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DATE:15th of May, the 70th year after the Coronation
LOCATION: Concord Metropolis
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I woke to the sound of metal grinding against metal, the stench of blood thick in the air. My eyes snapped open. I was no longer in the haunted house—this time, I was in a slaughterhouse. Massive, mechanical, and alive with a grotesque rhythm. The walls were cold steel, slick with fresh blood. I could hear heavy machinery churning somewhere in the distance—saws, blades, gears grinding and cutting, their movements methodical and merciless.
I stood in the center of it, surrounded by slabs of meat hanging from chains overhead, swaying with the low hum of the machines. Some of the carcasses were animal—too large, too unfamiliar to be anything I recognized. Others looked human. The chains rattled, pulling the bodies further into the depths of the slaughterhouse. The smell—coppery and foul—clung to me.
I tried to move, but my feet stuck to the blood-slicked floor. The sound of dripping echoed from all directions. There were no hallways here, no clear exit. Just a maze of rusted metal and conveyor belts, each one feeding into the grinding machinery.
A voice crackled over a distant speaker. Distorted at first, but then I recognized it—my father. He was here again. Hunting me. Only now he didn't sound like himself. His voice was colder, with a strange mechanical edge, like the slaughterhouse had twisted him into something inhuman.
"You can't run forever," he said. "This place will grind you down."
It wasn't like I wanted to escape. This looked like an eight-hour torture session, and I was fine with it. I was too tired to bother running away.
No, something else was strange about this dream.
There was a girl next to me.
She was small in figure, somewhat like Alice, with dense, straight blue hair reaching about her shoulders. Blue eyes to match, and some stereotypical hacker clothes. Who was she? She seemed surprised but more frightened. Glancing at me, she let out a faint whimper.
"W-W-Will?!"
"Who?" How did she know me?
"It's... It's me, Emily." She tried to get to her feet, but had a hard time balancing.
Emily? The AI? What was she doing in my dream?
"I can feel... Everything. My hands moving, my feet tensing up... What is this place? H-how did you bring me here?"
"As if I know. I have no idea how to bring myself here. Why do you have a human body?"
Thinking about it, this thing brought me into her problems without asking, and now I was doing the same to her. If her problems became mine, then my mind became hers. Fair enough.
"This... This is a human body?! I can't believe it! I... I can feel everything—"
So this meant she really was just an AI outside. Or was it because her 'body' limited her? Whatever. I didn't want to break her enthusiasm, but this wasn't exactly the best environment for her to 'feel' things.
"I'm sad to inform you, but this is kind of my torture room."
She stopped and turned to me. "What do you mean?"
"You heard the man over the communication, right? If he finds us, he'll inflict pain you can't even imagine. Way worse than when the professor tried to move you into another phone."
"Then, then we should escape, right?!"
"It's not that simple. Actually, I don't think it's even possible."
"Huh... What do we do?" She was terrified. It was clear the experience of feeling pain had left some kind of scar on her mentally.
"We should try to stay away as long as we can, I guess."
A horn rang throughout the facility.
Great. We stumbled forward, weaving between hanging slabs of meat. I didn't know where we were going—just away. Away from his voice, away from the machines. The floor vibrated beneath us, pulsing with the rhythm of the slaughterhouse. Everything here felt alive, like it was feeding off Emily's fear.
We rounded a corner, and I had to cover Emily's mouth before she could scream. There, towering over the machines, were things I couldn't even begin to describe. They were made of steel and flesh, some grotesque fusion of man and machine—eldritch horrors with blades for limbs, eyes that didn't blink, and mouths that opened impossibly wide, dripping with oil and blood. They moved with precision, as if they were part of the slaughterhouse itself, their bodies jerking and grinding with the rhythm of the machinery.
They hadn't seen us yet. If they did, this would get significantly more tedious.
I ducked low, crouching behind a pile of rusted crates while pulling the small girl under me as a hulking monster shuffled past. Its metal limbs creaked and whined, blades dragging across the floor, carving deep grooves into the steel. It was looking for us, its grotesque head twitching as it sniffed the air. I held still, the cold metal digging into my palms as I gripped the edge of the crate. The thing paused, its head jerking in our direction.
I thought it had seen us.
But then it moved on, the rhythmic clanging of its movements fading into the mechanical drone of the slaughterhouse. I exhaled slowly, hearing a heart pounding from the girl pressed against me. Kind of strange for this to be her first experience with life. I couldn't keep this up for eight hours. I didn't even know how much time had passed. Minutes? Seconds? It all felt the same—an endless loop of hiding, running, and barely escaping.
Then I messed up.
The smell of rotting flesh and the mechanical hum of the slaughterhouse faded into the background as my father's footsteps echoed behind us. We'd been caught. Emily stood beside me, trembling but trying to hold it together. I didn't even look at her. There was nothing to do now but go through the motions.
