November 11, 2013 - 6:15pm
Underneath Qincheng Prison, Beijing China
The tender soles of Machiavelli’s feet screamed in protest with each step he took on the prison’s freezing stone floors. The white-clad guards escorting him had removed the blindfold long ago, but it didn’t make a difference; a veil of darkness swathed the narrow halls of his new abode. He’d been given a small bag with toiletries and basic supplies, and wore nothing but a thin white shirt and pants.
“I knew I shouldn’t have gone back…” The twelve year old berated himself for a minor error he’d made amidst a robbery. As he was an atma user, that mistake meant he landed himself a position in one of the worst maestro prisons in the world, a facility known only as 156. Due to secrecy, that had been Qincheng Prison’s designation when it was originally built in the late 50s. And now that the original facility was no longer a secret, its underground counterpart inherited the name.
The boy and his wardens slowly approached a dim white light at the end of the hallway. There, he stood over a massive cavern with greenish-white sand coating its floor. Even with the cold numbing his nose, the stench of unwashed human bodies and excrement caused him to gag. He could see hundreds of men, women, and children laying about, some engaged in petty squabbles, others just staring blankly at nothing. A hand pushed him into the cavern below them, and he was sent tumbling down the rocky cliff welcoming him to his new home.
His feeble atma protected him from the worst of the fall, but it waned quickly when he touched the sandy ground. Eyes fixated on with a medley of hunger, lust, and boredom. A wave of fatigue and discomfort gnawed at him.
A gangly ghost of a woman with stringy black hair and rotting teeth slithered up to him.
“You’re young,” she rasped, “Bet you’ve never been with a woman before. I’ll let you try it out for some of your supplies.”
Machi stepped back, clutching his bag as the woman loomed over him.
“Leave the kid alone, you old bag!” A young Dee called out. The crowd of prisoners knew better than to be around fights. They backed away from the dark-skinned girl. She was much better off than the woman in front of Machi, but was hardly more than skin and bones.
“Step off bitch, he’s mine!” The woman roared. Her voice quickly simmered down to a whimper.
“Come on, just some of your rations. I’ll let you put it wherever you want!” The woman closed in on Machi, inundating him with her stench. Before she could get any closer, Billy’s massive hand gripped her shoulder, and pulled her away from the boy.
The woman hissed, but crawled away, not wanting to go up against the mountain.
“Welcome to hell!” Bonnie, pale-skinned, and dark haired, appeared next to Machi, startling him. Save for Billy who was in his early twenties, they were all around the same age, just breaking into their teen years.
“I’m Bonnie, that’s my sister, Diana,” she pointed at Dee.
“What is this place?”
“Prison, obviously. If you’re here, that makes you an atma user. It also means you fucked up, bad,” the girl chuckled.
“Yeah,” Dee said, “What did you do?”
“None of your business,” Machi whispered.
“Wow, that’s the thanks we get? Have some manners at least!”
“He’s probably just shy, Dee. We got sent in here for killing some creeps that followed us home. So much for justice,” Bonnie said. She was fairly excitable for someone who described her mainstay as a hell.
“Billy over there got in trouble for butchering people. He’s really passionate about human anatomy. I think it’s weird, but he says it’s got to do with his technique.”
“Which is pointless,” Dee rolled her eyes, “since atma is weaker here.”
“It is?” The boy asked. His sudden fatigue made sense.
“Yep. This sand is some sort of tool that weakens our atma. You can barely use reinforcement or shape your technique if you’re close to it.”
“How long have you guys been here?”
“More talkative now?”
“Sorry…I’m Machi. My friends and I…we had to steal to eat. I…I got caught.”
“That’s rough.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, Machi,” Dee gestured for the boy to follow her, “we’ve only been here for a couple months. It’s hard to keep track of time here, but they bring in supplies every two weeks. We should be due for a refill soon.”
“Do they…throw them in?”
“In a way…” She pointed at a massive square-shaped pipe at the roof of the cavern. It was hardly visible, but a draft could be felt from its gaping maw.
“I see,” The boy took in the sounds of despair all around him, “Has anyone ever made it out?”
“Lots of people have. Half in body bags, and the other half just get randomly dragged out by guards.”
