Caged - Sean Michael.pdf

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Torquere Press
www.torquerepress.com
Copyright ©2004 by Sean Michael
mirst published in www.torquerepress.com, 2005
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Chapter One
Palin gazed out the wide window. The view always
fascinated him. He wasn't sure if it was because he
hadn't always had it to look at or if it was because the
huge window so dominated the room. It took up the
entire wall, from floor to ceiling. Only the domed edges
were steel. The window itself was reinforced glass, as
strong as brick or mortar or steel, not invulnerable, but
close enough. Or at least as close as possible.
He didn't live at the very top of the building, but he was
up pretty high. There were only two buildings higher
than The Romaliot and both stood behind it. A half
dozen buildings rose higher than his apartment in front
of him, but they were placed in a way that he could see
the city sprawling away from its core, rolling over the
land to the very edge of the sea.
He couldn't actually see the water from here; the
horizon was buildings, the shorter flats that were a
dozen stories high and all the same. He'd come from a
place like that, his parents and his sister and himself
squeezed into two small rooms that were like boxes.
His sister was older and she'd escaped when he was
seven. She'd wanted to be an entertainer. mather had
refused—he wanted his children to live in the higher
buildings, closer to the core, not serve the people that
did. So she'd run away when she was thirteen.
He'd seen her once after that. He and his mother had
come to the core for tests and he'd seen her on a street
corner. She was thin, eyes so hungry and dark. She
held her hand out to him, called out to him, but his
mother held tightly to his hand and pulled him along.
He'd watched until the crowd ate his sister up.
Looking down now, he wondered if she was still out
there.
Palin couldn't see the street from here, with too much
traffic between him and it, and nearly 200 stories. The
aircars looked so different from above than they had
when he'd been looking up at them that day. They'd
seemed huge when he was twelve, their occupants
larger than life, mysterious.
He was one of them now.
The bell rang, warning of the imminent arrival of his first
client. Palin slid the gold and bronze embroidered white
robe over his naked body. The robe was warm and the
clients didn't know what he wore beneath it. Some of
them made him feel vulnerable, and he would wear his
jeans and shirt and a tri-klev robe beneath the robes of
his office, even though the building had security and he
was assured that there was no way for someone to
arrive at his door with a weapon.
Still, it didn't hurt to be too careful.
Not everyone thought information agents deserved to
live. Many were understandably wary, and he was
slender and short at 5'6"—an easy target.
It always amused him that some of the clients never
realized that it would be as easy for him to pluck

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