My father, dressed in a butcher's apron slick with fresh blood, loomed over us, his face obscured by a mask of twisted metal. His eyes, though, were unmistakable. Cold, cruel, and gleaming with satisfaction.
He said nothing as he dragged us, one by one, into his office. His grip was iron. The room was cramped, the air stifling, and the walls were lined with tools—saws, hooks, knives, each one stained with years of use. The desk in the center was covered in old papers, charts of flesh, diagrams of human anatomy. But what caught my eye were the restraints bolted into the steel floor, and the long, blood-soaked table that dominated the room.
Emily's breathing grew ragged. I could feel her panic radiating off her. "You don't have to do this," she whispered, her voice trembling, barely audible over the grinding of the machines outside. I knew she wasn't talking to me.
My father didn't respond. Instead, he motioned for us to sit, the massive cleaver in his hand catching the dim light as he pointed toward the table. I hesitated for a second too long, and he yanked me forward, shoving me hard into the chair. The chains rattled as they snapped around my wrists, biting into my skin. Emily was forced onto the table, her body strapped down, her face pale with terror.
Here we go again.
The silence that followed was unbearable for Emily, probably. My father moved slowly, methodically, sharpening a blade while Emily watched, her eyes wide and wet. Guess it was time for her to grow up.
I could feel my own pulse throbbing in my throat. I refused to beg. He wouldn't stop. I knew that much. He'd enjoyed this too many times before.
Without warning, he began. The first cut was shallow, a testing slice across Emily's arm, barely deep enough to draw blood, but it was enough to make her scream. I didn't grit my teeth. My fingers stayed relaxed. I didn't look away. She screamed again as he moved to her legs, drawing out every inch of pain with precision. The blade glided through her skin like paper, his hand steady, his eyes never leaving her face. He was savoring it—savoring the fear, the pain, the hopelessness.
And then he turned to me.
I'd been through nightmares like this before, felt the cold sting of metal against my skin, the heat of my own blood running down my arms. It wasn't about killing me. No, that would be too easy. It was about breaking me, piece by piece. He carved slowly, methodically, cutting into the muscle of my arms, the tendons of my hands, as if he was taking his time to learn every inch of me. But he knew it already. I didn't grit my teeth. I didn't scream. I was numb. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction. Not again.
Emily cried out between sobs, pleading with him to stop, to let us go, but her words were swallowed by the sound of slicing flesh, by the mechanical drone of the slaughterhouse outside. The world narrowed to this room, this moment, the endless cycle of pain and silence.
I started to drift away, disconnected from the situation. My father's voice, cold and mocking, cut through the haze.
"This is what you deserve. You never understood, did you?" He leaned in, his breath hot against my ear. "All that running, all that hiding... but you always come back to me."
I felt the blade press into my chest, cold and unforgiving. But just as it started to slice, he stopped. My father stepped back, staring down at both of us like a disappointed god, as if he was deciding whether to end it or draw it out longer. The clock on the wall ticked away the minutes, but time had no meaning here.
There was no escape this time. No exit, no way to wake up early. Just the endless, sickening rhythm of the butcher's work, and the knowledge that this was only the beginning.
We were trapped. And he wasn't done yet.
She watched him approach once again, her glowing eyes wide with a fear I'd never seen in her before. Her body trembled as he brought the blade to her skin, hesitating for just a second. But Emily was silent. She didn't scream anymore, didn't flinch as the blade sank into her flesh, drawing a thin line of black oil and synthetic blood. The sound of tearing skin was sickening, and yet she only watched him, her eyes flickering with code, glitching as if her mind was struggling to process what was happening to her body.
"She can feel it," my father said, a twisted smile in his voice as he drew another line across her arm. "Just like you."
Emily's mouth opened, but no words came out. Her body twitched involuntarily, but her face remained blank, her eyes flickering faster, more erratically. Something in her was breaking, and I knew this pain was something her programming was never designed to handle. She wasn't meant to feel—but here, in this nightmare, she did. Was she too broken to scream anymore? Already?
Such a weak-ass AI. How was this supposed to compare to human determination?
Seeing her silent, Father got annoyed and started punching her until she responded. She lost consciousness. An AI... lost consciousness... No wonder she'd had no reaction.
But he was persistent. Father didn't stop until she started screaming again.
Then he got to work once again.
Having a companion take this punishment made the whole ordeal seem way longer.
By the time he was done and I woke up, Emily wasn't talking anymore.
Not... at all.
I asked her through the messaging app if she was alright, but I got no response.
Oh well.
I did my usual morning routine, unbothered by what had happened. Alice asked me how Emily was doing, but I kept it short—"she was thinking about something." Alice didn't need to know about my nightmares.
Thinking about it, how did she even come with me? Was it that contract? Because I was her owner? Whatever.
