JUNE 16th, 2014.

Click.
Click.
Click.
The steps of countless civilians living their day-to-day lives mixed with the sound of pouring rain resonates throughout the East Ward— creating a cascading, rhythmic resonance.
Regardless of their walks of life, only the truly misfortunate end up here.
They live out their lives in a section of the world’s final stand against itself— A mega-city that, by size alone, is more comparable to a small continent.
They called it:

“The Garden”.

Of Eden? What kind of God would’ve created this place?
A young man— busy thinking about things that really don’t matter— finds himself amid crowded foot traffic, hurriedly making his way forward and past all of them without taking any care to realize he’s pushed through a few.
He’s in his early twenties, with thick black hair, and aquamarine eyes, wearing a black parka with pale fur lining, all of it over a dark grey open waistcoat with silver buttons above a muted teal undershirt. Additionally, black jeans that are held up by a frayed fabric belt that extends past the final belt loop, resting over his thigh. An outfit that, by no means, represents his dreadful financial status. He glances down at the gunmetal silver watch on his left wrist without slowing his pace.

Seven minutes before the train arrives… I’m screwed.

His white hi-tops, lined and detailed with black and dark aquamarine, splash against puddles on the ground with increasingly more vigor as he begins to think he may make it if he runs even faster.

The year is 2014, but despite that, things are much different than one would think.
Having undergone a horrific toe-to-toe encounter with extinction, humanity has changed the way that it operates. Human life, as a concept, is less valued in this world. This ideology is reflected in the environment surrounding the young man, with large, three to four-story buildings created with very little character or personality in mind. Outside of foliage and flowery, frequent graffiti, and damaged windows… it was as if this world was artificial.
Nothing but black and white.
It is the poorest of the three circles the Garden consists of: the “Outer Layer”.
A place for criminals, those who refuse rehab, and the ones too unlucky to find stable work.
The young man, Seth…
Fell under the third category.

If this job doesn’t work out, I’m going to starve…
He ponders internally at himself, as if it would change anything.
I’ve sold everything that I can, outside of my clothes…
He visualizes his almost empty, now very barren apartment with a look of disdain.
If it wasn’t for that one case gone wrong… I’d still be in the Inner Layer right now.
Despite his inner resolve while thinking this, he fails to realize that he’d already surpassed the infamous “three strikes” gauge. By around four.

Ring…
Ring…
Bzztt…
Bzzt…

Before he can continue his strain of self-pity, his flip phone begins to ring and buzz in his pocket. Ignoring the fact that he lacks the money for an upgrade, he claims it’s for “aesthetic purposes”.

Vibration and ringing combo… yeah, that’s Feno.
Seth answers the phone after flipping it open, never slowing his pace.

“Hey-heyy Feno…! I was actually just outside the—”

“Seth?!”
A voice over the phone yells, seemingly annoyed.
“Cut the bullshit! You were supposed to be here twenty minutes ago!”
Seth winces at the raised volume over the speaker.

“I know! I know… but I got chased by a rabid dog earlier, and the sidewalk traffic is crazy today…”
Despite sounding like a quickly fabricated lie, he was telling the truth.

“Seth. Seriously. Do you think I’m that stupid? How long have we known each other?”

Feno… I’m not actually lying…
He couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud, so he silently mourned for his future.
“A long time, I know. I’m almost to the station’s entrance, I swear I’ll be there in less than an hour.”

“Seth…”
Feno’s sigh exits through the phone’s speaker, somehow making him feel even worse.
“...Fine. Fine. But, no more delays. If you aren’t here in an hour, I’m finding somebody else.”

“Ah… You’re the best, Feno.”
Seth exhales in relief, as if he had been holding his breath.

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever, man.”
The call cuts and Seth is left alone with the impending fear of losing this gig.

