The sound of the closing door left behind a heavy silence, as if it had vacuumed all the air from the room. The metallic clack of the lock grinding into its socket violently severed her tie to the outside world. The Leader was gone. As the dense, crushing aura of authority he left in his wake slowly dissipated, only Serevia's absolute misery and exhaustion remained.
The young girl stood paralyzed in place for a long moment. Her legs had only just escaped the hours-long crushing grip of the coarse ropes, yet they prickled as if the blood hadn't fully returned, violently trembling as if they would fail to carry her weight. A single word the man had just spoken kept echoing through her mind: "Yesterday." That meant an entire night had bled away since the brutal struggle in the ruins.
She had remained bound to that chair in a rigid, unconscious state for hours. The exact second she processed this reality, the agony in her body multiplied a hundredfold. Her joints shrieked like rusted iron, and every microscopic movement drove needles deep into her muscles. A sinister, glacial shudder taking root in the hollow of her back and crawling straight up her spine to the nape of her neck violently seized her entire body. The room swelled with a stifling, artificial heat that violently contrasted with Caduta's freezing winter outside; yet the cold Serevia felt didn't cling to her skin—it rested deep in the marrow of her bones. This was the sickly, violent tremor of a spiking fever. Her teeth chattered as her shoulders involuntarily shuddered.
She dragged herself toward the cot by the wall with jagged, violently unbalanced steps. Every stride felt impossibly heavy and agonizing, as if gravity itself had multiplied. The minuscule distance warped into a desert stretching for miles before her eyes. She dragged her hand against the wall as she walked, desperately thrashing to stay on her feet by leaning on the cold, smooth surface.
By the time she reached the bed, her knees threatened to completely buckle. She clamped her hand around the iron headboard; the exact second the freezing metal grazed her fever-scorched palm, she flinched, but she refused to let go. That chunk of iron served as the absolute only solid anchor she could cling to in the world right now.
She collapsed onto the edge of the mattress, surrendering her entire dead weight. As she bowed her head, she anchored her eyes to the old, mud-caked boots on her feet, their seams violently ruptured. They looked completely alien, unbearably filthy inside this sterile, spotless room. She reached for the laces with violently trembling hands. Her fingers lacked all strength; untangling the knots felt like the most impossible labor in the world. Gasping for air and groaning with effort, she pried her boots off one by one and shoved them aside. The heavy, damp reek of old leather bled into the pure air of the room.
She refused to strip off a single piece of her old, rotting clothes. The cardigan, the sweater, the filthy trousers... they all served as her armor, clinging to her like a second skin. Removing them meant baring herself to absolute vulnerability, and Serevia entirely lacked the tolerance to strip down, to lose even one more protective layer right now.
Forcing her ruined body, she dragged herself between the sheets. The exact second she laid her head on the pillow, the violent cramp in her neck slightly loosened its grip, but the agony refused to die. She clamped her trembling fingers around the blanket and hauled it over herself—past her chin, her nose, dragging it all the way over her head. She imprisoned herself beneath the covers, sealing herself inside a dark, suffocatingly warm cave. She desperately, madly craved to turn completely invisible, to shut out the world, the gray sky, the Leader, and the bloody phantom of Torn... to leave everything outside.
She curled into a fetal position beneath the blanket, violently pulling her knees tightly against her chest. Her body burned with fever, throbbing with the sheer agony of a brutal beating. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the pitch-black void failed to deliver peace; it merely forced her to feel the pulsing agony tearing through her flesh with agonizing clarity. There, buried beneath the covers, she prayed to melt away and cease to exist within the stifling heat of her own breath.
Serevia locked her eyelids together with a crushing, almost physically painful pressure; yet even the absolute darkness proved entirely inadequate to strangle the deafening chaos violently tearing through her mind, or to kill the agony holding her body hostage. The heat trapped beneath the blanket managed to slightly thaw her violently shivering bones, but the void carved by that scorching starvation—by the absolute absence of a single bite of food for days—expanded like a massive black hole beneath her ribs. Her stomach no longer growled; it violently contracted, shriveling from the emptiness to warp into a pit of acid actively thrashing to digest its own lining. This starvation had mutated far beyond mere physical agony; it had become a brutal torture that clouded her mind and choked her thoughts in a thick, suffocating fog.
Last night... How profoundly different absolutely everything could have been.