Tears welled in the boy’s eyes.
“It’s over! My life is over!”
Just then, he noticed a man hanging a few feet in the air, suspended by chains around his wrists. He hung between two pillars that the chains ran through, made immobile by the gargantuan boulders attached to the ends of each chain.
Bonnie noticed his look.
“That’s Hyeseong Lee. According to Billy, he’s been here a long time for killing a lot of people.”
“Is he…?”
“He’s alive. Quite fond of us, actually. We sleep right by that pillar. Everyone is too scared to get close or try anything around him.
“But isn’t he powerless like the rest of us?”
“Not exactly. I think it’s safe to say that there’s nobody like Lee,” Bonnie smiled.
~
August 8, 2022 - 10:14am
Outside Lecture Hall 3, Third Floor, Eden Campus Building 8
Lee and Soji fought each other with a ferocity that tore at their surroundings. Soji picked up a set of lockers and threw them at his opponent who punched it back at him. The boy’s heated body melted through the metal as he clawed at Lee. The man blocked with his bloodied forearms, having received several similar attacks. The wound where Esme stabbed him throbbed even though the bleeding had stopped.
“So this is the bloom boy…he caught me off guard but…”
Lee kicked the bloom’s calf then struck him with a left hook, and followed with a right. His skin sizzled from the burns on his knuckles and forearms. Soji staggered back to regain his balance, his ears ringing. The boy wheezed from the pain he’d endured thus far. His healing had deteriorated dramatically, and the recollections of tearing at the inhabitants of Xander’s Genten ensured that his mental state followed suit.
“You’re being weighed down,” Lee said, rubbing his chin.
“What?”
“By the bodies. I can see them. Clinging to you. Whispering.”
After what had felt like ages, Soji once again felt Franklin’s weight on his shoulder, his parents clutching at his ankles, and now the ‘characters’ of the Bullet Train clinging to his arms and legs.
“What do you know about that? You kill without regard,” the boy spat.
“I kill without regret, though I didn’t always. Not until I found something worth killing for. Don’t you have anything like that?”
Soji paused. Under the weight of the bodies dragging him down, he wasn’t exactly eager to resume fighting.
“You come off as the ‘fight for your friends type’. Or maybe you want to be the strongest, or something boring like that. That’s why your body is moving so slowly. It’s not on the same page as the mind,” Lee tapped his temple.
“No. I’m fighting so I can find the woman that turned me into this,” Soji gestured at himself. Opening up to this stranger was peculiar, to say the least, but the boy thought it a good way to catch his breath while his wounds healed.
Lee looked Soji over. He was a bloody mess, the widely feared black devil, and incidentally, the first bloom he’d ever seen. In spite of that, at the core of the boy’s shadowy exterior was a bleeding human heart, and that was what Hyeseong could hear crashing against his ribcage.
“Are you sure you weren’t always like that?”
“Of course I’m sure! I used to be a human. And now I’m this thing that everyone wants to own, or kill, or ogle at. I-I’m not a man.”
“Yet you think like a man. You love, hate, and hunger like a man. But you’re fighting for vengeance. There’s nothing wrong with that being your goal. But if it’s your purpose, then you’ll be consumed by it. That’s when you’ll cease to be a human being. ”
“In a way, he reminds me of that young white-haired woman I met years ago. She’d been devoured by hatred when we met, and she’s the reason I gave up on my own revenge. Come to think of it, she was also still strong after my touch…I wonder what she’s become,” Lee thought.
“What’s the difference?” Soji wanted to ask, but he had a vague idea. It reminded him of his conversation with Kuro and Monika weeks ago. The goal was to reach Daisy and…do what again? Kill her? Force her to change him back? Then what?
His goals were fuzzy, wavering. Soji couldn’t even begin to think about what his purpose was.
“How the hell am I supposed to know my purpose? I’m seventeen!”
Lee’s fingers twitched at how young the boy was.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“You don’t find your purpose. You create it. However, trying to go back to the way things were never works.”
“So you’re saying I should just keep moving forward? Forget about the past?”
