Chapter Eleven: Welcome to Palos

(Page 1 of 3)

The gaze rose from the crisscrossing forest of elevated roads and reached toward the brilliantly illuminated land on the far side.

The artificial firmament, whose weather could be adjusted at will, arched overhead like the vault of heaven. By day, countless solar sails rose and fell in layered waves, folding their silicon wings. Beneath the sky, floating airships in every imaginable color drifted between the densely packed towers.

Far above, colossal holographic images cast dreamlike neon radiance over the city.

A medical expert in a white uniform smiled with warmth in her eyes while holding an elegantly packaged new suppressant, the olive-leaf logo of Emerald Pharmaceuticals glaringly prominent upon it.

The virtual idol who had recently shot to fame, Thousand-Night Nanalyn, flashed a heart with both hands—Kira✩kira✩—and announced a new collaborative event in a voice as ethereal as a dream.

On the Palos Daily’s final rebroadcast of the day, the presenter, whose perfect smile never faltered, regretfully reported that another fifteen people had died yesterday from pollution in the Old Industrial District.

The gaze shifted once more.

Following the Great Sea’s tributary past the Old Industrial District and Goge District, it stretched all the way to the horizon. The world seemed to plunge into darkness.

Low, dilapidated houses formed crooked lines, scattered haphazardly across the earth. The cramped living space forced them to interlock like jagged teeth, twisting and spreading like tangled crystalline growths, compelled to climb upward until they formed row upon row of withered, iron-gray giants that seemed to reach the heavy sky.

That was Deepmoss District.

It was unlike Whitegate District, where the wealthy and middle class gathered; unlike the Goge District, whose harbor swallowed and disgorged countless freight shipments each day; unlike Central Hall, situated at the heart of the city; and unlike Frostforge District, the sealed Old Industrial District, or the rebuilt New Industrial District.

This was Palos’s slum.

Even after two expansions of the urban limits, Deepmoss District occupied only thirty percent of Palos’s territory.

Yet nearly sixty percent of Palos’s population lived there.

Workers from the New Industrial District, cash-strapped corporate employees, undocumented outsiders without residential permits, underground cybernetic surgeons, wanted criminals, gang members, the destitute… Under the crushing weight of the corporations, people from utterly different walks of life were forcibly packed into Deepmoss District, that enormous meat grinder, desperately trying to squeeze a future from tomorrow.

But this was already more than enough.

Ninety years ago, the Seven-Nation War between the great powers swept across most of the world. Whenever one country collapsed and perished, several times as many nations would descend upon its corpse, sucking out every drop of blood and tearing away every scrap of flesh, struggling with all their might to survive the global war.

The Seven-Nation War lasted twenty years.

The Corporate Alliance was one of the victors.

Through the abuse of nuclear and biological weapons, and the slaughter waged by high-order psychics who were disasters in human form, forty percent of the planet’s land was transformed into lifeless Wasteland, forever rendered uninhabitable.

(Page 2 of 3)

Palos was a medium-sized city within the territory of the Corporate Alliance.

Even though residential permits were nearly impossible to obtain, even though one could enter only by taking illegal factory work, endure the exorbitant prices imposed by the corporations, and suffer extortion at the hands of gangs, countless people still flocked toward the city.

Even if all they could do was curl up in Deepmoss District.

At least they could bathe in the light of civilization and technology. They would not have to endure radiation sickness and shadow lightning in the Wasteland. They would not have to wake each morning and give thanks that roving bandits and mutated creatures had failed to tear them to pieces—that they had survived one more day.

“Ha—!”

A hand suddenly broke through the surface of the moat formed by the Great Sea’s tributary.

A moment later, someone’s head emerged, gulping great breaths of fresh air.

Carrying the bloodstained white coat he had stripped off, Song Shi climbed onto the low embankment.

The Leaper motorbike certainly had a tracking device installed. That was why, after speeding away from the research institute for a while, he had abandoned the bike and leapt into the river. He had drifted with the current for more than an hour, and only climbed ashore after confirming that he had reached Deepmoss District.

Song Shi snapped his fingers, and crimson-gold flames sprang silently to life.

Steam hissed upward as the fire quickly dried his drenched body.

The psionic power he had barely managed to recover, however, was once again almost entirely depleted.

“Tsk. I’m so weak now it’s almost laughable…”

Song Shi was thoroughly displeased, but could only let out a helpless sigh.

No one knew how many years it had been since the infrastructure here had undergone a proper overhaul. At a glance, every streetlamp was either broken or dismantled by scavengers. As for minor problems such as flickering lights, exposed wires, and sparks bursting into flame, no one cared about them anymore.

Song Shi searched for a while before sitting down beside one of the few streetlamps that remained more or less intact.

The dim yellow light stretched his shadow long across the ground. A moment later, another orange-red glow kindled.

“I didn’t want to die there. That’s the only reason.”

The flames consuming the white coat illuminated the young man’s face, the shifting light dividing it between brightness and shadow. Song Shi looked in one direction, as though answering someone.

“But, ‘Mariko, you were going to die anyway, so you might as well let someone else escape in your place’—I would never say something so disgusting. No matter what, the fact that I can sit here now is partly thanks to you.”

(Page 3 of 3)

On the projected interface across his retina, among the information transmitted through Mariko’s physical link, there was a photograph. In it, a man wore a somewhat awkward smile, while beside him stood a girl who seemed faintly reluctant, her posture a little stiff.

“We people of Xia have a custom. When someone dies, we burn paper offerings for them.”

“The burning paper lights the road home, giving the dead a chance to return home one last time and see those who are still alive… I couldn’t find any paper, so I’ll use this coat instead.”

“So go in peace, Mariko. I accept the debt I owe you.”

Song Shi rose to his feet. Under the ignition of the Forgefire, the white coat had nearly burned away.

He watched in silence as the final scrap turned to ash, then gathered the remains and scattered them into the river below.

Then Song Shi turned his gaze toward the opposite direction.

That was where Central Hall lay, the administrative heart of all Palos.

According to the Corporate Alliance’s Third Antitrust Act, no corporation could obtain absolute control over a territory; it was required to leave room for a free market.

But it was only an “act.”

Corporations had countless ways to obtain de facto control of a region. Compared with the enormous profits to be gained, a mere act was far too insignificant. At most, it prevented them from being too excessive or too obvious.

Palos was no exception.

In a sense, this city was itself the pinnacle of corporate power—one of Emerald Pharmaceuticals’ private territories. Nearly half the city existed to serve the corporation’s industrial chain.

As for the nominal “United Government”…

Everyone understood that it was nothing more than a subordinate institution of the megacorporations.

After one last look at the ashes dissolving into the wind, Song Shi turned and walked toward the district above the embankment.

“Wait a little longer. Give me some time to recover my strength…”

“—When the time comes, after I kill the directors of Emerald Pharmaceuticals, I’ll go to the Vamphusta Empire once more and cut down their Elector!”