Kariel lowered his head. A mixed, disgusting smell hit his nose.
He knew where it was coming from – three hundred meters away, in the slums, workers were burning corpses.
The bodies of workers, dried out from coughing, who had died on the hard bunks by the road, were piled up and burned one after another.
The burning human muscles and tissues reminded Kariel of beef from distant memories. The fat was nauseating. The skin crackled like burning embers.
The worst smelled like hair – like concentrated sulfur. The process usually began with the smell of coal and sulfur, then – muscle tissues. At the end – internal organs, and then the stench became unbearable.
Kariel looked away, and the blazing pyre disappeared from view.
The workers did not eat these corpses, but that does not mean that no one tried. It's just that those who tried died afterward.
Now they just ate the distributed nutrient paste, watching the spectacle. Their kin crackled in the fire, and hundreds of black shadows in tattered huts or on the streets shared the paste.
A scene like this, once seen, is unforgettable.
He turned and, with a leap, rushed into the darkness. Seven days remained until the Great Purge, and the gangs were becoming increasingly restless, especially in Quintus.
The streets teemed with thugs, zealously patrolling their territories. The leaders, meanwhile, conferred in basements and on the upper floors of buildings.
The existence of the vengeful spirit was no longer a secret. Lately, Kariel had been acting more openly than ever, deliberately leaving many traces of his presence.
However, it was not this that worried the gangs now. The cause of their concern was the fall of House Scryvok.
The Scryvok family, which intended to subjugate the entire hive once and for all, was destroyed – gangs learned this news through their channels.
At the moment when the vast majority of large and medium gangs had sworn allegiance to House Scryvok, this devastating news struck them like a blow to the gut.
Of course, misfortune never comes alone.
Some gangs tried to defect to other noble houses, but the news they received plunged everyone into a terrible silence.
The so-called "noble houses" no longer existed.
All families capable of promising the gangs a future were wiped out in one night. The remaining aristocrats were busy tearing each other apart for the vacated territories.
The Upper Hive had never been in such chaos. Previously quiet nights were torn to shreds. Aristocrats in silks and powdered faces, clutching weapons, eagerly rushed to rob and divide the vacant titles and possessions.
And before the Great Purge in the Underhive and the hopes of the gangs…
Who cared about that?
Even the gangs themselves didn't know if the Great Purge would take place in seven days. They knew what day it was, and they had been diligently preparing all this time, but…
If the aristocratic houses, the instigators of it, had disappeared, was there any point in this event?
If they had asked Kariel, he would have answered that there was.
A very big point.
He leaped over a silver spire and casually patted the thirteenth stone gargoyle of the Night Ghost, as if greeting it.
The iron monster silently watched into the darkness as he disappeared. Half a minute later, a murky drop of rain fell from the sky and shattered on its head. Muffled sounds of gunfire could be heard from three blocks away.
The gargoyle remained impassive.
…
It started raining.
This annoyed Charles, who was on patrol. He hated rainy weather; he always hated it. Although it rained almost five days a week in Quintus, he still didn't like it.
He used to complain endlessly about it to his only friend.
"The air gets so damp from the rain, Mao, don't you think?"
He would whine and whine until Mao put a gun to his head and told him to shut up. Only then would he fall silent with satisfaction.
He liked it when his only friend aimed a gun at him. For no reason, he just liked it.
At this thought, the pale youth gave a nervous chuckle.
A muscle twitched on his face, disfigured by chemicals, and the smile stretched into a terrible spasm.
"Damn…"
Muttering this, he punched himself in the nose without hesitation. This gruesome act not only crooked his nose sideways and caused bleeding but also stopped the facial spasm.
Charles shook his head in resignation, took a syringe from his pocket, and gave himself an injection.
The murky chemical goo slowly disappeared into the syringe, and in its place came heightened senses and chaos in his mind. Time stretched in his perception. Charles unconsciously shook his head and, leaning against the wall, began to bang his head against it.
A year ago, he wouldn't have injected this stuff called "Swift," but he had no choice.
Injecting it and enduring all the subsequent symptoms was the only condition for joining his gang. Now, a year later, if he didn't inject a dose of "Swift" every six hours, he would start having muscle spasms.
