Somewhere, there is a mountain of pure diamond. It takes an hour to climb and an hour to walk around.
Every hundred years, a little bird sharpens its beak on the mountain.
And when the whole mountain has been chiselled away, then the first second of eternity will have passed.
You may think that's a hell of a long time.
But personally, I think that's a hell of a bird.
For as long as he could remember, Lan had lived in its shadow. So did everything else, of course, but as he glared at the monolith that towered over the very earth itself; he couldn't help hating it. He tore his gaze away from the bridge and shook his head, reminding himself that it was impossible to do what needed to be done. He was weak and helpless, just like so many before him.
Someone walked past him on the street, an armoured shoulder slamming into his chest and sending him sprawling. "Hey…" The shout died in his throat.
A huge man loomed over him, the shadow of the bridge behind him. The man grunted and walked away, not even bothering to interact with someone so far beneath him. Anger burned in Lan's chest, but he smothered it. It was anger that got people killed. Careful, excruciating planning was what kept him alive. He couldn't afford to be rash or impulsive, and starting a fight with a pathfinder was a surefire way to get himself killed.
Everyone had a story, a tragedy, really. A sorry tale of how a pathfinder had hurt or killed someone they knew. One wrong word and a pathfinder could lash out and rip out your heart. It's not like there was anyone who could stop them.
He stopped himself; that line of thought always brought his gaze back to the bridge, which relit the burning fire in his chest. And he couldn't afford to lose his cool today; he needed to remain calm.
Honestly, he didn't know if his plan would work or was even possible. But he needed to try; every day that passed where he lived in fear was excruciating. He felt like a rat in a maze, searching for the cheese pathfinders deigned to hide for him.
But today was different; he had found a way out.
Running over the plan in his head, a wave of nausea overwhelmed him; all the pieces made sense. It just remained to be seen whether or not those pieces fit together.
The backpack he was wearing felt heavy, weighed down by the knowledge he was carrying everything he and his family had ever owned in there. Not literally, of course, but he had no choice but to sell everything he owned to buy what was in his pack.
Picking himself off the ground, he glared at the back of the enormous pathfinder and blended back into the crowd, joining the stream of people that flowed towards the city centre, the gate, and the bridge.
No matter how much he hated it, the bridge had become central to every aspect of human life. It gave resources, strength, eternal life, wealth and opportunity. Not to him, of course, but others undoubtedly benefited from it. He didn't fully understand how it did any of that, even after studying the bridge for years. The government locked all information on the bridge tightly and only let those they trusted or could control have the key.
Lan was neither. He had failed to enter an academy at 10 years old, he was talented at physical combat, but his psyche evaluation doomed him. He had been identified as uncontrollable. The powers that be wouldn't have minded so much if he was a maniac they could control, but if he was just a maniac, they weren't about to give him access to superpowers. A decision that Lan could understand, despite hating it. He certainly didn't have good intentions of entering the bridge.
The problem was that far worse people than him got accepted into the academies, far worse people got superpowers, and far worse people than him ran the government.
He was getting side-tracked, pulled along with the flow of the foot traffic. Shaking his head to clear it, he looked out for the approaching gate and, when he saw it, stepped into a coffee shop just before the turn.
The hustle and bustle were gone the second he stepped off the street, replaced by soft music and a peaceful atmosphere. It smelled like old wood and coffee. Walking up to the till, he noticed the price of the coffee and winced. '80 credits! That's what I earn in a week,' he gritted his teeth as he paid and sat down in a supremely comfortable leather chair by the window. It was perfect. From here, Lan could see when the new arrivals showed up.
From where he was sitting, he had a direct sightline to the bridge and one of the massive buildings beneath it.
Specifically, the building he watched was the smallest and least impressive of the cluster, standing almost a kilometre tall and built from white marble. While that might sound daunting, compared to some others, it was nothing. The tallest building of the bunch, the pathfinder headquarters, was almost 5 kilometres tall and half a mile wide, entirely hewn from some grey-black mineral that glittered slightly in direct sunlight.
Today, he needed to get into the smallest building. Built for new arrivals from the academies, this building was where everyone entered the bridge for the first time, and today, whether or not the government allowed him, the young man was going to do just that.
He looked down at his battered old watch. The black plastic was scratched in so many places it was a wonder the thing still worked. "Five minutes," he mumbled after checking the time. Now that it was so close, his heart was beginning to pound. He had nothing to lose, but somehow, he was still terrified. He had seen the wrath of a pathfinder before and knew just how dangerous his plan could be.