I’m not made for retail, he thinks to himself.
I’d never become a detective again if I touched the service industry…

As he glances down to pocket his phone while continuing to run forward, he notices a roughed-up and bruised homeless man at the entrance of an alley to the right, begging for money. Behind him are various used needles, poorly hidden from the accustomed eyes of the Outer Layer’s residents.

...Just to use it on drugs, of course. This place is…

A light frown casts itself on top of Seth’s face, but he soon realizes this isn’t the time nor the place to be contemplating the topic. He carries on, much to the dismay of the people in front of him.

There it is!

Seth quickly goes around the last corner between him and the view of the entrance to the station, running toward it as fast as he can. He presses his hand against the tiled corner to the right of the entrance, bringing his momentum to a delayed halt as a staircase leading underground enters his field of vision. It’s dimly lit by fluorescent tan lights on the ceiling going all the way down, as one can easily tell it’s been poorly maintained. Cracks, water droplets sliding down the walls from the run-off above ground… Welcoming hospitality. With no second thoughts and a lot of impatience, Seth almost slips from how erratic his rush down is.

Come on, come on… I’ve got a client waiting…!

Speeding down a corridor to the right at the end of the set of stairs, Seth balances his forward bursts of momentum with the handrail to the right, which is rusted over in a few places. To his sides, various LCD posters line the walls of the station, but a lot of them are graffitied over and cracked, causing the images to glitch and fragment. Not that it matters to Seth, as he’s practically viewing them with a motion blur filter on top.

Aaaand…
He begins to say to himself, as he turns the final corner to the station.
...I made it. Barely.
The tracks belonging to the train are empty as it hasn’t caught up to the wait yet, while twenty-five or thirty people are standing and sitting on the platform, waiting for it to arrive... Seth begins to walk forward, waiting along with them.
I bet the Inner Layer’s trains are faster…

While Seth is stuck in thought, a lurking, mysterious figure in a black trenchcoat begins to slowly make its way forward to him as he stands near the edge of the platform. Their face is hidden by a cracked white and black smiley face mask that looks as if they had bought it from a prop store and poorly repainted it. The mask is scratched all over, the paint is scraped off in multiple places, and generally, it appears as if someone had thrown it against a pile of large rocks repetitively. Approaching even closer, Seth is still oblivious to the person behind him: the harsh white lights of the train can be seen down the tunnel as the thick sound of the rumbling masks their footsteps. Suddenly, he hears a gravelly, breathy deep voice behind his head.

“Hah… You are… Seth, yes…?”

Seth snaps his torso around toward the figure, only to be met with them standing right behind him, cocking their head while they ask.

What’s… with the mask?
As Seth opens his mouth to speak, he’s interrupted by the figure, who has found their answer without his input.

“Yes… You are our... Progenitor…”

“‘Progenitor’? I don’t—”

With the noise of the train down the tunnel growing intensely to a deafening volume, getting closer and closer, the figure puts their hands on Seth’s shoulders, interrupting him yet again. The station floor rumbles from the vibrations, with small pebbles leftover from the treads of various shoes bouncing atop the platform. The blinding lights of the train are just before the two of them, shrouding the following act from the eyes of passersby.

“Welcome…”
The voice trails off, pushing their body forward, and…

Seth’s body forward, as well.

Seth’s eyes jolt open in shock, as his brain realizes something is very wrong, but not enough time has passed to determine what.

“...To the Free World.”

“Wh—”

If for only a split moment, or barely that, Seth realizes what had happened to him.

His eyes, bulging in instinctual terror, look to where the figure was standing, only to be met with the sight of them bowing with both arms under their torso as if they had just finished their part in a play.

Time slows to a crawl, as Seth feels both alive and dead simultaneously.

Unmistakably, this was a murder.

Unmistakably, there was nothing that could be done.
In a display of rebellion toward his killer, Seth grits his teeth before the train in front of him impacts his body.

He feels nothing when it does, and his vision blanks to black.
He cannot see with his eyes.
He cannot hear with his ears.
He cannot smell with his nose.
He cannot feel with his nerves.
He cannot taste even his own tongue.

