PARAGON CH. 1 [Draft]

“Son.” A fading voice cast over the washing waves of a distant flicker of a time long past. Flash white. Kiddell hangs his feet over the edge. His eyes linger on the afterimage of the waters slamming against the cold steel structure beams. The coldness, the bleakness of the misty dawn sky gave his hands a muggy, clammy feel, one that made his knuckles raw and sharp. He ran his     fingers together under the morose gaze in his eyes. Son? The word was long lost to him. His father was dead, and left nothing and at the same time everything for him. I don’t understand, he sighed, sliding a hand over his steel gauntlets, which hummed in resonance to his touch. Looking up, there was the artificial skyline of his city, Misfortuna. One his father created, the colossal monsters atop the heads of these people, who seemed to never notice its gravity. 

    The buildings seemed taller than usual, but they don’t ever change. Never. He knew this too well. There was never change in that glorious cosmopolitan skyline until after he was gone. It was incomplete, yet stood as its own, a statement but left without its full meaning without the euphemisms and words to express a genuine imagination. A reminder of his father’s presence, one that welled up deep feelings of loneliness and silence that clenched into his soul without solid proof. And in his farlong, uncertain gaze, Kiddell missed much for those distant days, wishing he could return.

Children’s screams from the slum, excitedly bouncing off the sewer concave walls. Tag! They play, only passing forward time until they return to scavenging for food in the barren, muddy underside of the city. It is a group of boys fraternizing among each other and energetically chasing one another. Giggles and chortling erupt in immature teasing. The boys chant, nudging the other over through the gap of the sewer to observe the women scavenging the river. Everyone looks worn, but hang onto life as they had been living it normally, in rags and among the rats. Their tongues waggle in slang, conjoined words not fully pronounced in their slummy mother language. These are hoodlums born within the sewers, ignorant to any other life. What belies above their unsightly dwellings is unknown, knowledge so forbidden it is now religion. “The young god,” The boys say among each other, wondering if ‘young’ implied that even they could be gods. The eldest residents remembered the ‘world up there’, and the terror that is Misfortuna. These were humans living beneath the glamor and cleanliess of the heavenly city. 

    As the children played, their screams grew more candid, extremely giddy, but soon disrupted by the whirring, unmistakable dissonance of helicopter blades. “‘Diablo!” These excited children immediately drop everything, eyes wide and like a routineness of ritual, duck beneath the nearest hiding spot. The women scramble in disharmony, seeking the nearest rock or depression to hide into from the mechanized terror. The bright, blaring spotlights of the helicopter intensely focus on any part of the barren, disgustingly murky land, searching for signs of life. The helicopter hovered like a vulture searching for any sign of carnage left to die to pick upon. For these were slum humans, a remaining outlier left out to die, but still in some awespiring power, still remain alive, living among the filth and rubble of the shell if what Misfortuna once was. 

Horrified eyes creep over their hiding spots to observe for a sign of clearing. They remember too much. The machinated eagle flies past, and the children resume like nothing. The helicopter spots a poor fellow from afar across the horizon as the sun begins to slide away from the sky, one unlucky band of refugees. Gunshots echo as a grim ringing noise across such distance that everyone left alive could hear. It was a stark impression sent from the inhabitants of the city to express one thing: “get the hell out of this city, street rats.” It is already known to these children that a body would flow downstream soon enough, left to bleed out and flood the canal with blood and the stench of death. It was unlucky, all they could think, was what they displayed on their tiny faces. However, a face of concern:“Wait, where’s Jun?” They headcount. One boy is missing. They all fear for the worst.

…

    “HELP!” A straggled boy cries over a tall wall of mud overlooking the side of a cliff. The boy fell off the side searching for a hiding spot from the helicopter, spraining his left ankle. “Anyone?” Jun scans the side of the cliff for a sign of response. No one comes, he is left on his own, slicked in dirt and natural debris and bugs that he flicks off immediately in hysterics. He calls again, even louder, but he has fallen too far from the others to be heard. Beside him is a collapsed building fallen from the side of the cliff from the slums, likely a reminder of the unmanaged state of livelihood. No one, the boy thinks, and searches for more. Surrounded by an unfamiliar wilderness, the boy seeks nothing but the uncanniness of pure nature touched only slightly by human interaction and interface. The boy mutters to himself in irate frustration about his newfound discernable displacement but presses on, scanning and examining the faceless, gargantuan wall. Perhaps a tree limb or fragmented branch, the boy thinks, imagining for a glimpse of hope. There is an unusual protrusion from the earth, poking out like an obvious marker. It bears an eerily uncanny semblance of a mechanical arm, jutting out of the cliffside. 

