1944. Eastern Border of the Tuenshi Empire. Lands Where Primeval Torment Manifests.

Once again, this tiny world was surrounded by cold, splintery twilight, where, with a few exceptions, anxiety and fear continued to grow. These two feelings marked an epochal interlude between an unknown past and an unconscious future, now roaring through countless hearts like a stormy ocean of endless hopes and terrifying fantasies. The heavy, thunderous rain, accompanied by the enraged vision of hundreds of blinding white and dark purple lightning bolts, had been ceaseless for unbearably long, dry months, serving as the witness to this virgin epic. The wind, crashing against the ground, screeched with hundreds of surreal blows—matter's touch in the constantly sparking and flesh-freezing darkness.

People in long chitinous cloaks and with burning respirators on their weary faces. Various silhouettes of soldiers in enormous, intermittently smoking mechanical suits, forming a grotesque quantity of metallic biota, and monstrous, massive inventions towering above their heads like sharp heavenly cliffs, trembling every minute under hundreds of thousands of tons of weight, shaken by the most powerful shots of climate cannon nuclei, corroding the multifaceted flesh of innocent nature. Beyond the tall gates, in his fatigue-soaked vision, he imagined hordes of legendary beasts hiding, instead of hastily invented human silhouettes, awaiting their doom under a heap of molten shells in the embrace of poisoned air, piercing metal and the graveyard earth, drowning in intestinal slime.

A gaze.

At times, it even seemed as though the endless, vast sky trembled in fear along with those boundless gray hills in the distance, like the long branches of frozen, ancient fir trees, to which the endless walls of dense coniferous forests and the variegated bistre sky bowed—a sky that resembled the decayed and faded halo of this world, spread out over a brown, scattered organic canvas. Winter had yet to approach, but the cold already seemed to gnaw at the deathly pale fingers opposite the girl, stretching thick white-pink frostbite under the nails. They moved closer to the bright, warm fire. Others continued to run frantically through the downpour, often bumping into each other and unintentionally shoving in an atmosphere of blood-stained gray entanglements and the constantly shifting, oppressed tremors of life.

Panic had been escalating in both zones for the second, if not the third consecutive week, rapidly reaching a feverish peak. The glowing wrist consoles on everyone's arms hummed and shook wildly, along with the rubbery dialogue windows, as the scattered light from the sandbox inside the screen flickered, further teasing the frayed nerves of the rank-and-file soldiers, laborers, and reserve personnel. The soldiers, strapped into mechanized armor, swiftly dragged heavy structures across the wet ground on command—a ground that, due to the relentless rain, now more closely resembled a brown, sticky swamp, with a dense carpet of suspiciously moldy moss spreading across several areas. Forcing themselves to stay alert and summoning all their strength, each continued to carry out their work, their unshakable duty, faithfully following the belief instilled by the new leader. A madness trusted to no one—words that no one could comprehend.

The muffled roar of furious engines on wheels passed by the chaotically placed canvas tents and the frequently seen setups of flat-roofed buildings, sheltered under the ancient bones of fantastically enormous trees, teeming with human bustle and piles of crates filled with various provisions. Every other infirmary was overflowing, mostly with soldiers groaning in pain—perhaps even in terror—among whom were many with nothing left to lose, their eyes filled with bitterness, confusion, and emptiness. And regarding such individuals, every third soldier or messenger harbored a single thought, still unaware of the horrors and bodily torture that awaited beyond the border walls.

They died. Just a little closer to those crooked trees, whose torn, hardened ribs descended with painful sighs toward the passing muddy river. They died. In their own rooms, schools, and factories. In thick grass, with a strained smile stretched across a young, pimply face. In someone's embrace or alone with their bound body. Losing their minds, limbs, and lives in the lightning-quick, murky atmosphere of deep-black stars—thick and terribly sticky. Massive crystal glyphs one after another scooped up the shattered earthy hills, where shards of rockets, limbs, and someone's briefcase with a rain-soaked yellowing umbrella were mixed together. These low, yet strangely long buildings with peeling white walls were barely fenced in by thin wooden logs, hardly holding together. Tall towers, masterfully constructed from enormous stone slabs and strong metal alloys, defending and retaliating, along with some rooftops, flickered with thick tongues of flame, which the angry, elderly rains struggled to extinguish again and again.

The brutal sounds assaulting the ears and the blood-stirring sights blended into an endless and relentlessly horrifying mosaic of the grotesque intricacies of someone's actions—sometimes so simplistic they forced one to question the sanity of this world. In many minds, adrenaline imprinted itself as an intense, muffled heartbeat, echoing in an unknown and sensitive void. A singular echo. Hearts pounded furiously, as if they wanted to escape the living body, and legs feverishly began to tremble in every volunteer who ran past the gates, daring to cross this fantastical Rubicon.

A strip of obstacles constructed by an exceptional mind. Dozens of frantic faces scurrying through the endless, waterlogged maze in search of some meaning, forbidden knowledge, or that rarest moment that allowed only three to survive. Simple desires, or perhaps sheer will. Words within sounds. Dreams around the world. Beneath the collapsing crossroads of defensive roads and the colonnades of some structures, far from the center, within the second line of defense against the nocturnal climax of skin, organ secretions, and bones, the sounds of massive, earth- and stone-shattering bombardments and powerful explosions continued to resonate behind the high stone walls.

The ear-splitting buzzing of intermittent short circuits from energy-matter turbines, the enraged hail of rocket flashes, and the unrelenting rivers of nature's release instantly and obediently responded to the dying bodies and the imploring, restless souls that now inhabited the mutilated soil beneath them, birthing an entirely new crimson fruit. No, this was not war. It was thirst—a thirst in which souls drowned, wrapped in the intricacies of the mind, the freedom of thought, fear, with no chance of finding comfort between, around, within, inside out, outside, inverted, forward, deepening, rolling out, stretching, piercing, smoothing, absolutely.

There were no heroes or villains in this conflict, no poverty or wealth. No beings or creatures. It was as if gods had simply gone mad. Gods who had desperately tangled themselves in their own thoughts amidst the ceaselessly bubbling, endless, and unpredictable discoveries of existence.

Beyond that nonexistent veil of consciousness and chaos, ahead of the disheveled human and chimeric flesh of the grass and the moon's fog-ground mist, a random glance faded on the yellowed stone canvas.

The small and quite cramped room of the captain, or rather, these worn walls with a feeble appearance, were as musty and poorly suited for solitary reflection. Although, unlike the barracks and noisy camps seen earlier, where indecent curses and other foul language echoed, her nose no longer wrinkled as much from the unappetizing smells of dampness, smoke, and half-decayed corpses near the town hall with its bell tower. And the ears beneath the thin layers of carbon-fiber flesh ceased to twitch nervously, more apprehensively than fearfully, in response to the continuous sounds of the raging slaughter. No matter where you stepped, you immediately bumped into a large box soaked with damp soil in front of you or a torn bag spilling out suitcases and opaque hard packages marked with city labels. Inherently dirty, painted with thick soot and empty shells, along with other debris, were frequently found in this cramped, cool chamber, where tiny gray grains of amorphous dust fluttered about like the first unexpected snow.

The battered lamps, worn down by age, gloomily illuminated what seemed like an unknown, cave-like space around, while the holographic translucent windows were completely filled with some digital assets with a jumble of blurry text and unclear images glued to thick brown cardboard. How many incomprehensible images were among the strange curves? Another unfamiliar place where she felt like an outsider and defenseless. Despite all this, the essence of the pathetic bulk followed closely behind her shadow. A hoarse, nagging yoke.

Gathering her scattered thoughts with panic and with her heart clenched by oppressive anxiety, she lost all her passionate confidence. The unnatural wooden decorations thickened between the short rooms, holding bound rooms with cabinets and shelves where notes of raspberry nectar with bread and butter, freshly smoked fish, and compote roamed. Even crossing the threshold, the not very tall girl in a gray field uniform with transformed plates did not dare to lift her seemingly glued eyelids after a deep sleep.

Her thin, fragile fingers involuntarily and desperately tried to intertwine with each other, eventually clenching into small, still quite young fists. The restrained hand of the senior lieutenant, clad in a sturdy glove, blocked the fragile silhouette of the girl with her head bowed, stopping her on the hard, dirty carpet where monochrome leaves played amid the surrounding darkness. He fixed a reproachful gaze from across the wide table, which resembled yet another fortress built from heavy leather straps, soiled books, and aged ladders, whose automatic bookmarks lowered the meager shelves laden with stacks of the victors' enduring papers. The only ones.

— Senior, Lieutenant Garren Stueld reporting as ordered! — in that instant, a young man with a large mechanical respirator on his face quickly saluted, taking a step forward as the device began to unfold into dozens of protective, colorful layers, resembling the moving face of a gray-green mantis. This freed his thin, frostbitten lips, shifting them over his sharp and painfully gaunt cheekbones. Whether his cheeks were dark from old bruises or from some prolonged illness, he could not yet tell.

The bulky figure of an elderly man with accumulated, disproportionately developed muscles behind his broad, heavy shoulders responded with a burdened gaze. The misshapen character, whose grotesquely pale, half-gray skin contorted into an ambiguous grimace, hardened into a roughness that spread along various long wrinkles, as if chiseled by a sharp chisel on an ancient stone that adorned the earth.

Clenching a thick sheet of paper in his large, aching fingers, the elderly captain continued to drill his gaze into the strange visitor before him. He didn't exactly have the luxury of time to indulge in such strange declarations, but volunteers — whether they were legal-age teenagers, elderly people, or even young women — would never be unnecessary in such a critical combat situation that had engulfed the world for the past six months. Chaos was the overwhelming reason why they had to coldly set aside ethics for protection, for the future, for the sake of ensuring that at least one of them could survive on this island. The life of their unreal future was at stake, one that could one day change even this moment, as often happens in fairy tales. Sensation. Hatred. Hunger. Touch. Passion, and much more collided with each other, shackled by the chains of their desires. Phrases. Meaningless. They hear it. Chin. On the table. Insults. Chewing from the other side. A joke. A blow. Absence. Excitement. Gaze. Skin...

The main thing is to complete the training. To remain a replacement and continue learning. In particular, there was no reason for citizens who had never held a rifle to go into battle. It was better for them to stay near the artillery, medical equipment, and tools, while more experienced fighters would reinforce the infantry and special operations.

According to his subordinate, it was clearly worth paying attention to this strange girl, which exceeded his expectations. A group of curious faces crouched behind a tall gap, watching in shock the girl's silhouette as she moved away from the entrance. The captain's stern gaze, formed by murky green spirals, suddenly darted downwards, his boundless astonishment focused on the long, dull fox tail that hung limply from beneath the folds of her gray, wrinkled cloak. Before his eyes, one of the few legends turned out to be the most candid and honest truth. With undisguised astonishment, the old man forgot to pick up his jaw. Why hadn't the authorities or science paid any of their good-natured stubborn attention to her? They should have stopped her. Dissuaded her and protected her! Studied her! Was this a dream, or had he simply gone overboard with the grain supply, adding too much to the cider? Understanding. The conclusion, the law of freedom.

Even without the loosely hanging clothes on her thin shoulders, she immediately appeared weak and frail. Only the face of the unknown girl could not be clearly seen, as it was hidden beneath a thick veil of equally dull locks, the color of wheat ears faded by frost. The girl's head was adorned with a complex apparatus made of rough yet lightweight alloy in places. Multiple plates were interconnected by sturdy, individual carbon fiber from a finer thread system, which provided a springiness for her fluid movements thanks to the chrome-melted terrion. On the right side of her face, very thin wires were noticeably pulled back, still swirling with warm neon substances of a mysterious liquid. They stretched upwards to a pair of thicker, longer plates that served as protective openings for her apparent fox-like locators. Behind these pressed-down "ears" was another pair of similar plates, but these were much smaller in size and firmly secured by metallic bumps, at the edges of which were fixing round capsules. Whether it was a gentle breeze or some other external influence, these capsules, adorned with recessed calligraphy, began to spin and glow with yellowish lights that smoothly spread through the deep, patterned grooves, reminiscent of melted, shredded black coals, their pointed ends piercing the wind.

Ideas flitted through his mind, accompanied by a couple of warnings, and questions settled themselves in the back row. In their place arose a thought, triggered by the sight of the unfolded documents — a modest biography consisting of literally two lines and the medical history of this young woman. As he calmed his inner child's excitement and desperate confusion, he noticed how his subordinate, with restless curious eyes, devoured every inch of her silhouette, as if it were in some divine museum of arts. Why had she been allowed here? Why hadn't this being been kept in a warmer and more peaceful place? They should have gathered around her. This bad dream wasn't happening to him for nothing. Was it time to give up on the pills? His own face felt so warm, almost soft in his palm, despite the terrible chill surrounding them.

Ideas flitted through his mind, accompanied by a couple of warnings, and questions settled themselves in the back row. In their place arose a thought, triggered by the sight of the unfolded documents—a modest biography consisting of literally two lines and the medical history of this young woman. As he calmed his inner child's excitement and desperate confusion, he noticed how his subordinate, with restless curious eyes, devoured every inch of her silhouette, as if it were in some divine museum of arts.

— Why had she been allowed here? Why hadn't this being been kept in a warmer and more peaceful place? They should have gathered around her. This bad dream wasn't happening to him for nothing. Was it time to give up on the pills? His own face felt so warm, almost soft in his palm, despite the terrible chill surrounding them.

— Ahem! I've reviewed your document and... there are strangely blank spaces regarding your surname. Your family. There isn't even a name here. Rather, instead of your name, there's a stamp indicating its exceptional absence, — the captain's surprisingly calm yet hoarse voice escaped hesitantly, like hail from parched lips, as he set the form aside.

— Permission to speak, Captain Lawrence! — Lieutenant Garren interjected, taking an uncertain step forward before she could respond.

— Speak. — With the same eagerness, Lawrence extended his hand toward him, nodding briskly across the large table, which, in addition to a huge map with colorful holographic outlines, was literally buried under high stacks of folders and other papers in exotic bindings. They reflected visual models of transparent fields, ravines, and cities with grim streets, in which life indicators had fallen silent, despite the passing carrying stations on the rooftops.

— This individual resided on the western island of Kanpek five years ago, serving as an aide to the recently deceased Prince Oji Mhuo, — the lieutenant tried to pronounce each word with smooth expressiveness, as smooth and even as the transparent stubble on his face. But from excitement, his tongue occasionally stumbled, and his gaze seemed determined to linger longer and scrutinize this unimaginable being beside him. A genuine, living entity quietly trembling from the cold. — As the guest claims, she had no relatives or any close ones from birth, and she swam to our renowned capital two years ago in search of shelter...

— Hmmm-mh! I see... — murmuring with a bit of confusion and glancing around, the captain had been eagerly rummaging through his pockets until he found a small steel box with a crimson marking on its black lid. — But tell me this, — portraying a thoughtful expression and furrowing his brows, Lawrence finally addressed the young girl, who was still standing quietly with a smoking helmet on her head. — Ki-tsune... Or Ho-Hokkaido... How should I address you? — Oh! I mean your divine condescension! — he awkwardly interrupted himself, rising from his chair with all his cumbersome bulk and bowing low before her. — Please, answer me just one question, alright? — not at all waiting for a nod from her or the long-awaited, barely audible agreement from her sealed lips, the captain asked his question after a moment. — What compelled you to come here, risking your priceless gift? You must... perhaps be the only one of your kind?

