White Nights of Empire, and Tea Below Ground
There was no night in Neo-London.
What hung in the sky was not the moon. Twelve artificial suns, launched into the stratosphere by the Atlas Empire, blazed down upon the surface twenty-four hours without cease.
A city stripped of shadows.
Glass walls caught the light and hurled it back. The reflected light struck neighboring buildings and ricocheted again. A city where light begot light. Within it, darkness was a crime, shade was contamination, and night was a word erased from memory.
Along the central axis of the capital, the Empire's motto flowed—luminous letters carved into the facades of buildings:
[ BENEATH PURE LIGHT, NO SHADOW EXISTS ]
Below the streaming letters, the citizens walked. White clothes. White shoes. White headbands. Color was rank, and white was the highest caste.
There were no bloodstains in the streets. No crime scenes.
All impurities had been pushed beneath the surface.
Beneath the surface. Subterranean Sector Seven.
Here, the ceiling was not sky but concrete. Sewage from the upper tiers seeped through the cracks and ran down the walls in rivulets. Yellowed water traced paths over rusted rebar, scattering the stench of iron, and that stench settled across every corridor until simply breathing left a metallic tang on the tongue.
Of every three fluorescent tubes, only one still worked. Even that lone survivor flickered ceaselessly, so the corridor blinked in and out of existence.
An abandoned factory. One of the manufacturing facilities the Empire had shuttered and discarded when it sealed off the lower sectors. The words ATLAS HEAVY INDUSTRIES — PRODUCTION BLOCK 7 still clung to the wall, but black mold had crept over the letters until half were illegible.
From inside came sounds. Groaning. Not one voice—many. From every direction, at every pitch, an unbroken chorus of human suffering.
The hitched nnngh of breath drawn through clenched teeth. The stifled uurrgh swallowed behind locked jaws. And threaded between them: the sound of cloth tearing, bandages winding, water being wrung.
The second-floor workshop had been converted into a makeshift infirmary. Bodies lay across the ground. Twelve. No—thirteen. Fourteen, counting the one curled in the corner.
Oil-stained tarpaulins served as blankets. Beneath them, blood seeped through to stain the concrete in dark, spreading blots. A man missing his left arm stared at the ceiling, his lips moving. Whether in prayer or profanity, no one could tell.
Beside him, a woman pressed down on his shoulder. The bandage wrapped there had already soaked through red, and her hands were red too.
The air was heavy. The smell of blood. The smell of sweat. The alcohol reek of distilled spirits used in place of disinfectant. And beneath it all, the sickly-sweet stench of flesh beginning to rot.
If you could eat while breathing this air, it meant you had been here a long time.
If it made you gag, it meant you had not yet been sufficiently broken.
Through the center of that gauntlet, up the iron staircase, into the innermost room on the second floor—
The scent of black tea.
The room was small. Barely four pyeong. Cracks veined the walls, and mold bloomed in the ceiling corners. But this room was different from everything outside it. The floor had been swept. There was no dust.
On a folding table in the corner, a cloth had been laid out, and atop it sat a single teacup. Steam rose from it—a thin wisp of vapor spiraling upward toward the mold-spotted ceiling, its shape like a prayer.
A man sat there.
Not on a chair. On two wooden crates stacked into a makeshift seat. But the way he sat on those crates was not the way a person sits on wooden crates. His back was straight. His shoulders were level. He did not cross his legs, yet his posture itself was architecture—the only structure in this crumbling building that had not collapsed.
Ian.
He wore a pristine white shirt.
Here. In Subterranean Sector Seven. Amid the blood and the mold and the rust-water. The shirt bore not a single wrinkle. The collar stood crisp. Where he had rolled one sleeve up to the forearm, the skin beneath was clean. No scars. No grime. Not a single dark line beneath his fingernails.
While outside, bandages bloomed red and flesh festered, this man's hands were white and smooth as porcelain.
He lifted the teacup.
The way his fingers closed around the handle was precise. The handle pinched between thumb and forefinger, the middle finger braced beneath the base. These were hands that had been taught. Hands schooled in the upper tiers. Hands that had received the education of the pure-blooded.
He took a sip of black tea. Closed his eyes. One second. The bridge of his nose shifted almost imperceptibly as he rolled the tea across his palate—the motion of someone savoring the aroma.
This man, at this very moment, between the groans rising from below and the stench of blood seeping through the floor, was appreciating the bouquet of his tea.
He opened his eyes.
They were clear. No redness. No dark circles. The eyes of a man who had slept well. While the wounded had moaned through the night outside these walls, this man had slept.
That he could sleep—that was the most precise sentence one could write about this man.
• •
The door opened. Violently. The hinges screamed.
A man burst in. Blood on his work clothes. Blood on his face. Whether it was his own or someone else's was impossible to tell. His breathing was ragged—he had sprinted up the stairs.
