had agreed.
Now in Tokyo2, for the first time, Marker was the outsider. This was how his mother must have felt, coming to a strange city, with strange customs. He had been inside nearly every building in New Lexington, and walked over every inch of ground in his childhood. He knew every tree in the parks, every secret in the maze of apartments that were built under the floor of dome. As he'd grown older, he'd squabbled with other gangs of youths, brawled in the Cola Riots. As he grew into a young man he started to respect the laws and customs. He went to the plays and Congressional debates for entertainment, he loved the shouting. He worked to fill idle time. Even after he had lost his inheritance, New Lexington was his home, he felt as if every inch of the city belonged to him. In Tokyo2 nothing was his, he was a foreigner in a land that had no place for him.
Kate had offered him a bonus if he found Julian so he wandered the city anyway. It was not just the money. Marker welcomed the chance to confront whoever had killed General Hewlett. He knew that Kate was only interested in answers and in helping her friend, but if Marker got a hold of him first there would be no questions to be answered, only justice.
Kate had set a timeline of three months, after which they would return to New Lexington. Marker wasn't paid for this in-between time, only the journey, but he was provided room and board. He wasn't required to do any work but Marker had taken to wandering the city anyway, first with Kate, and later without his employer. Should he run into Julian Reeves he didn't want her friendship with the man to interfere with what he intended to do, though he hadn't quite decided what that would be.
Marker had run a search pattern, rather than wandering like Kate. He had started in the center city and traveled to the many neighborhoods, walking the main streets, but watching the alleys and private land. When he entered the skyscraper gardens, he kept to the public stairwells, and watched the reactions of farmers as he passed. After completing a circuit in the neighborhood, he would return to the center-city with its ever changing crowds, hoping to catch a glimpse of Julian Reeves there. Then he would set out to another location: the Hill, the Great Window, the Green Crescent. Kate's friend Faruq had warned her and Marker against venturing into the Black Crescent but he skirted the edges anyhow. On the surface it seemed desolate and barren. He saw people come and go from the dark openings but hadn't gone below the surface of that place himself.
A few times Marker had seen the boy named Disnee when traveling in the city center, or on the pathways that wound up the sides of the Great Hill. He was with the woman Betrix. Marker and Kate had brought Betrix here from New Lexington in hopes that she might lead them to Julian. Before they reached Tokyo2, Betrix had kidnapped the boy and disappeared.
Marker would follow the two for a time and watch them. Disnee had acquired some addware of his own, a mistake if the boy ever hoped to go back to New Lexington, but he seemed lively and engaged in the company of the fighter. The sight of Betrix was a pleasant surprise to Marker who had shared a romantic moment with her in the baths of Halva Spa. Sometimes the boy would stop and look his way, but Marker always stayed far enough back that they shouldn't have been able to make out his features.
He hesitated to approach the pair, but as time grew short in Tokyo2, he began to miss Betrix. He remembered how they had laughed together in the baths, laughed, and then some. It was just a brief moment, but he'd thought of it often. For now, he would keep his distance. If the boy was happy and not being held against his will, then Marker had more important things to do. He had no intention of telling Kate. He was loyal to his employer to a point, but he'd sworn no oath to Kate. His business while he waited in Tokyo2, was his alone.
Normally, Marker would visit two or three neighborhoods in his search pattern, returning to the city center each time. This time he spent most of the day in the neighborhood bordering on the Great Hill. The Hillmonger clan was friendly to outsiders and his trespassing went largely unnoticed. He checked the cafeterias and side-streets and continually watched the hillside for the shapes of Disnee and Betrix.
Today he stopped and waited in the main thoroughfare where the road cut into the base of the Great Hill, and went underneath to the kickboxing arena. There was a fight scheduled for that evening and people were trickling down the hillside to claim a place beside the ring. Members of rival clans came in groups. N'ikea had told him that the feuds between the clans had been put to rest with the return of the Emperor, but old tensions simmered just beneath the surface. No clansman or clanswoman would be caught off their guard on rival territory.
While the Hillmonger clan may have controlled the land where the arena was situated, they were by no means the only clan to dominate the ring. Groups of fighters arrived with great fanfare, carrying their banners and escorted by cadres of supporters. The Green Crescent boasted large farm girls and boys, broad and muscular like the farmers of New Lexington, their entourage of supporters were as brawny as the fighters themselves. The Green Crescent fighters wore little addware.
The Skybearer clan farmed the towers, they were a scrappier group whose addware included extra limbs and attachments meant for climbing and cultivating hanging crops on the skyscrapers. It was an efficient farming technique but also labor intensive. Those members who found the time to train and fight in the kickboxing ring were thinner and more harried-looking than their Green Crescent counterparts. The Skybearer Clan had its champions though, wealthier families who lived at the tops of the towers and could afford better training and more powerful addware.
Magnavoxican fighters arrived unescorted, their people being few, and too preoccupied watching the moving pictures on the Great Window to go see a fight. They were well liked by all the other clans and had no reason to travel in groups.