“No. Mourn the past. Cherish it. But embrace the present, and walk towards the future. I was like you once. My anger led me astray from the noble path. That’s how I ended up like this. I created a Bond and gave away everything in exchange for a body that could hunt and kill the people that took my life from me.”
“Did you…?”
“Somewhat. I gave up on that…eventually. But it was too late to go back to what I used to be. Instead, I met my family,” Lee smiled.
~
January 3, 2015 - 4:26pm
Underneath Qincheng Prison, Beijing China
“Do you guys want to get out of here?” Lee whispered. Billy, Dee, Bonnie, and Machiavelli had set up camp around him. Even chained to the pillars, he managed to take good care of them with his mere presence, staying up at odd hours of what they presumed to be night, breaking his own teeth and spitting them out like bullets at daring inmates. Over the past year, they’d grown quite close.
“How is that even possible? Even with our techniques, there are too many guards and there’s no way for us to know which way the exit is,” Machi replied.
“Actually, I must tell you all something,” Lee sighed, “I came to this prison willingly. After my temple was burned down, I made a Bond with myself to obtain the abilities necessary to hunt down the people responsible. And then I took one year to myself to train. I left the mountain my temple was built on to discover that its treasures were now in possession of the villagers that ransacked it. They were led by a man with a tree-and-snake tattoo, but he’d disappeared right after the raid.”
Lee paused, realizing that some of the nearby prisoners had stopped to listen.
“I saw what they’d done, so…I killed them with my bare hands. All of them. After that, I ran around like a wild animal, searching for that man with the tattoo. Eventually, the fire in my heart cooled, and there was nothing but ash. When maestros came to get me, I submitted…I hoped to die here, in the dark.”
“So…” Dee began, “what abilities you got?”
“Dee!” Bonnie scolded.
“What? We’re all dying to know!”
“It’s fine,” Lee chuckled, “It all has to do with our plan. I was granted a superhuman body. My strength, durability, speed, and senses are…advanced. My atma has two traits. One is that it’s in a constant state of Staccato. The other is that it forces other atma into that state as well.”
“What is Staccato?” Machiavelli asked.
“It’s when the flow of atma from the core to the brain is disrupted. Instead, it just flows directly to the body, unable to be perceived, used, or shaped. It’s like a useless mist,” Billy explained.
“Precisely. Since meeting you guys, I’ve started to realize I don’t have to use this body for hunting down that man. I can use it to protect, to make sure that you all can reach for whatever it is you please. I…want to make you guys happy. If you trust me…I can get us out of here.”
Machiavelli and the girls smiled.
“What are your orders, Captain?” Billy asked.
~
August 8, 2022 - 10:14am
Outside Lecture Hall 3, Third Floor, Eden Campus Building 8
“Whatever it is you desire, you reach for it without any care for those that get in the way. Burn everything in your path,” Lee leapt at Soji, and punched his arms that were raised in defense.
Soji thought for a moment as he slid back.
“Burn everything for my desires…”
“That’s what people like you and Daisy do. That’s why I’m here. Why my friends might die. Why there’s so much blood everywhere!”
Lee sighed, then shrugged.
“That’s the very foundation of this world. We carve flesh, meld bones, and water the soil with blood to move forward. Those of us that are willing and able, can grasp whatever we want. As you are, with a boring motivation like revenge and an idling mindset riddled with guilt, you’ll never defeat either of us. Your steps are too heavy.”
“I don’t know where to start…”
“Don’t worry, your hyung-nim will beat the remorse out of you!”
Lee lunged at Soji, who loosed a small heatwave from his body to deter the man from coming any closer.
“I don’t want to be like you,” the boy cried, “Someone who kills without remorse. Even if it is for your family. How many should suffer so yours can thrive?”
“As many as it takes,” Hyeseong removed his smoldering blazer, then tossed it aside. As he removed his tie, and unbuttoned his collar, he slowly approached Soji.
“Then don’t you think that the people that made you like this were just doing the same?”
The man stopped. The images of all the men, women, and children cowering in fear before being torn apart flashed in his mind. The jewels given to daughters, and rings gifted to wives usually shone bright in his memory, but now, their light was dimmed by crimson. The floor beneath his feet was no longer tile, but flesh and bone, rotted and gray.
