Against his better judgement, Leo decided to accompany Haily as they had discussed prior. A food distributor was close by and going to open soon, so they talked about their days while walking towards it. Haily worked as one of the women who distributed morning rations, so she had many different stories of her interactions each day. Luckily, she was never in any danger due to the presence of the guard.
Puritans had tried to pull resources from the guard on morning rations in a few years ago. It didn't go well; multiple deaths and riots erupted that morning as the rations were completely hoarded by various gangs.
Leo wasn't sure if they had done so in just the section he had been living in, or if it was slum wide. All Leo knew was that later in the day at distribution of dinner, the guard was back in full force and order was kept.
The pair approached the distributor, the line was already 1 block long, with more slumfolk lining up behind them. Leo was actually surprised that the line wasn't longer by now, as the distributor was likely going to open in the next few minutes. Looking to his side, Haily seemed to be breathing heavier than normal, and then it dawned on him.
Leo hadn't thought about it before, but while he was no longer pressured by the mask, others around him were not spared it's strange and unnatural influence. Immediately realizing his mistake, Leo understood that they would be unable to complete this date.
"Haily, are you feeling ok? We can just get dinner, and I'll take you to your shelter."
The frail girl looked over to him.
"Ah, thank you. It's weird, I was feeling perfectly fine earlier today. I must be coming down with a fever." She said with a sigh.
Leo tried to shift the mask as far from Haily as he could, though doing so without tipping off others that he had something hidden under his clothing was not easy. The line started to move shortly after which made Leo's objective much easier and it wasn't long before the pair were at the front of the line.
Looking at the women who were in charge of the distribution of dinner, he grabbed some of the money sitting securely in his clothing; just enough to afford dinner. Handing it over she gave him a packet of rations. The packet was warm to the touch and carried enough nutrition to satiate someone for 2 days.
Not that missing dinner was good for the slumfolk's health, but most couldn't afford to eat every day. As Haily and Leo began to walk away, Leo took a brief look at one of the two guards standing watch over the distributor.
The guard were usually puritans that crossed a line, as unbelievable as that is to a slumfolk, a lowborn puritan sold by their parents for higher standing, or the occasionally 'lucky' slumfolk who had either broken by a game or captured and sold by trafficker. There was a uniquely cruel process to the guards creation, even by puritan standards, but beyond that none of the slumfolk knew what it was.
The only thing that the slumfolk could tell is that those that came back as members of the guard were not the people they were before. Their humanity was lost long ago, and all that remained of the guard's being was the flesh and bone.
The masks they wore were similar to the pure masks that the puritans wore, and at a glance they could be mistaken for a pure mask. However, even just an additional second will tip off that the mask is a guard's mask.
A normal pure mask does not contain any blemish or markings, though after obtaining his own, Leo suspected they all contained similarly strange runes on the inside. In the guards' case, there was a single line of script written in the center of the mask from the top to the chin of the mask in black runes, marking them as no longer a member of the puritans' social hierarchy.
Leo was unsure if whatever was done to a guard member could be undone, or how long a member of the guard lived for as they seemed to rotate guards fairly regularly. Regardless of the answer the sheer brutality that they enacted, and their completely uncompromising loyalty to the puritans, kept the slumfolk in line. Not even the hardest criminal within the major gangs would dare crossing a guard.
The pair walked away and began to eat as they left for Haily's shelter. Eating in relative silence, Leo devoured his ration, while Haily was still not even halfway done by the time they arrived. The large simple structure could house a couple hundred slumfolk with ease, though most shelters were separated by gender; those that weren't were primarily used by masked couples or orphaned children.
The puritans didn't particularly enforce these usage rules; it was more out of customary respect by the slumfolk to protect those who needed protection. While there was plenty of horrible aspects of living in the slum, the slumfolk still had some dignity as humans. That wasn't to say that there were those in the slums that would try to disrupt this protection, but most of the larger gangs would crack down on this behavior.
Haily's shelter entrance was guarded by a single guard. Even having a single guard made it one of the nicer shelters in the slums.
"Well, have a good night, see you again soon?"
Haily smiled behind her mask, "Yes I think so, I work dinner shift for the next two days, so maybe the day after that?"
"Sounds good to me, same place?"
The frail girl nodded her head in agreement before turning towards the guard and walking forward. Haily showed her wristband that marked her eligible to enter the shelter, and the guard silently inspected it.
