18 - Syianne
"Cello?" I whisper as I stare at the ceiling from the upper bunk. "Are you sleeping?" When I was a kid, I had always wanted to sleep in a bunk bed, on the upper bunk, I don't know why but it seemed like the coolest thing at the time.

At first there's no answer, I can only hear his breathing, but then he sighs. "No."

"Do you trust Tiger?"

He's quiet, this time because he's pondering. "I don't know," he finally answers, "do you?"

"Half."

"I guess I half trust him too."

"Do you trust me?" I ask. I don't know why, but somehow, it's just too difficult not to trust someone. I need Cello's trust because I need to believe in him. To go through my whole life – even if it's going to be a short life – without trusting someone seems too lonely to bear.

"Yes," he answers in a fast way that lets me know he didn't even have to think over it. I hear him move around in the lower bunk. "Even though when I was slugged I thought you betrayed me at some point. I hated you for it."

"I'll never betray you." I make the promise with all my heart, even though I don't know anything about what the future holds.

He doesn't answer.

"I trust you," I say, although he didn't ask.

He's silent and I wonder if he heard me at all or perhaps he drifted off to sleep.

*

We wake up late the next morning – no reason to be the first to arrive at the Zephyr. We both agree that the past two days felt like at least twenty. After breakfast (I wouldn't touch those eggs if I were you, Cello), we take a rail car and arrive at the Zephyr for our third attempt of going into service.

It's already well past ten in the morning, so the gates are wide open and the Zephyr streets are empty. We encounter no one as we make the now familiar way towards Reception.

I've already paid for our room in the Doorstep, so we decided that for the upcoming week, even though Heign Valley is not the most pleasant of places, we would be sleeping in that room. I was glad to leave my luggage there. Today all I have to carry around is my little orange messenger bag. I don't know how it happened but I'm no longer bothered by sharing a room with Cello. Even though we have known each other for a very short time, I feel closer to him than to anyone.

Except Artus.

As we near the entrance to Reception, Fellin trots onto the path before us. I wave and glance over at Cello and notice that he's smiling.

"Hey Fellin," he greets the short boy. Fellin looks even smaller in his Zephyr uniform. He's scratching the back of his head with a small smile on his lips, looking abashed and glad at the same time.

"You finally made it," he says. "You know everyone is talking about you guys?"

"Really?" Cello asks. "What are they saying?"

"Pretty much everything." Fellin laughs. "From what chaotic and insolent brats you two are and on to calling you two heroes."

"How are you holding up?"

Fellin shrugs his shoulders. "Risa Medrick was right, yellow is absolutely not for me, the people there were really mean, and lie all the time and made me take a test which apparently I failed terribly. Yellow is all about being tricky, and I'm..." he grimaces, "not."

"Anyway," he goes on with a spectacular smile on his face, "today I get to take the tour of the Zephyr and then I'll get a guide in green and prepare for my first Plunge."

"Already?" I ask, surprised.

"They told me that it's important to have the new ones in as soon as possible," Fellin says. Will we be Plunging into the Zephyr soon as well? It's too fast, and what will happen with Artus?

"That's crazy." Cello shakes his head, looking amazed but in a different way from me. I can see the dare-devil in his eyes, I can see his itching for excitement. I shiver slightly and he notices, reaching out and squeezing my upper arm.

Fellin notices my sudden discomfort too, he smiles at me, warmly and kindly. He seems like a kind-hearted sort of boy, someone soft, pleasant and unthreatening that I could easily connect with. I can make friends here, and he's the sort of friend I always wanted to make. "Anyway, I'm glad you two are looking well," he says. "I better get going before anyone notices that I'm not where I'm supposed to be. See you soon."

"See you," I say, and I mean it, I really do want to see him soon.

"Bye," Cello says.

Fellin turns to leave and so do we, but suddenly Cello stops and turns. "Hey Fell," he says.

Fellin stops and looks at him questioningly. "Let's meet today for lunch."

Fellin laughs. "Why don't you try and make it this time?" He waves and walks away. We head into Reception.

**

"Hello Arla," Cello says in a delighted voice as we approach the Receptionist's desk. He's making an effort to make her happy and she jumps right into it. He's a strange one, sometimes he's rudely confident in the way he'll openly flirt with any girl just to get his way, other times it seems like he isn't even aware of the fact that he's flirting. I don't know if he's being innocent, or pretending to be innocent.

