“Just give him some sunflower seeds or something,” says Saran, holding the button down on the exterior side of his helmet that controls the inbuilt microphone connected to his stowed away phone. “He’s a hamster, Jin. I don’t think he cares.”

He listens to a crackling quiet on the other end of the call for a moment before she replies. “I’m just saying, it’s always seeds. I think he needs some roughage too, you know?” asks a woman’s voice on the other end of the call.

Saran turns his head, looking at the buzzing light that was just above his head as it now flies off, heading down the street away from him to its source.

“I’ll call you back,” says Saran. “It’s here.”

“Wait, what about the water?" she asks. "How much does h -” He clicks the call away, letting go of the button, the contact information flashing away from the inside of his helmet’s visor, where it had been displayed. Jin’s clever. She’ll figure out the small details. Sam is safe with her until he finishes up his ‘chores’ for this week.

He hopes Charlie did his part, so that everything is lined up again like it was in the last session.

Saran stands outside of the shuttered concrete building, beneath an overhang, to stand out of the rain that runs down all around him and is unable to reach the thick graffiti layered over the metal exterior blinds, like water from a shower that can’t reach old scabs to wash them off. The street ahead of him whirs with blurred streaks of red lights as cars shoot past on the inner-city highway that cuts through the city like a deep slash, the ruby auras blurring over the visor of his helmet like fading gashes. From here, the highway shoots down into an underground tunnel that pulses out in every direction around the city, as if it were the veins beneath Taturus’ throbbing body. Glowing signs pulsate above him on the skyscrapers that take up everything there is to see from down where he stands, advertising the names of the countless sub-corporations that are nearly as many as the people of the city in number as they all fight for eyes and attention.

The signs are really just a lie, a mask. At the end of the day, there are maybe five big players in total in the corporate landscape here that run every single operation, from washing machines to industrial flour production, to the music industry. Everything else is just names and brands that they’ve thought up to give the appearance of a thriving small business economy. The same people that make and sell discount hamster food also own the factories that produce armor piercing ammunition for armed police vehicles. Everything belongs to them, whoever they are.

Saran sits upright, looking down the street in the direction the drone had flown off toward.

‘Down zero’ is the ground layer of the city, where he is now. In essence, the city as a whole has floors, like a building would. It goes deeply underground in some places, like the highway tunnels. This would be Down One, Down Two, and so on, depending on how far down one actually is. Whereas other spaces make use of raised, fortified platforms to offer greater abilities to build and expand. Space is at a premium in Tartarus, so vertical construction is no oddity here. People no longer buy property as the corporations and the city government, C.G, officials have already bought it all up and now just rent it out exclusively, except in the cases of some very wealthy special interests or political gifts. Anyone who wants to own an apartment will have to lease it from the city-government, which, like the oligarchic corporations, does a whole lot more than just make by-laws about littering and noise pollution. Home ownership has been dead for generations now.

Saran lifts his hand, covering his visor for a moment, as a bright beam of light sweeps his way from down the road, the empty, plastic lined cans on the sidewalks rattling as a heavy buzz intrudes on the drumming of the rain as the blindingly white light comes closer.

It’s here. Just like it was last week. It looks like Charlie did everything right.

The greater area of Tartarus city has a population of some fourteen million people, according to the latest estimates given out by C.G. However, no third party of note has been able to verify these numbers through any large-scale, public surveys. Ever since the insurgency decades ago, the flow of any information regarding the city or its government, even in regards to the most benign questions, has been strictly watched, regulated, and guarded. Nothing gets out. Nothing is clear. This is done under the pretense of old laws erected during those times regarding information secrecy in emergency situations. However, the laws were conveniently left in place after the danger was dealt with. New laws, new taxes, new ordinances — these things are never removed after they arise during crisis situations. They’re only added on one after the other over the decades, like new fibers of a thickening rope that is wrapped around the neck of every single person in this Tartarus.

Other sources claim the true population is noticeably larger, and other sources say that the population is actually quite a bit smaller. However, herein lies the problem, the truth is unverifiable.

It’s like this about everything. If you go to the information page about C.G. online, half of the photos there of the so-called civil servants will be generated by artificial intelligence and titled with fake names, as if these were real people. If you go to the website too often, you get flagged. All that’s really clear is who the current public face of C.G. is, but even that changes every few years. The summary of the truth is that Tarturus and its millions are owned by the few and powerful. The land, the water, the police, the roads — everything is run by a secretive central power that is beholden to absolutely no one.

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Every party claims their own truth, but none of them have the same weight as the mass behind the city government’s, C.G.’s, cudgel. C.G. controls everything that they want to control. Any other third parties offering resistance or a way out are likely just shadow extensions of C.G., made to give the illusion that things aren’t as bad as they seem.

— The lights reach him. Saran lowers his hand, looking up. A towering silhouette stands in front of him, blocking the rain and the sight of the neon signs with its hulking, sharply edged presence. Mechanicals whir as a small external camera turns his way, the facial recognition scanner beeping.

This thing here before him now is a mechanized, automated patrol unit that belongs to the city police. A Juliet.

