"Logically, I have already found out the knights' base, so the azure tower should be less dangerous." Harid was climbing down his base with the help of a rope. He preferred to leave his teleportation move as his last resort instead of using it casually. The uses of the cryptic tattoos still brought attention to him and he needed to keep their use at the minimum.
After his negative experience at the black tower, he knew it was foolish to pin all his hopes onto a single place. One of the reasons he had chosen the black tower first was the fact that to get to its azure counterpart, he would have to traverse a large part of the city, including its center which was dotted with damaged skyscrapers.
"It might take longer, but I can start small with exploring the city center before I reach the tower." It might actually be a good idea to explore further along the subway tunnels, as he just might be lucky and stumble upon some tattoo that was actually useful. However, the subway was not the oasis of safety as it had used to be. With frequent activity of Moths, there was a high probability of him meeting soldiers, not mentioning that their activity caused the subway to be more frequented by other enemies like Lurkers that were the most dangerous. Their invisibility was close to impeccable in the darkness of the subway tunnels
Harid decided on his road shortly after his feet touched the ground next to the broken cable that still lied on the grounds where it had landed many months ago.
"There is too much movement in this part of the subway, I will rather go along the streets above. In this region, most enemies should be underground leaving the surface a little safer. I can enter the subway after I have reached the city center." Whispering under his breath, Harid had picked up a habit of talking to himself, probably because of a complete absence of anyone to talk to. He passed the subway entrance and continued to walk at the sidewalk for a while before he entered a building that looked like a regular apartment building of that part of the city.
He moved up and gradually reached the rooftop. He had learned that it was the safest option to travel using the roofs when possible. Lurkers did not frequented the roofs much because there was simply nothing there and knights were too heavy and their feet easily broke through the more worn out parts of the roofs.
When he reached the point where he had to go down, he at first waited until all the golden figures wandering the streets were far from him and only then he climbed down using the stairway of one of the buildings and crossed the street only to climb up on another rooftop again. In this way, he slowly moved towards the city center that was not that far, because he had not been at the edge of the city in the first place.
"Oh boy, this is the first." He looked up from the edge of a shopping mall's roof at a skyscraper that stood in front of him. Although many of its windows were shattered, it looked in a good shape considering that some of the other skyscrapers were even broken in half or had their top part missing entirely.
"There should be something good there, it looks preserved." He managed to jump from the roof through one of the windows, entering the monumental building. After landing inside, he waited for a long time to be sure that there was no movement around him.
Harid could only sigh when he saw all the papers covered in printed letters. There was tons of documents everywhere, but he was unable to read them due to the language of this place being entirely foreign to him.
"Damn, I might actually need to decipher the language somehow." He had been averse to the endeavor of learning the native language, because he knew that the Moths had tried and even had some results, but strangely, none of the documents they have got their hands onto contained anything useful. When they translated the easier parts of those documents, it was all just plain boring accounting and corporate correspondence. There was no clue about the apparent disaster at all. He knew, because he had tried multiple times to extort information from senior Moths and had been disappointed by their progress. It felt like most of the futuristic world around him met its end swiftly, unaware of their coming demise.
The closest the documents got was a mention of new technologies used in flying vehicles, but everything described in them was extremely vague. The most probable cause was that what had caused the unfamiliar world to end was related to a new technology or invention that had been kept secret by private interests or state. That meant that even if Harid learned the language, which would not be an easy feat, he might not be able to find anything unless he got his hands on the right documents that certainly would not be just lying around in some high rise building.
Even if this world had some kind of a global network, classified information should be accessible only through an internal network of some sort, so the problem remained as well as the question.
"Should I learn the language?" Harid asked himself, but was extremely unwilling, because it was not something easily accomplished given his situation.
"Why was I so stupid? All do-gooders are going to die as they deserve." Haird remembered again the moment before he entered the bleak word of death and darkness through the subway station. If he only had concealed his tattoos and forgotten everything, he might have been sitting at his home while reading books or playing games.
"Why I had to be stupid and came here again." He sighed, his monotonous whispers sounded like uttered by someone else and he immediately forced himself to focus only on the task in front of him. He could not afford to think too much about his situation unless he wanted to end up like Charyia.
"Yes, I probably should learn the language! I should learn it!" He gazed at some of the papers while repeating for himself. However, it was easier said than done, because the letters seemed to be totally different from anything he had ever seen and after minutes, he had not been able to even tell apart letters from words.
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"Ah, clearly words in this language are not separated by spaces." Harid nodded his head and continued staring at a paper in front of him.
"Mm, the text should be read from left to right or. . ? No, from top to bottom!" He began rotating the page he held in his hand until he turned the page around and found out that the page was actually a little transparent and he had been staring at the wrong side the whole time without even noticing.
"Fuck!" He threw away the page angrily, it was clear that learning the alien language was far beyond his capabilities.
Harid tightened his fist and extended his fingers back again, suppressing his urge to slam it against the devastated leftover furniture around him. He had no idea how he was supposed to even find anything without the ability to read. He slowed down his breathing consciously to calm himself, but the mistake had already been made and when he fully regained his composure, he saw the barrel of a gun pointing at him.
The brief moment of distraction was all it took the other party to catch him by surprise.
