District 30
Light burst open overhead.
At first it was only a thin seam. The higher the platform climbed, the thicker that light grew — spreading, fracturing. The metal plate beneath them rose in a slow, grinding lift, and the old rails set into the surrounding walls meshed with a shriek like teeth grinding together.
Sound poured down from above first.
Machine vibration. Metal being struck. Someone’s cursing. An advertisement so distorted it was barely language. The smell of grease-soaked food forced its way down through the gaps.
There was a great deal of human scent.
Far too much of it.
Hunger was quiet. The power drawn from the last kill still moved through the body, and the pull beneath the teeth had settled.
The golden eyes narrowed on their own.
A city?
It did not feel clean.
“Whoaaa—”
“It’s a city! A real city! Snake, are you seeing this?”
I am.
“Oh right, you’ve got eyes. I just got more worked up than you.”
“I’m only half-on right now. If I go fully dark, you won’t be able to wake me again. I’m riding along only when I need to.”
AI’s tone dropped without warning.
“……Wait.”
What.
“This doesn’t match my records. No identity verification signal. No pollution scan either. No response from any quarantine gate.”
“This isn’t a civilian passage. It’s logistics. Waste, unregistered biometrics, things that get awkward if they leave a paper trail.”
Waste.
“Yep. You’re entering the city on a waste line, Snake.”
The light above had widened, but what opened was nothing like an orderly entrance. A path wound between rusted pipes, waste-transport rails, and iron plating patched over itself again and again. It was closer to a gap for things that preferred not to be noticed.
Certainty was impossible, but the smell said enough.
“Oh, and there are a ton of cameras.”
I can see that much.
“Some of them aren’t on the district public network. They’re watching, but they don’t keep records.”
A private net?
“Yeah.”
Geomeunburi flicked a finger.
A sharp click.
Both wolf-types dropped low at once.
“Stick to the shadows.”
He was looking up. Even so, the order came this way.
White scales.
Too conspicuous.
Cut the sound as well.
The body slid toward the edge of the metal plate, into the side the light touched less. Pipe-shadows split the scales into thin bands.
His gaze followed for a moment.
“I know you’re intelligent.”
“There are a lot of eyes here. Don’t show it. Act like a beast.”
Tiny lenses were set into the cracks in the walls. Among the ones that looked powered down, a few still swallowed light, faintly.
Blink.
Blink.
“Two on the lower right are on. Upper left is faking off.”
Faking off?
“Yeah. Cheap units. It’s obvious.”
A heavy thud.
The structure stopped.
A long hiss of compressed air. Iron plating shoved sideways.
Light crashed in all at once.
Neon stabbed the eyes. Pipes tangled across ceiling and walls without distinction, and between them hung cable bundles and markings that meant nothing. A half-shattered billboard stuttered in midair.
Directly beneath it, someone leaned against a wall and coughed blood.
Right under the ad, someone was selling black filters at half price.
Beyond that stood a single wire-mesh gate. An old scanner sat on its rusted frame, and humans bearing different marks stood on either side — one with a gun, one fiddling with wiring coiled around a prosthetic arm, one half-asleep as he scrolled a terminal.
A sharp beep.
The scanner trembled in front of the two wolf-types.
> Biometric response. Registration confirmed.
> Unregistered biometric response.
Every head turned this way at once.
Then a man walked out of the shadow beyond the mesh. A thin body. A black metal receiver where one ear should have been. One eye a dull gray; the other a cybernetic lens with numbers and waveforms sliding thinly across it.
A small crackle leaked from inside the receiver.
Static.
He looked first at Geomeunburi’s left arm — at the place where blood had dried.
“Boss.”
“Later.”
The man dropped his gaze.
Geomeunburi jerked his chin.
“Noise.”
The dull eye and the cybernetic one moved together.
“Handle it.”
Numbers streamed fast through Noise’s artificial eye. The wound. The two wolf-types. And last of all, me.
“A new acquisition?”
“Trade goods.”
“I’ll bury it so nothing hits the record.”
His fingers raced over the terminal.
> Temporary clearance.
> Biometric response: unclassified.
> Ownership: unlisted.
“Open the gate.”
A heavy clang.
The mesh shoved aside.
A woman beside the checkpoint sucked in a breath.
“Fuck, did you just see that white thing?”
“Even if you saw it, you didn’t.”
“What the hell is that?”
“It’s behind Black Beak. If you’re so curious, go ask yourself.”
“Are you insane?”
Laughter mixed in from another direction.
“Looks like the tamer filled a new cage.”
“Keep your voice down. You want to end up as feed if he hears you?”
The muttering rode the pipes and drifted away.