The elderly man was ignited with curiosity, eager to bury this young being under a heap of questions and revelations accumulated over several decades, which had already made his head ache. Her ears—are they hidden by the helmet?

If one could say so, there was exactly a minute of awkward silence from the fox and heavy breathing from the lieutenant. The remnants of dust, which had been lingering between the folds of thick tarpaulins, fell repeatedly in a brown trail under the unyielding tremor of the ground. After this, one of the lamps in the room went out with a soft crack.

— I... — her lips trembled and then pressed into a thin, cold line. Her heart was pounding desperately, and she gathered what remained of her will in her clenched fists with the last of her strength. Inside, there were no doubts or regrets, only courage — a quiet, fragile courage that she had not lost even under the weight of the suffocating awkwardness. Her decision required no lengthy contemplation, but her soul, scarred by others' hearts, fluttered at the thought of what awaited her after this final step. Despite the fear, despite the despair, she knew for what she was ready to throw herself into the hell of an unending war.

Her thoughts, desires, emotions — all of it was in a contradictory struggle with one another, changing places like wild beasts unleashed. Despair and fear of the new unknown melded into a painful, unresolved chaos. This sensation, full of contradictions and uncertainty, seemed as if it should not exist in this world. She took a deep, barely audible breath without lifting her gaze.

— For a long time, my soul was empty, — her voice trembled, but she made no attempt to hide it. — Inside me. I... I didn't know who I was or what I was supposed to do. Because of that damned feeling, I was just waiting for death, thinking it would free me from this torment... But everything changed after one meeting, — she paused, allowing her words to sink into the silence, then continued. — So many strange things... I didn't understand anything. My mommy took me in. I loved wandering in her garden. Tending to her flowers, feeding her Amselot, growing grapes, and learning to make wine from them. I've never tasted anything better in my life, — she smiled like a child, captivated by the warmth of her memories.

A familiar female face appeared before her eyes — a weak, transparent outline through which she again saw the two of them in the yellowed little room, smelling of salt, dirt, and unredeemed sins. This place had become her first and only home. She sighed and, staring into the void, whispered:

— I want to preserve it. To keep my mommy alive in this wonderful world. And for the people who live here, I'm ready to give my worthless life.

Thin streams of tears, soaked with fear and lonely, unshared despair, slowly trickled down her pale cheeks. She wanted to sob, to scream, but before her eyes, the same image kept resurfacing: the broken walls of the house, wallpaper soaked in blood, and the scratches of an enraged beast... Each time, she fell silent, as if afraid of being interrupted. But the men's faces were polite, filled with respect, attentive listeners to her short, unfinished story, which seemed to them a lengthy play about a forgotten universe. About feelings that, despite all the horrors of existence, retain sacred humanity. About a life that perhaps never existed.

The captain sat in stunned silence, now wearing a strange smile and rolling a unique tobacco wrap between his yellowed, thick teeth. At his nod, the lieutenant responded confidently, after which Garran's hands skillfully touched the intricate mechanisms of the fox's helmet. She would have recoiled from the stranger's hands at some unknown signal in her aching thoughts, but at the last moment, she held back. The modest heaps of protective armor rose above her head, releasing through the narrow gaps of the multiple plates, particularly on her head, thin wisps of steam that seemed like delicate strings in the unheard melody of an elusive dance, almost instantly dissolving into the harmony of the icy teasing wind. Along with everything else, a whole swarm of thick, unkempt hair spilled out, from under which fox ears began to peek out. Lieutenant Garran, with an astonishingly foolish expression, began to step back toward his captain, whose face, unlike that of his subordinate, revealed only a hint of that strange bewilderment.

— What, with her ears? — Lawrence replied, interested as he put aside his cigar. This creature clearly differed from those depicted and described in books and old manuscripts. It was almost radically different.

— Um... Does she have more? — Garran said with the same foolish, frozen surprise on his face, puzzledly shrugging his shoulders. His forbidden hobby had often conversed with ancient folk tales and myths, but they never yielded even the slightest equivalent or forgotten answer.

— Are there such things? Or have there been? — The captain suddenly looked at his subordinate.

— No, — Garran shook his head negatively, already adopting an artistically serious expression. — This is truly a phenomenon, — the man nodded firmly.

— Hmm, well then, — clearing his throat roughly into his broad fist, Lawrence stood tall with an outstretched hand toward the girl and a fresh seal for examination, — Upon entering the eighty-ninth platoon, Private "Fox," — the captain smiled encouragingly, so sincerely and so easily, as if he hadn't heard the cries beyond those thick, soiled canvases, hadn't seen the terror in the eyes of those wandering dolls on the walls, and as if he didn't understand at all why he stood inside this shabby room surrounded by half-rotting dishes.

***

2592. Beach. Present time.

Thick gray clouds have long moved away from this place, giving the scorching sun an atmosphere of endless turquoise space. Endless desolate surroundings. Once, there were green steppes rich with dense trees and plantations of gardens. Carefree farmers engaged in their favorite tasks. It was peaceful here. It was even beautiful. And the long, deep river served as a perfect picnic spot. Or the promenade for a morning run, filled with the eclogic tranquility on an old, awake face. These boundless and vast waves of ruins, golden as rays of sunlight, perhaps also contributed to the atmosphere of their utility. Shattered stone boulders, both small and mega massive, lay sprawled in the endless yellow ocean now absolutely everywhere and only underfoot. But sometimes they rose up and above. In the form of intricate staircases, tree stumps, seaweed, and distant meadows. There were so many of them that it seemed as if the moon, having shattered into countless islets, had crashed onto these lands, leaving not a single trace of the past. An insatiably flickering and unseeing contemplation, illumination, and a groaning turmoil, eternally hiding the spicy path of decay and insistently leading the curves along a trail of endless pale-yellow sand. Scorching heat. Moving around here without gear was extremely difficult, and there was no particular sense in it. Life here had faded. Instead, day by day, only massive and very loud explosions were born, creating heated depressions of destruction. For example, another shell landed right between those two still largest stone formations. Thunder. Another loss for the defenders. Thick metal fragments flew apart under sprawling and dense bloody splashes. Fragments of a thick burgundy mush, along with torn flesh, now lay abundantly against the heated stones that could burn someone's fingers right to the bone upon contact.

The cursing clung to some furious screams, which seemed to be struggling, drowning in the depths of chilling helplessness and strange sorrow. With a heart pounding savagely inside and a gaze of madness, this guy continued to scream for a broken minute, beating his quite reddened hands, marred with deep scratches, against the stones.

Having lost his mutilated "armor," which now resembled useless scrap metal with annihilated equipment and other tattered makeshift tools, the unknown continued to pound his blood-soaked hands against the nearby rocks. It seemed he had scraped almost all the skin off both limbs and showed no sign of stopping, crying out to himself in solitude: "Why don't they work!?" I wonder what he means? What exactly doesn't work? His hands? Or perhaps his sick and far from healthy mind? The issue clearly lies in something beyond these two options... The dark blue eyes of the guy suddenly darted toward another new source of loud noise. Huge, large, and small stone configurations scattered in all directions, raising a thick dome of dust from the sun-heated velvety sand. It was yet another fallen body of a soldier, collapsing dozens of meters away from him.

The protective helmet, with numerous scratched plates engraved with weary ages and shifting deformed mechanisms on the facial section, was shattered to pieces and splattered with blood on the advanced visor. The massive fragments of metal, merging like an endless cube, were covered in deep dents, numerous scratches, and open cuts, from which, like entrails, deformed structural parts emerged, along with some sparking wires, as if from an impenetrably black artificial space instead of its biological organism, behind which fragments of internally shattered systems lay crumbled like heavy wings. Only upon seeing the face of this unfortunate one through her broken helmet did the boy, as if losing his mind, rush from his spot. Thick and simultaneously insane clusters of detailed armor fragments simply did not allow the boy to turn her onto her back, although he struggled to do so for the first ten seconds. With years of honed hand agility, he only managed to free her head from the huge helmet adorned with a gray mosaic of featureless lips beneath a pale-gilded facial shield, surrounded by still living and shifting protective mechanisms of the unified armor, momentarily astounded by what he saw: without a doubt, it was her.

So powerful yet simultaneously fragile, so humble and eternally silent from the outside. She seemed to be carefully guarding utterly unnecessary words for her existence. With trembling dusty fingers, he touched her horrifically bloodstained locks, gently pushing aside a dense mass of pale wheat-colored hair. Her four, horrifyingly mangled and broken fox ears did not flinch even a millimeter, nor did her eyelids twitch. From her soft, pale lips, thin threads of blood trickled down, and her left cheek was covered in a terrifying burnt abrasion.

— And you kept insisting that you weren't special at all, — the guy said with a sincere but foolish smile, making another unsuccessful attempt to lift her body. — Ugh! We won't leave this like this! Right, my little drunkard!? We'll manage soon; it's almost done! We'll put an end to this eventually, just like with Misato's recent virginity on "Trinity" day. Ha-ha, it might not be an achievement, but at least he left for good after a fish diet and lessons in rhetoric in front of the mirror, — but then he suddenly fell face down, just managing to painfully brace his elbow at the last moment.

Once again, something resembling an explosion crashed somewhere in the distance. The previously mad gaze darted aside again, hearing something rolling down the high slope along with the stones... The hot air began to break the grave silence inside, thickly scorching the thin, painful figure, still not fully matured, with cellular connections around the intact organism, and constantly stealing from each other everything, from all and against everything, in pursuit and absence. That which comes after death. Not even color. Not space and not brain. Absolute darkness began to dissolve the repetitive, palpable pulse around the inner barriers of the fleeing and annihilating will of existence, blurring colors transforming into an endless blue spot with a single, everything-consuming yellow blot. A form squeezed in the palm between absolute completed chromosomes, wandering in eternal divisions of nameless enzymes lacking permanence and imprinted in grains.

Another law of another organ. The peeling gray flesh, with branching, sticky lymphatic vessels, began to cling to the heated hard surfaces, seeping with the slightest notion of burgundy and simultaneously liquid substances, from which a stamping ripple passed through everything at the beginning as if in severe frost, where flesh is gnawed by hundreds of metal needles in the act of extracting with sticky, thousand-degree stone boulders near the struck bones. Rough and gasping moans of human agony were replaced by heavy, greedy gulps of air, which began to lift his chest rapidly and push out jelly-like ribs turning yellow beneath the skin. Tight movements erupted in a sharp, tearing pain in his crunching joints, attempting to lift the brain and allow him to see through the inner corneas.

A scream. Wheezing. Everything turned into a blurred cloud, emitting contradictory and rhythmic waves of dreams. Life? The not-yet-bursting networks of pronounced vessels turned with an anxious gaze aside. The colors and their limitless spectrum gradually shifted to the pure sky behind invisible chromatin thoughts and that which does not exist, yellow stones, an endless network of nature's ceaseless processes from which it was impossible to hide mental understanding, and to the two formed shells, woven from flesh, blood, and something else. Humans? This something turned out to be a human. And quite a strange human at that. Perhaps not young and not old, the silhouette of a person, on whose body torn pieces of flesh were slowly stained by thin muscles, bubbling as if boiling with strange grains, regenerating thanks to the crimson strokes of a lifeless wind, and with an utterly repulsive gray skin with thin, paper-like wrinkles all over the body in the form of constant and non-intersecting lines.

The colorful palette merely pricked the Memorable Baggage with the tiniest drop, painting a familiar barrier on his new sketch. The dark and scattered gaze of the unknown was accidentally directed at them, frequently blinking and trying to reconcile a blurred, unreal perception. Slowly and somehow clumsily rising to his feet, the limping figure of a dark-haired crooked man in a tattered black shirt and ridiculously wrinkled trousers took a cautious step, stepping barefoot onto a somewhat flat stone. Unexpectedly for himself, he gradually began to forget about the unbearable pain that separated his mind and body during the weaving of incessant, chaotically splattered bodily sensations. The left torso, along with a wary sideways glance, dragged aside with a hunched, aching spine while a thin ringing spread in his ears like pinpricks. Strangely enough, now he was entirely enveloped in thick dust and clingy pebbles that had deeply embedded themselves in his dark hair and unpleasantly itched under his nails. However, if one paid attention to the thick black streaks on his body, one might think he had just been covered head to toe in resin... sugar.

— Hey! You, the figure in the hoodie! Help me, come here! — the young man shouted to the man, impulsively and almost feverishly waving his hands. The stranger didn't say a word and immediately quickened his pace, after several stubborn attempts trying to navigate more actively and carefully around the sharp, boiling mass of impenetrable stones. — Wait! What squad are you from? What's your rank!? — the guy pointed to his chest, the right side of which was protected by a rectangular gray metal plate with a glowing, incomprehensible sigil made up of various visual elements. Another pair of such insignia was sewn onto his right forearm of the field protective uniform. — And where's your gear!? You're barefoot?

— A... — the stranger distractedly averted his gaze, turning away and looking oddly at the sky, in which he saw nothing but colors, richly blurred layers of comfort, whose inner and free molecular embraces robbed his brain of its own traces. Because of his suspicious calmness and ambiguity on his face, it seemed like he didn't care about anything. As if he had everything under control right now. He let his gaze linger on the soldier before him. Exactly. He looks like a military man. Scared, groaning from pain due to the worn epidermis on his hands, bits of muscle on his red palms. He's holding her body so tightly. Someone's. Next to him lies a sick body on the ground. A face. Eyes, many ears — silent. Perhaps dying. — I... don't understand...

— Fine, whatever! So will you help me!? — the soldier interrupted the man with unchanging hysteria, — a patrol vehicle is supposed to find us. We need to go a bit east, just a couple of kilometers. Come on, we don't have much time!

— Yes... Alright...

The stranger, with an unbearably calm and distracted gaze, slowly sank to his knees before the outstretched, unconscious dreams. An unyielding lump constricted the stranger's throat, the bitter aftertaste of which was momentarily distracted by a shadow as black as night, blurred in the distance by sandy mist and mirages hot as flames from a campfire. The sounds ceased; they all gradually faded, turning into an enveloping, paralyzed mosaic. The beat of warm wind seemed to shed its essence, merely continuing to silently ruffle black locks and try to pry open human eyelids wider. It yearned for embraces, to touch something lifeless. Suddenly, his intangible hands, glowing with color from an endlessly radiating fabric, cautiously penetrated through the layers of huge fragments of armor, more vigorously rummaging from the inside like in some constructor that had vanished and dissolved midway between two or three highways.

The stranger's gaze was imbued with an unusual sleepiness and a lack of confidence in his actions, as if he himself were unaware of what he was doing in this darkness, in this room where other people peeked out from behind sofas, managing to discern some shelves on the walls, the outlines of furniture, and an unknown object between long curtains through which, fortunately, a glimmer of the local streetlight seeped amidst the darkening sky and seven-story buildings. It was as if he couldn't see his hands, couldn't see his fingers, or even the reverse. A drunken and fervent strike against the shell of visual nerves, the channels of the brain's prevention.