    The boy approaches, wondering what it could be, but grapples onto it to see if he can use it to climb his way back up onto the cliff. Unrealistic, but worth a try. At least, the boy either didn’t care or notice how far from the top he was to be climbable. He raises his leg and sets it into a divet of the earthy surface, his other hand reaching for the arm to pull himself up to scale forward. However, the “branch” gives way, and the boy’s weight pulls it out towards his body, hurling him and the branch (and whatever it was part of) onto his own ass. The child groans, lets go of the limb to realize it was an arm connected entirely to a mechanized figure, albeit inanimate and lifeless. Coupled with shock and awe, the boy jolts away from it, gaping at its foreign body. A robot. He reminds himself, gazing at its unusual blackness, shirked in wiring and circuitry protected under a translucent hull. The thing looks ancient, too outdated to be something like the robots of today. Even if the boy’s only seen one or two in his entire seven years, the body looks too old to be anything new. Plus, this thing was buried down here! How did it get here? The boy curled his lips in thought, grabbing a branch to further inspect the thing, jabbing its head in untapped wonder. 

    “Hey!” He sputters out in a young voice, trembling a little in uncertain anticipation. The body doesn’t seem to be alive, or so it shouldn’t. The boy looks on, partly separated in wishing the body would respond and echo back a word, and at the same time hoping he’d be relieved it doesn’t spring up and attack him, like a cadaver animated once again through the magic of death. The stick test works. No response, as the body remains lifeless. One more try, just to make double-sure that this thing is really dead. He gives the body’s head a tap with his clammy, unstable palm, observing as the wires through the translucent material react slightly to his hand. They react under his hand’s presence with a pale insect-sized light gleaming with bleak life, as if there is a dormant semblance of life still present within this metal cadaver. The boy does it again in succession with awe, striking the figure to illicit a response with those interesting tiny lights. The robot shakes under his hand, erupting a pale white colored substance with such plasticity that resembles the material dolls were once made from.

    The robot is moving, it’s moving! He widens his eyes as the substance gripes over his hand, ignoring its being, and coating the body like a thick tarp over the cover. Crawling on his fours away from the thing, the boy observes with a meek, petrified stony expression as the figure shudders its limbs awake in a mangled disarray of inhuman movement, silently forming its mock-skin membrane molding around the head into what could look like a face. It was watching a body come to life out of nowhere, without any rhyme or reason that emerged the face of utter shock across this boy’s eyes. For some reason, something compelled the boy like a gravitational force that pulled softly to stay and watch. It was an unusual, carnal view, [like the natal birth of a creature from a uteral canal.] You couldn’t look away. Terrifying. 

    The thing grew teeth, new apparatuses out of thin air, though it felt as if it were growing them from something, Strikingly silver-blond hair that shunted out of its head to fall immaculately into place, framing the face with pristine crispness. The marred, faceless body had taken its shape from memory and constructed it out of an unknown image. It took a human shape, much like the robots did of Misfortuna. The omniscient being glowed a pale, artificial white, astoundingly bright but not blinding that barely blended into the environment. It was a naked white-- as was the body-- which was weird, to the boy. A grown man, but not for much longer. A coat? The creature materialized clothing out of nowhere to assess its nudeness. The android donned such clean “clothing”, the like this boy has never been helped to see or wear, textiles artificially crafted from a nonexistent master seamstress that seemed to live within the mysterious makings of this unusual creature. The figure stood bipedally, strictly straight posture, face pointed at the boy’s direction, certain in his presence. Its lidded eyes rose, blinding white pupils gazing down at the doe-gazed child. 

