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The N109 Zone is filled with all kinds of people – some bad, some good, some good people making bad choices, and some people who wouldn’t know good if it hit them in the face with a right hook. Same goes for the children of the N109 Zone – some are naughty, some are nice, but most of them are just…in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s not a very kind place to be raised, the N109 Zone, and most people who live there learn that fact very young.
Despite this, there is one day that all the children who inhabit the N109 Zone look forward to – Christmas Day. Not necessarily because they have great home lives, or because they’re particularly religious, though some of them do and are, but because every child knows that they will always have a present waiting for them on Christmas morning, no matter the state of their family’s finances.
This began happening a few years after the hierarchy of the N109 Zone came to be decided, the power structures falling into place in the same way that a herd of wildebeest trample the savannah – leaving the ones without power to scatter and hide in the wreckage caused by the Chronorift Catastrophe until the dust settled. Families and businesses that had been safe and profitable prior to it, found themselves trapped in a darker world than they had ever expected, and when one’s livelihood and worldly possessions are all stuck in that world, there isn’t much many can do to escape, without becoming destitute.
So, these families stayed, and learned to adapt, or fell into obscurity or worse. The children of these families continued to go to school, to meet friends for play dates, to do homework and practice music lessons or sports, though playing at the playgrounds after school or other activities was now out of the question. What with Wanderers and all manner of seedy street life now flocking to the eternal night of the N109 Zone, parents began to keep their children inside more, or to hire security for them if they happened to be wealthy enough, though that included precious few families.
The families who did have that luxury – the ones with power of some kind, be it money or fame or business ventures – often spoke of the leader of the N109 Zone in hushed tones around their children. They spoke of the man who filled the power vacuum in that area in the wake of the Chronorift Catastrophe, the man who has a bounty higher than most people could imagine, and yet no face to put to the name… Sylus.
Of course, everyone in the N109 Zone had heard that name by the time a few years had passed; from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high, there wasn’t a single person who lived there who didn’t know at least who Sylus was, and the name of his faction – Onychinus. However, knowing a name does not, as many think, make its owner more well known and understood. In fact, it often has the opposite effect.
Rumors abounded regarding the leader of the N109 Zone, not least of which was whispered amongst these social elites’ children, that of him having horns and a tail, and sometimes even wings of shadow. Many parents then likened him to a fiend, to a devil or a demon, a boogey man to scare their children to sleep or to get them to come inside, much like the tales of Krampus, from olden days. However, the truth is often far stranger than rumor.
Not every family has the means to hire bodyguards or to live a normal life amidst darkness, of course, let alone participate in the usual holiday traditions during the winter, and the N109 Zone’s families are no exception to this rule. In fact, the area has a greater percentage of them who don’t have the funds to do so, compared to Linkon City, Chansia City, Snowcrest, and other more…law-abiding locations. As such, it has a greater portion of children who, for a while after the Chronorift Catastrophe, received nothing for Christmas, and whose families were lucky if they could manage a Christmas dinner.
Then, one year, another rumor began circulating, though this was not amongst the upper echelons of the social hierarchy. It wasn’t spoken of in private schools, or at carefully arranged and supervised playdates. Instead, it began in the muddy back alleys, dingy storerooms of shops, and rundown public school hallways, where the children of the N109 Zone, who had begun to tire of the darkness and the dreariness of their surroundings, suddenly seemed…excited again.
For the first time in years, many of these children had received something for Christmas. Some had received tasty food, some of the younger ones received a small toy, and still others received an item of clothing or a book. Each gift was simple and needed, but clearly fresh or new – a small, unexpected bright spot of joy in an otherwise dull morning that had begun to seem no different than any other morning, despite the holiday.
The whispers started small – friends questioning each other to see if only they had received something, to see if anyone else had heard the caw of a crow the night before or seen a red wisp of something disappearing out the window or up a chimney. Children who had lost hope of believing in things like Santa or the Christmas spirit began wondering if, perhaps, there was such a thing, after all. Certainly, these gifts hadn’t come from their parents, as the children whose parents knew about the gifts had been just as surprised as the children themselves, so who else could it be but Santa?
Though there hadn’t been the sound of reindeer hooves, jingling sleighbells, or any of the usual signs that Santa had been to visit, the gifts spoke for themselves, as did the color palette of the gift giver – red. Every gift was done up in beautiful red wrapping, with a lovely black ribbon and a white name tag bearing the name of the child to whom the gift was addressed, all of which match the colors of Santa’s outfit. Red for the coat, black for the boots and belt, and white for the trim and beard.
No one ever saw the gift giver, no matter how late they would try to stay up, no matter how vigilant they were, and no matter how quickly they ran to the window at the slightest sound outside on the night before Christmas. And yet…the gift would somehow be placed where the child could find it the next morning, even if there was no stocking hung and no tree in the living room.
Two very different rumors, which some might even say are the antithesis of each other, circulated through the social lives of the children of the N109 Zone, and eventually both reached the mechanical ears of a beautiful black crow. Its bright red eyes flickered as it glanced down at the sidewalk beneath where it perched, its metallic claws curled about a tilted streetlight’s metal frame, picking up the scene below for the one who saw through its eyes.
A young boy, probably about eight years old or so, could be seen walking beside another boy who was a bit older. Judging by their dark hair and similar facial features, they were likely siblings, or at least cousins. One of them was wearing a shiny new pair of glasses, and the other was carrying a brand new book, though both of them were wearing conspiratorial grins as they whispered about their gifts to each other. The crow cocked its head to the side as the boys passed, turning enough to keep them in its view as they passed beneath its perch, and one of them glanced up to see the crow looking at them.
“Tell Santa we said ‘Thank you’ for us, will ya?” the older one said with a grin, tossing the crow a lazy salute as he turned back to face forward. The younger one looked back as well, too, flashing the crow a happy grin as he hugged his new book to his chest, then leaned close to the older boy.
“That looks just like the crow I saw last night!” he hissed in an approximation of a stage whisper, and the older boy just elbowed him playfully as they turned a corner. Whatever was said next was now out of earshot of the crow, which hopped on the street sign and tilted its head again, as if listening to something no one else could hear.
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High in one of the towering skyscrapers that dominated the N109 Zone’s eternal night skyline, Sylus sat before a computer screen, sipping from an etched crystal glass. The bubbles of the gin fizz he was drinking tingled against his tongue as he set the glass down on the dark mahogany desk, and his sanguine irises scanned the view from the crow’s optics as it panned across the screen. The light from the screen shone on a gold coin as it flipped lazily through the air and landed tails up in a large palm, before being tossed again and landing, this time, on heads. A smile curved Sylus’ lips as he lifted the glass to them once more, taking another long sip and draining the last of the drink.
“You’re very welcome.”