Ren
Following the success of the Green Invasion, slavery became the norm in Isla Kengen. Children were torn from their mothers and sold like livestock. The Reds were conscripted into forced labor camps where they received brutal whippings for the slightest disobedience. Once the High Council came into being, slavery was rendered illegal, leading to a bloody conflict that lasted several years and claimed countless lives. Even now, its effects can be felt among the populace as red-haired people are treated like second-class citizens.
-Excerpt from ‘Life in Kengen’ by Chihiro Mukabe
∆∆∆
When in doubt, stay quiet. Nothing will get you in more trouble than opening your mouth at the wrong time. That was the first lesson Trent had ever told him. Ren groaned in pain when the security guard struck him with the butt of his gun but he did not say a word. Even when the big man, pulled his hair and knocked him to the floor with a gut punch, he remained silent as a grave.
“Long way from home, aren’t you, kid?” the man spat on the shining white marble floor. He kicked Ren in the stomach while his men belted with laughter. “Now, how come a little pissant like you came to work with a fucking terrorist?”
The big man shifted his gaze to Hope and gave his mustache a sly twirl. They’d tried to remove her mask more than once but the slightest touch on her visor would trigger an electrical shock. Ultimately, they restrained her with a length of rope and continued their torture with Ren.
“Would ya look at that? A terrorist and an illegal alien. What a wonderful couple! You guys will make a great gift for Mr. Roland.” He grinned at them.
Ren tried to avert his gaze but the big man squeezed his face between his palms and stared into his eyes. “Let’s take a better look at you. Oh, now, what are those?”
He ran a coarse hand through Ren’s shoulder-length hair and raised it with one finger to reveal signs of scarring on his neck. Ren shut his eyes and prayed for Trent to come and save him.
No answer.
“Fascinating,” said the big man as he inspected his scars in greater detail. They looked like chains used for capturing wild animals. Even compared to those, they were deep, much deeper than any restraint, seared onto his flesh from several years of bondage. Ren was nearly in tears. He wanted to run but the guns had pinned him in his place.
Fortunately, he was not alone. It was better than the alternative, yes, but not by much.
“Oh, no!” Hope cried sarcastically. “Whatever shall we do against these awful people? We are truly doomed! Doomed, I say!”
The guard watching over her responded by smacking her visor with his gun. “Quiet down, bitch!”
“Ow! Sire, you seem to be of noble heart. Won’t you have mercy on a poor maiden such as myself?”
All five of the men laughed in unison. “Did you hear that, Sarge?” one of them chuckled. “Vega’s gone all fancy-like on us.”
Their leader, intrigued by her outburst, crouched down to face her. He looked upon her face with curious eyes and observed his reflection in the visor. “I wonder what you look like beneath that mask. Some rich cunt in a suit? A street rat who came into money? Lowly scum that got bit by some radioactive animal? Or maybe, you’re not a woman at all! What do you think, lads?”
“That would explain a few things. Now, wouldn’t it, Sarge?” one of them responded.
“I guess it would.” He smiled, as he put his face next to her mask. “No woman would be stupid enough to do something like this. Or brave enough, for that matter.”
Hope reared her head and struck the big man’s forehead with such force that he fell to the ground, bleeding where she’d hit him. Before his unit could respond, she broke free with her pocket knife and tossed a smoke grenade to the ground, blinding them with a cloud of black soot.
Seeing his chance, Ren began to crawl away from the cloud of smoke that seemed to engulf the entire underground corridor. He heard the pained grunts of his ambushers as they struggled to put up a fight against the Ghost of Haven City. Bullets flew in all directions but even with five against one, the best they could do was ruin the beautiful patterns on the underground walls.
Ren winced at the damage and felt sorry for the artists that must have toiled away for months to create those delicate designs. Soon, the gunfire fell silent and as the smoke cleared, Vega emerged victorious atop the unconscious soldiers with barely a scratch.
She appeared to be doing some sort of victory pose that confused Ren more than anything. He approached her with caution and looked around to assess the damage that had been done. He saw one of the soldiers holding a rifle in his hands even as he lay passed out on the floor. Ren kicked it away in disgust.
“You okay?” Hope asked him.
