A small note, to whosoever reads this work: this will update every two days, no matter what. Under no circumstances will I miss a day of updating, so don't worry about that. I've set this all up so that with a day between each update I can get another whole update made with absolutely no impact on my existing schedule. Rejoice!
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The subway system was a mass grave, with trains running like ghosts through the perpetually dark tunnels, their scant lights illuminating prowling mobs of scavengers. As they pulled into each lifeless station their horns echoed sadly throughout, as if signalling someone, anyone, to give them a purpose once again. Empty casings from old bullets disembarked as the doors rattled open, froze, then clanked shut again. Down the tunnel tapping footsteps could be heard, who's they were was anyone's guess, yet no one cared to guess at all. Day and night, the trains ran regardless.
The brim of Eric Morris' trenchcoat swept the dust-covered steps leading down to the station, and his worn out shoes kicked aside casings and hypodermic needles alike while he cautiously stepped to the edge of the platform, the train long gone. Looking around at the area, lit up by dim bulbs on dull concrete pillars, the most useful thing that could be seen was a trickle of water leaking out from a busted pipe in the ceiling down a wall, making a black puddle where only mould would grow. Eric felt along the grey brick wall, sidling above the tracks on a raised curb that had been carved out of years of necessity by gangs that had come and gone. The kind of gangs Eric Morris was tracking down this melancholy night. It was hardly different than the night before, or the one before that.
Eric wasn't the type of man to do anything for justice's sake. To him, to nearly everyone in this city, justice was either a forgotten piece of the past, or a twisted way of controlling this city that had grown and mutated unchecked for decades, like a vine crawling across the graffiti covered wall of the Arts Center downtown. It wasn't a place for justice, for it had moved far past that sort of organization. The only people to be found mourning that were the ones sipping centuries-old wine on imported leather couches. Eric wasn't that type of man either.
From a holster on his belt he drew his pistol, black as the subway air, as quietly as he could. He crouched now, keeping a low profile, knowing this place better than his own home. Some nights, those were one and the same. The signal he had been waiting for was the train's wailing horn from far behind, back at the station. There was rumbling as it picked up speed again, and its lights, for a second, flashed Eric as the train passed him, then turned right, disappearing around a bend in the tunnel.
The instant of light had shown an unused branch of the subway system, somehow darker than the rest of the underground. Eric made his way there, and found himself right behind a green, rusting old subway car with its back doors bent and wrenched open. Lifting himself up the brittle step into the filthy walkway, he was immediately swept by the smell of smoke condensed into all too small of a room. It wasn't just the smell of smoke, though, it was the smell of smoke mixed in with the sweet scent of gunpowder and oil, native to these tunnels. As Eric walked, yet more shell casings rolled along the floor, clanging sharply when they fell out of side doors onto the metal subway rails. He looked through the windows of the passenger car, looking through jagged remnants of glass that managed to hold on to the window's frame even after being bashed and rattled from bursts of seemingly random noise and the thundering of the larger trains that still ran down there.
Ahead, through the chaotic first cars, was an orange light, the light of fire, glowing on the walls. Eric's shoes padded on their soft old soles along the floor and abandoned mattresses coated in an inch of ancient dust. On some were vague outlines of people who had slept there in the past, now more likely dead than alive. It was this kind of subtle sickness that reminded Eric of his home more than anything. Did it feel good to be here? No. It felt like this was where he was destined to stay, no matter what he may think. His life had seen changes, but he dealt with them as they met him. At least for this kind of trudging around he would be paid, usually.
Eric coughed from the lingering, thickening smoke, but kept to his path, nearly at the fire, right near the driver's car where his objective, so he hoped, was awaiting him. But there was something strange, just as Eric stepped into the front most car or the derelict subway train.
Fire. Warm, soothing fire filled the front car of the wrecked subway train. The splitting fabric of the seats lit up as if they were covered in gasoline, and the the plastic handles on the railings melted, drooping to the floor. Eric leaped back from the bursting flames, the heat licking his arms so used to the cold of the midnight air and the stagnant cool of the underground. The closest door, to his right, was rusted over and jammed, and the window was barred over. To the left was more of the same.
Eric kept his eyes on the driver's door, past the crackling, flowing flames, looking as best he could into the inch wide space between that door and the wall. If it weren't for the fire, he could've easily opened it. He slipped backwards, heading to where he had first entered the train, scanning left and right as he went for the source of the sudden outburst of flame. He knew this place too well not to be suspicious.
There was a metallic snapping sound from behind, clear and precise, as Eric stepped off onto the subway tracks. He froze. It was a gun, he could tell.
"Good day, Eric. I'm assuming you were looking for me?" Came a light German accent, right in line with the cold metal of a pistol barrel that was pressed against Eric's skull.
"For what I'm getting paid?" Eric laughed grimly. "Not bloody likely, Moritz. And by the way, it's not exactly very light out above ground, if you haven't checked that place yet."
Moritz, too, laughed. "Oh? I should really have you tell me about everything that goes on up there, but I'm afraid it'd be bad for my reputation to work with an Englishman such as yourself." Eric felt the pistol being released from the back of his head, and heard the light slip of a leather holster. "You can face me now, Eric, don't be afraid."
Eric raised an eyebrow as he turned, his hands going up in mock surrender. "I thought you wanted to kill me after that last round, Moritz! How much quid are you getting to keep me alive, then, O Moritz of the Coast?"