It’s twice the size of a man, tri-pedal with treaded feet, and as bulky as a truck of bricks with a shape to match. They used to be even bigger, as they used to hold a pilot inside of their chest cavities, but they have since become fully automated, after the war ended. Sometimes they bring those human-piloted models out for displays of police competence to the public, or to drive recruitment. They’ve been in service since the insurgency as a counter to the heavy mechanized weapons that the insurgents had used to fight against C.G. In essence, the Juliets are a counter-terrorism weapon.

Now, of course, they’re still in use, having been adopted by the police force, a long time after the end of the incident.

Saran opens up his visor on his helmet, letting the little drone flying next to his face scan his retinas, before the large Juliet gets upset.

Each Juliet is outfitted with a swarm of small, flying drones — Romeos — that accompany it. They fly around the heavy automaton like a swarm of bees following a mobile hive, scanning streets, nooks, and crannies. Sometimes they’ll fly up to the windows of the buildings and look inside; other times they’ll pulse down the tunnels below, where the rainwater runs off, or anywhere people could be hiding or gathering. Then they fly back to the Juliet, landing on it to recharge their short-lived batteries, before returning out again on a new hunt.

“Loitering in non-communal spaces with an obscured face is strongly discouraged,” says an unusually friendly woman’s voice, entirely out of place with the gritty environment. She sounds like an airline stewardess in an advertisement. Juliet’s all have the same voice. She sounds like a librarian who just found out she ordered two copies of her favorite book by mistake. “- Saran Sapana,” finishes the construct.

The drones whir around him, two of them scanning him as the rest of the swarm fly around the area in a paranoid hunt for absolutely anything that they could report back with. They aren’t picky. Romeos will take note of every single, tiny detail in hopes of being able to bring a tidbit back to their Juliet. They’re not alive, as they’re just machines. But to an outside observer, the Romeos have something almost desperately sad about their behavior, if one were to attribute something like a personality to them.

“Sorry,” says Saran, lifting his hands and stepping to the side. He nods his head down to his motorcycle that he was next to. “I’m having engine trouble.”

The drone leaves his face, immediately scanning his motorcycle with a close, overly excitable examination — as if deeply desiring to catch him in a lie — and for sure streaming an endless feed of video to some server somewhere in the basement of the city’s telecommunications towers. Everything is checked; everything is watched.

“I understand,” replies the Juliet, standing back upright at full, impressive height. The swarm of Romeos flies back to the bot, latching onto its legs like hands desperately trying to climb up them as they click into place in their loading stations. “Please remain here. A towing vehicle has been dispatched,” says the Juliet. “The costs have been deducted from your stored balance.”

Just like that, the giant machine turns around, the ground continuing to rattle as it leaves.

Saran looks at the machine’s back, past the many Romeos clinging there and watching him like small purse dogs, ready to start yapping at the slightest wrong movement, staring at the identification number painted there with blocky, white lettering.

‘1919’.

It’s the same unit as last week. Nineteen-nineteen is in the parade.

— It merges in with the speeding traffic, the three-treaded legs angling down as it shoots off down the highway to another section of the city.

Having seen what he came here to see, Saran gets back on his motorcycle. He presses the re-dial quick button, his ringtone buzzing around in his helmet for a few moments, until eventually the line is picked up on the other end. “Jin.”

“Say 'goodbye' next time before you hang up on me, dickwad,” replies the woman, who is watching the hamster at the moment.

“It’s her,” says Saran, ignoring her comment and just clicking the button to hang up again. He slots down his visor, fiddles with the third-party, illegal mechanical lock on his bike’s starter to free it up again, and lets the engine roar to life.

That really is her — the same one. That Juliet there… That's the very same Juliet that killed him in his last life, in the last session, six days from now.

Saran rides down the sideway and away from the highway at a slow pace, turning into a few alleys before then returning back onto the city streets.

Starting tomorrow, a lot of the inner city is going to be cordoned off in preparation for a victory parade over the insurgency. C.G. really is never going to let that one go.

That’s okay, though.

Last time, he and his group failed in their attempt to steal a piloted Juliet. There were security factors they didn’t know about. But now, this is a new session, which is what they call their windows of time alive before they’re all reborn again. This time, they’re well aware of C.G.’s additional safety measures around the event.

C.G., the corporations, and the security apparatus of Tartarus expect a lot of things and are prepared for just as many. However, what they’re not prepared for is a group of people with an infinite number of tries to get things right.

— Saran weaves through the city’s traffic.

He still doesn’t know what ‘this’ is — the fact that he and the others keep dying and keep coming back over and over, the fact that the Organization, whoever they belong to, are hunting him and all the others and always keeping the clock of their deaths on track, and worse yet, the thing that makes the least sense of everything in this situation…

Saran slows as the traffic jams up ahead of him, cars lining him on all sides like the walls of a cell.

…The digital license plates of the vehicles around him flicker, glitching, their serial numbers swapping out for a series of familiar letters, forming a pattern of repeating, almost mocking words that makes the man tighten his hands, his leather gloves creaking on the grip of his motorcycle from the strain.

The fucking Organization. They’re always here, always watching, and always manipulating.

‘You can’t save Sam.’

Saran revs his engine, immediately weaving off and onto the empty sidewalk — nobody ever walks in this part of town — and then breaking back into the flow of traffic a few cars ahead as he pushes down the street as he goes to find some specific materials that aren’t illegal to own, but are illegal to own together in combination.

It’s going to be one hell of a parade.