92. Scarlet Stains

Urban legends were common in Chrowall City. Rumors would pass through street corners and dull hallways, and Isaac could remember the hushed, secretive whispers of classmates sharing their latest morbid fascination. When he was in elementary school, it was ghosts and phantoms. Once he hit high school, the talks shifted to murders and serial killers.

Isaac didn’t doubt that at least half of those rumors probably had some truth to them. The later he stayed out, wandering cracked streets and narrow alleys, the more certain he was. Sometimes, a case would even reach the news, which almost always sparked another argument between him and Lloyd.

Still, despite Lloyd’s concerns, Isaac never did run into one of those bloody scenes they liked to paste all over the media. They remained just distant enough to steadily pass into unreality, a truth that lay just outside his grasp.

—

The first thing he felt after the initial freezing, the utter blankness, was relief that it wasn’t someone he knew. His eyes had passed over torn and mangled details that didn’t seem to fit together into a body, only registering whether or not the few visible features were familiar.

After that came the immediate guilt, then a hollow sort of distance that felt half like floating and half like being underwater.

There was so much red, he thought. Far more than when Lloyd had died. That had pooled, had gleamed under the harsh light of the street lamp, but remained in one central, collective shape. This one sprayed, individual lines crawling out like branches and webs, lining the cracks in the street. Against the grey and black buildings and asphalt, the color looked impossibly bright, even brighter than the sky above them.

A vague part of him recognized that he was focusing on the red to avoid looking at everything else. His eyes skimmed over squishy, pale pieces scattered in sponge-like lumps. He barely noticed that his shoes were becoming soggy and stained. In the strange stillness of that scene, only the red, spreading slowly, thick and viscous, gave any indication that time was still passing.

“Isaac?”

The voice—hazy, distorted—was what finally snapped him back into reality.

Isaac slapped a hand over his mouth as the sting of bile rose in the back of his throat. It did nothing to hinder the smell, many times worse than the healing area had been. There was that metallic scent, but also a sickeningly sweet undercurrent, like thick syrup, that made his head reel.

He squeezed his eyes shut, taking a moment to calm his quickening breath. When he opened them again, it took several seconds to refocus.

On the street proper, standing just outside the alleyway and peering inside, was Rosalinde. She was just close enough for Isaac to make out that her eyebrows were creased with concern.

“Are you alright?” Rosalinde took a step closer, hair swaying behind her, and before Isaac had the chance to warn her, she stepped straight into a pool of red. The woman stared down at the puddle, frowning, before her eyes shifted and landed on the mangled corpse hidden half obscured by the shadows of the alley.

Something flickered briefly in her eyes before they hardened. She took another stride forward, then another, until she was only a few feet away. Red droplets splashed over her shoes, a few specks staining the hem of her dress.

When she finally stopped walking, she was silent for a moment, simply taking in the scene with an almost uncanny stillness. Then, in one sharp motion, she turned around to face Isaac.

“Have you informed Lilith yet?” she inquired.

Isaac slowly lowered his hand. He had to take a moment to remind himself that he was in Solonell City, not Chrowall, not the tournament arena. “No, I—“ he paused to take a breath, steadying his voice, and clenched his fingers into a fist. “No, I just got here.” The stinging at the back of his throat wouldn’t go down. He kept his eyes trained on Rosalinde, whose own gaze moved swiftly between him and the barely recognizable remains with no hesitation. Was that reaction normal, he wondered. Was he simply weak?

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Isaac swallowed. “How…how did this happen? I thought the System—“ His voice cut off as another thought occurred to him. The red sky was the tint of the barrier, the clear windows a wall of ice wrapped around a hunched figure.

Rosalinde quickly sensed what he was thinking and shook her head. “The System never creates wounds like this. Someone else must have done it.”

The wave of relief following those words was nearly tangible, though it didn’t last long. Isaac tensed, eyes roaming around the dark alleyway, and didn’t think about the squelching sound his shoes made as he moved.

“Are they still here?”

