He walked calmly, blending into the cybernetic crowd. He kept his face as covered as he could. He watched every being that passed by. He analyzed the route and sensed the energy—its faint pulses coming from far away.
'I've been here for a while… I'm surprised no one's noticed there's a human among them.'
Even if that were true, there were many humanoid-looking Aberrations in the vicinity. Perhaps that was why Nova's presence didn't stand out.
Some of the humanoid beings around him had blue skin, others red or purple. The strangest ones had green skin and black, cybernetic eyes with gears spinning inside them. Most were creatures very different from what one would expect.
Some looked like terrifying giant insects. Others were like gelatinous masses that crawled along the ground. There were creatures over three meters tall, others as small as a young Ryutanin—like Poki. There were also androids with extra limbs entering the large buildings.
On one side of town, the streets were still crowded with futuristic vehicles. In addition, high in the sky, ships descended from the sky like falling stars and turning into spaceships. Each ship looked like a massive industrial complex.
For the most part, the ships were made of pure metal, with cables and antennas protruding from the hull. There were other more "primitive" ships, which looked like factories made of lava and iron, floating and emitting smoke from large pipes on the surface of the hull.
Nova took a moment to process everything. He was in a different dimension, after all. Whatever happens here will be difficult to handle. First of all, what kind of culture does this world have? Most of them looked like alien cyborgs. Perhaps the ships belonged to creatures without chrome in their bodies, alien to the culture of this planet.
'All of this feels completely out of place compared to the desert I was in before,' he looked at the ground, which looked just as technological as everything around him. 'Even this. Why does the ground have to be like this?'
The only way to find out was to ask the architect who designed this.
Since he was staring at the ground like an idiot, he didn't notice someone approaching him. Someone bumped into him, brushing past his shoulder.
The boy looked up instantly. All this time he had tried not to accidentally touch anyone, but he got distracted and this was the result.
For a second he saw her face and managed to distinguish her from the others.
She was a humanoid creature wearing a large black hooded cloak. The cloak was decorated with geometric lines, like slits in metal, and was so long that it almost dragged on the ground.
Her skin was pale, with purple tones; a straight line ran down from her right eye as if her skin were part of the machinery that surrounded her. Her hair was snow white, with a long black strand that fell over her right eye. Her eyes were mesmerizing: although they looked human, one had a black gear-shaped pupil and the other glowed with a faint blue light.
She was strange but beautiful, even though Nova barely saw her face.
His breath caught when he saw her, because somehow he felt a sense of familiarity in her.
In the brief moment their eyes met, the girl also seemed to feel a certain familiarity when she saw him, but she immediately looked back at the road and muttered something in another language. Her voice sounded synthesized: robotic, but surprisingly melodious; it had a soft tone with a sharp undertone.
After that, she quickly walked away, disappearing into the crowd.
Nova stared into space, silently. His expression showed curiosity and confusion.
'She... seemed human...'
Perhaps that was the strange familiarity he felt when he looked at her.
Before he knew it, he followed her into the crowd. But he didn't find her: she had already vanished.
'That's strange,' he thought as he stopped in the middle of the street. 'Are there more Aberrations like that?'
He had often encountered Aberrations with humanoid appearances, but none so similar to a human. That mysterious girl, despite her skin tone, was strikingly similar to a human from Terra.
He clenched his fist, frustrated. He thought he had lost the opportunity to learn more about this world and find a way out. Then he sighed and calmed down.
'I guess it doesn't matter anymore. I came here to go home, not to meet the enemy of humanity.'
Remembering the reason he entered this city in the first place, he returned to the sidewalk. He took one last look at the place where he met the girl and continued on his journey.
***
After a few hours, he ate a Sweet Flake as he approached a long, dark alley.
Although he didn't encounter anyone else like the girl, he kept looking around as if expecting someone similar to appear. Internally, he was trying to confirm whether there were more human-like Aberrations. Finding nothing all this time, he simply stopped expecting anything.
Being alone for the last few days had affected him. Since he had never truly been alone in his life on Terra, the simple fact of not hearing his own language coming out of someone else's mouth, or the everyday noises of the city, made him feel even more alone. However, as always, Nova ignored those emotions, crushing them with his Serenity.
So he continued down the alley, following the trail of energy that the faint pulses left in the air.
'Come to think of it, this city is too big. I couldn't see an end to the walls on the horizon. That means it will probably take me much longer to reach my destination.'
He frowned, wondering how long it would take him to reach the end of the road.
It took him over a month to get out of the desert. Although he never discovered what that strange black stone on the horizon was hiding, he found evidence of an ancient civilization deep within. If something similar happens here, it would be very dangerous.
'If that happens, my food won't last. I could try to steal something...'
When he entered the city, he saw no shops or markets for food or supplies. Instead, he only saw cyberpunk buildings with cyberpunk people doing cyberpunk things. If this is that kind of world, there must be some kind of black market with lots of stuff.
'If I find a hidden market, I could steal something.'
That was the plan. But Nova had another thought: he stopped dead in his tracks and stared coldly at the ground.
'Stealing…' he thought. 'Since when did something illegal in my world start feeling normal?'
He considered the possibility as if it were no big deal, but when he realized his own thoughts, he stopped to reflect.
