The muffled metallic noise, as if coming from the bottom of a well, was heard as the monotonous blows of a sledgehammer against the steel gate, and was echoed in his mind by growing explosions.
*♪ Boom, boom, boom... ♪
- "Good morning, Michael Brown." - The man said quietly to himself, suddenly awakened in the middle of the night by an unexpected call.
The sight of his room was like a cybernetic capsule from a twentieth century movie, though wait, it was a cybernetic capsule.
With great difficulty, in his sleep, he typed the password on the touch screen embedded in the ceiling of the capsule, and the lid of the coffin opened by itself with a quiet creak, as if he were some vampire from the distant future.
Sluggishly picking up his phone from the plastic nightstand, he looked to see who was calling him at the moment.
When his squinting eyes got used to the bright light of the phone screen he read.
[Bitch-Captain].
*Tsk.
It was the number recorded for Castile Torres, the captain of the investigative unit, and his boss.
Quickly wiping his sleepy eyes, he picked up the phone.
- "Good morning, Captain... What took me so long to pick up the phone? Mmm, I was in the shower... No... I was awake. 2:00 in the morning?! What happened? Suicide? The case, it's understandable... WHAT, WHO-WHO-WHO TO PICK UP?!"
*BEEP
The call was interrupted by the caller, an already awake Michael staring at his phone in bewilderment.
Two obvious questions popped into his muddy head.
"What?"
The bitch had just told him to get out to the old town, San Foli, right away.
"Why?"
She ordered him to pick up some trash from there...
Rising from his bed, he frowned and walked over to the window draped with heavy drapes.
Opening them, Michael frowned and almost immediately gritted his teeth.
"Fucking cold." - He concluded briefly.
Outside the window was a December winter, a starless night. A blizzard roamed the streets, and as if a loving mother had covered New London with a white blanket.
If he had any free time, Michael would make himself a cup of coffee, grab his unread novel from his futuristic restroom, and sit in a chair across from the panoramic window, alternately admiring the views of the sleeping city and immersing himself in his reading.
"Fuck!" - he mentally cursed, pulling out a pair of white socks, then cotton underwear from the underwear drawer.
A few quick, wide steps, and he entered his dressing room.
No Hawaiian shirts or acid T-shirts.
Everything was either black or white, Michael had once been in love with brightly colored clothes long ago, but one hurricane man had changed his preference for this.
Taking a white T-shirt, black pants, a white shirt, a black leather coat, and expensive black shoes, he was surprisingly quick to change.
*Beep.
The frown lines on his face grew even deeper.
A message arrived on his phone, reluctantly checked it and Michael saw the coordinates of the man he'd been sent for, as well as specific instructions and notes. This guy was somewhere in the middle of nowhere, on the outskirts of a junkyard called San Foli.
An unsavory neighborhood, a ghetto, where he could have been killed by the locals, just out of blind hatred for who he was, or worse, kidnapped and turned into an unwilling donor of "immortality."
"Damned mortals," he thought, recalling the incidents of years gone by.
The constant riots, looting, civil wars, endless kidnappings of immortals, hate murders, and more-all that shitty shit was imprinted on his memory tape, and on that black and white tape, any mortal's face was blacker than coffee grounds. They, the immortals, and all of New London, were then destined to clean up this barrel of honey and bucket of shit. To clean it up, along with all the other problems that these greedy, slaughter-hungry pigs had created.
*Bang.
With a loud slam he closed the front door, left the apartment, stepped into a huge elevator, and descended into the garage of the apartment complex.
A few minutes later, the elevator doors opened, and before him stood the insides of the spaceship, the sterile catacombs of the underground parking garage.
Taking the car keys out of his pocket, he flicked the button, then put the keys away and pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. It was a red pack with a picture of a cartoon cowboy smoking a cigarette seductively. They don't make cigarettes like that anymore...
*Shh.
Nothing like having a cigarette when you haven't smoked in a while...
His first puff in years of abstinence. The strangest thing was that he always had his cigarettes with him, even though he had quit smoking a long time ago... as if he knew that one day a sticky fucking day would come knocking on his door... and he'd feel so fucked up that the only possible lifeline at that moment would be his favorite cigarettes...
*Shh.
The first cigarette... is like the first sex. It's always the best, especially for a smoker who has ten years of smoking under his belt and another five years of abstinence... Like an old monk who had come down from the mountains to the countryside, he blew smoke rings into the ceiling, and his face displayed a serenity.
Suddenly the roar of an engine was heard from beyond the horizon of the underground parking lot, and Michael Brown smiled.
A bulky SUV appeared before his eyes, his baby that looked more like an electric shaver than a car. It sounded with a roar of its engine, like a faithful dog greeting its master.
Quickly approaching him, she flashed her headlights, Michael smiled at that and stroked her on the hood.