Gritting his teeth, he steeled himself and grabbed his backpack, bringing it to the coffee shop's toilet. On his way, he noticed more than a few people sitting in seats near him that looked distinctly suspicious. Their gazes were shifty and nervous, all trained in the same building he had been in.
'So, I'm not the only person to come up with the idea of breaking in,' The young man mused, stepping into the bathroom and immediately opening his bag.
'Good, they should be an excellent decoy,' He brought out plastic bags and waterproof trousers from his backpack, putting on the trousers and stuffing the bags into his pockets. Then, he closed the backpack tightly, making sure to seal it and looked up at the bathroom window. It was small, but he could fit, if only just.
Over the past month, he had visited every coffee shop and restaurant on this street, and this was the only window he found that he could squeeze out of. Throwing the backpack out first, he wriggled through the window, glad for once that he was so skinny. If he wasn't, there's no way he would have fit. He tumbled into the gated alleyway at the shop's side, the street's hustle and bustle a distant light at the end of a dark tunnel. Grabbing the backpack from where it landed, he ran back into the alley, scouring the ground for a manhole cover.
Soon enough, he found one and immediately came across his first problem. It was locked, and a thick metal bolt ran across it. Smiling evilly, he reached into his bag and brought a glass vial filled with neon orange liquid. This little vial had cost him half his life savings, but not without reason.
It was made from a strange opaque material, and despite looking like glass, it was incredibly strong. Even if Lan jumped on the vial, it wouldn't break. He had bought it from the black market, and although you could never really trust anything you bought from there to work perfectly, he had faith that this was the real deal. After a week of research, he had figured out he needed something corrosive, and it needed to be at least D-rank if he wanted it to burn through anything inside the new-arrivals building.
This vial was filled with venom from a D-rank Fire Adder, and when he had seen it appear on the black-market last month, he jumped for joy.
Carefully, he dripped a single drop of the venom onto each end of the bolt and listened to the glorious sizzle the metal made as the orange liquid ate through it. While waiting for that to finish, he brought out the plastic bags from earlier and tied them around his feet while placing his rucksack into another one. He needed everything to be waterproof where he was going.
Eventually, the manhole stopped smoking, and the bolt was ruined. The venom had eaten clean through it and burned a few feet into the ground. He marvelled at the terrifying power a few drops of venom could have from a mere D-rank creature. 'Imagine if I had gotten that on my skin,' He shuddered at the thought. With a grunt, he bent down and hoisted the cover-up, slipping beneath it and climbing down the metal rungs in the wall to the sewer below.
The smell hit him first, a rotten stench that made it difficult to breathe, almost suffocating him. He had been expecting the sewer to reek, so it wasn't a surprise. It's just that knowing and experiencing are two different things altogether.
Wishing he had brought something to plug his nose, he sped up as he walked through the dark tunnel, only lit by a faint strip of neon light that ran along the centre of the ceiling. As he walked, he took himself through the next step of his plan. It was by far the most dangerous but also the most important. It would have been easy if he could just climb up into the alley beside the new arrivals building and then sneak in, but if nobody had tried that before, he would lick the shoes he was walking in.
Someone would be posted there on such an important day, the children of the academies were the lifeblood of the pathfinders, and they were protected fiercely.
No, he needed to think outside the box. So, he walked by the ladder leading up to the alley beside the new arrivals building, continuing to the next ladder that led up to an even bigger building.
It was suicidal, he knew it was, trying to sneak into the new arrivals building through the E-Rank headquarters. His whole plan relied on it being so suicidal that no one would ever think to do it, and thus it wouldn't be defended against. It was dangerous because while the new arrivals building housed G and F Ranks, the E-Rank headquarters contained E and D ranks.
While the difference between an average human and an F rank is vast, it is nowhere near the cataclysmic gap between a mortal and a D-rank.
Any person in that building could sneeze, and he would die.
But he had already made up his mind, and something like death wouldn't stop him, not when he'd come this far. His father had used to say, 'Don't stop when you're dead. Stop when you're done,' and he lived by that mantra. He clenched his jaw and climbed the ladder up to the street, each rung brought him closer to death, but he kept going, dragging himself up one step at a time.
Reaching up, he pushed at the manhole, but it didn't budge, locked from the other side like the first one.
Expecting this to be the case, he reached into the bag, bringing out the glass vial full of venom and a long thin piece of glass that looked like a straw. He placed the straw into the vial and sucked out a drop of venom, allowing the orange liquid to hang out the end of the straw precariously. 'If this fall's on me...'