    “Child.” Its smooth, soft yet deep voice coerced a peace within the boy. The voice infiltrated his ears with such a monotonous volume that it was soothing. The robot's face settles its solemn gaze and approaches the boy silently. "Are you hurt?" He comes so close, his arms wrap around the boy's shoulders like an Aegis with no concern for consent as if they were already familiar, but reserved enough to give distance to the boy. The robot's expression softens to observe the boy's infantile features. Still gaping, the boy sees the robot's glowing presence with uncertainty and innocent ignorance to its origin. Being the child he is, he presents only slight wariness to the stranger, thrown off by its sincere kind words, but confused as ever. He shook his head in a slight stupor. "Do I know you?" He asks. 

"I am a sentinel. Or ‘Sentinel’, is my name... codename, rather. You know this is my name-- I have served you long enough that your long-term memory should have it ingrained to some degree." Big words. 

"I still don't know who you are." The boy's dirt - crusted face wrinkled in a contempt for the stranger. Should he know this hunk of metal that just came out of the ground? The robot seems to know him somehow, and confidently.

 "--But that doesn't matter. Can you help me up?" The boy pointed above, and the robot's eyes followed immediately. The blonde android nods without hesitation, lowering himself down to the boy’s height to gesture for a ride up. His face is stern and his body is rigid, giving no indication of warmth in language, but his intentions seem compassionate towards the boy, even hospitable and loyal, for some reason unknown to the boy. All this boy knows is that he’ll take a lending hand of help anyday. It’s like the deus ex machina of a solution to a conflict. 

“Hold on,” The man insists with the clean palpation of his linguism when the boy straddles his chest against the man’s back, arms wrapped around his shoulders. The android starts off, taking no idling to scale the cliffside, grabbing almost nothing on that barren surface, only taking trust in his fingertips to seize ahold of rock. The android surely knows how to climb, and with such velocity that takes them atop the cliff in almost no time.

The boy remains in awe at the height of which they’ve climbed, observing below the difference of elevation within a mere two seconds.

“That’s amazing!” He caffaws, throwing his hands up at the robot, hugging him quickly. “What else can you do?” The android is taken aback by his outburst, but fixes up a linear smile to appease him. His teeth bare out slightly from the corners of his mouth.

“Whatever you ask me to, I can do.”

The boy smiles, but maintains a questioning face. Why was this strange robot so inclined to help him? He did not understand, but the face alone that he had his own servant sounded cool. Like the prince and his faithful followers. Or so his older friends from the sewers told him, he heard a lot of stories revolving around a prince and his devout following. He never understood why there was such a frequency of them when he grew up, all about a prince. His mind snapped back, eyeing the bridge towering over the rock facing of the slums. “Let’s go look for my friends.” The cyborg nods again, following behind the steps of the human diligently. The android is naturally quiet, reserved. It was hard to read his thoughts. Did robots have thoughts? How could he even tell he was thinking? They trek together into the sewer system, reeking of dank filth and decay. They both aren’t bothered by the stench, but the android appears to be glowing against the darkness within the cavern, reflecting in his own beauty within this disgusting sewer pipe. The boy clicks his tongue, mocking rodent calls. “Alliyah!” He calls. “Sumeyah!” His friends are not heard from, only the resonance of the young child’s own beckoning.

    Footsteps are heard from a distance across the sewer pipe, about an hour into the search. “Jun!” Young, adolescent boys--scrawny, bony and filthy figures-- emerge from the darkness of the cavern. The group of boys scramble to embrace the straggler, only stopped by an immovable force. The sight of the steel demon. “Jun!” They call again with weak voices in shock, this time brandishin their poorly-crafted weapons: shanks and scrap sticks with sharpened edges, some with crudely teethed edges for gruesome ribbing of flesh. Jun is visibly distressed, hands and head shaking no, signalling their arms put away. 

“No! He’s good.”

“He is dangerous! Diablo, white eyed diablo. He only means trouble, Jun.”

One of the boys dashes forward to shove Jun out of the way to allow the group to lunge at the ‘diablo’. Such contact with Jun sets the android off, its eyes brightening with intensity that almost lights the tunnel on its own. The android lunges at the interceptor, arms unraveling in its unusual wiring to reform a blade, reaching at the young boy. “Sentinel!” Jun holds the android back with his own body, which triggers the android to step back peacefully. It resumes a peaceful, yet cold and emotionless demeanor that holds nothing against the boy. Jun is on his toes, but continues to calm the crowd of children down. “He wont hurt me, or you guys, if I tell him.” The boys exchange uncertain glances, but ultimately come to a unified acceptance.

