Scene 1
Blank Canvas
• •
Quiet.
Ian leaned his back against the sewer wall and breathed. In. Out. He felt his lungs move. Felt the ribs expand and contract. Felt the heart beat.
That was all.
No pain.
His left femur was silent. His knee was still. His ankle held its peace. The iron skewer that had not paused for a single instant in seventeen years was gone from inside the bone. Twenty-six screams had melted it. Evaporated it.
Ian looked at his hands.
The hand holding the clamp. Blood had dried on it. Black coagulated stains were etched into the knuckle creases like the fracture lines of a map. Other people's blood. Twenty-six people's blood.
He felt nothing.
Guilt? Absent.
Regret? Absent.
Elation? That too was absent.
Simply empty. The way the inside of his bones was empty, so was the inside of his mind. As though every pigment had been scraped from a canvas. Only the white, bare surface remained.
Maria stood a few paces behind him.
Her breathing was steady. Fourteen per minute. A tranquil rhythm. Absurdly stable for someone who had just witnessed twenty-six killings. But Ian did not question it. There was no reason to. Whatever she was, she was useful now, and that was enough.
Water dripped from the sewer ceiling.
Tok.
Tok.
Even intervals. Regular rhythm. The sound tapped against Ian's eardrums. Normally, even that vibration would have set fire to his nerves. A tiny sound converted into agony that hacked at the inside of his skull.
Not now.
A water droplet was just a water droplet.
A sound was just a sound.
Ian closed his eyes.
Darkness unfolded. The darkness behind the eyelids. He checked what was visible inside it. The past? Nothing. The future? Nothing. Regret? Nothing. Hope? Nothing either.
Only one thing.
Clean Slate.
That phrase alone glowed faintly in the darkness. The fragment the outpost commander had spat out before dying. Project. Experiment. The key that would explain what had been done to his body.
Ian opened his eyes.
"How far?"
"Two kilometers along this passage. Then down a vertical shaft into the Data Rat's domain."
Two kilometers.
How long the painlessness would last was unknown. The grace period purchased by twenty-six screams. Whether it was one hour or one day or one week. No data. No verification.
But it was certain that it would not last forever.
The pain would return.
The skewers would begin moving again.
He had to find the answer before that.
Ian's foot moved. One step.
Sewage squelched under his sole. The stench of rot and decomposing organics stabbed at his nose. Normally, even the smell would have been agony. The olfactory nerve screaming, hacking at the brain.
Not now.
Stench was just stench. Unpleasant, but bearable.
Second step.
Ian thought about how unfamiliar this quiet was. Something he had never once experienced in seventeen years. A state without pain. A state where he could endure without screams.
But.
Was this peace?
No.
Peace should have been filled with something. Relief, or happiness, or at the very least the tangible feeling of being alive. But inside Ian there was nothing. Unfilled space. A vacuum left where pain had been extracted.
Third step.
Maria followed. Her footsteps behind him, steady. Like a loyal shadow.
"Your Honor."
Maria asked.
"What are you feeling?"
Ian did not answer.
There was nothing to answer. He was feeling nothing.
Fourth step.
The sewer's darkness stretched ahead. Data cables ran along the walls like snakes. A faint electronic hum buzzed in the air. The Empire's neural network. Veins of information. The path toward its heart.
Fifth step.
Deep inside Ian's left femur, something stirred.
Not yet.
Not yet pain.
But a warning.
The signal that the skewers were about to move again.
Ian's stride quickened.
────────────────────
Scene 2
Neural Network
• •
A drone hovered.
End of the corridor. A spherical machine suspended from the ceiling. A red sensor rotated, sweeping the darkness.
Ian did not stop.
Heat bloomed from his fingertips. Not the right hand holding the clamp—the left. He opened his palm. The air shimmered.
The drone's sensor locked onto Ian.
Before the alarm could sound.
The heat reached out.
The drone melted. Its metal shell ran like water. Circuits charred. The sensor burst. No explosion. No scream. Only slag dripping to the floor.
Ian's foot stepped over it.
Second drone. Midway down the corridor. A flat unit bolted to the wall. Its lens zoomed as Ian entered its field of view.
He didn't need to reach out.
