"Ugh… it stinks, jeez!" Sami blurted as he opened his eyes to darkness. He immediately tried to sit up, only to bang his head against something metallic above.
"Ouch!" he hissed, rubbing his forehead with a grimace. The dark space around him was cramped and suffocating, littered with what felt like waste. Worst of all, the stench engulfing the space was unbearable. He coughed, then crossed his arm over his nose, though it did little to help.
"Where am I?"
He reached out and tapped the walls around him, then realized he was trapped inside some sort of rectangular box. When he pushed upward, he felt the lid creak open a crack.
"Am I in a dumpster?" he muttered in disbelief, forcing it wider until the night air spilled in.
Then he immediately hauled himself out and tumbled onto the ground, groaning as he scrambled to his feet. Turning back, he stared at the large dumpster in shock.
"What the… How the hell did I end up in there?!" His brow furrowed and his face twisted in utter bewilderment.
He brushed at his shoulder and peeled off a banana skin that clung stubbornly to his jacket, flicking it back into the trash. Then he brushed the rest of the grime from his jacket with a shudder.
"Strange…" he muttered, still disoriented as he narrowed his eyes and scanned his surroundings… which now felt very unfamiliar.
He was standing in a narrow alley wedged between two looming buildings, the passage stretching long and dim in both directions.
The first thing Sami noticed was the flickering neon strips bolted to the walls, bleeding fractured reds, blues, and purples. Holo-ads sputtered on the surfaces nearby, while fluorescent lamps clung to exposed pipes, casting harsh pools of light. Large rats scurried across the damp ground, and above it all, he could hear the buzzing of neon transformers, distant power lines, and the wailing of sirens in the distance.
Another thing Sami realized was how polluted the air was. It carried a choking, acrid mix of burning rubber, exhaust fumes, chemicals, and rotten waste.
Sami scrunched his face and frowned. "Where am I? This doesn't look like Seoul."
He turned back to the dumpster, trying to make sense of what was happening.
The last thing he could remember before waking up in it was running away from a gang of loan sharks in Seoul.
They had come to his apartment but waited outside for him. When he was taking out the trash, he saw all six of them approaching, so he ran into the nearby alley. Unfortunately, he reached a dead end, and when he turned around, one of them suddenly pulled out a pistol with a silencer and shot him in the heart.
'Did I die? Did they dump my body in a dumpster?' he wondered, instinctively reaching for his chest where he had been shot. There was no injury, but his fingers brushed something in the breast pocket of his utility jacket. He dipped his hand in and pulled it out.
It was a small mirror that had a crack run across it. Sami barely had time to study it before his eyes suddenly went wide at the reflection staring back.
"Huh? Who is this?" he blurted before he even realized it.
He was supposed to have the painfully average features of a twenty-five-year-old, with inky black hair and dark brown eyes marked by dark circles, but the reflection staring back at him was that of a younger boy, perhaps in his late teens, with pale skin, gray eyes, and silver hair.
Sami was… flabbergasted.
He let out a short sarcastic laugh as he dragged his cheeks in disbelief.
'Ha… I'm going crazy. What the hell is going on?!'
He ran his fingers over the unfamiliar contours of his face, still trying to make sense of it, when something caught the corner of his eye. Bringing his right hand closer and narrowing his eyes, he saw some kind of writing on his wrist in black ink, like a tattoo. It read: SRN241002.
'Weird… why does it look like some kind of serial number?'
He stared at it for a moment, trying to make sense of the strange marking. Halfway through studying it, a piercing migraine suddenly lanced through his skull, making him groan and drop to his knees.
He clutched his head, bending over and writhing, but almost immediately his strength gave out, and he collapsed fully onto the ground. The seconds stretched on, each one amplifying the pain until it felt unbearable. Sami felt as if his head would burst from the excruciating pressure. He couldn't help but yell, tears streaming down his face, as he twisted side to side on the floor. At one point, he bit down on his lips so hard that blood trickled into his mouth, mingling with his cries of agony.
Then, after what felt like an eternity, the migraine began to fade slowly.
When Sami finally managed to regain some semblance of relief, he crawled slowly to the wall and leaned against it breathing heavily.
He had barely settled when a strange, overwhelming sensation washed over him. Suddenly, fragments of memories, images, emotions, and thoughts that were not his own, flooded his mind:
Vel, a regular of Sector 9 in District Four, was a poor boy who lived alone in a tiny single-room apartment on the outskirts of Sector 9.
He has a sister who, at the age of six, was sold by his father to a wealthy family in one of the upper sectors for money.
His father became a Derivator when Vel was still little, five years old to be precise. After that, his father abandoned him and his mother, moving to the higher sectors to pursue a better life.
Vel's mother never found her concept object and, unlike his father, could not become a Derivator. She remained human and later died of syphilis when Vel was fifteen, probably from the work she did to provide for both of them.
Ever since, Vel had been surviving through theft and trading. By the time he was eighteen, he managed to land a job as a cleaner for a wealthy woman in Sector 3.
While on the job, he came across a mirror, and upon touching it to clean it, he awakened as a derivator. This made him realize that mirrors were his concept object. Overcome with excitement, Vel stole the mirror, but unfortunately for him, he was discovered as the thief and killed by the wealthy woman's guard.
'Vel? Is that the owner of this body? Did I take over his body or what?' Sami's mind raced as the memories settled in fragments. The entire situation felt off-kilter, and he didn't understand most of what was happening. Even the memories now flooding his mind were confusing and disjointed.
He leaned back against the wall, trying to steady his thoughts, but barely a second later, he heard a voice at the back of his head, like someone whispering into his ear:
"Run!"
Sami immediately looked to the right, instinctively, but he couldn't see anyone.
"Huh?"
He looked to the left… nothing. Then he tilted his head in confusion. 'Am I hearing things?'
Just then, a drop of what looked like water fell from above and landed on his hair. Sami looked up, thinking it was about to rain. But then his face twisted in horror as he saw a horrific monster, nearly twice his size, with the lower body of a spider and a vaguely humanoid torso, climbing down the wall… toward him.