SMS 23': Unsolved Case

​Chapter 1

    If you had never made a mistake ever in your whole life, and all of a sudden you managed to mess everything up and make it look like you are a total failure, you would know how I felt. Honestly, there was nothing I wanted more than to die at that moment, I had absolutely nothing left to live for. I wish I never turned 20.

I looked into the world not knowing anything about it. I was only 6 months old afterall. I felt out of place in my house since birth. I never cried. Ever. I still had feelings and all that of course, but why would I be crying if there was no reason to. Other things just didn’t really make sense in my opinion. When I was 4 and my memory was developing, I started to learn the basic thing everyone did in life. The Underground Cities and The Main World. Why should people who live down there grow up to be more successful and capable? The air quality may be bad underground, but life should still have equal chances for everyone. 

    I lived in a world of noise as I never had any space for myself. I am the 3rd child to be born out of 6 total. I can imagine it wasn’t easy for my parents to make a living, they had six kids and it was the 1970s afterall. 

I must say that I had to be the smartest out of all my siblings because I had always been the one who answered everyone else's questions. You could call me obnoxious, but it’s just the truth. Even my mom admitted that I had an unusual attitude for someone my age. 

    When I was 7, my life became derelict. I had been outside collecting stones for a school project when these two men with oil smelling lanterns showed up at our house door. Maybe I could’ve created a light source that smelled better than that cause even from the distance I was from them, I felt like passing out. 

After about an hour, they left and my mom had a sympathetic look on her face. Who could she have been feeling sorry for? Maybe those two were marketers who were trying to sell us stuff. That wouldn’t have been the first time after all. 

 “Larissa!” My dad called out in an urgent but serious voice. I ran over and sat down at the table with them. I thought we were just going to have a normal conversation, but I had no comprehension of what they were about to say to me.

 “Take care of yourself, take care of your siblings, and please find the money. We love you so much dear, do not let them get the better of you.” I felt like I was watching some horror movie because their words rang eerily in my ears after they had simultaneously recited them together. They said the exact same words at the exact same time in the exact same tone. Had they been rehearsing this? It must be them trying to be funny.

 I gave them a fake chuckle and left quickly. Before those two guys came we had just eaten dinner. If they had something important to say they would have said something while our whole family was present so why would they have only said this to me? I couldn’t think about it anymore since I hadn’t even gotten a chance to finish my school project. Ah, well I guess that's a problem for tomorrow then. If I sleep now I can wake up early enough to finish it.

Silence. Screams and pounding suffused through our thin-walled halls. What the heck was happening? I ran over to my parents room and they were lying on the floor- faces flooded with agony. They were not moving. 

    “Mom? Dad? Hello? What happened!” for the first time ever in my life… I cried. Before I could mourn any longer I ran over to my siblings room. 

There they were. My older sister and brother were both lying on the floor in their matching plaid pajamas with their sleeping masks hovering over their eyes. They too had not been moving. Both my parents and my older siblings had been on the floor. I do not want to say that they are gone, but that must be the case.

    “This is a case of polariya. It’s a new disease that has been wiping across the main world. I think it just happened to spread to your family. I’m sorry kid, they are gone for good.” The doctor had been explaining my case to me. My three younger siblings were sitting beside me in the white, cold, and lonely hospital wrapped in blankets. Except there weren’t three figures next to me, but two. Where was my youngest sibling Niko? Matter of fact, I hadn’t seen him all day! Where the heck did he go!

10 hours.  In just a measly 10 hours my life had fallen to shackles. I lost 5 family members and had no money to take care of the remaining two. Now I was the oldest in my family, sitting in my house, with nobody to pay the bills or do whatever the heck adults do. Speaking of, there were no medical bills for me to pay for some reason which I thought was odd. Usually they have to find out if patients are dead or not since it is hard to observe from just looking, so why didn’t they check this time?

 Knock Knock.

“Hey, that's the girl who was collecting rocks yesterday.” A familiar looking man said to me. It was the two guys from yesterday. “Hey little girl, your parents owe us money. How are you going to fix that?” I stared at them with a look of mixed fear and confusion. At that moment they both violently grabbed one arm of each of my two remaining younger siblings.