"Betsy... My baby."
This girl in an all-metal dress had been with him all his long life.
She had once been given to him by his father...
Together they went through a lot of crazy chases, shootings, a lot of hit-and-runs, and... in the end, he loved her.
Putting out his cigarette on the sidewalk, he tossed the butt aside, the car doors raised like the wings of a seabird.
A view of the leather-covered interior opened up, and Michael sat in the driver's seat and began entering data into the touchpad on the steering wheel.
[Autopilot, coordinates - 10-SO-01...]
When he finished entering the coordinates, he leaned back and dozed off.
-Betsy, wake me up when we get there...
The car rumbled approvingly before it started.
The trip to their destination would take them several hours.
A quiet, old man's snore could be heard in the cabin and the lights slowly became dim.
........
The dark skies, covered with heavy snow clouds, shot lumps of snow through the streets of the city. A cold December morning on the outskirts of San Foli, it was even colder on the rooftop of the apartment complex. Shabby, gray skyscrapers, these monsters of the past had a hundred stories in them and looked like jenga towers themselves.
They were scattered all around, a kind of ghetto in which the citizens of the old city lived. It was clear from the shape of the towers that they could go on forever, until the tops of the towers hit the sky.
People wandering the streets of San Foli had to tilt their heads back until their necks hurt just to see a piece of bottomless sky to get a glimpse of the dark, morning sky.
Never mind the rooftops of those humming colossuses.
A naked man of about twenty-five with a pendant around his neck stood knee-deep in snow.
His wiry body was covered with numerous scars, and his emaciated expression and loose eyelids showed that he was exhausted.
His concentrated training on the snow-covered roof had been going on for hours. Resisting the fatigue, he practiced, stumbling, falling, and getting up again to push himself against the walls of his mind once more, until he finally managed to do what he wanted to do. He couldn't remember the last time he ate, or drank, or who he was in this world, what was the world around him anyway?
Emptiness.
He was absorbed in the noise of the icy wind that surrounded him.
Blown around by the icy wind, he made smooth movements with his body with an absent-minded gaze, striking numerous blows through the air as if fighting an unseen foe. He didn't look silly, like a madman, on the contrary, his focused look and fluid movements created the atmosphere of a predator around him, sharpening his claws for the coming hunt.
He looked like a sword sharpened to the point of being unsheathed.
The whistle of the wind resonating with his flesh, no matter how hard he tried, could not restrain his movements.
The man seemed to merge with the violent elements, not so much with nature as with the whole, all-encompassing.
Observing his appearance from the outside, one might have thought he was as ancient a manifestation of existence as the cold and the wind.
Finally, as he struck his final blow, his body froze and became motionless, and his gaze took on a cold glow in the depths. He stared at the door leading to the roof where he was now training.
Through the deafening whirlwind he thought he heard someone's growing footsteps on the stairs.
They were footsteps familiar to him.
*Bang.
The door swung open and a man in his thirties appeared in the opening, irritated, with trembling cheeks and lips and eyes.
- "Gris Moon? What the fuck are you doing on this roof?!" - the man in the expensive coat shouted loudly trying to overcome the noise of the wind.
-"...Michael?" - Gris, was puzzled by the appearance of an old acquaintance, here in San Foley, but he was not happy about it.
- "Yeah, yeah, Michael Brown, long time no see, can we talk somewhere else?" - Mikey wanted to leave the damn place as soon as possible, his car was parked down there, unattended, now he had the feelings of a parent leaving his child in the middle of a slum.
- "What are you missing here?" - Gris lifted his clothes from under the snow and asked him quietly as he dressed.
Hearing this, Mikey became more irritated.
- "Can't we at least go inside?! Or do you want me to freeze my balls off in here? А?! Gricey! Let's go!" - he shouted, pushing him along.
But Gris didn't give a shit about his cries, putting on his pants and throwing his coat over his shoulders he still stood in his place as if he didn't notice the cold around him.
*TCK*.
Michael clicked his tongue, watching the fucker just stare at him.
- "I asked a question," Gris asked, drilling him with a frown.
- "A case has come up, you're obligated to go back to the investigative unit and take part in the investigation. That's management's orders," Mikey gave up and stopped looking like a frozen gopher, the ancient fucker knew that Michael had the same resilience to the cold as he did.
Straightening his back, he stepped out of the doorway onto the snow-covered roof, and walked toward Gris.
- "I see something massive," said Gris, poking around in the pockets of his jacket, looking for something.
- "Yeah, something big has happened..." - Noticing this, Michael pulled out his crumpled pack, and gave him one of his vintage cigarettes.
- "So?" - Smoking, Gris asked.
- "A series of suicides."
- "What?! A series?! Suicides?! In New London?! You're fucking crazy!"
Gris scoffed, showing how disgusted he was with New London.
