Jin opened his eyes.
The air filling his lungs was cold and sodden. The metallic taste leaking from Shinjuku's sewers left the sensation of rusted iron on his tongue.
He sat on the edge of the cot. He didn't flinch when his bare feet touched the concrete floor. His body was acclimatized to the chill.
He unwrapped the bandage on his right shoulder. The claw marks that had shredded his flesh five days ago were now just thin, pink lines. The Cellular Repair Ointment had done its work. He pressed lightly against his ribs. A dull, muffled ache responded from deep within. Not fully healed, but it wouldn't stop him from fighting.
He looked in the mirror.
The face staring back didn't belong to a university student. The under-eyes were dark, the gaze glazed and dull. He thought of his family, of his mother's face. He couldn't go home. He couldn't sit beside them with these blood-stained hands. It wasn't a choice; it was a necessity.
He cut the thought there. Melancholy was a waste of time.
He opened his locker. He pulled a black turtleneck over his head, followed by a long leather coat cut to allow unrestricted movement. He checked the magazine loaded with obsidian bullets, racked the slide, and holstered the weapon at his waist. The weight of the metal settled against him, feeling less like an object and more like a limb.
He picked up the metal tin from the table and tipped a black pill into his palm.
The Black Filter.
He swallowed it.
The effects began within seconds.
First, the colors in the room bleached out. The rust-red of the pipes bled into the gray of the concrete. The light lost its warmth. The world was stripped down to the grainy, monochrome palette of old security camera footage.
Then, the scent arrived.
Colors seen not with the eyes, but with the nose.
The mold in the corner materialized as a cloud of suspended, poison-green smoke. The smell of his own sweat was a gray steam radiating from his pores. The gun oil on his weapon formed a glowing ring of metallic blue at the tip of the barrel.
Jin opened the door and stepped out into the rainy Shinjuku night.
Outside was absolute chaos.
Rain fell like drops of black ink from the sky. The wet asphalt reflected no neon signs, because for Jin, there was no light—only scent.
The people walking on the sidewalk were nothing more than gray silhouettes. A drunkard's breath drifted into the air as dirty yellow bubbles. The fear of a woman passing by him was a mist of ice-blue fog clinging to her skin. Exhaust fumes dragged along the street in suffocating, dark gray clouds.
Jin focused amidst this riot of sensory input. He turned his nose to the wind. He was hunting for a specific signature.
And he found it.
A thin, sharp ribbon cutting through the crowd, overpowering every other smell.
Golden Yellow.
Expensive, heavy French perfume. It sliced through the mass of bodies like a knife. Jin turned up the collar of his coat and began to track the trail through the rain.
But as he got closer, he noticed the anomaly within that flawless gold.
It wasn't a pure scent.
Right in the center of that golden ribbon flowed a vein of pitch black and rotten brown.
This wasn't the smell of old books or dusty shelves. This was biological decay. Necrosis. Formaldehyde and dead skin cells. The perfume was nothing more than a heavy chemical shroud poured over the stench to mask the rot.
The trail turned onto a street lined with luxury boutiques and ended at the door of a nightclub with a sign that read "The Blue Velvet."
The impulse for violence radiating from the massive bouncer at the door glowed like a dark red aura. Jin didn't even look at the man's face as he walked past him and inside.
The place was hot. Cigarette smoke hung suspended against the ceiling.
Because of the Black Filter, the interior was rendered in shades of slate and charcoal. But in the furthest corner of the bar, a figure sitting in a dark booth glowed with a sickly golden halo.
She was there.
Back straight, a glass in her hand.
Jin slipped through the crowd, moving toward the table. His steps were silent. His hand rested beneath his coat, close to his gun.
The woman didn't see Jin coming, but she felt him. She turned her head slowly.
Her face was smooth, like a porcelain doll. But Jin could see the cracks beneath the glaze. The scent she radiated didn't lie. The thing sitting across from him was an organism struggling to stay alive, rotting from the inside out.
When Jin approached the table, the woman didn't raise her head. She simply lifted the crystal glass to her lips. The liquid inside was wine, but through the filter of Jin's perception, it appeared as a thick, coagulated Rotten Cherry. It looked like blood.
The table was in the darkest corner of the booth. The rest of the bar was filled with cigarette smoke and gray silhouettes. The mournful cry of a saxophone dragged itself heavily through the haze.
Jin sat in the leather armchair opposite the woman without asking for permission. The hem of his coat flared open with a soft rustle, his hand resting in a position where he could easily reach the grip of the Obsidian pistol in its holster.
The woman smiled.
It was a flawless smile. Her teeth were like pearls, her lips full. But Jin could smell the scent radiating from that smile.
Metallic Rust and Mold.
The woman smelled like a corpse coated in makeup and expensive perfumes (Golden Yellow).
"You still carry the cold of Berlin on you," the woman said. Her voice was smooth, but there was a faint, rasping Russian accent at the edges of her words. "It wasn't hard to find you. You smell so... clean. Just like the sterile corridors of that laboratory."
