\\ The Underground.//

As Aleph crashes from the skyscraper, the plan to scout the tower goes off without a hitch but as Saiyah and the others strike the tower, he strikes the earth, immobile, sunken through a sewer grate his several-ton body collapses through the hardened surface, one-hundred stories.

In a dark place he lies, and as his mind is sunken, as his body wilters and withers, he is immobilized, yet subconicously something wills…him to fight.

‘Where is Aleph?’ a sign shorts on amongst the Shocktroopers pointing.

‘What do we do?’ An army marches, yet the bits of the city turn against that army, for two months something strange happens, his mind buried into the depths is closer to something, the heart of the city.

And as it seeks out, it takes hold of it, weaponizes it, and guards all 144,000 still trapped within.

In death Aleph has sacrificed himself, using the last of his subconscious mind to protect, to defend….

Asaph later took control, after the two months the mechra seized control of the cities depleted defenses…and Asaph he lead them to great resolve, in a harrowing defense to the last-stand.

Aleph will soon know the fate or whether they lived or died…because may God is willing he should not YET perish here.

[\\ALEPH//]

I awoke first, VLIR peaked on, but I couldn’t move….I was immobilized, my eyes came to me first my vision swam with fading stars before I could see, I’m deep within a strange sanctum, the heat of a fire and its warmth at my right…

Blood, I want to claw at the earth and air, and I’m like a zombie, my mouth opens, widened then shuts aimlessly gnawing for something…

“I-It’s awake?” I can hear a woman’s voice first.

“Yes he is awake,” There is a voice that answers her in cold maturity yet lacking full authority, I question if it is her sibling.

My vision no longer swims and I see ebony skin in my wake, a human…. I’d hate to see one of these now but this is different.

She wears rags, humbled, no robes, no white, and her hair is wrapped tight in a bonnet…. Where the hell am I?

I’m laid back in this bed, struggling to even…. think, the agony of my starvation settled in, my interior feels hollow and the lack of blood bites at flesh, I feel like a ravenous insect the late-stage of any grasshopper, I’ve become a locust desperate to feed...

Even now my vision swims, what I could initially figure was the figure of two women, in a decrepit subterranean medieval interior now fades. I see blood bags of it…

I can’t let this control me…but I must feed…but I can’t move…I see an object of renewl ahead of me…but even if I had the strength, I wouldn’t do it….am I just that weak…maybe…back then…

‘When Arianne asked me to run away…maybe I should have.. had Asaph been leader….wait–I was out…how long has it been! The others…

I see the two girls stare at my widened eyes….I’m in nothing but a thin blanket over my barren form, a formfitting suit covers my body, it terrifies me to imagine anyone would know how to remove my armor.

It was cast from crucible onto my body live and hasn’t been removed since then… Who are they?

Why do I feel safe? But exposed?

There's a third voice, the two girls retract from me, it has cold chastisement that becomes words, he speaks what I don’t know... a language oft and forgotten, so I can only presume he scolded them, by how they retreat from my vulnerable form.

He drags within an unnaturally large wheelchair, restraints cast onto it…and several other men enter where the two women had left, the first man must’ve been father. They shared eyes.

He is authority as my form is grasped, the men have frowns as they pick me up, fearful faces and glances as I’m lifted…placed into this wheelchair, my head slumps down.

I’m paralyzed…but my eyes can still move, I’m vulnerable..they could kill me now…if they had something sharp enough.

I’m confident I can resist a blade for a short time but not forever.

I want to make contact to speak but my vocal cords retract, I’m paralyzed my heart no longer beating, I sense no electricity within save for in distant corridors, it’s wet, damp…the wheels of the chair grind as a flurry of men push me out with struggle.

I’m well aware I’m 400LB out of this suit…seven-foot-seven…but these men seem accustomed to lifting heavy things in tandem with each other. They murmur and groan amongst each other but he silences them, barking orders, his mouth opens, I see missing teeth.

they wrench me out. The interior of what looks like a spare bedroom that had crates.

I’m carted through a living space, pictures? No..papers with odd scriptures written in, but there is one photo…. it’s the priest…this pastor standing next to, a vampire.

Scars litter their wrists, bruises, wounds, the man leading them all…he’s like a priest, pastor maybe?

He wears a robe, holds a bible at waist…I recognize it, it’s like the one my father owned, matte-black, worn brown pages… a stone sticks out his skull oddly, it has stains of blood, and

Nothing but silence my way.

So when I’m taken out, I see a wide subterranean layer, it’s a two-story interior city, a long windy canal slickened with boss is below, strange circular spheres stick out from a ceiling casting light bright.

There are what looks like flowers in dumped soil sprouted tall, there is warmth, it’s damp and this moss lingers stretches to the surrounding walls, ventilation and fans line the walls…but I’m outside.

