- "It has to happen!"
Standing on the edge of the skyscraper roof, a handsome man in a pair of sunglasses and a business suit stared expectantly at his smartphone screen.
- "Come on! Please!"
He had a view of the nighttime city in front of him that looked like an ocean of stars, but he hadn't climbed up on the roof to admire it.
His clothes fluttered in the wind and his untied tie was ready to snap off his neck at any moment, it was a miracle that this man kept his balance under the gusts of wind from such a height, his image looked as if he was ready to jump down at any moment, but he didn't care, he was concentrating on his phone, waiting for something to happen.
*Ding, ding, ding.
A notification window appeared on his smartphone screen.
[The gate is open].
A seemingly short message, but as he read it, the man burst into tears.
- "Thank you... thank you..."
He bowed his head. The street, somewhere below. People going about their business here and there were like gadflies swarming in a corpse.
It was disgusting.
A man with a smile took a step into the abyss of the night city and flew down toward his death.
But on his face, distorted by the turbulent oncoming wind, there was no hint of fear, horror, only anticipation of his death, the end of the suffering of an immortal existence.
He screamed with joy, pouring more and more power into the scream as the solid ground approached.
*Shmukshmuk.
Miraculously not hitting a random passerby, he slammed his face into the asphalt, his body bouncing several times from the force of the impact and finally stretching out in a grotesque pose.
- "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA," screamed a woman whose face was splattered with bloody chunks of the man, after which she lost consciousness.
A random passerby picked up her exhausted body and examined the scene.
Next to the body was a bloody stain, a mutilated corpse, and a smartphone with a cracked screen.
A crowd of onlookers began to gather around the suicide body, whispering quietly among themselves, as suddenly the sound of police sirens rang out.
........
- "Damn it..." - Going through the keys in front of the front door of her house, the beautiful Woman sighed wearily.
- "He must have heard by now, no wonder."
Today she had finished the project she had been working on for several years, and now she could finally go home to rest with her family. She came home from work earlier than usual because she wanted to please her husband. On her way to the grocery store, she bought all sorts of sweets and a bottle of red wine to celebrate the day.
- "Finally!"
she exclaimed when she found the right key, Opening the door, she brought the grocery bags inside, after which this beautiful Woman went to change her clothes. A man sitting in the living room in front of the flat screen TV noticed her and smiled.
He got up from the couch, walked over to her and put his arm around her waist, kissing her neck.
- "Hi, honey, you're early today, did you finally finish your project?" - Her husband asked.
- "Yes, honey!" - she replied, almost squeaking with joy.
He realized that she was finally free from work and wanted to have a feast, it was given away by the bottle of wine sticking out of the grocery bag.
- "I'll make dinner later... I'll put Susie to bed... and we'll..." - she said in a flirtatious voice.
The woman gently pulled her husband aside to finally change into her home clothes.
She put on a sweatshirt and sweatpants, then walked to the nursery, where a little girl was sleeping in her crib.
Kissing her on the forehead, she smiled warmly and went into the kitchen to prepare dinner.
Suddenly her husband appeared in front of her, his eyes filled with tears and a frantic smile playing on his lips, he held a knife in one hand and a smartphone in the other, a notification glowing on its bright screen.
[The gate is open].
- "Honey? Go away!" - she shouted, but it was too late.
The man pounced on her and plunged the kitchen knife into her heart.
With a frozen question on his face: "Why?" she stared at her husband.
Tears gushed from her eyes, and then she felt the strength leave her body and she wanted to sleep.
- "Honey, they opened!" - he said with madness in his voice.
As the man removed the knife from her chest, she collapsed to the floor, turning her face toward the nursery, where a child's crying was coming from.
The man slowly made his way into the nursery with the bloody knife in his hands, closing the door beforehand.
......
A young man was sitting in front of a computer screen playing an online game. There was an oppressive atmosphere in the room with its stale air and thick curtains. On the floor were scattered tightly closed bottles with suspicious contents, a lot of socks with hard stains lay on the unmade bed, and the young man himself had black circles under his eyes, in which he could hide his fatigue.
A red [defeat] sign appeared on the screen, and in the corner of the monitor the chat room exploded with curses against the streamer.
- "Fuck, he lost again!"
- "You should have played three in a row!"
- "I'm his forester, motherfucker, delete the game!"
- "Fucking nub."
A tired sigh.
