Chapter 10: Red Mist

  Sym moved through the winding paths of Zone 9, his boots crunching over gravel, shattered gss, and the rusted pieces of forgotten machines.

  He was retracing old routes, faint echoes of memory passing through his flesh.

  This body remembered things, even if the mind that once lived in it was long gone.

  There had been stores here once. Pces to trade, barter, and find pieces of the world that hadn’t been swallowed by rot.

  Now?

  Shuttered doors. Boarded windows. Buildings leaned like they were trying to whisper to one another in ruin.

  Tucked between two colpsing concrete husks and hidden beneath a swaying sheet of rusted metal, the small shop barely looked open. A faded sign dangled overhead, half the letters missing, the remaining ones scrawled over with charcoal symbols of some forgotten faction.

  Inside, the air smelled of burnt cloth and old oil. A flickering ntern sat on a crooked table, casting elongated shadows across piles of discarded garments and gear, most of it unusable trash: coats with missing sleeves, boots worn down to the bone, gloves chewed through by rats.

  Sym sifted through it quickly, fingers brushing aside mildewed fabric and brittle straps, until he found one thing worth the effort: a long, ash-gray coat. Slightly torn at the hem, but the fabric was thick, the lining intact, and it bore a few hidden pockets that hadn't been stripped out.

  He held it up. Functional. Durable. Concealing. That was enough.

  The shopkeeper, a gaunt man with bloodshot eyes and shaking hands, emerged from the shadows as if dragged by obligation. He looked at Sym with the weary detachment of someone who'd seen too many strangers and expected nothing from any of them.

  "That one," the man muttered, voice like gravel. "Eight notes."

  Sym handed over the money without haggling. The man snatched the crumpled bills and stuffed them into a small box, then immediately stepped back toward the tarp-covered wall, clearly itching to close up shop.

  Sym opened his mouth to ask something, anything. About the area. About the rise in Jitters. About the Order.

  But the man waved a shaking hand and barked: "No questions. I’m closing. You’ve got what you came for, you don't want to stay out after dark."

  Then the ntern was doused.

  Sym stood in the dim half-light, the gray coat over his arm, the shadows reciming the space around him. No information. No connection.

  Just silence.

  He stepped back into the street with a sigh and slid into his coat. It fit.

  As he turned a corner, his footsteps slowed.

  A man sat on the edge of the sidewalk, barefoot, shirtless, hunched beneath a bnket stained the color of old dirt.

  His ribs were sharp enough to cast shadows, and his skin stretched too thin across his frame. Every breath he took made his ribs move like an old neglected machine rejecting the force.

  “P-please...” the man rasped, lifting a trembling hand. “Food. Anything. I haven’t eaten in...”

  His voice cracked and vanished into the wind.

  Sym looked down at him, expression unreadable.

  He could hear the man’s heart. Literally. It thumped beneath the cage of bone like it was fighting to be free.

  His eyes were sunken. His fingers twitched in a way that told Sym the nerves were going.

  Without a word, Sym reached into his coat and pulled out a small note, not much, maybe enough for a meal if spent right.

  He crouched and pced it gently in the man's hand.

  The man’s eyes widened. Tears welled, unblinking.

  “Thank you,” he whispered. “Bless you. Thank you.”

  Sym didn’t answer. He just stood and kept walking.

  He moved on, the city closing in again. Graffiti curled along the walls like twisted vines. Most of the newer messages were symbols, codes, tags, and warnings. But some were words.

  "The Order doesn’t see us."

  "Blessed bleed too."

  "The Gate remembers."

  Eventually, he reached the store he’d remembered, a low-slung building with bck-tinted windows and a rusted sign that once read KRANE’S GENERAL.

  Now the doors were locked with chains, the inside dark and empty.

  Sym sighed and shook his head. Another dead lead.

  Then he looked east, toward the far edge of Zone Ten.

  And there it was.

  The sealed Gateway.

  Up close, the Gateway wasn't what Sym had expected.

  It was a structure, hunched and angur, fused directly into the outer wall like a parasite that had been grown rather than built.

  Towering sbs of metal and concrete jutted at odd angles, yers upon yers of reinforced housing, old sentry outposts, and ancient lockdown systems.

  A wide, sealed entrance sat in the center, dark like an eye that hadn’t blinked in years.

  Sym approached slowly, boots kicking loose pebbles as he scanned the perimeter.

  “It’s not a ‘gate,’” he murmured.

  “Confirmed,” Sage replied. “Designation misleading. This is a multi-phase checkpoint system. Several internal doors. Likely yered to prevent breach or infection. A single gate would compromise all defensive integrity.”

  Sym nodded to himself.

  Of course. You don’t hold back monsters with doors.

  There were no guards. No patrols. Just graffiti-slicked walls, rusted barricades, and burn marks near old turrets that hadn't worked in a decade.

  People loitered nearby, watching him with twitchy, sun-starved eyes. Ragged coats, empty stares.

  Their words were sharp, cruel, and aimless. Curses were thrown like gravel. Some ughed at nothing. Others argued with the air.

  The further he walked from the core of Zone Nine, the more decay showed itself, not just in buildings; it seemed that the rot seeped through the body into the human soul.

  “Sage,” he whispered, scanning the shifting figures, “how long do people usually survive here?”

  “Statistical life expectancy for unaffiliated Zone Ten residents is between 11 to 17 years. Post-childhood, if they make it.”

  “I see.”

  He turned toward the gate one st time.

  Then something shifted.

  It was faint. Not sound. Not light. More like a pressure, a tightening behind his eyes. A strange red mist, almost non-existent, seemed to pass by like a passing storm.

  “Something’s... off,” he said.

  And Sage’s voice came sharply, immediately.

