A megastructure lost to the ages, or what was left of it. Ruins whose scale exceeded tens of thousands of square kilometers. They were hidden deep beneath layers of concrete, so deep that the sun's rays from the surface of the earth could not reach them.
This hidden from prying eyes ancient monster bore the rather affectionate name Ringpit, given to it by the underside living in its womb.
"Ringpit."
Ringpit had the absurd shape of a hollow doughnut-shaped tunnel.
Once upon a time in the distant past, this man-made monster was built with the hope of saving the past world. When building it, the architects were guided by the goal of creating a city-colony capable of living autonomously underground for several hundred years; there were: artificial nature reserves, water treatment plants, industrial plants, working cities and four large-scale GeoTES.
With the onset of endless wars, humanity forgot about this Mega-Structure.
When light left this subterranean oasis, shadows appeared, and over time they swept over this cesspool and covered it in impenetrable darkness.
The people who found the forgotten heritage settled here, enchanted by the simplicity of this world.
Decades after the discovery of the Megastructure, the glare of neon signs and the light of streetlights became the only source of light in this hole. The ugly houses, hastily built by the hands of sinners, now towered over the once fertile soil of this land, which had been abandoned by the invasion of the sun.
Now the place belonged to the underside, and the people who had seen Ringpit as a gold mine had settled here, considering it their own home.
....
Ringpit. Western Region. Grimm City.
Drunks and losers hid in brothels and bars from the torrential rains. For four or five days it rained hard and cold, so hard that roofs, windowsills, and umbrellas glistened like gutters, illuminated in the dark by the headlights of passing cars.
It was clear from the tightly boarded-up windows of the apartment buildings just how welcoming the locals were.
Here, underground, there were no notions of day and night, of good and evil... Darkness always reigned here, which oozed inky blood from the wounds of the city's alleys. From above, it looked like a sleeping monster whose flesh was woven of concrete and rotten wires, and through which drunken fleas and decaying parasites ran.
Futuristic brothels and bars, warehouses and high-rise buildings sprawled across the stinking city named Grimm.
The long-running autonomous irrigation system for the crops sometimes malfunctioned and changed its intensity, direction, and temperature. Sometimes it rained boiling boiling water mixed with chemicals from the sky of the Ringpit, and sometimes icicles fell on the heads of the unfortunates.
Such things were called the rainy season here.
Now it was thrashing with icy daggers, with the frequency of a machine-gun round.
The darkness that had swallowed the streets without a trace was obliterated by the glare of gunfire and the noise of the chase.
A streetlight at the edge of the road, along with clogged gutters, plucked a chunk of wet asphalt from the dark mass peeking out from behind the corner of the concrete wall of the apartment building.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a black car came flying at him with a deafening screech of tires, sliding down the wet road on a curve.
The car, riddled with gunfire, appeared to be a wild mustang. Unaware of the obstacles in front of it, the metal horse sped into the darkness like a mortally wounded beast fleeing into its lair.
The man behind the wheel, sweating nervously, glanced frantically at his partner, who was bleeding out in the front seat.
- "Bitch! This wasn't supposed to happen, Gil! Your fucking mouth! What the fuck did you sign us up for?!" - The driver cursed loudly, nervously shifting his gaze between the dark road and his pale partner.
- "Too late to whine, Lucas. We've got the cargo," Gil shifted his gaze from his stomach wound to the backseat, where the naked guy in handcuffs was passed out, "all that's left is to get to the rendezvous point... that's where it all ends."
- "Can your buddies get us out of this asshole?"
- "Yeah, they can do it, they're part of the Black Perch."
- "The Black Perch?! How does a simple smuggler have ties to such bastards?"
- "Just don't call them that in front of them... or you won't be able to collect yourself later."
Lucas swallowed nervously, remembering who these guys were.
"The Black Perch," a violent criminal organization whose tentacles had long since spread throughout the ring. "The Black Perch and its brood devour anything, anything that can bring in easy money.
Murder for hire, pimping, looting, kidnapping, robbery, selling and producing drugs...
These bastards had no regard for human life.
All the brothels and bars in the eastern region of the Ring Pit are adorned with neon signs depicting this devilish fish.
«People saying they even have connections in New London."