A mirage from a deafening concussion of the eyes, around which the world began to erode under the dull screech in the eardrums. The blurred moment gradually transformed into trembling natural frames. Vision literally returned to normal. A few quiet clicks sounded, brightly sparkling in the largest and most crumpled cracks, and from the impenetrable mechanized slots, thick streams of snow-white steam began to ooze for a while, warm enough to break into a sweat entirely. The weakened and unconscious body of the young woman was freed, and moments later, it was already being supported by the two boys with bandaged bodies wrapped in layers of clothing, as some medications managed to be pulled from a virtual and broken hip bag. The soldier didn't have time to marvel at the stranger's specific tricks, for lingering any longer was unacceptable due to her mutilated body parts that needed to be carried extremely carefully. Meanwhile, the pale-faced one had remained suspiciously quiet all this time, continuing to stay silent and observing intently. But now, the priority was to take her to the safest place possible for the doctors, and then other formalities could follow.

The young soldier was noticeably exhausted, evident from his face and trembling knees. They had traveled quite a distance, perhaps. His watch was damaged, showing nothing but a web of cracks on the glass instead of numbers. And that unfortunate girl had apparently lost hers in the corners of the ground-up mechanisms. Ahead, behind, and around them loomed the same infinite and chaotic architecture of stones. They often had to rise and hide in shelters even more frequently. The abundant wounds and injuries on the girl's body left no chances to stop all her bleeding. The bones of her axial skeleton appeared synchronously twisted from within. The burns on them looked even worse. With such injuries, any creature perishes in a matter of moments. Perhaps they had been dragging the mutilated fox's body for several hours. Her breath. The way...

The sounds of furious explosions had surprisingly recently ceased and were no longer audible behind several rising hills. Not even any gunfire could be heard beyond the plundered muddy horizons. The sun, if looked at slightly upward, mercilessly blinded and continued to envelop the bodies in its excessive heat. Huge and scalding stone fists on these vast lands were rarely encountered when displaced in less dense clusters as sharp sprouts. Every ticklish second, which could always lead them to sudden and new dangers, whether on the ground or in the air, required extreme caution. But in the current conditions, it was exceedingly difficult to achieve, barely avoiding slipping.

A yellow mirage. Constant seconds and time freezing in consciousness. Somewhere far away, it seemed the birds began to sing in their unnatural hoarse voices.

A furious and distorted roar of steel suddenly echoed behind them, catching them off guard. Cautiously turning their heads, they spotted a tall cyborg woman on one of the high rocky hills: a solid combination of resilient metal, with some strangely highlighted forms, protected her rich, pointed internal processes. The gray and excessively long fabric of her thick, crumpled cloak writhed fiercely in the wind behind her stone-like hunched back, gathering and dragging dust between the black spots on her velvet white fur. Fierce clusters fell from the closed gates of black and red projectors and mirror dimensions, wires leading to bulkier prosthetics with artificially colored and decorated joints, secured by thin micro-barriers, which could only be noticed due to their standout, similarly shimmering cocktail of a blue matrix.

The exposed structure of her athletic torso was wrapped in a thin shirt and adorned with several tattoos of fierce animals outlined in dark calligraphy, demanding care with long bandages. Natural silver locks of hair flowed gracefully, ignoring the wind's currents, dancing around her broad linear cheekbones, occasionally tossing aside luxurious, colorful bird feathers, rarely obscuring her two emerald-bright eyes, shining yet instilling something cruel. And beside her, a mighty wolf, maliciously snarling, was forged from cheap cybernetics; the right side of its body was guarded by hundreds of razor-sharp spikes resembling deceptively coarse fur, interwoven with a thick, artificial swarm of cute burgundy curls alongside the heavy gray jaw of a red fox, horrifyingly mutilated by muscular athletic masses. From their shared, menacing, toothy maws, akin to incredibly powerful descending prosthetics with two wide rows of pointed fangs featuring deformations, hungry green liquids flowed, while their furious gazes pulsed with bright lights, each second shifting their color palette around jelly-like shifting particles that swam and splashed at every inch of this two-headed creature, whose trembling, constant mechanisms reached about three meters in length and two and a half meters in height, perpetually combining a variety of colors in their collective plates.

A thick neuro-helmet, draped with networks of thin fibers, suddenly appeared on the silver-haired head of the cyborg woman, illuminated by a red screen. Shaking off her body, the beasts were already preparing to execute their mistress's command. The human consciousness was unfamiliar with foreign minds and their soulful desires living in this utterly empty and scorching space that burned the whole body, but something anxiously whispered in the form of aesthetic touches and symbols near his brain—this silhouette would pounce on them at the first suitable opportunity, bestowing upon the three of them an unknown direction they didn't wish to partake in, at least two of these soldiers.

— Ca... Can you... carry her for now? — glancing towards the woman with her pet, the pale man quietly spoke.

— To go far, I definitely can't for now, — the soldier shook his head negatively, another heavy sigh escaping from his chipped lips, in whose mind the thought of "the Deviants" flashed. He again adjusted his deformed hand, but in vain, — Are you planning something?

— I'll catch up with you soon, — removing the unconscious girl's hand from his shoulder and securing the second fabric band around the boy's neck, the stranger stepped unsteadily backward toward the hostile silhouettes. Taking a deep breath, the soldier carefully squatted down and leaned forward, placing the body of the young, tailed warrior on his back, continuing to tread cautiously and steadily along the winding desert paths.

Now between the three silhouettes lay a strange pause and short series of glances exchanged from one to another, then to the playfully yet fiercely writhing mutant. The woman indifferently followed the wandering soldier burdened with the lifeless load on his back with her eyes. One face appeared bewildered, contemplative, and simultaneously foolish, unlike the mask, saturated with negativity, colored frozen steel, warmed by two bright fires. One of them suddenly smirked, applying slender fingers to her sly, slippery lips.

— You don't look like your presence here has any value. You're not who you pretend to be. Who are you? — even the cyborg found it hard to conceal her indignation directed at this barefoot man with a defenseless, calm gaze, who didn't even have protective framing on his potentially absent armor, whose miserable and wretched owners continued to hinder her and her brotherhood from erasing this meaningless Life from the face of the earth. To destroy this notion, to heal this secret place from sick minds, mutilating thoughts, gazes, and words.

— I... — the man muttered indistinctly and pensively, clumsily and slowly gesturing with his grotesquely thin fingers. His mind shrank with the surrounding environment, feeding off every moment in which his lungs breathed and his hopelessly black eyes came alive. Instead of words, an almost inaudible mooing escaped from his half-closed lips into the mineral semi-transparent mist, while instead of an adequate response, his gaze became stuck on a single smooth movement, as if the thin texture was trapped between two unbreakable barriers that wouldn't allow it to squeeze through and outpace this bottomless essence. Confusion. His gaze again devoured each volume of the new image, learning about her more unnoticed by himself. Why. Who. — What... What happened? — with an innocent gaze and still struggling to breathe, the man asked the tall woman.

— What happened? I thought you were helping them escape, or is this sun warming my chrome skull, — she quietly tapped her hard head, glancing around and twisting her pupils sixty degrees, — You look strange. You're strange. Are you a refugee? How did you end up here?

The man needed time once again to comprehend what this soulless being had said, to quietly approach her, squeezing through the unbreakable mental barrier that deprived him of the ability to understand everything and scatter it across new places, filled with endlessly sticky pale pink canvases of soft waves, navigating one very tiny and bottomless matter instead of two hemispheres. Fear, contemplation. He had seen her gaze, fixed intently upon him. Intersecting patterned irises circled her tiny pupils, beneath which barely noticeable folds of cloned dead skin stretched. Her lips stopped trembling, trying to overshadow one thought with entirely different musings directed at the person below. A knock.

— Who are you? — the man asked with no less interest, standing still and noticeably trembling all over from exhaustion.

No. Killing. Talking. Doing. Feeling. A lot. No. Diligence. Trying. To feel. To seeEverythingEyes. Not understanding. Thinking. Communicating. Touching. Learning. CelebrationColorsEvent. CutAlongSmile. Voice. Alien. JumpToWalk. Nothing. Rhetoric. Synergy. SoundDisconnection. No boundaries. No concept of Infinity and Eternity, for even they cannot serve as a measure. Already ahead lie the annulled silhouettes of fantasies, begging to leave the name in peace... Her eye sockets seemed ready to scorch two thick streams of yellow flame in both limbs, desiring to attain freedom. But this is all, and they all must disappear along with existence. Perfect and devoted. Eternal emptiness, where chaos can never be born. Again this thoughtless phrase without a face. Imagined tears oozed like jelly from the brain, convulsing with exhausting agony, writhing in disgust and torment through this bony, fertile flesh.

— Oh. No... — The cyborg firmly raised his palm above his brow, covered by a helmet, biting his lip. — This... No... This doesn't matter at all, right? There's no meaning in this. — A tiny sensor beep sounded, after which the massive silhouette of two fused predators skillfully leaped from the high hill. The grayish one wanted to apologize. To prevent aggression. Maybe he did something wrong? He just wanted to understand, to know.

In the black eyes of the man, suddenly a light ignited, filled with two crimson, infinite intersecting paths, crossed by countless intertwining thin mirrors, between which a shadow flickered imperceptibly. At first, it stood against the wall, entangled in thin red channels, gradually tilting toward an unstable monochromatic contrast, wishing to conceal its presence. Their flesh and blood would become naked death, and the rusty phalanges of the creature would rise beyond the next horizon, where for the soul there existed nothing but immortal secrets. One decision, another path. The unknown unnaturally began to gain speed as if propelled by an invisible supernatural assistant that suddenly settled in his legs, raising his knees high before him and foolishly flailing his arms, pushing off the walls, trying to navigate past hostile figures near an arbitrary left partition made of hot golden hills and ruined gray prairies, maneuvering through the winding trail of insane ruins at surreal, untraceable speeds.

A dull restlessness. Grabbing his right cheekbone, he snorted, swiftly and mentally commanding his pet to catch and tear apart the man's body. Several surviving and brightly shimmering crystal rocks in the cool haze sped past as the beasts rushed by long-collapsed remnants of aircraft and their hundreds of agile, camouflaging yellow vectors and the paws of wounded iron birds and machines, shortening the distance between themselves and the man with every second. The labyrinths crumbled against the gray bones of lost bodies. Metal screeched madly, clashing against itself, while the skull processed hundreds of schemes and combinations, calculating the sum with merging mathematical predictions. The rocket and skin-implanted light fixtures activated, allowing the mutant to make a lightning-fast leap onto the man's back. But at the last moment, he missed, crashing ribs-first into the dull rocky masses after a fleeting silent glance, abruptly falling face-first into the mud. The cyborg, in turn, screamed, clutching its body, involuntarily kneeling. She hadn't yet healed her previous scars.

For long centuries, a vulgar heap of unknown, even slightly fresh debris sprawled nearby, particularly the surviving remnants still slightly smoldering with oily flames. It was precisely these that the red eyes decided to utilize in a wild rush, seeing this as a blatant arrangement. When the mutant once again relinquished control to artificial instincts, the unknown struck with all his might at the melted metallic body, after which an explosive wave, accompanied by an equally massive expulsion of black smoke, propelled both figures down the slope, preventing this violent scene from reaching the fateful and inevitable intermission. Fragments were fervently gathered amidst ground bones, organs, blood functions, and free dying screams. Someone messed up again. An alien yet familiar reason helped, peeking out with wise little eyes from behind the curtains of dulled thinking.

A terrible and painful scream sounded. Several sufficiently sharp fragments of the ship pierced the fox's body, penetrating its second wolf half, which landed lifelessly on the surface, striking the sharp stones below. The cyborg immediately shared all the pain with its insufficiently agile toy, but unlike it, she had no intention of dying and was convulsively spitting out thick green foam oozing from her mouth. When she tried to rise to her knees, she was immediately struck down, as heavy as the collision of a thin chest with a cumbersome ten-kilogram hammer.

She helplessly collapsed backward, along with her shattered neuro-helmet that flew aside into the crashing waves of golden, darkened sand riddled with sores. No. This was a moaning, wounded body fleeing from injuries, resembling an opaque tall shadow, which against this bright canvas appeared as a dull and grim spot. A spot that came to life with each passing moment, spreading the essence of its enclosed emptiness across its entire likeness. A living and quite tangible shadow. More than anything, he wanted to look into her eyes, which he would separate from her soul with one-and-a-half-meter-long artificial nerves. Eyes into which he longed to implant the painful truth about every word and thought, including those that had gifted her with new acquaintances. What were they so long whining about, killing themselves?

A black figure. He simply watched as one mind maimed the other, as occasionally yellow leaves fell onto the sidewalk, blooming around the fifty-year-old refined bodies of nature torn from their home. His inaction would lead to nothing. But strength — it could save a life. Was it a warning or guidance from the mysterious red wings, the other side of his mind that he had only just discovered?

— D-don't touch... Don't come near this! — the silent gaze screamed. Deep in the subconscious of one of the illusory worlds, reaching it was harder than anything for an ordinary god alone with his own nature, which borders on, which inhabits. And it exists only in chaotic bodily designs. Without a logical answer for so long.

Аn unknown shadow was pushed away by thoughts that had appeared out of nowhere, boldly touched by those two people, sensations, legends, a sharp crack on the lip, averted gaze towards an object through the eyes. Or maybe just symbols, or glitches in an apparent postmortem. Where is the darkness? Where is nothing, which separates the random and still-generating structure of a fibrous-muscular organ between posters, between their and his endless distances of spaces? Indifference. The pale-faced person turned behind, then nevertheless carefully and ambiguously looked around, recklessly trying to inspect every meter of scattered stone stained glass, every squiggle between the ruins and resembling the twisted silhouettes of shadows around the trenches, with a hidden path behind the rocks on that side, whose dark sole was covered by a beam of light surrounded by millions of dust particles between the smooth rocky walls.

Again, a muffled echo resounded amidst countless mixtures of pressing sounds, trying to close the shattered parts together. Again so familiar, an answer was given to something without any meaning. Not understanding anything, and fully obeying the brain inside the fragile skull, continuing simply to see everything before him, feeling irritation in his head, trying to prick himself. The alien flesh of the sequence of reason blanketed the shell of the tangible brain, bringing the understanding that he should obey its request.

— Can you become the master of her changed fate? Look closely. And confess. Now it is dying, — someone stood behind him, uttering these sexless words. The red walls were washed away from the brown symbolic carpet, disappearing and revealing instead a former human face, with sick gray skin and still bewildered former eyes, whose mind had once again drowned in the infinity of air on the neck, the burning blows of the sky, the constraining embraces of muscles, and the tormented hunched spine, losing lived moments and images right now.

The man cautiously knelt down, helplessly spreading his palms and looking at the mutilated face of the iron woman, which had become like pieces of a thin fragile puzzle, shattered by a heavy large hammer. From the distorted mechanical buzzing amidst bright flashes and the grumbling of small folding details around her threshold, it seemed that this cyborg began to whimper plaintively, looking into an invisible cosmic slit with her cracked eyes and unsuccessfully trying to clench her nervous fingers, which had fallen among the rotating disks of her three-meter multi-ton body, stuck in the vertebrae with neuro-bridges, unreachable to the ends of the body. Her artificial muscles contracted and squeezed out the last juices through the tearing tissues, protecting themselves with a liquid metal shell, as if she were still capable of something. To protect herself, to seize any, even the tiniest opportunity to live a few more moments, minutes, hours, or days. Secretly from everyone, with shame pretending to be completely blinded by agony, to make a last wish to the sky. One body is dead. The other continues to live instead of her.