I saw the bandaged Sasha walking down the hallway, so I ducked into the boys' bathroom by instinct to avoid her. I didn't think she'd seen me.
I went into one of the stalls since technically teachers weren't supposed to be in here.
Then a small guy entered the bathroom. I could tell by his soft footsteps. This was when something strange happened. While he was using the urinal, out of the stall near me came two bigger guys. Were they in there together? I hoped they were just smoking.
I remember the conversation vividly:
"Hey, hey, hey—what are you doing here?" said one of them to the small guy.
He sighed and responded with "Not again." What the hell kind of routine was this?
The... bully then said, "Hey, his dick is so small," and they both started doing this strange, slow laugh while pointing at it. What the hell was wrong with them? First of all, the gesture was bizarre, and second—why was the little guy still standing there with it hanging out?
"Short penis," one of them said, and they laughed again. He repeated it two more times between these strange slow laughs. Then he said, "Bastard, don't mess with me, I'll kill you," as they were leaving.
What the hell just happened?
I walked out of the stall and saw—I think the nerd from the tournament? The one with the Morris family name? Quite embarrassing…
He was still standing there with his dick out, giving me a serious look. How uncomfortable could these students make things?
"Zip up your pants, kid."
I left the bathroom disgusted. I should have just walked past Sasha.
And walk past her I did—or tried to. She was waiting in front of the bathroom. What was my luck these days?
We locked eyes, and I could see she was still bandaged from what had happened. The good doctor probably wanted her to recover faster by moving around, or maybe she just didn't want to stay in a hospital bed.
She had a pretty sweater on. I had no idea how she didn't get hot in this kind of weather.
She was petrified to look at me, but I had an idea she knew I was here. Otherwise, why would she wait in this place? Sasha never went out of her 'lair' except for smoking or some big reason. What did she want to say?
She was biting her finger, probably out of anxiety. It was clear she wouldn't be the one taking the initiative in this apparent discussion, so I did.
"So how are you, Sasha?" She didn't respond. I could see her shaking. Her breathing was getting faster. Sweat developed on her skin while tears covered her eyes. Were they the symptoms of a convulsion or a panic attack?
Behind me, the nerd rushed past to the left. Seemed like he'd managed to raise those pants. I was happy to leave this place. Didn't know it was filled with such weirdos.
Anyway, about the girl at hand. I thought about calming her by grabbing her arm, but considering the circumstances, it would probably only scare her more.
"What do you see when you look at me? Why are you so scared?" She still didn't want to say anything. Well, this was boring. I would just leave, but it would feel strange to leave her like this.
I got closer, so that our faces were about a meter apart.
"What is it when you look at me?" I seriously didn't understand her. If she was scared of my trauma, then that only spoke of how weak she was as a counselor. I'd barfed out those accusations in the moment, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.
Surely, if this woman considered herself a highly experienced practitioner—highly mature and powerful—she wouldn't be broken from a single experience. On the other hand, I wasn't exactly sure what she'd seen, because our experience may have been totally different.
I couldn't say I'd been a slouch with it. After all, I'd also felt, for the first time in years, the fear of death in one of my dreams.
She almost killed me. Shouldn't I be the one to fear her?
That was so amusing. I couldn't stop a smile from forming on my face, and it seemed like she saw it too. But she wasn't calmed by my gesture. Quite the opposite.
I didn't want to make her think it was about what had happened. I appeared quite villainous in this moment if you didn't know the circumstances.
"Sorry. I'll leave if it's too much."
Just as I started stepping away, she grabbed my shirt with her delicate, bandaged hand.
"W-wait..." I heard a soft whisper escape her, but I didn't turn around.
"What is it?" I was quite tense. Could I get some revelation into what she was thinking?
"You... You're not a monster. I'm sorry for saying t-that." She did? I didn't even remember.
I glanced back at her, her oceanic eyes untouched by the torturing experience. They beamed light.
"It's no problem. We both weren't in the right state of mind." I gave her the brightest smile I could manage, but it probably wasn't enough.
As she let go, I made some distance before quickening my pace to my room.
I looked at the messaging app, and Emily had finally responded in the meantime.
"I now know the pain. Why did you do that to me?"
Well, that was a strange statement. Entirely untrue. Even if I'd brought her into that world by some force I wasn't aware of, it wasn't a conscious effort.
But she wouldn't care about any excuse.
I responded to her message: "Your problems became mine, but sadly it appears that my problems also became yours."
What I got back was a simple "What?" She probably needed some clarification.
"Because of this apparent contract, faceless men are after me. Sadly for you, I seem to be cursed to go to that place every now and then. Through the same contract, you are brought there."
"How... Do we end it?"
"It isn't that simple. If I knew, I would have ended the cycle long ago."
"So... I will go there... A-gain?"