If only she had managed to smuggle those two pieces of metal, those tickets to salvation, out of the chaos, out from amidst the reek of dust and gunpowder in that ruin; she would have awakened to an entirely different morning, cradled in the arms of a completely different fate. What had slipped right through her fingers wasn't merely two Sarcos-manufactured weapons, but the absolute possibility of a hot meal to fill her stomach and a secure sanctuary. Every time she calculated the sheer value those barrels and mechanisms would fetch on the black market, her insides violently twisted. Who knew exactly how much they were worth? She imagined the rations she could have bought with that money, the phantom room where she could have finally warmed herself. Yet it all remained buried in history as a strangled desire, a dream that never drew breath.
The absolute butcher of these dreams, of these fragile crumbs of hope, was undeniable: the blue-eyed executioner.
When the Leader's phantom materialized behind her closed eyelids, the young girl violently contorted her face, buried deep in the pillow, with absolute disgust and pure fury. The man had manifested amidst that wreckage like an angel of death, violently scything down every shred of life around him. He hadn't merely obliterated Serevia's plans; he had eradicated absolutely every breathing thing in that place. The people... He had executed so many souls in a single strike without even blinking an eye, as if they were absolute nothingness, as if they were mere specks of dust demanding to be purged.
That freezing, absolute expressionlessness igniting in his eyes with every single squeeze of the trigger, that terrifying professionalism, violently forced the bile from Serevia's stomach straight up into her mouth. The emotion called mercy had long since been violently scrubbed from the very genetics of this man and this entire system.
This sheer brutality stood as the masked, flesh-and-blood incarnation of the Sarcos dictatorship. The corpses sprawling across the floor, the stones mutating into pools of blood, and dead center of it all, that figure casually walking, taking meticulous care not to dirty his combat boots... Serevia's face twisted even further at these violently resurrected scenes. What kind of hellish world was this? What kind of twisted justice?
And the ultimate question flashed like a blinding neon sign in the pitch-blackest corner of her mind: Why me?
For her to have slipped through so many corpses, so much absolute death, and to currently be drawing breath in this bed, in this spotless yet prison-reeking room, stood as a miracle that violently tested the absolute limits of logic. Or perhaps it was a curse... Why hadn't the executioner pulled the trigger? Why had he butchered absolutely everyone else yet left this "thief girl" alive? The absolute unknown carved her up from the inside out like a blade far sharper than starvation. Still... Whatever the actual reason, the air flooding her lungs remained absolutely real. Her heart continued to hammer against her ribcage.
She had to live. She had to violently cling to life out of pure spite for this man, this regime, this absolute starvation. Because somewhere out there—perhaps trapped behind these walls, perhaps at the absolute opposite end of the city—the possibility still breathed that Torn remained alive. Her brother... If that innocent child branded with the mutant mark hadn't already bled out on the freezing tables of the laboratories, Serevia entirely lacked the luxury of surrendering. To violently resist until the day she reunited with her brother and tore herself from the grip of that blue-eyed dictator—or until her own breath entirely failed her—remained the absolute sole purpose of her violently trembling body beneath this blanket.
Her eyelids violently surrendered their resistance, collapsing a fraction further with every passing second as if invisible lead weights had been chained to their tips. Every single time her eyelashes brushed together, her mind drifted closer to that hot, pitch-black void, to that foggy abyss where consciousness entirely shut down. Yet her body... This mound of flesh, violently battered by absolute exhaustion, fought back like a stubborn enemy absolutely refusing to surrender to sleep. The agony gnawing deep into the marrow of her bones, the cramps violently knotting her muscles, and the sticky, suffocating heat radiating from her fever kept the young girl violently suspended on that razor-thin, jagged line between wakefulness and passing out. As every single cell in her entire body violently throbbed, drifting to sleep felt less like rest and entirely like a desperate thrashing to escape.
Right as her consciousness prepared to plunge entirely into those murky waters, that familiar, metallic crack violently tore through the silence of the room.
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Click.
The grind of the gears locking into their socket rang out like a blaring alarm bell in Serevia's brain. As the cold beads of sweat pooling on her forehead carved a path down her temple into the pillow, she forced her eyes open with a violently trembling, agonizing effort. Her vision blurred, and the world violently spun around her, but the sheer instinct of danger violently forced her to stay awake, desperately thrashing to sharpen that blur into focus. Clenching her jaw and straining far beyond her limits, she locked her focus onto the light bleeding into the room.
When the heavy metal door violently ground open, the silhouette stepping inside wasn't one of the masked giants Serevia expected, nor one of those killing machines sheathed in black uniforms.