— Forgive me... Please... I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to. Sorry... What should I do? — no one could get an answer to the question frozen in the air. His eyes melted along with the tormenting desire from within over the futilely fulfilled canvas, heavily regretting the actions of another and remaining devotedly sitting beside the helplessly convulsing machine for a long time, deprived in a cocoon of understanding and reason, and the possibility of consuming. He wanted to turn everything back, to make her dying groans and mutilated personal body disappear. Perhaps to talk to her. To know her thoughts and reasons. Thoughts. Sensations. Absence. He fell silent and continued to observe every particle of her being. The colors faded with her last sip of reagent oil. To return for a few minutes, to see the lifeless gaze of the skeleton again and send other words from the very place where he appeared, without turning away, without fleeing. Not to allow those animals to immerse themselves in their last heavy suffering. Remaining standing. Observing. Reflecting on why she acted the way she did... Who controlled them.

***

Silence and peace. That's what reigned in this white and clean hospital room. Fresh air flowed through the crack of the slightly opened window, and a modest bouquet of yellow fragrant flowers was carefully placed in a crystal red vase adorned with lace-like translucent patterns that reached up to the wavy neck. Perhaps, apart from the leaves, something else was bathing in it, washing its barely awakened face. The walls, the color of dull and ancient parchment, were bordered by a couple of wide cabinets filled with archives of medicines, ladders, dishes, and other everyday trinkets left behind by visitors. On the walls, silent broadcasts displayed tomorrow's weather forecast and the latest news gathered over the last six hours, even from the most hopeless corners of Tué and the yet unexplored remnants of the world. Outside the window, cool yet warming winds carried with them the warmth of summer. The quiet hum of engines barely reached the fifth floor, around which birds had already made nests resembling clay jugs. In the backyard, two men and a young nurse were engrossed in conversation, often laughing and letting the light tobacco smoke from the southern autumn fields drift into their lungs. The semi-sweet aroma gradually dispersed, rising high into the blue sky.

Thick, slightly greasy locks of dull wheat-colored hair now concealed the fact that the clear blue eyes of the fox cautiously lifted their sleepy, still-crusted eyelids. A strange feeling and intense fatigue coursed through her almost immobile body, making her want to shake it off while also wishing to sleep a little longer. But the piercing pain that cut through her heart, bones, liver, and stomach, familiar to her entire body, rejected her helpless attempts to escape this reality. Somewhere, a faint itch was felt, while in other areas, there was a noticeable ache. In some places, she felt every coarse irritation on her skin. It seemed as if every thin scratch, every bruise, every burst blister, the long stitch on an horrendously torn wound, and what felt like gangrene, of which she couldn't even guess due to the many years spent in an unbearably heavy pile of armor, were all felt acutely. For the same reason, she had her milk-white skin, which she could barely make out now on her left bandaged arm.

A bitter unpleasantness lingered around her lips. She felt disgusting. Perhaps it wasn't just because of that. But alas, she had no choice but to endure until it would all one day come to an end, just like her existence here. After long seconds, she still couldn't comprehend where she was or what had happened to her, but the monitor that switched on and gradually approached from the other side distracted her from strange thoughts, accompanied by the polite smile of the presenter, on the other side of artificially recreated neural connections of a submissive servant and reliable assistant. Her eyes opened a little wider. There was nothing and no one in her aging mind, which was empty and immobilized in those prolonged moments of torturous stagnation. Not a single glimpse, face, prepared dish, or word. As her unwillingly moving pupils scanned the room, a multitude of words, numbers, and terms printed on her outpatient electronic form immediately caught her attention. Only a few of them she read with interest in her mind.

Name: ≪Fox≫

Surname: ___Bio.Index: ___Gender: Female ♀Date of Birth: Year 1195. Sixth day of the first Yangal comingPlace of Residence: [TUE] Tuéshi. Suburb Yoshida/34I𝌴 Personal Data Score 𝌴I -Year 2592:

Patient Description: On the 14th, the patient was admitted to Medical Center No. 3 in extremely serious condition, classified as stage S complexity. Due to the critical state of the patient, three S+ class surgeries were performed from the 14th to the 15th to restore organic processes and reconnect bone and muscle fragments, covering 95% of the body.

Diagnosis (General):

Fracture of the base of the skull; Multiple contusions of soft tissues (74%)Fracture of the neck of the femurFractures of vertebral bodiesFractures of pelvic bones; Fractures of both collarbonesDislocations in both shins; Multiple acute wounds (58%)Second-degree burns, Critical organ damage affecting fundamental functions.

If she had the strength, she would foolishly smile right now. But at least, doing so in her thoughts was more than within her power. Even now, the wretched anxiety wouldn't leave her soul, and her heart strangely tightened under the pressure of the constricting white ribs. Strange sensations noticeably warmed her from within, like alcohol spreading along her stomach, rapidly lowering the temperature of her limp body. She felt the blood coursing through her body to the very tips of her fingers, while barely perceptible smells and sounds periodically sharpened with sharp jolting thrusts that rocked her consciousness deep within her bound hemispheres. She felt her bones deforming inside her with an incredibly viscous and gentle intensity, carefully shifting to their original places, as if they were unconditionally following some collective system. She felt that something was clearly changing in her brain to the playful notes of a strange yet painfully familiar song.

Now her four poor fox-like locators on her head were supported by tiny implants, along with many dozens of tiny prostheses. The surgical mechanisms, though fragile in appearance, were actually finely crumpling like small cockroaches with a dozen oleaginous legs on their peculiar abdomens and pads, interconnecting with molecular tissues that had the ability to stretch like delicate rubber bands in a pristine segment of hundreds of thousands of miniature windows, seemingly crafted by tiny molecular blacksmiths. It was between those indistinguishable gaps that hidden childhood engines lay, initiating the unwavering process of restoring and maintaining the necessary liquid components flowing through her ear canals. To prevent her from flinching and straining her mutilated ears, a dim green light illuminated before her blue eyes, indicating that someone would soon enter her room. A young soldier in a white coat entered the room, sitting down on a chair beside the patient and placing on the wide light nightstand bags stuffed full of goodies from which her favorite candies, various spices, and the silly look on her companion's young face spilled out alongside a noticeable rough aroma.

— You're still very strong, — the boy gently took her weak and weary fingers in his hands, on which the still sharp but mostly worn and broken claws were healing very slowly. She saw him. Again. How many years had passed since their last meeting? A hundred years? No, much more.

She barely murmured. An unpleasant fog settled in her head, and she couldn't pull away from sleep due to the lingering anesthesia.

— Can you imagine? A medical patrol miraculously discovered us. They spotted us by chance, — the blue-eyed boy tried to give her the right answer, involuntarily smiling as he carefully released her hand and leisurely enriched the neighboring nightstand with the purchases he had brought. — And while they were providing you first aid in the cabin, the general unexpectedly informed everyone over the radio that all platoons were ordered to return. Instead of us, creative squads were dropped into enemy zones, — he paused. — Do you know what that means? We've finally reclaimed our territory, — he whispered with necessary relief.

— So fast? — the fox whispered quietly, a little gray and tired.

— Two hundred eighteen years of continuous battle. Truly, a minuscule number for heroes like us, — trying to support the conversation as always, he smiled foolishly out of habit, while simultaneously realizing and returning to the previous reality in which he had made far too many unnecessary and reckless actions. — And also... Please forgive me for our last quarrel. I messed up, as always. And I'm sorry for bringing it up after so much time, — without any prepared speech he had so long prepared for several months and weeks, the boy spoke briefly and quietly, as if someone else had possessed him in those strange seconds, forgetting all his past and recent apologies. There had been plenty of them, but they all lacked a piece of his soul. They were all abrupt, casual. He thought about this even at that moment but didn't know how to embellish the words he had just spoken, striving to look at her with as much sincerity as possible and to convey that this was definitely the last time and that he would not allow himself that long-forgotten annoying foolishness again. — I found what I had been hunting for so long. I did it, and now I'm at peace...

— I'm glad for you... — she spoke faintly through her lips, freeing her voice from the chains of tiring fatigue and the unyielding sharp pains in her head with her last strength.

— Sorry, I blabbed on, — he whispered nervously, with risk and cloying bitterness on his lips, trying not to recall the words he had spoken in the past, the foolish deeds he had committed, and the images that eternally contradicted his now awakened reason.

The familiar light flickered again on the beige wooden blinds. The door opened smoothly, allowing two young men in strict white coats to enter. G. Hobsen and L. Faculty were visible on their uniforms with their badges. An excessively persistent and admiring gaze followed the second, more focused and meticulous one. Dr. Faculty scrutinized the patient's condition and examined stacks of dialogue and visual information on all available monitors and adequate sayings approaching the androids with freckled visors on their cheeks, while Dr. Hobsen, having started his internship yesterday, chattered non-stop under his breath and barely made his way through heaps of omnipresent equipment, flickering silhouettes of doctors, and a messy-haired orderlies chasing after someone with coffee spilled on his thick bangs.

— And she was breathing! And kept breathing! — G. Hobsen continued his one-and-a-half-hour emotional monologue. — So many injuries on just one body! What's there, in her flesh, lungs, tendons! And how did she manage to keep her torn heart beating? I just didn't understand what to tackle first! It was lucky that...!

— Shhh... — raising a finger before his lips, the chief neurosurgeon Faculty displayed a cold, thoughtful demeanor. — Go, you need to rest, kid. Drink some soda, there's...

— With forest berries, as we love! — his young colleague attentively noted, momentarily buoyed by this idea.

— Yes, yes. You can tell me the rest later when my meeting is over... Has she regained consciousness? — he asked the soldier sitting by the patient after the intern, holding his head and mumbling something under his breath, left the room, glancing back at the eared creature helplessly lying among the velvety covers of the tender turquoise blanket.

— Yes. She has regained consciousness, — the young man nodded.

— So fast, — the doctor shook his head in satisfaction, writing something on a sheet of paper in his folder, as it might have initially appeared. — Fortunately, her nature and intense, one hundred fifty percent regeneration still bring her luck. For the umpteenth time. But today she has outdone herself, bringing you back from the dead, mademoiselle, — the man in the coat remarked ironically. — Should I call him in?

— Yes, let him come in.

In room number "134," a mysterious guest was welcomed by the door. Worn fresh trousers and a newly acquired hoodie with warm striped collars were tightly covered by a medical gown, while bare feet with swollen veins rested in protective fibers of universal footwear. A distracted gaze on a pale face curiously examined thin sheets of paper serving as documentation through a translucent folder in his hands, next to which numbers and some initials glowed on a finely painted shard of ice instead of a sorceress's staff. His gaze wandered around the room, which strangely reminded him of a summer kitchen with late autumn outside, distracted by large plasma TV screens, a variety of drawers, and rhythmic lighting on the dimmed walls adorned with soft toys and posters about the latest trends in this seemingly wonderful and friendly town.

Two completely different gazes. Two strangers' lives, meeting each other's eyes for the first time. Cracked lips barely parted, releasing a quiet, convulsive sigh that the man couldn't keep in his throat. Shoulders hunched, thoughts scattered chaotically. He feared something, realizing that retreating was too late, standing before them. No single thought, no intermediate memory or representation. Just looking. Only her heavy hand, a bandaged red wrist on the other side of the fragrant white steppe, from beneath which a fluffy golden tail emerged. It was bright and calm. He hesitated to lift his head, more cautiously scrutinizing the feminine outlines of this... creation? He had recently touched her dying body, feeling her broken bones, pooling blood, and thick yellow hair cascading onto the clean sheet. A timid and fearful gaze rose higher, aside from some hidden scars beneath the medical cuffs, noticing her free-spirited gaze upon him. Long lips covered with dark sores. A small scar on her nose. Cheeks, lower eyelids, left temple, and bridge of her nose. The heart beneath him beat strangely, faster than usual. Was she still in pain? Was he to blame? Could he have been of greater help to this being? And was he even capable of that?

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

The light pearls of her blue eyes were likely involuntarily drawn toward the man. They scrutinized him suspiciously, trying to recognize someone familiar in him, but this masculine figure before her was entirely an alien personality to her mind, which was clouded by a heavy illness and continuous discomfort, mightily enveloping her weakened soul. Her reasoning felt as if it had been thrown into a polluted aquarium filled with colorful fish, among which nothing could be discerned. Only blurred faces, screams, and an endless otherworldly echo behind her, rippling sensitively across her shoulder blades, arms, and collarbones.

With difficulty, the gray-faced man turned away from her hidden blue eyes and sickly fox ears, glancing at the young soldier beside her, noticing his fixed gaze on him.

— Is this really necessary for me? — the man quietly replied.

— K-Kuroba? — the fox whispered, noticing a blurred gray figure misleadingly approaching her closer and closer amid hundreds of mutilated dead soldiers.

— Huh? Which comet did you fall from, buddy? Of course, it's necessary for you! — the guy replied with exaggerated indignation. — Here's a tablet for you, it's a very useful thing — I've marked all the important places on it. With this, you definitely won't get lost and will arrive safely at the administrative center of our capital. There you'll get both your registration and military ticket... Huh? — he suddenly turned his face to his friend. — Well, meet him. This is a nameless and eccentric guy with amnesia who apparently fell from the sky today, right in the middle of the beach. Ha-ha, as if I'm telling my flight story to this world, albeit with some deviation... If it weren't for him, I'm afraid the doctors wouldn't have reached us in time, and you wouldn't be resting here like a sweet little kitten, who is about to be served his well-deserved meal, by the way.

— It's a coincidence. — the gray-faced man simply replied, looking at both of them.

— Coincidence or not, but fortunately, you literally fell from the sky. And we're sincerely grateful to you. — the guy patted the man on the shoulder with a wide smile. — You can always count on any kind of help from our empire.

— W-without memories? — the fox whispered again.

— Yes, — the stranger muttered just as quietly. — But I think I remembered one name.

— W-what name? — All this time, she had been attentively examining the stranger before her, her narrow eyes filled with awakened curiosity, not understanding anything apart from the impenetrable blur in the reddened irritation around her pupils. Could this sickly-looking man really have helped them escape from that bubbling hell? Just skin and bones beneath his pale, starved skin. As if crooked shoulders and bloody growths along with barely discernible bruises surrounded his eyes. She wasn't sure who he could be, but in return, she was genuinely grateful for his goodwill. The desire to express this to him. Her lips gasped with every attempt to utter a single letter. A blow.

***

— Well, there's always hope, even if it doesn't know you face to face... That's just me being philosophical, — Kuraba said with a silly smile, nodding his shoulders. — Our doctors and the police will surely help you.

He replied as he walked away, a simple blue-eyed boy with messy mouse-colored locks covering his narrow light eyes. Incredibly optimistic and cheerful, he seemed too joyful for someone who had spent half his life in war.

— I'm sorry, I can't remember anything. Nothing, — the pale one replied, not turning around, with a look of confusion and excessive awkwardness as he descended the wide staircase with arched railings, surrounded by painted dense schedules. The wide garden paths that stretched ahead were filled with sounds and passing beings. He instinctively tried to look down at his feet, a habit he couldn't always maintain. Instead of wooden mechanical tiles, he saw someone's antlered scarred horns, a stern tiger-like gaze framed by holographic pink butterfly lashes, and depressing silver eyelids, causing him to accidentally bump into random passersby or vehicles carrying assorted medical and even bedding furniture, cheerfully dancing and circling around like an encore delivery.

— Are you feeling alright? After all, you almost bled out your entire blood supply for her. You hardly rested here, sat for a bit, and immediately set off, — he said, concerned, placing a hand on the other's shoulder.