"Mao, how I hate the rain," he muttered, leaning against the wall.
Although he was banging his head against the wall, Charles felt no pain.
He continued to mutter, a low, continuous hum escaping his throat. His eyes rolled back, and he almost unconsciously leaned against the edge of the wall – he had almost forgotten who he was.
"Swift" turned you into someone who forgot his name. His fingers began to twitch nervously, and the familiar sensation returned – the sensation of his first murder.
He slit a man's throat with a knife, and then tore him apart. The sticky sensation of flesh and blood didn't affect Charles; he just wanted to finish everything quickly then…
Wait, who is Charles?
"Mao, I want to die so badly, it's so boring in the gang."
He heard someone say in a low voice.
"Only murders, and nothing but murders. What's the point? I just wanted to dress well and eat my fill. I don't want to inject 'Swift'…"
"Swift?" a voice sounded.
The man named Charles nodded unconsciously. Blood was flowing from his nose. It streamed, mixing with the rainwater, flowing down his disfigured face.
His consciousness and vision were so destroyed by "Swift" that he couldn't come to his senses until the drug wore off.
Therefore, he had no idea who was talking to him.
"Swift…" the fractured consciousness said. "Swift, how I hate it."
"I think I understand why," the voice said low.
The downpour hit the city, shattering against the roofs of buildings with a deafening roar. The mud on the roads was gradually washed away by the acid rain, but soon this same rain would create new mud.
An endless cycle.
"I want to die, Mao," the shattered voice said.
Golden consciousness. — I can't live like this anymore, I don't want to kill, I really don't want to.
"Do you really want to die?" asked a voice. "Death is not a pleasant process, and for those like you, its outcome cannot be called peace."
"Who's speaking?" the fractured consciousness asked suspiciously.
He was still banging his head against the wall, his skull already bleeding, and the cracks between the bricks were filled with his blood.
"Does it matter?" asked the voice. "You just want to die, don't you?"
"Ah, yes…"
The fractured consciousness answered unconsciously – it had no idea where it was or who was speaking to it. But it wasn't lying.
He was too lost to lie.
"I want to die," he said. "Someone, kill me. And kill 'Swift' too."
"'Swift' is a chemical substance, it has no life."
"I can only kill the living," said that low voice through the curtain of rain.
"Life?"
"Life."
"And me? Do I have a life?"
Under the pouring rain, Kariel looked at the man who asked this question.
He had a pale face, clearly showing bruises from beatings. Blood was still dripping from his nose, his eyes were empty, with nothing in the black pupils. The corners of his mouth twitched nervously, and he continuously banged the back of his head against the wall.
The embodiment.
"There used to be," Kariel said.
He reached out his hand, and a dull thud sounded. The body collapsed to the ground. He remained under the influence of 'Swift' until his death and never learned who killed him.
In fact, he didn't know anything anyway.
Kariel raised his head, glanced at the sky, crisscrossed by a jumble of buildings and neon signs, and left the alley.
He had four gangs to deal with that night. This number was carefully calculated. He would handle everything in six hours and finish today's work.
In fact, if someone had traced his routes, they would have noticed one thing.
Ever since the two offspring of House Scryvok were hanged on the tower of the Glorious Warlords, gangs in the vicinity of this twenty-five-story tower had been disappearing one by one, every day.
If this continued, by the day of the Great Purge, there would be no gangs left within a four-block radius of the tower.
"Efficiency is always important," Kariel thought.
He broke through the wall of rain and entered a low building. Music vibrated underfoot, and a hum of voices filled the air. Ahead of him, a narrow corridor descended. The walls were dirty, with graffiti of blood and dirt gleaming on them.
The stench of a crowd hung in the air, mixing with the smell of acid rain, creating a chilling, piercing stench.
Kariel remained unfazed.
An icy blue light flashed in his eyes, and the walls began to distort. The building materials they were made of melted in seconds, turning into boiling, incandescent liquid. However, the load-bearing structures of the building remained intact.
Kariel closed his eyes.
The corridor was now wide enough for him.
Opening his eyes, he moved forward.
The night was still long, but there was not much longer to wait.
***
Read the story months before public release — early chapters are on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Granulan