"Ian, sir."
A cracked voice. The voice of someone who hadn't slept properly in two days.
"The recon squad is back, and Minho, he—"
He couldn't finish. The sound of him swallowing was audible.
"His left leg—below the knee—they couldn't bring it back. It's still at the—"
Ian set his teacup on the table. There was no sound. The base of the cup meeting the cloth produced no sound at all. This man created no noise even in the act of setting things down.
"What is Brother Minho's condition?"
Ian's voice emerged. Low. Soft. The silken resonance of a throat that had just been drinking tea. A voice without cracks. A voice without tremors.
"Is he conscious?"
"Yes—yes. But the bleeding won't stop—"
Ian rose.
The motion of rising from a stack of wooden crates was graceful. That "graceful" was not a word that should exist in this context seemed lost on Ian. Or perhaps he knew and simply did not care. He rolled his sleeves up one more fold. His forearms, still immaculate, glowed white under the stutter of the fluorescent light.
"Lead the way, if you would."
Ian walked toward the door, half a step ahead of the blood-covered man. His stride was even. As he descended the stairs and the groaning from below grew louder, his pace did not change.
He stepped into the makeshift infirmary.
The wall of blood-smell struck him.
Ian's nostrils did not flare. His eyes did not narrow. His stride did not falter. He passed between the fourteen wounded, stepping over the bloodstains that had seeped from beneath the tarpaulins, and not a single mark touched his white shirt.
It was as though the blood was avoiding him.
• •
Minho lay in the farthest corner, propped against the wall. Below his left knee: nothing. A strip of cloth had been tied around the stump, but it had already turned a dark, saturated crimson. His face was ashen. His lips were blue. His eyes were half-shut but holding—refusing to let go.
He was conscious.
Ian knelt.
On the concrete floor. On the bloodstains. The knees of his white shirt pressed into the ground, but he did not look down. He looked only at Minho's face.
"Brother Minho."
A gentle voice. The same tone he used while drinking tea. Unchanged. Whether before a teacup or before a severed leg, this man's voice maintained the same temperature.
Minho's lips moved. No sound came. Only the shape of the words could be read.
It hurts.
Ian's hand came to rest on Minho's forehead. A clean hand. A spotless hand. Those fingers, unblemished, brushed across skin drained of all color.
"Brother."
Ian spoke.
"Pain is nothing more than a momentary electrical signal generated by the brain."
Minho's eyes turned toward Ian. Half-lidded, they settled on Ian's face and did not move. A clean face. An unmarked face. A face that had never known pain was speaking to him about suffering.
"Do not let a momentary signal break your conviction, Brother. Even if the body crumbles, so long as the spirit stands—we have not lost."
There was no malice in Ian's voice. That was the most terrifying part. This man was sincere.
Standing before a man whose leg had been sheared away, saying "pain is an electrical signal," in this very moment, Ian's eyes held the same clarity as when he sat before his teacup.
It was not a lie. It was not performance. This man truly, sincerely, believed that willpower could conquer pain.
Because he had never once experienced it.
Minho's lips moved again. This time, sound came. Cracked, wet, threaded with blood.
"…Yes."
That was all Minho could manage.
Because this man's hand was on his forehead. Because this man's eyes were on him. Because those eyes were so clear, that voice so gentle, that the absence of his leg frightened him less than the thought of disappointing this man.
Ian smiled. The corners of his lips rose. His eyes smiled too. A warm smile. A genuinely warm smile. That smile sat atop the smell of blood like cream on a wound that would never heal.
Ian stood. He did not look down at the bloodstain on his knee. Turning to the blood-covered man, he spoke:
"Disinfect Brother Minho's wound. If we're low on spirits, put in a request through the Sector Three network. Supplies should arrive by dawn."
His instructions were precise. His voice did not waver.
• •
Ian left the infirmary. Climbed the stairs. Entered his room. Sat before his teacup.
The tea had gone cold. No steam rose from it. Ian took a sip of the cold tea. His expression did not change. As though hot tea and cold tea carried the same weight for this man.
He set the cup down. No sound.
From below, Minho's groaning seeped upward. Through the cracked floor, through the concrete, to the soles of Ian's feet. Ian was listening. Or perhaps he was not. For this man, the distinction between the two did not seem to exist.
Ian's clean hand reached for the documents on the table. A stack of papers, every page dense with handwriting. The title on the top sheet flickered into view under the stuttering fluorescent light:
[ THE DECLARATION OF THE INDOMITABLE — SEVENTH DRAFT ]
Ian's fingers brushed over the paper. Clean fingers tracing the letters he himself had written. His lips moved. Soundlessly. The mouth of a man reciting his own words.
Pain is but a moment. Conviction is eternal.
His lips closed. Ian smiled. The same smile he had shown Minho. Warm, clear, unblemished.