“I am fine,” he sighed. “These things,” he spoke with a cold stare. “These weapons were used to massacre my people. I thought them rare but… it seems they are all too common in this country.”
Hope extended an arm to comfort him but upon seeing his anguished face, changed her mind and fell back. She did not say a word.
Ren took a deep breath and smiled at her. “I suppose I owe you my thanks. For the second time today, you have saved my life. I shall forever be in your debt.”
Hope, though bouncing on the inside, answered him with a wistful shrug, “Eh, it’s what I do. But damn, this place is huge.”
The two looked around to observe the underground corridor that seemed to extend for miles in either direction. Ren felt suffocated by the imposing structure. “We should hurry before more of them come. Follow me.”
“I wonder how things went for Sir Trent,” Ren pondered aloud as he led Hope through the winding corridors. For anyone else, the labyrinth of paths would have been impossible to navigate, but Ren had trained for months for this very day.
“You call him Sir. Why’s that?” Hope asked.
“You do not know? He is a knight, anointed by the King of Regalia himself,” he declared proudly. “And well-deserving too. Did you know he once saved the King from assassination?”
“Did he now?”
Ren nodded. “He is a great man. I do not know where I would be without him.”
“You know, you never told me how you met him.”
“A long time ago, he rescued me from a terrible fate and never asked for anything in return. I do what I do because I love him. That is all you need to know,” he answered. A sudden gust of wind came in from behind and Ren felt a tingling pain at the nape of his neck. He realized that his scars were exposed and hurriedly used his long hair to cover them. “You should have told me you could see them.”
“Why do you hide them? They’re still a part of you.”
Ren laughed at her suggestion. “Says the person hiding behind a mask.”
“That’s different,” she answered.
“Different how?”
“I don’t want people finding out-”
“Who I really am.” Ren finished for her. He chuckled, “You are not as special as you think.”
Ren turned left at the next partition and discovered, to his immense satisfaction, the vault door guarding the server room. He smiled as he stepped forward and crouched down to feel the iron handle in his palms. He ran a finger along its large frame and took in the smell of fresh paint with a deep breath. “It’s even more beautiful in person,” he muttered as he hugged the vault door with his entire body. It stood a whole three meters taller than him.
Hope shook her head and sighed, “You’re a weird one, you know that? Think you can get it open?”
Ren placed an ear against the vault door and rotated the five-dial lock with surgical precision. For a moment, he stopped to check his phone and chuckled, “There it is! Sir Trent was successful. Thank goodness- I mean, as expected, of course. He has sent me the password. The door will be open in no time.”
A mechanical voice boomed from the other end of the corridor that sent a chill up his spine. “And what, pray tell, would you accomplish by opening that door, eh?”
The duo turned around to face the approaching person. Hope reached for her Whiplashes as the figure drew closer. It appeared to be a man wearing a waiter’s uniform just like Ren. However, that was where the resemblance ended. He was tall, muscular, wore white gloves, and a large black top-hat. His most striking feature was a festive mask in the shape of a fox, which covered his face such that not an inch of skin was visible to them.
He began walking toward them in slow mechanical steps and surveyed Ren from head to toe. Then, he readjusted his top-hat and cackled with laughter. “Well, well, it seems that we had an impostor among us. And what else do we have here? The great Vega? I’m honored.”
That voice, it feels familiar.
Hope held two fingers over the gun in her sheath, though she didn’t dare to pull it out until his intentions were clear. “Who are you?” she demanded. “And how did you find us?”
The masked man clapped his hands and spoke in a joyous voice. “Right to the point, then. I’m Justin Roland. A pleasure to meet ya. Now, would you asshats kindly get the fuck off my property?”
Ren and Hope stared at him in silence, then looked at each other’s faces in horror. Justin Roland. THE Justin Roland. The richest man on the planet. The person they’d been plotting against this entire time was right in front of them.
“No,” Hope cried. “It can’t be! How did- just how?”
Ren gulped and took a step back. “I thought I’d heard your voice before. So, it really is you, Mr. Roland.”
“B-but how did you know?”
The man claiming to be Justin Roland shook his head. “You’re not exactly subtle with your craft, love. I could hear your mess from half a mile away. And besides, people don’t come here for the tourist attractions.”