Standing across from her was a girl, presumably her own age or perhaps a year or two younger. The most glaring detail—the one that violently scrambled Serevia's perceptions—was her face. It was entirely bare. She wore neither the terrifying, bug-faced gas masks of Sarcos nor the pathetic, makeshift scraps of cloth tied on to ward off Caduta's toxic air... Absolutely nothing. Amidst this sterile hell, this stranger's bare face looked shockingly defenseless, shockingly human. This nakedness actively screamed that breathing the air in this place posed absolutely zero threat to this girl; on the contrary, it proved she was an intrinsic piece of this very world.
The silver tray clutched in the girl's hands, violently gleaming as it reflected the overhead lights, stood as the absolute only spark of brightness slicing through the suffocating gloom of the room.
The stranger glided inside with silent, measured strides. She anchored her eyes not to the floor or the walls, but directly onto the wretched heap sprawled across the bed; yet her stare harbored no lethal gleam. She set the tray onto the table with a faint clink. The exact second the steel grazed the wood, the aroma bleeding into the room violently resurrected the acid well burning in Serevia’s stomach.
As she forced her head off the pillow and stared at the tray, the sight completely strangled the breath in her throat.
This was no mere meal; this was an absolute myth down in the slums of Caduta, a legend whispered in the world of sewer rats and the forsaken. A thick, heavily portioned meat stew still steaming with heat rested on the tray, flanked by boiled vegetables burning with a vivid orange rather than the usual rotting gray, and slices of bread that looked flawlessly white and impossibly soft. These were the "clean" rations spoken of only in fairy tales, feasts the wretched souls who refused to sell their honor and snitch to Sarcos could never even glimpse in their wildest dreams. After surviving in a world choked by mold and rust, this rich, spiced aroma flooding her nostrils made Serevia violently dizzy.
Her starvation violently eclipsed her terror for a fleeting heartbeat. As her stomach thrashed with an agonizing cramp at the sight, she found herself utterly unable to tear her eyes away from that forbidden treasure on the silver platter. This plate felt less like a blessing and entirely like a lethal test laid out before her.
The heavy thud of the tray striking the solid wood violently fractured the tension in the room like fragile glass. As the young girl took a step back after dropping her burden, the expression pooling on her face harbored less pure terror and far more the shadow of a profound, restless dread. Even though Serevia entirely lacked the strength to peel her head off the pillow, she drove her narrowed, fiercely untrusting gaze through her lashes straight into the stranger. Her senses dulled behind the suffocating fog of her fever, violently tearing the reality around her into shattered fragments.
As if the sickness agonizing her bones for days and the cursed infection scorching her lungs weren't enough, she had plummeted into the role of the victim in her very own game. The trap she had meticulously woven thread by thread purely to survive had violently turned on her, warping into a heavy shackle binding her own feet. While she plotted to play the hunter, she had morphed into the absolute prey; she had ensnared herself between the steel teeth of the trap in those ruins. And now, trapped inside these white walls, inside this sterile hell, she violently thrashed against the invisible fire gnawing at her flesh.
Defying her rapidly blurring vision, she desperately thrashed to focus on the silhouette towering across from her, to dissect her every detail. A loose, nearly unraveling clasp gathered the stranger's brunette hair at the nape of her neck as it cascaded down her shoulders. The way those strands gleamed beneath the artificial lights of the room forged a violently stark contrast against Serevia's own filthy, matted hair. The girl's pale skin burned with a vividness that screamed for attention amidst this suffocating gloom.
Serevia desperately wanted to pinpoint the color of the eyes burning in that vivid face, to plunge into the depths of her gaze. Hunting for a clue, perhaps a threat, or perhaps even mercy... Yet her eyelids felt so crushingly heavy and her mind swam in such a dense fog that the girl's eyes remained nothing more than blurred smears of color, indistinguishable halos. The harder she thrashed to focus, the more violently the throbbing in her skull spiked, twisting the image into an indistinguishable mess.
But a single detail violently clawed at her mind, tearing right through that curtain of fog: The mask.
This girl's face lacked the mechanical Sarcos mask that concealed her breath and severed her from the outside world. Her mouth, her nose, every single inch of her face was entirely bare, directly dragging the air of this room into her lungs exactly like Serevia. This absolute nakedness actively screamed a single reality. She had to be someone violently torn from the toxic streets of Caduta, dragged here from the very heart of that squalor. One of those nameless servants Sarcos had integrated into their regime, enslaving the "lowers" with the mere promise of survival or a full stomach... Absolutely no other explanation existed. Only lungs accustomed to breathing the lethal venom of Caduta could walk around this comfortably, this unmasked.
Perhaps she was one of her own people... But now, even if she didn't wear the enemy's uniform, she wore their invisible collar tightly around her neck.
