'The person in the mirror
Wasn't who I wanted to be,
And life wasn't the one I wanted to have.
You, who present yourself under different names,
Yet decided to keep the same appearance.
You are a thousand things,
But everyone sees the million,
You are not,
You are not.
Where you are from
You are
Where you are going.
I'd like
to go there
But you always leave me behind,
Because
You are not me…
- LOVE:less act 5 -.
Our society succeeded in qualifying emotional and mental states. Through the Social Credit system, the value of a human being is calculated—reduced to a number.
Today, a soul—or whatever is left of it—can be judged before it commits a crime. Judgment is no longer the realm of morality or conscience, but of data. The judge is the Aleksithimia Technology and Science Corporation, the machine-driven surveillance state we now call the Mitera System.
Thanks to Mitera, and its long-standing policy of preemptive control, we Keepers—and the rest of the population—are told that we've escaped countless disasters. We've been promised that this is the only peaceful nation left on Earth. But peace came at a cost far greater than anyone was prepared to pay.
People no longer remember what it means to love. Or to hope. Compassion and friendship are relics. We've become hollow shells, obedient extensions of the very machines we built to serve us.
We created a future. We made history. But we traded our humanity to do it.
If only that were the end of it...
The true answers remain hidden beneath layers of silence—concealed crimes, buried truths, digital graves. But nothing escapes nature's cycle forever. Not even the Emperor. One day, the King will become the hunted. And whatever lies beneath this artificial peace will rise to the surface, whether we are ready or not.
[September 25th. Genf – TechnoPark, past 7:30 PM]
A small, hooded figure wove its way through the crowd—nearly a foot shorter than those around her—dwarfed by polished heels and military boots pounding the rain-slicked pavement. The city of a million lights had awakened from its daytime coma, and now pulsed with synthetic life.
Holograms flickered in every direction. Shopkeepers and digital hosts shouted over each other, voices amplified through echoing speakers as they desperately fought to lure customers.
Every stall promoted the latest in synthetic enhancements—cutting-edge augmentations, neural implants, prosthetics, cosmetics, subscription services. This was TechnoPark—Aleksithimia's largest cyber-market. A chaotic sprawl of flashing signs, booming advertisements, and shoulder-to-shoulder bodies. There was no room to breathe, no space to think. If you liked personal space, you didn't belong here.
"Cheap body augmentations!" a female hologram called out, her voice unnaturally cheerful.
"Top up your Credit score here!" shouted another in a nearby booth.
"New Kanjöga upgrades in stock—shop now!" echoed one more in the distance.
People jostled through the crowds, stepping on toes, brushing past with vacant stares. In TechnoPark, only one rule mattered: first come, first served.
"I hate this place... So noisy," Nion muttered, pulling her hood lower. "Mitera, reroute my destination. I don't want to go through the market—too many people."
"Understood," the AI replied calmly in her ear.
Without breaking stride, Nion veered away from the congested street and vanished into the shadowed tangle of back alleys.
The city changed in an instant.
A narrow corridor stretched out ahead—almost a kilometer long. It cut through the heart of the old industrial zone like a wound, the surrounding towers too tall and crowded to let the sky in. The echoes of the main road softened behind her as she moved deeper into the alley, swallowed by its quietness.
The buildings here were ancient—cracked brick and rusted pipes, stained metal shutters long since sealed shut. Faint graffiti decorated the walls, faded names and symbols half-swallowed by time. Everything here was still. Dusty. A forgotten artery of the city that had once held life.
Before the Third World War, this alley had been one of the busiest street food hubs in Genf—lined with tiny Asian and Western food stalls, where workers from nearby office blocks would gather after hours for cheap, hearty meals. The smell of grilled meats and fried dumplings once drifted into the night air. Now, only silence remained.
It was just another part of the underworld—a cold, hollow space preserved in steel and stone. Empty. Sterile. Forgotten.
Occasional drunk salarymen passed out on empty tables were once a common sight in this alley. But those days were long gone. After new tax policies crushed small businesses, every shop here had shuttered. Now, all that remained were sealed doors behind freshly repainted façades—most marked with faded condemned signs. Inside, dust-covered chairs and forgotten kitchenware sat like relics in a tomb. Owners had fled or vanished when the 'Grand Central' era collapsed.
Nion glanced around.
Not a single soul ahead. None behind.
"Creepy..." she whispered, blinking as she continued down the alley's perfectly aligned stone path. A sudden breeze slipped between the tight brick walls, carrying the scent of rain and a crisp, pre-winter chill.