- Stop being a fucking comedian, it's not funny. You know what I mean. These suicide bombers had something in common, something the top brass picks up losers like you. - Mikey said, stepping away from the cigarette smoke.
- "Yeah, so what, though I don't give a shit... About the main thing, are you still a virgin ? Castile finally found herself a man?!" - Gris asked with a surprised look on his face.
-"... Anyway, we should get going. You're going back to New London, and if you don't, you'll be sentenced to death, and then you know what happens next," said Michael, running his thumb across his neck.
- "And if I don't want to?" - Gris muttered as a smirk appeared on his face.
- "Then fuck you! Stay here and do whatever you want and keep doing what you've been doing. But remember, one day they'll come for you, and it won't be your toothless old town police, it'll be the Punishers," he interrupted his bravado to smoke, and then continued meaningfully. - "And then, you'll be put in a wooden chair, then a wet sponge, a crowd of beer-sucking gawkers, and two million volts hammered into the subcortex of your skull."
Gris let out a cloud of cigarette smoke into the air at this, then looked at Michael with a cold glare and suddenly hit his nose by head.
*Bang.
From the suddenness, Michael didn't have time to react to this blow, and as he backed up, he quickly grabbed his broken nose.
The sharp pain from the morning before, and the warm blood on his hands that splashed from his nose, finally made Michael wake up finally.
He looked at Gris, who was standing over him, with a question in his gaze.
- "Well, if you're done barking loudly you can go back to your mistress, dog," Gris said with the same smirk as he walked past Michael who sitting down in the snow, heading for the stairs leading downstairs.
Michael quickly overcame his confusion and remembered the message Castile had sent him.
- "Wait! I haven't said yet that Castile offered you a deal! She wrote that she would review some case! She wrote that you would understand right away! - Mumbled Michael loudly with a broken nose."
The harsh words, after which Gris stopped, turned around, and walked quickly toward him.
His cruel expression, and the lowered fists frozen near Michael's face made him wary.
- "... That was a good place to start. Betsy's downstairs, isn't she?"
Gris walked silently off the roof, imagining the face of the man who wouldn't let him go, dragging him back to the hell from which he had once been banished.
Yes, he didn't like New London, and not without reason; that blindingly gray city had left many more scars on his body than it might seem.
Michael followed him out and started down the stairs of the skyscraper, as the two of them walked down different people came running up to Gris.
"Who's that?" Michael was puzzled.
The thugs that approached Gris looked like typical criminals: tattoos, stateliness, stern looks, and of course incredible ugliness.
Gris didn't stop to make random remarks to which they nodded nervously and walked away.
After walking a hundred floors due to an inoperable elevator they finally made it to the street.
- Get in the car, I'll tell you about the case," Michael said, watching the thoughtful expression on Gris's face.
Gries came over and patted the old Betsy on the hood, and her engine rumbled like a kitten.
Michael took notice, he clicked his tongue in annoyance, but said nothing.
Betsy trusted Gris as much as she trusted Michael.
Together they got in the car and drove toward the rising sun, the horizon beyond which the high black walls could be seen made Griese wistful.
Those walls were the bold line drawn by the mayor of New London between poor and rich, mortal and immortal.
He willingly shifted his gaze from the walls to the shimmering vistas of Las Foley's skyscrapers; in the time he had spent here in exile he had changed, changed greatly.
Gris was reminded of echoes from the distant past.
A time when there were no concrete hives that made the sky blind, a time when there was no division between mortals and immortals, a time when machines were machines and not electric shavers... 500 years ago there was none of this, and life seemed so much easier to him than it is now.
- All the people on our suicide list, and there are about a thousand of them, got the message a few minutes before they died - Michael began to bring him up to speed.
Gris reluctantly turned to him, even though he hated Michael until his teeth ached, he hated remembering his past even more.
- What was that message.
- "The gates are open, have you heard of it? But who am I to ask, you've been decomposing in this dump for years.
- The junkyard is New London. - Gris said affirmatively, looking coldly into Michael's eyes, as if to say that he would not tolerate direct insults in his direction.
- What?! Did you just call the capital of the world a dump, you?! New London is not a dump, and you're not part of it, remember that, Gris, and don't talk that crap when we get to town, you know what they'll do to you for saying that. - Michael focused on the road didn't even notice that look.
- You're such a brat, Mikey... your daddy didn't raise you that way," Gris said with a chuckle, sitting comfortably in his seat and turning to the window.
- Gris Moone, knock it off.
"Still a sore subject," Gris noted in his head, watching Michael's darkened face in the reflection.
- ...
- ...
The car became quiet, but it wasn't an awkward silence; they both needed to think. Michael was thinking about closing the case and getting some sleep, and Gris was thinking about the days when he was still a lieutenant in the New London Police Department.