Tracing around the edge of the manhole with the straw, he left a sizzling trail of the venom all around its circumference and then quickly backed off down the ladder, not wanting any of it to fall and land on him.
With a bang that stopped his heart, the manhole fell into the sewer, and all he could do was pray nobody up above had heard the racket.
He climbed halfway back up the ladder and stopped, taking off the waterproof trousers covered in muck and removing the plastic bags he had tied around his shoes,
Steeling himself, he took a deep breath and climbed into the alley above. He was wearing cheap leather armour that even a G-Rank would be embarrassed to be seen in public with, but he needed to look the part.
Hopefully, from a distance, nobody would realise he wasn't a pathfinder… hopefully.
The first thing that struck him about the alley was that it was precisely the same as the one beside the coffee shop, if a little cleaner. He wasn't sure what he had been expecting, but Lan supposed he had thought the alley would be… fancier.
Shaking his head, he looked up at the towering building beside him, a massive monolith of steel and cement, a monument to the combined technological might of humanity. If he wanted to see the top, he needed to crane his neck almost ninety degrees, and even then, the building seemed to stretch forever into the sky. Swallowed by distant clouds. It was dwarfed by the bridge, of course, but so was everything, and he didn't like looking at the bridge. Even if its shadow loomed over him at this very moment.
At the end of the alley, he saw an open door that led into the building. From within, curse words flew, and people screamed vicious slurs at each other.
'The kitchen doesn't change no matter where you are,' Lan thought with a grin. Having worked as a bellhop in a crummy hotel for most of his life, he had plenty of experience dealing with insane chefs.
He reached into his bag and brought out a white robe that the chefs in this building wore, slipping it on over his armour and striding towards the backdoor purposefully. As long as he looked like he belonged here, Lan shouldn't get asked too many questions, especially if he looked like a chef that would scream at you for the slightest mistake. Which they were known to do.
He looked rather uncomfortable in the white robe, skinny and gaunt. If anyone looked even remotely close, they would notice he was extremely young, only around 18 years old. But he hoped they wouldn't, not if he acted the part anyway.
Striding into the kitchen, he did his best to look furious, scowling like a thundercloud was hovering overhead. His fists clenched, and his jaw set grimly. Lan power-walked through the back of the kitchen towards the exit.
A few people looked confused about where exactly he had come from, but noticing his fury, they decided it wasn't worth the hassle of getting screamed at and left him be, sending out a prayer to the unlucky soul he was about to berate.
He left the kitchen, leaving the heat and noise behind and stepped into one of the maintenance hallways the workers used to get around the building without being noticed by the pathfinders.
Apparently, pathfinders would rather not have to look at the people catering to their every need. He supposed they were too busy trying to get the stick out of their ass.
Making a beeline for the toilet, he strode inside, stripped off the robe, and got back into his leather armour. Only this time, he took out a neon orange workers jacket and a clipboard, donning it and walked out of the room after smearing some dirt on his face.
As he walked down the maintenance hallway, he looked intently interested in the piece of paper on the clipboard, which was actually just a menu he had grabbed from the coffee shop.
He made it to the end of the corridor and pushed open a heavy steel door, finding himself in a vast car park, countless exotic car models that probably cost more than his old family home were parked there, gathering dust.
It was a tiered car park that went halfway up the side of the building. Apparently, most pathfinders were rich enough to have one, if not multiple, cars; for the most part, they kept them here.
Checking that the coast was clear, he noticed a few people washing an already sparkling sports car and slipped back into the shadow of a thick pillar, making sure they hadn't seen him.
He crouched down and began to creep through the gathered cars, making sure to stay out of sight. He was heading towards the open end of the giant structure that faced out onto the New Arrivals building.
When he peered out, he saw another car park beside him. It was slightly smaller, but then, so was the New Arrivals building It belonged to.
Looking up, he guessed how far the distance between them was, maybe 10 meters, and decided he would need to go to the 15th floor if he was going to make the jump.
Behind the car parks, he noticed long roads stretching off towards the foot of the bridge, cars flying up and down the road constantly, some moving so quickly they were little more than a blur.
While the city had been built around the bridge, it couldn't be too close. It wasn't safe. No one was safe near the bridge. Or so the government said.
He rechecked his watch, and ten excruciatingly short minutes had passed. Usually, the induction ceremony took half an hour, giving him only twenty minutes to find his way over to the new arrivals building and find the busses.
