Chapter Text
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing the song of angry men?
It is the music of the people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!
The screech of static was the prelude to that shrill voice coming from the metal box that jolted him awake. Dan Heng turned the radio dial with a sharp movement, his fingers still numb from the cold seeping through the cracks in the wall. The song died in a rattle of interference, but the words lingered in the stale air of the room like an unwanted echo. "Song" "Beating" "Echoes" "Tomorrow". Empty words that sounded like mockery in a place where the only homeland they knew was the mold on the pipes and the dampness creeping up the corners.
He stayed silent for a moment, looking at the ceiling, listening to the irregular beat of the building's boiler, that noise that had become his most faithful companion. The radio was a useless object, a whim he had found among the rubble of an abandoned warehouse, but sometimes he turned it on out of habit, out of that human impulse to seek voices in the silence to pretend company. Today, however, it had only managed to irritate him.
He got out of bed — if that sunken mattress on a couple of wooden planks held together by a miracle could be called a bed — and his bare feet touched the rotten wooden floor. The cold bit his soles, but he was used to it. The cold didn't bother him that much either, and he had spent years getting used to worse things.
His work uniform hung from a nail hammered into the wall. He looked at it for a moment before starting to dress, a gesture he repeated every morning with the precision of a ritual. The first of the two sleeveless shirts was a color that must once have been white but time and grime had turned into an indefinite ash tone. It was already gray when he haggled for it. The second, hanging next to it, was slightly darker, just a couple of shades distinguishing it from the other. He had washed them so many times that the fabric had become thin as paper, but they were all he had.
He put on the first one, feeling the cold fabric stick to his skin. The suspenders waited on the wobbly chair, the one with a shorter leg that had to be chocked with a piece of brick to keep it from wobbling. He hooked them to the buttons of his pants with mechanical movements, adjusting them over his shoulders so they would hold the garment firmly, shuddering in pain as the fabric brushed his lower back. He inhaled once, twice, three times, and as every day, he set out to ignore the pain in his stump. The boots were by the door, cracked and covered in dry mud from previous days when it had miraculously rained. He put them on carefully, tying the laces double as he had learned to do so they wouldn't come undone during the shift.
And then came the second moment he hated most. The beret rested on a small wooden shelf, next to a couple of spent candles and an almost empty box of matches. It was made of coarse wool, a shade of brown so dark that in the dim light it looked black. He picked it up with his fingertips, feeling the rough texture that had so often irritated his skin.
Before putting it on, he approached the only mirror in the room — a fragment of broken glass with rough edges glued to a board — and looked at himself. The boy with short black hair who looked back at him had tired green eyes, surrounded by dark circles that looked like tattoos (the red mark on his eye topped by a scar didn't count). He ran a hand over the back of his neck, where his hair grew longer than it should. With a quick gesture, he gathered it into a small ponytail at the base of his skull, holding it with a thread elastic that he had mended so many times it was threatening to break.
He placed the beret on his head, adjusting it to one side as was common in the Underworld. The pressure of the wool against the cartilage of his ears and the stumps on his head was a dull torment that reminded him why he hated wearing it. An uncomfortable beat, a tingling that climbed up his temple and settled behind his eyes like a tiny claw. "Get used to it already," he told himself with the same phrase he repeated every day. "Come on."
The rules of the industrial district were clear: no beret, no entry. It had been established after a goldsmith lost an eye from a splash of molten metal, and although that had happened in the upper part of the city, in the Underworld regulations always arrived late and poorly enforced. But they obeyed them, because not obeying meant losing your job, and losing your job in that pit of misery was equivalent to a slow death sentence.
He adjusted the beret a little more, looking for an angle that would relieve the pressure without disobeying the rules. The pain didn't disappear, but it transformed into a background hum that he knew he would have to live with for the next thirteen hours, until he could return there, lie down on his "bed," and repeat the cycle again.
He sighed and let his gaze wander around the room. Four exposed brick walls, stained with dampness that drew abstract figures. A small window that faced an inner alley through which barely any light filtered, and which on the clearest days only let through a milky glow, like the light of a cloudy day seen from the bottom of a well. That was the reality of the Underworld: the poorest area of Jarilo-VI, upon which the main city was built, the only place truly worth living in. Down there, in the entrails of the structure of one of humanity's last bastions, sunlight was a rumor, a legend that the elderly told children with the same nostalgia with which they spoke of enormous seas of grass and vast expanses of water.
Long above, Dan Heng really missed the sea. And yet, it seemed he would hardly get out of that hole. For a moment, he was tempted to go to the elevator that connected to the Overworld, show his stumps to the guards, and hope they believed his story, an idea he immediately rejected thinking about what had happened last time.
The last few months had been hard. Harder than usual, and in the Underworld, hardship was the currency. Dan Heng remembered the news he had heard on the radio before turning it off with that disgust he felt for patriotic songs. Attacks in the factories. Two in the last week, if he remembered correctly. The first had been in the other textile plant in sector seven, a homemade device that had destroyed three looms and left a dozen workers in the hospital — the only hospital in the Underworld, which looked more like a morgue with beds where they waited for the injured to die in order to obtain their few belongings and use their bodies as fertilizer for the surface greenhouses. The second, more serious, had occurred at the coal depot in the east zone. They had spoken of sabotage, of radical groups called Wildfire that wanted to destabilize the precarious balance of the industrial district.
No one knew who they were. Some whispered that they were deserters from the ranks of the militia, others that they were infiltrated agents from the surface, and the most paranoid whispered that they were the first signs of a civil war that would end up consuming what little remained standing. Dan Heng didn't know what to believe. He only knew that the air had become denser, that the guards at the checkpoints looked with more suspicion, and that people walked faster and spoke more softly.
He gritted his teeth and pushed those thoughts away. He couldn't afford the luxury of worry. He had a shift to cover.