Crowds of people meander around the pathways of the canals like roads, the split of it is in down the center of this underground, and there are bridges to cross.

Black, brown, grease, mold, masks and suffering... smells of water, like the result of an after of heavy rain What are they doing living down here?

The other men from nearby leave me, yet all I get is sideway glances not even fear, so I leave my head slouches with no other option.. but that priest!

I jolt, as the bumpy uneven broken floor of a worn out bridge is walked with me ahead…

I hear laughter, crying, and shuffling and sweeping it’s ambient here…,

and I’m walked a long-long time, until it feels like less of a city, I enter an archway and feel as if I enter a sewer now as a smell gets putrid…..

We are waltzing far away and I feel a darkness clinging to us now, the dim-sun lamps distant an orange reflection on the mossy brick and stained metal walls that build up this underground.

The priest that ferries me doesn’t speak and I’m left silent.

I encounter many people, he drags me along here, and I see many people…today they re all gathering, and here I am ferried along like a corpse, unmoving…my skin thankfully isn’t dried or desiccated, but the moments blend by quickly.

“Let us enjoy our sabbath.” The people draw nigh, breaking bread, it’s as if rationed….they read, they smile.. and they enjoy each other’s presence…these humans are happy, in the filth. In the darkest pits below.

In agony I’m left in a corner of what appears to be a church, I’m left to watch…so I watch, and I listen and I turn and time winds through...

These people are innocent, by what measure? Are they good people? Who calls one good?

I’m struggling to consider my place, strange is this what death is like? No…it’s a point where it all becomes black. I heard them say on this day

‘The Dead know nothing.’ But in the all the scriptures repeated, some I’ve heard. Some new a chord hits my heard.

‘For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion.’ I’m still here and I can’t recall how long it has been.

I let the lesson end for them…

Let with what power? I’m immobilized. Destroyed…everyone else they’re dead…gone…it’s been too long, isolated, they wouldn’t of lasted without me…..now they probably escaped without me they’re gone…

[…]

I let the lesson end, and they leave me there….I was regarded at first, fearful stares but I’m just left there, in empty and darkness. Like a lamp-stool….why did they grab me? What is this? Is this a test? Is their God testing me?

God…I beg you be merciful.

I’m suffering…they’re dead, that sensation of my ability is gone…I know it is, like you move an arm without thought I could use that ability, and it’s gone..I don’t sense the surface, it’s just empty…are they the humans we encountered above…did the surface get nuked!?...Is everyone…

I after sit there for an hour–no it’s a week…I’m here for a week, and when they finally cart me out at the end of their second sabbath the priest doesn’t speak to me, he carts me to the water…I’m tormented by it again, I’m there for two days now…

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Nipping at my covered body-glove foot, I feel something hairy, with lengthy tail..

Rats.

[…]

It’s agony.

I can’t imagine what it’s like to just be unable to move, knowing someone needs help and being unable to help them until now, something yearns for me to reach up…

Saiyah, Asaph, Anna..I’d even suffer for Juno right now..someone..anyone…

[…]

Some girls came by, decorated me with flowers and prayed….that was nice…but then the preacher came finally.. shooing them away

“Don’t mind them please, they’re..innocent..removed from what’s occurred surface….these years.”

I don’t have ability to tell him I hadn’t minded, that I invited such care…I can smell the scent of what was placed on me, they were nice..

My head still remains lulled yet fighting against the hunger, as I near death my fingers twitch.

He jolts as if noticing…”I wouldn’t of wanted to initiate any further contact with you until the grace period had ended…”

I know what he meant, the torment of these days subsiding in a moment, I was so easy to understand that, having forgotten I was not human..they were and why they would fear what I could do, if just so happened I had enough ability to reach the nearest person to me.

It was obvious I was starved after-all.

“I by grace of God thank the Lord above that I was able to find you…may you thank him that I was able to find you as well..you’re alive….I did what I could, to preserve you.” He speaks mournfully over my state.

I’m worse than a vegetable, I was never alive to begin with..I’m something awful…..

I’m wretched.

But oh do go on! I blink, in Morse code.

I can see by lack of response he only takes that as affirmation I’m listening indicating he doesn’t understand

He speaks to me “This place we’re in, it’s a very isolated habitation from those above, the Mechra and the deceived…” He gives a slow affirmation of what must’ve occurred.

“Don’t think I brought you here to be revived to kill those above.” He quickly argues, he respected my intelligent and I appreciate that greatly, though I can’t show it.

He immediately deduced I understood the situation.

The wounds, the bruises, the children who hadn’t seen the surface, hadn’t even seen a vampire.

It’s clear to me the explanation of what happens to humans who don’t accept the mechra, not what the mechra does to them.

But possibly what the other humans had done to them..it stickens me to think about…

“When you came here, you were able to somehow bring power back…..the connection they refused, reopened….many doors of this underground become open to us as well.” He spoke and my eyes followed him as he walked around.

