Such a tiny, cramp apartment room that she called home, but at least she had somewhere to call home which was a lot more than too many could say. All things considered Karen woke up that morning feeling alright, her head somewhat pounding due to a slight hangover, but what else was new in her life? While sitting on the very edge of her narrow bed she reached for her flask, and took a few gulps from the metal container. The drink are quite rough as it poured down her throat, but fortunately she managed to choke down the alcohol anyway. With a sigh she placed the flask back down on a nearby table then grabbed her watch, on the LED screen she made out the time as 7:46 AM. Just enough time for breakfast...
From a small cupboard she retrieved a box of oatmeal mix, add that together with some water in a pot and that's good enough for a filling if not bland meal. As the mixture was heating up, the source of said heat coming from a portable burner, Karen took the chance to get dressed for the long day ahead of her. She pulled the orange jumpsuit over her underwear, somewhat struggling to zip the back but eventually got it, just not without a lack of effort. After that she quickly laced up her work boots and stuffed the gloves into a pocket.
By then the oatmeal was practically ready to boil over, "Shit!" she momentarily panicked and rushed over to blow the flame out. After waiting a minute for her molten breakfast to cool off, Karen poured the oatmeal into a plastic bowl while also wielding a metal spoon and thus she finally was able to start eating. In a bit of a hurry she shoveled it all down, sorta burning her mouth in the process, but better this than going hungry all day. She glanced down at her watch, 8:09, still plenty of time so there was no need for her to worry. She added the bowl to a growing pile of dirty dishes, a pile that she'll have to tackle eventually in the coming days for sure.
Karen found herself squished in the middle of a crowd of bodies, many of which smelled like week old sweat and with even a hint of vomit thrown in for good measure, it was times like these she was thankful to be used to horrible stenches, although mostly because she has had the displeasure to experience much worse smells. While it did suck to be crammed into such a place, Karen also couldn't deny how much she relied on public transportation like this, seeing as she definitely couldn't afford a pair of mag boots, or God forbid pay for cab fare everyday, at least being able make it to work made all the difference.
Soon enough her stop came up, and Karen was more than willing to regain her freedom from her prison made of humans. From there it was a matter of walking down a few blocks, a route that she had memorized well after a year of the exact same routine. The area she found herself in was an industrial district of the Slums, putting heavy industry around the same area where people were supposed to live wasn't exactly a concern it seemed. She continued down the narrow streets, trying her best not to bump into too many pedestrians, and definitely keeping away from the various puddles of chemical waste that are known to populate the streets; while she was confident her boots were more than able to protect her feet, it was just better not to take the risk at all.
Ferring Steel Co. Her place of work. On the outside the building looked just like any other example of dirty industry, gray concrete walls that were covered in spiderwebs of cracks... it was safe, probably. Karen pushed her way through a pair of faded red doors, the paint being chipped off and the color mostly all but gone. Through there she entered the worker's barracks. The room looked exactly what one may expect, a kind of shower room set up with a row of lockers lining one wall and a few benches scattered about the area. On the far side was an old fashioned bulletin board used to post everyone's job for the week, Karen had always wondered why not use a holoscreen like the rest of the civilized world, but eventually came to the conclusion it was to save money, unsurprisingly.
As she approached the board she overheard some of her coworkers talking. "Have you heard?" One asked in hushed tones.
"What?" The other responded.
"Liberata, that's what, I've heard the Watchmen raided another one of their hideouts again, they say there were no survivors."
"Damn, Liberata, huh? Don't know I feeling hearing that name more and more everyday."
Karen sighed and tried to tune the conversation out. Liberata has always been a somewhat polarizing subject for her, on one hand she would love nothing else than to topple the government and their bullshit system, that would be a dream come true. On the other, what she just despised about Liberata was the chaos they cause, direct or otherwise. The last thing she and just the normal people need was more trouble. Sure what these rebels do was to fight against the oppressors, but through every closed down street, or whatever else, it makes everyone's life that much more difficult. That's why she wasn't sure what to think about them, maybe to make progress sacrifices will had to be made, like hell would peaceful protest make a difference, so yes maybe some chaos really was needed... maybe.