His hand brushed the empty hanger where his sleeveless shirt, the darker one, hung. An almost superstitious gesture, as if touching that clean garment could bring him good luck. He kept it for days off, when the first one was too dirty to put on. Two shirts for one life. Just two shirts.
And then, without really knowing why, his thoughts drifted elsewhere. Home. The word appeared in his mind like a flash, a glimpse of something that had been and was no longer. Blurry images, delicious smells that seemed to come from heaven itself, the feeling of a brotherly hand on his shoulder in a moment of danger. He shook his head. No. He couldn't afford that. The past was a luxury the inhabitants of the Underworld could not afford. Here only the present existed, that perpetual instant of survival that repeated day after day like a broken record.
He looked at the room again and, for the first time in a long time, he smiled. It wasn't a happy smile, far from it. It was a twisted grimace, a rictus that formed at the corner of his lips when reality seemed so absurd that he had no choice but to laugh at it. "The ironies of life," he thought as he observed the cracks in the ceiling, the warped floor, the door that didn't close properly, the window that didn't open at all. That was his home. A dilapidated apartment that in any other city would have been declared uninhabitable, but here was considered a luxury. There were people living in worse conditions. People who slept in ventilation tunnels, in stairwells, and in the abandoned tram stations that never ended up working.
"Look where you've ended up," he told himself. "Of all the things you could have been, this is what you are."
The laughter died as quickly as it had arisen. He grabbed the canvas bag where he kept his few belongings — a canteen of water, a stale crust of bread from the previous day, and a small knife he almost never used — and slung it over his shoulder. His fingers brushed the door handle, a piece of rusty iron that screeched every time he moved it but was capable of keeping thieves out.
He opened it.
The hallway stank of boiled cabbage and dampness. The walls were covered in wallpaper that must have once been flowery but was now just a mess of brown stains. A woman's moans echoed a few doors away, followed by the laughter of more than one man. The light bulbs on the ceiling flickered with a dying light, as if they had been about to burn out for years. Dan Heng walked with a firm step, his boots echoing on the wooden stairs that creaked under his weight, each step threatening to make him fall several meters down.
He reached the street door and pushed it open. The outside air hit him in the face, laden with smells that had become so familiar he no longer registered them: burnt coal, sewage, sweat, and oxidized metal. The Underworld woke at its own slow pace, even without the presence of the sun, the same pace with which it had lived for years.
The streets were a labyrinth of uneven cobblestones and narrow sidewalks. On both sides, buildings crowded together as if afraid of falling if they separated. The exposed brick facades, stained with soot, held faded signs advertising products that were no longer manufactured or services that no longer existed; and they were even more useless due to the fact that most people couldn't read. Above everything, far above, barely visible through the mist that never fully dissipated, the ceiling of the dome separating the Underworld from the rest of Jarilo-VI could be glimpsed. Up there, on the surface, sunlight must be shining. Down here, there was only that orange glow of the gas lamps that never completely went out.
People were beginning to fill the sidewalks. Men and women with patched clothes, faces furrowed with premature wrinkles, hands calloused by factory work. Children running barefoot between the legs of adults, chasing a ball made of rags, before heading to the factories. Guards parading in perfect synchrony through the streets. One-two-one-two. Street vendors hawking their goods with hoarse voices: wilted vegetables, outdated but perfectly usable fabrics that would soon sell, metal gadgets that no one knew the purpose of. On a corner, an old man played a out-of-tune accordion while his granddaughter, a girl with enormous eyes, passed an empty can among the passersby.
But there was something different in the air that morning. An underlying tension, a tingling at the back of Dan Heng's neck that he couldn't ignore. The word to describe it was on the tip of his tongue. People walked faster than usual, with hunched shoulders and downcast eyes. Groups formed and dispersed quickly, as if afraid of being seen together too long by the guards, who were far more numerous than the day before. Even the street vendors, usually talkative and loud, merely pointed at their goods with brief gestures, as if speaking aloud could be dangerous.
Uncertainty. That was the word floating in the air, dense as fog. Dan Heng felt it in the way two women moved aside as he passed, in the way a man put his hand in the pocket where he surely kept a knife, and in the way even the children stopped playing for an instant to look at the adults with eyes that already knew too much for a child.
He stopped in front of a newsstand — a folding table covered in sheets printed on paper so cheap it disintegrated between fingers — and his eyes scanned the headlines without pausing on any. But his ears, those he couldn't close.
"Terminus has launched another attack on the Xianzhou Ship in retaliation for the one they launched a month ago. Authorities report at least thirty casualties in the ranks of the Alliance."
The vendor's voice, a bald man with thick-rimmed glasses, mixed with that of his other customer, a tall, thin man leafing through the newspaper with a grave expression.
"...they say the Planarcadia terrorists have taken control of three entire districts. The organization calls itself the Masked Fools, or something like that..."
"They're all crazy," the vendor replied, shaking his head. "First Adlivun, now Planarcadia. Terrorists everywhere and nothing ever happens. When will this end?"
"When they close the damn borders," said the customer, raising his voice and looking directly at Dan Heng, making sure he heard him. "And stop immigrants from coming to steal the little work that's left."
Dan Heng moved away from the stand before those thoughts could nest in his mind and before the man kept looking at him. It wasn't the time. He couldn't afford the luxury of listening to news he couldn't change or worrying about wars being fought thousands of kilometers away while he struggled to survive another day, or about the opinion of a stranger. But the words stayed with him, embedded like splinters, reminding him that the world was bigger than the Underworld and that, no matter how hard he tried to ignore it, chaos always ended up reaching everywhere.
He wondered what role he played in that conflict between the two powers.