“Could you help us?”

I blinked twice.

[…]

They don’t speak much to me, they just communicate, the preacher had let me know he’d needed help, we had said so few words to eachother and just easily he was accepting me as a tool, it was apparent I was needed here...

This place was deep under, and it appears it was ‘old unity’ the great capital city of what this world had once been called, I can see the remnants of our technology strewn within and about, faded insignia.

There are doors here, the mechra has access to the sub-level systems of this city they’ve sunken into he dirt and from loose description and my vague observations, its systems were still allowed to run.

But someone shut it off, The Mechra don’t work that way from what I saw in the hivemind, it had to be obvious it was other humans, only they could be so uniquely cruel to one-another.

All they had to do was ride me around, that inability to feel the surface paled in comparison, with my body gone my body ran free, initially I was required to reach out and snatch script, snatch the latent signal, the pulse of any device nearby to alter it.

Now I could just waltz around, my eyes look over and it shoots on, I was bringing back access...

Water, filtration, when they were too tired to wheel me around their home, they brought me back to the habitable sector and I saw it cleaner, some bits of marble on the floor white..I was cleaning the place up.

The chittering of rats keeps me awake..

But I am worried now..How long have I been here.

[…]

I’m left in side of the church as they hold another sabbath, as the preacher speaks scripture I’m left to watch, it’s routine now…..I want to head to the surface but I have no mouth to speak, to beg for blood….

In a moment I see a woman with child–. No it’s many children.

After a moment of drawn out speech I notice her again through murmuring, through a child restlessly irritating his mother, she chastises him once, then twice.—

“Honor thy father and mother.” A strong voice lulls from beside me….. The child going silent

The preacher stops, he’s at the pulpit... I consider where I’ve heard this…voice?...as I’m looked upon..

It’s me I spoke!

[…]

Yet Still and after that I’m ferried around,

It’s with great distaste do I realize the intricacies due to me simply being left around occasionally to observe my surroundings like a coat on a hangar and wheeled around like fine tools,

I fully understand this is not just an underground sewer habitat made into a home…

‘UNITY REPAIR CENTER’ is strewn across doorways at top and center, this used to be a city and with the familiarity I know…this was their home…before the Mechra had arrived.. before what I assume created the divide.

Etched onto the walls are the occasional scripture, it was a small city less grandiose than above, but it was homely dead and desiccated potted plants.

The structure of it is as if an entire plat was dropped onto this old city, onto ‘UNITY’ and new Fracturia crushed it….a fitting namesake…I anger to imagine it is like this across the rest of the world..

That humans took those who had resisted the evil vain idolatry and belief of these machines and crushed them, building over their graves…

[…]

I couldn’t communicate further, I just continued to take orders opening these electronic doors.

I can investigate with what little I see, they speed me past but I can see the scratchmarks on what looks like slots for keycards, even after they’d been pushed down here whoever facilitated this further, ensured this city that was once theirs would reject them.

Unity…was sacked, and whatever systems held in place turned against them…I can see faded scratched posters ‘Don’t Resist, my gods’ written plain in torn worn posters on the wall, likely the Mechra did this to force those who initially resisted above-ground…..

One of the men, an engineer who’s had to fix this chair I cart around on quite a few times takes screwdriver, and unscrews a panel….It has a screen and access point meant for keycard, I can just sense it’s difficult.

Reading out on a long rectangular strip is a faded cracked screen, it’s in Persian. And I read it carefully, translating in a moment. ‘VALID-ACCESS-DISC-REQUIRED.’ Then as the text is about to scroll and I see the beginning of more letters.

My view is obstructed I can’t see much more because the engineer gets in the way, yet I can still make out the internals of it, as it has a latent signature as If it’s still on.

Disturbing me as I recognize the framework of it from a glance, in what could be measured in nanoseconds I decipher.

…it’s one of ours confirming something…We were here before. The war, the fighting…it’s one of ‘those worlds…’ that is what this place was before, it explains why the mechra may be here rather than anywhere else we have human colonies... this place used to be a-. The Vampiric technology in this sunken city, the hyper controlled and tech-integrated nature this city would’ve been in make sense.

Then after realizing this, I give no time to gruel over it, but it explains why they are hesitant to feed me, I’m still an enemy…

I can hear the engineer man grunt, as his fingers grapple with it, he has scars and bandages along the digits that fumble trying his best himself to get through, he has some sort of device, a cryptographic sequencer.

It seems to spark, as he nears it toward the access point you’d have placed the disc.. ”I-I..don’t know if you can even hear us as well as you hear, Brother Daniel.” He grimly speaks, his eyes flitter between me and the panel.

, it’s what would be implanted into the wall of a Vampiric facility meant to medicate unruly humans or tend to their wounds and their elderly…...What is like script appears in front of my mind.