Below, the groaning continued.
Ian did not put the smile away.
• •
The Declaration of the Indomitable, and Solace
The radio crackled to life while Ian was revising the third paragraph of the seventh draft.
Ksshht. Kssht-ksshht.
Static came first. Down here, any signal that managed to penetrate the Empire's stratospheric jamming barrier always arrived dressed in static.
Ian did not put down his pen. He waited for a voice to surface from the noise—pen tip still touching the paper, a half-corrected letter frozen mid-stroke.
The voice came.
"…Leader, do you read? This is Kal, on-site."
Kal. The field commander for the supply train raid. An operation Ian had personally designed—calculated the timing, assigned the personnel, mapped every variable. Ian was the man who calculated. Kal was the man who carried those calculations into the world. That was the difference between them. One whose hands stayed clean. One whose hands were soaked in blood.
Ian set down his pen. This time it made a sound. A sharp, deliberate tap against the table. Intentional. The act of setting down the pen was the threshold—a door closing on the world of the declaration, opening onto the world of the operation. This man lived his life as though each scene were a room with a door to be opened and shut.
He lifted the radio.
"This is Ian. Report your situation, Brother Kal."
"Entry successful. Cargo car three has been breached. Medical supplies currently being secured."
The corner of Ian's mouth lifted. Minutely. Not a smile of satisfaction—a smile of confirmation. The confirmation that events were proceeding according to calculation.
"And the escort detail?"
"Contained in car two, as planned. Six guards. Engagement was—"
Static cut in. One second. Two.
Then a scream tore through.
Not Kal's voice. Someone else's. High, ragged, the shriek of a throat being ripped apart. That scream punched through the radio's speaker with more clarity than the static, and fell into Ian's room—beside the teacup, atop the declaration.
Ian's expression did not change.
The only shift was that he did not reach for his teacup. His hand was on the radio, and therefore the cup was inaccessible. That was all.
"Brother Kal. Status report."
"…AAAGH…AAAHH—"
The screaming swallowed speech. Kal's voice clawed its way up from behind the screams. Ragged, breath-torn, the cadence of a man running.
"Reinforcements! Imperial elites in car four—! Forces not in the intel—three down! Ah, goddammit—"
THUD.
Something collapsed on the other end. Metal hitting floor. Another scream.
Ian did not rise from his seat—from his wooden crates. He sat with the radio in his hand. The groaning from Minho in the infirmary below and the screams pouring from the radio converged in this small room. Between the groans ascending from beneath and the screams emanating from his palm, Ian sat. Unmoved.
"Brother Kal."
Ian spoke. His voice had not changed. The same tone as when drinking tea. The same tone as when speaking to Minho. The same temperature.
"Compose yourself. Report the size of the reinforcement element in car four."
"Twelve—twelve or more! Heavy weapons! Donghyuk's right arm—his arm was blown off! I can see bone! Ian, the bone—"
"Is Brother Donghyuk still combat-capable?"
Silence fell on the other end of the radio. The screaming continued. But the words from Kal's mouth stopped. In that brief interval, his breathing changed. The ragged gasps hitched once, and when they resumed, a different kind of roughness was woven through them. Anger. Or something wearing the shape of anger.
"…You're asking if a man whose arm was just blown off is still combat-capable."
Ian's expression did not change.
But it took him a fraction of a second to deliver his next sentence. For this man, a fraction of a second was time that did not normally exist. Ian's answers were always ready before the question had finished being asked. That fraction was the only crack he showed. Whether it signified bewilderment, or simply the time required to select the right word, was impossible to tell.
"Brother Kal."
Ian's voice emerged. After that hairline fracture of silence. In an unchanged tone.
"Pain is nothing more than a momentary electrical signal generated by the brain."
Ian's voice settled atop the screams bleeding through the radio. It was gentle. It was sincere. This man's voice was always sincere.
"Do not let a momentary signal break our noble conviction."
The same sentence written on the declaration atop his desk. Letters on paper, transmuted into sound through Ian's mouth. Whether inscribed with a pen or spoken aloud, they carried the same weight. For this man, word and speech and reality all occupied the same plane.
"The destruction of the body—"
"Enough."
Kal cut Ian off. It was the first time. The first time Kal had ever interrupted Ian. Static hissed. Screaming continued. Between them, Kal's breathing was audible. A deep inhale. A short exhale. The breath of a man holding something back.
"Understood. Continuing the operation."
The radio went dead.
Ksshht. Static. Then silence.
Silence returned to Ian's room. The groaning from below persisted, but with the radio's speaker gone dark, the air in the room shifted. Where screams had been, the cold scent of tea resettled.
Ian placed the radio on the table. No sound.
He lifted the teacup. Took a sip of the cold tea. Closed his eyes. One second. The bridge of his nose shifted minutely. The same motion as before—savoring the aroma.