—at?

He is nothing now.

Not human, not a spirit, nor anything else that would come to one’s mind.
This was not an afterlife, it simply… was.

There is nothing else.

Seth, without a body, attempts to reach his hand out.

If he had one, he would have succeeded.

I’m… dead? That…
If he had a head, he would’ve held his hands against it.
That bastard... That can’t be right. I… can’t die yet. Not until…

“Until you redeem yourself for what you did?”

A voice pierces the cold, black void, directed at Seth.

Piercing directly through his brain, it sends shivers down a spine he doesn’t have, as the blood he doesn’t own begins to freeze over. The voice is rough, organically distorted, and crackly in nature.

The question itself almost comes across as a mockery.

“That was the lowest point of your life, wasn’t it?” the voice questions him again.

Silence fills the void.
Seth, without eyes, can’t see the one talking to him.

If he could, he would not be able to force himself to speak.

In fact, if he could see it, he’d want to rip out his eyes.

If he could understand that it shared the same plane as him, he would feel a fear so primal that it’d be as if every single piece of logic he lived by was rewritten simultaneously.

“You didn’t have a choice, did you? It was them or you. That’s how you justified it.”
The voice grows increasingly more amused with itself while being careful to not come across as disagreeable.
“...But we both know that your sleepless nights have a clear cause, don’t we?”

“Who…”
If Seth had vocal cords to physically speak with, they would be clicking together in chattered fear, not wanting a single sound to escape his body.

Trying to hide.

Wishing they could.

“...Who are you? How… How do you know that?”

“It’s simple. There’s not a single person, let alone a spirit, who wishes to turn back the clock more than you do. That kind of selfish stupidity is what I live for.”
The voice smiles to itself, and Seth can tell by the way the sound slightly changes to fit its new form. Then again, this thing is already far from human.
“And we’re both prisoners, heinous criminals that enact our justice when we see fit.”

Seth pauses, taken aback by what was just shoved into his soul.
“I’m… not a criminal.”

“Right…”
The voice trails off with a sarcastic tone behind its teeth.
“...That’s why you became a detective. So you could keep that lie up.”

“IT ISN’T A LIE!”
Seth yells in an outburst, as his voice bounces all across the void.
“I don’t know what you are… but I—”

“Oh, it isn’t? Hm…”
The voice thinks to itself, sorting through its options and cutting Seth off.
“...Interesting. Alright, I’ll accept the contract.”

“‘Contract’…?”
Seth sounds confused and slightly worried by the proposition.
“What ‘contract’….?”

The voice grows subtly sinister, spreading a sense of despair across the void.
“You wanted to turn back the clock? Alright, then. Someone who can’t live their life without hating themself, who’s as foolish as you…”
Pausing for a moment, the voice continues with a lower tone, to emphasize the severity of the warning it’s about to present.

“...You live with a burden not even a god would want to handle, and yet you act as if it’s a righteous responsibility…”

The voice chuckles heartily, adding to its proclamation.

“...I WANT TO SEE IT! THE WORLD THAT A NONSENSICAL FOOL LIKE YOU COULD CREATE!”

Seth remains silent, not able to respond to anything the voice says.

“...And to accomplish that,” the voice continues, with a calmer and more concentrated tone of voice, “this contract allows me to accompany you during your journey through Hell.”

“Hell…?”
Seth meekly says, still trying to process everything.

The voice simply laughs in response.
“You’ll see. Can’t expect me to ruin my own fun. Oh, and…”
A light begins cracking, bursting through the void as Seth can view his humanoid form again, although his body lacks any detail.

“...A final warning, kid…”
The voice takes on an extremely sinister, foreboding tone.
“...If you’re thrown into Hell, call out for me. You’ll know how.”

As the voice ended its cautionary advice, Seth’s body slowly disappeared from the void.