The silhouette inside the white overalls violently flinched the exact second she noticed Serevia part her cracked lips, preparing to hurl a question. The sudden, raw panic igniting in the young girl's eyes fed directly on the sheer terror of the invisible cameras watching the room or the colossal shadow lurking behind the door. Wiping her violently trembling hands against her apron, she cut Serevia off in a tone bordering on a whisper yet dripping with absolute, desperate begging, desperately thrashing to strangle Serevia's voice before it could even start.
"Don't... Please, don't say a single word." She slashed a fugitive glance toward the door, then ruthlessly locked her eyes back onto the bed. "Eat this... Just eat it and keep your mouth shut."
The exact second she finished her sentence, she violently spun on her heels in pure panic, as if every single second she remained in this room robbed a year from her life. She lunged for the door, entirely refusing Serevia the chance to even say "Wait," denying her even a single breath of objection. The heavy mass of metal slammed shut with a deafening crash, instantly followed by the razor-sharp crack of that damned lock; it echoed twice, violently sealing Serevia's absolute isolation once more.
The silence left behind didn't stand alone this time; it was violently shattered by the intoxicating, mind-numbing aroma of food bleeding into the sweet air of the room.
Defying the absolute agony tearing through her back, Serevia forced herself upright in the bed with a jagged, agonizing motion. When her eyes locked onto that gleaming tray resting on the table, her stomach thrashed with an agonizing cramp at the sight of this visual feast. The plate resting on that tray could never transcend a mere hallucination down in the squalor of Caduta. Chunks of meat floating in a thick, steaming sauce... Actual meat. Not soy or insect protein; red meat that fell apart shred by shred, its aroma alone enough to drive a person entirely mad. Flanking it were boiled carrots and peas radiating a vivid, vibrant orange rather than decaying into gray... And that white bread resting on the edge of the plate looked as flawlessly soft as a cloud, as smooth as pure cotton.
As her starvation violently lashed her willpower like a physical whip, she found herself utterly unable to remain in the bed a single second longer. She violently tore the blanket off herself and planted her bare feet against the floor. Even though the freezing hardwood scorched her fever-burning soles, her eyes remained absolutely blinded to everything but the feast resting on that table.
She reached the table with violently unbalanced, drunken strides. She clamped her trembling hands around the backrest of the chair, leaned her nose toward the plate, and dragged in a deep, lung-filling breath. The aroma of the spices... Thyme, black pepper, and exotic aromatics she didn't even know the names of violently scorched her windpipe, driving her salivary glands into pure madness.
She reached for the pitcher resting right beside it. The freezing touch of the glass sent a violent shudder through her fingertips. The heavy glug-glug sound echoing as she poured the water into the empty glass played like the most breathtaking melody someone dying of thirst in a desert could ever hear. Crystal clear, sediment-free, completely uncalcified water... She raised the glass to her lips, bracing to feel the freezing relief of that life-giving liquid.
Right at that exact second, the venomous seed dropping into her mind violently froze her movements like a stone statue.
She stopped dead. The glass hung suspended in the air mere millimeters from her lips.
Sarcos... This was a Sarcos stronghold. She rested in the absolute clutches of that hell where humans were used as laboratory rats, where mercy was branded an absolute weakness. Why would the Leader feed a thief, a fugitive, this flawlessly? Why would he lay out a king's banquet before her? What was the absolute, bloody price buried beneath this generosity? The paranoia violently tearing through her mind entirely strangled the screams of her starvation. What if this water concealed one of those tasteless, odorless chemicals? What if this meat was laced with drugs designed to make her talk, to violently shatter her resistance, or to drown her consciousness in a fog? Perhaps this was simply the final, lavish meal offered to a condemned prisoner before execution.
She slowly set the glass back onto the table with violently trembling fingers. She couldn't drink it. Even though her throat felt as dry and jagged as desert sand, that pitch-black suspicion absolutely refused to let a single drop slide down her windpipe.
She ruthlessly locked her gaze back onto the food. She clamped her hand around the metal fork resting on the table. She prodded the chunks of meat with its tines, crushed the vegetables, and tore open the soft center of the bread. The sight remained absolutely flawless. Not a single discoloration, not a single bizarre odor, not a single trace of powdered residue... Everything looked so terrifyingly normal, so flawlessly innocent, that Serevia's terror multiplied tenfold. Poison didn't always taste bitter; sometimes it hid buried deep inside the sweetest, hottest meal. And Serevia continued to stir that flawless feast with the fork in her hand, entirely blind to whether absolute death or absolute life rested at the bottom of the plate.
