The following text is the prolouge to the Monkey Club Saga, the starting point of the series.
Chapter One
It was around midnight, the sky outside of Kevin Zalotto's window was a cloudless navy, blocked by floating billboards and distant shapes that flickered past. The brown-haired teen, freshly nineteen, was lying on his belly on the sofa, watching a documentary about how the earth used to look a long time ago, before The Rift.
If Kevin had been paying attention in his history class, he would know that around three thousand years ago the earth was split in half, each side left to drift through space alone. Humanity had only survived through sheer perseverance, efforts to reconnect the two halves were fruitless and eventually they became lost to one another.
Kevin lived in what the World Government had labelled 'mass accomodation', essentially a set of skyscrapers around the edge of each half, some people believed that they were built like this to balance the planet, others thought it was just because it looked cool. The specific building that Kevin lived in was creatively named 'TE-238', the two hundred and thirty-eighth building built around The Edge.
The brown-haired boy had been living alone for a year now, and whilst he enjoyed having his own space, he deeply missed his family; due to overwhelming population on 'Sinister Diminium' (the name of the half of earth Kevin lived on), when a child turned 18 they were moved quite forcibly to another skyscraper as there were generally no available rooms in their parents' home skyscraper by the time they had reached the age (unless a neighbour had died). Around 7 months ago the glass-tunnel that connected Kevin's building to his parents had been destroyed by a group of invaders know as 'The Saints', a rather ironic name, Kevin had thought to himself after reading the news on his head-set the morning of the incident. Kevin had considered using his credit savings to go the long way around to his parents' building but put the thought to the rest when he calculated how long it would take to walk through all of the buildings that fenced 'The Edge'.
The toxic atmosphere of Sinister Diminium made it incredibly lethal for oxygen-breathing creatures to dwell upon, and even gaining permission to use an oxygen-regulated hovercraft on the surface was infamously difficult, Kevin hadn't even bothered to try and get permission because he knew he would be so far down the list he would probably be dead by the time it was granted.
As Kevin thought about all of this, he found himself heating up, his anger at the World Government's lack of help (and disregard of his constant emails) was reaching an all time high. Then, without much cognitive thought, Kevin decided he would go right down to the Lobby and demand to see the person in charge of TE-238's Building and Restoration Comittee.
He yanked his Entry-Card out of his pocket and firmly pushed it into the card reciever on his door,
"Card unreadable." A monotone voice spat back out.
"Stupid thing." Kevin muttered as he wiped the pins of the card against his red jacket-sleeve.
"Card accepted, you have TWENTY-SEVEN minutes of travel-time left." The voice returned as the door slid left into the wall.
"Twenty-seven minutes, is that all?" Kevin complained, watching as a timer appeared on the top left of his neural display and began to count down.
The hallway of the sixty-seventh floor of TE-238, much like every other floor, stretched so far that a person without binoculars would greatly struggle to read the plaques that displayed the floor number at either end of the seemingly-endless corridor. Hundreds of doors identical to Kevin's were spread out equally across either wall, digital screens on each one listing the room number and occupants' names. Every now and again, a pair of steel doors broke the pattern, they were elevators that could transport inhabitants quickly to their desired floor, provided they had the clearance.
As Kevin trudged down the hallway towards his closest elevator he spotted one of his neighbours, Mr Mallard, an elderly man who enjoyed making smoothies at ungodly hours of the morning with, what Kevin considered to be, the loudest blender invented by man. Mr Mallard, in his 'advanced' age, was having a particularly rowdy argument with a painting hung on the wall, seemingly convinced it was his wife. Kevin did his best to shuffle past unseen as Mr Mallard began to lift his walking stick up into the air with intense malice.
"Welcome, Kevin Zalotto. Please enter the floor number you wish to visit." A similarly monotone voice greeted as two numbers lit up on the numberpad beside the doors, floor sixty-seven and the ground floor.
Kevin rolled his eyes, feeling offended that the machine had even asked when there was only one option, and pushed the ground floor button. The doors slid shut and Kevin felt the elevator begin to descend, knowing it would take a while, he sat down on the bench attatched to the far wall.