 “NO! LET GO OF THEM!” I shrieked while running up to them and attacking them with all my might. Of course I couldn’t do much because I was only 7 and they were full-grown old men. 

    They snickered at me and walked off with my siblings in their clutches.

    “Hey little girl, we’ll be back, and when we are, you’d better have the rest of our money. These two will just be a bit of collateral for now.”

 All alone. I was all alone and nobody was left. I was seven years old, what could I possibly do by myself while being seven years old.

Chapter 2: The Underground Cities

    I guess I should inform you of the current situation. I am 19 years old and I’m an official detective now. It's been twelve years since the ‘Incident’ and I have made some friends. To add, I am also now in an underground city. Now that I mention it, I should probably explain how that works.

The underground cities are complicated. They were implicated around 4000 years ago, and nobody knows why or how. What we do know is that these cities' physics are way different from the main world. Each underground city is different from the next. Underground cities are unique to the state they are located in the main world. There are no countries in this universe. For perspective, my state, Hubith, is a larger one. There are around 14 million inhabitants in the main world section and the underground city section.

Our underground city has a quality of persistence. Certain things in the city follow the traits of the city. An example of our underground city would be the trams that take you from place to place. If there were an attack on the trams, they would keep traveling till their destination like there was no problem to begin with. 

People's brains perform faster in the underground cities, which is why it is said that people grow up to be smarter down there. When people are born, they usually tend to stay in one state their whole lives, so I personally don’t know much about any other cities. My parents did tell me a few stories that I shared with my class when I was younger but besides that, all I really know is that Hubith’s underground city is said to be one of the best to live in since the people grow up persistently, because of the city's traits. 

Down here, you are ranked on your will power. Of course, the government tracks any achievements or significant things you have done regarding said will power and rank you. Nobody knows how they are able to know everything, or specifically what they even rank you on, but it’s kind of overlooked anyways. Currently, I am in the 19,974th highest spot. That is honestly pretty good considering 8 of the 14 million people who inhibit Hubith live down here.

Because you are ranked in this society, certain areas will only let people of a certain rank into their zones. Some stores only allow people below the 5 millionth spot into their stores while others only allow people below the 10,000th spot in. 

Life will always have its believers and deniers. There are certain citizens of high will power that live here. They are called the prohibitors and they are deniers. They think that the underground cities were only made for the most powerful people as a gift from god. The government believed that letting them do their own thing was a good option, but I think otherwise. They kill a lot of innocent civilians because of their beliefs.

“Larissa! We should probably go to Canith now. The trains are about to head out.” My best friend Jane Clark had made plans with me to go to the Canith garden today.

“I forgot about that. I don't really want to go there with you, why couldn’t you have booked a spot at Nature Park?” I groaned in response.

“I tried! They were fully booked until next week, and do you even know how expensive they are to book in the first place? I swear you have no regard for anything and anyone.”  She whispered.

“Oh I love money, I am just willing to request this much because you are paying.” I gave her a smile and she rolled her eyes at me. She is a very sweet girl who got her doctorate degree for medicine at a very young age. (Of course a lot of people graduate college at the age of 18 here, but she got her doctorate at the age of 16.) She just is sensitive when it comes to money, similar to me.

As we made our way to the train station, we saw a boy getting beat up by some prohibitors. He looked oddly familiar for some reason but I thought he just had one of those faces. Anyhow, It isn’t exactly our problem.

“STOP! What is wrong with you guys? Why would you attack someone who can’t even fend for themselves?” Jane took a stand in front of the boy. What the heck was C.J doing? (C.J Is the first letters of Jane Clarke) The two guys told C.J off and ran off.

“Thank you guys so much!” The kid praised me and Jane when I hadn’t even done anything myself.

“How old are you, kid? You should know that it isn’t safe to walk alone on the streets when you are a minor.” I asked him.

“I'm 16, turning 17 next month.” He replied.

If you asked me to describe the look on me and Jane’s faces, I don’t think I could. I was absolutely appalled, the guy looked like he was twelve!

“That haircut doesn’t do you justice.” I informed him.

Jane gave me a quick nip on the arm with a nasty look.

“Come with us for now, we will take you home later.” Jane picked him up by the arm and the three of us made our way for the train.