She shook her mind free from these thoughts, and started to look over the assignment sheet for her name. As it turned out Karen got to be on blast furnace duty that day. Probably one of the easier jobs to be given, it definitely was easier than loading ore, and less dangerous than some other duties. When it came to operating the blast furnace there wasn't much to the actual work, but it was also perhaps the most important, i.e the one step that cannot be screwed up.
After stretching her back in preparation for many hours of mind numbing labor, she slipped on her work gloves and tapped away at her watch to clock into her shift.
8:27 PM read her watch, a twelve hour work day... holy hell she shouldn't have taken a double shift, but the extra pay was too tempting. Soon as Karen exited the foundry she went straight for her flask, workplace policy states that no worker would be allowed to drink for extremely obvious reasons, these reasons being ones she understood but still didn't like anyway. She sighed heavily, almost sounding exasperated, her flask felt way too light for her liking, and after unscrewing the top to make sure, yep, it was empty. Karen wracked her brain trying to figure out when she drank the last of the liquid, but came up empty. Damn, and I don't have anything left back home... This meant she had to make a detour before she could go home to finally call it a day.
Luckily she had a place in mind, that of course being a bar. There was one she went to fairly regularly, mostly because it was within walking distance from work. Sometimes she would go for some companionship, the conversational type, but really though it was for the cheap booze, plus it didn't hurt that it had a reputation for safety... well safe as a bar in the Slums could be. Karen turned her attention to her watch, and after some presses brought up the GPS. The small screen made it a little hard to follow unlike a proper holographic, but she had long adapted to the inconvenience.
As she expected it was a very quick walk and there she was standing in front of The Blind Harpy. There have been many occasions where Karen asked where the hell that name came from, Brad the owner of the establishment however just wouldn't give her a straight answer; something about a night of poker with a Changeling and Core Shard Dust...
Karen went straight through the front entrance, and inside found the typical bar setting. For reasons she couldn't figure out the place was actually empty of all things, almost like people didn't want to go out that night. Strange. Not including her there was only two other souls present, Brad the aforementioned owner, and a very confused, very dirty drunk who was sitting in the corner.
"Why's it so deserted in here? Seriously, its sorta creeping me out." Karen greeted as she took her usual seat at the bar.
From behind the counter there was Brad himself, a tanned man in his late forties with a bright and shiny bald head. He sighed and shrugged, "Your guess is good as mine, Tobin, don't know maybe something to do with Liberata and the Watchmen. Their war has gotten more serious and all that."
Karen chuckled, "Wouldn't surprise me, but I really can't see that preventing folk from going out, unless martial law got declared and I missed out on that... yeah, dunno got no idea."
Brad laughed in response, "Yeah and if we were under martial law I don't think that would stop you anyway, speaking of which..." He turned towards a wall filled with various bottles of booze where there he knelt down to grab one from the very bottom self. He slammed that said bottle onto the counter. "Here, just transfer the credits when you're done, like always."
For the next ten minutes at most, Karen nursed her drink not necessarily trying to get drunk fast as possible, and taking the time to socialize with the bartender. She didn't have much in the way of close friends, but she supposed Brad was something getting close to that, then again it was also supposed to be his job to make some sort decent conversation and otherwise hear out the troubles of his patrons, so who could say.
It was a sudden and very jarring scream that brought her out of the good mood. Both she and Brad turned their imminent attention to the source of the disturbance, that being to the street outside. It was also then that Karen noticed that the only other sole customer happened to be missing from his table. It didn't take much to connect the dots here.
Clearly trying not to panic, Brad slowly crouched under his counter and retrieved a set of keys, "Tobin, I'm going to check out what's going on, but I want you to lock the door after me... you understand?"
Karen also looking somewhat panicked shook her head, "But... why the hell do you want to go out there... and-"
"No arguing!" he interrupted "You're going to stay here, and lock the door behind me. That's it."
She didn't entirely get a chance to respond because without uttering another word Brad stormed his way out of the bar, in a very much brave but really stupid fashion. Now being left all alone, Karen had no other choice than to follow his instructions and ran to the door in order to lock it shut. Almost as soon as she did there again was another set of blood curdling screams of pain... these ones sounding very much like a certain bartender.
Now absolutely scared for her life, Karen scrambled away from the door and went straight to the other side of the bar counter where there she crouched down low as possible in an attempt to hide. "What the hell is happening!" She whispered to herself, her mind racing through the possibilities and none of them ended well for her.
What was going to happen to her?