The young man glanced at his smartphone screen as if expecting something.
But biting his lip, he went back to his routine. He faked a smile at the webcam.
- So, let's get on with it! - he said in a sweet voice, moving the cursor across the monitor to the blue button.
[Game Search].
*Click*.
The seemingly meaningless swear words in the chat room on the periphery of his tired gaze caught him off guard.
Without a change in his face, he cried imperceptibly.
Taking an open can of beer from behind the monitor, he took a few sips and " accepted" a new match.
Forty minutes later, the same red text and a new wave of swearing in the broadcast chat.
- "how fucking stupid is he!"
- "IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO WATCH!"
- "YEAH, IT'S FUCKING LAME!"
After swallowing his tears and snot, the young man smoked a crumpled cigarette and looked at his smartphone again.
*Ding-ding.
The glint returned to his dead eyes as he read the message that popped up on the locked screen.
[The gate is open].
A relieved sigh, a middle finger to the monitor screen, and a slight movement of his hand under the desk to an already familiar place.
He pulled out his hunting rifle and without much thought put the muzzle in his mouth, moving away from the computer in his chair, he picked the right angle and...
*BAH*.
The back of his head exploded like an overripe watermelon and a picture appeared on the wall behind him, stained with blood, bullet holes, brains and lodged skull fragments.
- "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA."
- "LOL HE'S DEAD IRL?"
- "what the fuck????
- "looks like his " repentance" for the defeats LOL"
A riot of red paint is what the viewers of the stream called it in the chat room.
People unfamiliar with death trembled, and to the unfortunate young man, the coveted glory in life only came posthumously.
.......
- "Well, kids, do you know the answer?"
- "Elephant?"
-" ... "
A man dressed as a cartoon rabbit sat surrounded by five-year-old children, in front of an expensive camera, they were in a large studio with a flashy pink backdrop, he was explaining to the children how to live properly, at what crossroads in life you should turn and where you should slow down and think, what the hell are you talking about?
There was an unconcealed disgust in the depths of his eyes. Children. He didn't like kids. He fucking hated them.
With his whole being, he hated what he did for a living.
For him, kids were a chore.
Every fucking Thursday, every fucking week, every fucking year in a fucking studio, he put on a fucking bunny suit and did fucking things he didn't like.
His only outlet was the gym, where he took out his resentment on the gym equipment.
Minutes went by like clockwork, a snotty kid blew his nose into the ear of his bunny suit, and in response our bunny's forehead swelled with sweat.
Hatred. Rage. Anger.
*Dingdling.
But suddenly from the pocket on the belly of his bunny suit came the phone notification.
Ignoring the silly faces and curious looks from the children, he got to his feet and checked his phone.
The sweat disappeared and a devilish grin flashed across his face.
- "Ah-fucking-fine..."
[Gates open].
Throwing the phone aside he ripped the mesh in the rabbit's mouth and pulled the head out, it was like a scene from an old movie where an alien monster crawls out of the actor's stomach, only instead of a scary alien the head of a scary man in his fifties showed up. It looked as if the cartoon rabbit's inner demon had gotten out.
- "WOOOOOOAAAA!!!"
- "HE KILLED BUGSY!"
- "BUGSY!"
The children screamed in horror and cried as if their much-loved rabbit had been killed by the man, some of the children even started throwing toys at him shouting "Bastard," apparently the education of the bunny Buggy had not paid off.
The cameraman saw this and approached the camera in response to the cries of the director, who ordered him to urgently stop filming and stop the live broadcast.
The man in the suit, not paying attention to the cars flying at him, inhaled a full chest and smiled, tears came out of his eyes, he was feeling happy. He grabbed the snotty kid with his plush paws.
*Hrrrrrrrrujt.
He twisted his head 180 degrees and tossed it aside from his torso. The boy didn't even have time to cry out. The man didn't stop just at him, he looked like a rabid gorilla in a chicken coop... like a pumped-up jock who was asked to open several cans of pickles in a row. The man moved from one child to the next with such speed as if it were some kind of competition.
The studio was filled with children screaming and crying for help, all of which stopped with a burst of gunfire fired at the half-man-half-plush bunny.
Only then were the police able to find the man's phone at the scene.
Turning on the lock screen, they saw an unread message from an unknown person.
[Gates Open].
......
She was awakened by the smell of fresh coffee and a soft question.