The German man wore an amicable smirk. "Enough, Eric, that's how much. Just keep killing off my competition and we might have some kind of unsigned deal here."
"Money's worth no less to me than to you, Moritz. We'll see where the paper takes us both." Eric began to walk off, his hands in his pockets.
"Keep in mind, Eric," Moritz told him as he disappeared down the subway tunnel, "That I've only been paid for this one time." His voice echoed a bit through the underground before dissipating, ending their conversation there.
The two flickering lights of a subway train drew closer and closer, and Eric hopped back onto the carved out ledge to let it pass, muttering "Shit!" under his breath, muted by the holler of the long metal creature snaking its rounds about the underground. Tonight was Eric's second failure in a row to catch either a gang member or information about the gangs that roamed about the tunnels, and now the second most famous hired gun in the city was out of work and out of money to pay rent. His resources and time were draining away into the gutter like the fresh blood that spilled down the subway station's steps in its daylight hours. He had to get his pace back to what it had been before, even to his bare minimum of the last month.
Eric let out a self-deprecating laugh at his circumstances. The boy he once was had never dreamed of coming to a city like this, and all his education never taught him anything about being a contract killer. That option never was on the aptitude tests back home, or at least, what used to be his home: London.
"London," said the advertisements, more like propaganda, "The last civilized city in the south! Join the dream, change your life." Eric, after his years in this place, made a habit of mocking all the new pamphlets tossed about and ads pasted on telephone poles, laughing in the face of what had defined his life as a boy, but haunted him as a man of twenty-one years. It was the kind of situation that changed people, and broke the common mold to truly etch out the left from the right, the red team from the blue, the incorruptibly good from the horrifyingly bad. London never was good.
This place wasn't Earth. No, the Old Earth, as it was called, was long gone. It had been almost six whole centuries since humans had reached this new planet, Taas, leaving a home that was becoming increasingly hostile to them. They emigrated on great colony ships, each containing millions of people who would never actually see their promised lands, and even their children and grandchildren became a "lost generation" with no home but the darkness of deep space and the pristine white walls of the colony ships where they were born, and inevitably died. It was a full one hundred and two years before humans set foot on Taas, numbering two billion.
They were two billion people who had forgotten survival, conflict, disease and all the ills of the Old Earth. Tass had been chosen because it was most like the Old Earth, with a calculated 98.6 percent similarity to a more hospitable Earth in regards to ecological stability, geological activity, habitability, and dozens of other categories. However, what was supposed to be a new Eden was soon revealed to be a world already taken by an industrial society of strangely evolved, intelligent alien creatures. The new humans raised entirely in the colony ships laboured to fight a bloody, reckless and seemingly boundless war over their chosen territory, winning a clear but ultimately Pyrrhic victory over these native "zerconiths". Taas was theirs.
The hope of the people who had initially launched the mass emigration from the Old Earth had been to peacefully settle, to forget the ways of warfare, and to start mostly anew. Advanced technologies were rendered useless by the lack of people able to operate or understand them, and were soon disregarded in favour of older ways that were simple and did what was needed. The lengthy rebuilding process left industrial and scientific advance nearly stagnant for ages, and was compounded by the enslavement and gradual genetic modification of the native zerconiths into more humanoid shapes through forced cross-species breeding and evolution from the overwhelming humanization of the once-occupied sectors of the planet. zerconiths were subject to absolute subordination to humans, and over time lost their once terrifying figures, and became an oppressed minority. Over time, however, "zerks" gained rights in some cities, such as Eric's new home of New York, created from the Old Earth city of the same name, while they were still treated no better than pitiful slaves in London.
It was in the year 584 of the Colonization Era that London's imperial eyes glared greedily at New York, rich with crime and the finest example of a land that needed London's "liberation" from its sin and corruption, to feel the cleanse of justice. In the earliest hours of the morning, when the seediest parts of the city were most alive, the long London airplanes clouded over the sky and dropped their burning black rain all across roads and bridges and railroads, and the thunder of the heavy tanks shook the rubble, advancing on the city with unwavering speed, steel juggernauts spreading the message of obliteration to the masses.
It was an entirely expected invasion, and one where the Londoners found themselves on the unprepared side. Their blitzkrieg was met with an underground resistance more like an ambush, and the groups within the city with the most power, notably Zerconith businessmen and women displeased with the thought of being enslaved once more, fighting back with unhinged fervour and creative and scientific minds energized with the adrenaline of self-defence. Though the Londoners won the initial battles of the first days and their occupation stood strong for half a year, their opposition was far too great, and the city was retaken and any man woman or child from London unofficially declared an enemy of the people of New York. That all took place nearly nine years ago.
Eric's family moved to New York as the first of several planned waves of London immigrants, to assimilate the city into the London way of life. After the occupation was forced out, they, like many other immigrant families, were victimized and were themselves assimilated into the fast-paced adventure that was life in New York, and life spiralled down from there for years, only improving as Eric became old enough to take on adult responsibilities. He had personally dropped all ties to London, and replaced his old family connections with new ones in the ever changing social landscape of New York. He hated London, cursing his heritage and only accepting the English accent he spoke in, belying his culture that was so outcast in this city.
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, they are more personal, confusing factors)
Originally Posted by Five_X
) and very good cliffhanger... what lies in the mysterious room?
(yeah, unfortunately I don't think the doujin project section is well followed... 
).
