“…”
It felt like a long dream. Memories of an ancient era, fragments of illusions seen through the eyes of a stranger. A strange dream where he was called Nameless, engaging in philosophical exchanges with two sisters, Eve and Canaan.
Rising, Danan yanked the connect-cable from his mechanical arm’s socket. Stretching to loosen stiff joints, the young man glanced at the low hum of his steel limb, clenching its metal palm.
Dreams were merely memory sorting, a brain function to bury unneeded pasts. Feeling you glimpsed another’s dream was a delusion akin to synesthesia; believing you became someone else, an illusion. His name was Danan—not some embodiment of a nameless void like Nameless.
“…”
Yet the dream felt unnervingly real. An unfamiliar place, a sensation of being there. Recalling the bizarre daydream, Danan shook his head, deeming it absurd. Peeling off his sweat-soaked shirt, he headed to the bathroom.
“…” Gray hair, pitch-black eyes. “…” His brown skin bore countless white scars, painfully vivid. “…” The mechanical arm replacing his right limb gleamed dully.
Twisting the faucet, he cupped rust-tinged water in his hands. Washing his face with the gradually reddening liquid, he dried it with a parched towel. The brittle fabric plucked at his stubble with each wipe, staining its gray weave a faint brown.
Sighing deeply, Danan touched his skin with steel fingers, glanced at the sleeping Eve and Lils, donned a fresh shirt, and strapped on black body armor.
He had something to do before meeting the security soldier. A ritual, mocked as foolish and meaningless by undercity dwellers. But for Danan, it was near-sacred, repeated almost yearly. Draping a coat over his armor, he holstered firearms and sheathed the sword Helles at his waist.
“…”
Weapons and ammo—just take what’s needed. Two spare magazines, three speed-loaders with magnum rounds. If he spotted a Dead Parade thug before his errand, he’d kill them. If someone bared fangs to harm him, a bullet to the forehead sufficed. That never changed—a survival tactic in the undercity’s unforgiving code.
But… Danan now had room to question if that was right. In the undercity’s brutal survival-of-the-fittest logic, questioning the law of the strong was a matter of individual sentiment. The strong ruled absolutely; the weak had no right to object. Exploitation, theft, murder—all justified by weakness, with no room for emotion or thought.
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Grabbing a bottle from the fridge, wrapping it in newspaper and padding, Danan muted his footsteps, slipped on combat boots, and cautiously opened the door. Lukewarm air brushed his cheeks; the stench of maggot-ridden corpses stung his nose.
The alley-facing apartment wasn’t exactly safe, its intruder-defense systems lackluster. A moment’s lapse, and vagrants might storm in, guns blazing. Grudges led to residents being killed by third parties—a relentless environment. Protecting oneself and cohabitants required investing in security.
A vagrant, staring with murky eyes, drew a filthy revolver, cocking the hammer. As his finger grazed the trigger, a hole pierced his forehead.
Before Danan could draw, the door’s recognition turret deployed, firing at unregistered targets. One, two, three shots—gunfire echoed, piling corpses carelessly, blood pooling into the alley’s drains.
The weak had no choice. Even stifling their breath to survive, the undercity forced people to trample weaker souls. A bottomless abyss, no lowest rung—weak preying on weaker, all stolen by the strong in an infinite hell. Scavengers swarmed the dead, harvesting fresh organs, stuffing them into blood-crusted containers—a mundane sight in the undercity, unworthy of shock.
Descending iron stairs, ignoring the squelch of flesh, Danan collided with a boy. Emaciated cheeks, exhausted eyes. The boy, avoiding Danan’s cold gaze, swiped a magazine while passing. Danan aimed his magnum.
“…” Show weakness here, and you’re next to die. “…” Kindness or leniency was a fuse to death.
“…”
Clicking his tongue, Danan holstered the revolver, lit a cigarette, and exhaled purple smoke. Silencing the urge to kill, he questioned why he didn’t pull the trigger as usual.
The undercity’s law wasn’t easily overturned. One person’s defiance would be crushed by absolute reality, reduced to dust. Danan knew this—knew ideals were impossible to realize.
No dreams, no hope. Staring at despair, accepting reality, he grasped at life. Compartmentalizing—this is this, that is that—sinking into darkness offered surrender to slow ruin. Drifting toward destruction, killing death’s shadow, praying for life’s meaning in the undercity’s trash heap, only to die unfulfilled. Danan’s fate, he quietly accepted, was to die with nothing gained.
He didn’t want to die. Obviously—who could forgive dying before finding life’s meaning?
He wanted to live. Naturally—he wasn’t living to die.
To survive, he trampled others, killed to deny death, proving his strength by crushing the weak. Yet this logic caged him in a sinful prison, an infernal theory binding him. In a mad, violent world where sanity crumbled, Danan faced two men blocking his path.
“Hey, buddy, let’s talk,” one said, leering.
A gunshot rang, bursting the man’s head. Before the gun smoke cleared, Danan crouched, deploying his mechanical arm’s ultrasonic blade, thrusting it into the other’s gut.
“Ngh—!” the man gasped.
Blood dripped down the blade, staining the asphalt red.
“I’m not soft,” Danan said, twisting the blade, crushing organs and bone. Kicking the groaning man, he aimed the magnum at his forehead. “I didn’t kill that kid for a reason.”
“R-reason?” the man choked.
“Want to know?”
“—”
“I don’t know either.”
The man’s head shattered like a burst tomato, brain matter exposed. Wiping blood from his gun, Danan glared at vagrants peeking from the alley’s depths, then strode toward the main street.