 “He’s a robot, though, Jun. I don’t trust him,” They express their concerns, Jun nods, solemnly acknowledging them, only slightly half-hearted. Jun turns to Sentinel. “You are not going to hurt them, you hear?” The android accepts with no pause. The boys walk Jun and the stranger in unison into the community dwelling. “Nothing brash, okay? I don’t want the others getting scared of you again.” The man nods, no other words, only an acknowledgement of what he had said. 

The community, which was only a stark collection of refugees living in a cultivation within such tunnel system. “Home,” was what Jun had called it, along with the other boys. The slum rats appeared fearful of the white being, crawling to give way to its path and Jun’s-- the former always followed behind, and hissed toward its direction. There were humans with unkempt, matted hair caked in dirt, filth, whose bodies were sprawled and bony from starvation and malnutrition. These were only the adults, however, they appeared overworked, starved and too old to function to survive on their own. They lived off of each other, but this codependence seemed ill-fated and doomed to last. The children, on the other hand, were more fit. More nimble and up to the task to find food, water and the like. 

The adults, however, cowered away from the being with such fear that shook their hands and eyes with violent distress. “Demon,” They feared, howling at the man. “Go back to the city!” Jun could only understand some of their rage, but not how sound their hatred was of Sentinel. Some threw trash at the man, but he only slapped it down immediately, blocking their hatred with mere indifference. Even his face bore no change based on their maltreatment.

“Why do they hate you?” Jun sputtered out his question, genuinely wondering. 

“I know you’re like those guys up there,” He gestures up, meaning even beyond the underground tunnel from which they were in. “But you’re different, in a way. You aren’t violent towards us. Somehow.” Sentinel raises his brow. “I do not understand, either. I did not incite any violence before them.” Jun looks at him, puzzled, and lowers his head. “I don’t see you as a killer, to be honest. You’re nothing like those guys.”

Sentinel raised his head. “Thank you.”

The helicopters come more frequently. News spreads among the slum children that the people “up there” have become more aggressive, more insistent on their elimination. “They’re getting rowdier. They want us gone, dead, for good this time!”

The children cry out, brandishing their weapons up above their heads. Heinous looks scatter over to Sentinel, eyes brazen with rage and defensive anger. “Demon,” they share rumors, whispering among each other. Jun notices, and groans with distress. “I can’t stand this.” He mutters to him. “I can’t stand all this death, Sentinel.” He rubs his face in anxiety, moaning in irritation. “How do we make it stop?” Sentinel budges under his distress. “I can help you find a solution.” He urges quietly, gesturing solemnly to the ground above, as the loud mechanical whirring makes its rounds from above the soil again, rumbling at a terrifying, enormous scale. The habitants of the underground shook, pausing in their arguing and incessant chattering to listen grimly at the mindless humming muffled by the thousands of metres of ground above them, separating nothing but this system-line of sewage pipes. The elders sign themselves and hug each other, clapping their palms together aptly for prayer, hoping the chopper leaves, even if it has not seen them. They cry, “diablo, diablo,” throats rasping and scraping hatred. Jun keeps his eyes down, squatting down to his ankles in the water. “Sentinel…” His voice is low, quiet that no one else hears.

The android readily levels his gaze at the boy, eager to listen. 

“Take me out there-- the city.” 

The android nods wordlessly, with no question, he offers Jun his hand.

Upon trusting his hands, Jun grabs onto Sentinel, and is immediately hoisted onto his back, legs buckled around his stomach and arms coiled horizontally around his shoulders. They slip away from the others, as quickly as Sentinel could spring off, unnoticed and traceless. 