"Oh, aren't you two the little troublemakers," Arla coos, greeting us like old friends. The gleeful delightfulness on her face is the same one I saw on Minty's and even Fellin's. I guess in the eyes of Zephyr society, we're the ones who dared oppose the Core, and got away with it.

She hands us each a small parcel wrapped in waxy brown paper and tied with a string. "Your starting kits." She shrugs her shoulders. "You've been asked to attend the main dome for now, room 551, after you get fitted for your uniforms."

"What's in room 551?" Cello asks, the wrapping of the parcel crackling between his fingers as he starts untying the string.

Arla smiles. "You'll just have to go there and find out."

Cello returns her smile. "Or you can tell us now and then we'll know what to expect."

She laughs; clearly he's charming the chins off of her. I lean my elbows on the reception desk. "Let me guess," I say drily, "room 551 is where our guide is."

She grins at me, whatever the joke is, Arla thinks I'm in on it. "Clever," she laughs. "Oh, and I'd look at what's inside your starting kit in privacy." She wriggles her eyebrows at us. "They're special. The two of you have a lot of reading up to do in there."

Cello shrugs and sticks the parcel in his back pocket; I put mine in my bag. On the way to the place called "Uniforms", I'm busy contemplating all the mysteries that are going to be uncovered in the next day – like whether or not the Zephyr uniforms are any comfortable.

"Uniforms" is nothing more than a dusty storage room in the back of one of the smaller domes. There's a makeshift desk up front where a bald, elderly Undefined man is sitting. He scratches a chin covered in white stubble when he sees us. I don't like his scrutinising gaze; I hover behind Cello's shoulder.

"Hi," Cello says.

"Whaddya want?" the man jumps straight to business. For someone so obviously bored out of his wits, he's not spending much time on small-talk. His uniform is wrinkled and faded, stained and torn. At certain places – like his arms, it hangs too loosely and in others, like his belly, it's so tight the buttons look as if they're going to shoot at us like bullets.

"The obvious, sir," Cello says, "we've come to receive uniforms."

"Is that so?" he growls in reply.

"Uh," Cello spreads out his arms to show off the simple jeans and T-shirt, "as you can see, we haven't got uniforms."

"What's to tell me you didn't lose 'em?"

"Lose the uniforms we haven't got?" Cello shakes his head. "No, neither of us makes a habit of losing things we never had."

"Once there's a uniform," the man speaks with contempt from the corner of his mouth, "it means you're part of the Zephyr. You look like a joker to me, kid, and being part of the Zephyr, it ain't a funny thing, not one bit."

"It looks like the Zephyr could use a joke or two," Cello says.

"It ain't got a sense of humour." The man doesn't even look at me; he narrows his eyes at Cello as if only Cello is the problem. "And you won't get your uniforms without the proper forms."

Cello sighs and pulls the starting kit out of his back pocket. Unceremoniously, he opens it and reveals a sheaf of papers. He licks his finger and starts going through them. "Nothing about uniforms here," he muses. He stuffs the papers back into the wrapping and back into his back pocket. "You'll just have to make do without the forms."

The man at the desk becomes furious — his face turns crimson, his nostrils flare and even his ears stick out in a rage that seems to have been cooking ever since we arrived. "Listen here you little runt," he jabs his finger at Cello's chest, "I heard 'bout you, like them chaos theories, don't you, eh? Like your friend Belgrun you are! All you Alpriners are the same calamity! I see right through you, you wanna bring the whole bleeding system down. Not on my watch, that ain't happening here! You go back to that black hole from whence you came, you mangy bastard. You won't be getting no uniform here! Go away and take your shit revolution with you!"

It really isn't a good idea to laugh at someone who is this angry, but Cello does. I feel like laughing too, but I also feel a little sorry for this Uniforms man. He must be very mean-spirited to get this vicious over something so trivial. "You can't decide that, gramps," Cello says while still chuckling.

The Uniforms man huffs and moves about, he waves his arms in violent gestures and a purple vein swells on his forehead. "You – I – You think I can't – " He finds Cello so outrageous that he's fresh out of retorts. "Listen here, filth, as far as you're concerned, I am the gatekeeper of – "

Whack.