He kept walking, dodging puddles of dirty water that accumulated in the potholes of the cobblestones. His boots splashed through the mud, leaving a trail of footprints that vanished as soon as he moved away. The heat from the steam pipes that crossed the streets like veins of a metal beast gave him a momentary respite from the cold, but also reminded him that the city breathed around him, with its own rhythms and its own needs.
The smell of fresh bread stopped him dead. It came from a small niche opened in the facade of a building, a space so tiny that it barely fit the oven and the woman attending it. Dan Heng approached and looked at the loaves displayed on a wooden tray. They were small, round, with a crust so hard it seemed like stone, but inside the bread was soft and warm, and he hadn't eaten anything in days other than the hard crust he kept in his bag.
"How much?" he asked.
The woman, a round-faced lady with floury arms, looked at him with tired eyes.
"Two coins for one. Five if you want it with meat."
Dan Heng reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a few copper coins, so worn that the figures engraved on them were barely distinguishable. He counted them twice before deciding. He paid fifteen coins and received three loaves that were still steaming, with a piece of roasted meat inside. The meat was scarce, just a few fibrous strips mixed with some kind of thick sauce, but for him it was a luxury he only allowed himself once a week. The rest of the days he fed on bread and water, and when he was lucky, some wrinkled fruit that merchants couldn't sell or meat that was almost at the level of putrefaction.
He bit into it eagerly, feeling the warmth of the bread between his fingers and the salty taste of the meat on his tongue. It wasn't a feast, but it was enough. He walked while eating, saving half for later, because eleven hours of work in the factory weren't sustained by a piece of bread in the stomach.
The Underworld stretched around him like a living organism, with its streets that forked and met again, with its iron bridges that crossed over channels of black water, with its alleys that plunged into the darkness like open wounds in the city's side. The buildings grew taller as he approached the industrial district, and also darker.
The gas lamps burned with a yellowish flame that barely cut through the fog, creating a world of shadows and half-lights in which Dan Heng moved with the ease of someone who had always lived in it, wandering from shadow to shadow. When a lamp's light projected a bright rectangle onto the sidewalk, he veered toward the darkness, walking close to the walls, stepping exactly where the shadow was densest. It wasn't something he did consciously. It was a reflex, a habit acquired through years of vigilance and tension.
Industrial propaganda posters covered the walls, with slogans like "Work is freedom, and freedom is slavery" and "Ignorance is strength." Dan Heng looked at them with indifference, the same empty phrases as always, the same colors faded by time and humidity. Someone had scribbled over one of them a word in charcoal: "Lie." Honestly, the most surprising thing was that anyone in that hole could read. Most likely, it had been written by a refugee like him.
Almost without realizing it, his gaze fell on an albino girl with red eyes, barefoot, begging under the posters, who was desperately rubbing her feet in an attempt to get warm. He noticed how she was situated right under a poster promoting "high quality" apples. Next to her, what seemed to be her grandpa was sleeping with his cap over his face. His logical side started cursing him. Carefully, he crouched down to her level, making the girl startle. He wasn't sure if she understood the language, so he just smiled at her and handed her the piece of bread with the tenderest meat, forcing the girl to wrap her small, trembling hands around the loaf. Without wanting to look at her reaction, he quickly stood up and resumed his path, hearing the girl shout at him in an unknown language, in a tone that didn't seem to be an insult, causing a small smile to form on his lips despite the insults from his logical side.
Finally, after twenty minutes of walking, he arrived at the security checkpoint.
It was an iron arch that crossed the street from side to side, with a guard booth at each end and a drawbridge that went up and down with a metallic screech. The Silvermane guards wore gray uniforms with navy blue touches, with peaked caps and high boots. They carried batons on their belts, and although they rarely used them, the mere sight of those pieces of varnished wood was enough to maintain order.
Dan Heng stopped in front of the guard on the left, a man with an angular face and a trimmed mustache who looked at him with the expression of someone who has seen too much and cares very little.
"Documents."
Dan Heng took a folded ID card from the inside pocket of his jacket, the corners rounded from use. The photo on it was so bad it barely resembled him — it had been taken three years ago, in a coin-operated machine that always gave blurry results, and when he was much better fed — but the seal of the industrial district was authentic, and that was all that mattered. In stamped bright magenta letters, it read "TERRAVOX."
The guard examined it carefully running his thumb over the surface to check that the paper hadn't been tampered with. He returned the card without comment and gestured forward with a nod of his head.
"Pass."
The barrier rose with a metallic groan, and Dan Heng crossed to the other side along with other familiar faces. There began the real industrial zone, the mechanical heart of the Underworld. The factories lined both sides of wider streets than the residential neighborhood, with chimneys spewing black smoke toward the dome's ceiling and pipes vibrating with constant energy. The noise was deafening, a symphony of pneumatic hammers, hydraulic presses, and combustion engines mixing into an endless cacophony. The smell was worse: molten metal, burnt oil, chemicals that irritated the throat and made eyes water.
But Dan Heng was used to it. He walked among the industrial buildings until he reached his own, a brick building without windows with a sign that said "Textile Sector — Section 7." He pushed the iron door and entered a world of heat and sweat, of sparks flying through the air like mechanical fireflies to keep the looms running, and of men and women working in silence on them.
His post was at one of the enormous steam engines they used to keep the looms afloat. The work was monotonous and exhausting, an endless cycle of pulling levers, collecting coal, and sweat covering his forehead. His arms moved with mechanical precision, his back curved under the invisible weight of fatigue, and the eleven hours stretched before him like an endless road to nowhere.
But the hours passed, as they always passed, dragging his feet and his hands and his spirit until they reduced him to an empty shell.
When the exit bell rang, eleven hours later, Dan Heng could barely keep his eyes open.