Black Beak.
That was what they called him on this side.
Geomeunburi let the whispers pass. His short, rounded frame moved through the crowd. Looking at him, he seemed like the kind of man people would shove aside — yet people made room first.
“Whoa, that guy’s popular.”
That kind of popularity, is it.
“No, for real. Everyone just automatically steps aside. I wish I could try that once.”
You don’t have a body.
“……Hey. That’s a cruel fact-check, Snake.”
Noise had already fallen half a step behind.
“Southern rail is blocked. A waste hauler flipped. Both drivers got carved up, apparently.”
“East.”
“The Redpine Society raised the toll again.”
“Today too?”
“Yes. They have an incredible nose for money.”
“We pass under my name.”
“They’re going to pick a fight. What then?”
“Let them.”
“……I’ll open the northeast detour. If blood starts flying, the cleanup fees get filthy.”
Geomeunburi glanced sideways this way. He had caught my gaze lingering a moment on the terminal.
“You look like you’ve got a lot of questions.”
AI stayed quiet this time.
The path widened.
The ground was a tangle of waste-transport rails and human foot traffic. On either side, shops like holes in the wall ran on without end — illegal prosthetic repair, scrap-chip exchanges, Pollution Beast byproduct processors. Inside one, someone was swapping out an arm, and a groan slipped out as if the anesthesia hadn’t fully taken. Beside that, a child was bargaining over a mechanical eye resting in an open palm.
Overhead, a waste container rattled past on the rail. No one looked up.
An advertisement floated above it.
The humans in the reality below were mostly wearing masks.
Moving through that landscape, thought gathered to a single point.
The ones who would hunt me would not stop at one.
Someone would dig through the aftermath of the last fight I had touched. Someone would come looking for the fallen. And if anyone knew what was embedded in this body beneath the ruins, that side might move as well.
Remaining outside was the same as waiting. And waiting for the first one to arrive was a prey’s place, was it not.
Until this body grew hungry again, information was needed.
How this world turned. What systems the things chasing me stood on. Flee without knowing that, and wouldn’t the path simply circle back to the same ground?
Under the lamp.
Whether this city was a lamp or a beast with its mouth open was still unknown. Only that inside might be better than outside.
Geomeunburi pointed with his chin into the distance.
“District 30.”
“The City.”
He spat the words like something chewed.
“The ones inside talk about last bastions and hope.”
“This is the edge of that last city. The flesh pressed up against the outside. The first thing to get bitten — and the trash can where everything the inside throws out gets dumped.”
Far away, a heavy pulse kept rolling.
Thud.
Thud.
The wall. It was not visible directly. Too distant. And yet it caught on the senses — metal, barrier fields, gun turrets, the smell of old blood. A vast boundary line, layered over itself many times, holding the outside of the city at bay.
The scale was hard to grasp. Less a wall than a structure driven into the horizon.
“That thing divides it.”
Geomeunburi said.
“What’s inside is human. What’s outside is monster. That’s the line the ones inside drew.”
He laughed, short.
“The things that were people when they got pushed out — once they’re outside, they call them monsters.”
They turned into a narrow alley. Buildings on both sides leaned into each other as if ready to collapse. Dozens of cables and pipes webbed the gap between them.
Geomeunburi did not hesitate. At every corner there was someone — masked figures, people half machine, people wearing different marks. The moment they saw Geomeunburi, they stepped back without a word.
Calculation and wariness came first, not loyalty — discomfort and necessity.
They stopped beside a waste-compression yard. An abandoned repair hangar stood there. An old warning remained on the iron door.
BIOMETRIC WASTE PROHIBITED.
Underneath it, someone had painted over in black.
If the price is right, everything is possible.
Click. Click.
Geomeunburi snapped his fingers twice.
A long metallic groan.
When the door opened, the smells of oil, chemicals, wet fur, blood, and old metal poured out together. Beneath them, the presence of Pollution Beasts.
The two wolf-types reacted first — less wariness than tension draining out.
A few more people were inside the door. They had taken positions along the walls — subordinates guarding the hangar’s perimeter.
Broken equipment hung on the inner walls, and thick wire mesh and old mats covered the floor. In one corner, two small, twisted Pollution Beasts. Near the ceiling, something like a winged rat hung upside down from a pipe.
It was close to a nest.
Geomeunburi first set a hand on the scruffs of both wolf-types. He checked the flesh around their collars, fingertips tracing where the black tubes had dug in.
“You overdid it.”
One of the wolf-types made a wet sound deep in its throat.
A low growl.
“I told you not to run.”
The way he handled those two, at least, was not rough.
“Hmm. This isn’t in the records.”