Jin didn't answer. He just looked into her eyes. Under the effect of the Black Filter, her eyes were gray voids, but the aura around her flickered between Envy Green and Hunger Red.
"Who are you?" Jin asked. His voice was as cold as the bucket of ice on the table.
The woman slowly peeled off the long, silk glove on her right hand.
The hand that emerged was a stark contrast to her face.
The skin was wrinkled like dried parchment. Her veins had turned pitch black, her fingertips darkened by necrosis. She had no nails; in their place were metallic implants.
"I am what you are not," the woman said, displaying the rot on her hand with pride. "I am the mistake. I am the waste. Moscow Facility, Number 309. But you can call me 'Klara'."
She placed her hand on the table. Those rotting fingers reached toward Jin's smooth, powerful wrist but didn't touch it.
"We are siblings, Judge," Klara said. Her voice suddenly hardened. "They injected the same poison into our veins. Samael... That sweet poison. But it loved you. It embraced you. And me..."
Klara loosened the silk scarf around her neck with her other hand. The veins in her throat bulged like worms moving beneath the skin.
"...it eats me every second. My cells don't regenerate; they just die. I have to steal the lives of others to survive. But even that isn't enough. Just a temporary patch."
Jin's eyes narrowed. Under the table, he silently flicked the safety off his weapon.
"What do you want?"
The aura around Klara suddenly exploded. Dark Red. Pure, savage aggression.
"Your blood," she whispered. "You adapted. Your DNA is the completed form of that formula. Give me a vial of your blood, Judge. And I'll get out of your way. Or else..."
A metallic click came from under the table.
Jin's reflexes were faster than thought.
Klara leaped over the table with superhuman speed. The metallic nail implants on her hand extended like scalpels. Her target wasn't Jin's throat, but his arm. She wanted blood.
Jin leaned back in his seat. The claws slashed past, grazing the collar of his leather coat.
The sound of the saxophone in the bar was cut short by a scream.
Jin grabbed the table with his left hand and flipped it over onto Klara in a single motion. The heavy oak table slammed into the woman's chest, but Klara seemed to feel no pain. She swiped the table aside like a cardboard box.
Her speed... It wasn't normal. She was much faster than a human could move. Her muscles might be rotting, but the adrenaline of that decay had turned her into a bullet.
"Give it to me!" Klara screamed.
In the world of the Black Filter, Klara was no longer a gray silhouette. She was a storm surrounded by blood-red and poison-green smoke.
Jin stood up. He didn't draw his weapon. It was crowded. An obsidian bullet could punch through Klara and hit the civilians behind her.
Klara attacked again. This time low. She slid toward his legs, aiming the metallic blade in her hand at Jin's calf.
Jin planted his right foot hard on the ground and drove his left knee into the woman's jaw.
THUD.
Klara's head snapped back. Black liquid (blood) sprayed from her mouth.
But she didn't stop.
She snapped her jaw back into place and straightened up. Her eyes had rolled back. Like a biological vampire, she was locked onto the target.
"You're selfish!" she screamed. "You're perfect and you're selfish!"
She smashed a whiskey bottle she grabbed and lunged at Jin.
Jin didn't stay on the defensive this time.
He stepped forward. He caught Klara's wrist holding the bottle in mid-air.
Klara's strength was immense, but Jin's strength... It was on another level. He was Nephilim.
Jin squeezed the woman's wrist. The crack of rotting bones echoed in the silence of the bar.
Klara sank to her knees with a groan of pain.
Jin grabbed her other arm, spun her around so her back was to him, and wrapped his arm around her neck. A chokehold.
"Let go!" Klara rasped, struggling. She dug her nails into Jin's arm, but she couldn't pierce his hardened muscle tissue.
Jin leaned into her ear. His voice was as heavy and cold as a tombstone.
"I won't give you my blood, Klara," he said.
He tightened his grip slightly. The woman's windpipe constricted. Her battered body began to tremble from lack of oxygen.
"But I can give you something else," Jin continued. "Purpose."
Klara's struggling slowed. Her consciousness was blurring.
"You will work for me," Jin said. "I can find a way to keep that rotting body standing. There are things I learned in those labs. Not my blood, but my knowledge can save you."
Klara stopped. Her resistance broke.
Jin eased the pressure on her neck but didn't let go. He was in complete control.
"Moscow is after you, aren't they?" Jin whispered. "You are alone. And you are dying. Be my shadow. Be my eyes. And I will be your medicine."
Klara took a heavy, ragged breath. The wheeze from her lungs sounded like a broken bellows.
She nodded her head, with difficulty, meaning "yes."
Jin released her.
Klara collapsed to the floor. She coughed, clutching her throat. Black blood leaking from her mouth dripped onto the expensive carpet.
Jin straightened his coat. People around were staring at them in horror. The bartender was already reaching for the phone.
Jin pulled a wad of banknotes from his pocket and tossed it onto the table.
"Get up," he said to Klara, not offering a hand.
Klara stood up, trembling. The red rage in her eyes had faded. In its place was a gray resignation.
Jin turned his back and walked toward the exit.
"Follow me, Number 309. The rain is stopping."