Chapter One: The Escape to Hell
In this city built in darkness, far from the sunlight, surrounded by nuclear radiation everywhere.
In an upscale residential neighborhood, in the middle class.
A pale young man with gray hair calmly and stealthily made his way into one of the houses. The act was routine for him. He easily bypassed the external and internal security of the house and entered through the front door with a key that appeared out of nowhere in his hand.
Upon entering, he headed to the second floor, where he heard the sound of water in the bathroom. He knew his target was taking a shower, so he sat and waited for him to come out. While he was waiting, he heard a sound coming from one of the rooms, so he went to investigate.
The room was locked with an advanced device integrated with a bomb and required a secret code. It was strange that the room had a sophisticated security system while the rest of the house did not. He searched around for the electronic key card for the door.
He searched in various places: the library, inside books, on tables, behind paintings and drawings, under rugs...
He searched without making a sound until he found a secret safe. He opened it slowly and found a card to unlock the door, and a blank map with some scribbles. The map was hand-drawn with a crooked yellow line forming a right angle, but it was clearly drawn by a blind person or a baby.
The young man knew the line referred to the Black River, and inside the right-angle area of the line in the northeastern direction, which occupied two-thirds of the paper's space, there was a drawing of a black pipe next to a drawing of a machine card, below them a drawing of a mesh door, and below all of them a large drawing of an animal's head with the word "dragon" written next to it.
Crack! The sound of a door closing.
The young man stopped his search, put the card and the map in his jacket pocket, and left the room like a seasoned soldier. In one of his hands was a dagger that hadn't been there before. When he reached the source of the sound, he was in front of the same previous door, and it was still locked. He wondered, "Did someone leave? Or did someone enter?"
"Who are you?" a person behind the young man asked. He lit up the place with the press of a button on a remote control in his hands.
"You shouldn't have overstepped your boundaries with someone from the Outskirts, Mr. Paul," the young man replied, turning to face a bald man in his forties with a light beard, wearing pajamas. He was still wet from his shower.
"Leave," Paul commanded in an annoyed voice.
"The code for the room. I want to make sure of something before you die," the young man ordered, ignoring him.
Paul did not respond to the young man. They both looked at each other.
The young man knew that Paul was waiting for someone. He rushed towards him and raised the dagger, cutting off Paul's head, which flew into the air before falling.
The young man looked at the severed head, sighed, 'Is this really Paul?' the young man thought, but he decided to ignore the matter. He couldn't believe that Paul, the leader of a famous gang, was this weak. Something strange was happening.
The young man touched the closed room door. It began to slowly and steadily disintegrate, creating a hole in it. The disintegration spread to the floor like a waterfall, but a dusty one. As the hole widened to fit his size, he entered the room and found a five-year-old girl lying against the wall next to the door. She was sweating, and her exhaustion was evident, and she was barely breathing.
He provided her with delicate first aid. But her condition only worsened. The girl's condition was contradictory; she was not sick or harmed, but her condition worsened over time.
The young man picked up a dirty and tattered doll that was next to her and put it in the girl's hands. He whispered in her ear, "The one you love is coming. It's better not to let him worry about you." Just as the young man expected, the girl's breathing changed slowly and became calm. He left her on the floor and went to Paul's office.
He searched through some documents until he found his target. It was an information sheet with a picture of the girl attached. The girl was an orphan of a father, and her mother was currently a contract killer for Paul. Her killings were competitors of Paul and others, while her payment was her daughter's safety.
The young man searched for information about the mother but only found the targets and their locations. The young man took the location of the current target and headed there.
When the young man arrived at the target's house, he found a police officer watching the house. The young man knew he was checking on the mother to confirm she was a killer. He got rid of him and began to peel off the skin of his face with a dagger.
In a dimly lit room inside the house, a man in his sixties lay on a sofa, with blood leaking from his mouth despite his desperate attempts to contain it.
On top of him sat a beautiful young woman in her late teens, she was nineteen years old. She was slowly pressing a short knife, which seemed to be designed for combat rather than general use, into his heart.
She continued to press the knife calmly, watching the man's features, which began to change from desperate to indifferent to death, which intensified her gaze, making her look like a poisonous flower.
She had fed him a paralyzing poison that made him unable to move or resist.
When the man's breath died out and the light in his eyes faded, she pulled the knife from his corpse. Then, with a barely noticeable movement, she separated his head from his body, leaving it to roll on the floor with a cracking sound and its pale eyes, with new blood gushing over the floor. Indifferent to all this, she left the room, cleaned the knife in the toilet with one hand, and left the house, contemplating the garden outside. The weather was so dark that the only light came from the dim streetlights, and the smell of dampness mixed with decay filled the air, even though it was midday when the sun should be at its hottest.
After five minutes of silence, she decided to leave the man's garden as well.
As she stepped out of the main gate of the outer wall, she found a young man who looked to be her same age. He looked sad and was staring intently at the knife in her left hand.
"It was you then!" the young man sighed, speaking as he ran his hand through his black hair in despair. "Do I have the right to know something... or not?"
