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Level 15
- Criminal accident on level 4
- Mary Shepard was born at 1:22
- Daniel Harris was born at 1:24
- Car accident on level 8
- Sofia Joy died at 1:25
Pale?blue screens scattered throughout the chamber kept flashing with new information. Without pause, one message after another. There were so many that no human mind could ever process them all.
“An astonishing machine,” the lady in black remarked. “It monitors the entire metro, without rest, endlessly. It’s like a giant eye that never blinks and sees into every corner and every street.”
“Indeed,” Dr. Wang nodded. “Truly the most advanced machine in the world.”
The lady in black stared intently at the blue holograms, where new data kept appearing over and over, reflecting in her strange, inhuman eyes. “Just imagine what Osirion could accomplish… if it were in the right hands.”
Dr. Wang looked at her and frowned. “Why do you hate this city so much, madam? Why do you hate everything we’ve built?”
“I love this city. I hate the people who own it.”
“Then you hate me.”
“Correct, doctor,” she replied without taking her eyes off the screens. “But that can change. Everything… here… can change.”
Dr. Wang studied her for a moment, then declared, “Your time is up. If security sees you here with me, we’ll both be in trouble. Leave.”
The lady in black obeyed. She turned and walked slowly toward the exit. “We have much work ahead of us, doctor. Both I and the council,” she added, her final words spoken from the doorway: “It’s up to you whose side you’ll stand on.”
Finchtown
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Level 6
When Amber was little, she imagined that somewhere high above, in the upper reaches of the city where she would never set foot, lived evil monsters that watched them constantly, controlling and judging them. Something like the gods from the old books people once believed in. But as she grew up, she slowly realized there were no monsters. No gods. Only people.
It would have hurt less if demons or supernatural beings existed, but reality was different. There were only two options: obey, or stand against them.
When they took Damien, Amber was left with only the second option.
And so she was here, crouched against the wall of one of those techno?laboratories where they dragged all the missing people from the lower levels. She shivered from the cold as large snowflakes fell onto her shoulders and head. From the implant on her forehead, a hologram projected the program she was about to upload into the building’s security system.
She exhaled slowly, a cloud of vapor leaving her lips, and looked up. In this city, you couldn’t really tell the difference between up and down. The buildings were so tall and massive that you couldn’t see their tops even from level 10. It was a gigantic labyrinth of interwoven structures stacked on top of each other, reaching high above the clouds and deep down toward the industrial bedrock.
She carefully peeked around the corner. Above the glass entrance made of opaque panels glowed a neon sign: Wittlinger’s Development Facility. She held her breath and pressed the release button on the hologram.
The lights and neon sign went dark. Voices of security guards echoed from inside, followed by gunfire.
But the shooting stopped quickly, and one of the guards crashed through a large window, flew across the street, and slammed into a car on the opposite side.
Then, from the shattered window, an enormous mechanical beast resembling a tiger leapt out. The machine opened its blood?stained jaws and roared into the night with an unnatural metallic voice.
Amber gasped and stumbled backward.
The mechanical beast noticed her and turned. Its glowing red eyes pierced her as it crept toward her through the snow, emitting a low metallic growl.
Amber felt her heart pounding in her throat. She froze. The mechanical monster stepped right up to her. The massive metal creature towered over the small girl and lowered its blood?smeared snout toward her.
Terrified, she pulled her face back slightly and whispered through tears, “Damien? Are you in there?”
The beast stopped. Mechanical clicking and soft grinding came from within. Its eyes shifted from red to blue. “Amber?” screeched the metallic voice from its maw.
“Damien!”
“What did you do? How did you know I was here?” the robotic body growled.
“I… It’s about the thing… I…”
Somewhere between the buildings, police sirens wailed.
The beast snapped its head toward the sound, staring down the snowy street. “We don’t have time. We need to go.”
Police cars burst from the far end of the street, racing toward them.
“Quick! Get on me!” Damien ordered.
Amber obeyed and climbed onto the back of the massive mechanical creature carrying Damien’s soul.
“Hold on tight.”
Gunshots cracked behind them. Damien bolted forward.
Metal paws slammed against the snowy ground as he sprinted through the streets. The cold night air and snowflakes stung Amber’s face, forcing her to squint. They were moving so fast the world blurred around her; she couldn’t tell where they were. All she heard was the pounding of powerful legs and the shriek of sirens behind them, punctuated by gunfire.
