Chapter Twenty-Three - Looking Around

"Hup!" Crystal said as she grabbed onto a rail above her head and pulled herself up.

Alice very pointedly didn't look up as Crystal climbed the ladder. They were both on the scaffolding connected to the side of the building, out in the open and visible to anyone who wanted to look. Though she supposed that with them having to squeeze out of a window to climb onto the scaffolding, there was no reason for someone to look this way.

"Are you coming?" Crystal asked as she took the final step off the ladder and onto the roof.

Alice finally looked up. It was just common courtesy not to stare up her friend's skirt. It would also have been common courtesy to wear some damned pants while gallivanting out in the Zone, but she kept that to herself. She didn't need an hour's long rant about the evils of pants. "I'm coming up," Alice said before looking back. Koschei was still in the building, gun up against his shoulder even if the barrel was lowered. He seemed tense. "Are you coming up?"

"It's foolish," he said. "You'll be standing where you're visible from afar, right after that explosion. People will be looking this way, and they'll see you against the sky."

Alice considered it. He wasn't wrong, they were taking a risk here, but it was quite minimal. "We'll keep a shield up, if that helps," she said. "Crystal's shield can stop anything shy of a nuclear weapon. Are there any anomaly-empowered weapons around?"

He frowned, then shook his head, but with some hesitation. "Not that I know of. Only rumours."

"Right, we'll probably be okay then, but I'll make sure Crystal keeps a low profile," Alice said. A moment later there was a loud boom and a short wall of bricks tumbled past the window on their way down to the ground below.

Alice resisted the urge to mumble something unkind about her teammate and scampered up the ladder.

She found Crystal pushing aside a pallet of bricks with some effort. "What are you doing?" Alice asked.

"Trying to get a better view," Crystal said before standing straighter. She hopped up and onto the pallet, then half-turned, hand extending out for Alice to grab.

"At least put a shield up if you're going to be so obvious," Alice said as she took the hand and pulled herself up.

Crystal laughed and Alice felt a slight shift in the air around her. She couldn't see the bubble of floating crystal around her, but it did something to the quality of the light around them that her power picked up on better than her eyes could.

She took Crystal's hand and stepped up onto the stack of bricks. "What's this for, anyway?" she asked.

"Look around," Crystal said. "I wanted a bit more height, because I'm not sure if what I'm seeing is right."

Alice frowned, but did as Crystal suggested. The area immediately around them was what she expected. A large yard with construction equipment and unfinished buildings. There were walls around the space, and a few factories beyond that.

She looked back the way they'd come, and she could make out that big red factory, then a spot with nothing beyond, the river, maybe? The opposite shore had more industrial buildings, and past that she could just barely make out the walls of Pripyat in the distance.

She looked the other way, then frowned.

There was a city. Of course there was, she knew that the Zone was inside of a city, but this extended to the horizon. Hundreds of relatively short skyscrapers, the air around them thick with shifting dust. There didn't seem to be an end to it. "Huh," she said.

"Jump up," Crystal said. "Uh, but be careful, when I did the wall over there fell."

Alice frowned, then knelt down for a moment. She tensed the muscles in her legs, then leapt up. She didn't put too much power into it, just enough to gain a few metre's height. It was enough to see further.

The city... never ended. It just went on and on.

She'd stood in the penthouse and upon the rooftops of some impressively tall buildings in her day. There was something about being a magical girl that called them all to stand on tall surfaces.

The skyline here stretched out as if she was looking at Sao Paulo. Just countless apartments, offices, and a huge assortment of large buildings surrounded by a landscape of industrial complexes.

She landed with a slight bend of the knee. "How big was the city that was supposed to be here?" she asked. She couldn't remember if it came up in any casual conversation.

Crystal shrugged. "I don't know. But I don't remember there being a capital city around here, right? I was never good at geography."

"No, there's not supposed to be anything like that here," Alice said. "This is... huge. And moderately modern." Some of the buildings weren't as new, of course, but the oldest looked like it was at least post-second world war.

It was possible, she supposed, that the area had been heavily developed after the second world war for reasons she couldn't guess at yet, but something in her gut told her that it wasn't the case.

"We could always just ask," Crystal said as she hopped off the pile of bricks.

Alice blinked. That was fair, she hadn't even considered it, but it was a good idea. They returned to the scaffolding, then slipped back into the building where they found Koschei glaring into the room. Was he making sure that things didn't move around while they were above?

"We have questions," Alice said.

"Oh?" he asked. "Done with the sightseeing? We need to head down, to the basement."

"Lead the way," Alice said. "this city. The one in the middle of the Zone. Did that exist before the Zone was created?"

"Yes and no," he said.

Crystal giggled. "That's a nice answer."

"Can you explain a little better?" Alice asked.

Koschei reached up and ran a finger along the bottom edge of his gas mask, the skin there was red from the constant contact already. "There was Pripyat, and there was development. It was growing, but not as fast as it had been growing before. You know how things are. Politics and the economy and such things."

Alice nodded slowly. She had no idea what the political landscape pre-Zone had been, but she could guess at it a little. "The city I saw from the roof is a city of millions. Tens of millions, even."

"No, it was never that big. When the Zone appeared, so did all of that. Hundreds of buildings that weren't there before next to plenty that were. Sometimes you'll find the same building twice in a row. The construction site? Before the Zone it was for two buildings. Now there's seven, or twelve. Depends on the day."

Crystal 'oohed' impressively. "There's time shenanigans at play."

Alice nodded along. She could think of a few ways that could happen. If this was Dimension Death's world, then it would mean pulling buildings from alternate dimensions, but with Fractured Time around... these had to be possible, potential buildings. Places from a time that never happened or would never happen. Potential realized when it never would be.

"Is it safe to navigate?" she asked. "If it's still shifting."

Koschei hummed something as they finally made it to the basement. "I had a man explain it to me once. There are... memes."

"I love memes!" Crystal chirped.

"He doesn't mean the fun kind," Alice said. "Go on."

"If a place is a construction site today, it will be one tomorrow too," Koschei said. "If there's a little village from before the Zone, then it'll stay there after the storm. A shoe maker's shop might be a plumber's tomorrow, or a locksmith's, but it'll never be a bar, and it'll never be a farm."

"Ah," Alice said. "Patterns, then?"

"More or less, yes," he replied. "They're not always fixed, and they don't repeat that often, not ever exactly the same way, but they do stay similar before and after a storm."

"Are things that you take from there permanent?" Crystal asked.

Koschei nodded, then stopped to pull out a heavy-duty flashlight from his pack. He lit it, then flashed the light through a tight tunnel in the basement that ran on for a while.

"So, someone that finds a jeweller's shop can just grab everything and run, or if you find a bank," Crystal said. "It's guilt-less theft, I guess."

"There's more than one way to become rich in the Zone," Koschei said. "But exploiting the Zone sometimes means that the Zone will be angry with you."

"Ah, crap, it's got feelings?" Crystal said.

***