"No, and... aren't you a cop?!" the young woman smiled calmly under the yellow light of the luxury neighborhood's lamp, which made her look like an angel, with her dark skin, bluish-black hair, and light blue-greenish dead eyes, with a dark, wide eyebrow and unusually black eyelashes as if she had dyed them, a small nose that suited women, and a short, wonderful smile. "Aren't you going to arrest me?"
"A cop... arrest..." the young man mumbled, his gray eyes showing the emptiness of his thoughts and his psychological distress. "Well, it doesn't really matter... it's already too late." The young man remained still for a while. "In fact, your daughter isn't doing well..."
"Strange, you're not the cop who was following me! But why do you look like him?" the young woman interrupted with a tilted head. "Well, I don't care why you took his form, kid. But what do you mean, 'your daughter isn't doing well'? Are you playing with me?"
"Paul is dead, and that explains everything," the young man said as he left the place. "We'll meet again."
In the middle class.
Between the luxury of the upscale neighborhoods and the simplicity of the poor ones, there was a semi-middle-class neighborhood that carried contradictory features of both worlds.
While the young man was walking in the alleys of the neighborhood, heading somewhere, his mind was occupied with the sound of the door he had heard. He didn't have the chance to open the door to confirm his suspicions about the sound. And Paul seemed different; he came out of the bathroom without any sound; he didn't even hear the bathroom door. Yet he was weak. And the reason for his entry into the Outskirts was not trivial; there was a reason behind it. Finally, the map. He had heard of the dragon, but he had never seen it or a picture of it, but the map reminded him. Was there a dragon in the city here? Impossible.
Finally, the young man stood in front of an old garage with a wide, rusty gate belonging to a normal-looking house, like the other houses there. He opened the door with a simple push and entered.
Inside the garage, there was a young woman tattooing roses on a teenager's arm, which was full of scars and burn marks. The teenager had long black hair and light green eyes and was wearing old black clothes.
The young woman's fingers moved with precision and expertise to cover the scars and make them invisible, with a silence broken only by the sound of the needle burning the skin.
Without looking at them or them looking at him, the young man headed towards a marble slab on the floor far from the door. He lifted it to reveal a dusty black bag. He opened it, removed the police officer's face skin from his face, revealing his pale features as if he were sick, and his eyes filled with a sleeplessness that hadn't been there. He put the bag back in its place.
Then he went to a corner of the garage, where there was an old toilet and a rusty water basin. He opened the shower tap after taking off his clothes and began to wash. The tap was held by a thread so it wouldn't fall, with the thread not in a better condition than the tap itself.
The water washed black ink from the young man's hair, but it didn't overwhelm the thick, viscous, milky liquid that seemed endless, separating from the young man's elegantly built body, revealing many scars that almost hid all his skin. Each scar was larger and deeper than the other, and on his face, a single scar appeared on the left side, starting from under his eye to his neck, with three deep wounds of varying lengths attached to the scar. Both liquids slid into the toilet drain like a soul leaving a body.
The young man had gray hair, which was not a sign of his handsomeness but rather a testament to his suffering and his hellish life that he lived in the Outskirts, as his hair was black at first. As for his gray eyes, the sleeplessness disappeared from them and was replaced by sadness, and the depth of his thoughts and wisdom came from the hell of life.
He raised his left palm and focused his gaze on a milky white crystal. It began to slowly excrete a liquid of the same color, covering the scars and wounds on his disfigured palm as if they had never existed in the first place. In the end, he refused that and left the scars as they were.
When he finished, he put on his underwear, black pants, and a hoodie, then he came out drying his hair with a tattered towel like a completely new person, with pale skin and short gray hair, but his scars and sadness, which did not disappear, made him appear as an important member of a gang. As for the young woman who was putting on the tattoo for the teenager, she sat cleaning her tools alone.
"I told you not to waste water!" she looked at him from the corner of her purple eyes and said coldly, "Especially in this place."
"I found Paul," he replied, changing the subject as he dried his hair with a smile that brightened his features when he heard the young woman's words. "He no longer exists."
The young woman nodded without emotion and said nothing.
"I found a little girl in a room. She was barely breathing..." He paused for a moment and then continued, "I decided to look for her background, I reached her mother... and I knew her."
She looked at him now, but slowly. This led to strands of her black hair falling to block her eyes.
"She is Vordon's daughter. I took care of her for six years. I was eight... and she was five." He smiled bitterly, remembering parts of his memories. "Since then, we have been separated. Me... and her."
"But she didn't recognize you?" the young woman asked calmly, a steady sigh behind him.
He nodded yes. "I was wearing the face skin of a cop... a cop who was following her as a 'suspect' in a murder. I got rid of him... and wore his face."
Then he sighed as he looked at the floor beneath his feet, "I watched her silently... then I told her about her daughter... and left the rest to fate."
The young woman was silent for a while, then she asked as she put her tools back into a clean special box, "What is your relationship with Vordon for him to leave his daughter with you?"