"Oya, are we nervous?" A man was facing him, he had to be searching the building before he had entered through the window.
"You cannot shoot, the sound is too loud." Harid tried to stall for time while pulling out his own gun.
Unfortunately, the Moth in front of him seemed to be experienced and instead of panicking or thinking, he hit him with the gun's barrel. Harid's vision turned blurry and he dropped the gun he was about to pull out. The next second, he felt pain in his gut and his bag and knife were taken away from him like he was a little kid facing an adult. When he regained his faculties, he had been held against a wall and a knife was pointing at his chest, the attacker was significantly stronger than him and the tip of the knife touched his belly when the Moth was annoyed by his prolonged resistance.
"Do not squirm rat, I do not need you alive." The man growled and Harid looked down at his naked belly.
"You . . ." His eyes widened when he realized how thorough the man was.
"Yes, any sign one of these are glowing and I gut you like a pig." The uniformed Man sneered at him, he must have recognized him and had immediately taken appropriate action.
"You are lying, I would have been dead if you had no use for me." Harid racked his brain, but all his usual tricks had been disabled and he was at the mercy of the soldier in front of him. He needed just a moment to teleport, but the knife in front of his chest was too close to give him that moment.
"I might let you go, if you tell me something interesting." The soldier said and Harid knew that it was a lie. He noticed that the uniform of the man was slightly different from ordinary Moths and wondered if he had not stumbled onto someone special.
"What do you want to know?" Harid carefully tested his opponents grip, but he was much weaker than the man who was able to hold him like a puppy. After all, he was just a teenager, but the man in front of him had to be in his thirties.
"Have you come across any functional technologies? Weapons? Machinery? Schematics? Your life depends on your sincerity. Do not even try to lie, I will know in an instant." The peculiar Moth squeezed his neck until Harid could barely breath and touched his belly with the tip of his knife.
"I. . I have." Harid coughed and his captor released the pressure a little to allow him to speak. "I have seen the greatest of weapons."
Harid knew that it did not matter if he lied or told the truth, the person in front of him would end their exchange by plunging his knife into him. He could think of only one way out.
"The only hope left is the tower, The Black Tower, it is the only place left we have not searched though. I am heading there myself. There is a . . " Suddenly Harid gripped the knife's blade by his hand and twisted it by ninety degrees. At the same time his body lowered and pressed hard against the knife while one of his tattoos started to glow.
"No you don't!" The soldier wanted to execute his promise, but found out that the tip of his knife was stuck in a bone. One of Haird's ribs had been intentionally pierced and the weapon refused to go any further into his body. The soldier quickly tore his knife out of his victim's bone, but when he plunged it in again, the knife stabbed the wall in front of him. His hostage had already left, leaving the Moth only with empty hands and swear words on his lips.
* * * *
"Curses!" Harid fell on the familiar floor of his base and instinctively grabbed his chest that kept oozing blood. Due to the nature of his injury, there was not much blood, but the pain was tremendous. He tried to lessen his discomfort by pausing his breath, but it provided him only a short respite before he was forced to breathe again with increased intensity, only worsening the pain he had tried to prevent.
"Brainless soldiers should burn in hell." He whispered while he found the most comfortable position on the cold floor. He had no idea if he would manage to pull through with his wound without any medical assistance, he had no choice but to try. The only positive was that the knife was sharp and clean, well maintained.
"An advantage of being stabbed by a professional." He started to laugh, but the pain forced him to stop midway,
His journey had been reset to its starting point and along with the pain, a clear though arrived to his brain. The city above the subway was too infested with Moths, the soldiers' activity had increased too much in that area to just waltz through the whole region without any incident. He might as well rather choose a danger that he was more familiar with. In the end, humans were too unpredictable.
"Why have I returned to this place again? I was damn stupid!" He felt like banging his head against the closest steel support when he remembered his younger self that had jumped back to the hellish place, just because some insecurities and confusion. However, he could not undo his commitment to his quest of searching for answers anymore.
"Yeah, there are no refunds for stupidity I guess." He still whispered due to the pain in his chest, the heavy silence around him was being interrupted by only his shallow breaths, creaking of corroded steel and something else.
Harid abruptly paused his breath to listen to the irregular noise and recognized distant voices, too far away to discern the meaning in the words torn by howling wind that was a permanent resident of the high tower. Alarmed, he dragged his body to the edge of the platform, hoping that he would be able to understand what was going on down below. After a brief painful struggle, he could finally understand parts of a conversation.
"Use more, it will be perfect if the whole thing goes down." A raspy voice urged someone.
"This is a bad idea, we should have gone for something more civilized."
"Civilized? If you wanted to sit in an office with your ass wet from farting into a cushion, you should have crawled under you mommy's skirt and stayed there, not coming to this bloody place. Now hurry up, they are about to pass by any minute!"
Harid's eyes widened while he listened to more words that had been made unintelligible by the strong wind, the next sound he could hear clearly was a loud explosion coming from the direction directly below him. When his ears regained their ability to hear, he could already sense the whole tower beginning to shift to the side, its slight tilt gradually transforming into a free fall.
In the back of his mind, he understood that someone was probably using the same tactic he had used on their enemy and he was going to become a collateral. He could almost hear the dead Moths he had robbed of their lives in a similar way laughing at him from their graves.