Cello and I both start because neither of us saw it coming. A rolled-up newspaper hits the man on the back of his head, held in a pristine, wrinkled, long fingered hand attached to a tall elegant woman with shoulder-length, straight, white hair. "Sorkin, I don't want to hear another word of that gatekeeper rubbish," she says harshly to the man and then she smiles at us with her warm brown eyes that sparkle as much as her Undefined diamond. "Forgive me, violence is the only way to make him stop." She unrolls the paper and gently places it on the desk. The words and headlines that had momentarily become scrambled from the rolling of the hologram paper, wrigg their way back to their proper places. She pats Sorkin's shoulder. "Read your paper, dear."

He looks confused and suddenly shy; he seems to have shrivelled in on himself, now I feel a full surge of pity towards him as I watch him take the paper in both of his shaking, obedient hands.

The woman beams at us. "My name is Margo and I am the Zephyr seamstress. I've been long awaiting your arrival, children."

I don't say anything and neither does Cello. Everything about her is well-fitted and put together and her mere posture makes me feel gawky. She seems to be a kind person but I want to pick up our uniforms and get out of here.

I don't like to be called a child.

"Follow me," she says, oblivious to our silence. "I have already set out your uniforms." She leads us into a tiny, densely crowded storage room. Rolls of cloth line the walls and in the center of the room there's a computerised sewing machine. Next to the sewing machine, there's a strange kind of metal detector gate with knobs sticking out in odd angles.

"The boy first. Take off your shoes and stand straight in front of the gate, please." Cello obeys and Margo elegantly glides to the opposite side. She adjusts the knobs that, as it turns out, control the height and width of the gate and makes it only an inch higher than his head, and an inch wider than his shoulders.

"Now, would you please take one step forward and make sure to place your feet inside the ducts on the floor."

When Cello steps into the gate, it glows red at first, the thin screen over the sewing machine comes to life, and the word "processing" with an hourglass icon appears. Then the gate turns blue, there's an affirmative beep and a male outline appears on the screen with a series of measurements written upon each part of the outline. The sewing machine goes into operation immediately, hammering stitches into cloth.

"That's all," announces the seamstress cheerfully. "Now it's the girl's turn."

I step up to the gate.

*
Our uniforms each take ten minutes to be made. I get a pair of white trousers, one pleated white skirt and one white pencil skirt. Additionally, there are three long-sleeved blouses from the same white fabric and three short-sleeved summer shirts from a thinner, airier fabric. There's a cream-coloured wool sweater and a cream coloured vest. There are two black coats, a heavy one for winter, and a light one for summer. I get three pairs of gloves and a pair of perfectly fitting, soft, black leather boots and one black leather belt. Lastly, there's a tightly fitting silvery jumpsuit that looks like it's made out of rubber, that when I touch it flows softy through my fingers like water. The jumpsuit covers everything, including my head and half of my face from my chin up , with special holes covered in nets for the nose and mouth.

"That's called your Lightsilver suite, it's what you'll wear when you Plunge, dear," the seamstress explains. "The coats and gloves you have to wear at all times while wandering the city; they protect anyone who happens to touch you by accident."

I examine myself in the mirror, I'm supposed to despise having to wear a uniform, but I feel light and comfortable. Wearing it in the Zephyr, I can easily blend into the background if I want to.

The seamstress helps me adjust my collar and button my vest, then she takes a pink chiffon kerchief and ties it in a bowknot under my collar. "That'll bring out your eyes; all the younger girls wear these."

Cello looks oddly formal, although the uniform makes him look younger. Unlike the loose t-shirts and baggy jeans he wore before, the uniform fits him well, revealing how thin he is. He puts on the black coat – which actually, isn't a raincoat at all – and it helps accentuate his naturally wide shoulders. Even though he's tall, he still looks like a boy who borrowed his daddy's suit.

Maybe the neat uniform would look more reasonable if his hair wasn't such a complete mess. He said that his mother is a hairdresser and works at a salon, but Cello's dark hair sticks out in every odd angle and though it's long enough to be brushed, he told me that he doesn't own a hairbrush.

"Looks good on you," he says to me with a grin. I smile and twirl for him feeling my face blush. For some reason, I feel a little embarrassed to receive a compliment from him. He looks at the seamstress and extends a thanks.

"Thank you," I say as well.

Margo beams at us. "It's my pleasure dears. You can come here any time to get new uniforms or adjustments, also, sweet girl, if you want longer skirts like us older ladies enjoy, then just tell me."

We're given fancy black bags with our names embroidered on them in golden letters, into which we stuff all our spare uniforms, and then we head to the main dome to meet our Guide.