"Hey, young lady," called a deep, gravel-thick voice.
She froze mid-step.
A beat passed.
"Yes, you. Got some change?" the same voice rasped again.
Slowly, Nion turned her head. Just outside an abandoned subway entrance, an old man sat on a makeshift bed of cardboard. He looked at least seventy—a near-mythical age since the Gan pandemic decimated the elderly. He was wrapped in layers of mismatched clothing, a brilliant scarlet fabric peeking through soot-stained coats. His bulk seemed less like body mass and more like bundled fabric disguising frailty.
"Warning. This person is likely from the Metro, all interactions are prohibited," Mitera's voice warned in her ear.
"Then what's he doing here?" Nion muttered under her breath. "They're not allowed outside right?"
"Oh ho!" the man chuckled, as if he'd heard her anyway. "What's a kid like you doing in a place like this, and at this hour?"
"I strongly advise you to ignore him. Interaction will negatively impact your social credit," Mitera insisted.
"I know, I know. Just… give me a second," Nion murmured, inching closer.
"Don't worry. I don't bite," the man laughed, lighting a cigarette with trembling fingers. "Just an old geezer hoping for a coin or two."
Nion hesitated but finally stepped closer. She crouched a few feet away, leaning against the cold metal wall, watching him intently.
There was silence. Deep and strange.
She couldn't explain it, but the more she stared at the old man, the more curiosity gnawed at her.
Without a word, he peeled back the stained cloth covering his lap. The movement made Nion tense—her hand flew to her side, only to remember she wasn't armed.
"The only ones who can hurt us… are people like you," he said quietly, reaching out a hand, not in threat—but with something like peace. "So calm down a bit, yeah? Keep an old man some company. It's rare anyone even stops anymore."
As his hand touched hers, Nion felt something strange. Off.
He rolled up his sleeve slightly.
The limb was a prosthetic—hollow, plastic, unnervingly light. Its surface was scuffed, chipped, and aged, like something pulled off an old department store mannequin. Obsolete. Fragile.
"No one uses these anymore," she murmured.
The old man let out a wheezing laugh. "You've got no idea."
"What's so funny?" she asked, still eyeing the arm.
"Back in the day, this was the standard. Everyone I knew had one. Now? You'd need to sell your kidney just to afford a Mitera-approved model." He lifted his arm with mock pride. "But hey, this one still does the job."
He looked at her more closely, his expression softening beneath the weathered lines of his face.
"What's your name, dear?"
Nion frowned, deflecting. "What are you doing out here?"
"You sure ask a lot of questions for someone who's not even willing to share their name," he chuckled.
She hesitated, then gave in. "My name is... Quarta."
He raised an eyebrow. "Now there's a strange one. Kids these days... Quarta, huh? I wouldn't even name my cat that." He cackled. "World's gone sideways, hasn't it?"
She smirked faintly. "You?"
"Samuel. But you can call me Uncle Sam." He reached out the prosthetic for a handshake.
Nion accepted it. The plastic felt wrong, but the gesture was sincere.
"Are you alone?" she asked.
"Yup. Just me. Waiting for death like toast for butter." He coughed, his voice cracking as the smoke caught in his throat.
"Toast... for butter?" she echoed, puzzled.
"Yeah. World's full of things that want me dead. If it's not that lunatic Aleks-whatever, then it's Creepers from Metro. If not them, then good ol' starvation or diabetes will get me." He grinned. "Take your pick."
"Sorry for that," Nion said softly.
He nodded. "Sure is. But I've made it 78 years. Ain't bad, right?" He blew out a heavy cloud of smoke and offered her the cigarette.
She waved it away.
"Smart girl." He smiled. "I'll probably keel over in two years, so what the hell. Might as well enjoy the view from the gutter."
Nion reached into her coat and pulled out a small pile of coins. "Here. Take this."
Samuel's eyes widened. "Sweet Jesus… That's too much. You sure?"
She placed the coins firmly in his palm. "It'll do you more good than it'll do me."
The old man's hand trembled as he gripped hers again, this time almost tearful. "You're... my ray of sunshine," he said, voice cracking. "No one's been kind to me in years."
"No worries," she replied, her voice soft.
"You don't know how much this means to me," he said, near weeping. "Maybe you Keepers ain't all rotten after all."
"Wait… How do you?!"
He smiled through his tears, his voice trembling with both grief and nostalgia.