Hope looked back at Ren who gave her an oblivious shrug. She thought for a second, then giggled, and began walking past Roland like she didn’t have a care in the world. “Well, in that case, we’re terribly sorry for the mess. We’ll just get out of your way, if it’s all the same to you. Okay? Okay. Take care. Oh, and, by the way, love what you’ve done with the place.”
“Not so fast.” He stopped her with an arm over her shoulder. “Obviously, you’re not leaving here alive.”
“Gah!” She yelled and used her Whiplash pistol on his face mask and delivered fifty thousand volts of electricity straight into his body. Roland shook violently, staggered for a moment, then finally collapsed onto the floor.
“Did you just?” Ren tried to ask but failed to put it into words properly.
“Holy shit!” Hope exclaimed. “I just tazed Justin Roland. Oh God, what have I done? Oh man, oh jeez, oh crap.”
“Why the hell did you do that?” Ren cried.
“I don’t know! I panicked!”
“Is he… is he alive?”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Yes!” Hope answered with confidence. “I think,” she followed with lesser certainty. “We need to get the hell outta here.”
Ren took a deep breath and looked at the unconscious man on the floor. He does not look like he will be moving any time soon. “Give me a few minutes. I will open the safe. Then, we can complete our task and leave.”
“Are you crazy? Roland will have our heads!”
“It does not matter. We have a mission to complete. Do not forget, Lucidean, this is what you signed up for.”
“Okay, firstly, my name is Hope and you damn well know it!” she protested.
“Hope, huh? Thanks, I will remember that,” Roland answered.
Both Ren and Hope watched with gaping mouths as Justin Roland wiped his vest, dusted his top-hat, and looked them dead in the eye as he placed it gently on his head. Ren observed his mask as he approached. Bits of it had fallen off where the gun had struck. Ren’s eyes widened with fear as he saw the features beneath the mask.
He had a mechanical eye. An orb of sapphire with an auto-rotating lens and in the corner of his eye, he saw a part of his face. Instead of flesh, the eye was surrounded by a large chunk of metal in the shape of a scope.
“You are not Mr. Roland, are you?” Ren asked.
The ‘thing’ shrugged. “I am. Well, kind of, except not really.” He knocked his skull with a knuckle which resulted in a metallic clank. “See? Full metal. Think of this body as a remote-controlled car if a remote-controlled car had military-grade weaponry. Now, where were we?”
“Uhh, we were about to kindly and very politely vacate your esteemed property?” Hope suggested.
“Oh, yes!” Roland clapped his hands in delight. “I was about to murder you!”
His mechanical hands tore through the fabric of his gloves and transformed into a pair of miniguns.
Hope sighed as she unsheathed her own Whiplash pistols. “An android, huh? Haven’t fought one of you in a while.”
Ren was sweating bullets with his back arched against the vault door. “What the devil is going on? What is that thing?”
Before he could get an answer, Roland rained a barrage of bullets in his direction. Ren curled up into a ball on the floor as Hope directed the gunfire toward her. She used the stored energy from her boots to jump over Roland and fired an explosive round in the back of his head.
It did nothing.
“Take this!” Hope yelled and tossed an ice grenade at his body.
Before the crystals could fully form around his body, the android utilized his internal heat to melt them away, leaving little more than droplets of water on his metallic form.
“Oh crap,” Hope cursed.
“Indeed,” said Roland, and fired another storm of bullets, forcing her to flee into the labyrinth of corridors. “Run all you want. I’ll catch up, in due time. But first, your little friend. Oh, this is gonna be delightful.” He turned to face Ren who was still curled up on the floor.
Ren saw his cracked mask and trembled with fear. He kept silent as he’d been taught. His mind raced as it struggled to recall Trent’s lessons.
Nothing.
His mind went blank as his body froze in position. The cackling laughter of the sentient machine became a distant noise. Is this it, then? Ren wondered. All those years of struggle, building himself up from nothing, fighting, stealing, hurting people for food, surviving- only to die in a nameless corridor at the hands of a machine. His body had stopped listening to his mind a while ago and now, even his mind became a thoughtless void. This must be the end. He closed his eyes and accepted his fate.
