⌊Chapter 4⌉

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Project Neon was nothing too short of a hotspot for almost everyone in Adelmir. Work was stressful? Project Neon. Relationship troubles? Project Neon. Running from the cops and needs any money possible in order to survive, so goes through with that by making a deal with one of the biggest names in the criminal underworld? Project Neon. And that was exactly what Richard Alann needed to do. Andy had his disagreements with the idea, and Rich had heard them, but he decided to not heed them. If he couldn't break Alex out of prison, he'd have to buy him out. Then skip town. And leave everything he's ever known behind.

All in all, it could be worse.

As usual, Adelmir was drowned in cold rain from the skies, and the lights from the buildings and light posts reflected in the water running down the streets. People making their late night commute home or to a night shift at work either carried umbrellas or speed walking from one building to another to dodge the rain. There were a select few, though, who braved it and just walked out in the rain without much of a care. One of those people was Richard Alann. His face was hidden under a hat and a mask around his face. Blake had sovereign aides roam the streets of the city, but Rich, after a while, learned their route and went in a different direction. There were a lot of people in Adelmir who covered their faces and hid their identity from those around them. Sometimes if the sovereign aides cared enough they would stop people and ask for identification. Otherwise they would turn a blind eye to them.

The underground lab was about 10 minutes from Project Neon. It was underneath a small building that Andy used to sell his inventions from. The trapdoor into the undergrounds was hard to find and even harder to open. If it happened to be found and opened, there was a long hallway of cement. The door into the lab itself was metal with an overcomplicated passcode. It hadn't always been under the building, either, so there wasn't a chance that a previous owner would know of its existence. Andy had slowly installed it bit by bit around the time that Rich was accused of murder. The building was built atop an old mining caveat that wasn't used anymore, so it wasn't difficult to actually build the lab because he didn't need to dig out a whole underground building.

The route Rich took to get to Project Neon was one through dark alleyways. The lab and Project Neon was on the eastern side of Adelmir, which was considered the 'bad side,' so the alleys were a preferable place to go through. That was the exact reason Rich did it. More sovereign aides were attacked than people like Rich, so the aides seldom explored those parts. The alleys were riddled with dirt and rocks and rubble from buildings. Fire escapes were rusted from rain and neglect and windows were covered in cobwebs or broken in some parts. Unlike most of the buildings in the city (which were made of cool, grey, flat stones), the apartments and small stores were made from red, brown, and orange bricks. Weeds and grass grew out of the cracks in the cement, and near the edge of the city there was a tall wall that barricaded Adelmir with large sewer pipes behind metal grates. On the other side of that wall there was a bit of land and then the ocean. The wall wasn't a completely full barricade. Around the middle of the city where Black Tower was, there were two main bridges to connect the eastern and southern side to the northern and western side. Black Tower was on the northern and western side. That side of the city was larger so it placed the tower in the very middle. The northern and western half was more higher class while the eastern and southern half wasn't as nice. However, that side did have more culture to it.

The canal ran through the city and was deep enough that smaller boats and ships occasionally went through the city. The bridges would go up for the ships, but the main indicator one was passing through was the sound of the steam-powered vehicles echoing through Adelmir. It was normally around the 10 o'clock hours that ships would pass through. 10 AM and 10 PM, so as Rich made his way through the alleyways, the loud holler of a passing ship drowned in the rain to only sound like a faint yell from far away.

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