Don’t speak.
“Got it. But it’s interesting.”
“Come in.”
The wolf-types shifted aside. The body slid low over the threshold. Every Pollution Beast inside looked at once — teeth, eyes, twisted joints, embedded scraps of metal. None of them lunged.
Geomeunburi was there, and I was there. Between the two of us, they hesitated.
He spoke.
“Not just a beast. Not a common Pollution Beast either.”
The eyes on me began to measure value again.
“And you understand speech.”
“So you’ll be all the more useful.”
Displeasure ran thin beneath the scales.
Will pressed outward.
A trade.
Nothing more.
“Right. A trade.”
He perched on the edge of a battered workbench. As his short, rounded body sank into shadow, only the long nose jutted out with sharp clarity.
“You need a place to hide, and I need to see what you are.”
“No need to pretend you can’t talk. You know how to send meaning.”
The city.
Information.
A safe gap.
“Greedy, too.”
“He says you’re greedy, Snake.”
Ignored.
“If you’re going to stay in my nest, one rule.”
Geomeunburi said.
“You do not touch my kids. Ever.”
Kids.
The two wolf-types reacted first. The small Pollution Beasts in the corner lifted their heads, and the winged thing on the pipe pulled its body in tight.
Fine. I won’t touch them first.
“Good.”
He pulled one corner of his mouth.
“First talking snake I’ve met.”
“Hey, first for me too.”
That was when it happened.
A short beep.
A siren sounded briefly outside the hangar.
Caution. District 30 outer wall erosion grade C-2.
Civilian traffic restricted in the affected zone.
A short beep.
No one reacted much. The alley noise stayed the same. Routine, it seemed.
Noise scrolled his terminal and muttered.
“This shit again.”
Geomeunburi only turned his eyes toward the terminal.
Soon the tone changed.
Beep-beep-beep — beep-beep-beep —
Warning. Erosion grade C-3.
Contact confirmed in sectors 17 and 18. Access to the affected zone prohibited.
Full civilian traffic lockdown.
Beep-beep-beep —
This time the alley noise dipped a little.
“Grade just went up.”
AI said.
“This pattern isn’t in the normal range.”
The senses tried to widen and were cut back at once. Too many humans. Heat, current, machine signals, traces like magic, the presence of pollution, drugs, blood, disinfectant — all tangled together.
Narrowed to the wall alone.
Distant. Still the heavy pulse continued.
Thud.
Thud.
The wall’s resonance kept a steady rhythm.
A long rising wail stretched out —
Wiiiiiiiiing—
This time the sound laid itself down long and low. Voices inside the hangar sank beneath that tone.
Warning. Erosion grade C-4.
Erosion in progress in sector 17.
Please confirm nearby shelter levels.
Entering higher-tier response procedures.
Wiiiiiiiiing—
Inside the hangar, Pollution Beasts and subordinates who had been moving stopped one by one.
Static roughened at Noise’s ear.
Crackle-crackle-static.
The fingers moving over the terminal stopped.
One of the subordinates outside spat a curse.
“Six batteries went quiet?”
“Guild kids are fucked again.”
“Sector 17 — is that far from here?”
“Even if it is, so what. If it breaches, this place is done too.”
“Then shouldn’t we run?”
“Run where. You think the ones inside are going to open a door for us?”
Noise’s expression hardened first.
The amusement left Geomeunburi’s face as well.
The alert kept repeating, and the muttering outside spread low.
Geomeunburi did not look toward the wall. He only slowly closed his bloodstained fingertips.
This time it stretched longer.
Wiiiiiiiiing—
Repeating. Erosion grade C-4.
Outer wall erosion in progress.
Awaiting higher-tier response authorization.
“Authorization, my ass.”
Another voice spat.
“The suit bastards aren’t coming. I’m telling you.”
Geomeunburi stepped down from the workbench. Both wolf-types rose at once. The Pollution Beasts in the corner moved as well. He lifted one finger, and all of them stopped.
Wait.
He looked at me.
“We’ll have to put the trade on hold.”
The senses narrowed toward the wall again. Distant, and thick. At this range, among these humans, nothing precise caught.
Even so, one thing did.
Something was massing outside the wall.
Presence beyond it was pulling in the same direction.
“Snake. This is kind of scaring me.”
AI’s voice had gone quiet.
You feel fear, that thing.
The question passed for a moment. Not meant as a jab. Pure curiosity.
Then the sirens tore open again.
Wiiiiiiiiing—
Wiiiiiiiiing—
Not once. From the alleys, from between buildings, from the upper floors — all at the same time. One had not finished before the next began. The entire city was ringing with the same note.