With a shudder, he remembered the rumors he had heard about this organization.
- "These guys are pretty reliable... when you're useful to them."
- "Are we useful?" - Lucas asked wryly.
- "Of course we're fucking useful, look at our catch," Gil replied without a backward glance, as if to clarify the obvious.
Lucas glanced in the rearview mirror and immediately calmed down.
They'd gotten the real immortal! And a purebred, too!
It had cost the lives of two of his comrades, but he was willing to pay that price. In their world, immortals were like chickens, capable of laying golden eggs forever for their masters. Who wouldn't want eternal life, hell with eternal life, who wouldn't want easy money?
- "How much do you think we'll get paid for it?" - Lucas asked cautiously, watching the glare of the raindrops flying in front of him on the road.
- "Considering the chase on our tail, plus my gut, the commission and the extra cost..."
- "Just say it already," Lucas interrupted him impatiently.
- "We'll have enough money to support all the whores of the eastern region for a few years!" - Gil laughed when he said this, but then a grimace of pain appeared on his face.
- "A loud statement."
- "-" "Chill the fuck out, we've got an immortal in the back seat!" - shouted Gil.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
There was a loud sound of gunshots, and the pursuers appeared behind their wounded horse.
A string of four cars, Lucas sighed nervously as he spotted them.
- "Those bastards won't let us off that easy!"
They followed them across the Grimm to retrieve the stolen goods, Lucas had a bad feeling.
- "They'll let us go, Lucas, we've got to get away from the chase first... "When you see a rotten tree in the road, turn off the headlights and interior lights, then step on the gas."
- "What?!" Lucas was dumbfounded by the idea. - "That's completely insane! You can't see anything there at all!"
The road ahead was obscured by darkness and led to the border of the Western Region.
- "Calm down, I know these places like the back of my hand, I can walk here even with my eyes closed." - Gil said affirmatively.
- "I fucking can't! I can't!" - Lucas resented.
- "You can. You have to. Just trust me and do all my commands as I tell you!" - Gil raised his voice and reassured him.
- " Fuck!" - Lucas cursed as he saw the rotten tree.
They were now entering the dense forest that was the barrier between the western and northern regions.
Quickly turning off the headlights and lights, he pressed the gas pedal to the floor, and an impenetrable darkness engulfed them at breakneck speed.
The rain drummed against the windshield, the sound and the roar of the engine under the hood stirring the blood in Lucas's veins along with a shot of adrenaline.
- "Just a little more..." - came Gil's concentrated voice next to Lucas, who was now imagining a map of a dense forest with a narrow strip of road in the middle.
- "Don't slow down! Turn left on three! One!"
Hearing this, Lucas gripped tighter into the leather-wrapped steering wheel and strained to the limit all his senses. He could have sworn it was as if time had slowed down around him!
Gil's voice echoed in his mind.
- "Two!"
"For fuck's sake!" - Lucas could have squealed in anger, but he was so focused he was ready to die of a heart attack at any moment. His eyes were ready to jump out of their orbits and his skin was oozing cold sweat like blood from lacerations.
The steering wheel creaked under the pressure of his dead grip.
- "Three!"
At this point his mind was clear, and now he was ready to die.
A sharp turn of the steering wheel, the sliding creak of tires on wet asphalt, and the dim light of distant headlights in the side window.
Gil slammed into the side door, and Lucas froze in place, hurtling into the darkness. He knew what was waiting for him there, but he didn't care now.
The car rattled and began bouncing on bumps, letting him know that they had gone off the road into the woods, and now only a miracle could save them from colliding with one of the stony trees in the driftwood.
- "To the right!"
"Bitch," Lucas thought, jerking the steering wheel sharply to the side.
- "Turn that fucking engine off!" - Shouted Gil.
It didn't take Lucas long to turn off the engine.
"Click."
Silence filled the interior of the car. Lucas' consciousness began to clear. Now he could hear Gil's ragged breathing next to him and the sniffing of the immortal who had fallen to the mats behind him.
- "Are we hiding?" - he asked quietly.
- "Yes, I remembered there was supposed to be a tall boulder here, so we took shelter here for a while," Gil replied quietly, holding onto the newly opened wound on his stomach. - "All we have to do is wait it out, they're about to pass us further down the road."