Over the past month, survival had become the priority. Doing whatever it took to survive—no matter how morally gray—had become necessary. Whether it was killing, looting, or stealing: if it was necessary, it had to be done without hesitation. But did experiencing death three times change his way of thinking?
When Nova was little, Adelaide taught him that stealing was wrong, because the people who owned their belongings had probably worked hard to get them. Taking something that wasn't yours was not right, let alone taking another person's life to get it. While there are shady dealings related to this in his world, that does not justify the acts.
Nova never stole from anyone; he always stayed on the edge of the law. Or at least that's how it should have been...
'I guess it was since I got trapped on the other side.'
He sighed, tired. He adjusted his hood to cover his face well and looked up.
'I don't know why I think about it so much. I'm not in my world. Besides, I'm not some pure hero or anything like that.'
After all, Empaths are murderers no matter how "good" they appear in the eyes of the public. Killing is worse than stealing, and as someone who had already crossed that line as a child, he shouldn't worry about trifles.
He moved forward with a determined expression. He thought:
'I've already participated in the murder of many Aberrations. What could be worse than that?' He smiled relaxed, not out of pleasure in those dark thoughts, but out of irony: killing and stealing — two acts separated by a great moral difference.
After about ten hours — or so Nova estimated — he sat down on a metal box in a wide alley to rest. There were many trash cans in the area as well as large metal boxes stacked on top of each other.
He had been walking since he arrived at this place, perhaps a whole day. Although he was not tired, he could not afford to push his own body to the limit. His wounds from the battle against the serpent were still healing, so it was not advisable to strain his body.
Besides, from where he was sitting in the alley, he could see one of those large advertising screens and two blue holograms hanging high up on a building. The faces of four different individuals appeared there.
'I've seen the same faces since I arrived. Who are those guys?' Nova thought, committing those faces to memory. 'If they're showing them one by one on the screen, they must be very famous criminals.'
It was a pity that he couldn't understand the language. The only thing he could understand were the faces of those Aberrations. There were three men and one woman of humanoid appearance; in short, they looked masculine and feminine.
They were all dressed in black garments with chrome details that hid most of their faces. Two of the men, at first glance on the hologram and the screen, were burly and large. Due to their bulk, the hoods did not fit snugly around their bodies, although they did hide their faces well.
The last man was more normal: thin, not very tall, but not very short either. Among them all, he was the one whose face was most visible in the darkness of the hood. Half of his face was cybernetic, silver in color with a bright blue eye, resembling an old theater mask with excessive details. The skin on the other side of his face was pale blue, with two straight lines that resembled metal welding. His white, tousled hair made him stand out from the rest, and his silver eye stared into nothing with a chilling, mesmerizing calm.
Beyond that, there was not much else to distinguish.
As for the woman: she was taller than the white-haired guy. Her skin was red under the darkness of her hood, with long, unkempt, straight black hair. Her eyes couldn't be seen, as her hair hid most of her face. Between the opening of her cape, her abdomen was usually visible. Below that, the woman wore black shorts that exposed her strange cybernetic legs. If not for that, what would attract the most attention would be her small red horns, sharp as daggers, protruding from her forehead.
'But if they're not criminals, what are they? This would be easier if I had some kind of translator.'
Finished eating, he stood up on the box and looked at the alley exit.
The lights were still shining brightly, and the whole place was as impressive as it was enigmatic. Nova moved through the crowd, somewhat more confident and relaxed than before.
When it came to routines, Nova was an expert. He has been following the routine of an Empath since he turned seventeen: wake up, shower, eat breakfast, and go out on patrol with his team. Sometimes he would have lunch at a restaurant. Although during that first year on the job, Adelaide always made him lunch.
In the evenings, Nova would walk home. Every time he opened the door, his mother was waiting for him with a warm smile and dinner ready. Seeing that woman, who used to be very sad in the past, smiling calmly, made Nova feel good about himself.
He believed he was finally paying off his debt to Adelaide...
After two more days on the road, Nova noticed that the time on this planet was completely different from that on Terra. While it was night here, it was most likely daytime on the continent of Calem, because when the day awoke this city, Nova felt very sleepy.
He took advantage of this to sleep in the alleys, in the darkest corners where no one would see him.
Sometimes he witnessed killings among the Aberrations: for example, a group of mobsters shot a cockroach-like man in the head.
Nova did not sympathize with them, because in his eyes they are the enemy. If they killed each other, even better. That meant fewer problems for him and his world. However, he always had to flee from those moments, as he didn't want to get involved in the problems of creatures he didn't know, and who were his natural enemies.
Before going to sleep, Nova thought for a while.
'Ever since I got here, no portal has opened…'
That wasn't normal. If there is a source of energy that powers the planet, dimensional portals should open frequently. But that doesn't happen in this world. In fact, Nova had already speculated that the portal through which he arrived probably took years to form.
'I thought that at any moment a portal would open in the street. That would be my chance to get out of here, but no...'
He thought there was something strange about that world.
Nova cleared those thoughts from his mind and slept until nightfall. However, a noise near the alley woke him up. He opened his single eye and slipped behind the dumpsters, as he usually did to avoid being seen.
Peeking out, he saw two Aberrations: one on the ground and one standing. The one standing was the red-skinned, horned woman from the screens was pointing a gun at a crustacean-like creature.
'I haven't been in this world long and I'm already running into problems. Seriously, I have to get out of here...'