The metallic sound spread through the entire industrial building like a heartbeat, and the first-shift workers began to leave their machines with slow, tired movements, as if the springs keeping their bodies moving had suddenly broken. Dan Heng released the lever that helped raise the steam and felt the tension leave his shoulders in a wave of pleasant pain. His fingers trembled, the palms of his hands were covered in blisters, and there was a black line of soot under his nails that wouldn't go away no matter how much he washed them.
He stretched his neck, feeling his vertebrae crack. His uniform stank of sweat and burnt metal. The beret had shifted during the shift and was now pressing at a different angle, causing a dull pain in his temple that added to the exhaustion. But he didn't take it off. He still had the journey back, and rules were rules within the industrial perimeter.
He left the factory along with the mass of workers, a human tide of gray faces and hunched bodies advancing toward the exits with heavy steps, who nevertheless had nothing to envy of those who worked in the mines. The street air was almost a relief after eleven hours of breathing molten metal fumes, although it was still the same stale air of the Underworld. At least it was colder, and that helped clear his head.
The security checkpoint at the exit was more lax than at the entrance. The guards checked IDs superficially, more concerned with the flow of people than with documentation, and made sure nothing was taken from the factory. Dan Heng showed his without even stopping, and the guard on duty, a young guy with a bored look who already knew him, returned a gesture of indifference.
He crossed the barrier and went back into the streets of the lower district. Night — if night could be spoken of at that depth — had fallen, and the gas lamps projected yellow halos onto the wet cobblestones. The fog was thicker than in the morning, reducing visibility to just a few meters. But Dan Heng knew the way by heart, and although his feet could barely hold him, he walked with a firm step.
Hunger began to twist in his stomach, reminding him that he still had half the loaf of bread. He brought it to his mouth as he walked, nibbling at the hard crust and the soft bread that crumbled between his fingers. The meat had cooled and the sauce had hardened, but he didn't mind. He ate with appetite, swallowing in big bites, feeling the energy slowly return to his muscles.
It was then that he heard the voices. Even with his mutilated ears, he still had superhuman hearing.
They came from an alley that opened to his left, a dark space between two buildings that had never caught his attention. At first he thought it was some ordinary argument, the kind as common in the Underworld as dampness on the walls. But something in the tone of the voices stopped him cold. It wasn't the usual brusqueness of a street altercation. There was a different nuance, a tension that didn't quite fit.
He sharpened his hearing — that sharp ear that had saved him from more than one tight spot over the years — and approached the alley without making a sound, moving in the darkness like one more shadow among shadows.
"...do you p-promise you'll help me if I do what you say?"
The voice was female, young, and trembled slightly. It wasn't fear that Dan Heng perceived in her, or at least not only fear. There was something else, a kind of contained desperation. He tilted his head curiously.
"Of course, sweetheart," replied another voice, this one male, hoarse, with a hint of smugness that made Dan Heng's hair stand on end. "If you do what we tell you, we'll give you the money you need. All you want."
Judging by the conceited way he spoke, there was no doubt he was probably a guard.
"And don't worry, if someone catches us, we'll say we were searching you," added a third voice, also male, younger than the first, making his companion laugh. "You heard what we told you, right? With us everything is easier. You just have to cooperate."
Dan Heng peeked around the corner of the alley and what he saw made his blood run cold.
The girl had gray hair, an ashy tone that barely reflected the scant light from the lamps and disappeared inside her clothes. Her eyes, on the other hand, were golden. Golden like red-hot coal, but alive, bright with a gleam that couldn't be the product of artificial light. She was dressed in something like rags: an old man's coat, so big it reached almost to her ankles, and torn pants that stopped just below her knees, revealing thin legs covered in bruises and welts. She wore no shoes. Her bare, dirty feet, with toes purplish from cold, rested on the cobblestones as if the pain of stepping on the sharp stones wasn't enough to make her give up what she was about to do.
And what she was about to do was unbutton her shirt.
Dan Heng watched as her trembling hands reached for the buttons of the coat, as her clumsy fingers struggled with the worn fabric, as the first button slid through the buttonhole and revealed a flash of pale skin. Under the coat she wore nothing else. Not even underwear, probably because she couldn't afford it, judging by the state of the rest of her clothing.
The two guards flanked her, one on each side. They weren't fully uniformed, but Dan Heng recognized their movements, the way they planted themselves on the ground, the batons protruding from their jacket pockets. They were thugs from the checkpoints, the kind who earned extra money by extorting the most vulnerable to pay for some whore. More muscular than him, bigger, with the security that power and impunity give.
"That's how I like it," said the older of the two, a bald guy with a scar on his cheek. "Keep it up and you'll see how we help you. We're trustworthy people, you know? You'll see, you will start well here."
The girl didn't respond. Her face was a mask of innocence, lips pressed together and eyes dancing between the two men, as if she wasn't fully processing what was happening. The second button of the coat opened with a dry sound, and the fabric separated a little more, revealing the bone of her sternum, the line of her neck, and the shadow of her breasts that were still hidden.
Dan Heng felt a knot in his throat. "It's none of your business," reason told him with its cold, calculating voice. "You don't know that girl. You don't know what she's done or where she's from. Getting involved in this will only bring you trouble, and if she's lucky, she'll probably end up in some brothel for the guards. Leave. Keep walking. You didn't see anything."
But his feet didn't move.
"She's a refugee," he thought as he watched her bare feet, her oversized clothes, the lost look of someone who has arrived at a place they don't fully understand.
The third button. The fabric opened a little more. She had a pretty nice chest.
"Come on, cutie," said the younger guard, with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Don't be shy now. We're almost there."
"You'll examine me carefully, won't you? And then I'll get money, right?"
"Don't you see us? We're professionals, we'll do it well and without hurting you. However, we can't do a good inspection if you're wearing clothes in which you could hide weapons."
"This is disgusting," Dan Heng told himself. "Humiliating yourself just to survive."