Grinning wildly, he relished the challenge. It was hard but not impossible. He could see the path forward and knew the only thing standing between him and what he wanted was a ten-meter gap between two buildings.
Grunting, he picked up his speed, grabbing his clipboard and striding as purposefully as his nerves would allow towards the nearest stairwell the workers used.
Flinging open the door, he began climbing the stairs. His heart was racing now, jackhammering in his chest like a rabbit on crack. He was worried he might collapse from a heart attack before reaching the 15th floor.
'AH! Why don't the service staff have an elevator?' he roared internally, panting as he climbed the never-ending stairs.
Halfway up, he bumped into a group of men wearing hard hats coming the other way. Heart in his throat, he nodded cordially, stepping to the side to let them pass.
"Fuck these stairs, am I right?" One of the men laughed, wiping sweat from his brow.
"You said it," Lan laughed along nervously, his back drenched.
"Where you headed?" Another man in a hard hat asked him.
"15th Floor"
All the men whistled and shook their heads, "Sorry to hear that, buddy. There's some crazy D-Rank on that floor, giving all the workers a hard time. Prick scratched his own car and is trying to blame us for the damages."
"Ha! You'd think a fancy fucking pathfinder could park, eh?" another man chimed in.
Lan thanked them for the information and continued up the stairs, his back slick with sweat. If he had gone to the 15th floor, he would have been screwed.
Thanking his lucky stars, he stopped at the 14th floor and, checking that no one was there, made his way to the far end and out to the edge.
Looking down at the building opposite him, the steep drop made his stomach churn, but that only hardened his resolve.
He reached into his pack and brought out the final thing he had brought. A length of black rope with a simple hook at the end.
Despite looking normal, this rope was even more expensive than the venom for the simple fact that it was extremely tough and had a minor enchantment that allowed it to return to whoever threw it.
He had no idea why someone would sell such an incredible tool, but Lan didn't question his good fortune. At this point, he felt he was owed some good luck.
Squinting, he looked across to the other car park and listened intently. He could hear shouting from above him and winced, knowing that some asshole was making some poor worker's life difficult for no reason other than that he could.
But that was why he was doing this, risking his life to get into the bridge, and spending every penny, his parents left him on some rope and venom.
It had started years ago when his parents died. Every time he looked for something to blame, the colossal shadow of the bridge was there, looming over him.
Everywhere he went, even in his dreams, it was there. Everpresent and indestructible. It took people, and it twisted them into something unrecognisable. He had seen it happen before his own eyes.
Rechecking his watch, he noticed that he only had ten minutes and clenched his fist around the rope, his knuckles turning white.
The hook flew out over the chasm between buildings, and his heart stopped. Watching the single piece of metal that would decide his fate, the world stood still.
It sailed through the air and began to dip, falling forwards and towards the ground. To his dismay, the hook streaked down and clattered against the side of the car park wall, bouncing off ineffectually.
Cursing, he pulled the rope back, rewinding it with the enchantment. This time, he took a few steps back before he threw it, running forward to give the throw more momentum.
Flying through the air, the hook clattered inside the 10th floor of the car park, and he yanked on it feeling it catch on something sturdy.
He tied the rope on his end around a pillar and, seeing that he only had 7 minutes left, burst into a run. In his hand, he held the high-visibility jacket and right before he jumped off the edge of the car park, he looped it over the top of the rope and used it to zipline across.
Wind rushed through his dark hair, blowing it out of his face to reveal the glee in his gloomy eyes. He hadn't felt this excited, this free in a long, long time.
The cold wall of the car park rushed up to meet him, and he let go, tumbling into the tenth floor and rolling to a stop.
He held his breath and prayed no one was there, praying that no one had seen him enter. The shout he was expecting never came, and eventually, he clambered to his feet, wincing slightly at his grazed knee and banged wrist.
Reaching down, he grabbed the end of the rope hooked under the front bumper of an expensive-looking sportscar and pulled it out, thanking the heavens it didn't break.
Activating the enchantment again, the rope unwound itself from the pillar, snaking through the air and into his grip, where he coiled it into a loop. He placed it in his bag and started walking.
Without time to catch his breath, he noticed he only had five minutes left and took off in a run, putting on the high-visibility jacket once again as he did so.
He bounded down the stairwell two steps at a time, checking each floor for buses as he did so. And the closer he got to the bottom, the more nervous he became. What if they were parked on one of the top floors? There were almost 100 levels to this car park, and he would never be able to check all of them in time.