    For strident seconds, the gazelle gallops, taking long, tall strides with pauses so infrequent they leave no mark or trace. Here, the wind buckles, the wind whistles and whines. How amazing, thought Jun, how gallantly the androids fluttered against the cold, moist evening air. There was a fleck of child-borne jealousy in him. Misfortuna, what did they hide in there that kept us all out? It was unfair, devious and cruel. The city always seemed to glow so bright, so beautifully, for at least what he could see for a glimpse from just the right angle. The walls were mostly too high to see anything more. Sentinel’s legs pounce off the ground as they exit the network of pipes. Jun was anxious to see the city, to see what these androids kept to themselves. Unfair, no fair,  He whined in his own head. To gallop so gracefully with such speed and rigor humans could never have. Sentinel carved his hands and feet into the cliffside of the city, where the walls stood high above. “It’s a tall climb,” Jun whistled, gazing up at the marvel. 

    No human from the slum can go up. A literal and idyllic wall. “You and me, Sentinel, are gonna be the first guys from the slum to get up there.” Sentinel gave him a puzzled look at the word, first, as though Jun had never been there before. His eyes gleamed a clean white. As they approached the top of the wall, Jun lifted his hood onto his head. In awe, his face gaped at the skyline, a bright green skylight shone from the highest tower into the sky, which seemed to be endless, as though it shone straight out to the universe and on, and on. It was a cityscape, fulfilled with miles upon miles of like buildings in an orderly, modern fashion with clean streets, pristine white roads. From the top of the wall, one could observe the city’s great scale and marvelous roadlines. Jun stayed speechless, mouth still open, eyes blankly taking everything in. The highest tower was solemn, the most lit, pure black, whose sides were flanked by a bridge system connecting the other buildings along its adjacent roads. The top of the tower was obscured by night fog, that of which seemed to hide the building’s massive height. 

    “Wow,” Jun speaks, finally, hands gripping the shoulders of Sentinel’s coat. His eyes were big, amber-brown, the cityline reflected in them. “Look at those ants, those are people, sentinel! People!” His voice cracks, frantically excited. He watches for a moment, taking in the view and observing the calming flowing motion each individual ‘ant’ made, fluctuating throughout the streets. They were tiny, insignificant in their numbers, but each one was a person, even if they weren’t human. None of them were. Misfortuna was the city of androids. After observing for several minutes, Jun tapped sentinel’s arm, asking him to scale the wall down, to catch the city within its walls, and observe its inhabitants closely. Sentinel shook his head, unsure if it was safe, but was obliged to by Jun’s command. “You could blend in.” He chimed, and the android took off, sliding down from the wallside into the darkness. 

    The streets were lit sufficiently by warm lighting from lamp posts emitting soft light. The rays seemed to hit Jun finely, the streets were quiet, but populated by its exclusive peoples, the androids. They were the city’s workers, it seemed, teeming as they exited factory buildings, the only workforce, the elders remembered, how they stole the life of labor from warm hands. Humans, obsolete, but ironically, androids once served them altogether. For betterment of human lifestyles, ten years ago. It was haunting, to Jun. A piece of newly-discovered history that his elders once saw. They knew the cruelty of the city abandoning their devoted peoples. The factory buildings were just now being vacated, the lights flickering out.

    The most striking part of the streets were the glaring white eyes the androids had, like Sentinel. They stood out even more in the dark, eerily lined up behind each other’s heads. Jun was unnerved by their hollowness, like watching ghosts. The androids had individual faces, but carried altogether the same blank, directionless glare. Sentinel did not carry this, to his relief. He was definitely not like them, he wasn’t heartless. However, these androids, the workers, did not seem harmful. They were normal, albeit mundane-looking from their task-filled life. The android and the boy wandered silently through the shadows, the boy watching closely the curious, monotonous nature of each individual android. They walked in a reserved fashion. There was this strange anthropomorphic animal figure in the distance. It resembled an upright fox, robed in white, standing silently with several other of the same kind. Some special cyborg? Jun wondered, though he felt nervous to not invoke suspicion. He didn’t want to get their attention. They looked scary. He couldn’t tell if they wore masks or if they were actually fox-headed. Special robots, or something. 

    

    “Sentinel?” It was the late night workers’ rush back to the living spaces. A large influx of workers flooded the streets, overtaking the two. The individuals in the crowd did not seem to notice the hooded human boy among them, thankfully. Perhaps they were hard-wired bugs to only fulfill a job. Jun was separated by the crowd, pushed aside by their rapid steps and forceful motions. He lost his balance off his left foot, falling off onto the pavement to the side. “Sentinel!” He cried out, to no avail. 