The Hillmongers were a varied people and because they were on their home territory, they also came to the fights without clustering into large groups. More outsiders made up the Hillmonger clan: non-Tokyo2ans like Betrix, some bearing the dark complexion of New Lexington, others the pale, blotchy skin and blonde hair common in Dutch-Russia.
Just before the fight, the Black Crescent arrived all at once, in a very large group. Like the Skybearer Clan there was just as much addware worn by supporters as by the fighters themselves, making it difficult to tell which of the skinny, addware-heavy individuals were fighters and which were not. The only one that stood out was a large Dutch-Russian man who was head and shoulders taller than the rest and seemed to set the pace of their procession. He even wore the collared shirt and pleated pants of the Dutch Russians while his companions wore nothing more than loosely wrapped sheets about their bodies. From the way he wore the standard of the Black Crescent across his chest, there was no question of his loyalty.
After the fighters entered, Marker still had not seen Betrix or the boy. He decided it was best to return to the newspaper office. Kate would have concluded her search and he was eager to hear if she'd had any luck. He'd taken to sleeping out most nights, finding some pleasure or other to entertain himself, often waking in the home of some strange woman with a throbbing in his head and empty pockets.
It was a short walk from the arena entrance to the city center and the office of the Lexington Globe. He was surprised to find N'ikea, alone and still writing. Though few stories written by this office made it back to Lexington to be printed, the handwritten articles were posted on a public board outside the office. Once-a month, a small crowd gathered in the street below to hear N'ikea and Faruq read aloud. It was quite different than the Lexington model but the people were responding. A small group of Tokyo2an activists were advocating for a reading and education program within their city and calling for a replica of the Lexingtonian printing press to be made in Tokyo2.
N'ikea was a small woman with dark hair and large brown eyes that were most often fixed on the papers on her desk. She had never left her home city, yet Faruq, the merchant trader's son, had taught her to speak and write perfect Lexingtone. Her voice, though usually soft and quiet, could reach the entire crowd when she recited on the streets. He was surprised to find her idle, nervously combing a nit out of her oil-black hair. When he opened the door N'ikea got up and shoved his wallet into his hands.
"You did not come back last night." Marker didn't know N'ikea well, but had given the wallet to her for safekeeping, rather than trust himself not to spend it when he went out at night.
"There's a lot to do in this town," he said.
"Well you should have hurried back. You just missed Faruq."
"I told ya' I'd be late. What's tha' problem, so long as I report for duty on time?"
N'ikea went to the closet and retrieved a pouch with dagger attached and tied it around her waist. She found Marker's pipestaff and threw it into his hands."
"Kate went out yesterday. She did not return. Was she with you?"
"Me? No, I was—well I don't remember everything, but no Kate there."
"Do you have a torch?"
"There's a light in one of my bags."
"What's this?" N'ikea dug around in Marker's things and pulled a rubber, purple dinosaur from one of the bags. When she squeezed the toy it began to glow and a distorted voice sang "I lovve youu" over a stuttering jingle.
"That's tha' light."
"It is strange. Why does it play music, is it a child's toy?" People were always criticizing Marker's light, until the power went out.
"Well do ya' know any other lights ya' can carry in your hand?"
"None that I could afford to purchase."
"Then don't make fun a' mine. Found it on a wilds-man tried to cut my head off."
"It looks like a toy for teething babes, but we will need light where we are going."
"Where's that?"
"To find Faruq," said N'ikea.
"An' where's Faruq?"
"Looking for Kate. I fear someplace dangerous."
"I don't worry 'bout her, she's tough as I am."
"Faruq is concerned, he says she has been playing with trouble, looking in places she should not be, for her friend Julian."
"Yeah, I seen a few-a those places myself." He rubbed his head, recalling hazy memories of the previous night's merrymaking and bottlehouse fistfights. "Well, how do ya' know where he's goin'?"
"I know Faruq." N'ikea looked up, her expression darker than before. "I have known Faruq a long time now. He is a cautious man. There is only one thing that he is afraid of."
"Well, spit it out an' let's get goin'."
"His family."
"He thinks Kate went to see his family?"
"He is afraid that Kate went to the Black Crescent."
"Hmm. He's one of them?"
"No, but I should not be the one to tell his story. We'll find Kate first. When Kate is safe, you should ask him to tell you the story of his family, it is not so bad as it sounds."
"I don't care 'bout Tokyo2 business, long as Kate gets what she wants so I get paid. Now we goin'?"
N'ikea frowned at the soldier's callousness and watched him for a moment, her eyes seeking some kindness behind the surface.
"What?" Marker raised his hands, impatient to find Kate.
Her expression brightened, she had decided that he was a good man after all. N'ikea patted Marker on the arm, and cinching the dagger belt tightly, she opened the door. "You will get paid again Marker. Follow me. If Kate is really missing, Faruq will be the one to find her."
"That's good 'nough, but we ought-should split up, cover more ground that way, I jus' need an idea where to look."
"Do not worry. If the Black Crescent knows where Kate is, then Faruq has already found her."