- " Fucking hell, Gil, you fucking wizard! How did we even survive doing such an idiotic thing!"
- "It's just that I was once in a southern region where I had a UE-CNS chip implanted..." -said he and paused to catch his breath, then continued- "Haven't you ever noticed how quickly I come up with such brilliant plans in such a short period of time?" - Gil said with a chuckle.
- "All this time I thought you were just talented at it. Motherfucker, it turns out it's a fucking processor. Although... that's even better."
- "Exactly," Gil concluded smugly.
- "What's next?"
- "Next, turn on the backlight for a minute," Gil said hurriedly.
Lucas flicked the toggle switch and turned on the light, a pale Gil was drenched in his own blood.
- "Is the field medic's kit in the glove compartment like it always is?"
- "А... yeah, sure. I'll wait," Lucas said with a smile and turned away.
Gil pulled out a needle and thread and two large syringes from the glove compartment.
One contained a few cc's of adrenaline and the other was filled to the brim with whiskey.
Gil injected the adrenaline into his neck and poured a portion of the whiskey into his mouth. Meanwhile, Lucas quietly opened the window and smoked.
A few minutes later, Gil stitched himself up like a skilled seamstress without uttering a sound.
"Fucking filthy," Lucas concluded mentally, not holding back a smirk.
He knew something of Gil's backstory, namely that as a child he had been a "calf" on a certain "farm" in the southern region. He had immortal blood in his veins, but the difference between him and that sleeping guy in the backseat was that he couldn't procreate because of his origins.
Dirty blood was his curse and his blessing at the same time.
"If he were a pureblood he wouldn't have survived here," Lucas finished musing.
- "Let's go out. You drag that guy and I'll lead us through this wilderness."
- "No problem, you're the only one who knows the way anyway" - Lucas knew Gil was going through some trouble right now... in the area of his stomach, several centimeters in diameter.
Together they got out of the car.
Gil walked ahead of the group with the flashlight while Lucas dragged the sleeping immortal on his back. The sound of raindrops hitting the green leaves of the trees like a drummed skin, and the dark silhouettes of the tall trees formed a sad atmosphere that encrusted their bodies with gooey tar.
After a few minutes of wandering, Gil led them to a hidden forest path.
In silence they walked some distance together and then stopped abruptly.
The deafening noise of babbling water.
- "There's a river up ahead?! Gil what the fuck?" - A drenched Lucas wondered what was going on.
- "Okay. It must have fucking happened because of this downpour! There was a little stream you could've crossed in one go! The river must have overflowed!" shouted Gil, thinking of a logical explanation as he went along.
- "And do what?" - Lucas asked perplexed.
- "We still have to go through it! They're already waiting for us on the other side! If we're late, we'll get in trouble!" - Shouted Gil, himself not believing what he was saying.
It was clear at once that this river, only a few meters wide, was as furious as a water snake.
Upstream it was picking up all kinds of debris that could knock them off their feet and loop them downstream at any moment.
What about the riverbed... Gil didn't know its depths.
- "Let's go!" - said Lucas as he walked past Gil, who was frozen in thought.
-"..." Seeing his partner's back, he decided to follow him after all.
"Fuck!" - shouted in his head as Gil stepped into the icy water.
The water at the edge of the bank was already up to his knees, and he felt its strong pressure, knowing that further - worse.
The deafening noise of the rain, the rustle of the forest, and the shimmering sound of the water below, made Gil feel cold in his stomach.
It was as if a whole lump of ice had been shoved in there.
A bad feeling rose up the walls of his throat and lodged itself in a lump.
Ahead Lucas took a few more steps and now stood waist-deep in the riverbed.
Gil fearfully took another step forward.
Suddenly he could hear, through the noise around him, muffled explosions coming from somewhere upstream. Pointing a streak of light in the direction of these sounds he saw a monster flying into them downstream.
"For fuck's sake!" - was their last thought before they were both swept away by the big log.
Their bodies, along with the immortal, were carried somewhere downstream.
Darkness reigned again where they had crossed the river, through which the sound of rushing water and the creaking of trees dancing in the darkness could be heard.