- "Mom, are you asleep?"
Her eyelids fluttered open, and in the reflection of her emerald eyes appeared the image of a child-a little dark-haired girl lying across from her in the bed.
She smiled casually at her, gently stroking the long strands of her hair, dreaming of stretching this pleasant dream.
- "Mom, there's Daddy baking pancakes, are you awake?"
- "Good morning, honey, come to Daddy, Mommy will be right up," the woman replied in a velvety voice.
- "Okay, we'll wait for you," said the girl, deftly jumping off the bed onto the floor.
- "It's okay, honey, I'll hurry," the mother replied with love in her voice as she escorted the child to her bedroom door.
For a moment, the vivid memory of the crime scene exploded in her mind, poisoning her soul. A family murdered in their own home. A father, a mother, and a young child the same age as her Blanca.
The victims' bodies were found in the kitchen, at the dinner table. They had been killed at the same time, their deaths were excruciating, they had been poisoned. The perpetrator was never caught.
The woman frowned, gave herself two quick slaps, and pulled herself together.
She was often haunted by ghosts of the past, the weight of being a policeman's responsibility surfaced every time she experienced harmony in her family or with friends, or simply when she went out on the street. She was answerable to the dead. That was her job. She was all they had left after they were rendered voiceless. She owed them, but she tried desperately to convince herself that her life didn't end there.
These images reminded her that she had a debt to her own conscience, and she owed it back in a much bigger way.
Castile Torres stared blankly at the ceiling for a while longer before she gathered her thoughts. Castile sat down on the bed and checked her phone, a few missed calls from her subordinates, a couple of messages from the police chief, her boss, and... just work.
Sigh
With a tired sigh, she reached out and placed her phone on the bed.
Castile got up and headed for the bathroom, picking up the toys scattered down the hallway on the way.
Blanca had already turned five, Castile looked sadly at the teddy bear in her hands, realizing that she hadn't been able to catch four of her own daughter's five birthdays.
She... she wasn't making excuses for herself, she really had been a bad mother to her child, but even if she had the chance to go back in time and change things, she would have made the same choice.
Dropping her toys in the nursery, she headed for the bathroom, quickly treading barefoot on the cold floor.
- "Good morning, Castile." - she said to her reflection in the mirror above the washbasin.
Quickly brushing her teeth and noticing a few new wrinkles in her forehead, she grinned. Even though she was a pure-blooded immortal in the fifth generation, and her family had a strong im-genic and mortal lineage... The constant work at the station and the stress of catching criminals was taking its toll on her appearance. By her two hundred plus years she had aged her body to the point of no return, and now her physiological age was already forty.
Shaking her head, she shook all this nonsense out of her head and went into the kitchen.
In the light-filled kitchen, a tall man with a cozy posture stood at the kitchen stove making pancakes.
"Theo..."
Castile looked lovingly at her husband.
He was dressed in a white T-shirt and sweatpants, but what Castile liked best about his look were his big slippers shaped like a pair of fuzzy pink bunnies and his black as tar apron with a pink "kiss the cook" signature.
Blanca sat impatiently at the high table.
She hummed a song to herself as she looked at the delicious pancakes on her plate, drizzled with syrup.
Castile entered the room, and her husband turned to her with a smile.
- "Good morning, dear. Sit down, the pancakes are coming," Theo said.
Castile walked over to him, stood on tiptoe, and kissed his cheek in an already casual manner, as if taking the writing on his apron seriously.
He smiled as he shifted his breakfast onto his plate and turned to her and looked thoughtfully into her warm eyes, asking a mute question.
"Is everything all right?"
It was clear he already knew about yesterday's incident, his apron pocket had his phone in it, as she knew he flipped through the news feed every morning while cooking.
In response, she simply stroked him on the back.
Together they sat down at the table and began to eat breakfast.
- "Honey, how's school going?"
- "Yeah, share it with your mom, she'll be very interested."
- "My history teacher, Miss Barlow, gave me an A for the essay that Daddy and I did together, and my friend Sally said that the parents of Nancy, our classmate, decided to go on a trip around the world, it's so great, they..."
As the girl told, she alternately ate pancakes, her eyes gleaming with joy.
Theo and Castile held hands under the table, listening to her. They did not interrupt Blanca and only occasionally asked questions, as if they were tossing sticks into the fire.
Castile glanced at the wall clock hanging in the kitchen.
