"Lyubon, pay, uskaoyon. Otka kak kirey. Meerifej, meerifej. Ma meerifej." When he realized that he had regained consciousness thanks to these meaningless words, which were repeated randomly without any rhythm, he immediately opened his heavy eyelids and wanted to get up from the bed with the support of his hands. But suddenly the words stopped and he felt a sudden pressure in his chest and he sank back into the bed and lost consciousness.
Nox went back into the American kitchen, returned to his work at the chopping board and, with his hat on his head and his glasses in his eyes, began to say the same words again.
An old man in his sixties, with graying hair and beard, was stroking the head of the blond-haired boy who had fallen asleep on his lap. As they stood silently on a corner of the deserted and dark alleyway, as if waiting for something, a woman who was trying to balance with heavy and uneven steps passed in front of them. She collapsed face down on the ground. A shout erupted as the stone floor was quickly covered in her blood.
"Where the fuck is she?"
The bald man, short and scrawny but with a fat body, stood next to the pair, baring his yellowed teeth. "You bitch..." he walked over to the woman and grabbed her by the head and lifted her up. "Where the fuck do you think you're going?" he turned around to go back the way he had come, dragging her hair along the ground without letting go, but a foot blocked his way.
"What are you doing, old man?" he asked, looking into the eyes of the old man sitting on the ground. He stepped over the foot that blocked his way and crossed to the other side, dragging the woman with him, but she did not move.
"What do you want with a dead woman?"
With a disgusting, spitting gag, the man ran his hand over his bald head and up to the nape of his neck. "Hey, old man with gray hair. What the fuck business is it of yours?"
The old man bowed his head and let go of her ankle and the bald man continued on his way. "Don't forget. One day they will come for you too."
The bald man rolled his eyes, shaking his head from side to side, and turned left when he reached the end of the street. "So you're awake, White," the old man said, not smiling, seeing that the boy was awake. "Come on, let's go home. It's going to be dangerous around here soon."
The two stood up, held hands and went the way the bald man had gone, turning right, but no one noticed the bodies on the other side of the street, not yet.
When he lifted his eyelids with a heavy feeling in his eyes, he realized that he was lying on a black sofa and lifted himself up by placing his hands on the leather seat. He rubbed his eyes when he saw the blackboard hanging on the wall five meters across from the couch and a few basic math questions drawn in chalk on it and looked at the wall again, but the blackboard was still there.
"It seems to interest you."
White immediately shifted his gaze in the direction of the sound and saw Nox, wearing a white kitchen apron over his shirt.
"Y-yes. Why is something like this here? Are you doing math or something?"
Nox looked at the blackboard and took off his kitchen apron and put on his jacket, which was thrown over the arm of the single armchair to his left. "This is the only memory I have of my past." The room suddenly went silent and for a while there was no sound from either side. "Anyway, come to the kitchen. I've prepared my special soup for you."
"Special soup?" White repeated as he got up from his seat and walked past the man and sat down in the chair to look at the soup on the counter. "What... what is this?"
"It's called Eat What You Can. It contains a lot of ingredients that I prepare with love and often with poison."
"Poison?..." suddenly her eyes widened and she jumped up and grabbed his collar. "Was there poison in that syringe you injected me with? Wait a minute! Then..." she lost her balance as the memories flooded her mind with pain and she immediately reached out to grab the edge of the counter but she knocked over the soup and collapsed on the floor.
Nox inflated his chest by filling his lungs with dense air through his nose, and lifted the young man into the air as he held him while he touched the tip of his tongue to his palate, pulled it back and made a sound like "Nch, nch, nch." And he put the young man back on the couch, carrying him on his shoulders as if he were carrying a bag.
"I think you should get some more rest. I don't think you'll understand now. Uh... I might as well go get my prize. I wonder why that Nell Se's head was so valuable."
Nox left the living room, turned left and walked down the narrow corridor and just before he went out the door, he took the palm-sized, round, transparent pill from the wooden box hanging on the wall, put it in his mouth, bit it and sucked all the liquid into his lungs. "Oh!..." his shoulders dropped in front of him and after a few seconds of standing still with his eyes closed, he straightened his back, lifted his shoulders and walked through the door and out into the street.
The street was no different from the streets on the other floors, except that no people lived there. On the right side there were train tracks about fifty meters away, on the left side there were only ruined houses and on the opposite street there were some non-human creatures. After a few seconds of staring at these creatures gliding through the darkness, he began to move forward, twirling his cane on his fingertips.
"Lyubon, pay, uskaoyon. Otka kak kirey. Meerifej, meerifej. Ma meerifej." She started repeating the refrain she had sung in the kitchen, but this time she was singing the words in a steady rhythm, without a detonation. But what was he saying? Why was he saying it? He kept walking down the dark street and when he quickly crossed the street, ignoring the faces staring at him through the opening and closing doors and windows, he saw a sign that read "Free Kelle" with led lights.
"Whenever I see that name, I can't help but think how much he deserves it." He approached the door and knocked three times with the back of his hand, the door opened and the muzzle appeared on his forehead as he stepped inside. Nox adjusted the brim of his hat, took his cane, which was too short for his height, in his right hand and closed the door with it. "Don't you recognize me?"