And with the bicep of my brain, I crush the access restriction, these sorts of access points weren’t entirely binary the Mechra kept us from conventional applications of our technology, but it still required the programmed signal from whatever access card should be slotted in.

It was clockwork faking it, the signature and electronic signal was easy to fake, transmitting it took a bit of effort, my ability allowing me to entangle to it, simply arced it, and in a sense the machine presumed simply

I accessing it with legal non fabricated digital signal but that I had a grade of access much higher,

To me it seemed like I was presenting basic maintenance and debug code to a security computer to access intricate parts of its system and repair

‘I’d seen it done to the computers back at the facility in New Persia this felt like a supernatural equivalent to that maintenance,’

it defaulted to maintenance mode and in turn opened itself.

Switches, lights and levers flipped open from what was initially a plain black portion under the screen.

After the Engineer gasped “Thank you! I can’t imagine how you do it…it’s just with your mind?” He started into fearful laughter which caused me to blink once and he nodded to me when he saw my eyes blink.

He tilts his head up, his lip quivers slightly “Oh Lord, I thought these machines could sense the twins of Dracula and that’s how we’ve been doing it…” He kids at me, than goes grim…yet stoic..

“Thank–.you….”

I could still hear hesitation in his voice to thank me, but he wasn’t at all ungrateful, he even joked a bit

No..no it’s just with my mind, heh..heh..

He clicked and flipped the switches and we were heading back.

That gave them some rerouted power, there was a section in here that was like hydroponics, where they even farmed their bread, half of it accessible the other half locked away by a powerful glass barrier,

I saw where the pulses went as they went about thirty meters in seconds, pulsing twice before a constant signal was given as my efforts fully gave them full furthered access…

I didn’t realize it in that moment but I felt pride, happy that even now I could help someone…. I just wish I could help everyone…my unit…those under my command…I’m stuck here…

[…]

The more I help the less I get mistreated, I help with more things, the lights go out and I get them back on…albeit I’m thinking that wasn’t the place being faulty, it’s as if it was remotely shut off, because I had to do it twice, carted around thirty meters outside the main habitation area,

the paths of the canals used to be marble streets…this place wasn’t car-centric…how annoying.

Yet I’m understanding more in these observations, I get my own room now…it’s a weapon storage…better than being left next to the canal and sounds of rushing water, the lack of silence drives me crazy, the darkness of the locker, the isolation calms me…because I can just simply endure the pain of starvation let that sink in with my sensory deprivation or else I’ll be thinking of the others…

They are likely fighting the enemy, maybe many humans or just Polaries…This places these people, this planet has a history of fighting.

I can see the signs here in Unity underground clearly…this planet was an ‘Ang-Hander’ class world

a where rebellions or resistance was purposefully cultivated and most notably Vis-Stasi caste infantry would regularly use these worlds as a relentless death training game to hone military strategy, adjusting doctrine, figuring what worked…. It made me sick…thinking…I could ignore learning of places like that…as a child…

but here I see it clearly…. Even we are partly responsible for what’s happened to these people, and it hurts…I really am not human, if I hadn’t been immobilized and encountered them with strength and hunger…I may have–..I don’t want to think…

[…]

It was a few days after they drug me out, had me help get more things running, air scrubbers and get access to an electronically locked building within their habitation area that had tools to clean mold,

When we came back from working, they were feasting, much more food than I’d seen before, more than just the bread…. I hadn’t any idea where they suddenly got all this food but then–

A girl came to me, they must’ve told her to do it because she was terrified, but she hadn’t come alone…lest I tried to find the strength to scold, I know how terrified Arianne was of me when we first met, and that’s something

I can see in the mothers’ eyes as she keeps her arm on her daughter's shoulder like a tight leash, her pupils, she shakes and.–. “Say thank you, he got the vault open.” She betrayed that lingering fear on her expression of me- it was just reasonable caution…. At least I know they weren’t just having me open useless things…..

But nonetheless carefully the mother leans herself child over in thanks

“Thank you, Sir.” The child remarks to me…and it has me wanting to flinch but reminded I can’t move…. I’m being referred to as if I’m a person, as if I’m one of them…as if I’m human...

I’m in pain right now, the starvation gets to me and the reality is, I almost consider biting into their flesh right now…it sickens me to think they’d thank a creature like me….so weak I can’t feed on them or help those above…Saiyah…Asaph…Anna…all likely–.

Yet still here I am hearing them…. they thank me together again.…they must’ve been starving she and the daughter are skinny…. I’ve often only known healthy and well fed humans…

I can’t say “your welcome” right now, even if I could speak, I’d be too pained and hungry….

My subconscious seems to disagree and after they thank me twice as if they know me so well, they could tell I was in deep through, my pinky twitches and the mothers brow raises…she noticed…and-

She smiles