The fourth button. The girl bit her lip, and the rest of the buttons were unbuttoned so quickly that it seemed she had only been testing the guards to play with them, revealing a stomach white as milk and also an ugly scar on it, which didn't seem to bother the men at all.
Dan Heng took a step forward. His mind was hurling insults at him in Xianzhou for doing something so stupid.
He entered the alley with empty hands and a steady gaze. He carried no weapon. Even so, he couldn't just stand by and watch.
"For the last time: leave her alone."
The words came out of his mouth with more confidence than he felt, to the despair of his rational side. His voice echoed in the alley, breaking the tense silence that had formed while the girl unbuttoned her shirt.
The two guards turned toward him with the slowness of those who don't feel threatened. Their faces, lit by the dim light coming from the street, transformed into grimaces of disdain. The girl also looked at him in surprise for a few moments.
"And who do you think you are, kid?" asked the bald one, straightening up to show his full height. He was easily ten centimeters taller than Dan Heng, and his robust build contrasted with the slender build of the short-haired young man. "Get your own, you pathetic skinny bastard."
"That doesn't matter," Dan Heng replied, keeping his distance. "You're about to commit a crime. She's clearly a refugee. She has nothing. Do you really want to dirty your hands with this?"
The young guard let out a dry laugh.
"A crime? Go fry asparagus, kid. This is a voluntary deal. She wants to register, we offer her help and we examine her thoroughly in the process, and we give her an unforgettable first memory of the underworld. Everyone wins, a fair deal."
"That's not a deal," said Dan Heng, clenching his fists. "It's coercion. You have the power and you abuse her ignorance. Just look at her. You have weapons, she doesn't. You..." he paused, searching for the right words. "It's not right."
"We leave what's right to the saints on the surface," snorted the bald one, taking a step toward him. The other took the opportunity to approach the girl, who backed up until she was against the wall, with a panicked face, while the young man began to fondle one of her breasts. "Down here things work differently. And now, if you don't want a souvenir that lasts for weeks, I suggest you turn around and get lost. It's none of your business."
Dan Heng didn't move. He just spat in the tall guard's face. "Leave her alone and we forget about this."
The young guard separated from the girl and also stepped forward, both towering over Dan Heng, forming a barrier of flesh and muscle that seemed insurmountable.
"Look, kid," said the younger one, in a tone that tried to be conciliatory but came out threatening. "For the last time, I'm going to say this clearly so you understand. That girl means nothing to you. She came on a freight train, like so many others, without a penny in her pockets. We're offering her an opportunity. If she doesn't want it, she can go to hell. But she accepted, okay? So mind your own business and don't meddle in ours."
Dan Heng looked over the young guard's shoulder and his eyes met the girl's. The golden eyes looked at him with a mixture of surprise and something he couldn't identify. She had put one hand in the pocket of her coat.
"I could leave," he thought. "I could turn around and go my way, and within ten minutes I would have forgotten about this, warm in my mattress."
"You already mutilated yourself when you arrived here. Are you going to let someone else lose their dignity to survive?"
"Get lost," said the bald one, stepping forward again, his hand going to his baton. "And I won't repeat it."
Dan Heng opened his mouth to respond, but what happened next was so fast he could barely process it.
The girl moved.
One instant she was against the wall, her hands on the buttons of her coat and a resigned expression. The next, her bare foot rose in a perfect arc and crashed into the back of the bald guard's neck with a precision that didn't seem fitting for a malnourished refugee. For a moment, Dan Heng could swear he saw something black coming from her food. The man fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes, without even a groan, struck down by a blow that Dan Heng would have sworn he'd seen executed only by trained martial swordsmen.
The young guard turned, surprised, his mouth open and eyes wide. In that moment of confusion, Dan Heng acted. He didn't think or reason. His body moved before his mind, throwing himself at the guard and driving a knee into his solar plexus that knocked the air out of him. The man doubled over, and Dan Heng took the opportunity to hit him on the back of the neck with the edge of his hand, a blow he had learned in childhood training thanks to his brother, and which was accurate enough to knock the guard out.
For a moment, the alley fell silent, broken only by Dan Heng's ragged breathing and the sound of the two motionless bodies on the cobblestones.
The girl stared at him, her golden eyes so wide they seemed to take up half her face. The coat was still open, showing part of the curve of her breasts (and what Dan Heng hoped was not the nipple) and that huge scar on her stomach. She made no move to cover herself. She just observed him, as if evaluating whether he too was a threat.
Then, unexpectedly, she smiled.
"Thanks," she said. Her voice was firmer now, without that earlier tremor. She had a different accent, something Dan Heng couldn't place, but definitely from somewhere far away. "Although I expected to handle it alone, I didn't expect anyone to intervene."
Dan Heng was speechless. What had just happened made no sense. That girl didn't need his help. She had taken down a man twice her size with a kick that would have made any professional fighter pale. So why had she been about to...
"You were going to..." he began, but didn't know how to finish the sentence.
The girl looked down at her torso, pale as the milk Dan Heng had been able to drink in his childhood. But she showed no shame. Only a kind of weariness, as if that were just another coin she had been willing to pay.
"I needed money," she said, as if that explained everything, shrugging. "And these two idiots seemed very willing to... well, help me, as they said. I had to take advantage of that."
"They weren't going to help you," said Dan Heng, with more confidence than he felt. "They were going to use you and then leave you stranded. Or worse."
"I know," she replied, with a naturalness that chilled Dan Heng's blood. "But sometimes the hunter ends up being the hunted. And you can be sure I wasn't going to let them touch me."
The gleam in her eyes as she said that sent a shiver down Dan Heng's spine.