“I suppose you’re right. But isn’t that what it means to be human? To gnaw and gnash to protect what you have and take what you don’t?”
“No,” Soji ran at his opponent and leapt through the air for a jumping triple kick. The man parried the first two of the midair kicks, but was surprised by the third. The boy’s foot crashed into Lee’s head, launching him against a wall.
“We’re more than that! We have to be!”
“And why is that?” The man stood up, stretching.
“Because…because it has to mean something to be human. We’re different from animals, aren’t we?”
“I like to think so. Buddhist teachings dictate that humans are born good. That we suffer a temporary confusion with our nature, and we must lift ourselves from that confusion. That is what separates us from animals. A dog has no confusion about what it is. No matter how much you train or nurture or mutilate it, its mind knows that its soul is that of a dog’s.”
“So you’re confused, is what you’re saying?”
Lee froze, then chuckled.
“Who said I’m not good?”
He opened his eyes with a sigh. Soji was in front of him, claws aimed for his jugular. Lee grabbed the boy’s hand then threw him towards the end of the hallway.
“Soji. I once read, and have since learned, that moral impotence is the key to success. If success is dependent on the abandonment of our ‘good’ nature, then does that not mean that the good are destined to suffer? Can we not seek refuge from suffering?” Lee asked, with a sense of urgency in his tone. Soji could detect apprehension in his opponent, and a genuine desire for an answer.
“I don’t know! Does moral impotence make us successful?”
“Look around you. Surely, you know better than I do, that the Institute is filled with corruption. Those that live comfortable lives are the ones that have stolen and lied to get it. And even between you and I, you’re not going to win this fight. Selfish ideals tend to improve quality of life. And yet…”
“Are you uncomfortable with your confusion?”
Soji’s question rang bells in Lee’s head.
“The end of suffering is in the Eightfold Path. That’s why I’m not satisfied…I’m close, but…I’ve strayed.”
“Ah, so it’s like that,” Lee sighed.
“What?”
“I just remembered, you were worried about whether or not you’re a human being. Your confusion about your nature is proof that you are. But you need to find out what kind of person you are. What is your purpose? What dream drives you so much that you would devour the earth to get it? That is your mania…and your source of strength.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I can’t fight you like this. You’re the second person I’ve ever met who could survive a serious attack from me. Capturing you like I was paid to do would be a waste of your potential. So, I need you to find your mania. Then you’ll understand that everything you’ve been through was preparation to get you there. And only after you’ve shed your guilt, can you begin to lift your confusion,” Lee turned away from the boy, walking towards the skull mask he’d thrown aside. Soji subconsciously sighed a breath of relief.
“He’s right…even after everything…I’m still standing. And I’m stronger,” The boy’s heart rate quickened at the thought of the people he’d met, the blooms he’d fought, and the savory sensation of surviving battles for his life.
“Has the anomaly been subdued?” He asked into the earpiece he’d removed from his mask.
“Kuro!” Just as he’d slowly started to cool down, Soji painfully forced his body to heat back up. His protruding horns had started to crack off, and flakes of black loosened from his brown skin. His locs were disheveled from the smoke and the thrashing, and his limbs trembled from the tremendous force they’d both output and endured.
Still, he pushed through the pain and jumped at Hyeseong, wrapping his legs around the man and clawing at his face relentlessly. Lee tucked his head in and raised his arms again to protect from the worst of the damage, simultaneously relishing and wincing at the sensation. To Soji’s surprise, Lee then pulled the boy in closer, abruptly throwing off his onslaught. The man exploded upwards, tilting his body forwards so that he found his feet planted on the ceiling. Using as much power as possible, he pushed off the ceiling, breaking it as he and Soji rocketed into the floor.
With the wind knocked out of him, Soji’s eyes widened as he was helpless against Lee’s barrage of punches that soon followed.
“That’s your friend, I take it,” the man said. His hands wrapped around Soji’s throat, an effort to subdue the boy temporarily.
“You won’t be able to do anything properly until you examine your life. Then you’ll see that it’s your ideals that have put you beneath me, that are making it hard to breathe. Forget about that woman that you say took your life. Take it back…when you wake up.”