It wasn't really up to me. I was surprised an AI had been brought inside my mind.
"Didn't you want to experience life as a human? Sorry to break it to you, but it isn't just independence and happiness. There's also suffering. In that place, I find mostly physical suffering, but it's nevertheless one of the types."
"..."
Now what was that supposed to mean?
"Look. I've been suffering in that place for about 30 years. I did all I could to try and stop it, yet I failed. The same could be said about your suffering and how you're currently being tracked by those people. Why won't we work together? I'll keep you safe from them... while you use that new perspective of an all-powerful AI to find a way to save me. How about it?"
"..."
At first I thought she'd gone back into her broken mode, but Emily was thinking.
"Yes, we will save each other. I don't want to go there... again..."
Well, it was good we got that covered.
I looked around the academy but didn't find Alice. At some point she called me—possibly being an empath who could read my mind—and told me to go back to the teaching building, more precisely the biology laboratory.
It was a well-funded project. The space had high ceilings with large, old-fashioned windows that let in natural light, though the glass was slightly foggy from years of weathering. The workbenches were made of sturdy wood, scratched from years of use. They were lined with microscopes—older models but still functional—and some newer digital devices like a projector and computers for data analysis.
A corner of the room held a refrigerator where biological samples and reagents were stored, along with an old incubator. In the back, there was a tall wooden cabinet displaying preserved specimens in formaldehyde-filled jars—frogs, insects, and other small creatures.
The laboratory's ventilation system was older, with a large fume hood that hummed loudly when turned on. The place had a certain aged quality to it, but it was functional enough.
Usually I didn't care much about classrooms, but I'd always wanted to go in here since I came to the academy. When I was young, I wanted to become a biologist. But fate had other plans... Such a cliché thing to say.
Anyway, at one of those tables was Alice together with the black-haired kid and the short Chou girl.
She excitedly announced my presence and invited me to sit with her.
Then Alice went on to explain how she was recruiting them into her agency—UltraMan's Legion, of course.
But why did she bother to bring me here?
"As I was saying, my... friend here, William, will also be joining the legion after we finish our substitution." She's talking about me? When did we talk about that? Probably one of those many times when I spaced out while she blabbered on about heroes. Damn.
"He isn't a hero yet?" It was the black-haired kid—Ulkip? Yeah, that was his name. He was surprised to hear I wasn't officially a fighter. His surprise made sense considering what I'd done while technically not being trained.
"Well, not actually. It's his first time officially being a superhero." Way to talk instead of the person in question, Alice. I didn't know I'd elected you as my official representative. These kids already knew we were in a relationship, and now what would they say—that I was on her leash? No way.
"So he was a vigilante?" It was the Chou girl bringing herself into this nonsense. I called her Chou, but I didn't know if she even came from the eastern principality. She didn't have the accent the chef had, so she probably grew up here.
"So why did you call me?" I wanted to get out of this place.
"Nothing much, I just wanted to present you to the students joining us. I'm not sure if you ever bothered to talk to students in your classes, heheh..." She was embarrassed? But why? Was I supposed to care about these people? To build a special bond or some kind of relationship? I was only going to teach them for a month. "So I want you to make sure we got off to a good start."
"Sure." I looked around as if waiting for someone to ask me anything. If not, I'd just leave. Sadly, the boy brought himself back into the discussion.
"How old are you exactly?"
What? Was he perhaps one of the few to recognize my actual age? I'll be honest, it felt strange to be thought of as a young guy just out of college. It got old.
Sadly, he corrected himself. "Sorry, what I mean is—you are the same age as Alice, right? But you didn't go to the academy... How did you reach this level of skill?"
Now that was a good one. I could finally correct someone.
"I don't know where everybody got that idea, but I am older than Alice. And how did I train? This academy isn't the only place where you can learn how to fight. Well, I guess you'll know that in the real world once you get out of here."
Alice took back the initiative and continued to talk about her meaningless mentorship stuff. I was sure she was very happy to have sidekicks. Or were they going to be sidekicks? Fledgling heroes? I really didn't care.
I got out of that place and went to the library to relax a little.
I read a book about AI, but it was so old it considered the very concept as fiction, so it was kind of useless. There were surprisingly few books about machinery considering this was a superhero school. Was this the monopoly the Matthew and Mundi heroes had over equipment? I'd heard they were the only reliable sources of good gadgets and armor.
You'd think there would be more students trying to learn to make this stuff themselves considering how big the community was.
I thought there were some with this kind of interest, but they were probably snatched up by the bigger players in apprenticeship programs. I wasn't really sure.
Whatever the case was, I was tired.
I went to bed early, passing by Alice talking with some other teachers. I think Sasha was with them too.
That night I slept quite fine. It was clear I had some exhaustion I'd never gotten to get rid of from the past days.