The rain in Sector 44 didn't wash things clean; it just rearranged the filth.
Abaddon ran. He ran until his lungs burned and his legs felt like lead, splashing through puddles of oily runoff that reflected the flickering purple neon of the slum signs. The streets were deserted. The "Static Storm" warning had driven everyone indoors, leaving the labyrinthine alleyways of the Fray completely empty.
That was a mercy. If anyone had seen him—half-naked, shivering, with black markings coiling around his torso like a demonic brand—he wouldn't have made it two blocks. In this part of the city, anything out of the ordinary was treated as a threat. Or worse, as profit.
He kept his head down, clutching the greasy tarp tight around his shoulders. Every shadow looked like a monster; every distant hum of a generator sounded like a Synod patrol drone.
He navigated the ruins by muscle memory. He ducked under a collapsed ventilation duct, vaulted a pile of discarded rusted pipes, and skidded down a muddy embankment that smelled of sulfur and rotting garbage.
His "house" was at the bottom of the ravine. It wasn't really a house. It was a corrugated shipping container that had been welded precariously to the side of a structural pillar holding up the highway above. It was rusted, dented, and leaked when the wind blew from the east, but it had a lock.
Abaddon scrambled up the metal ladder, fumbled with his keycard—his hands shaking so badly he dropped it twice—and finally shoved the door open.
He practically fell inside, slamming the heavy iron door shut behind him and throwing the three mechanical bolts he had installed himself.
Click. Clack. Thud.
Safe.
The interior was tiny. A mattress on the floor, a hotplate, a bucket for water, and a single flickering halo-lamp bulb hanging from the ceiling. It was a coffin for the living, but right now, it felt like a palace.
Abaddon collapsed onto the thin, stained mattress. He didn't bother checking for leaks. He didn't bother trying to find food. The adrenaline that had carried him up from the void was crashing, leaving him with a exhaustion so profound it felt like his bones were turning to liquid.
He curled into a ball, pulling the tarp over his head, hiding from the world.
'It's just a dream,' he told himself, squeezing his eyes shut. 'Just a hallucination. The static got to my head. Tomorrow, I'll wake up, I'll be broke, and I'll be normal.'
Within seconds, the darkness took him.
◆ ◆ ◆
Morning came with the subtlety of a hammer to the face.
The sun—or what passed for it through the thick smog of the sector—filtered through the cracks in the container walls, casting thin beams of dusty light across the room.
Abaddon gasped, sitting bolt upright.
He waited for the pain.
Usually, waking up involved a symphony of aches: a stiff back from the terrible mattress, hunger cramps from skipping dinner, the general lethargy of malnutrition.
But there was nothing.
In fact, he felt... incredible.
His mind was sharp. His muscles felt light, coiled with energy. The gnawing hunger that had been his constant companion for sixteen years was gone, replaced by a strange, dense sensation in his chest. It felt like he had swallowed a cannonball, but in a good way. He felt anchored.
"Weird," he croaked.
His voice sounded deeper, less scratchy.
He rubbed his face, swinging his legs off the mattress. "Maybe the storm cleared out my sinuses or some—"
He froze.
He looked down at his arms.
"No."
The word came out as a whimper.
The morning light was unforgiving. It illuminated his skin with clinical clarity. And there, stark against his pale complexion, were the chains.
They hadn't faded. If anything, they looked darker, more defined than they had in the rain.
Thick, jagged links of obsidian ink wrapped around his biceps, disappearing under the skin of his shoulder and re-emerging across his chest. They looked heavy, brutal, and ancient. They didn't look like tattoos drawn by a needle; they looked like shadows that had been burned into his flesh.
"No, no, no, no..."
Abaddon scrambled off the bed, tripping over the tarp. He rushed to the small cracked mirror bolted to the wall above his water bucket.
He stared at his reflection. The chains coiled up his neck, stopping just below his jawline. A few inches higher, and they would have been impossible to hide.
"This can't be real."
He grabbed a rough cloth he used for cleaning grease and dipped it in the water bucket. He scrubbed at his chest.
Hard.
"Come off," he gritted out, rubbing until the skin turned angry and red. "Come off!"
He scrubbed until he broke the skin, blood mixing with the water. But the black ink didn't smudge. It didn't bleed. It was under the blood, under the skin. It was woven into his very existence.
Abaddon threw the cloth across the room with a shout of frustration. He paced the small metal box, his hands gripping his hair.
"What am I going to do? I have a shift in twenty minutes. If the Foreman sees this... if those thugs see this..."
They would dissect him. That was a fact. Unregistered markings, especially ones that reeked of energy, were a one-way ticket to a Synod lab.
He looked at the clock on his datapad. 06:45 AM.
He was late. If he didn't show up, he lost the day's pay. If he lost the pay, he missed the debt installment. If he missed the installment, the Viper Gang took his kidneys.