    The boy is wrestled off his feet by some other force than the crowd, he can feel the scary white eyes on him. “Sentinel?” He turns to look the interactor in the eyes. A force slams into his gut, and before he can take in the image, a terrifying, shaking motion sends his body convulsing in an uncomfortable fit of spasms that knocks him out within seconds. A tazer slammed into his stomach, sending volts hard into his body. Before he can react, he is out.

    This time, it’s glass on the floor. Kiddell is tired again. Good thing he didn’t spill anything, he had already finished his drink before he’d tipped it over. A major, dramatized liquid spillage would have easily sent the boy off his chair, hurling the desk out the side of the tower. He leans over the desk on his arms, pressing his hands down in a distressed anger. No need to rest this week, we have to organize this human problem soon, he rubs his temples. No more humans, no. He thinks, sighing to himself. On the desk were appropriate decorations, mostly practical-- a steel lamp, ciphoned decorations from an artistically-designed catalog, assorted expensive stationary sitting in a pen bin. There was a calendar mat sitting primly in the center of the table, important documents and papers sitting on top. The right of the desk holds a nicely framed photograph of a man and his son. The son holds dignified features, in some unique mix of northeast asian “___” folds and eurocentric complexion nose. His hair was a light pale blond, combed slightly back to the sides. His father is predominantly a european man in his late 60’s, hanging the boy upright from his shoulders. The boy is Kiddell, and he still had a leg, a legacy, and a father. 

Kiddell’s brows wrinkled in what appears to be like a decade’s worth of stress, his eyes appeared world-weary, a kind of tired that lasts forever. He snaps his fingers softly, clamoring behind his desk as he keeps the paperwork out of the way of the spillage. it’s the fox-headed figure this time, entering through the door nearby. Kiddell groans with a compressed tiredness. “Clean this shit up,” He points, walking away from the desk and towards the bedroom. The foxbot did so, picking up the shards of the glass individually, diligently and without a question. It was silent and loyal, eager to work. Kiddell seemed to not care about its devotion. 

The man groaned, rubbing his head and seizing a bottle of aspirin from the desk, mindfully grasping the lid and downing a couple of pills for his headache. There was too much to do, and even if the world gave him all the time, he still felt crushed with problems in life. Kiddell leaned over his bedside, grabbing a clean, primly folded towel from the overhead shelf in the wall and walking idly towards the shower…

Kiddell sat himself on the toilet lid, lifting his fingers to fill the divets in his left leg. The prosthetic leg hummed, it's pockets connecting to his amputated thigh release, and he slips the false leg out. Kiddell placed it to lean against the wall, and immediately seized the bars on the shower as he guided himself in. 

What makes me so qualified? It was always the same questions in his head. His father wouldn't have wanted those questions. Regardless, they were hammered in his mind-- inferiority. He was a physical copy of his father. Down to the bones, the skin, the time-tired eyes and strenuous hands and idle, single-faceted smile. It wasn't the same, though. If not the same, if couldn't be any better. Innovation, he thought, a word his father knew constantly and excitedly in his past prime and eager inventive age. A strong-willed, diligent fighter for improvement of life and living. One who strived for his dreams. The water flowed too slowly down the drain. The water pressure beat down on his skin, much like a torrential force. Thoughts trinkled in his mind,  singing his eyes like acid. He kept his reddened eyes at his feet, his vision faltering at the sight.

…

“Clear skies, today, sir.” Rivale emerges from the door, politely idling at the edge to allow Kiddell his privacy. “At least for now. Rain, later on tonight, if you will,”

Her voice is affirmative, stately for a professional woman, but her artifice has given her tone a soft metal hum to its treble. Noting his aptness for tidiness and presentation, she notes the date of the month, her eyes lowering to a soft, modest silence, knowing fully that today is the day. She raises her eyes again, rapping the wall lightly to gather his attention, but to no avail. “I suggest an umbrella.” Kiddell is brushing his teeth as he keeps the towel wrapped around his waist.

