The sky rumbled loudly, shrouded in thick clouds of thunder and lightning.
Dark clouds covered the moonlight, leaving only neon lights to bring life to this dead city. Red, blue, and green billboards and signboards flickered in and out through the heavily pouring rain.
Their glow was distorted by the mist and rising fog in the city that never sleeps.
Above this dead city that never sleeps, maglev trains zipped past neon-lit buildings, their silver frames vanishing into the night like phantoms.
The roar of their engines reverberated through the city, vibrating violently down into the streets below.
This is the everyday life in Paradise Megacity, a city of glass and chrome towering above the slums and decaying alleys.
Wealth and power hung above the skyline while misery and sadness rot away in the gutters below.
But tonight, these gutters are painted with blood.
---
This place was once a nice clinic, but now it looks more like a haunted house. Cracked walls and broken glass tell a story of violence.
A crooked neon sign buzzed faintly above the entrance with sparks flying out of it; its letters half-burnt and unrecognizable, flickering in and out, casting a violet glow over the ruins.
Inside the clinic, a stench of oil mixed with burnt circuitry and blood permeated the air. Everything warped under the neon light; slick pools formed on uneven tiles where roofs had caved in.
Outside, the storm continued to rage on, the rain beat against the roofs as if trying to erase what horrors lay in this clinic.
But unfortunately, nothing can erase this horror.
---
In the middle of the clinic is a fifteen-year-old boy wrapped in bandages from head to toe, the entire bandage was soaked in blood; it was as if the boy had been fished out of a pool of blood.
He was kneeling in the middle of the clinic with utter chaos around him, in what looked like a slaughterhouse.
All around him were corpses, dead corpses scattered across the floor; none of these corpses were intact.
Heads were blown open like ripe watermelons cut open, faces caved in and twisted into something else entirely.
Limbs were torn away as if they were mere toys thrown away after playtime.
Chrome mods twisted and torn off brutally; twisted sockets where cybernetic arms and eyes were once fixed.
An entire body had its stomach hollowed out, guts and intestines strewn across the floor, spines that have been snapped like twigs, ribs poking out like shards of broken glass.
This place was simply...a butchery. None of these corpses here were intact at all.
Thick rivers of blood gathered between bodies, mixed with rain dripping from shattered windows.
Chrome parts littered everywhere; arms with twitching fingers frozen by dead nerves, eye implants glowing faintly before fading into darkness.
This place was a true vision of hell that surrounded the boy in the middle of all this.
The boy in the middle of this hell was clutching a petite body.
This body, once brimming with life, laughter, and racing through alleys with her bright smile, was a rare smile of hope in this gloomy world.
But now she is just an empty husk. They have hollowed her out.
Every organ in her body was taken out: kidneys, liver, heart, and eyes have been plucked from their sockets, her tongue ripped from her mouth.
Even her brain was not spared; it was carved away, and if that wasn't enough, they drained her blood until her skin turned pale as wax.
What remained was just an empty husk, an eight-year-old child's shaped shell. The boy hugged the body tightly, his body shaking.
The rain continued to pour even harder, landing heavily on the roof like a drum, seeping through cracks, each drop tapping against the lifeless bodies around him, against the chrome parts littered everywhere, and against the hollow girl cradled in his arms.
The boy's head was hung low, buried in the body; he shook amidst silent sobs. His breathing was hitched and rough; the sound of his grief reverberated throughout the clinic like a weeping ghost.
Time passed by, but the boy continued to kneel there without moving, as if time had no effect on him.
He didn't move; he just held her tighter, his fingers digging into what remained of her.
He buried his head deep into her body as if trying to cut off the world outside, hoping against all odds that maybe... just maybe the rain could wash this unbearable truth and pain if he held on to her long enough.
But nothing changed; her chest did not rise, her warmth did not return, she did not wake up and call him... Dante.
She was completely gone.
But life continued beyond this clinic; the city kept moving. It wouldn't stop just because an insignificant little life was gone from this world.
BOOOOOOM!
Suddenly, a pure golden lightning cracked and flashed across the sky. For a fleeting moment, the entire clinic was illuminated by golden light, revealing a corner of the horror all around him.
After a while, the boy finally lifted his head; he revealed bandages wrapped tightly around his skull, with only two holes cut open for his eyes to peer through.
From the darkness, these eyes were completely red, cold and detached, as if they were the eyes of a demon.
They were crimson red, as if pools of blood.
Those eyes were full of anger; these eyes belonged to a fifteen-year-old boy, not to someone who would never know peace again.
These were the eyes that had consumed death and spat it back out as rage... a demon born from despair in these slums.
The boy stared at the hollow body in his arms.
"I told you I'd protect you and get us out of this place."
His hoarse and cracked voice sounded.
Silence enveloped him; only the sound of the rain remained.
His breathing was rough; his chest heaved up and down. For a fleeting moment, those crimson eyes softened... the boy he once was came back into existence, a brother who carried her on his shoulders high above despair, who dreamed of escaping District Nine together.....
The boy's fingers clenched tightly, his nails digging into her hollow frame.
In that moment, the boy stopped crying; his body stopped trembling.
When he lifted his head again, the grief and sadness were gone; his eyes returned to that cold and detached look.
".....I'll gut every last one of you."