The slums breathed like they were alive, releasing steam that rose thick in the air beneath neon signs and darkened windows. Trash was piled in now and then on the wet pavement, and no amount of rain was going to wipe it away. It only made it stand out more.
Ren walked on one of those god-forgotten streets. Looking at him, one could have easily mistaken him for a ghost or an eerie apparition, if it wasn't for his slight limp. He had a coat too big for his stature, one sleeve was torn, and one shoe was gone. His other foot slapped the pavement with each step as he made an effort to move forward. Blood ran down from somewhere near his temple and nose, but he didn't check how bad it was. Probably because he already knew the answer to that. It was bad.
He scanned the street. It looked empty, but he knew better. A few steps in, he recognized the sound of boots and puddles being disturbed under heavy strides. He'd heard them earlier following him from a distance, too. It was always like that for him. He could almost anticipate the moment he'd slow down and they'd find him vulnerable enough to grab him. And the truth was that he was. His body was weak after the beating he had received one hour earlier. He was easy prey now.
He slipped through the gap between two fences, past an old malfunctioning sign mentioning something about "easy pleasure". Whatever that meant.
A hover train rumbled hard overhead, distant and uncaring of his existence.
His breathing came hard, releasing warm vapors in the air. It was cold. Even the pain in his fingers had started to vanish because of it. And he was hungry too, because of course, life was always adding more weight to whatever circumstance he found himself in. It was never the other way around.
He stopped at the corner of the street as his knees were starting to give out. He caught the wall beside him, scraping a bit of its paint with his fingernails. He didn't want to rest just yet, because rest meant they would catch up to him, and then it would be over. But his body had other plans for him. He crouched.
A few moments in, he pushed himself up and somehow found the strength to move forward, just a few steps past pipes and rusted panels. Then he stumbled again. Pain came from everywhere, but instinct dragged him up one more time.
The corridor ahead narrowed, revealing a maintenance route that had been clearly unused for a long time. Pipes hissed overhead, scaring him.
Behind him, the footsteps sounded quicker this time. He didn't look back, but he estimated they were around two, or maybe three, following him.
He turned a corner too fast and slipped. With one hand, he pushed from the ground, while with the other, he attempted to regain balance, but it was too late. Something caught his hood and yanked him backward.
He turned sharply in place, and before he could even look at them properly, the one who had grabbed him threw a blow to the face, then a knee to the stomach. The air quickly left Ren's lungs. Then, another figure stepped in, took him by the hair, and slammed him against the nearest wall. There were no words spoken, no screams, just the thuds and the teeth clenching from the effort.
The impact blurred Ren's vision, and his ears rang, but his sense of smell must have been left intact because he sensed the familiar stench of cigarette smoke.
Someone then said something, Ren couldn't hear, and then somebody else laughed. It was a full and unfiltered laugh, like it came from deep inside their rotted, cruel souls.
The joke must have been a good one also, because a new series of fists rained on Ren. They were messy and uncoordinated for the big shots they were supposed to be. Ren almost laughed at how his mind was fixating on that in such a moment. But then one boot landed in his ribs, and that took away the little thought-processing abilities he had left.
"You're not even worth the blade," one of the men said.
Then something hit his temple hard, and light engulfed everything in an instant.
When he regained consciousness, Ren didn't know how much time had passed. His first thought was how rain, blood, and dirt were soaking the only clean set of clothes he had left.
He opened one eye. The shapes around him bent in unusual ways for a while as his vision took its time to recuperate. It all felt like being underwater.
He got up slowly, no rush this time, finding balance on one of the lighting poles buzzing overhead. As danger had passed, everything else came rushing in. It was a mix of pain, anger, and a pinch of too much awareness screaming through his thoughts.
Ren started moving again. Crawling at times, falling at other times. He hadn't picked a direction based on any rational thought. Instead, he just went for the first route that would take him out of there. Anywhere was fine at that point, so he stuck to that as the only familiarity he could reason with.
After a while, the environment around him started to turn from flashy neon lights and rusted pipes engulfed in vapors, to darker alleyways surrounded by abandoned structures that looked nothing like he was used to. Not even gangs bothered with this area anymore. It was useless space.
But Ren didn't give it a second thought.
His hand touched the edge of a collapsed fence, which bent inward as if something had torn through it decades ago. Beyond it, Ren saw a tunnel, partially buried by debris and bushes. It looked old. Really old. Rain dripped down through the cracks above, but as he moved passed the entrance, the air became drier and the sound of rain faded away behind him.
He staggered for a while, until his eyes stuck to a set of small pipes winding up the roof like vines. He followed them almost without thinking, pulled forward by... the absence of anything. Hope. Light. Only the need for a shelter remained.
At the end stood a room, carved unnaturally into the tunnel. The walls were half-collapsed but protected by what seemed like an old arch. It was covered in lines that Ren initially mistook for graffiti. As he got closer, he saw symbols instead, markings that looked like some forgotten language. Too measured and patterned to be the work of kids.
Suddenly, Ren stumbled over a broken panel lying around in the water just before the room's threshold. The fall should have hurt, maybe it even did, but his body sent no signal of it. He looked to the side, then forward. The space was still there. Untouched.
Or was it? Something felt off. It struck him as odd how there was no sign of the city's decay in there, no dust, no mold. Just clean stone and water.
He let his body rest on the floor for a moment, one hand falling forward past the boundary line. His fingertips barely touched the clean stone.
Then it hit him. A pulse moved up his arm. It was faint, but it seemed to make everything around him warm. Which made no sense. Nothing in this city was warm.
He blinked slowly, trying to make sense of it, then suddenly light came down from somewhere beyond the arch. And something moved slowly through it. Delicate. Elegant.
A cat.
Its fur gleamed like dark silk, and its eyes were golden, staring directly at him.
Ren pushed himself up on his elbows, but found no words, no proper reaction as he couldn't tell if he was seeing something real or simply hallucinating.
The cat watched.
And a voice echoed directly in his mind. "So this is what's left of you."
The warmth spread up his arm, into his shoulder, and then into the rest of his body. His eyes started to close, and in the final moments of being awake, Ren thought he could here purring.