Shaving was the easiest of his daily maintenance. Typically, he was not exactly a brusque, hairy individual, so he did not shave daily. But today, he knew he wanted to show that he was a proper man. Capable of keeping up appearances. His eyes grieve at the sight ingrained in his memory. A lost chance between two men, one growing up. Kiddell made his way towards the closet in a saundering fashion, arranging his undergarments before the undershirt. His clothes were already ironed to a perfect, creaseless exaction, but doubly so to make sure, by his diligent guards. “Ready the car downstairs.”

Kiddell beckons, but he is donning his formal attire, a clean slate grey suit, the lapels cut so clean. His eyes gleam a meager soil color, stained with his own weary expression. 

He is now cleaned up, ready to leave. The clouds are arranging outside, a dark, hovering malevolent cloud hanging out in front of the skyscraper. “Safe travels, president.” There is a line of fox-headed androids awaiting the bottom floor at the wake of the elevator’s opening. Kiddell takes his steps forward, accepting that the cyborgs clear the way just for his arrival. They line, eye-less faces pointing in his direction. “Safe, travels.” They echo as he exits the building, towards the car at the pickup circle in front. 

A sleek black car with dark, tinted windows sits eagerly. Rivale is to its side, opening the door in the back for Kiddell, awaiting the passenger. A wide bouquet of flowers are held in his right hand, he is stumbling from the overbearing on his fake leg on the walk to the car. He does not accept the help from Rivale. He hobbles into the car with a grim look on his face, his jaw locking in stress. “Drive.” He slips out, sitting plainly in one window seat. The driver is a cyborg as well, wordless, and obeys, the car starting off into the street. Kiddell looks out the window, taking in the size of the skyscraper from above and sighing at the sight of the eagerly waiting, attending bots at the building, still waving his departure.

“They just keep getting younger.” A young man’s voice spawns from the room over, silently, but enough to wake Jun from his slight sleep. He starts, jolting up to his arms and feet bound. He is quiet, but wary and very afraid. Where’s Sentinel? He fears, fingers tingling in distrust. 

“How could he have possibly gotten through security? Impossible,” 

The voice whispered in awe. Jun is silently flattered, waiting in slight darkness. Strange, a warm house. He has never experienced the indoors in such a way. Sounds travel differently in here, things are unnaturally cleaner, there is no lingering stench of waste. Another voice, hoarse, but more humane. “He just stinks. I can’t stand these kids smuggling in. This kid’s just lucky he didn’t fucking end up like the other hoppers. They never fucking learn.” The voice grunted, losing its bruntness as the other voice intervened. “Pax, stop. Look, we should just… look for a way to get this kid back to the other side before they know. Otherwise, we get the shit end.” 

“No -- I’ll save him the trouble.”

“Pax,” The softer voice picks up a serious tone. “Put the gun down, now.” The gun is seized audibly. Silence. “Stop that.”

Jun eases as a moment passes in silence, an irate grunt is released. The boy wriggles in his bindings silently, trying to slip out a hand, possibly. These people sounded human, but it was unclear whether or why humans would be around in such a walled, secluded city. He wasn’t eager to find out if they were friendly. The room he was stuck in was dark—the only light he could access was the gap beneath the old, wooden door in front of him. Help, the boy thought, struggling against his bound hands. These people want to kill me! Jun knows better than to make a great noise, and tugs his wrists out of the rope, the fibers’ friction burning. He has his hands free, the rope still attached to one hand. Jun slowly reaches for the doorknob in the limited light. 

The two are arguing now, only less audibly. Likely, they must be in another room, though it is very passive-aggressive arguing, though not too serious. Jun, slowly and cautiously twists the knob, hoping there isn’t a noise made. The wood bends, creaking beneath his weight, still wobbling under the suppression. Jun’s eyes widen, and the hairs on his body spike in fear. The door creaks soundly, alerting Jun, hoping that the people didn’t hear. Jun crawls slightly on his fours, towards such old furniture he’s now surrounded by. He rises from his hands and crawls slowly out of sight, hopefully. 

“Where are you going?” 