....
The gray December sky brightened.
A sunless winter morning.
A deserted highway somewhere in the middle of nowhere. A car parked on the side of the road, and two men looking off into the distance, along the road.
Gris stood quietly on the side of the road beside Michael, smoking a cigarette.
- You've changed a lot," Michael began abruptly.
He hadn't expected to see Gris today, and he hadn't expected him to be so... Tough, or something.
- It takes a rock not to change in a hundred years.
- " Yes, of course, don't you want to tell me what happened to you? Where all those scars and that dead fish look came from."
- "I see you're still the same as before, a tongue without bones and not a drop of self-preservation instinct."
- "Immortality is exhausting if you can't even say what you want to say."
- " The point is that the life of a traitor has no purpose, Michael. Tell me, are you still a virgin?"
- "Fuck you, Gris."
- "Ahhhh, really."
- "... Then I didn't betray you."
- "You expect me to believe that?" - Gris asked with a chuckle, climbing into the car.
- "I don't give a shit, you just look like you ate a sea of shit," Mikey muttered to himself as he got into the driver's seat.
Even though he was joking, Michael knew for a fact that Gris really did have to drain that sea.
Gris had chewed his way out of the bowels of the earth and escaped from the underworld.
Las Foli, where he now resided, compared to the place he had found himself at the beginning of his journey outside the walls of New London, seemed like a playground with crazy kids with strawberry lollipops, a place filled with rainbows and green leprechauns.
- "You're just an asshole. Michael, let's stop somewhere now before we drive into New London," Gris said aloofly.
- "Where to?" .
- "Here are the coordinates." - He pulled out his phone and showed Michael the route coordinates.
He checked them and grinned nervously.
- " The wasteland? What are you want to doing on a vacant lot anyway?" - Mikey resented.
- "Got to grab something and leave something behind..." - Gris replied cryptically.
- "Okay, 'less you know, stronger something there,' but you could have told me that before, now we have to make a detour to get there."
- " Let's just go." - Gris said, making it clear he didn't want to continue this conversation.
Michael entered the coordinates into the steering panel and drove off.
Pulling out his phone, he began to check the news feed, the event that had happened the previous night was splashing with yellow headlines.
Gris, on the other hand, watched out the window as the trees whizzed past them.
Now memories were surfacing in his mind from the back of his mind that he had not resisted. He quietly indulged in nostalgic reminiscences of the old days.
.....
The thunderous creaking of cables against Ringpit's concrete slabs was heard everywhere.
His iron cage, suspended at the very end of the cable, slowly descended into the hellish abysses surrounded by darkness.
"They're already waiting for me..." - mentally grinned Gris.
Somewhere far below him, the sounds of gunshots and death cries could be heard distantly.
The locals had set up a bloodbath in which the winner would be rewarded with the half-dead immortal that he was.
"Damn hypocrites and traitors!" Inside himself he was angry, but his anger was not directed at those waiting for him below, no. He hated with all his being those who brushed him off when he needed the support of those closest to him the most. A lousy and completely rotten system grinded his bones, crushing and pulverizing them into dust, before spitting him out into the fringes of existence.
Exhausted and exhausted by endless torture, he began to lose consciousness before he could even reach the depths where he had been so welcomed.
He knew he probably wouldn't wake up from this dream, because the people below only wanted his lineage, not himself.
This place was filled with thieves, murderers, drug dealers, rapists. This place was more like a junkyard, filled to the brim with criminals of all stripes. Here he would be clothed as a helpless slave, his flesh branded and his identity erased.
He will become a shadow of himself, losing all ability to think.
An empty shell of an immortal, neither living nor dead.
It would be his infinitely long nightmare from which he would never awaken.
Though he was scared, he could not resist the pull that pulled his consciousness to the depths.
His eyelids closed one last time, his body went limp, and he fell into the arms of sleep.
.....
Betsy stopped in front of a ramshackle house in the middle of a vacant lot on the outskirts of the old town.
Michael and Gris got out of the car, Gris sighed wearily and slowly began to walk around the building.
- "Aren't we going inside?"
- "A little later, I have to visit someone."
- " ... "
In silence they walked around the house and out into the courtyard.
