The largest prison in the world was known officially as an international detention facility.
But the internet had given it a different name.
The Bloodless Fog.
Hell on Earth.
Over one hundred years ago, a colossal meteor crashed into the middle of the Sahara Desert. The impact scarred the land for miles, leaving behind a massive crater and strange mineral deposits no scientist could fully explain.
Fifteen years later, the world's major powers came together and constructed a prison directly over the site.
Officially, it was meant to house the most dangerous criminals on the planet.
Unofficially… the rumors told a different story.
Online forums whispered that the facility had been built to imprison aliens recovered from the meteor. Satellite photos of the location were always blurred or distorted, fueling endless conspiracy theories. Some people even claimed the prison had been placed there to guard something far worse.
That the gates of hell lay somewhere beneath its foundations.
Whatever the truth was, one fact remained undeniable.
The people sent to the Bloodless Fog were not normal criminals.
Notorious gang leaders. Serial killers. Terrorists. War criminals. Individuals whose strength alone could devastate entire cities.
No filming was allowed inside the facility. No journalists were ever permitted entry.
Every guard carried state-of-the-art rifles and electrified batons powerful enough to stun an elephant. Every window was made from reinforced bulletproof glass. Every set of bars was chemically and alchemically altered, forged with five times the density and resilience of normal steel.
Violence between inmates was not only tolerated.
It was encouraged.
The administration believed conflict created a natural hierarchy, one that revealed the strong and eliminated the weak. New arrivals learned this lesson quickly.
And if they didn't…
Their replacements would learn it for them.
Inside the Bloodless Fog, survival had nothing to do with age, nationality, or even the crimes that brought someone there.
The only thing that mattered…
Was strength.
The strongest inmates required no gangs, no alliances, no protection.
Their mere presence was enough to keep others away.
In the Bloodless Fog, power alone decided who lived peacefully—
and who disappeared.
"Ohhhhhhh, bestie. My buddy, my pal! Whatcha doin'? Still brooding in silence? Come on, you don't have to look so depressed. Smile! If you smile, I might share my delectable, barely two-out-of-five-star chocolate pudding with you."
A young man with fiery red hair and eyes as clear and pristine as the sky lay on the bottom bunk of the shared cell.
One of his roommates, a man in his mid-twenties with snow-white, unkempt hair and a scraggly appearance, hung upside down from the top bunk. A pale scar slashed through one of his eyelids, and light stubble covered his chin. He swung back and forth like a child on a jungle gym.
He looked like a complete chimpanzee.
"If this is about the comment about your hair, I'm sure redheads have souls. Even if it's way less than me."
The white-haired man provocatively brushed a hand through his hair in what was clearly meant to be a suave gesture. It had absolutely no effect. Without gel, the strands could only stick straight up, obedient to gravity.
"Of course, pure beauty belongs to those with white hair. It symbolizes purity."
"It also symbolizes old geezers. I'm eighty percent sure it's artificial. You dyed it that color."
"OOUUFF. Always with the snappy comeback. And for your dully informed, uneducated little head, I am a genuine, one-hundred-percent, all-natural, beautifully blessed-by-heaven smexy hunk. People always want to imitate perfection. And for your information, I'm a young and spry twenty-eight. Who wouldn't want this?"
He gestured proudly to himself.
"And if you don't believe I'm all natural, I can show you proof." His finger pointed toward his waistband.
Rein's face immediately twisted in disgust.
"Okay, unc. If you really feel that way, why don't you introduce yourself like that in the yard?"
"Yuck. No thank you. I may be unparalleled in looks, but my glorious self is limited solely to women."
"Who would've known?" Rein replied dryly.
"YOU thought I was gay?" the white-haired man's voice jumped an octave as his expression turned suddenly serious.
"Why is that a big surprise? With your behavior you're either a man-child or a very zesty man. I just don't want you releasing whatever pent-up desires you've got in my vicinity."
"You thought me repeatedly saying 'I'm gonna touch you' was gay? That's just what the homies do."
Rein, the red-haired young man, only turned his head slightly on his pillow, ignoring the obnoxious man as he continued to treat the bunk like playground equipment.
"How do you always have so much energy? You're like a ferret on fentanyl. You didn't steal one of Conner's imported brownie bites, did you? You should know those are laced."
"Hah. Of course I learned my lesson. Never steal from Conner. Last time I did, I ended up in solitary for a month."
He paused, still hanging upside down.
"But come on, you're young. Now's the time to have fun while you still can. Oh… but we are on death row and will likely never get out… NYAA."
The white-haired man stuck out his tongue in a childish attempt at looking cute before chuckling to himself.
"I can tell you're a good guy though."
Rein turned his head slightly toward him, curiosity flickering in his eyes. The lazy indifference he'd been wearing cracked a little when the joking tone shifted into something strangely sincere.
"You must've had a good reason," the man continued with a wide grin. His one good eye curled into a crescent.
"After all… who am I to judge?"
He swayed once more before beaming brightly.
"You're my friend now," he cooed in an elated, childlike voice.
"We're having soft tacos later."
Rein muttered under his breath, "I don't want any friends… wait, why would they be serving tacos here?"
The man's eyes widened in exaggerated hurt. Clutching his chest like he'd been struck by an arrow, he gasped dramatically.
"Oof! Right in the heart!"