2:34 a.m.
Half an hour with her family and two hours of sleep was all the time she spent at home.
Castile cast a hurried glance at her husband and got up from the table, quickly sending a few pancakes into her mouth without chewing them.
She kissed Blanca, affectionately saying goodbye to her family, that she continued her breakfast without her. She deftly changed, and the charming woman in her homemade pajamas, dressed up, in the image of an ice queen, wearing pumps shoes and a formal suit.
She quickly left the house, got behind the wheel of her car, which was parked in an underground parking lot, entered the coordinates of 27th Precinct on the display, and soon drove off.
Pulling out her phone, she began calling all those who had sought her attention this earlier morning.
- "Good morning, Mr. Commissioner. Yes... Yes. The case is already in circulation, my subordinates have spent a sleepless night investigating this incident, the report will be on your desk when it is ready, I understand that you are getting your balls twisted, but you should understand that we are doing everything we can to resolve this situation."
- "Good morning, Mr. Mayor. Yes, thank you for the funding. Of course. That money will be used to expand the staffing. Yes, thank you."
- "Good morning, Ms. Austin, thank you for your wishes, yes. I'll see you this weekend."
...
The endless string of calls didn't seem to bore her in the slightest; out of all the chaos and panic, she managed to catch two things.
The commissioner was going to push her department, and she was finally getting her share of funding for her department.
It was time to expand her staff, and she already had a couple of people in mind.
Picking a number on the speed dial, she called her subordinate.
- "Michael, there's a case..."
Giving instructions to her subordinate, her eyes sparkled with a cold gleam.
......
While the streets of New London have not yet sunk into a chaotic frenzy, and the tabloids have not yet gone into circulation with headlines like "Suicide Cases" or "Suicide Gates Opened to Suicides," etc., we will take a little tour of the history of this world.
......
Earth.
The year 2547, Great Britain. New London.
This is our time, but the action itself begins exactly 500 years ago, when the great Chinese biologist scientist Lin Wangyan was able to develop the "Elixir of Immortality."
The formula of the elixir was classified to this day, but its miraculous properties were known to everyone.
The elixir granted the person who drank it biological immortality, which was able to save his life from the hardships of aging and deadly diseases.
With his discovery he forced mankind to make a step towards chaotic "Era of immortal people", at first everything was fine, everyone could become immortal, immortal became, dozens, hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands.
Then came the bloody war whose motives no one can remember, then Lin Wang Yang went into hiding for many years, in order to hide the recipe from the whole world, and get rid of the scrutiny of the various special services.
Even then it became clear to everyone that humanity is rolling into the abyss and that people needed to limit the birth rate, but only after four hundred years of endless wars for a place under the sun, and long demagoguery on the subject of overpopulation, people have finally decided, but it was too late, the once frightening number of 8 billion turned into 30 billion and the overdue at this point the problems have already begun to show themselves.
The lack of resources, the endless decline of GDP, and the constant growth of crime had driven the rulers of this world to a deadlock, it was time to take extreme measures.
States around the world have tightened their laws for immortals and mortals, they have brought back the death penalty: if you steal, you execute, if you cause a brawl in a bar, you execute, and so on...
Immortals who did not contribute enough to society were forbidden to have children; if they did have a child, the punishment was the death of both parents, the child was taken to a specialized orphanage and was legally forbidden to have children in the future. For 100 years, ordinary people and immortals hated each other. Chaos seemed to fall into disrepair.
Immortals hated mere mortals for the fact that they could have children and the law was not so harsh on them.
And mere mortals hated immortals for the fact that they were immortal after all, what to say, such a rarity as the elixir of immortality after 500 years had too high a price, there was no legal way to get it. Mortals driven mad by their powerlessness went to criminals who traded captive immortals as sex toys.
A strange joke of fate, or an idea of the creator of the elixir of immortality.
The elixir was used to make a pure-blooded immortal, and the immortal's genetic code had a gene embedded in it that could be passed on to offspring, but only if the immortal was pure-blooded.
Mudbloods, the result of a crossbreed between mortals and immortals. They were immortal but could not have immortal offspring, which made them stand out from the masses, and of course were reviled in both circles.
Mortals hated them out of envy and immortals hated them for their kinship with mortals.
All in all, it is a strange and cruel world, where the human race is rapidly descending into the abyss on its own initiative.