She crouched next to the bald guard and began to search his pockets with an efficiency that seemed rehearsed. Her thin, dirty fingers pulled out a grimy leather wallet and opened it with a quick gesture. Inside were several bills, some coins, and an ID card that she ignored completely. She took out the money and put it in the pocket of her coat — still open, still showing her skin — and then moved to the second guard.
Dan Heng watched the scene with a mixture of fascination and horror, not knowing what to do. Needless to say, if they were discovered they would be in big trouble. The girl moved with the ease of someone who has looted bodies before, who knows the value of loot and doesn't hesitate to take it. Her expression was serious, focused, as if she were performing a routine task. When she finished with the second guard, she stood up and extended her hand to Dan Heng.
In her palm was a handful of wrinkled bills.
"For you," she said. "For helping me."
Dan Heng looked at the money, then at her face, then at the money again. He didn't understand anything.
"Are you really a newcomer?" he asked, ignoring the offer. "Was this all a trap to rob them?"
The girl let out a short laugh.
"I'm a newcomer, yes. I arrived this morning on a freight train. I have nothing. I have nowhere to sleep, no documents, I'm nobody. But that doesn't mean I'm stupid. These two had been following me since I left the docks. I knew what they wanted. I was just waiting for the right moment to..." She made a vague gesture with the hand holding the money, shrugging. "Well, you saw what happened. I just didn't expect you to show up. Honestly, you made the job easier for me."
"It seemed like..." said Dan Heng, embarrassed. "Well, in the end you didn't need help."
"I needed someone to do what you did," she replied, with a seriousness that contrasted with her disheveled appearance. "The fact that he turned to look at you gave me the opening I needed. If you hadn't shown up, I probably would have had to face both of them alone, and I don't know if I would have come out well without letting out... THAT. So yes. Thanks. And take the money. We'll share it, it's fair."
Dan Heng shook his head.
"I don't need your money."
"Everyone needs money down here," she said, with a crooked smile. "Don't give me that story. Take it and we're even. If you want, you can get yourself some good female company that's genuinely willing to be with you."
He took it, more to avoid further argument than anything else. The bills were few, but enough to buy bread for a week. He put them in his pants pocket without looking at them.
"I suppose you need to register," he said, changing the subject. "The money will help you with that."
She nodded.
"At the station they told me that without registration I can't access anything. No work, no housing, no rations. That I have to pay a fee at the Underworld census office. But without work I can't pay the fee, and without the fee I can't get work. A nice circle, right?"
Dan Heng frowned. He knew that problem well. It was the trap most newcomers fell into, a subtle way of keeping outsiders out of the system until they proved they deserved to be inside. Or until they found someone to vouch for them, which was almost impossible if you didn't have contacts.
"What you took from these two..." he began, looking at the wad of bills in her hand. It was quite a lot of money.
"It's enough, I think," she interrupted him. "I'm not very good at math. If it's not enough, I'll find a way."
The way. Those two words echoed in Dan Heng's head like a sinister echo. The girl's way, until just a few minutes ago, had been to unbutton her shirt in a dark alley to attract men and rob them. He had to grant that she had imagination.
He looked at her. Her gray hair fell over her shoulders in tangled strands. Her golden eyes shone with a light that seemed to defy the shadows of the alley. There was something about her face, a combination of features that seemed vaguely familiar. Dan Heng could have sworn he had seen that face somewhere, at some time he couldn't remember. But he was so tired, so overwhelmed by the last eleven hours of work and the adrenaline of the fight, that he couldn't concentrate enough to remember where.
"Do I know you?" he asked, without thinking.
The girl looked at him with strangeness. Her eyes seemed to gleam for an instant.
"I don't think so. I just arrived, remember?"
"I know," said Dan Heng, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. "Sorry. I've had a long day."
He pointed at her coat with a nod of his head, avoiding looking.
"You should close that. It's cold."
She simply rebuttoned the buttons leisurely, as if that oversight was the least of it and many men had seen her naked. But when she finished, her fingers stopped at the last button and she looked up at him.
"You worry about me," she said, tilting her head like a cat would. It wasn't a question.
"Someone has to," Dan Heng replied, shrugging. "You yourself said you have no one. If we don't worry about someone, we'd all end up dead."
She raised an eyebrow.
"That's not a reason for a stranger to worry."
There was a silence. He was about to respond, to say it was the least he could do, to say some of those silly things decent people say in situations like that. But he never got the words out.
Because it was then that the younger guard moved.
He wasn't completely unconscious. Perhaps Dan Heng's blow hadn't been accurate enough, or perhaps his more robust build allowed him to regain consciousness sooner than expected. The truth is that a hoarse groan escaped his lips and his hand rose, trembling, seeking support on the alley wall, and before either of them realized it, he grabbed her wrist to try to get up.
The girl stared at the man who was starting to get up. Dan Heng could see out of the corner of his eye that something changed in her face.
It wasn't a grimace of fear or surprise. It was something deeper, almost primitive. Her golden eyes, which a moment before had shone with an almost human light, became opaque, glassy, as if someone had extinguished a flame behind them. Her jaw tensed. Her shoulders straightened. And then, without a word, she lunged at the guard.
Dan Heng couldn't react. Everything happened in a fraction of a second, too fast for his mind to process what his eyes saw, his movement hampered by the absence of his tail. The girl lunged at the man like an animal, like a beast that had been waiting for the moment to be unleashed. Her hands moved with a force and precision that didn't seem human.
The young guard tried to scream, but the sound died in his throat as her fingers dug into his neck. Her nails were definitely longer than before, emanating a pressure that made the man's skin sink as if it were made of wax. His face turned red, then purple, and as life left his body, his eyes also left, bulging out of their sockets like melted candy. The girl wasn't just grabbing him. She was tearing him apart alive, and no kicks that man could throw could stop it.
"What's wrong? You wanted to touch me? Don't worry, now it's me touching you."
