I could still hear the grating noise of the gate closing behind us, cutting off the tunnel's cold air and leaving only the mechanical hum of machines and the murmur of voices rising from every direction.
The underground city, the so-called Final Line, seemed to stretch beneath our feet like a living maze. Pale lights washed the streets; snatches of irritated arguments and occasional bursts of laughter clashed starkly with whatever was happening outside those doors.
If you ignored the ceiling and walls that looked like a living organism, it almost felt like a civilized place, far from the horrors above.
For a while, no one spoke, as if we were all savoring that breath of civility.
It didn't last. Soon Mei was striding ahead, face severe, with the skinny old man, the jeering man, and the strong woman following close behind.
I was the stranger among them.
"So," the man gripping me broke the silence, "what's your name again, outsider?"
"I… I already told you, I don't remember."
They all laughed.
Not a light laugh; it was dry and mocking. I knew they didn't believe me.
"Of course you don't," he sneered, spitting on the ground. "Nobody remembers after a baptism of faith."
The skinny old man rolled his eyes at him.
"Enough, Raul." Then he turned to me with a faint smile. "Don't mind him. Down here, laughing is the only thing that still makes us feel alive."
"He'll remember," Mei said without looking back. "The Counselor always finds a way."
Those words made me more nervous than relieved.
Raul, however, laughed again, obvious malice in his tone.
"Yeah, the old man has his methods. And believe me, you're going to remember everything. Whether you want to or not."
I couldn't help trembling at the thought of the worst.
The skinny old man walking at my side seemed to notice and tried to ease the mood. He looked less paranoid now, maybe the shelter of this underground city made him feel safer. He looked at me and, for the first time, smiled for real.
"I'm Josh," he said, offering his hand. "Or what's left of him."
I hesitated, then shook it.
His hand was rough. He was so thin it felt like I was holding bones.
"You really don't remember anything?"
"Nothing. Only what I saw out there, and what I told you."
"Then maybe that's for the best." He stared ahead, scratching his gray goatee, thoughtful. "Maybe you can start over here. At least try. Out there it's just ruin and rotting flesh. In here we at least have a roof."
"Is this… safe?"
I couldn't help glancing up at the fleshy ceiling over my head and shuddering.
He chuckled low.
"Safe? No one's safe anywhere. But this is the closest we've gotten since the end. And that…"
He paused a few seconds, looking up.
"That hasn't harmed us, at least not in the thirty-nine years since this shelter was built."
It seemed true. People hurried past, some wrapped in cloth, others with prosthetics that creaked like old bones. But unlike the refugees, no one here seemed afraid to live inside something made of flesh.
Raul overheard and snorted.
"That 'end of the world' talk is a believer's thing. The world ended when they started preaching that flesh was sacred."
"Not everyone in the church believed that," Josh answered, still calm. "But I agree on one point: to them, humanity doesn't mean anything anymore."
I stared at him, confused.
"What do you mean?"
"Survival, kid." He looked at me with hollow, tired eyes. "That's it. It's the most we can manage, and we already call it a miracle."
Josh rubbed his chin and went on.
"Since you don't remember, let me tell you a few things. For example, our city is one of several that belong to the Order. The Order of the Three Fears was born when the world still made sense, or at least when it wasn't as broken as it is today. When everything collapsed, scientists, doctors, soldiers, and whoever else survived banded together to try to control the chaos and keep people alive."
"And did they succeed?" I asked.
He laughed.
"Depends on what you call success." He gestured broadly at the crowded street. "This is the result."
I couldn't help thinking of the refugees outside before I spoke.
"At least they seem to be surviving."
Raul cut in with scorn.
"Believers, all of you. Cursed lot that only offers comfort and does nothing."
The strong woman shot him a withering look but kept silent. Mei didn't react either. It was as if she were detached from the debate, focused only on moving forward.
The old man sighed before continuing.
"Surviving… that's exactly what the Order stands for now. After the Great Purge, the survivors learned to fear three things above all: faith, reason, and sound."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Exactly what I said, living in fear of those things. The people who survive here don't believe in explanations anymore. They live for the next day, and only that. Our group just wants to survive, nothing more."
He seemed exhausted after saying it. The others looked more apathetic for having heard it, but none of them argued.
We turned another corner, and I saw a different kind of building: a huge metal hangar. Unlike the rest of the city, it didn't look patched together; it had clean lines and white lights. It looked modern, clean, almost technological.
Josh whispered near my ear.
"This is one of the Order's cores in our city. It's where the Counselor lives, the Master of the Third Fear. He's the one who decides who lives and who gets sacrificed for the good of all."
As we approached, an old man waited outside. He was elderly, but not frail, his body bent, his face carved with deep wrinkles, and eyes that looked like they could see a soul.
He didn't wait for us to reach him. He simply walked up to me, stopped less than a handspan away, and examined me from head to toe. His movements were far too quick for someone his age.
If not for his heavy breathing, I'd have sworn he wasn't human.
He greeted no one.
After a brief silence, he nodded.
"Follow me."
As we all took a step, he raised his hand.
"No. Just him."
Mei immediately stepped forward.
"That's not a good idea."
"I didn't ask your opinion, Captain," the old man replied, emotionless.