The red-skinned officer, his body full of stitches, lowered his gun and Nox's cane exploded between his eyebrows, pinning his head to the wall. And just behind him appeared the stairs leading underground.
"Brute force opens every door guarded by fear."
Nox took strong steps down the stairs. Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock. When he reached the end of the stairs, a few white lights in between the red lamps that completely illuminated the environment pointed to him. Remaining in a small white area in all the red, Nox continued to move through the crowd without hesitation.
"Lyubon pay, uskaoyon. Otka kak kirey. Meerifej, meerifej. Ma meerifej." This time his mood was more like a Bible passage than a song lyric. With heavy steps he sat down next to a black man with dreadlocks at the bar at the end of the huge enclosed space.
The black man took a sip from his glass and opened and closed his mouth as he suddenly flicked his tongue against his palate several times.
"Apples, pears, kiwis. They're all so good. I'll eat, I'll eat. I'll eat." he turned his head towards Nox, who was standing to his left. "Who first told us that, 1910? That..." he mumbled, squinting as he shook the drink at the bottom of the glass in his hand. "What was his name again? Arthur... White? Arthur White?"
Nox sat down on the round barstool. "As usual, your memory for names is terrible, Tobias Harris." He handed Tobias a note from the inside pocket of his jacket. And as the young man in his thirties took it, he left a movie ticket on the counter.
"Nox. This Pay guy has an assignment for you. The boy with you..." he was interrupted by a hand in front of his face.
"Got it. Syringe in its usual place, right, Tobias Harris?"
Tobias puffed out his chest with a deep breath. "Exactly."
With his cane in his left hand, Nox climbed the stairs to the left and entered the room with a glass floor and walls and stood in front of the desk where a skinny young man with blue hair was sitting. When the young man saw him, who was very calm, he took a black box out of a drawer and put it on the table. Nox took the box, took the pipe out of the other inside pocket of his jacket, put it in his mouth and half-heartedly asked, "Open the door." And a gap appeared in the ceiling, through which a ladder led down. When Nox climbed the stairs, the ladder went up again and the gap in the ceiling closed. Slowly, as the dim red lights of the corridor lit up, he saw that there were doors on either side of him and he started to walk. He began to hear many different voices in his head as the small mechanism in his pipe picked up sounds too low to be heard and transmitted them through his jawbone into his ear, but he kept walking.
"We still haven't found someone to fill his void." the voice stopped his steps. Nox immediately leaned against the door and listened.
"But Arthur promised to fill White's shoes."
"I think he's just lying to get more funding."
"Well, what do we do now?"
"We'll bring Ms. Kira from the Mik District downstairs here to Nelir. If we can find the boy with Arthur's blood, we can subdue him again."
"Really? P-sorry. I got a little excited. Because of that asshole, we can't get to Torandes, the last zone on the bottom floor."
"Don't worry, Mr. 2. There is no force that will stand in the way of our ideal of restoring the United Kingdom. Some pebbles may try to stand in our way, but who cares? We are close to establishing a country where only nobles should live."
Nox took the pipe out of his mouth, put it in his pocket and continued on his way. Knock, knock, knock, knock. Every step he took down the long, endless corridor reminded him of that man's shining gaze and the confidence it gave him.
"My grandparents locked themselves in here to protect the rest of humanity, Nox. If it wasn't for them, the threat that started in the seas would have spread across the world. And now... it's time to go up."
He took a sip from the Nox glass on the other side of the round wooden table. "That's all well and good, but how, Arthur? If you want to go out on your own, you can do it in a couple of hours, but you want to drag other people with you."
"Nox. Humans live above ground, not below. We are not a mole. And who would want to go against that?"
Nox took another sip. "The rulers, Arthur. The rulers... This order sees them as a deity. Besides, what difference does it make if you go up? They'll build huge buildings and castles and think themselves superior to other people."
Arthur slammed his hand on the table. "I can't throw away the future of the people just because of a bunch of impudent fools. My ancestors did not shed blood in vain. We will surely get out of here together."
Nox touched his glass to his lips and threw his head back, but when nothing came to his mouth, he looked at his glass, it was empty. He quickly poured himself another glass and started drinking.
"Your son is very young, Arthur. How will you protect him?"
Arthur was silent for a few moments, bowing his head at the question, then poured himself a glass, took a drink and said, "He fights too," as he slammed the glass down hard on the table.
Nox looked up when he realized he had reached the end of the corridor and saw a door, much larger than the others, standing in front of him. He grabbed the handle, turned it and stepped inside, pulling it to him as he noticed the woman with red lipstick on her lips, her eyes wide as she stared at him.
"Yes? Mrs. Resta."
"Are you... smiling?"
When the man took his seat without saying anything, he realized that only Mrs. Resta and he had arrived.
"Where are the others?"
Ms. Resta said, "They went inside. This time the movie is very dramatic. That's why they got front row seats."
"I see." He rested his elbows on the table and interlaced his fingers. "Ms. Resta...do you remember the Mik Zone?"