Heat radiated from his body. Three-meter radius. The air itself boiled. The drone's plastic housing ran. The lens cracked. The circuit board spat sparks and died.
Third.
Fourth.
Fifth.
Ian walked. Did not stop. Drones melted. Security systems were neutralized. Alarms failed to sound before the heat source had passed. The Empire's eyes went dark, one by one.
Maria followed. In the heat's blind spot. She placed her feet only where Ian had already passed and the air had cooled. Precisely. As though calculated.
"Vertical shaft."
Maria said.
Ian's gaze aimed downward.
Darkness. No visible bottom. The shaft plunged deep underground. Data cables ran vertically along the walls. Hundreds of lines. Thousands of signals. The point where the Empire's neural network converged.
"Depth?"
"Approximately forty meters."
Ian gripped the railing. Rusted iron. The rough texture of oxidized metal against his palm. He did not inject heat. No need. This level of stimulus was not pain. Not now.
He jumped.
Wind grazed his ears. Gravity pulled. Forty meters of free fall. Four seconds.
Landing.
Impact through the soles. Knees bent. Bones vibrated. But nothing broke. Heat had softened the floor an instant before contact, absorbing the shock.
Maria descended behind him. Climbing down the cables. Primate-agile. She landed beside Ian without a sound.
"This way."
A passage extended ahead. Narrow. Shoulder-width. Data cables packed the walls on both sides. Blue light flickered between them. The pulse of electronic signals flowing.
Ian walked.
The passage widened.
The light increased.
So did the sound.
The hum of machines. Fans turning. Hard drives scratching. Servers exhaling heat. Hundreds of machines breathing in unison.
At the end of the passage, a door.
Not a steel door. A curtain woven from cables. Thousands of lines hanging in a drape.
Ian's hand parted it.
Light poured through.
────────────────────
Scene 3
A Thousand Eyes
• •
Screens.
Hundreds.
No—thousands.
Every surface of every wall was covered in monitors. Floor to ceiling. Left to right. Screens of varying sizes packed together like cells in a honeycomb. All on. All showing something.
Upper-tier streets.
Lower-tier alleys.
Purification Corps outposts.
Citizens' bedrooms.
Every corner of the Empire was contained inside this room.
At its center sat a man.
Hunched. On the floor. Back curved. Narrow shoulders. Thin limbs. The body of chronic malnutrition. Skin bleached white from a life without light underground.
The man's head turned.
Eyes.
Enormous eyes. Abnormally swollen eyeballs. The irises had faded to near-white. Only the pupils remained—black dots pinned to the center. The eyes of someone who had watched too many screens for too long.
Those eyes locked onto Ian.
The man's mouth opened. No sound came.
Terror.
The man's entire body seized. Fingers clawed the floor. Heels kicked, pushing him backward. Between the thousands of screens. Toward the wall where light and shadow tangled.
"Data Rat."
Ian said.
He took one step forward.
The man's breathing turned ragged. Above forty per minute. Hyperventilation. The respiration of imminent panic. A thousand screen-lights reflected and rippled across those white irises.
"Y-you—"
A cracked voice. The voice of someone who had not used their vocal cords in a very long time. Rusted and sharp.
"I saw on the feed. Outpost Three. You melted them. People. Twenty-six of them."
Ian did not respond.
Second step.
The Data Rat's back hit the wall. Nowhere left to retreat. Screens flanked him on both sides, casting his face in light. Upper-tier citizens smiling. Lower-tier children starving. Purification Corps on patrol.
"I need information."
Ian said.
"Clean Slate."
The Data Rat's eyes wavered.
"H-how do you know about—"
"Just tell me what you know."
Ian's heat rose.
Not from the fingertips this time. From his entire body. The air shimmered. Floor cables began to melt. Plastic sheathing ran and smoked. One screen shattered. Glass bursting.
The Data Rat screamed.
"I know! I know, I know, I know!"
Hands up. Surrender posture. Palms thrust forward, body curling in.
"Clean Slate! Top-secret Imperial project! Human experimentation on lower-tier subjects! Converting pain into a weapon—"
Ian's heat stopped.
"Continue."
The Data Rat gasped. Saliva ran down his chin. Those white irises rolled wildly.