Gangs had tried to duplicate the wristbands before, but the guards, or rather the puritans, had made them in a peculiar way which was difficult to duplicate. The last attempt a few months ago led to a gang member being arrested, his fate unknown. Most likely to be used by the puritans to create a guard or as a plaything until he broke.
The guard nodded in approval before opening the door for Haily. Leo dared not get close during this process, mostly out of caution of if the guard could sense the pure mask under his clothing. He wasn't sure if the guard could, but Leo wasn't about to take that risk. Before the door closed, Haily turned and waved.
"Sleep well, I'll see you soon!"
Leo waved in return and began to walk away. After dropping Haily off, his mood dropped, and his mind shifted to how in the hell was he going to hide the pure mask.
Keeping it in his clothing was clearly not an option without severely impacting those around him. At first, he thought just hide it at the shelter, but he immediately dismissed the idea. The risk of someone finding it and stealing it from him was just too high. Not to mention that the shelter he was at wasn't guarded either.
His second thought was to use one of the abandoned buildings like the gangs did to hide from the guards. While an interesting prospect at first, the logistical issue lay in how Leo would be able to determine which buildings were safe to stash the mask in. Stake it out for a week and hope no one goes into it?
While technically possible, Leo still had to eat and go to work, leaving it as an unrealistic option without an accomplice. Leo's mind continued to wander as he walked down Piper's Street, not really paying proper attention to his surroundings.
Maybe he could just keep it on him after all? Those people around him could just learn to accept his strange and unnerving new presence. In fact, why hide the mask, he should just put it on and...
The pure masks influence on his mind was clearly still strong, even just a moment of aimless thought threatened to bring him under its control. Leo couldn't help but continue to deepen his fear of just what he had done in putting it on.
Continuing his walk, he came to the thought of maybe he just does stash it away somewhere and forget it existed. No one but himself knew he had it; the two Hollow members only knew that a puritan was in an alley way for some reason. They were unlikely to put much thought into it.
Leo hoped at least.
Giving a sigh, Leo looked around and found that he had walked further than he had intended to and night was beginning to fall. He was approaching another section of the slums. But maybe that was the perfect place to hide it?
Before living in his current sector, Leo had lived in multiple different sectors of the slums in the seven years after he left his parents. Now that he thought about it, his parents' sector wasn't too far from here. Leo didn't really know if they had still lived there, or if his siblings had stuck around either.
Another thought for another time, but until he figured out his current situation, Leo wouldn't want to subject his family to the awful power of the mask.
As he walked, Leo began to take note of a strange phenomenon. While it wasn't exactly vibrant, the night life in the slums wasn't usually this empty. Leo hadn't bumped into a single person this entire time, and he had been walking for nearly an hour since he had left Haily's shelter.
He continued to walk but paid more attention to his surroundings. A couple of minutes passed, and Leo finally understood. It was the pure mask under his clothing. Slumfolk generally had an aversion to anything to do with the puritans, partially due to the pure masks' effects, partially because contact with a puritan usually didn't end well for a slumfolk. That passive avoidance that was in every slumfolk's subconscious led to people avoiding walking near Leo.
One of the major issues with walking in the slums at night, especially for as long as Leo was, was being targeted by traffickers, gangs or streetwalkers. None of which were exactly company a normal person would try to keep.
The traffickers were well known lackies of the puritans, selling their fellow slumfolk out for improved treatment and permission to enter the upper side of the city for brief supervised visits to deliver their 'goods'. There were even rumors that in rare cases, a trafficker was adopted into a puritan's family and given a pure mask for many years well served. Though, Leo's opinion was that the more likely case is that the trafficker was turned into a guard.
Gangs were fairly straight forward; they would usually use violence to achieve any of their desired motives. The most common outcome for interacting with a gang was either you are losing anything on your person, being coerced into doing something for them, being beaten for not doing something for them, or joining them. This made dealing with them usually fairly simple.
Streetwalkers were the rarest and by far the most dangerous of the three though. Rumors are that they were slumfolk that puritans were especially brutal with, culminating in their minds being broken. Leo had seen one once before years ago when he still lived with his family while walking with his father. At the time, they had to travel to a distributor at the other end of the sector as the ones nearby were out of rations and had taken too long before they got back.
The creature that Leo saw was barely recognizable as a human. Looking back, the mask it wore was completely black and gave off a similar pressure as a pure mask, but to a twisted and mind-numbing degree in a way. If Leo hadn't seen it himself, he would have laughed at anyone who said that black masks existed; but unfortunately, he knew better.
Leo shivered thinking about that streetwalker but continued on his way. His steps quietly echoing into the night.