“Hey, Rolandroid!” Hope’s voice penetrated his skull. He slowly opened his eyes to find her standing in the middle of the corridor nearly twenty meters away. In each hand, she held a Whiplash, with zip lines that were tethered to the gray shale walls. Each zipline appeared to be stretched to its limits and Hope herself looked ready to launch herself from the makeshift catapult.
“Special delivery!” She yelled and let go of the lines. The masked vigilante flew across the corridor at blinding speed, further accelerated by her stored momentum, and crashed into Roland’s metallic torso.
Ren reflexively jumped out of the way as Roland was thrown across the air and into the vault door behind him. His ‘full metal’ body left a massive dent in its impenetrable frame.
Rolandroid crashed onto the marble floor with a loud thud.
Ren got up to inspect him. He wasn’t moving. But before he could breathe a sigh of relief, Hope grabbed his arm, pulled him away from the vault, and ran like her life depended on it. They kept running until they were practically lost in the twists and turns of the underground maze.
Once Hope was certain that it would take Roland at least a few minutes to find them again, she plopped down on the floor and allowed them a moment of rest.
“You saved me… again,” he sighed. “Why are we running? Did you not defeat him?”
Hope shook her head. “You’ve never fought an android before, have you? He’ll be up and running in a few seconds. All I did was buy us some time.”
“So, what now? How do we defeat him?”
“We can’t.”
“What?” Ren gasped.
“Them’s the facts, pal,” Hope shook her head. “His armor’s impenetrable. His body is self-repairing. He’s a walking talking death machine, for God’s sake. I’ve fought like nine of them in my career and I only managed to take down one by accident. We’ll have to find a different approach.”
Ren shivered with fear.
“Hey, you okay, pal?” Hope asked with an arm over his shoulder.
“When that thing attacked me, I was completely helpless. I would have perished if it wasn’t for you,” Ren answered with an empty smile.
“And I’d do it again. We’re in this together, you know?” She comforted him.
Ren shook his head. “And you saved my life in that vent as well. And then again with those guards. And what have I done in return? Absolutely nothing.”
Hope remained silent.
“You asked me about how I met Sir Trent earlier,” he sighed and let his back fall to the wall. “A long time ago, my homeland was attacked by people from Isla Brava. We called them the Greens. They carried weapons the likes of which we’d never seen before.” He stopped to exhale.
“With their guns, they mowed down my people like cattle. The survivors were made to work as slaves. I was one of them. That is where I got these.” He lowered his gaze and revealed the scars on his neck.
Hope gulped and responded with a sorrowful nod.
“For many years, I worked under the devils, getting sold from one owner to another. Until one day, he came.” His eyes lit up with joy. “Sir Trent. He freed me from my master and gave me my own life. Everything I do. Everything I have ever done has been to repay him.”
He paused for a moment.
“But it’s never enough. No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, I always end up making things worse. Earlier in the vents, when I saw your gun, I panicked. It was my fault that we got captured.”
He dug his nails into his palms and shut his eyes. “I thought I had gotten better, damn it! I thought that I could handle it. That I was not afraid anymore. But who am I kidding? Nothing has changed. I am still that scared little kid from all those years ago.”
Hope took a deep breath, removed her mask, and seated herself beside him. “I’m sorry to hear that. It sucks, big time.”
Ren chuckled, “What? Is that all you have to say? You are not going to lecture me? You are not going to say that I should be brave and face my problems head-on?”
Hope looked to the roof with thoughtful eyes, then returned her gaze to the ground. “No. You were dealt an unfair hand. There’s nothing you can do about it. You deserved better. I wish I could change things for you. I wish I could magic away your trauma but I can’t. It doesn’t work like that.” She bit her lip. “So, I’m sorry.”
Ren felt his shoulders become less tense. The furrow between his eyebrows disappeared as he let his knees fall to the floor. “Thank you,” he exhaled softly. “Gods, I am such a coward. What am I supposed to do?”
“Hey, it’s okay to feel overwhelmed.” Hope smiled as she curled her fingers around his hand. “Life can be rough sometimes. It doesn’t matter how many times you stumble. You just gotta get back up and keep on walking.”