The woman closed the round mirror in her hand and put it on the table. Then she nodded as she turned the bottom of her lipstick. "Why did you bring this up?"
"Ms. Kira... she's coming here." her lipstick slipped from between her fingers. "I wondered if you knew anything about her."
Resta crossed her legs with a sigh, running her fingers through her auburn, wavy hair. "I may know her. But what does that have to do with you?"
When Nox reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out the syringe, Mrs. Resta pulled her right hand out of her red bag. "I had other plans with this, but at the moment I think it is more urgent. Mrs. Resta... can you tell me everything you know?"
Resta folded her arms across her chest, leaned her back against the chair and looked with tear-filled resignation into a pair of eyes behind the man's sunglasses.
"We used to study together in the Mik District. We've been like sisters for as long as I can remember. She's unstable. And... very happy."
Nox tilted his head slightly to the side. "Happy? Ms. Resta, what does he look like?"
"I-I-I can't... say... anything for sure. I haven't seen him for a long time, maybe ten years. But... there was something strange about his left eye. There were children who gained strange physical abilities, although most of them died during training. But, he was... he always was. An eye as black as night and a red dot in the center... That's what his left eye looked like when he was angry."
Nox leaned back and spread his fingers apart. "You know enough about him. He put the syringe on the table and pushed it toward her. "Your eyes... they look like they're hiding a story you want to tell me. But we'd better talk about that after the show."
Resta put the syringe in another box in his bag and left his chair as Nox got up and headed for the other door in the room.
When he exhaled the air through his nose, his eyelids lifted and after a few seconds of frozen expression, he quickly straightened up and stood up. But soon his memories returned and he calmed down and stroked his temples with his thumb and middle finger.
"What the hell happened to me?" He caught sight of the soup on the floor. "That crazy guy... he made me soup. Oh. I need to wash my face, but where's the bathroom?" she scanned around with her eyes and saw the door on the back of the couch. He immediately turned the handle and led himself out into the hallway, then turned left and opened the door opposite. This was not the bathroom but the bedroom. He walked in slowly and looked around the airless room at the incredibly tidy bed and the laptop computer open on the desk to the left. Frowning, he sat down in the chair and looked at the string of zeros and ones on the screen.
0100111101101110011011000110000101110010001000000110100001100101011100100010000001111001011001010111001001100100011001010110110001100101011100100010111000100000010010000110100111000011101001110110001001101001011100100010000001111001011001010111001001100101001000000110101101100001110000111010011101100001011011010110000101111010011100111100010010110001011011100010111000100000010010110110010101101110011001000110100101101110011010010010000001101110011001010010000001110011011000010110111011000100101100010111100101101111011100100111001101110101011011100011111100100000110001001011000001101100011000010110100000100000011011011100010010110001001111110010000001001111011011100110110001100001011100101100010010110001011011100010000001111001011000010110111011000100101100010110111001100100011000010010000001101000011001010111000001101001011011010110100101111010001000000110000101100011011010010111101001101001011110100010111000100000010011110110111001101100011000010111001000100000011010000110000101101011011010111100010010110001
"Did he fall asleep on the keyboard?" the young soldier turned his body to the left and got up from the chair, reaching for the notepad next to the computer. But most of the page was torn out and the rest of it was empty except for the sentence "They are everywhere."
"To know that the game I played as a child will work now..." he had a goofy smile on his face. White looked for something on his desk, but when he found nothing but a computer and a notebook, he opened the left drawer of the desk. He then took a pencil and lightly scribbled on the torn section, revealing the missing writing.
"They are everywhere. You can't escape anywhere. Who do you think you are? A god? Compared to them, we're all weak. You think I'll give you information about them? Even if I do, I can only give you what they want. You will die. Just like Arthur White."
After White put the notepad and pen back where he had picked them up, he stood up and realized that his hand was resting on the gun at his waist. As he left the room and closed the door behind him, his pulse began to quicken and his body began to burn.
"White? Arthur White. Isn't that the guy my dad was talking about? My grandfather?"
The young soldier went into the kitchen, put the clean glass under the faucet and raised a clean glass of water to his lips when there were four knocks on the door.
White put the glass down on the counter before he could drink it and walked through the other door, reaching for his gun. And slowly, he pointed the barrel at the door and started walking. At this moment there were three knocks on the door. The young soldier looked through the peephole and saw a red eye. With a sudden start, he threw himself backwards, fired three shots and the door slammed against him, sending him crashing into the wall. The blood from the back of his shattered head trickled down the wall and began a slow descent to the floor. His gun slipped through his fingers as his arms fell limp.
Her ankle-high ankle boots were heavy on the parquet floor, and the sound of her footsteps was muffled by a labored gasp. The woman, one seventy feet tall, with straight black hair down to her waist, one red eye and one pale blue one above the black mask that stretched from the bridge of her nose to her chin, pulled back her black gloves and placed them on her hand. And when she grabbed the door and pulled it aside, she found a blond youth with many bones shattered, his nose tilted to the left and his teeth shattered as his jaw collapsed