  “Warning. There is a cognitive intrusion targeting your consciousness coming from that mist.”

  Sym stilled.

  “What is it?”

  “Unknown. Non-physical vector. Psionic. It is attempting to map your mind, slowly.”

  Sym’s fists clenched.

  “Erase it.”

  “Initiating countermeasures.”

  A second passed.

  Then the pressure cracked, like a fever breaking. It fled, silent and unseen, as though it had never been there at all.

  Sym’s breath left him slow.

  But the feeling remained that someone, something, had just tried to wear his brain like a glove.

  “Where did it come from?” he asked.

  “Unknown. No physical source. Atmospheric pattern disruption consistent with ‘thin-space’ interference. Origin point: unknown. Possibly Settlement-reted.”

  Of course.

  He looked up at the wall again. The way it leaned. The way the shadows bent was just slightly wrong.

  Then he turned and walked away.

  Back through the winding streets.

  Back to the cracked comfort of Richie’s tavern.

  By the time he made it to his room, the lights felt brighter than usual. The air is clearer. But the silence was too perfect, like something had stepped just outside perception.

  He locked the door behind him and went to work.

  Time passed, and the room was humid with his breath and sweat as Sym moved through the final exercises Sage had compiled. His body was low to the ground. Arms trembling from holding tension. Muscles burning.

  He was efficient about it. No wasted movements. Sage counted each rep silently, adjusting his form when needed.

  Sym could feel the momentum building in his core, the rhythm of change just beginning to hum beneath the skin.

  But he didn’t push it too far.

  Tomorrow, he’d return to PRG Headquarters.

  Training. Evaluation. Probably surveilnce.

  Then came the noise.

  A crash. A shout. Something that wasn’t background chaos. Something close.

  Sym stood, wiped sweat from his brow, and moved quietly to the door. He descended the stairs in smooth, silent steps, senses already on edge. The tavern floor came into view, and the first thing he saw was Richie, crumpled near the bar.

  A knife jammed into his shoulder, blood soaking through his coat.

  One of the cooks, barely more than a kid, was on his knees, hands shaking, begging to be spared.

  Behind the bar, a pot of something boiled over, steam hissing into the air like a scream.

  And standing in the doorway: a man. Slender. Pale. Wild eyes behind a bck scarf. Another knife in his hand. Laughing. Breathing too fast.

  “You thought it was over?” he snarled. “You thought it was over? You killed my brothers.”

  He stepped forward, knife twitching in his grip.

  And that was all the time Sym needed.

  From the side, a blur of motion, boots dragging across the floor.

  Double-leg slide tackle.

  Sym smashed into the man’s knees, the impact loud and sharp.

  The snap echoed through the room as the man crumpled in mid-scream, his legs folding the wrong way.

  Before he could reach for the knife, Sym was up.

  One hard kick to the hand. The bde skittered away.

  The man screamed louder, half rage, half shock.

  Sym picked up the knife. Weighed it for a moment.

  Then turned, and calmly handed it to the cook.

  The boy blinked at him, face frozen in terror and disbelief.

  “You do what you need to,” Sym said.

  He didn’t watch what happened next.

  He heard it. Wet. Fast. Full of hate.

  Sym walked to Richie, crouched beside him as the man groaned through gritted teeth.

  “Still with me?” Sym asked.

  “Damn right I am,” Richie hissed. “He got what he deserved?”

  Sym didn’t answer.

  “Sage,” he said inside.

  “Assessing. Vital signs are stable but deteriorating. The knife wound missed major arteries. Blood loss is still significant. The risk of infection is high. Treatment is possible but rudimentary.”

  “Can you guide me?”

  “ I can assist with basic pressure control and bleeding mitigation.”

  Sym nodded.

  He removed the knife gently, applied torn cloth from the bartender’s apron as a compress, and tied it tightly.

  Slowed the bleeding. Lifted Richie gently with one arm.

  “You’re lucky,” Sym muttered. “In this pce, it seems that not everyone gets a second try.”

  Richie coughed a ugh. “You’re tellin’ me.”

  The cook, his face bnk, his hands stained red, stood over the body like a sleepwalker.

  “Help me get him to someone,” Sym said.

  The boy nodded, “My uncle is nearby, he can help”.

  Together, they walked Richie out into the early night. He could still walk. Still breathe.

  And after some time, Sym returned alone.

  Back to the stairs. Up through the empty hallway. Into the quiet room where the workout mat still y warm from his palms.

  He stared at the ceiling.

  And shook his head.

  “This pce... is rot,” he said.

  “Confirmed,” Sage replied.

  Sym sat on the edge of the bed, elbows resting on his knees, hands still stained faintly red.

  The room was quiet. Only the hum of the wall lights, the faint ticking of a warped ceiling fan, and his own breath.

  He looked down at his hands for a moment, then spoke into the silence.

  “Sage. Those men... back there. Do the kills count?”

  A pause.

  Then Sage’s voice echoed within his mind, calm as always.

  “Analyzing. No significant change in system metrics.”

  Sym frowned. “So nothing?”

  “If experience was gained, it was minimal, below detection thresholds. These individuals were cssified as non-anomalous. No awakened potential. No system resonance.”

  Sym leaned back slowly, eyes narrowing.

  “So killing monsters pushes me forward... but people like them?”

  “Irrelevant to system advancement. Unless empowered by external anomalies, basic humans do not yield experience of value.”

  He exhaled through his nose, sharp and quiet.

  “Convenient. System doesn’t reward mercy... or cleaning up its mess.”

  “Correction. The system does not reward survival. It rewards conquest.”

  Sym went silent after that.

  Because deep down, he knew what that meant:

  If he wanted to grow... He’d have to hunt things that could kill him back.

  Sym sat down at the edge of the bed.

  But he didn’t sleep.