A branchy tree, in the crown of which, at the very roots, stood a worn tombstone.
The slab was unengraved and unsigned.
An overgrown, nameless grave and a ramshackle old house.
Michael remotely began to understand where he was going.
Gris slowly approached the tree, leaving Michael behind, and without much thought, he knelt pacifically before the gravestone.
He bowed deeply and said.
- "Hello, old man..." - a quiet greeting escaped his lips.
.....
A dream without dreams. Consciousness dissolves like cigarette smoke, you fall into nothingness, a veil of darkness envelops you.
You see the world differently now, as if from the bottom of a well filled with viscous oil.
Your face is the only thing that rises above the level of the water in this well.
You are like an insect in amber, buried underground by the effects of time.
You are in perpetual anticipation of something, knowing that you will never get it.
Your mind is consumed by silence and powerlessness, in total darkness.
A sticky sensation gripped his time-shattered body.
Indefinitely long, slowly plunging into the depths, he still felt panic.
He could no longer remember when or for what reason his struggle with this disgusting place began, but he simply could not stop, for when he stopped, his identity would be erased and he would surrender to oblivion.
As soon as his feet touched the hard bottom of the well, something terrible would happen.
With every second of the struggle, with every swing of his arm, he became more and more exhausted.
After an unknown amount of time, he began to hear an indecipherable whisper. A voice was calling to him, cutting through the silence of the place. The voice came from somewhere overhead, and each time it grew louder and clearer. When it became deafeningly loud, Gris was finally able to make it out.
- "Take it easy, boy, you're safe," came an elderly voice.
Hearing it, Gris unknowingly broke free from the oily grip, and then his body flew upward.
A small dot of dim light turned into a blinding peace in his eyes after a while.
He felt pain, pain that made it clear to him that he was alive.
When his eyes adjusted, he saw an old gray-haired man beside him.
-"..." - Gris didn't know what to say, or rather, he didn't even remember what to say or how to say it.
- "You won't be back on your feet anytime soon, why don't you listen to this old man's story? In return, I'll pay you back with a nice meal and a bed for the night?" - The old man gave him a warm smile.
Warm tears unknowingly flowed from Gris' eyes.
.....
- "I'll have to go back to New London, I probably won't be able to visit you anymore..."
A lone tear, filled with longing, fell from his face and soaked greedily into the grave earth. Gris rose to his feet and looked thoughtfully at the tree before him. The image of the old man sitting in the shade of the tree, hiding from the hot summer sun, exactly as he remembered it, arose in his mind.
Removing the pendant from his neck, he hung it on a random branch.
Turning his back on the tombstone, he staggered toward the house.
- "Go back to the car, I'll be there soon."
- "Won't you tell me who's buried here?"
- "An old friend," Gris replied dryly.
- "..." - Michael did not question him further and walked back to the car.
Gris entered the house, the creaking of the boards under his feet made him nostalgic, but he didn't want to indulge in memories now.
He went up to the second floor and through the door into a small room.
A rotten mattress on a rotten bed and a muddy window overlooking the courtyard. Lowering himself to the floor, he peered under the bed and found a box he had once left behind. It was small and not insignificant.
Taking it out, he sat down on the mattress and blew the dust off the lid.
On the mahogany wood, an engraving showed up under a layer of dust.
"Two crescents, two halves of one whole."
Unlocking the latch and lifting the lid of the box, he saw the knives he had once left there.
It was obvious at once that they had been forged by a skilled artisan.
Gris smiled as the white blade in his hands glinted coldly, greeting his master.
Tucking his find under his coat, he left the house and got into car.
- "Can we get back to New London now?" - Michael asked impatiently, expecting the creepy type to want to visit someone's grave again.
Being an immortal living among immortals, Michael didn't know what affection or true intimacy was.
Gris did not even snap at his rudeness.
In his mind, Mikey was still a snot-nosed child who didn't yet know what life represented.
- "Now we can..." - he said.
Those words sent chills running down Michael's spine.
"Really creepy guy," he mentally concluded.
The Gris he had once known no longer existed in this world.
Without a second's thought, Michael jettisoned unnecessary thoughts and entered the appropriate coordinates on the steering panel.
Betsy took off and sped toward New London.