— The doctors examined me. I feel fine, really, don't worry, — the pale one looked tired as he met the gaze of the boy behind him, whose face expressed doubt.

— But why did you ask me not to tell her about you? You saved her life. You helped pull her from the beach. Your blood is the only thing that could save her from harm. Without it, her regeneration would have been a futile and hellish torment this time...

— I did it so that soul could continue to live...

— ...and not suffer in eternal agony?

— I!... Thank you. If you need anything, just contact me through this gadget, and you can reach me anytime. I hope we find out all your secrets soon! — he added, waving goodbye to the man with the tablet in his hands, forming a phone gesture with his fingers near his ear.

The spacious, bright courtyard of the hospital, adorned with outdated architecture and noticeably tidy, was very large yet chaotic. It resembled a pioneer pentagonal park with a single fountain near a monument surrounded by long purple grape leaves, dedicated to some young, modestly smiling woman showered with baskets of various fragrant flowers. People continued to leave fresh fruits, honey, and lit candles in the evenings around her. Busy movements of ants created mosaics around boards with global announcements, assistance, and services. A large white tiger in a light suit, encased in heavy-looking golden armor, skillfully spun a long tale around which old men and children gathered, while a stout orderly with an extra portion of energy salad got lost in the crowd.

At the very end of the sprawling and vividly blooming square, narrow paths were laid out of smooth surfaces with wooden coverings along the edges, leading to artificial transport forks, with benches and lush leafy trees lining the way, as patients and their companions passed by, including polite staff in their courteous manner.

The sight of the imposing tall building with massive columns and blooming balconies was interrupted for the guest by a guard who landed from the sky. On his thin calves and feet, transforming bulked demo-mechanisms began to appear, sparkling with colorful smoke trails, gradually masking the strong glow of modules beneath thick, loud steel soles.

Something resembling a two-meter tall amphibious man with a toothy mouth stretching to his ears, long gills on his heavily tinted neck, and a sharp shark fin on his muscular back politely waved with a deep palm in greeting, then swiftly disappeared behind a man, heading towards the entrance of a neighboring building. Before that, he fastened sliding reactive cuffs to a large electro-compass, picking up random clients along the way, unpretentiously glued artworks, and their means of transportation resembling a giant miniature centipede. Through thick branches and lush organic growth bubbling in comfortable vegetable sections, outlined by light contours, tall gates began to emerge with thick brick walls adorned with intricate copper engravings of countless handwritten scripts, covering the surface of the massive gates.

The most ordinary roads, with chaotically placed buildings, rotating poles from mechanical clocks with pipes streaming in different directions, dispensing thick legs of bionic outlets. A solid presence of hot hues, forever in motion yellow, reflected in the colorful neighbors and the blue strand of hair, flickering nets, and metallic footrests.

It was precisely those very streets, appearing as quiet and bright neighborhood alleys with visible floors made of wooden constructions, where today crowds of beings or humans strolled, pale faces flowing with the wind, developing banners, symbolic drawings along the walls, celebrating something special in this elaborate and festival-like quarter. They wore worn-out yet festive robes, leather shirts, and thick plush wraps. Their painted garments and feral gazes were adorned with real or artistic skulls and animal masks, amulets of strange symbols, shaking with the glint of sparkling stones, all while singing the lively tune of a mystical energy song in sync with the rhythmic beating of drums, resonating through every window of the formed street, captivating every passing or intrigued face, creating the sweetest, most joyful intoxicating allure.

Under the vibrant waves of dark smoke and brightly glowing yellow sawdust from the bonfire. Amidst the tumultuous cries of beasts, moans, and birdsong from uncharted creatures. Exquisitely and magically, even if awkwardly, these soulfully dancing deer, roosters, wolves, owls, sheep, and many other guests from the old world showered the passing traveler with their mysterious and ancient charms, pouring rivers of the brightest sacred smoke overhead and blessing the man for a long journey with a cup of strong and enigmatic brew, which ended with a sharp gulp and began anew at one of the city stations near distant neighbors, surrounded by glass-like enclosures, all available approaches to potential customers, and friendly staff around the corner, behind which mechanical hearts prowled, and someone's artificial muscles scurried about, suddenly coming alive with thousands of protocols, endless metallic limbs and hands, sometimes full of smooth movements and at other times aggressive, fixating actions.

It felt as if these world's iron snakes were about to tear apart the space around him, topple these old skyscrapers, and reach for the very stars in the dark blue sky. Startled, he fell onto his back, watching the massive engines, as large as mountains, before him. A kind gesture from a mechanical adventurer stretched out a hand, while a less cultured response came from giggling schoolgirls with comically jumping holographic jaws bearing fangs instead of lower eyelids, their youthful blooming flesh hiding behind a black outfit and a loosely tied tie. The man hesitantly rose, glancing several times at the immense sizes of the mechanisms between platforms, their cyclical thumps deep underground.

The station resembled a bustling market, attracting random passersby and some onlookers, opening doors to a rich assortment of gastronomic, artistic, souvenir, and other interesting and useful shops, whose images dissolved, blurred, and gently mingled in a multifaceted optical chaos. A warning shot sounded from the tablet screen, after which a stranger followed into the appropriate carriage, which had descended a minute earlier before the passengers on its thin magnetic legs, awaiting the colorful performances of street musicians helping some passengers haul heavy luggage onboard. Fleeting glimpses scattered across the structural branches of streets, small alleys, and constant gazes, sometimes unclear and unrecognizable to sharp perception. Walls. Tiles. Latches of cement shutters. Interfloor ceilings.

It seemed that consciousness was deceiving him, presenting to his eyes a bleak night in the descending underground kingdom. Or, on the contrary, illuminating him with light from the massive peaks of a cliff, from which the transparent ocean could be seen around the rocky shore and old multi-story buildings, where, alongside the anxious faces of officers, silhouettes of smiling teenagers were wandering and chasing away boredom, having just arrived at the shore's edge on huge rail carts. Unlike simple protective windows, through mirrors transmitting the surrounding space, he more effectively captured the flickering clusters of underground windows descending beyond the sea horizon of the island and their opposites from reflecting towers. The tracked handrails, like translucent soft screens, parted, and it was here that the sun above was obscured by thick cumulus clouds from chemical reactions around the brightly lit stage, endlessly soaring high above hundreds of thousands of heads, skulls, and other corporeal arts of transport with dense and even blatantly cramped mixtures of fantastically tall buildings in a single lively tone, actively interconnected through transforming mechanical bridges, posts of active street divisions sparkling with mysterious illusions and tangible undercurrents, secretly intertwining with active and transitional connecting channels of chaotic technology, branching ring-shaped compartments, paths, horizons, planes, and other hourglass circles.

The eyes were immediately drawn to the most diverse and monstrous constructions, shattering his sense of comfort with their mechanical oscillations of strange nature, millions of doors and those tiny supermarkets at first glance, with their frantic kiosks and other vividly eye-catching slogans of life scattered around and even above like sparkling stars in a myriad of colors. A bent path was politely presented to another pedestrian, capable of providing him with the necessary direction, revealing its bottomless designs and equally deceptive abyss away from the tall figures with scrutinizing gazes. A new winding path shifted to an emerging smooth tile, where it was difficult to find oneself among the endless wandering crowds moving like monuments of steam robots, precious individuals in luxurious expensive garments, and foolishly migrating fabrics under the gentle flow of traditions among long dresses. Long, even sidewalks and wide highways were overflowing with movement that did not stop for a second, neither here, above, nor anywhere else, riding atop these neon crystal paths, sharing fate with molecular portals from which massive ships and shapeless houses slowly emerged on wings.

Each road branched off into several others, always in chaotic intertwining of waltzing atmospheres with reading news, shouting music, and freedom, creating an impression that made the guest feel at the center of some subatomic galaxy, with its endless intertwining webs of gray rainy skyscrapers and sunny terraces with tables and peacefully spreading coffee that a laughing cat nearly spilled under the banner of a pink moon. Although judging by her disheveled, made-up cheeks, rather wine... Various clusters of energy, gathered in luxurious and often hidden turbines, incessantly passed high above and even over the platform roofs of entrance halls with white chairs and red carpets, invoking to sight ordinary metropolises with their unparalleled, indescribably gigantic monuments dissolving in an atmosphere of constant annihilation and diligent work. Green forests, a lonely glade with a white villa surrounded by solitary chairs silently invited one to enter and discover what would happen next on this wonderful day.

Trying to calm his trembling body and at least for a moment not concentrate on the unceasing substances around him made of breaths, moving outlines, voices, and sounds through mouths and predatory muzzles—he lowered his eyes and raised his hands, examining his wrists and feeling them in the area of his forearms through his thick shirt and above. The muscles were tiredly languishing, intensely contracting apart from the excitement that gradually departed and temporarily left his weakened torso with its heels. He embraced his warm forehead with one hand and carelessly smeared his face with his fingers, feeling something familiar. The bitter smell of sweat. Fire under the skin, in the head. He took another step, then the next; yellow eyes continued to catch his attention, an artificial waterfall around his neck with pendants made of expensive minerals, developed red skin beneath a black tank top. So many lines. One of the balls burst at the entrance to a new shoe store, where a speaker leaned against the cardboard, and a tiny body of a very young and feminine chronicler leaned against it, having lost her ideas. A massive iron limb of a two-meter knight bumped into his shoulder, on whose thick belt a tightly painted autograph had gathered, behind him were kilometers of football fields with yet another delightful survival show among the bottom of the tournament table.

At the towering entrance to the park stood a man pulling thick notebooks from the hip bags of his bicycle. He handed several of those items to an elderly lady with her grandson passing by.

— Wow, thank you very much. Jean, hide it in the bag.

The gray-faced man also received one notebook for free from the kind person, which turned out to be the size of a whole hand, a calendar done in religious motifs. Strangely named days, weeks, and months beside dates. Do they really have a holiday every day, and how do they manage to celebrate them all?

Equal attention was deserved by the lost person among the chaotically shifting thoughts, inhabitants of this literally collective and cramped life, where a boundless spectrum of entities reigned—sharp as a razor, gentle as a feather, hard as steel, fictional like someone's fleeting words, and even the immortal hearts. No matter the gazes that met him, conversely devoid of scrupulosity towards the surrounding feet, each of them had their story, a thin and tactless reflection, filled with unending and eternal inspirations, whose sticky and bulging reviews confused the newly arrived mind, not to mention the clouded eyes reading this existence without any effort to chew through and understand. The sister of imperfect sensitivity was born in a secluded pinched corner among lively, low, loud, smooth, bass-heavy beings, becoming a new and incomprehensible sculpture, whose lines sliced the identity into thrilling pieces, into countless shards of new non-existent echoes, swelling and spreading among the changing eternal particles of the brain, lurking at the edges of substances.

Above each step, every corner of the sky and particle of air, invaluable mortal achievements, ideas, and fantasies were curated, embodied in both mad and abundant alluring improvements, both modest and perfect, expertly captured with these moving and possibly non-living bodies. This was a place for cybernetic revolutions, perfectly and at times indecently entangled with magic and its hidden fairy-tale past, vividly hovering across all quarters of this memorable street with its joined islands of molded streets leading to docks, personal oval corridors, and horizontally spread ladders, above which lay the most diverse stories, around which the crowd barely fit with a crack.

And now, it often happened to stumble upon winding molehills, from whose unreal planes the fences, flashing showcases, and rolling witnesses did not create the slightest feeling of strange crampedness. Someone descended with an umbrella. The skyscrapers seemed to grow thicker and longer like seaweed above the disturbed black earth, into whose bright soil a person descended silently, looking back. In an active tempo, bouncing from one luxurious lounge to another alongside the local werewolf, a Capricorn and a fish in his pocket at the wheel, indignantly puffing, an accidental inspector skillfully attached a mechanism to the man's ear, whose bottomless matrix began projecting the universal routine of the virtual digital hall among the frightened pupils, automatically starting to project the route of the designated excursion under a quiet, unobtrusive melody. Tipsy youth laughed loudly, awkwardly spreading the charging notes of a demonic rock guitar past the scattering passersby and flashing stalls with their diverse spices among tapes and bouncy New Year ribbons, stolen from the neighboring bar where an interested crowd dreamed of the long-awaited bisexual cocktail after a long work shift.

The speedometer lost distance between hives of cosmic green fields, beginning the epic confrontation between two teams on this special day. A police badge was tucked into the red velvet scarf. Mockery. Someone even found a secluded corner in such ambiguous places for reading yesterday's newspaper, like that giant under the evening column, scratching his heavy and imposing triceps on the stone and dark brown, lit scales with intervals. Endless streams of passersby seemed like meaningless rivers moving in search of their free, needed, ethnic, absolute goal. They simply sat and laughed, stealing a zone of comfort and spending time together. But the movement did not stop for a moment thanks to the watchful and strange machines in black jackets, time and again raising their glass disdain and opening doors to more secluded paths for gifted cyclists and people with unstable vacuum strollers, while countless glowing displays could promptly suggest the way to the nearest station, a lovely and recently opened "Yu-Doo-If" kitchen, a motel, or even a restroom with VIP service. Unless they were obstructed by the passing three hundred cars in half-meter volumes, following the main cabin with bags dangling from all sides and mysterious devices tied with paper clips and dishes, about whose passengers one could only guess. A few green berries almost fell from the basket, but the children couldn't care less to turn their heads from the windows to resentfully accompany the heavenly nectar on its last journey. Her raspberry-light sugar hair was fiercely blown by the stream of air, hiding a surprised gaze at the massive heads of the neighbors around, mistaking a puddle from pear juice for a whimsical ocean between the endless snowy mountains of knitted sweaters, and the rooftops of showcases for some anomalies of asteroids, thickening over the infinite openings and retreating spaces of a wandering margarine existence.

Graceful illusions began to distract from the disordered fairy-tale episodes, or rather the variously grown owners of improved places for relaxation or long-awaited vacations, traversing the expanses of book planets angels and someone's lost bra, whose traces led to a sickly colorful alley, from where a dark-skinned elf smiled with love and warmth, her snowy ocean of hair spilling across the intricately stretched tunnel of a dark bleak world. Alluring horizons gave free rein to all imaginations that connected in a collective chat among massive heavenly metropolises with their melted sunset and shadowy cats, sometimes amazed by these "Complicated Words." An artificial air kiss from powdery turquoise lipstick, along with a large and angry sock, intercepted a chatty mustachioed gentleman, shamelessly placing in the hands of the pale-faced a large box with a set of tools that nobody could figure out, promising that with the purchase of the "WO!!" brand next time he would receive a ton of hot discounts, whose list of privileges was interrupted by the chatty tone of a female creature, with distinct orange teeth on her dark thistle flesh and wavy bony horns.

Her fingers, long as the branches of a giant tree, quickly and precisely placed spoons of appetizing cooked dough into his obediently opening and already smeared raspberry filling lips, instantly trying to substantiate the critique in favor of her ancient parental recipes, in which this Quentin and his team of ecological geography did not think at all, which again failed at the latest sour milk management. Not daring to step further and a little differently, the matter turned to meaningless requests to take a photo or dance a slow dance with someone resembling a dragon dressed in a festive uniform, all under this magically blooming umbrella of golden petals of agarwood and with an invented fairy tale on wide theatrical parchment, which so strongly inspired those ironically smiling old women who had walked a difficult path beyond the walls years ago.