Damien veered left onto a narrow bridge connecting two buildings and stopped so abruptly Amber nearly fell off. She looked ahead and saw an armored vehicle blocking the opposite end, city guards in purple?black uniforms aiming their weapons.
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She gasped. “What do we do?”
The way they came was already blocked by police cars. The guards ahead raised their guns.
Damien scanned the surroundings. Beneath the bridge, a massive zeppelin drifted by, flashing a bright message: Charmitage Cyber Inc. wishes you a Happy New Year!
There was no other choice. He stepped back, ran, and jumped.
Amber screamed.
The mechanical paws landed on the zeppelin’s top. Damien scrambled for balance, then pushed off again. They soared across the chasm between buildings and crashed directly onto one of the market stalls in the pedestrian zone several floors below.
They smashed through the wooden roof and landed in the middle of a walkway attached to the building’s side, packed with drunk New Year’s revelers. Dance music thumped through the air.
Both of them scrambled up, and Amber climbed back onto Damien.
“What the hell is that?!” someone in the crowd screamed as panic erupted. People scattered in all directions while Damien charged forward.
He barreled through the packed walkway, knocking over tables and drinks as people fled screaming.
He ran along the railing that separated them from the bottomless abyss between the massive structures. When Amber lifted her head, she saw police cars racing along the walkway on the opposite side, blue lights flashing. “Hold on! We’re almost there!” he shouted.
Damien turned again, this time onto a snow?covered road meant for vehicles—empty at this hour—but more siren?blaring cars burst from a side street. Gunfire echoed again.
Damien swerved sharply into a narrow alley too tight for the police cars, but a bullet struck his leg.
Damien let out an inhuman, grinding scream. Sparks and shards of metal burst from his limb. Amber cried out.
They crashed into an overflowing dumpster. She fell onto the snowy ground.
Her wildly beating heart forced her to her feet. She spotted a metal door above them with a flickering green sign: Emergency Exit. She recognized it.
She ran to the door and pounded on it with her fists. “Vladimir! Vladimir!” she shouted. “Please! We need help!”
The door didn’t move.
Damien, leaning against the dumpster, opened his mechanical jaws and roared, “Vladimir, you bastard, I know you’re in there! Open the damn door right now!”
The door swung open, revealing a tall man with black hair, a black vest, and a permanently angry brow. When he saw Amber, his face twisted into an even more furious grimace. “What the hell are you doing here, you little brat?! I told you not to show your face around here again!”
Amber caught her breath and whispered, “I found Damien. And… this…”
Damien limped toward them in his tiger?body.
Vladimir’s eyes bulged. He froze, mouth open, unable to form a single sound.
“Well? Are we gonna stand here all night?” Damien growled.
“A?and what about the…,” Vladimir stammered.
“The damn chip? Yeah, it’s ours.”
The man in the black vest threw the door wide open so they could enter, then slammed it shut behind them.
“The guards will be here any minute, you should get ready,” Amber said.
He nodded. “Go upstairs to seven and lock yourselves in. I’ll hold them off.”
Amber glimpsed the open doorway into the bar—filled with blue smoke and the poor souls who chose to celebrate New Year’s quietly in this hole. She ran up the creaking wooden stairs.
Damien placed one metal paw on the first step, then turned his head toward Vladimir. “Hey… Take care of her.”
Vladimir lowered his gaze and nodded. Damien then limped after Amber, his damaged leg screeching, while the bartender returned to the bar.
They ran down a narrow, dimly lit hallway with peeling wallpaper until Amber stopped at room seven. She opened it, and they entered a shabby room with a single window and sparse furniture.
Amber immediately grabbed the HPR from the table and set it on the floor. She activated it, and a hologram projected from the long black cylinder.
Damien stepped closer, and a small panel on his chest opened. Inside shimmered a small red box with golden shell?shaped patterns.
Amber stared at it. “This is it?” she asked, confused. “What does it mean? How does it work?” She took it from his chest and ran her fingers over the clean, glossy casing.
“Connect it to yourself,” Damien ordered without explanation.
Amber pressed a small button on the side of the shell?shaped box, releasing a cable. She pulled it out and plugged it into the implant on her forehead. The golden parts of the box lit up.