"Okay. Okay, calm down, Abaddon," he whispered, forcing his breathing to slow. "Think. Just... hide it."
He rummaged through a pile of dirty laundry in the corner. He found an old, oversized thermal shirt—long sleeves, high collar. It was thick, woolly, and completely inappropriate for the humid heat of the lower sectors, but it was the only thing that covered his neck.
He pulled it on.
It was itchy and smelled of mildew, but it covered the marks. He pulled a hooded vest over it for good measure.
"I'm just cold," he rehearsed, looking in the mirror. "I caught a chill from the rain. That's why I'm wearing a winter shirt in summer. Totally normal."
He looked like a suspicious lunatic, but it was better than looking like a monster.
He grabbed his keycard and unlocked the door.
'Just get to work, keep your head down and don't talk to anyone.'
He took a deep breath, steeled his nerves, and stepped out onto the metal walkway.
The morning air was thick and humid. The storm had passed, leaving the slum steaming in the hazy light. The sounds of the Fray were waking up—shouting neighbors, crying babies, the distant grinding of the factory gears.
Abaddon turned to lock his door, his heart still racing. He just needed to get to the transport lift without—
He turned around to head down the walkway.
And froze.
His foot hung in the air, mid-step. His momentum tried to carry him forward, but his brain slammed the emergency brakes so hard he nearly slipped on the wet grating.
About ten meters away, walking slowly toward him, was his neighbor.
Old Man Nigel.
Nigel was a retired miner, a nice enough guy who smelled like cheap tobacco and cabbage. He was limp-walking back from his night shift as a perimeter watcher, carrying his battered lunchbox.
But Abaddon wasn't looking at Nigel.
He was looking at the thing attached to him.
Protruding directly from the center of the old man's spine, right through his dirty grey shirt, was a chain.
It wasn't black like the ones on Abaddon's body.
It was Gold.
It was translucent, shimmering like a hologram made of sunlight and glass. It was thick at the base—about the width of a wrist—but it looked brittle, dry, and cracked, pulsating with a weak, fading light.
The chain rose from Nigel's back, defying gravity. It curved gently upwards, ascending ten, twenty, fifty meters into the air, passing right through the concrete ceiling of the highway above them, shooting up toward the distant sky.
Abaddon's eyes followed the line of it.
He looked up and realized the sky wasn't empty.
'What in the world...'
It was a web.
Everywhere he looked—in the distance, moving along the walkways, rising from the houses below—he saw them. Golden threads. Golden cables. Some thin as spider silk, some thick as ropes. All of them rising from somewhere—someone, stretching up, up, up into the haze, connecting them to something unseen in the heavens.
"What..." Abaddon whispered, his mouth hanging open.
The world looked like a puppet show.
Old Man Nigel stopped. He noticed the boy standing frozen in the middle of the walkway, staring at him with eyes the size of dinner plates.
Nigel blinked, shifting his lunchbox to the other hand. He followed Abaddon's gaze, looking over his own shoulder, then back at the boy.
"Abaddon?" Nigel croaked, his voice raspy from years of inhaling coal dust. "Is that you, lad?"
Abaddon didn't answer. He was fixated on the connection point. He could see the skin around the golden chain... stretched. It looked like a hook was buried in the old man's meat.
"What in the blazes are you staring at?" Nigel squinted, stepping closer. The golden chain bobbed behind him like a balloon on a string. "You got a look on your face like you've seen a ghost. Or did you finally realize how handsome I am? Fallen in love with me, have you?"
The old man chuckled at his own joke, a dry, wheezing sound.
Abaddon's eye twitched.
'He can't see it,' Abaddon realized. The horror crashed over him like a bucket of ice water. 'He has a three-meter golden cable sticking out of his spine, and he doesn't know.'
"I..." Abaddon started, but his throat clicked shut.
Nigel shook his head, sighing. "Kids these days. Fried your brain with that cheap stim-gum, I bet. Get to work, boy, before you starve."
The old man shuffled past him.
Abaddon couldn't help it. He turned around. He watched Nigel walk toward his own door. The golden chain trailed behind him, phasing through the metal railing, phasing through the wall as Nigel entered his house. It was a leash.
A literal, metaphysical leash.
Abaddon stood there for a long minute, the humidity soaking into his heavy shirt, sweat trickling down his back.
He looked at his own hands.
No gold.
Just the hidden black ink burning under his sleeves.
He looked at the sky, filled with millions of invisible strings controlling humanity.
Slowly, very slowly, Abaddon turned around.
He walked back to his door.
He unlocked it.
He stepped inside.
He closed the door and threw all three deadbolts again.
Click. Clack. Thud.
He slid down the metal door until he hit the floor, burying his face in his hands.
"..."
He let out a long, shaky breath.
"I am soooo fucked."