Between the moment, seconds ago, when the radio had carried the news of Donghyuk's severed arm, and this moment, in which this man was appreciating the bouquet of cold black tea, the interval was forty-seven seconds.
He opened his eyes. Picked up his pen. Returned to the third paragraph of the declaration. The half-corrected letter.
Ian's pen touched paper. He erased and rewrote. Clean handwriting. Steady strokes.
Pain is but a moment. Conviction is eternal.
Beneath that line, he added a new sentence:
Therefore, those who fear pain are those who have forsaken eternity.
The pen stopped. Ian gazed down at the sentence he had just written. His own letters. The corner of his mouth rose. Not a smile of satisfaction, not a smile of confirmation—a third kind of smile. The smile of a man who has proven himself right once more.
• •
The radio crackled again twenty-three minutes later. Ian was revising the fourth paragraph. Once again, he did not set down his pen first. He completed his sentence, placed a period, then picked up the radio.
"This is Ian."
"Kal here. Operation complete. Full medical supply haul secured."
Ian's smile returned. The confirmation smile.
"Casualty report."
Kal's voice paused. The same length of silence as before. But a different species of silence. Where before there had been fury, now there was the quiet of someone counting.
"Two KIA. Four critical. Donghyuk lost his right arm—field tourniquet applied. Evacuation commencing."
Ian nodded. A nod Kal could not see through the radio. This man nodded even when alone. A man with courtesy inscribed into his body. Or a man who lived inside the architecture of courtesy.
"Well done, Brother Kal."
"…"
"Please provide the names of the two fallen. I will prepare the eulogy."
A sound came through the radio. Not a word. A breath. Short, sharp—expelled through the nose, the breath of a man swallowing something down.
"…Jaewon. And Subin."
Ian picked up his pen. On the blank side of the declaration, he wrote two names. Clean handwriting. Steady strokes. The pressure of the pen did not differ between writing a person's name and writing a sentence of the declaration.
"The sacrifice of these two brothers will be remembered. Their pain was but a moment—"
"Ian."
Kal cut him off. The second time.
Wind noise bled through the radio. The wind atop a train. Kal was still at the site. On the blood-soaked train. The train where a comrade's arm had been torn away. The train where two people had died.
"I was beside Jaewon when he died."
Ian's pen did not stop. He completed the final stroke of "Subin," set down the pen, then gripped the radio with both hands. The posture of attentive listening. This man assigned meaning to posture.
"Do you know what Jaewon said at the end?"
"What did he say?"
"He said it hurt."
Silence. Only the radio's static remained.
"That was all. It hurts. No conviction. No eternity. Just—it hurts. His stomach had been blown open and he said it hurts. He said only that, and then he died."
Ian held the radio and did not move.
"Do you know, Ian?"
Kal's voice dropped low. The wind wrapped around his words.
"How much it hurts when your stomach is blown open?"
Ian did not answer.
One second. Two seconds. Three.
After three seconds, Ian opened his mouth.
"Brother Kal."
His voice had not changed. Still gentle. Still warm. After three seconds of silence, this man's voice stood in the same place it always had.
"Your anger is natural. But if we falter, then the deaths of Brothers Jaewon and Subin become meaningless."
Kal's breathing came through. A long inhale. A long exhale.
"Please expedite the evacuation. We will do everything in our power to treat them here."
Kal did not answer. Three seconds. Five seconds. Static.
"…Understood."
The radio went dead.
• •
Ian set the radio down. No sound. He looked at the teacup. Cold tea. No steam. A brown ring where the tea had dried inside the rim.
He did not drink.
Instead, he picked up his pen. Returned to the declaration. Read the sentence he had added.
Therefore, those who fear pain are those who have forsaken eternity.
The tip of the pen hovered after the period. One second. Two.
Ian's mouth opened. Soundlessly. The shape of lips only.
Jaewon.
A mouth forming a name. A name that never became sound. A name that never touched the air of this room.
His mouth closed.
Ian set down the pen. Straightened the papers on the table. The declaration on the bottom, the page with the names on top. Corners aligned. Precisely.
He stood.
Smoothed his shirt once. Checked for wrinkles. There were none.
He looked down at the bloodstain on his knee. For the first time. The blood from when he had knelt beside Minho. Ian's gaze rested on the stain for one second.
His hand rose. Thumb and forefinger pinched the fabric around the stain. Folded it. The blood disappeared inward, hidden inside the crease. Neatly.
He released the fabric.
The stain was gone. Tucked away inside the fold.
Ian opened the door and stepped out. Descended the stairs. His stride was even.
Below, the groaning rose to meet him. Fourteen wounded. Soon to be more. The smell of blood. The smell of rot. The smell of spirits.
Ian walked through it all.
His white shirt caught the stuttering fluorescent light and gleamed.
The bloodstain was nowhere to be seen.