"T-test subjects. They grabbed hundreds. Tortured them. Injected extreme pain. If they adapted, they were discarded. If they couldn't adapt, they were killed. The ones who survived that process—"
The man's voice stopped.
Because he had looked into Ian's eyes.
Amber flame was burning inside the pupils. Not human eyes. A monster's eyes. Eyes that swallowed the light of a thousand screens and still had room to generate their own.
"…You."
The Data Rat whispered.
"You're it. You survived. CS-0042. The 'completed form.'"
Ian's expression did not change.
Completed form.
The phrase struck his eardrums. Reached the brain. Was parsed.
He felt nothing.
Rage? Absent.
Shock? Absent.
But confirmed. What he was. What had been done to him. That the torture seventeen years ago had not been mere punishment.
"Facility location."
Ian said.
"Clean Slate facility. Give me the coordinates."
The Data Rat's trembling fingers hammered a keyboard. One screen among the thousands changed. A map appeared. A red dot blinked.
"H-here. Sub-level of the Central Processing District. Currently operational. They transported a subject there tonight."
Ian's gaze locked on the screen.
The red dot.
The Clean Slate facility.
The place where he had been made.
"The transported subject."
Ian said.
"Name."
The Data Rat's fingers moved again. The screen changed. A transfer record appeared.
Subject ID: CLS-2047
Original designation: 'Eli'
Age: 8
Status: Transfer complete
Scheduled procedure: Primary pain injection (21:00)
Ian's left femur throbbed.
The skewers had begun to move again.
────────────────────
Scene 4
21:00
• •
21:00.
Ian's gaze went to the clock in the corner of the screen.
20:47.
Thirteen minutes.
The Data Rat pointed at the screen with a shaking hand.
"T-there. Live feed. Inside the facility."
The screen switched.
A white corridor. Sterile tile floor, clean as an operating theater. Fluorescent lights at even intervals along the ceiling. Down that corridor, a small shape was being dragged.
Eli.
Two Purification soldiers gripped the child's arms. Eli's feet dragged along the floor. No strength to walk. No—no will to walk. Head hanging. Face hidden.
"In transit to the procedure room."
The Data Rat said.
"Once they pass that door, it's over. Once the primary injection begins—"
On the screen, Eli's head rose.
Toward the camera.
The child's lips moved.
No audio. The voice feed was not connected. But the lip movements could be read.
Help me.
Ian's left femur caught fire.
The skewer burst through the bone. Descended to the knee. Pierced the ankle. Climbed the spine. Seventeen years of painlessness ended after thirteen minutes.
The pain had returned.
Ian's teeth grazed.
"Distance."
"Wh-what?"
"To the facility."
The Data Rat's fingers found the keyboard.
"E-eight hundred meters. Straight down this passage—"
Ian's foot moved.
He ran.
Heat exploded. From his entire body. Air evaporated. Floor cables melted and surged upward. Wall-mounted screens shattered. A thousand eyes burst at once.
The Data Rat screamed.
"Are you ins—?!"
Ian was not listening.
800 meters.
The passage stretched ahead. Darkness. But Ian's heat consumed the dark. Orange light flooded the tunnel.
700 meters.
The pain in his left femur peaked. It felt like the bone was cracking. Like a wound that didn't exist was tearing open. Like seventeen years of suffering crashing in at once.
600 meters.
Breath hissed between his teeth. Rough. Short. An animal's breathing.
500 meters.
Maria's footsteps behind him. Following. Running along the edges of the heat.
400 meters.
A door became visible at the end of the passage. Steel. Thick. The entrance to the Clean Slate facility.
300 meters.
Ian's hand reached forward.
200 meters.
Heat concentrated. Fingertips to arm. Arm to shoulder. Shoulder to heart. Heart back to fingertips.
100 meters.
The steel door began to glow. Orange. Red. White.
50 meters.
The door melted.
Steel ran like water. Hinges evaporated. Locks sublimated. Where the door had been, only a hole remained.
Ian passed through it.
A white corridor.
Fluorescent lights.
Sterile tile.
And—
At the end of the corridor, two Purification soldiers.
In their grip, a small shape.
Eli.
The child's head rose.
Their eyes met.
"…Mister?"
Ian's lips parted.
Not a word.
A breath.
"Scream for me."
Spoken to the soldiers.
Heat exploded.