Lee’s words slurred together as Soji lost consciousness. He had neither the energy nor the resolve to heat himself up and break free. In the back of his mind, fear, regret, and defeat mixed with Hyeseong’s ideology, concocting an admittance of weakness that rendered the boy immobile. On another day, such a feeling would’ve been a call to action, but with the compounding injuries to Soji’s body and sense of self, he could only shed a single tear.
BOOM!
Niko’s spear, Cloud Diamond, shot at Hyeseong’s head, powered by a familiar explosive atma. The man rolled to the left, narrowly avoiding the Instrument’s wicked glint. He turned to see Monika planting her palms on the floor as he heard the spear sink into the wall behind him.
“A lesson just showed up, ” Lee sighed, “Instead of going to help your dying friends, you’ve come to fight me. What’s about to happen to your friend, Soji, is what’s going to happen to you if you continue your path.”
“Shut the hell up!” Veins of atma glowed brightly along the walls, ceiling, lockers, and floors of the hallway just before the girl detonated them. The force of the resulting shrapnel shredded Lee’s clothes and skin as splinters of all kinds lodged into his flesh.
The girl loosed another explosion beneath her hands and feet, launching herself at Soji. As she flew over her barely conscious friend, she latched onto his windbreaker and used bursts of atma to maintain her momentum until they reached the end of the hallway, where they made a sharp right, just out of Lee’s sight.
The duo tumbled down the hall as Soji’s mind slowly rebooted itself.
“Monika…you’re…”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re far from fine.”
“Says you…you can actually keep up with this guy?”
“Barely. He’s strong. But a different kind of strong. Like…Tamara strong,” the boy’s voice trembled.
Monika paused at the blasphemy.
“No, it’s not that. Well, not just that…maybe. But he puts our atma in Staccato; we can’t use it at all when he touches us, not even for reinforcement.”
“That’s how he took you guys down so quickly…”
“Yep. And I’m sure you’ve sensed it, but it’s as if he has no atma,” the girl explained.
“I gave away everything in exchange for a body that could hunt and kill maestros,” Soji remembered.
“That’s the Bond he created,” he whispered.
“Bond? What? How do you know?”
“It would make sense,” the girl thought, “the ability to weaken maestros in exchange for having no atma.”
“He’s been saying a lot of— they’re after Kuro!”
“Did he tell you that, too?”
“Indirectly. We have to stop him! But we need to get help for everyone…I can feel them fading out! I saw Niko’s leg…she’ll bleed out soon if we don’t do something! If I can get to her I can cauterize the wound!”
“You’re right about getting help and stopping him. But the bleeding out won’t happen for another half hour or so.”
“What? Maestros are still human, a missing limb is not going to take that long to bleed out.”
“But that’s the thing…this barrier that they set up, it’s not a normal barrier…it distorts time.”
“H-how can you tell?”
“Just trust me. Time is moving faster in here. Outside, it’s only been a few seconds, and I think both recovery and injury are operating on real world time. I noticed it with Niko’s blood, and everyone being unconscious. These things should take seconds to play out!”
Soji sighed, but he knew better than to argue. Whether it was her family’s hearing ability, or years of training with atma that gave her the insight, he was always impressed and comforted by the girl’s ability to explain confusing situations.
“So what’s the plan here?”
“You play close, I’ll support long range. I can’t hit him directly with my atma, but I can still let off explosions near h—”
“He’s coming,” Soji interrupted, hearing Lee’s heartbeat move closer.
“I’m here,” Lee replied, only a few paces away from the kids. The sparkle of intrigue about Soji had since left his eyes, and was replaced with a steel-cold determination to finish the job he was sent to do.
The boy entered a boxing stance once more, but Lee was too fast. He crashed his fist into Soji’s face and sent him flying out of the window. The man didn’t even give Monika a moment to gather her bearings when he brought out a playing card from his pocket and slapped it across her face.
“Since Penguin is down, this deck will be our last,” he thought sadly. The girl disappeared into the card, ready to be torn should he want to bring her out again. He hastily put her in his pocket, and began downstairs where he would be finishing the job once and for all.