“Now log into your ID account,” Damien continued.
On the hologram, she opened her ID. Her photo and information appeared:
Name: --
WCIC: L10-07-31784559-U
Level: 6
Born: 31.2.2907
Birthplace: Princen Function Preparatory, Willington
Residence: Finchtown, Princen
Movement Authorization: 1
OBI: 77
At that moment, a button appeared in the corner of the hologram: update ID. Amber, the cable still connected to her head, looked at Damien. He nodded for her to press it.
She did, and the red?and?gold box flickered. Then she felt something new sinking its teeth into her mind through the cable. She felt it spreading across the internal drive implanted in her skull, overwriting it. Like a virus reshaping a body into its own image.
When the hologram screen began to flicker and the image warped, Amber knew something was wrong.
“Damien… what is this?”
The tavern doors burst open and city guards marched inside. People lifted their heads from their drinks and fell into uneasy silence.
From among the guards stepped Madlene, her cheerful, sing?song voice slightly distorted by her speaker: “Good evening, fellow citizens! The city of Willington wishes you a happy New Year!”
No one said a word. Vladimir stood behind the bar, eyes fixed on her, quietly pulling a revolver from behind his belt.
Madlene walked forward slowly. With each step, her metal boots clicked against the floor, and faint mechanical ticking sounded from her joints. “We are very sorry to interrupt the celebrations of the exemplary and respectable citizens of the beautiful level 6, but we have received information that dangerous criminals are hiding among you,” she said, scanning the room with her single red eye. She stopped at the bar across from Vladimir. “Good evening, citizen.”
“What do you want?” he muttered, cocking the revolver under the counter.
“Records indicate that your establishment is a meeting place for several criminals and supervised citizens,” she began, eyeing him with her single lens.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he stalled.
Madlene let out a disturbingly human giggle. “Oh, please. We both know it’s pointless to hide anything now. I’ll give you a choice: you tell us where that monster and the girl are”—she leaned on the bar with both hands, resting her faceless head on them—“or we’ll simply find them ourselves. The choice is yours.”
Downstairs, screams and gunfire erupted. Damien tensed and stepped in front of Amber, who was frantically tapping at the frozen hologram while the lights on the small box blinked.
“Damien!” she cried. “Damien, something’s wrong!”
“Disconnect it and put it in your pocket. Make sure it doesn’t fall out,” he said quietly.
“What?!”
Then the screen displayed: Installation complete. A moment later it changed to large red letters: ID erased – system error.
“Fuck!” she shouted.
The door burst open and guards aimed their weapons at them.
“Hey! We’ve got them!” someone yelled.
Damien lunged toward Amber, leapt, grabbed her in his mechanical paws as the guards opened fire, bullets slicing through the air around them. Damien and Amber smashed through the window and burst out of the room.
The moment they broke through the glass, the distant clock tower boomed, and everything around them flickered with shifting colors.
As they fell, Amber looked up and saw dozens of fireworks exploding between the buildings high above, scattering into multicolored sparks.
In midair, Damien twisted so he would land on his back and shield her from the impact.
They hit the snowy road hard. Amber crawled out of Damien’s metal grip, gasping for breath. She still held the small box in her hands. But when she looked down at Damien beneath her, her heart stopped.
The mechanical beast lay shattered on the asphalt, sparks flying from its body.
She screamed and rushed back to him.
“Gooo…” rasped the faint voice from his speaker, and his eyes went dark.
“There they are!” voices shouted.
Amber stood up, looked at the small red?and?gold box, shoved it into her coat pocket, and ran down the street toward the sound of exploding fireworks.
The guards reached the broken beast. One of them raised his weapon toward Amber in the distance. Before he could fire, Madlene stepped beside him and placed her hand on the gun.
“We need her alive,” she said.
“But she’ll get away,” the guard protested.
“In Willington, she can’t get far, can she?” Madlene replied. “Sooner or later we’ll find her. What matters is that we have him.” She nodded toward the ruined beast behind them, from which Damien’s soul had already faded.
Vertex Tower – Osirion Control Room
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Level 15
- Criminal accident on level 6
- Frank Osborn died at 23:41
- Fire on level 12
- ID DELETED
- SYSTEM ERROR
- Moira Moon was born at 23:58