***

Something emerged, cobbled together from an uncountable number of boxes, bags, and balloons, interspersed with magazines dangling from overstuffed bags, heavy panting, and a reckless assortment of all sorts of junk that barely fit into its virtual slots and other product bouquets with fireworks on crossed straps. Something whose hair was well-combed as a compliment, professionally dried and soaked in luxurious expensive "Krait's" perfume — before which even the general's lady would not stand, as that sharp-beaked heartthrob with the tuned cottage above ground, traversing the portals of artificial matter, had said.

Emerging into the surface adorned with living posters and flying hacked holograms of millionaires, amidst quiet laughter and someone's tearful sobs, higher and higher, one mundane multi-level building rose after another. Tiny roots of entrances towered against wide gray walls made of squared sections of windows. The sky was a cocoon, huddled against blooming ridges. Giants of monuments, arches merging streets. Silhouettes seemingly assembled from an uncountable number of collected puzzles and mechanisms, police and video sensors patrolled every possible inch.

The situation. Hundreds of fresh and sickly sweet scents mixed into weightless and transparent clouds that wandered from one kiosk to another. In the height of a bright evening, while the not-so-bright booths still couldn't boldly throw themselves into the eyes ahead of the dark districts of ground-up red moons and blue snow, some flew through the frames of LED headlights, their colorful advertising aura overshadowing daylight with hundreds of fast delivery offers. They couldn't, like some colorful droplets beating above his head.

These balloons waiting for a flow of electricity in the sweltering days stretched along another sprawling road with dozens of incomprehensible branches at almost every twentieth step. Loud conversations on devices mixed with the chatter around, and an imperceptible light shock was an eternal burning fire in this active and incomprehensible anthill, in which he didn't even notice himself, forgetting his existence for long minutes and completely engrossed in exploring these labyrinths, which multiplied everything with their tangled street techniques and histories, adorned with perfect miniatures and amusing caricatures, near which love letters and social calls lurked.

Difficult wandering in search of administration led him to a remote alley that turned out to be far from the center, with a vaulted tiled roof between two residential quarters, leading through a wide shaft paved with large stones. The streets here were quiet and very green due to the dense vegetation of lush grass underfoot, well-tended shrubs, and foliage thickly growing on the dull walls of multi-story houses, which stood there like trees and thin vines near balconies with dividers, where their harmless inhabitants, always eager for a tasty treat, ran about.

On the dull green benches sat peacefully chatting residents with live broadcasts, and the sandboxes were still rarely filled with children. The rare drifting smell of pancakes wafted near one of the kiosks surrounded by people, overseen by an elderly woman in a working and simultaneously miniature gardener's jumpsuit. And right next to it was a modest little shop with a dense copper-green tarp as a roof over a seemingly wooden door and a thick display window, which had been brazenly crowned with several crookedly pasted advertisement posters. Itchy and sometimes ticklish drops of greasy sweat had gathered all over his body, unpleasantly rolling down his lower back and along his habitually wrinkled face from the obnoxiously chasing sun.

Taking his time, he climbed the thin metal ladder, lazily pulling off his shirt and entering the small house called "Yavora's Flea Market," under whose wall he carelessly dumped a pile of newly acquired junk, from which he could well build his first home.

The door slammed shut. The loosely affixed decor resembling the music of the wind alerted the cashier to the arrival of a visitor, clanging hideously against one another. Inside, it turned out to be an incredibly spacious and indescribably high room, with arched ceilings and rounded walls that probably reached many dozens of meters in height. Shelves and refrigerators cluttered with fogged glass displayed a chaotic assortment of items. The creaky floor beneath the man's feet and the unkempt long ladders leading to the other shelves momentarily transported him back to a state that felt painfully familiar. Somewhere, a thick box could unexpectedly fall, thudding as it smashed against a pyramid of gathered blankets and embroidered gift boxes. M mysterious hissing sounds and swift birdsong echoed from the gaps between the endless and overflowing shelves.

A young saleswoman sat casually at a narrow cash register positioned between two decorative tables adorned with overtly incomprehensible products, showing no inclination to acknowledge him while she blew balloons out of chewing gum and read a musty-looking book titled Embraces of Emptiness, V. in Slippers.

— Hello... I would like some water. — The man spoke cautiously, his right eye dimly glowing with a reddish glint, making him constantly scratch it.

— Arghh, behind you. — She replied irritably without looking up, getting up from her warmed chair to serve an old man in a black coat with a cheap prosthetic for a lower jaw, who had already wandered in the store for a good ten minutes just to buy some laundry powder for hand washing. There was a discount on it, at least, which dated back to last year.

The man continued to examine the sealed and spread-out blocks with various bottles near a couple of horizontal refrigerators, where wooden round barrels stood proudly with sets of long kitchen spoons, each the size of a human head, and iron sieves. They were all colorful, and only where they appeared as a translucent rare liquid, he picked up a small bottle after tearing through the thick film.

— Mom! Do you still have some small change? I have no way to give the client change here! — Suddenly, the girl shouted, holding onto the cash register with both hands and sharpening her long wolf-like ears on her head.

— Look in my wallet! It's in my bag, on the hook! — A woman's commanding voice responded from somewhere. The pale man suddenly remembered that he had no idea what that was, and with that he recalled that he had no devices or alternatives with him at all to exchange for the right to own that liquid.

The young saleswoman, with a silly green fringe covering her entire right face and a cap brim on her forehead, soon returned with the necessary change for the politely waiting old man. The man took advantage of the moment, quickly inspecting the visible currency: ordinary bills worth a hundred of some kind of okan. A black asymmetrical line separated the two halves of the paper, dividing the contents of a pale lettuce-beige bill, which looked more like very strong but still pliable paper. Occasionally, a holographic calligraphy depicting some young, bushy-haired lady flickered on one sharp side in the form of a modest small frame.

There were more, additional okans, but in the form of black coins. Among rounded patterns with a couple of segments, each was stamped with the number five. A shadow reassuringly ruffled the hair of the pale man, who was suffering from a stimulated headache, hiding behind his back.

— Ten okans, — she yawned sweetly, shamelessly stretching and clutching her hands behind her neck, barely managing to utter the words with her yawning fang-like mouth. Her eyes clouded, and she began to feel slightly nauseated as something unpleasant sparkled in her head with the thinnest and ear-piercing ring.

It was as if necessary coins began to trickle from the right hand of the pale man, totaling two not quite genuine coins that the girl clearly didn't pay any attention to.

— Is he a magician or what, hmm. — Not waiting for an answer, she swiftly tucked the money away behind the cash register and resumed reading her thin book. She probably wasn't even bothered that the coins were yellow with red-white edges and felt like frozen hard fabric.

— "Save me, oh merciful and gracious Helvia! For you are my healer and my banner — and I am your loyal shepherd"! — With this brief yet shouting hymn, the old man, quite out of his mind, literally flew out of the room, clutching the laundry detergent to his heart.

— And when did people so completely screw up their generation? To sincerely worship a food powder and give it a silly name. The instructions clearly state — DO NOT CONSUME!!! — the girl muttered negatively, shaking her head as if speaking to an imaginary friend beside her.

— Where did you catch such a bug? — A young woman unexpectedly appeared, wearing a white apron on her neatly arranged ample bosom, with thick, light hair tied up in a ponytail, peering curiously past one of the glass-filled display cases. — Or is this called fashion now, the "fashion era"? — With a crooked, low accent, she tried to quote some fashion magazine that usually cluttered her daughter's bedroom.

— Are you talking to me? — The man cautiously addressed the pleasantly smiling woman in the apron.

— Yes, you.

— I don't understand, you...

— Well, you have a huge, straight scar on your back in the shape of an "X." — She crossed her arms, trying to explain it to him as if he were a slightly tipsy customer with a dry mouth.

— A-ha, now I understand why that old man is completely out of his mind, — glancing at the man before her, the girl quickly interrupted their conversation. — I read that many, many hundreds of years ago, people believed in some detached seraph. This guy was the opposite of the ancient goddess O, Helvia, whom many still worship today. — Suddenly, the girl began to speak with interest. — So, for everyone who awaited a swift death and the subsequent afterlife judgment, this seraph left similar crossing scars on the body. Either on the palm, or on the belly, maybe even on the buttocks, I'm not sure. Oh, turn your back... Aha, it really does resemble that drawing from the chronicle. But no one living should see that crap according to the canon. Well, except for the owner, of course.

— So, should I expect to die soon? — asked the man.

— No, of course not. It's all fairy tales. — The woman denied, dragging boxes somewhere with a gentle smile on her face. — You probably had a good rest with friends last night!

— Y-yeah, probably. Th-thank you for the water. — The pale man politely nodded to both of them.

— Some are having fun, while I've spent two days in this hole. — The young cashier muttered nastily.

— These parties won't lead to anything good! I promise you that! — the mother began to get worked up.

— So it was okay for you, a seventeen-year-old, to entertain yourself with some werewolf?! To recklessly engage in debauchery and travel around the world!?

— He was wonderful, and his youthful exploits were sung in the testament of the Storyteller! — The woman clutched her heart, dreamily finishing with closed eyes. — And he is your father, who gave you life!

— Ha-ha, well thanks. Because of that wretched werewolf, every month there are crowds of these clueless guys hanging out under my balcony. And now I recently went into heat! Do you have any idea what was going on then!? A-aarrggh! I wish some handsome guy would show up! Sniff... — The girl started to throw a tantrum, desperately trying to return to her book.

— Only when you sincerely fall in love, when you get married, then God is my witness to my words.

— And Apostle Peter. Pfff...

***

Moments. The brightly blinding orange sun continued to lazily sink behind the high and fantastical horizons of towering multi-level structures, some of which shifted and moved into horizontal gigantic overpasses from time to time. Service vehicles could now confidently navigate these winding paths. And now, any type of transport bringing its owner home after a hard shift could land on the newly transformed platforms serving as parking lots. Countless streetlights had already been lit by electric current, and the faint light mingled with the dense cluster of headlights and energy reactors from the cars, buildings, and drones passing overhead. Aimlessly wandering and only occasionally glancing at the touchscreen, he continued to absorb each presented corner, step, and seemingly every molecule, as if a light breeze, a heavy scent, or a specific aesthetic imprinted itself inside him, around the large moving eyes in a black cloud, interrupted by the piercing voice of a thin boy and his crooked-smiling companion with a massive yet feminine, lizard-like jaw.

In such an acute time, every passerby, whether a person, a freckled dwarf, a higher form of life, or another lurking ghost, a rarely encountered cyborg with faded nails on its back, always flickered around him, each with their own problems, conversations, or even friendly smiles. They didn't notice his gaze surveying every bit of the active space. Perhaps hundreds of thousands of kilometers separated them all from the horror that lay beyond the walls, yet he still found moments in which he genuinely marveled, cautiously observing the passing eyes and their only irreplaceable hearts. The expansive cybernetic surroundings with an illusory-steel sky shifted into mundane cityscapes of tall office buildings and motels, with quiet winding streets lined with private houses, where paths from balconies, horizontal staircases, and windows often converged in a chaotic arrangement between neighboring blocks and the far-off hills made up of various domestic horizons, small branches leading to lonely and quiet parks.

His eyes stared at the gray endless expanse, with steps as long as blades rising briefly to a monochrome, dim entrance, towards the dull wide walls with gray and golden doors, to the dim columns, among which darkness lurked, alongside a tiny orange glow from a lit cigarette between someone's lips. A strange ringing emanated from this house, a sound of wires and microchips, as if a tiny vibrating processor had been shoved into his ears.

It was the most ordinary chain. Steel yet truly indestructible. It stretched endlessly somewhere into the beyond, slipping under his still-bare feet in the worn slippers that had gathered even more tiny cuts, mixing his oozing blood with fine dirt. It was almost completely covered in rust, twisted by time, with frequent areas warped. And somewhere, it bore tiny scratches, left as if by equally metallic nails. Cool as the atmosphere of the morning gray dew beneath the porch. Heavy as the loss of hope. Forged by life. So far, it crawls behind. So far, it crawls behind. It smells strongly of tears. A soul, cursed and forgotten by all, trapped in a cage since birth. A living, soul-wrenching agony. No hell in the world can compare to this pain. What happened? I want to know, I want to know, I want to know, I want to know, I want to know, I want to know, I want to know, I want to know, I want to know, I want to know, I want to know, I want to know. I want to take this away.

Slippery with sweat and pale-red from sudden tension, thin, pale hands carefully picked up the searing, invisible chain, its scent comparable to bitter ash in a fleeting moment. The disgusting stench of ash left behind after a body had burned to cinders. Darkness clouded his vision. Everything around him began to stretch like melted, multicolored clay, with a single liquid puzzle piece in the center of his head, from which new substances of yellow and somewhat warm colors began to flow, mixing with the constant black mush of his own thoughts, seen forms, and tangible sensations. Everything always melted and crumbled into infinity, everything constantly collided and compressed into serene tongues, drowning among countless touches that weren't there. It seemed as if eyes severed from bloody nerves began to intertwine with fragile, liquid tissues and columns, trapped in a polluted aquarium with no fish around.

He began to suffocate from the growing fear, unable to move even the hand that lay beside him, which felt as though it had turned into a thick cloud of dust, shattering against the hard ground. Finally, he managed to lower his gaze to the same chain in his painful, weak hands, which trembled weakly. Around him, a blurred mosaic of towering cliffs spun and danced, reaching toward the clear pink sky dotted with sparse clouds and two singular, brightest stars, as if conversing with each other. But before him, he saw a miracle. The very miracle he had once heard in an unfamiliar song. It was the sweetest horizon, with a single small, oval hill made of sturdy rock. If he could approach it, he would see a long cliff behind it, beginning its majestically boundless existence with dense, immortal forests, where countless billions of tiny lives with delicate legs, narrow antennae, and spider webs thrived. It would be worth returning to the hill. Two bewildered figures, sprawled in a lotus pose, munching on brewed rations, began to drill the stranger with the chain in his hands with their blank stares.

— Hey. Put that down quickly, — one of them replied coldly. A young guy with light curls on his cheeks and bluish eyes was clearly not in the mood to accept any refusals. His thin lips twisted in a grimace of disgust, and his eyes filled with insatiable outrage. He wasn't going to ask a second time, and at the moment when the gray-faced man struggled to break the chain with both hands, the young man instantly dissolved into nothingness, covering the twenty-meter distance in a heartbeat, grabbing the man by the hair on the back of his head with one hand while delivering a flurry of blows to the stranger's face with the other at an incredible, inhuman speed. His first knee strike landed heavily on the solar plexus, followed by a second blow to the previously focused point, and the gray-faced man helplessly collapsed backward, rolling over his thin shoulders and screaming fiercely in the face of excruciating, shameless pain that seemed to engulf his entire body.

The boy's strikes were as precise as a computer's aim, and each hit carried an inappropriately steel-like weight that had already vanished from his usual hands. The shattered face and injured stomach left a lasting imprint of horrific pain, but the hidden, bubbling desire deep inside rapidly prevailed, prompting the pale-faced man with empty black sockets instead of eyes to struggle to rise amidst the hoarse cries through broken lips and trembling shards of remaining teeth, first pushing up on his elbows.