"You know..." He pulled a small flask from the inner pocket of his coat and took a burning sip. "Back in the day, I was a wealthy man. And when I say wealthy, I mean it. People called me 'Sir Samuel'—the best trader in America. I swear on God's name, I had my own driver. A driver just for me. That bastard drove so fast I thought he'd kill me one day." Samuel let out a shaky laugh, a rare sound half-choked by his own coughing. "Not a single accident, do you hear me? Ten years at my side, and not once. His name was Luckas. A great man."
"I'm asking you—how do you know I'm a Keeper?" Her voice cut through the night, sharp and urgent, pressing him for an answer.
He pressed the back of his hand against his mouth as another cough wracked through him, then straightened with a faint grin. "And Madame Dowie—God damn. One of the finest women I ever met. Do you know who she worked for?"
"No... I don—" Nion began, but Samuel cut her short with sudden fervor.
"That's right! She was my secretary." His face brightened as he spoke, the years dropping away from his lined features as if memory alone was enough to breathe youth back into his body.
"I dined in the finest restaurants. I spent my money like every day was my last. I had everything: women, houses, cars—everything a young businessman could ever dream of."
"Answer my question..." Nion insisted once again.
Samuel's smile faltered, his gaze drifting into darker places. "Then came 2048. Barely a month after Charlie, my youngest boy's birthday, the European Union collapsed. You probably never heard much about those times. When it fell, everything else followed. The economy. The banks. Health care. Jobs. Each day worse than the last. We saw it coming, but the men in power dragged their feet, as they always do. And by the 2060s, when they tried to rebuild what was left and called it the Grand Central, it was already too late."
His hand trembled as he lifted the flask again. "And then came the Gan virus. I lost everything. Spent what was left of my fortune just to keep my family alive—medicine, food, and water. So much water. Once you caught that stuff, you lived only to drink. Thirty gallons a day, between just four of us. Thirty gallons! Enough for fifty people in normal times. But if you didn't drink enough... you dried up and died." His voice cracked, the last word barely a whisper.
"Why are you telling me this," Nion murmured, her chest tightening at the weight in his words.
Samuel's face hardened, the years of loss cutting through the brief light of his story. "Then, out of nowhere—World War Three. I remember the announcement like it was yesterday. The president's voice over every screen, declaring we were at war. My wife and I cried together. We had already suffered enough. And now it felt like the world itself was about to explode. Next thing we knew, the government forced all cadets, all young adults, into the army. My children... they never came back."
He fumbled for a cigarette, but his fingers shook too much to manage the lighter. His eyes were damp, but he fought the tears with the stubborn pride of a man who had already lost everything. "My wife... she worried herself sick. Day after day, until her heart just gave up."
The man lit another cigarette, but his body rejected it instantly. A violent fit of coughing wracked his chest, so harsh that flecks of blood sprayed from his lips and spattered dark against the ground.
"You should stop smoking..." she said gently.
A sudden beeping broke the silence. Samuel's wristwatch flared with a sharp alarm. He stood, unsteady on his feet, swaying as if the very earth beneath him shook. His grey hair hung in unruly strands, a tangled mop of brown fading to white, while his long beard spilled down his dark overcoat.
"Since I've been on the streets, all I've ever gotten are averted eyes," he said bitterly, looking past the alleyway and into the city. "People don't want to see this face, this story. Why would they? A few pretend sympathy, but I can see through the façade. Behind the hollow 'sorry,' there's only disgust."
"Not everyone is the same," Nion replied.
"Same or not," Samuel said, his voice breaking, "you're the first Overgrounder who's been kind to me." He wiped his nose on his sleeve and tried to smile, though it was weak, more ghost than man.
It was well past midnight. The city had sunk into silence, swallowed by the weight of darkness. The moon struggled to break through the thick, restless clouds, and the stars lay hidden, smothered by a heavy sky.
"So, are you going to reply to my question?" Nion pressed, her voice calm but unyielding as she locked eyes with him. His gaze, however, wandered past her, fixed on a place she could neither see nor reach.
"Thank you for keeping me company, Quarta," he murmured instead.
At that very moment, a thin beam of moonlight broke through the clouds and caught her face. Her amethyst eyes flared with sudden brilliance, glowing with an otherworldly light.
Samuel froze. The cigarette slipped from his trembling fingers as the violet fire reflected back at him.
"Quarta Keeper… I knew you were the one," he whispered, his voice hollow. "And those eyes..." His breath caught. "He has the same eyes. The eyes of someone who has died countless times... The cursed heritage of the Sixth Judgement."