Tenacious Apathy

The machinery that powered the city from far below its surface hummed and thumped while steam vented gently at regular intervals. It was as though the city itself was alive. It had a pulse and breath that could be felt when one stood still enough and heard when quiet. To those that had lived in the city long enough, it became barely perceivable background to their day to day lives. A nuisance at most if one was unfortunate enough to be trying to sleep where the machinery could be felt or heard more than usual. And on hot summer nights when the dry desert wind came down from the mountains, over the storm wall, and through the streets, it felt as though the city were running a fever. Even at night, the city radiated heat and seemed to inflict waking fever dreams on the minds citizens. On those nights the city was on edge, making the skin itch and nerves twitch in a way that filled every tavern with a fight and every accidental bump of the shoulder on the crowded streets waa met with curses both yelled or muttered under the breath. On nights like those, anything was possible. It was one of those miserable nights. On the tenth floor, at the end of a dim and dingy corridor was a door that suitably matched the rest of the old building. The glass panel in the door rattled incessantly and in flaked black lettering read: "Nathaniel Deschain" and "Private Investigations." This was one of the miserable parts of the city where the machines were closest to the surface, vibrating the building hard enough to slowly move an ill-placed empty glass off the edge of a counter and then over the course of the night spread the shards across the hardwood floor. Behind that door lay an office that also served as a bedroom and dining room. It was flanked by a tiny kitchen and even smaller bathroom. The office's clutter was that of a room serving too many uses by a man too busy to keep up with it and far too accustomed to a lack of visitors to be concerned with cleaning. Nathan was sleeping like the dead when someone knocked. A sound he had not heard it so long it was almost alien to him and for a brief moment, he thought it a noise from the neighbors above him whose arguments often escalated to such sounds. When the knock sounded a second time, he sat up with a groan and rubbed at the corners of his eyes with a hand. After the third set of knocks and a brief deliberation on simply ignoring it, he finally called out, in a rough voice that had been silent too long, "come on in." The door opened and a woman stepped through, wrapped in a hooded cloak far too heavy to be of any use beyond concealing who and what she was. The pale green glow of her eyes gave her away as one of the forgeborn—artificial humans imbued with something akin to a soul. This was not one of the parts of town particularly friendly to her sort, which explained the cloak. What it didn't explain is what her sort was doing here. Of all the offices in all of the city, why she had walked into this one? "You look like trouble," he greeted her. "Unfortunately, Sir Deschain," she answered, "I believe you're right."