His heart was in his mouth again when he reached the bottom floor. If they weren't here, it was all over.
Reaching out with trembling hands, he pushed open the door and stepped into the car park, more nervous than he had ever been in his entire life.
A tidal wave of relief washed over him when he walked onto the ground floor and saw hundreds of buses packed like sardines into the car park.
They were futuristic, beautiful and sleek in their design, with leather seats and massive tyres for a comfortable ride. Rumour had it that these sorts of buses could take a hit from a missile, and the students still wouldn't be late for school, and now that he saw them, he believed it.
Each bus was painted in bright school colours, with its crest proudly displayed on the side. And each school had tens, some even over one hundred buses.
And, to his delight, the buses lay empty. A few people milled about each one. Presumably, drivers or caretakers, each smoking or chatting, not paying attention to him.
He hid his grin behind his clipboard and marched over to the nearest bus with purpose. Now, more than ever, he needed to look like he belonged here.
Thinking he might stand out near the edges, he strode past the first bus he came across. Heading to one somewhere in the middle of the parking lot where there would be so many people, no one would notice one extra person.
Finally, he arrived at a massive bus with high road clearance. The driver and teachers were chatting on the other side by the bus door, giving him the chance he needed.
Scanning his surroundings, when he was sure nobody was looking, he dropped to his belly and slid under the bus, another moment where he was grateful for his skinny frame.
Thankfully, the bus had offroad tyres and was almost half a metre off the ground. Meaning that what he was about to do next wouldn't get him killed.
Careful not to make too much noise, he removed the rope and began to loop it around his waist and legs, ensuring it was tight in place.
Then he reached up, tying the rope around the undercarriage of the bus, once again eternally grateful to whatever idiot decided to sell such a great tool.
Lan tied the knot loosely enough that he could use it like a pulley to winch himself up, and then he moved the bag from his back to his stomach before pulling himself up until he was strapped tightly to the bottom of the bus.
It wasn't long before he heard footsteps, thousands of them. And then he felt the engine rumble as the bus driver turned the key. He could only be glad for the bag between him and the rapidly heating metal.
Turning his head to the side, he saw countless feet walk past the bus and heard the chatter of excitement from happy teenagers. It felt so alien to him, covered in grease and sweat, clinging to the bottom of their bus like a drowned rat.
He was the same age as they were. But he was a parasite, stealing scraps from their table.
Time trickled by and the buses around them were fully loaded. A queue of people lined up beside his bus as names were read out, and they responded with a shout before stepping into the vehicle.
'Why is it taking them so long?!' He cursed, begging them to just hurry up. 'What if…' to his horror, he heard the clatter of a dropped phone.
His head snapped around to the source of the sound, where he noticed a more petite figure surrounded by three larger ones. It appeared they had hit the phone from the person's hands and were now stamping on it.
'Even the academy kids aren't free from it…' he thought, watching the ruined phone with bated breath.
If the kid bent down to pick it up, they would see him. 'Just leave it! It's only a phone!' he screamed internally, hoping his thoughts would somehow reach the other person.
But they didn't. Names were called, and the three bigger people left, leaving the smaller person standing quietly above their ruined phone.
He slowly watched his life crash around him as the figure bent down, crouching as they picked up the pieces of their broken phone.
They had short white hair and three circular scars on their cheek. All he could do was watch in horror as their dull eyes flickered up for a moment and made contact with his.
Time stood still, and he couldn't even think, let alone breathe. What would they do? Should he run? Should he say something? Beg? His mind spun wildly, trying to come up with a way out.
But the person did nothing. They looked into his terrified face, and he looked into theirs, confused and tired. Neither said anything, but the person nodded, finished picking up the pieces of their phone, and walked onto the bus. The last person to board before it took off.
Beneath the bus, Lan's face was sheet white, and his stomach was doing somersaults. He couldn't believe what had just happened. An insane grin began to spread across his face, and he had to force himself not to burst into laughter.
He had done it! He had actually done it!
Thanks to the high-tech bus, the journey to the bridge was short. Lasting a little more than 5 minutes, they travelled around 10 miles to where the towering bridge lay.
When the wheels screeched and the buses stopped, he waited until the crowd had moved on from his bus and then untied himself, dropping out from under the scorching hot engine.
He managed to wriggle his way out from under the bus and took a deep breath of air, it was the best air he had ever tasted, and even better, it didn't stink of petrol fumes.
And then he looked up, staring directly into the eyes of an all too familiar pale figure with white hair.
"Hi," they said with an awkward smile.