2/. Chapter Two: Main layer
Remaining in the Middle Tier, between the luxury of upscale neighborhoods and the simplicity of poor ones, there was a semi-middle-class neighborhood, bearing contradictory features from both worlds.
As Blade wandered through the alleyways of the neighborhood heading somewhere, his thoughts were preoccupied:
First,with the sound of the door he had heard but hadn't had the chance to open to confirm his suspicions about the noise. He felt that every second he delayed subtracted from the success rate of his plan.
Second, Paul, who seemed different, had exited the bathroom without any sound; he hadn't even heard the toilet door creak. Yet, he was extremely weak, as if the door sound he'd heard initially was intentional and not a coincidence.
Third, the reason for Paul's entry into the Marginal Tier. It wasn't random for someone of Paul's status to enter it by chance. There was something hidden, and his suspicions increased, especially with the appearance of the dragon map in his possession.
Finally, the map. He had heard of the dragon but had never seen it or a picture of it, yet the map reminded him of it. Was there a dragon here in the city? Impossible, but it would be wonderful if it truly existed. So, Blade decided to search for it when he finished everything, or even before everything began.
In the end, Blade stopped in front of an old garage with a wide, rusty gate attached to a house with an ordinary style like the rest of the houses here. He opened the door with a simple push and entered.
Inside the garage, a young woman was tattooing roses on the arm of a teenager covered in scars and burn marks. The teenager had long black hair and light green eyes and wore old black clothes. The tattoo artist's fingers moved with precision and expertise to cover the scars and make them invisible, with a silence only broken by the sound of the needle burning the skin.
Without looking at them or them looking at him, Blade headed towards the corner of the garage, where there was an old toilet and a dirty water sink. He turned on the shower tap after removing his clothes and began to wash. The tap was held by a string to keep it from falling, though the string wasn't in much better condition than the tap itself.
Water washed black ink from Blade's hair, but it couldn't overpower the thick, milky, viscous liquid, as if it were endless, separating from Blade's youthfully elegant body to reveal numerous scars that nearly hid all his skin. Each scar was larger and deeper than the last, and on his face, a single scar on the left side ran from below his eye to his neck, with three deep wounds of varying lengths adhering to the scar. Both liquids slid down the drain like souls leaving a body.
Blade had gray hair, not a mark of handsomeness but evidence of his suffering and the hellish life he had lived in the Marginal Tier or before it, as his hair had originally been black. His ash-gray eyes, filled with artificial sorrow, were very strange, thick, calm, carrying with them the depth of Blade's thinking and the wisdom taken from life's hell.
Blade raised his left palm and deepened his gaze into a milky white jewel. With the water pouring over his body, he looked like a person carrying a mountain of worries.
The jewel was slowly releasing a liquid of its own color to cover the scars and wounds on his deformed palm, as if the scars had never existed. In the end, Blade refused this and left the scars as they were. It was as if an actor had left a fake movie set to face reality. The truth.
When Blade finished showering, he put on his underwear, black pants, and a black hoodie, then came out drying his hair with a tattered towel like a completely new person: pale skin and short gray hair, but his scars and strange eyes made him appear like an important member of some gang.
As for the young woman, Nayer, who had been tattooing the teenager, she was now sitting alone, cleaning her tools.
Nayer looked at him from the corner of her violet eyes and asked coldly: "Faruq,didn't I tell you not to waste water, especially in this place?!"
Blade was watching the young woman with an unusual calm. After a moment of heavy silence, Blade said as he returned the tattered towel to its place and combed his disheveled hair with both hands in a strange voice: "I found Paul.He no longer exists."
Nayer nodded without emotion and said nothing.
"I found a little girl in a room. Barely breathing..." He paused for a moment, then continued: "I decided to look into her background, reached her mother... and recognized her."
She looked at him now, but slowly, causing strands of her black hair to fall and hide her eyes.
"She is Vordon's daughter. I took care of her for six years. I was eight... and she was five." He smiled bitterly, remembering parts of his memories. "Since that time, we parted. Me... and her."
"But she didn't recognize you?" Nayer asked calmly, behind her a steady sigh.
Blade shook his head yes. "I was wearing the skin of a policeman's face... a policeman who was following her as a suspect in a murder. I got rid of him... and wore his face." Then he sighed, looking at the floor under his feet. "I watched her in silence... then told her about her daughter... and left the rest to fate."
"Who told you the policeman was following her in the first place?" Nayer asked.
"Who cares. I just didn't want to reveal myself," Blade replied with a sigh.
Nayer was silent for a while, then asked as she returned her tools to a special clean box, "What is your relationship with Vordon that he would leave his daughter with you?"
"He is my trainer. And I was the one who planted the idea of escaping this city, no, the entire world, in his head. But I didn't think he would take on such a task himself," Blade said with a deep sigh.
"So you were the main reason Vordon united the children of the Marginal Tier. And you remained silent all this time?" Nayer understood and asked. "Do you think Vordon will really find a way to escape? And will you stay here with me today, or do you have other work?"
"He found a way to escape, if my treasure is real. I will verify the treasure's authenticity now... I can't stay anyway; the gangs have started competing to hunt me down. At least three groups are looking for me now."
Nayer glanced at him with a look that implied no surprise, but she kept staring at him for a long time, as if waiting for him to say something, with a warning look.
Blade continued with a clear hesitation in his speech. "I want you to come with me... If you stay..., they won't be satisfied with just erasing me; they will come for you in my name."