— Who the hell are you!? And how the fuck did you get here? — The young man squatted down beside him, carelessly grabbing the man by the hair and lifting his gaze with it. — Look me in the eyes. — The stranger fell into uncontrollable tremors and panic, gasping for breath, trying to gather his thoughts while carefully monitoring the reaction of the young brigand as it began to seem that a dozen broken teeth floated in the bloody swamp of saliva in his throat.

Breathless, he struggled to catch the gaze of the young guy whose aggression and psychological state were utterly incomprehensible and unattainable to him. Before him, he only saw colors, the absence of numbers, the acceptance of an eternal path, control, and a recreated insane vastness, their unstable biological visibility, tiny genetic codes, and their possibilities. Through a slit in the red wall, a shadow suddenly appeared in his eye, obstructing his view of the man's face through the bouquet from the inner side of his eye. Each endless echo of existence clung to his constantly refined layers, wrapping around his consciousness, becoming a unified organ capable of everything. He was ready to grasp with his bottomless, slow sources of will to his excited system, to those serene red canvases of his shackled mind. To make a leap. To tear apart all conceivable and non-existent consistencies of imaginations, ideas, all-pervading space, emotions, and feelings. To embrace this story and gift it hope, to give a part of everything and provide answers... Compression. A new gaze and complete annulment. His thin palms helplessly fell to his groaning belly, while the empty sclerae remained a purposeless design whose direction was impossible to decipher. He could barely distract himself from the drifting native ships in his mouth, not to mention the liquid stream of black blood seeping through his lips, occasionally laced with red threads of the thickest secretions.

***

Her eyelids suddenly flew open wide as her heart began to tingle strangely, as if it were slowly ready to suffocate itself from within. In her blue, tear-stained pearls, a stirring fear was clearly readable. No, she did not crave such a sacrifice. She didn't want anyone to suffer because of her—because of her body, her voice, her thoughts—her very existence in this world. She had to stop this. She would execute her will, not allowing anyone to suffer because of her pitiful existence.

The room erupted with a terrifying, bone-chilling scream. Her head gradually lifted from the pillow, and her arms and legs began to move heavily under the pressure of her wavering and stubbornly resisting mind. Only crooked, puppet-like movements and a heart-wrenching, escalating shrill scream could be produced. Every muscle, every cell, every precious nerve in her body was engulfed by a maddening warmth, making her feel as though all her muscles and joints, with their tendons, were continuously and slowly tearing apart like a vast white fabric. Within eight seconds, the cries drew attention. Rushing orderlies and a few random nurses saw an open door that ultimately led them into an entirely empty room with a sheet lying on the floor. Only a strange, flickering yellow light went out behind the bustling backs of others.

***

These were not just simple blue eyes. That gaze, securely hiding something greater, could not reveal to anyone what lay deep inside. Those cunning eyes could see everything. They were one of the masterpieces in the world of an unending race for something greater and perfect. The true and all-seeing, tortured third eye awakened in his flickering soul, hidden beneath human bones. And now, he could not help but see the true essence, nurtured in this wretched, pale-skinned sick body that had once slowly rotted under the pressure of a meaningless life and died in the most ordinary and unnecessary place. Hidden secrets and desires were revealed like a dish from which a rusted lid was lifted. His life's journey was laid bare in the span of unfathomable seconds.

— Can you imagine who's come to see us? — the guy smiled widely and enthusiastically, turning to the sitting girl, who was still chewing something, a dark-haired maiden in brass light garments reminiscent of a hunter's light armor.

— And... who? — she mumbled through a mouthful of bread.

— A "human", — the guy scoffed with arrogant surprise. — A tiny piece of shit under the force of annihilation and the flesh of the Gods. Or something like Jesus is in charge. Buddha. Torah. Kali. Hmm. Or... I'm kinda confused in their divine limitations already. No idea what's where or who. You can't count them on your fingers... He turned back to the blood-smeared man, whom he began to lift by the hair.

— For such a shoddy attitude toward your degrading mind, you might get slapped in the face, kid. And who are all these people you named? — the girl replied indifferently, continuing with less fervor to stuff her mouth with the last remnants of soup, nearly cold among the melting circles of carrots and greasy broth.

— Aw, look! — He shook the man. — Go see for yourself if you don't believe it! I'm shocked! I told you, it's where all the cripples live. Both the people and their offerings to artificial beliefs, guesses, and fathers. Though, everything's pretty much the same here. The guy started to observe the man carefully again. — Although, it can't be. You can't do anything at all. Then he sniffed. — Hmmm... Hah, you can't even get rid of your body. At least heal those injuries, not to mention give me a good thrashing. But I see what I see. I don't understand a damn thing. He began to step back, tossing the man's body aside and turning his head in bewildered thoughts.

— Maybe your pressure flared up again and you can't control your brain, or maybe this mister just got lost. Anyway, as my grandmother used to say, 'with the world on the brink.' Wiping her mouth with a napkin, the girl suddenly pulled out her enormous damn mechanical gun with a body that had just heated to redness, which was divided by several recessed openings. With bright, sparkling sparks, two projectiles flew out of the hefty barrels of the weapon, shredding the heart and groin area of the barely rising body. Apart from the pools of blackened blood soaking the solid sandy cover around, a scream immediately began to pour out from carelessness in handling the heavy, trembling weapon.

Every part of the body, along with the narrowed eyelids, the uncontrolled, labored breathing around the aggressively stretched mouth, and the toes had completely refused to obey. He could barely hear his own silvery voice, unable to recognize the ever-multiplying number of silhouettes in the distance, his head sinking into the unseen depths filled with incredibly flexible, sharp blades that covered his body from within, accompanied by a strange warm coldness. Sand. Grass. His eyes could no longer distinguish color or think of those words; the icy claws of the wind lifted their sprawling trails back, striking his bending body with a silent, gentle stream, adding greater ferocity to his torn, exposed flesh, intensely piercing past his ground-up left chest. Eventually, his throat grew weary of its constant, silent, unyielding moan, drowning in the muddy, dark red juices. The beast was deprived of the opportunity to unquenchably and fully surrender to its involuntary roar, but in still living thoughts, they continued to race against each other, trying to tear apart the space of mentality, where a violet hue squeezed beneath the lower eyelids along with the sharpened lines of adapted skin. The curtain, kids! HaNaMillis-n, the bass voice of AdaMiHa fell... Her disarmed red chandelier with a face trembled before the snake. And they took each other's hands again, although Te vrL had stepped away with the cotton. Extinguish... step back, chain before the fingers, earth, ears! O-na!

— Just shut him up! He's gonna scream all night long, you bastard! — at her partner's request, she obediently reacted, apologizing for her rashness, and delivered a fatal shot to the head of the man writhing in horrible convulsions. — First of all, you pig-faced bastard! And second, are you out of your mind? Why kill him!? I asked you, damn it! He came from another fantasy! I wanted! I wanted! Bullshit. You brainless thing with overripe cherries instead of brains! Phew... What the f#%k!!!

Picking up a couple of red droplets on his thin vest, the guy felt strangely upset, delving into his swirling pupils past the gradually rupturing edges and the eternal roots of existence, deeply shocked after failing to comprehend his chaotic appearance, stubbornly staring at thoughts that whispered he had forgotten to take his pills again and tearing them to shreds. After not being able to witness how flesh and blood deprived themselves of life, becoming an inanimate and nonexistent painting that pierced through all laws and vice versa, everything that does not exist, preventing the cosmic cavern's immensity from scattering accumulated memories, desires, names, and love. Not anticipating the appearance of him, and his reasons to break this chain of metal. He didn't know her. Neither her body, nor her name, nor her story. Immediately, a road appeared in his mind, along which he began to stroll peacefully, examining the knowledge he had, trying to clarify for himself this impossible anomaly. Futile and in vain. There could be no answers. Perhaps he was gradually losing his mind. The heavenly darkness was shrouded in gray fog; he would have to wander the streets alone once again. But in a good mood, he turned around in the long bottomless corridor of black, flowing walls, following the path of a bright Gothic carpet... Eyes secretly laughed, but gradually turned away from him were grotesque silhouettes of cosmic size, locking their picture frames of multifaceted cloying worlds. Every thought, face, word. He understood his presence on Earth, but rejected his will. What if there were several of them? Born simultaneously in different circumstances and places. Ones he had never seen before. Yet one of the human faces looked at the guy like he was an idiot, hiding behind him, pulling its anticipatory opinion through the rising window of subspace.

Tears gently hit the ground. He couldn't extinguish the smoldering agony within himself, despite his immense desire, and so it squeezed the bubbling and still terrible pain in his strong teeth, which noticeably ground together. From the soft lower lip, which the fox accidentally bit during a shock, long drops of blood now trickled. Her poor ears were deprived of healing prostheses, and instead, the wounds continued to slice wider and longer, lifelessly dangling from her head like double-sided sheets of paper that hadn't completely torn in half. And her thick, golden swarm of dull hair began to gently sway in the warmly welcoming wind. With a chilling sense of dread, she timidly raised her gaze. The tall mountain cliffs around and the beautiful horizon ahead, which was only marred by the figure of a dark-haired girl with a smoking gun in her hand. She had been trembling feverishly even before, but upon seeing the familiar face, the ripple as a personal feeling became more horrifying with every quiver of her limbs. When a man's scream ceased, she cautiously turned her head, seeing the body of that very dead man. The nameless man from the ruins. Tears thickened, and the feeling of guilt and self-hatred surged rapidly, growing very high and breaking yet another boundary in a new understanding. And her scream was capable of drowning out anyone's madness, passion, and love. A sound pushing toward the most absurd and twisted acts. But pain restrained her movements.

— Wa-a-a...? — the girl with the cooling gun in her hand seemed to have lost her ability to speak. — You... You're...

The guy ambiguously began to look around, as if he didn't believe what was happening.

— Who do I see, — with arms outstretched, the blond was genuinely shocked by what was happening and his own ability to unwittingly edit illusions, after which he glanced around just in case. — How many years has it been? — he politely knelt before the sick vixen, gently placing his palm on her tense cheek. — How many winters, you sweet little lump of anguish. You have no idea how we've missed you. Where have you been all these long years? What have you been doing? — he began to stroke her, piercing through her soul with his cold-blooded gaze, trembling from terror and pain. She remained silent, continuing to swallow her screams, feeling her body going numb all the way to her eyelids. He watched her and marveled time and again. — I just can't understand! — the guy rose with a sudden and instant flare of anger. — Suddenly, this fucking piece of meat with your seal in hand shows up! After having died once in a completely different world! But how!? This violates all the written and still non-existent fucking systems of exohistorical universal voids! Even I can't see this... I!! And now suddenly you show up!? Oh you! You floppy-eared piece of masochistic trash! Why has this day come with your grievances, Lord!? Did I go too far with curiosity again?... Forgive me, I'm still just a child! So much more to understand and forget forever! Forever! Damn it! Ugh, what am I saying? Almost slipped up there. — again in despair, he raised his accumulated anger to the sky, nervously waving his fists and starting to kick at a half-burned bush in the sun.

The girl behind the furious hysteric barely restrained her laughter and contempt in her usual style. — You really should work on your vocabulary, you little fucker. — she finally couldn't hold back, laying the gun on the tablecloth and lowering her satisfied post-dinner face, crossing her arms over her knees and shrugging her thin shoulders.

— You. You ran away from us back then. I remember that leaden day. I remember it as clearly as my fifth birthday... We took care of you, fed you, clothed you. And this is how you repay us? You are no longer my little angel — you're an ungrateful, brainless, disgusting creature as it was written in that guidebook. Hey! Is he still with you!? — the boy's lips twisted grotesquely, and his face contorted in pain and regret, as if he were trying to cry. He genuinely wanted to forgive this creature for her ingratitude and possibly naive mistake, but he secretly understood that no punishment in the universe could compare to her fate. He was tired. He was fed up with all of this. Especially that idiot behind him. After a strong blow to her face, she collapsed back weakly, continuing to lose her last tears filled with bitterness and regret. She wanted to scream again. She wanted to destroy everything around her with her scream. The burning pain unrelentingly squeezed every part of her body. But she just continued to endure and accept all of this as truth, which she eternally consumed alongside lies. Who were they? Why was everything happening this way? Alas, she was too weak. She had always been weak, and now she would simply die like a useless doll in a world of masters and perfectionists. Along with her tiny desire, knowing nothing but constant loss. Molded without necessity, abandoned, and forever forgotten by all. — You can't escape fate, you can't run from it, damn it!

Memories. So many faces sleep before her gaze, sometimes even whispering, addressing her with inaudible pleas. The hovering glow shifts in the ceiling like a ghost, tempting her with hope. Suddenly it disappears, leaving only emptiness. There is no feeling — no hands, no consciousness, not even darkness or blinding light. Or maybe it's all just a dream she could lift like a book opening on the first page. But where will she find herself now, and what kind of world will it be? Her fingers tremble. She remembers old stories, scattered in her memory. What if she sees her mother? Maybe she had a father once? It's so hard to think about things that seem non-existent, like a meaningless word just made up or another sound. About things she had never suspected. Damn it, it's happening again. I'm tired...

~~~

Inside his skull, a nightmare ignited — exploding islands of consciousness, like fragments of a sunken world, hurling all the dirt he had long hidden to the surface. Thoughts, so vivid they felt organic, crawled through his veins like a poisoned syringe tightening in a tourniquet, and every sensation was filled with the sound of shattered glass shards. Fear gnawed at his heart like wild beasts piercing the flesh of his essence, spreading throughout his body. It was not merely a feeling — it was a nesting of horrors intertwining in his mind, sparking like lightning, leaving him no chance to escape. Pain? It was no longer just a companion — it had become his beloved, exquisite and tormenting, imposing its presence with every breath. It enveloped him so tightly that he could not discern where his body ended and this infinite, creeping, cold, slimy creature began.

With each passing second, a strange sensation grew within him, as if his skin were tightening and his bones fracturing, and something new was emerging in place of flesh. His mind exploded into infinite fragments, each a shard of the old "self" sinking into the abyss. He heard voices — whispers from the depths of memory, from the wounded soul that had long slumbered.

"Don't be afraid. Save her." These words seemed to originate from him, and he did not understand how they could be so clear yet full of despair. He did not care that he had never known this half-fox; in her, he saw the reflection of his own fear and humiliation. It was something sacred—it was the acknowledgment that his existence found meaning only in moments when he could challenge evil, even if that evil did not know him.

Every twitching muscle beneath his skin elicited a sharp reaction. The bones of his skull cracked like glass under the pressure of internal chaos. He felt his eyeballs contorting, striving to escape their sockets, as if they were threatened by an unbearable reality. He could no longer remain ordinary. Humiliation, mixed with pain, flowed into aggression. Words from the mouths of enemies he once could have ignored now sounded like a sinister symphony penetrating his brain, turning him into a tool of resistance.

And there he stood, burning his gaze into those people. Suddenly he realized: his hands no longer belonged to him. They had become instruments of pain, ready to destroy, however strange it felt inside. The half-fox had become a symbol for him, not just a victim—she was an image of everything he might have lost, and he could not allow those bastards to strip her of that pitiful fragment of her freedom. He was no longer himself—he had become a ghost of madness, calling for freedom through hellish rage and exhaustion. This was not merely a transformation; it was violence against his inner self, his humanity torn apart like a rag in the hands of a maddened sadist who might have been the cause of his oblivion, his ignorance, his sufferings, and fears that were impossible to comprehend. And now, in his mind, only now, in this lifeless yellow desert, cruel enlightenment flared up.

With each breath, he was torn between himself and the dark abyss between the rattling chromosomes, where each sought to engulf him with its mysterious meanings. He felt all his insides constricting, as if someone were driving hooks into him. This was madness, but it was in this madness that he found his new "self." This process, full of corruption and twisted beauty, merged into one—rage, discontent, and unhealed wounds. Everything that had come before now sank into darkness, turning to dust—a dust that had no right to exist in this world.