Ren took a deep breath. His hands had stopped shaking. His breathing was stabler. The fear still gripped his heart but he felt stronger. He took one look at Hope’s compassionate eyes and her radiant smile and felt that he could take on any threat in the world.
She placed an arm over his shoulder and spoke in a soft voice, “Don’t be so hard on yourself, okay? You’re a great guy. Wounds like that, they take time to heal. Believe me, I know.”
Ren nodded in response.
“Good. Now, you ready to take on Rolandroid or what?”
“Only if you stop calling him that awful name.”
They both laughed.
“If we try to take him head-on, we’re gonna die,” said Hope. “You saw how he shrugged off my explosive rounds.”
“Then we won’t take him head-on,” said Ren thoughtfully. “What sort of ammunition do you have?”
“I got ice bombs, flash bombs, smoke bombs, explosives.” She stopped to think for a moment. “Shrapnel, tear gas, sticky bombs, sleeping gas.”
Ren’s eyes widened when he heard those words. “Back up a bit. What did you say?”
“Sleeping gas?”
“No.” He shook his head. “The other one.”
“What? Sticky bombs?”
“Yes, what do they do?”
“They… stick. Make things stick together. Like, really strongly. This one time, I accidentally fired one at a burglar’s hands. Didn’t unstick for a week. Poor guy had to be spoon-fed by the cops.”
Ren got up from the ground, leaned against the wall, crossed his arms, and shut his eyes tightly. He tapped his left arm with his fingers in a musical pattern as he thought up a plan. The tapping got faster and faster until it reached a crescendo and he opened his eyes with an “Aha!”
“What?” Hope asked.
“I know how we can take him down. Listen closely.”
∆∆∆
The once-imposing walls of the labyrinth had lost their power over Ren. Memorizing the plans was one thing, but actually navigating that godforsaken place even when it reminded him of the mines…
No. No more.
His mind was clearer than it had been in a long, long time. Closing his eyes would replicate the entire layout of the maze in his mind in perfect detail. He flexed his fingers, tightened his chest, and walked towards the vault with noiseless steps. For Sir Trent. And for her as well.
He took the next left and found Rolandroid leaning against a wall with his arms crossed. “You know, if you just wanted a breather, you could’ve asked for it. I’m not that heartless,” Roland spoke in an exasperated voice. “It’s the least I can do before filling your guts full of lead. Now, where were we?”
Ren hid his shaking fists inside his pockets and swallowed, praying he did not notice the bulge on his vest. Trent’s second lesson came to mind. Never let them know what you’re thinking. Ren bowed down on the floor, “I have come to surrender. Please, accept my apologies.”
Roland was taken aback. “Hmm. Interesting tactic,” he said rubbing his non-existent chin. “But unfortunately, I’m not an idiot.” He pulled out his arm-mounted miniguns and aimed at Ren.
“Oh, believe me,” Ren said, retrieving the smoke grenade from his vest pocket. “I am counting on it.” He pulled the pin and tossed it at Roland’s feet. The android attempted to kick it away but the canister stuck to his leg like glue and engulfed him in a cloud of smoke.
Roland grunted and cursed as he swung his leg around, attempting to get it off but the smoke overwhelmed him. There was nothing dangerous about the smoke itself but the fact that it came out of nowhere was enough to catch him off-guard. He limped on one leg and wildly flailed his arms as he attempted to chase after the boy.
Ren, on the other hand, grinned and threw another grenade at his torso. The canister decompressed as a thick layer of ice spread all over Rolandroid’s metallic armor. “What?” he gasped. As the ice crystals began spreading to his joints, Roland heated up his mechanical body to melt it away. Within seconds, his armor, burning red with heat, melted away every last crystal, leaving his expensive clothing drenched in water.
“You little shit!” Seething with anger, Roland jumped after Ren, but the young man dodged out of his way, and he landed where Ren had bowed previously.
Right on top of an electrical land mine.
Rolandroid’s pupils went wide as the million volts of electricity coursed through his wet, metallic, amazingly good conductor of a body. Though the shock wasn’t powerful enough to destroy him, it did give Ren a few precious minutes.
He ran straight to the vault and practically slid on his knees for the final stretch. “Now then.” He licked his lips, placed an ear next to the vault, and got to work. The vault, as he had learned in the last few months, was no slouch when it came to security. It required a digital password to even begin cracking it open.