Rosalinde frowned. She peeled off the stark white glove on her left hand, revealing a familiar dark, inky tattoo. A slight silver glow surrounded her, only to fade a few seconds later.

[SKILL REPEL LVL 16]

“The System seems to be in place, from what I can tell,” she confirmed. She tugged the glove back on. “If the perpetrator is still here, they should not be able to attack.” Her eyes drifted over to the body again. Carefully brushing her hair behind her ear, she knelt down, uncaring of the red quickly seeping up the fabric of her dress. She placed a hand on one of the chunks and stayed like that for a few moments before finally standing again.

“They haven’t been dead for long,” she said simply. Isaac distantly wondered how she’d been able to discern where to check when the body lay in such scattered pieces.

Eyes widening, Isaac pulled out his tablet from his jacket pocket. When he opened it, the screen glowed as usual. His mind whirred, and words poured from his mouth in a rush. “Earlier, the screen wasn’t working,” he rambled. “I think—I think something must’ve happened. There was an error or something, and so the System was down.”

“…and someone noticed and took the opportunity to do this.” Rosalinde closed her eyes, exhaling, before opening them again. She raised a hand, and a familiar silver circle formed in the center of her palm. Slowly moving her hand across her clothes, the thick red liquid was gently repelled away, leaving the cloth clean again, as though it had never been stained to begin with.

With a flick of her wrist, the circle slowly drifted over to Isaac, where the same process occurred. Isaac shuddered when he finally noticed how moist his shoes had gotten. The silver light faded once all the blood was gone, but she didn’t touch any of the liquid still pooling around on the ground.

“I need to tell Lilith,” Isaac muttered. What the hell was going on? Did she already know? He could barely think straight, not when the stench still hung so heavy in the air and sirens rang in his ears.

Rosalinde nodded. “Yes, she should be informed.” Her eyes drifted over to the corpse. Who had this person been, Isaac wondered. The tablet screen remained blank when he pointed it at them. Did the System no longer keep records of someone once they were dead?

His grip on the device tightened. This person had likely been walking around as usual, going about their daily life, only for something like this to happen. They probably hadn’t even had their guard up; there was no need to, not when the System had been in place for so long. Why should they?

And the attacker, no, the murderer—they’d realized the System was down and done this. In such a brief period of time, less than half an hour, they’d made the choice to slaughter someone. There couldn’t have been any hesitation, given the brutality of the scene, the speed of it. Isaac shuddered at the thought, that someone had been living normally among the Underside residents, but had probably been thinking about this, about what would happen if they had the chance, the whole time. Was it someone he’d seen before? Spoken to? How had no one noticed?

“Isaac?”

Rosalinde’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts. She was giving him a curious look, but didn’t press. She took a step forward, this time carefully avoiding the blood. “I will stay here and collect evidence. More people will likely come by soon and see,” she said. “You need to travel to the Golden Lands and inform Lilith what has happened. The sooner the better.”

Isaac frowned. He didn’t disagree, but… “Are you sure? I could—“ he paused to swallow, “I could help…collect evidence.”

Rosalinde didn’t respond, simply stared at him with unblinking eyes. Isaac looked away. She had said everything she needed to in that gaze. Both of them knew he wouldn’t be able to stomach it.

“I’ll go,” he muttered.

“Be careful,” Rosalinde said, voice soft. The look in her eyes wasn’t quite pity, but it was close enough to make the sprouts of guilt grow even heavier. He resolved to hurry to the Golden Lands as fast as possible and return. It was important to tell Lilith, he tried to remind himself, and it was a necessary job. The thought did little to ease his mind.

Isaac tore his eyes away, only for them to immediately land on the scarlet sky. He’d never hated Solonell City’s appearance more than in that moment.

“You too,” he said. He turned around, cast one final glance at the alleyway, and bolted for the train station. His feet beat against the asphalt, nearly echoing his rapid heart rate.

Isaac ran down the dark streets, past crooked roads and lopsided buildings, the red of his memory and the red of the sky pooling together into one burning, pulsing image. And through it all, the sound of sirens kept ringing in the corners of his mind.