~~~

With a weighty squint of his unseen eyes, he hoarsely filled his lungs from within, his contorted face hidden behind a clenched and worn fist. His shimmering shell, seemingly lost in serene emptiness, slowly rose with the ruthless non-existence, oozing severed chunks of flesh and torn fabric. Dozens of fleshly vortices, woven from biological abundance, exploded with galactic gallons across the crust of his meaty and simultaneously mental comprehension. Mad tremors and a spectrum of pain embraced waves of opposition, conquering all sensations with their long ribs.

Emotions, their words, nails, and all kinds of elevations—everything, like whirlpools in boundless depths, merged before a stain, not hindering each other, but occasionally melting into a homogeneous mass. The wild jaw slowly opened, allowing echoes of bottomless and powdery sounds to form between his lips and cursing tongue. Words shattered again, never reaching his lips. The falling shadow shriveled, as if in response to the refraction of light expelled by a mighty star. Raw red skin, breathing between 76 percent keratin and 80 percent amino acids, hardened to a level sharper than any knife, displaced in transformation.

A bloodied winged mark gaped, the bloodied lips revealing all that remained of his flesh. A tiny mutilated creature leaped from behind, mimicking a cracked male voice:

— You don't see the obvious... By the way, you are soaked with loneliness to the point of fainting.

He widened his eyes, and around them blurred, like in a thick fog with deceptive protrusions. Inside, it felt like an entire jar of sleeping pills had been dumped and heavily smashed over his head. He did not move his lips; he felt no presence on his face. Instead, someone else was speaking, as if snow had lodged in his throat, robbing him of his voice. His chest and groin tightened with wide bloody pits, where the last fragments of bones and cellular secretions collected, glimmering like tiny liquid shells on the ground. They gradually evaporated, and the gray stretched skin took away this unbearable pain.

— Huh? — the guy began to look perplexedly at how the previously mutilated body, shot and beaten, slowly reclaimed all the lost fragments of its body like a frozen frame on an outdated film, gradually being replaced by fresh details of its brokenness, growing around the flat illusion of Disconnection. The shadow, pulsating and distorted, struck against the trembling mind in the present space, shimmering with an unlimited spectrum of tangible and horrifically cutting touches, nervously pounded with genuinely escalating rage, self-contempt, and a strange pain that surrounded his gaze absolutely everywhere and quickly began to replace new decorations in the skillful color of understanding, perception, and the desire to help achieve perfect self-control over these limbs. — What the hell is this uprising from the dead "Ada Christ"? I don't get it!?

— Why... Just shut up. Please. — The mutilated figure painfully bared its face, with hunched islands behind it. Groans of agony occasionally resembled bird calls, with a heavy hoarse accent. Its legs struggled to support the creature. Someone began to drag it from within. Red wings, sharp claws, and snow-white eyes like two pearls in blue seaweed. — You with your broom can't even imagine what color their pain is.

After these words, the girl opened her mouth in surprise, unzipping her zipper and carefully examining her rounded and firm breasts under the thin black turtleneck, to which the blue-eyed boy twirled a finger at his temple and curled his lips as if to say, "What the hell are you listening to him for!?"

Nonlinear bright outlines around the imagined eyes intensified with their ambiguous and unnatural grin, instilling a weight of control over the doubt that wished to protect the being behind him, unable to read all the necessary thoughts and desires. The paranoia of a tearing pack drilled in his ears, and he began to glance repeatedly at the absolutely helpless tailed warrior. There was that guy again: angry and confused, ambitious yet lazy. The girl reached for her weapon, glancing at her partner; green eyes hid among the chocolate hair, and brittle strands tangled in the twisted branches. Someone lay there. Someone's room was a whole refuge. The returning seasoned feelings briefly became their inescapable fate — uncontrollable and omnipresent. The blue-eyed one's eyes sparkled aggressively, winking in the compressed memory of the master of his own desire ramp-ups. Reluctantly, he resigned himself to the futile attempts to learn anything, leaving hope and strange thoughts for that helpless fox in her powerlessness.

The shadow smoothly dripped to the ground from the shadowy intersections of crushed grains of sand, leaving behind bright red lights in the eyes of the pale-faced stranger, who cautiously examined his skinny gray hands. A brutal struggle was inevitable. They stared at each other, frozen, waiting for one of them to make a superfluous move.

Hands. One of them roughly grabbed the face of the approaching blue-eyed boy, already pushing him back against the hard rock, doing so clumsily, like a lost teenager at a party who had previously had a fierce quarrel with his hated classmate, clearly superior to him in every possible aspect. The girl accurately and promptly fired her weapon at the ugly psycho, whose bleeding forearm caught all the incoming projectiles. He let out a loud scream, grotesquely baring his teeth in pain, and fell to one knee. The boy sent a sharp elbow strike to the stranger's jaw, stepping on his foot and creating a combination of skillful steel strikes.

Stumbling awkwardly, he tried to shield himself from the blows with his hands when one of them, with elusive speed, seemed to slice through all the sky above their heads and fell heavily on the boy's shoulder with a characteristic crunch, closer to the swollen nerves in his neck, which both of the pale-faced man's hands grasped. In his eyes, the boy unexpectedly read the entire scheme, as if his breath had brushed past another's mind for a single second.

Clumsily shouting, the blonde frantically tried to kick at all his vulnerable spots, envisioning an ordinary person before him while struggling to break free from the hands pinning his body against the solid earthen wall. His voice desperately imitated the fierce and muffled roar of a wild animal, whose claws scraped tightly and barely broke against the flabby, dead skin. Meanwhile, his partner stood helplessly, aiming sporadically and ineffectively shooting at the head and shoulders of the leather skeleton, which promptly brushed off the shots and continued to push the boy aside. She remained on the sidelines, closely observing this wild struggle, where this strange guy stood out.

The blonde began to laugh hysterically, as if trying with all his might to lose his mind. There was not a shred of doubt in his sincerity as his fierce gaze froze in confrontation with pain. This fear became a fateful event for him, a barrier he could only squeeze through while continuing to ascend the evolutionary ladder much deeper.

The mountain wall opposite them began to dissolve, transforming into a poorly lit room with dusty windows, long carpeted stairs, and a nearby bottle of tequila shattering. The delicate and youthful face of the boy was gently surrounded by modest makeup with luxurious eyeliner around his eyelids, onto which dazzling light from the concert rigging fell sharply, swirling around the perimeter of a wooden stage somewhere in a Texas, ordinary, grubby saloon, where men crowded together, likely quarrelling over nonsensical foolishness, or rather — over a woman frightened to the point of fainting. Only a few distant intellectuals, leisurely sipping fresh whiskey on the balconies, observed the modest performance of a cheerful singer in a lavish, bulky, bright dress, assisted by an old man with a heavy, surprisingly brand-new cello, who intensely struck the inebriated strings.

The boy reached for an iron hook, driving it forcefully under the skin of the man, and immediately commanded his old friend on the other side of the bar to briskly pull the rope. With a heavy cough, clutching his throat, the boy powerfully kicked the torso of his opponent, sending him flying as far away as possible. Half a corpse and half a man, he slipped off the hook and skidded face-first across the well-worn piano, nearly swallowing one of the penultimate keys before landing on the unloaded thick sacks of flour that gradually blended into the backdrop of a high cliff in non-loading flickering frames.

Slap! A small flour bag burst spectacularly on the face of the gray-faced man, who looked as if he had been dusted with snow. Another bag exploded on the pretty face of the blonde boy, who was knocked down by this sudden blast. But this was not the end! The next, but larger projectile of flour exploded in the makeshift trench created by the long bar, coming under mass fire from someone's shoes, glasses, bell peppers, lemon wedges, and other vegetables.

The guy was bewildered. He wanted to escape from this freak. One of the bags managed to fly back, roughly smacking against the boy's face and knocking him to the ground along with an enraged, snowy grimace. He continued to clutch at his throat and his cracked shoulder joint, where bruised red marks remained, hastily crawling backward... Darkness encroached on his vision with every breath, and his hands once again began to restrict the breathing of that audacious kid who had unexpectedly appeared in the heavy, peppery fog, causing his eyes to water. He wanted to move forward, but the strength drained from one of them in the upside-down space, making his head spin to the accompaniment of a jazz tune played by a vanishing cello.

"Leave her alone! Please! Please! I want this to stop! Just let her go!" A stranger's voice burst out from the unknown person, kicked aside by the boy into the instantly disintegrating chaos of their fragile, termite-like stones, still occasionally pounding his face with his fists and possibly tearing at his own skin between his faded pupils, realizing how deeply emptiness gnawed at his mind and intensified his fear.

He wanted to stop, but the air suffocated his thoughts and pushed him back into the reddened island of internal details and unnatural planes of his skull, briefly robbing him of sight. His maddened, trembling hands resumed the task of hitting and knocking down the blonde boy, perhaps trying to calm him down and give himself another chance to reach out to him.

But an unknown force haunted and treacherously spun his consciousness, feeling fear for every passing moment in which that creature could be grabbed again and something done to her life right now. Anything. In a possible justification for the cruelty scraping at his back. Or maybe it had already happened, along with the fleeting bright tires rushing through that unbreakable wall, where familiar places drifted away, moving oil motors and sprawling silhouettes among multiplying labyrinths in the ashen sky, defying the amber clouds.

Tear apart, again and again. Relentlessly repeat their words. Make them look, make them feel, while behind them life continues on.

— I just woke up! I saw you! — the guy shrieked, delivering punches in turn, desperately trying to fend off his attacker. — Just a person! A nobody with a false name and a damn coward! You're right! You're a disappointment! Absolutely to everyone and to her! You didn't even exist, idiot! — A mad laugh began to toy with the unknown between his trembling wolf-like fangs. — Just a fucking human!! How does it—!!

Something silently sobbed on the other side of intentions with a fading female scream but somehow didn't stop choking the person beneath the nameless canvas, lost among the ghost of another, gasping in the unnatural, colorless juice of a paralyzed mind. Who is this? This teenager had raised his hand against her for the first time today; it was an explosion of frozen emotions. He truly was alone. Somewhat similar to his best friend. Perhaps just "a friend" now. His third eye had taught him so much, allowing him to see and feel so many things. But he had overdone the medication.

The person tightly grasped his head and began to smash it down with a collapsing regression in a restrained scream, barely audible from his sealed, lacerated lips, from which another face emerged and disappeared, another word. This unnatural, opposing fear forced him to turn back again and again to the solitary fox-like silhouette, distracted by the painful scars on his weary body. What if she disappears suddenly? What if those legs grab that unfamiliar face again? Is she out of strength? What is happening?

If he hits again, will he stop? The attempts to break free, to deprive him of consciousness—only for a moment.

The back of his head gradually shattered into various fragments, igniting with crimson splashes. An eruption from semi-solid organic puzzles instantly painted the warm earth, flowing with tears streaming down from soft, pink puzzles. The ringing in his ears multiplied with the number of the rounded area compressing instead of the flat sky, with stars magnified thousands of times, piercing the tops of crumbling rocks like celestial, radiant cloaks.

The person froze with outstretched palms, barely able to discern someone's lower jaw with a tongue and scattered teeth. Paranoia. He turned back several times, unexpectedly noticing the silhouette of a long-eared woman in a white coat lying down. Bright and cool. He felt a presence, turned back, and saw the last scene with the stranger above. In her trembling hands, the weapon began to crumple, like risen dough, surrounding and tightly wrapping the thin black limbs. Once again, someone's oozing, crimson-pink large hands crushed the woman's bones into multiple open and closed fractures, simultaneously deforming her rough skin and breaking her long gray nails. I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know.

With a thunderous scream from an invisible force, the girl's head shattered into pieces, causing her headless body to collapse lifelessly to the ground amidst the eager splashes of blood, flailing nervously with its lifeless thighs, like a fish. Her neck partly accepted this decision, even though it was painfully torturous. But she didn't want to die. And she left this message on the long fingers of unfamiliar hands, releasing her calmed torso from their embrace.

The person struggled to look down at the shattered pieces of the boy's head beneath him. Red walls slowly dripped down, dissolving in the murky brown eyes. A terror that swiftly consumed his consciousness began to tremor through his body. Pain started to return, sending painful impulses. The realization of death laid bare before him the former rocky expanses, enveloped by yellow walls beneath the darkening warm sky.

***

The clear eyes of the fox remained consumed by fear until the last moment, ready to fade away and accept its fate in this scenario. Rather, it was curiosity. Breathing became much easier, and the ears, which seemed to have no more living space left, now only tingled softly and itched with a tickling sensation. The heart-wrenching and merciless agony from intolerable pain throughout her body faded away. It dimmed as if someone's breath had extinguished a recently lit fire around a porcelain saucer.

And all of this happened to her just when pale, thin hands barely touched her horribly trembling shoulders, already entwined with strange, light threads that seemed to embrace even her bones through the layers of internal muscles. These hands struggled to lift and gradually carry the body away from the bloody patch, weaving smoothly in the long sheets and tenderly laying the weakened body in its former warm blanket by the window, beyond which night had long reigned and the reflections of neon confetti glimmered.

Her four fox-like sensors on her head seemed never to be devoid of healing prosthetics, and the devices on the screens displayed stable indicators of her body. Questions clamored to escape one after another from her mind, but she lacked the strength for that. And once again, all she had left was to endure. Patiently waiting and hoping that the answers would soon appease her stubborn desire. Hoping that this would come by tomorrow morning.

Her pounding breath gradually stopped gasping, the tumultuous body slowly calmed its movements and in the overloaded brain. Just moments ago, he had held someone in his arms. Someone's spine, shoulders, legs, skin, head, nape. He was afraid of dropping her with each subsequent weakened step, distracted by the rough tingles beneath his skin, for ages. Lucky that she was here, so close. To touch someone. A stranger... Flesh. In such impenetrable darkness, she barely managed to glimpse the stranger's silhouette at the locked door. Only the colorful wavering of keys in the distance with the plasma screen and the furniture that had long consumed the daylight helped her orient herself.

— O-please stay — she barely heard herself, and from the heavy exhalation, she addressed the departing figure of the man, in whose hands glimmered fragments of some torn heavy chain, clanging loudly as it slithered away. A bit of blood and a piece of torn, bloodied clothing. — P-please... — the voice pleaded softly, heralding a painful wave of tears.

— I... Shh... — the man raised his hands, cautiously whispering and swallowing the nagging lump in his throat. — You need to sleep, I suppose. You look tired. I'll inform the duty officer that you're in your room. So no one worries. There are police outside. — he replied nervously, partially stammering as he turned his face towards her.

— Y-you...? — she continued to stubbornly follow his figure blurred among the orange-dim and warm-toned walls.

Her head suddenly throbbed, the involuntarily closing eyes began to darken intensely, and the tips of her fingers on her hands and feet went numb. Her eyelids began to close from exhaustion, and the pale lips of the girl sealed with a brief sigh. After long minutes in the quiet and pristine room, her sweet, tired snoring could be heard in the darkness, reminiscent of a tiny, cute creature.