The password that Trent had been kind enough to send him. He smiled as he entered each of the eight digits.
“Zero-Eight-One-One-Two-Five-Zero-Seven.” He spoke each digit out loud. A soft clicking noise came from within the vault. He exhaled sharply. “One down. Four to go.”
“That was… not nice.”
Ren cranked his neck to see Roland back on his feet. His vest was tattered, the mask had formed numerous cracks, and the top-hat was lying on the floor in a burning mess, but the body itself showed no signs of lasting damage. Damn this bastard! Does nothing keep him down?
“You…” the android pointed at him and demanded, “Who do you think you are? Breaking into my place. Hurting my men. Damaging my property.” Roland readjusted his cuffs and just as he did, his hand transformed into a handgun. He pointed it towards Ren’s head with zero hesitation. “Who sent you, huh? You don’t look smart enough to plan this by yourself. Who the hell are you working for?”
Ren smiled. He remembered the exact words Trent had told him before he’d gone undercover. He was supposed to pass a message on to Roland in case he ever ran into him. Even now, they were etched into his mind. He answered him with a proud smirk. “Your old friend sends his regards.”
Roland cocked his pistol and pulled the trigger. The bullet missed Ren’s forehead by three inches and hit the vault behind him. The android, possessing the most technologically advanced eyes on the planet, capable of hitting the wings of a bee mid-flight, missed.
Roland was frozen in place. His expression was hidden by the mask, save for his left eye, which was shaking uncontrollably. A soft “no” escaped his mouth-piece. Shortly thereafter, he coughed, regained his composure, and spoke with a nod. “I see.”
“Surprised?” Ren asked him.
Roland shook his head. “Not at all, my boy. I knew this was coming, sooner or later. Not that I expect you to understand.” He chuckled. “So, the Red Death comes for me at last, eh? Well, I can hardly let him down.”
“You will pay for your sins, Mr. Roland.”
“Sins? So, that’s what he’s got you believing? Let me be clear, boy. I have no intention of going down without a fight.”
A pair of zip lines struck Roland’s back and embedded into his shoulder armor with a metallic clank. Before he could process the situation, the android was pulled across the air and into the winding paths of the labyrinth. He screamed and cursed as he flew at the mercy of the ziplines, bumping into walls and corners and roof tiles without a moment of reprieve. Once his screaming voice became inaudible, Ren breathed a sigh of relief and got back to working on the lock.
Soon, Hope came running from the other end of the corridor. She was unarmed. “Sorry! The trap took a while to set up. You okay?”
Ren, completely enraptured by the locking mechanism, saw no reason to answer her. Even the strange words of the android felt like a distant memory as he got to work deciphering the next four locks.
For many years after his liberation, he’d worked alongside a group of small-time bandits. He was their locksmith. A damn good one at that. Not once had he stumbled upon a lock he couldn’t decipher. He considered locks to be the gateway to the craftsman’s soul. It was an art form that required skill to be understood. That was what separated it from the other “shallow” mediums for him. You had to meet the creator halfway. You had to prove your worth and in doing so, gain something that others could never hope to understand.
“You done yet?” Hope questioned with impatience.
“No.” His tone was sharp.
“How long?” She asked again.
“Soon.”
“How soon?”
“Soon,” he answered. The third lock had been undone. Only one remained.
“By the way, it was a brilliant idea to use the Whiplashes like that. I bet that bastard never saw it coming.”
“Let me focus.”
“Oh, fine.” She grumbled and plopped onto the floor next to him.
Ren remarked at the fine flame-like patterns on the locking mechanism as he rotated the last dial and heard that satisfying click.
The vault was unlocked.
Ren got up to take a step back and Hope followed his lead. Their mouths were left wide awake at the marvel in front of them.
The black vault opened to reveal a massive network of computers that dwarfed even the labyrinth that had to lead them there. Rows of servers stood before them, arranged in a spreadsheet-like pattern. Ren took one look at the computer in front of him and how it stood a whole five meters taller than him. Then, he squinted his eyes to peer at the entire row, which appeared to be more than fifty meters long, and wondered if they had brought enough explosives.