Nayer smiled, saying with a wonderful smile, "A beautiful way to invite me to come with you."
But she couldn't erase her strange suspicion towards Blade currently. It was as if he was planning to kill her. The empty, deep looks Blade was showing were the ones he showed when he intended to kill someone, but she didn't care about that; he didn't do anything without a reason.
Also, Nayer was still trying to solve the riddle Blade had posed five years ago: 'Don't worry about your actions, you won't die here, I think.'
After moments of silence, Nayer nodded in agreement. She had nothing to lose by accompanying her husband. She didn't even ask him about that escape treasure.
---
At the same time, somewhere near the atmospheric barrier of the Tiered City. The atmospheric barrier was the foundation of the city.It blocked over ninety percent of the outside radiation, providing a stable place of residence within the city. It resembled a transparent bottle with a slight ripple appearing steadily every second. Outside the bottle, a dense green fog and a few gray shadows undulating behind it could be seen.
The mother Yama, with her lifeless eyes, was silently digging with her hands into the dry, rotten earth near a withered black tree.
After digging for a quarter of an hour, she found a door handle. She lifted it, and dust erupted from the spot over an area of two and a half meters. The mother lifted the large door with force until it opened completely. She carried her sleeping five-year-old daughter and descended the stairs leading down beneath the city. She didn't forget to close the door behind her.
"Another failure." A man who appeared out of nowhere spoke as he scrutinized the black door that the rotten soil was clearly burying again as if it were alive.
The man was bald with a light beard, speaking calmly. He closely resembled Paul: "Being Vordon's daughter,I thought she had found the dragon's hideout, but she didn't. Ah, damn that stupid servant. Not only did he fall captive to the children of the Marginal Tier, but he also didn't notice that this door looks new, not old."
Paul's lookalike looked behind him and left calmly: "I sacrificed my brother for no reason.Well, that doesn't really matter; there are more problems on our the future."
---
As for Blade and Nayer, after their deep analysis of the map, which clarified that upon entering a certain tunnel, they would need to use the card to enter the purification plant area, then go to the Covenant Prison, and after that, to the dragon's area.
They began gathering their supplies. They weren't many, but they were chosen with precision and care: ·Two elegant energy pistols with blue engravings. ·The pistols' ammunition, fully charged crystalline rounds. ·A few boxes of crystalline bullets in different colors. ·Two daggers: each double-edged, one side sharp, the other serrated like a saw. ·Two black gas purification masks. ·Two boxes of transparent lenses that completely cover the eye, adhering directly to it like a membrane.
Though the supplies were for combat, they were beautifully designed. Every piece was shiny, clean, attractive, like lethal jewelry. As for the crystalline bullets, they were shiny crystals with a faint light depending on each crystal's color (gold, red...).
It didn't seem like preparation for an ordinary search, but rather an outing for a real war.
Unlike Blade, who took nothing extra besides combat tools, Nayer didn't forget the basics: compressed food cans, copper water bottles, and spare clothes. In addition, nine smoking boxes of 'energy cigarettes' and three special lighters for them, which she carefully divided between them for fear of them getting damaged.
As for the plan, it was simple... and insane at the same time: escape the Tiered City via the "Covenant Prison" by releasing a dragon and clinging to its claws during its random flight outside the barrier's limits. A plan with something of legend… and something of despair.
Nayer didn't care about the artificial plan; She sighed to console herself, thinking that her husband was merely enjoying his youth.
After a few moments, Nair asked to clear her doubts and steady herself: "I feel like you finally want to get rid of me? Searching for a dragon, escaping on its back, a stupid map. I know you're an idiot, but it seems you've finally gone crazy, Faruq?"
"It doesn't matter now. But do you trust me?"
After hearing Blade's words, Nayer nodded her head slowly, surrendering: "I'll give you an answer after all this,but don't forget, you're not the only one alive here"
Blade nodded understandingly and set off with Nayer towards the Yellow Passage, a bridge crossing over the Black River that separates the Middle and Marginal Tiers from their sister, main layer.
There, they both stole a small, dirty boat powered by energy crystals, hidden in a remote corner out of sight under the large stone bridge. Although it was advanced enough to cross the Black River, which was over eight hundred meters wide, in roughly seven seconds. Blade's skillful operation of the boat without its original keys and his stopping it despite the speed at which it crossed the river showed his expertise.
The Black River cut through the city from east to south and formed the border of the Upper Class District. It had its own unique view with the permanent darkness of the atmosphere and its own gloom, the rotten black trees surrounding it, the air full of green radiation, and the sound of the near-stagnant black river water leaking, as if telling everyone about its hellish source.
Blade and Nayer crossed the river to disembark on its banks on the shore of main layer.
---
The Upper Class District was twice the area of the Middle and Marginal Tiers combined, with a relatively smaller population than the sum of the other two tiers, giving it a wider emptiness, but rather more than necessary.
The engineering there was stunning and precise. The rooftops of the houses were huge filters for acid rain, carved from bright silver metal despite the darkness, in the shape of real blooming metal flowers. The streets were slanted at an unnoticeable degree, allowing water to slope gently towards deep filtration layers underground. The air was also rinsed for purification through special channels. The lights shone with ultraviolet radiation for twelve hours, while shining with a yellow light for the rest of the day, giving the dark atmosphere a strange but wonderful aura.
The purified rainwater here was drinkable, while the river water was purified for secondary uses. But the strange thing, in fact, was that although the city was closed off, like other external cities, it achieved a strange self-sufficiency in everything, be it metals, energy, or food.