Dan Heng watched in horror as the claws of the girl's other hand tore through the guard's jacket as if it were paper, the fabric ripping with a wet sound, the flesh appearing underneath crossed by scratches that bled instantly as the wounds opened. She carried no weapons. She didn't need them. Her fingers were her weapons, her nails were blades, her arms were steel bars moved by a force that shouldn't exist in such a thin, malnourished body.
"Stop!" shouted Dan Heng, finally processing what he was seeing, stepping forward. "Stop it now!"
But the girl didn't hear him. Or maybe she did, but she didn't care. Her face was empty, a mask of absolute indifference while her hands kept working, tearing strips of clothing and skin from the guard's body, who was barely moving now, except for his mouth, curved in a horrible smile of pleasure. Blood spurted in small jets, staining the cobblestones, splashing the oversized coat she was wearing.
From the pale scar on her stomach began to emanate a light that intensified when the guard's neck bent at an angle no neck should bend, before his body collapsed to the ground with a dull thud. In her hand, the girl had a still-beating heart, which Dan Heng could barely appreciate before she brought her hands to her mouth and disgusting noises filled the alley.
In seconds, she had finished. The monster stared at the corpse for a few seconds, still chewing the heart and with her mouth still stained with blood. Then she looked up at Dan Heng and her golden eyes, still cloudy, still dull, fixed on his. She wiped herself with her sleeve.
"Why did you try to stop me?" she asked. Her voice was flat, without inflection, contrasting with the sadistic expression on her face. "They're bad people, you know it yourself. Bad people must be eliminated."
Dan Heng felt fear creep up his back, a chill that had nothing to do with the cold of the Underworld. The girl in front of him was not the same one who moments before trembled while unbuttoning her shirt. She was something else. Something that carried within itself an instinct for destruction so pure and so absolute that it didn't even bother to hide it.
He swallowed. She could still talk, so she still had some logic, right?
"Listen... um..." He didn't know her name.
"Stelle."
"Stelle. That's enough. Stop now. The other guard is still unconscious. You don't need to kill him too."
The girl tilted her head, as if processing his words. The scar on her stomach shone brighter, and for a moment Dan Heng thought he saw something moving under her skin, something writhing in the darkness of her entrails.
"I'm hungry," said Stelle, and those two words sounded more terrible than any threat. "I haven't eaten in a long time. I'm empty. I want to be full."
Her gaze shifted to the body of the bald guard, who still lay unconscious against the wall. Her fingers opened and closed slowly, as if they could already feel the flesh between them.
"No," said Dan Heng, taking another step forward despite the terror freezing his veins. "You're not going to touch that man. Listen to me. I have meat. I have food. You don't need to do this. Whatever you need to fill your stomach, I'll get it for you."
Stelle looked at him. For an instant, the cloudiness in her eyes seemed to clear, as if a fog were lifting from a frozen lake. The scar on her belly flickered once, twice, and then its light dimmed until it became a faint, barely perceptible glow.
"Meat?" she asked, and in her voice there was no longer that terrifying flatness, but something closer to curiosity. She almost seemed like a normal girl. "Do you have...? Do you have something that will fill me?"
"Yes," Dan Heng replied, reaching into his canvas bag and pulling out the rest of the loaf of bread with meat he had bought that morning. It wasn't much, barely a quarter of the original bread, with a few strips of fibrous meat stuck to the sauce. But it was food, and at that moment it was his only bargaining chip. "Here. It's for you. I have more. Just don't get your hands any more bloody."
Stelle watched the bread with an expression Dan Heng couldn't interpret. Then, with a slowness that contrasted with the animal fury of moments ago, she reached out and took the loaf. She brought it to her nose and sniffed it, like an animal distrustful of a trap. And then, finally, she brought it to her lips and bit into it.
The change was immediate and terrifying.
The tension left her shoulders as if someone had cut the puppet strings holding them. Her face relaxed, the furrows on her forehead softened, and her golden eyes regained that warm glow Dan Heng had seen at first, before everything was unleashed. Even the scar on her belly seemed to calm, merging with the rest of her skin until it became just a pale line, almost invisible.
"Thanks," said Stelle, with her mouth full of bread, looking at the corpse and the unconscious man, with an expression still indifferent. Her eyes still lacked shine. "I was very hungry. I don't know what happened to me. Sometimes... sometimes I lose control when I go a long time without eating."
She said it with the same naturalness with which another person would talk about a headache or a cold. As if tearing a man apart with bare hands and breaking his neck was a minor inconvenience, a minor ailment caused by an imbalance in her diet.
Dan Heng looked at her, and in his gaze there was a mixture of horror, fascination, and a compassion he didn't fully understand. That girl was a danger. She was a ticking time bomb that could explode at any moment and destroy everything in her path. And yet, when her golden eyes rested on him with that expression of naive gratitude, he couldn't help but see her as what she seemed to be: a scared, hungry, lonely refugee who had arrived in the Underworld with nothing but the clothes on her back.
"We have to go," he said, pointing to the two guards lying on the ground. "When they wake up..." he added, and corrected himself. "When the one who's still breathing wakes up, he'll raise the alarm. And I don't want to be here when that happens."
Stelle nodded, taking another bite of bread, though rolling her eyes. She chewed with appetite, with a disconcerting normality, as if she hadn't just committed a murder. She even dared to smile, a small, crooked smile that showed bread crumbs between her teeth. She seemed like a sane madwoman.
"Okay," she said. "I'll follow you. You said you had more meat, right?"
"At my house there's more," he said, and the words came out of his mouth before he could think them. "I have meat saved. It's not much, but it's something. A bit more bread too. And water. You can come with me. It's not far."
The girl stared at him. Her dull golden eyes reflected the yellowish light of the gas lamps that barely managed to penetrate the fog. For a moment, Dan Heng thought he saw something moving in the depths of her pupils, something that might have been hope or mistrust.
