Pat gasped for breath; his throat burned from the acidic fumes of rotting corpses and refuse. Klada was a few meters ahead of him, her reddish, slightly curly hair bouncing with each step and trailing behind her head like flames. The squeaking and hissing of rats thundered around them. They were on their heels. The pounding of millions—or perhaps even billions—of rodent paws accompanied the hissing like drums backing guitars. Pat almost felt the small claws scratching at the back of his neck. He was terrified of those enormous rodents, of their yellow teeth and claws, of the hiss that haunted his head in many nightmares. He tried to suppress the surge of anxiety that drove tears into his eyes.
"Move—or they'll leave us here!" Klada cried between rapid breaths. But Pat couldn't hear her—the rats' sounds drowned out everything else in his head. All he heard was the pounding of his heart and the rats. Yet he kept running. His lungs burned from the dry air and his legs felt wooden.
Every movement was hindered by mud. Mud built up over decades from debris and bodies forever forgotten by those above. Mountains of plastic waste mixed with rotting fruit, vegetables, meat, and broken furniture. A paradise for scavengers and decomposers.
Pat gritted his teeth and, with his last strength, made it into the paternoster lift. Behind him, the iron doors slammed shut with a loud click, and Pat watched only the coarse concrete of the elevator shaft rushing past.
Klada breathed erratically, leaning against the cabin wall with closed eyes. Her reddish hair gently draped over her tiny shoulders. Her freckled face was smeared with dark brown grime. So were her work rubber overalls, mud-stained up to mid-thigh. She looked so small in her uniform, like a child wearing her parents' clothes.
Compared to Pat, she was tiny. But what she lacked in height and strength, she made up for in agility and speed—nobody among the seekers could match her.
The coarse concrete walls of the shaft gave way to glass panels. A chip scanner turned on in an instant, and from the speakers came the cheerful slogans of chip advertisements. The noise in Pat's ears quieted, and he began to hear the familiar, upbeat voice of the woman in the chip commercial.
"Register with us! You can come without prior appointment and at an amazing price! Only until this Thursday, newborns and students are given priority. Come get your new life on Level 180! Remember, by law, all citizens must have an implanted chip per Act No. 110/2115!" The woman's voice was accompanied by cheerful music and images of smiling people of all ages in spacious apartments with white, sterile walls—a universally accepted ideal of luxury.
"Lies," Pat thought. "Everyone already has a chip, and it's useless. It's just a way for authorities and corporations to gain maximum power over people. To collect data and trade it, personalizing a numbing advertisement package for each person about things they don't need. And for what? For a falsely promised life above." Pat frowned. He couldn't remember what the world once looked like, but he heard stories from his great-great-great-great-great grandfather, passed down via recorded messages and a small photo album showing life before the city began to rise. Eventually that recording and photo album reached Pat.
Decades ago, around 2045, the government of our small country in the midst of the Union of Nations decided to raise the birth rate. They wanted to turn one child per woman into four. It took them a long time before someone clever thought to ask the people. They held a poll, people called for housing, and the government listened. They began building. Every available space—except national parks, which they halved twice—filled with apartments and living spaces. It worked. Birth rates surged, and everything seemed ideal. But then space ran out. For families whose children had grown, there wasn't enough room. So governments built even more. The cities began to rise. Old landmarks and cobbled streets vanished. Only towers and platforms remained. Pat remembered faded, colorful—and most importantly physical—photos passed down in his family for generations, showing the old world: the hidden side of the moon that was once the city center full of little houses, castles, even cathedrals. All now buried beneath mountains and mountains of waste. The past erased from the eyes of those who remain as its legacy.
A sharp pain in his shoulder ripped Pat from his reverie. His face contorted in pain and instinctively he reached with his left hand to where his shoulder once was. Through a thick glove, he felt the cold metal of his prosthetic arm. Phantom pain hit—he felt as though someone had driven a knife into his arm and turned it. The burning, piercing pain drove tears into his eyes again, exacerbated by fear of the rats. Klada noticed how Pat pressed himself against the cabin wall with a painful expression, and she immediately understood what was happening. It had happened before, many times while working with Pat—she knew what to do. She pulled a pocketknife from one of her many pockets, knelt by Pat with a cold expression, and stabbed the prosthesis. Pat glared at the prosthetic limb as the knife's handle protruded from the rubber skin. His breathing slowed, and his mind finally started to register that the painful limb wasn't real. After a few minutes, the pain passed completely, and Pat exhaled in relief.
"Thank you," Pat whispered softly. Klada didn't respond; her cold expression shifted to pure fascination. She gazed at the stabbed prosthesis as though expecting a torrent of blood. After a moment, she blinked, withdrew the knife, and returned to the other side of the cabin.
"Don't think that makes us friends. I almost died because of that thing!" she gestured toward the prosthesis. "If that thing hadn't gotten stuck and left those damned doors open, we wouldn't be running from those disgusting creatures. The "most skilled tracker"—yeah, right. Just another loser. Why do you even work here if you're terrified of rats?" Pat opened his mouth to reply, but Klada cut him off sharply.
"You know what, let me guess. You have a sick mother and you just want to pay for her care, right? Or some similar crap—nothing else would bring a pathetic guy like you here." Pat didn't respond. It was pointless. Once she got going, nobody could stop her. He leaned his head against the wall of the cabin and closed his eyes. He didn't want to explain that a flesh-eating bacteria had infected his arm after a rat bite, started consuming it, and doctors could only amputate the entire limb—almost to the shoulder blade. That triggered his persistent phobia. Combined with endless nightmares where his arm turned red, then purple, then black from wrist to mid-arm, fear ruled his mind. But his desire to see historical cathedrals and castles was stronger. That was his reason for venturing into these wasteland regions every single day—almost fifteen years now—to work recovering lost bodies in various stages of decay. Trying to explain that to Klada was pointless; she wouldn't understand.