Still hanging upside down with questionable balance, his over-the-top performance caused him to lose his grip. He fell head-first off the top bunk with a loud thud.
He immediately popped back up and threw a thumbs-up.
"I'm okay!"
Then he pouted slightly.
"But kid… why wouldn't you want an awesome friend like me? We could be like Batman and Robin. Or Tom and Jerry! Come on, picture it. Backs together, fighting off hordes of monsters, watching each other's six!"
"Monsters? Are you just making references?" Rein muttered in confusion before closing his eyes again.
Responding in a dry tone, he said,
"I don't need a sidekick. I see no point in fighting back-to-back. I can win any fight by myself."
"Hey! You'd be the sidekick!" the white-haired man shouted indignantly.
"I know I may not look it," he said, striking a pose as he leaned against the cell bars with one arm, "but I'm the strongest."
Rein sat up, clearly unamused, and gave his cellmate a once-over.
His instincts told him the man was formidable. His physique wasn't overly muscular, but more like a sprinter's, long arms, long legs, built for speed and balance.
But when it came to raw strength?
The difference was too vast.
He wasn't Rein's match.
"Maybe in technique you're superior," Rein said flatly, "but to this day I've never met anyone stronger than me."
There was no arrogance in his voice. No teenage bravado.
Just simple certainty.
The kind that only came from someone who had proven it too many times.
The white-haired man scratched the back of his head as if pondering that.
"Listen, this offer's only for you. I can see it in your eyes. You're strong, and you're loyal. That 'fighting back-to-back' thing? It's just a metaphor. But c'mon, haven't you ever seen a good fighting movie?"
He suddenly began shadowboxing, making exaggerated whooshing noises with every punch as if saying them aloud would somehow increase the force.
Raising his arms above his head with purposely limp wrists, he lifted his knee and posed dramatically in a crane kick stance before snapping his leg forward.
He froze mid-pose.
Then turned toward Rein.
"Mr. Miyagi… we did it."
He immediately started a tiny cheer, cupping his hands around his mouth like a megaphone and mimicking a crowd.
Rein watched the entire performance with the detached patience of a man observing a particularly energetic raccoon.
"I haven't seen a movie since I was fourteen," he replied with a grunt.
With this roommate, boredom was impossible.
The man paused.
Then said with total seriousness,
"So… two years ago?"
Rein stared at him.
Deadpan.
Does he really think I'm sixteen?
The idea was ridiculous.
The scary part was that he wouldn't even be surprised. This man clearly had the reasoning ability of a hyperactive eight-year-old.
"If I was sixteen I'd be in juvie, not here. Put your brain back in place."
"Bold of you to assume I have a brain."
From the bunk across the cell, one of four in the cramped space, a balding man with a tangled beard, easily in his forties, shouted from beneath a pillow pressed over his head.
"SHUT UP already! I'm tryin' to sleep! One more word and I swear to God you're gonna end up with a f*ing shiv in your chest!**"
The inmate in that bunk was a new arrival.
Rein had seen this pattern before.
With his chatterbox of a cellmate, things always followed the same routine.
New inmates either tried to intimidate them… or slowly lost their sanity listening to him.
Eventually they snapped.
Every single time.
And every single time, they ended up hospitalized and transferred to a different cell.
Rein had watched the cycle repeat at least half a dozen times.
If his cellmate had actually been weak, he would've been shanked on his first day.
White-hair immediately shouted back.
"Silence from you! You're cut off! Me and my bestie are having a CON-VER-SAT-ION!"
He exaggerated every syllable with ridiculous tongue movements.
"So shoo!"
Then he waved his hand dismissively like he was chasing off an annoying fly before turning his back to the other bunk.
And the rage-baiter strikes again, Rein thought.
He watched the bearded inmate's face turn red as his body trembled with barely restrained fury.
The man had heard the rumors.
There were four kings in this prison.
Untouchables.
Men who could guarantee your death simply by being offended.
One of them, the young red-haired king who practically owned the west wing, was sitting right there in the cell.
Rein.
But Rein only looked on with indifference.
At least that's how the bearded man interpreted it.
From beneath his thin mattress, he pulled out a makeshift shiv: a shard of glass taped between two plastic spoon handles, secured with rubber bands and globs of hardened glue.
With a snarl, he charged.
Bare feet slapped against the concrete floor.
Just inches away—
White-hair moved.
It was sudden.
Fluid.
Almost casual.
He twisted his body as if he'd expected the attack all along, caught the man's wrist mid-lunge, and redirected the momentum in a smooth overhead judo throw.
The man slammed face-first into the cell bars.
CLANG
The echo rang through the block.
"Donnnnng."
"Strike!" the white-haired man laughed. "Haha, thanks for the free shaver."
Grinning, he bent down and picked up the fallen shiv.
For the first time, he opened the eye that was usually squinted shut.
A deep, glowing blue stared out from it.
Brighter, arguably, than even Rein's.
"You're too weak," he declared arrogantly.
The bearded inmate could only groan, sliding down the bars as the air rushed painfully back into his lungs.
"Come on, bestie," white-hair called, turning toward Rein. "Why didn't you warn me?"
Rein rubbed his eyes with the exhausted expression of someone who had watched this exact situation unfold far too many times.
"I'm not your bestie," he muttered. "You provoked him. And you wouldn't have survived this long if you couldn't handle him."