"He's my mentor, and I'm the one who planted the idea of escaping this city, and even the entire world, in his head. But I didn't think he would take on a mission like that," the young man said with a deep sigh.
"So you were the main reason for Vordon's unification of the people of the Outskirts. And you remained silent all this time," the young woman understood and asked, "Do you think Vordon will really find a way to escape? And will you stay here with me today, or do you have another job?"
"I found a way to escape, if my treasure is real," the young man stated.
After a heavy moment of silence, the young man said as he returned the tattered towel to its place and styled his scattered hair with both hands, "I will now confirm the validity of the treasure... I can't stay anyway. The gangs have started competing to hunt me down. At least three groups are looking for me now."
The young woman gave him a look that did not show any astonishment, but she kept staring at him for a long time, as if she was waiting for him to say something.
The young man continued with a clear waver in his words, "I want you to come with me... if you stay... they won't be satisfied with just erasing me, they will come for you in my name."
"A beautiful way to invite me to come with you," the young woman said with a smile.
After a moment, she nodded in agreement. She had nothing to lose by accompanying her husband. She didn't even ask him about that escape treasure.
They began to gather their supplies.
They were not many, but they were carefully and precisely selected:
Two elegant energy pistols with blue engravings.
The crystal ammunition for the pistols was fully charged.
A few boxes of crystal bullets of different colors.
Two daggers: each with two faces, one sharp and the other serrated like a saw.
Two black masks for gas purification.
Two boxes of clear lenses that cover the entire eye, sticking directly to the eye like a shell.
Despite the supplies being for combat, they were beautifully designed. Each piece was shiny, clean, and attractive, like lethal jewelry. As for the crystal bullets, they were shiny crystals with a faint light according to the color of each crystal.
It didn't look like preparation for a normal escape, but rather for going to war.
Unlike the young man, who took nothing extra other than combat tools, the young woman did not forget the essentials, such as compressed food cans, copper water bottles, and spare clothes.
In addition to nine packs of 'energy cigarettes' and three lighters, which were hers, the young woman was careful to divide them between them for fear of damage.
As for the plan, it was simple... and crazy at the same time.
To escape the class-based city through "Covenant Prison" by releasing a dragon and clinging to its claws during its random flight outside the barrier's boundaries.
A plan that has something of a legend... and something of despair.
The young woman did not care about the plan; she knew her husband was just enjoying his youth. The existence of dragons was a legend in the past. But now, even famous animals like lions, wolves, dogs, and other insects like ants, bees, and mosquitoes are nothing but stories passed down through generations. This is thanks to the contribution of radiation in removing them from the way.
But she didn't scrutinize the matters. The young man's sense of humor was truly sick, but she loved him from the bottom of her heart.
The outcome was decided, and the truth was clear. But she decided to take the risk. For her, staying with a certain death did not compare to an adventure, even if it was an invitation to death.
But their decision to escape from the misery of their current life to what caused it: the outside hell, showed the abundance of their choices and their beautiful lives.
The young woman asked with a smile as she saw the childish map on the floor, "Is the world outside better?"
The young man looked at her, scrutinizing her face for a moment, and sighed, "I heard that radiation has a limited range."
"Hmm, it doesn't really matter. But if we can get out and find a place without radiation," she raised her head from the map to meet her husband's eyes, which were looking at her, "What will you do?"
"The sea... the mountains... the rivers... the animals... the sky... the stars..." The young man quickly averted his eyes from her, speaking in a disjointed manner as his eyes fell on the food cans, which were full of poisonous fungi and rotten worms. "Let's get out first. I actually hate hope, and I love the truth, even if it's hot and not just bitter."
At the same time.
Somewhere near the aerial barrier of the class-based city. The aerial barrier was the foundation of the city and had blocked more than ninety percent of the outside radiation, providing a stable place to live in the city. It resembled a transparent bottle with a slight ripple that appeared steadily every second.
The young mother, with her lifeless eyes, was digging the ground with her hands, silently. The ground was dry and rotten, near a withered black tree.
After digging for a quarter of an hour, she found a door handle. She lifted it, and the dirt from the place flew up over an area of two and a half meters. The young mother carried her sleeping five-year-old daughter and went down the stairs leading to the bottom of the city. She did not forget to close the door behind her.
"Another failure," a man who appeared out of nowhere said as he scrutinized the black door that had begun to be visibly buried by the rotten dirt as if it were alive. The man was bald and had a light beard, calmly. He clearly resembled Paul. "As Vordon's daughter, I thought she had found the dragon's lair, but she didn't. Oh, damn the stupid servant, he didn't just fall into the captivity of the people of the Outskirts. He also didn't notice that this door looks new and not old."
The man who resembled Paul looked behind him and left calmly, "I sacrificed my brother for no reason. Well, that doesn't really matter."
I am sorry for the mistakes or things if they are not understood. I am not good at English, so I translate automatically.
"""Creation is hard, I hope you comment or rate my novel, even if negatively.!"""