"Your house?" she asked, tilting her head with a gesture he found strangely familiar, though he didn't know why. "Like... home?"
The question hit him in the chest harder than he expected. For him, it was simply the place where he slept, where he ate, where he waited for another day to pass to go back to the factory. Home was where his family was, and the only family member he had left was probably dead. But now, with those golden eyes fixed on his, the word suddenly meant something more.
Dan Heng hesitated for a moment. He thought of the damp stains on the ceiling, the window that didn't close properly, the cold seeping through the cracks in the wall, the rusty door that creaked, and the building's boiler that vibrated with a deafening noise every night. It wasn't much. It was nothing, compared to the homes people must have on the surface, up there where the sun shone. It was far from the opulent, warm home he had once had.
But it was his. The only thing he had.
"Yes," he said, and his voice sounded firmer than he felt. "It's a home. Even if it's small and dilapidated, with leaks when it rains and moldy walls. The floor creaks so much it seems like it's going to collapse at any moment, and the heating boiler makes a noise that keeps you awake. But it's mine. It has a roof, four walls, and a door with a lock. There's a bed, even if the mattress is more sunken than a grave. And a kitchen that works, heats water, and can make a stew if you have patience. And food. I have food saved. It's not a feast, but it's enough to share. I offer it to you. If you want, tonight you can sleep there. Rest. Eat something warm."
The gray-haired girl said nothing for a long while. She stood looking at him with an expression Dan Heng couldn't decipher: her golden eyes were fixed on his, but they seemed to be looking beyond, at something he couldn't see. Her lips moved slightly, as if she were testing the words silently, tasting them as she had tasted the bread and meat. She brought a hand to her stomach, clutching it as if it hurt.
"A home..." she whispered at last, and in her voice there was a mixture of astonishment and a fragility that contrasted with the ferocity she had shown just minutes ago. "A... home?"
"That's right."
Tears began to form in her eyes. Dan Heng felt a knot in his throat. He didn't know what to answer. There were no words for that. For a moment, she leaned forward clutching her chest desperately, right over her scar, gasping.
Stelle took a step toward him, still bent over. Her bare feet splashed in a puddle of dirty water, but she didn't seem to notice. Her hand rose slowly, as if she wanted to touch his face, but stopped halfway, fearful.
"Can I?" she asked, in a voice that was barely a whisper. "Can I... go to your home? Can I... can I stay there tonight?"
"Yes," Dan Heng replied, without hesitation. "You can. And if you need more nights, no problem."
She opened her mouth to say something more. Her lips formed the words thank you or perhaps a name, but they didn't come out. Her face suddenly paled, as if all the blood had retreated from her skin in an instant. Her lips, which moments before were slightly pink from the effort of the fight and the food, turned a grayish shade that made Dan Heng's heart skip a beat. The scar on her belly, hidden under the man's coat, began to radiate a heat that he could feel even through the fabric, a dry, dense heat that didn't seem to come from a human body, but from something much deeper, much older.
Her golden eyes, those that had shone with an almost supernatural light during the fight, became glassy, dull, as if someone were blowing out candles one by one behind them. Her eyelids closed slowly, as if the effort of keeping them open was beyond her strength.
"I..." she whispered, and her voice was barely a thread, so faint it was almost lost in the silence of the alley. "I feel... dizzy. I don't know..."
She didn't finish the sentence.
Her knees buckled as if someone had cut her tendons with an invisible knife. Her body collapsed forward, inert, without the slightest resistance, as if all the air supporting it had suddenly escaped. The man's coat opened during the fall, revealing an instant of pale skin and the bright line of the scar before the fabric covered it again.
"Hey!" shouted Dan Heng, lunging toward her before her head hit the cobblestones. "Hey, wake up! Don't pass out now!"
He caught her in midair by pure reflex, wrapping an arm around her waist and the other around her back. Her body fell against his with a weight that was surprisingly light, almost ethereal. Too light for a person her size. Dan Heng felt the girl's ribs under the fabric of the coat, each one pronounced as if her skin was just a thin membrane over a too-fragile skeleton.
"Stelle!"
But she didn't respond. Her eyes were closed, her dark lashes contrasting with the deathly pallor of her cheeks. Her head hung back over Dan Heng's arm, and her gray hair fell in tangled strands almost to the ground. Her breathing was so shallow it was barely noticeable, an almost imperceptible whisper coming from her slightly parted lips. The scar on her belly continued to radiate heat, a heat that Dan Heng could now feel throughout his chest, as if he were holding a live ember wrapped in rags.
Desperate, he searched for her pulse on her wrist. For a few moments he thought she had no pulse, until his eyes widened. She was breathing, but she had no pulse. Instead, there was that strange vibration coming from her scar.
Panic began to crawl up his back like a cold, sticky insect. He didn't know what was wrong with her. He didn't know if she was sick, if it was from hunger, if it had to do with that bright scar, if she was dying. He only knew that she was unconscious in his arms and that he could hardly take her to a doctor.
He looked from side to side of the alley. The gas lamps flickered with their yellowish light, casting dancing shadows on the brick walls. The two guards were still motionless on the ground, but the bald one had let out a faint groan, a sound that chilled Dan Heng's blood. He would wake up soon. When he did, they would look for whoever had beaten them and killed their companion.
He couldn't stay. He couldn't leave her there.
"Come on," Dan Heng murmured, gritting his teeth. "I'm taking you home."
He adjusted the girl's weight in his arms with an effort that tore a groan of pain from him. The eleven hours of work in the factory had left his muscles in knots, and carrying another person, however light, was torture. But there was no alternative. He couldn't drag her. He couldn't leave her. He could only carry her and walk.
Take her to his... no, their home.