The others hesitated, but Mei only clenched her fists, swallowing whatever she wanted to say. She shot me a quick look, like a warning.
Without waiting for an answer, the old man turned and went inside.
I hesitated a few seconds before being shoved toward the entrance. I sighed, resigned, and followed.
Inside was completely different, no sci-fi gloss or high-tech shine.
The floor was clean wood; the walls were covered with paintings, maps, and old photographs. The air still smelled of freshly brewed tea. It was… cozy.
My eyes roamed curiously. A dusty piano, a bookcase full of charred books, a fake window painted with a green meadow and a blue sky.
Not what I expected.
A rough cough snapped me back.
The old man now sat behind a dark wooden desk. A single black notebook with purplish edges lay in front of him.
"Sit," he said, pointing at the chair.
I obeyed.
As I sank into the cushioned seat, he fixed me with those dark eyes and I didn't know what to do. The silence that followed was uncomfortable. I could hear my own heartbeat.
I opened my mouth, but no sound came. I didn't know what to say.
He smiled, calm.
"I know," he said softly, almost kindly. "You're not from here."
My body went rigid.
He opened the notebook but didn't write a thing.
He just kept talking.
"And you don't remember your name either, do you?"
I nodded.
"I don't. I swear."
"Those people outside probably didn't believe you," he said with a little laugh, leaning back. "But I do."
He watched me for a while, as if lost in a memory, then fell silent again.
After a few seconds, he rested his hands on the notebook and smiled.
"It's not good to walk around without a name. That draws attention," he said. "How about Noah?"
The sound of the word felt right.
"Noah."
For some reason, it sounded familiar.
I stayed quiet.
He waited a few seconds, and since I said nothing, he confirmed.
"Then it's settled. You'll be Noah."
He sighed, then looked toward the fake window, as if he longed for that painted place.
"You must have many questions. I'll make an exception for you and answer a few."
I had plenty. Where I came from. Whether he knew me. He seemed to know something. And what this place really was.
"You must be confused," he said at last, seeing I was still silent. "Everyone is. It's normal."
His voice was calm, but every word felt heavy.
"Memory is a luxury few still have. Sometimes it protects; sometimes it condemns."
It didn't sound like he was saying it just for me. I looked around again. The place was so peaceful it felt cruel, a parody of normalcy inside hell.
"Did you know I was coming?" I asked.
The old man chuckled softly, the sound muffled by a dry throat.
"I don't know." He tapped his thin fingers on the notebook. "I feel.
People like you leave traces. Trails that neither time nor flesh can erase."
He leaned forward, elbows on the desk.
"But before anything else, I need to understand something."
His gaze was sharp, steady as a blade.
"When you saw the Rizonte, what else did you see?"
My body locked up.
The memory still weighed on some corner of my mind, that awful sound, the smell of blood and scorched iron.
"A silhouette," I whispered. "Several, actually. They looked like people."
He didn't react right away. He just ran a finger across the shut notebook, tracing something invisible.
"So we've already gotten to that," he murmured.
I swallowed hard.
"What is that thing? They called it Rizonte."
"A scar on the world," he answered without hesitation. "Rizonte to the Order, Sinalor to the Anatomists, Mother-Pulse to the cult. Many names. Each group thinks it understands, but really they just want to stack their ideas above the others. That thing is just another reminder. A reminder that humanity is condemned."
His words thickened the air. Several of those names I was hearing for the first time, and something about the way he said it made my stomach twist.
"And the Order," I began, hesitant, "what do you really do here?"
He looked back at me, setting his hands on the desk.
"The Order is what's left of the people who refused to go insane, but nowadays those who remain refuse to fight." He explained, "We divided fear the way you divide bread. The First Fear was meant to lead the combat units, a specialist in evading the flesh, but right now he's probably drunk in some brothel."
He spoke with obvious disdain, but sadness slipped into his tone right after.
"The Second Fear," he paused, his voice dropping, "she commanded scouts and silencers. She was the best of us. But she isn't here anymore."
In that moment, he stopped being the lively old man—an aura of bone-deep exhaustion seeped from him.
"And finally me, the Third Fear. The Counselor," he said with a touch of mockery. "Unlike the Church of Flesh and the Anatomists, most of us were civilians. We didn't agree with the church's madness, nor with those scientists' insane ideas."
I looked confused.
He noticed and laughed softly.
"I forget you've got no memories. The church, or rather the Cult of Flesh, believes humanity was a mistake of fragmentation, that every human is an isolated shard of the original entity called the Origin. You know that thing you saw out there? They think it's their god's Herald."
He rose from behind the desk still holding the notebook and went to a side table. There was a teapot there. He filled two cups and walked back, sitting again.
"Anyway, they're a plague. Then there are the Anatomists. At first they called themselves the Academy of Reason and started like us, trying to find a way out for humanity, but things got out of control over there." He looked at the fake window with regret.
"Some extremists believed the changes were a biological process gone wild, maybe a symbiosis between human DNA and some external agent, who knows. What's certain is that their goal shifted. Now it's to reproduce the phenomenon in a controlled way, believing they can create an adapted human."
I listened in disbelief. What kind of twisted world was this?
"You'll understand soon, Noah. The world died when everyone stopped being afraid. And we… we're what's left of fear."
For a moment, the old man looked tired, almost fragile.