Jun startles at the voice from behind him. Shocked at his discovery. Shit, he shuts his eyes, and quickly looks back behind him. A slender man, with soft and rounded facial features eyes him down. The man sports white eyes, staring intently at the boy. They exchange lost glances in unfamiliarity. The boy, whose two few, and only, encounters are bewilderingly spontaneous in nature, and the cyborg standing before him, stared at him like a sewer rat out in a house where it never belongs. One peculiar aspect of this cyborg that differed from sentinel, however, was his unusual anatomical addition: a cat’s ears and tail, molded in striking chrome metal. What kind of robot was he? Jun stumbled on saying anything, strangely amused at his features. “Little one,” The cyborg eased his gaze, beckoning the new friend over. “No need to be afraid. We’re keeping you safe from what’s out there.” 

    The man was mostly peaceful in demeanor. 

“Inigo.” The other voice hissed from behind Jun’s periphery again. “Don’t stand so close to him, you’ll catch something.” Jun shifted his gaze slightly behind him, twisting his body to view. The boy sat, terrified in contrast to the new face, who sustained a heinous scorn to his expression. ‘Pax,’ the cat man called this other individual. Pax was more peculiar in appearances—he had two eyes of different colors: his left eye had a white iris that glowed like a cyborg, and his right eye was a human chestnut color; the man had unusual foreign piercings, almost disgustingly positioned on his nose, lips and ears, slightly hidden beneath his dark blue hair.

The man’s unsightly appearance alerted Jun even more, and he backed slightly away from him. “Please don’t kill me,” The boy whimpered, terrified by the heterochromia-eyed man. Pax didn’t soften his expression the way the other cyborg did. “He won’t, or at least, he shouldn’t.” Inigo huffed, indirectly relaying the message to Pax. Jun had mindlessly eyed the gun in its holster resting on Pax’s belt, slightly loose from its restraint. The sight of the weapon made Jun breathe shortly. Pax took notice of this, and rebuckled the gun. His face lost the angry glare. “It’s not for you. I’m not wasting the ammo.” The man grimaced, his hand resting on the handle. 

“It’s here for other reasons.” 

Inigo sighed, after a moment of brevity, hand massaging the back of his neck. Tied around his neck was a soft pink ribbon in a bow, covering all the skin on his neck. These two men dressed very strangely. “What’s a kid doing out here? They’ll kill brown-eyes like you, don’t you know that by now?”

Jun shook his head yes, but he had other justifications. “There’s a lot of cyborgs here. They can’t point me out in the crowd, at least they didn’t. Yet.” Pax adjusted his glance at the boy’s dirtied limbs. “You’re smart. But these cyborgs are smarter. They’ll smoke you out just by looking at you. You just got lucky.” He grimaced at the stench of mud and garbage emanating from the boy. Pax pulled his jacket over his nose. “How the hell did you get over that wall, kid? There aren’t any pieces to hang onto to climb with. The dirt is too dense to dig beneath. What, did you kill someone?”

The boy shrugged. “My friend helped me.” 

“…Your friend.”

“’Sentinel’. My cyborg friend.” Jun nudged his head over.

…

Pax gave a detached response, feigning confusion and consequently some familiarity to the name. His metal-imbued face wrinkled to contempt. 

“What the hell are you talking about?” 

Jun urged. It was knowledge that no cyborg would react kindly to the presence of a human, more explicitly, a child. It was how they were programmed—that was what Jun knew since he could think. 

“I found him buried underneath the cliffs, I have no idea how, but that was the way I found him. He still works, though, but he looked like he was under there for some time.” 

Cloudy. Father would not appreciate this. The trees are too restless, the air is too sticky, and the grass is 

too damp and muddy. Kiddell’s shoes sink right into the mud. His finely shined shoes. Hand-me-downs, custom-made from a hobbied cobbler long ago as a gift, the initials marked within the sole. “E.K.” The initials were precisely incised into the leather inside. Father’s shoes, he wore, one of the many things left behind. You would appreciate the way I dressed this morning. The leaves left over from the fall cluttered to the far field, cleanly organized and previously raked. The field radiated a vibrant green which disregarded the gray haze from the clouds, as finely orchestrated by Kiddell’s people. The city must be perfect. No patch of yellow, dead grass. Kiddell strode silently, clutching his gifts to his right side, a slight, but very unnoticeable hobble to his left side.