Chapter Eight - City Centre

The concentration of people out in the city seemed to only grow as they walked towards its middle.

At the same time, Alice was pushing her power outwards, stretching it so that she could have a good grasp of the entire city and its surroundings. There were a lot of people here. Some fifty, maybe sixty thousand souls, all contained within a relatively small footprint for a city.

"Anything good?" Crystal asked. She must have sensed that Alice was trying to learn more about their surroundings.

"Nothing too interesting so far," Alice admitted. "It's a relatively large city, but that's all. There's not much past the walls."

"Okay, but isn't that kind of interesting?" Crystal asked. "I've seen weird fantasy cities with walls, but this is modern. Well, more or less modern." She glanced to the side where a cart was being pulled by a draft horse. It was loaded with barrels and the driver seemed half-asleep behind the reins.

"I suppose," Alice agreed. "It feels like there's something more going on. Those strange distortions we've run into, they're not enough to bring civilization down to its knees.

"What about the storms?"

Alice nodded. "That could contribute. You're assuming that they're regular occurrences. That storm might have been caused by our arrival, or it could be relatively localised."

"Hmm, it felt big," Crystal said with an expansive little gesture. "But I don't know how big. The other weird bits were kinda small. Just a few cars long, or like, the size of a bus."

"Do you measure everything in vehicle-sizes?" Alice asked.

"Yup!" Crystal said. "I'm point four cars tall, if you measure the average car length-wise."

Alice gave Crystal a look, which set the younger magical girl off into a fit of giggles. "You're kidding, right?"

"Yeah! As if I'd know how long the average car is. You know how bad I am with math," Crystal said.

Alice shook her head, but did allow herself to chuckle a little. Crystal could be funny, at times. And this time it was even on purpose.

Soon enough they were in the centre of Pripyat. Alice's impression that the city wasn't all that old was only reinforced as she took in the city's main square. There were several large buildings around a small park-like space, with thin, decrepit trees confined to cement boxes around a space lined with benches and brass statues.

The buildings here were all grand, cement and brick, sharp angles and angular shapes that suggested a level of precision and brutality in their construction, and yet they were trying hard to be grandiose as well.

The space looked like it needed maintenance, but nothing was falling apart yet. "How old do you think this city is?" Alice asked as she looked around.

"Uh. I guess... it looks very 70s?" Crystal tried.

"Yes. I think that's about right," Alice agreed. "It looks like a planned city."

"Does that matter?"

"I guess not," Alice replied. She pointed to one of the largest buildings. It had a wide set of steps leading up to its front doors, and a sign above that read City Hall. "That's our destination, I think."

"What about that?" Crystal asked. She was pointing to another building nearby. A boxy one, in the same style as the others, but a little less noticeable. It might have been an office building, or a police station. Its windows were thin, narrow slits in grey cement, the glass impossible to see through.

More interesting were the people around the building. They wore leather and army fatigues. Bits of armour over the kind of tough clothes someone who was ready for a long hike would wear. Most had masks, either on their faces, hanging off of belts, or pulled up over their heads to leave their faces exposed. And guns. Almost all of them were armed. Mostly Alice saw hunting rifles and handguns, but a few had assault rifles and submachine guns as well. They were carrying with the habitual care of people who were used to being armed at all times.

Alice squinted at the building. Its only signage was a small, more recent plaque bolted next to the door. There was some discoloration where a previous sign had once been beneath. Office of Zone Exploration.

"Interesting," Alice said. "But I don't know if that's what we're looking for."

"I don't know. I think heading over to chat to the most competent looking people might be a winning strategy when you're travelling to another dimension." Crystal sighed. "I wish Dee-Dee was here."

"You know she hates that name," Alice said as she started towards the City Hall.

"Yeah, I know," Crystal said.

Magical Girl Dimension Death would be very useful to have on hand at the moment. She had travelled across a dozen worlds, maybe hundreds. She always returned to theirs, her magic calling her back to her home dimension, but she was by far the most well-travelled in their group.

The City Hall building was guarded by one police officer, currently smoking and not paying very much attention to who was coming and going. Alice and Crystal slipped right past him without having to touch his mind at all.

Within, the hall was a tall-roofed space, with a lot of waiting room to one side, a row of counters at the rear, and some offices to the right. Alice's attention, however, was pulled to one side, where someone had installed a to-scale replica of the city. It was in a large display, the diorama protected by a sheet of glass and lit by a few neon tubes.

The city looked clean, and vibrant, with tiny flags in deep red around a rendition of the city hall. There were no walls, and no destroyed buildings around the centre. To the north of the city was a large complex that had a small label over it. The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

"Ah," Alice said as some buried memories clicked into place. She knew she'd heard of this city.

But... on her Earth it had been abandoned. Here it looked as though the city never ceased to grow. It had a footprint as large as Rio, at least on the scaled map... but only a fraction as many souls that she could feel.

Something disastrous had happened here, but it was recent. A small plaque next to the map said it was donated to the city in 2007. "We need to find out what year it is," Alice said.

"Can't be hard," Crystal said. She skipped over to one of the tables in the waiting room, and plucked a magazine from it. She flipped it open, then spun it around. "It's twenty-eleven!"

"That could be years out of date," Alice said.

"It doesn't feel too worn," Crystal returned. "And we know it's summer, more or less. I bet I'm right." She checked the other magazines. "Krestyanka? Looks like one of those magazines we interviewed for. They were always going on about how we dressed and stuff, never about how awesome it was to be a magical girl."

"Is it dated the same?" Alice asked.

Crystal opened the magazine, which did feature mostly images of women, luxury cars, and other ads squeezed in between articles. "Yup, same year. Twenty-eleven. We're in the past."

"Nikolai was only frozen for three years, then," Alice said. "And that means that there hadn't been much time for those walls to go up and for the city to empty."

"I don't think it would take that long for a city to empty, would it?" Crystal asked.

"I guess not," Alice agreed. She eyed the front counter, where an older woman was sitting behind a CRT monitor and splitting her attention between the two of them, and a game of solitaire on her screen. "You know, I wanted to come here to find out answers, but now that we're here, I don't know who or what to ask."

"So... plan B?" Crystal asked.

Alice nodded. "Plan B."

She walked across the waiting room and right up to the counter. The woman behind it looked up and flashed them a quick smile. "Can I help you?" she asked.

"Yes, I think so," Alice replied. "Who's the person in charge?"

"Of... the city?" the woman asked. "The chairman?"

"Oh, good," Alice said. "Can we meet with him, please?"

"He's busy," she said. "Do you have a reason to meet with the chairman or the council? Most matters don't require their attention."

Alice frowned, then lowered her hood. This was one of those moments where appearing different might actually come in handy. "My name is Rending Nightmare. I'm looking for one of my companions who is lost in this region. I will be finding her. I think it would be in your council's best interest to either help, or at the very least, not stand in my way."

***