The Mark of The Locket

They called themselves the Locket League, and at first the alliteration wasn’t doing them any favors. We laughed, even as we huddled in the fractured shadows of skyscrapers and foraged in the parks for wildlife that hadn’t lived there since even before The Cataclysm. There weren’t many of them, a handful of people in robes that looked like they were running late for a LARP, but their voices were loud. Promises rang out over the dejected ears of the squalid folk in the city. Promises of prosperity, of homes made of more than tattered plastic and rusted out vans. Most importantly, promises of power.

I didn’t believe them, “just another group of entitled assholes who caused all this that have finally lost it.” To be completely honest, I thought they were weak. Their minds snapped after only a few months living in a world so alien from the one we knew. Not that we knew what this new world was yet; no one had the time to research why things had happened the way they did. Everyone had a theory though; the second coming of Christ, nuclear armageddon, actual aliens. You get the point. None of it mattered though. It was wistful talk for the few nights you’d found enough food that you could almost forget you were hungry as you huddled up against the fire.

Moments like that are what they promised. An entire life like that even, and for a lot of the folks who’d made it this long it was a promise of a life they hadn’t had even when there was a wider world than our city. It had been hurled upwards into the clouds, leaving torn roots of pipes and cables. Now our city floats high above the cracked earth, like a raindrop that got too scared to fall from the safe embrace of its thundercloud. I could understand why it wouldn’t fall, to be so high up and know what doom lay all those miles beneath you. Up here we were all just scared little raindrops, huddled together in the storm, praying we wouldn’t have to fall.

That’s how they found us, preying on the fear of those of us who still lived. No one dared call us survivors because we didn’t know what we’d survived from. Not to mention the pesky little thought that maybe we hadn’t survived at all. You wake up one day and look around and all you see is lightning and darkness, wind whining through buildings so gutted they looked like titanic skeletons from ages past. Their glory was gone, all the shine and wonder of a tower so tall it could pierce the sky was robbed once you could do the same simply by sticking your finger into the air.

Funnily enough, that was how they did it. One of them stuck their finger into the air above them, the loose sleeve of their robe whipping in the wind like a banner being carried stalwartly into a victory so decisive you could hardly call it a battle. Then it fell, lifeless as the steel giants that decayed behind them. The wind was gone around the cabal of newcomers. I turned away, my eyes burnt by a light so bright I thought for an idiotically hopeful second that the sun was shining again. But the sun was still absent, its light and heat not felt since the day the city ascended. Instead the figure, their eyes locked on whatever skyward mystery their finger was drawn to, was glowing. Or to be more accurate, their locket was. It was the shape of a heart, and as the winds returned, their howling and groaning a comfort I didn’t realize I’d accepted until it filled my ears again, it had seared itself through the robe and left a sizzling burn on the wearer. The mark of a locket.

The marks were what made them dangerous really. Anyone could burn a shape into their sternum and proudly proclaim they were a newly minted member of the League. You could always tell it wasn’t true even before they couldn’t harness Catalyst the same way the League could. It was the power struggles caused by every leech that thought they were the first to come up with that particular get rich quick scheme that destabilized the shallow society we’d cobbled together to the point where the League’s promises seemed more palatable.

Three years ago we accepted their offer. Now we live in the resurrected corpses of office buildings and hotels we’d never have a dream of seeing before the end. Sorry, before The New Start. The Locket League approved term is of course a lot less final than what actually happened to the old, dead world. Apparently history is written by the victors even after the apocalypse. For a time it was nice. They used the power they called “Catalyst” to transform our lives. In a dazzling flash we had everything we needed; food, water, stable housing. Things got so good there are even some toddlers you have to be careful not to barrel over in the Upper Scrapes.

The League was too smart to let everyone prosper though. If all the people could want for nothing, then what would they need the League for? So, to preserve their seats of power their new society wasn’t created all that equal. There were the Upper Scrapes, the old penthouses and rooftop gardens that they connected with immaculate crystal bridges. Because “When you live among the clouds, why would you want to touch the ground?” Next were the Lower Scrapes. The folks that live in the middle floors like to argue about where exactly the line is between upper and lower. Regardless of where the official line is, those people are always Lower Scrapes folk. Maybe they worked their way up a few floors. More than likely they just want to pretend they matter to the angels that live above them.

Which brings us to the last elevator stop. There’s no fun name for the part of the city I live in, we just get called Grounders. I think it’s a bit on the nose, but at least it’s not alliterative. If the Upper Scrapes are heaven, then the ground floor is a few layers deep into hell. Demons like me make do, everyone has dirty work that needs to get done. I’ve even done a few jobs for Locket Holders. Said jobs are precisely what got me into the trouble I’m in now.

Here I am, a dirty mark wishing desperately I could hide in the marble palaces atop the city. Instead, I dash across another bridge, glancing down hoping to see the ground that I call home. Ready now for the storm to cast me out of the dizzying heights and careening to the comfort of the streets below. I run, sweat dripping from my brow like the rain I wish to be, but now I am a shooting star. Shadows race away from me faster than my heart pounds. I am a dark comet, blazing with glory as I streak across the lofty castles the League calls home.

I can feel it burning in my chest, a raging beacon urging me forward with pain. I have to take it off, I have to get as far away from it as I can. I have to keep it away from them no matter what.

I lost track of how many were behind me. Stalking my footprints like a pack of wolves, coordinated and swift. If I were caught I was dead, maybe that was better than the pain in my chest and limbs, as much from the burning locket as it was from the marathon I ran for my survival. I prayed to nobody and everybody that I could stop running, that they would just forget about me like they had the rest of their lives and let me go. Then someone answered.

I fell to my knees as the bridge lurched out from beneath me. Glass shattered and fell like diamond hail. Down, down, gone. I lost sight of the delicate debris long before it hit my safe haven of cracked pavement and pond filled potholes. I knelt there as the dislodged bridge was hauled into the sky. We left the city beneath us. Lightning arced through the clouds, electricity tracing the fractures throughout the bridge as the League stood at it’s opposite end.

They were pulling their favorite party trick even after all these years. The wind assaulted my hair and clothes like a thousand furious hands tearing it apart, but the robes of the league trailed behind them solid as rock. Steady and unshaking as they approached me, lockets piercing the storm like lighthouses guiding me to their callous embrace. Words were offered, curses and more hollow promises of amnesty if only I would give the Locket back. The Locket.

I grinned, my mind was exhausted so I gave up hope of a charming one liner in the face of certain death. Actions speak louder than words, and my actions roared with the fury of all those we’d lost, of those I’d lost. As we cried out in defiance our hand raised high, the light blinding me as I stared at the League, at their terror as my stolen Locket shone like the Sun. They were all of them Icarus, and I was going to melt them into wisps of nothing. I cast the locket off the edge of the bridge, I could feel its heat as it fell. A golden raindrop on its final journey, pulled inescapably towards the millions of pieces of itself that would dash against the ground below. It’s grave the damp sewers and tarnished sidewalks, the unwashed alleys and forgotten intersections, the home I’d never see again.

I could feel the tears streaming from my scarred eyes, their trial broken by the triumphant smile on my face. I stood, arm raised above me as the white void in my vision slowly blurred into an endless black expanse. And yet, I could almost see the scar on my palm, blazing red as if it were a source of light all its own. I could hear their footsteps now, racing toward me as I curled my fingers over the heart shaped beacon in my hand, and pointed to the sky.