The Daily Grind
Case File #0
January 4th, 2044
08:28 AM
Central Ward
Horizon District
Saburo had always thought himself fortunate.
Life didn’t bless those that allowed themselves to fall into depression and anxiety. No amount of self-pity could change a man’s circumstances, but wallowing in regret could stop you from seeing a way out from your current situation. No, dark thoughts could only make a light downpour into a storm, and the storm above Saburo’s head didn’t need any help.
A storm was perched over the island of Yōgai-shima. A curtain of black clouds swallowed the sky, stretching from one horizon to another so as to trick the city below that the sun was never going to rise. The only light that the hurricane allowed was its own, and that came in the form of terrifying flashes of lightning that roiled through the black clouds, each scintilla followed by a deafening peal of thunder. When the typhoon held its roaring tongue, the silence was filled by the endless whispers of falling rain. A hundred million tiny drops of rain struck the city up and down, colliding with walls and roofs to splash and leave behind a little syllable, another fragment, in a series of indecipherable hushed secrets. Despite the attempts from the wind and the rain to drown out all other noise, the city beneath remained defiant.
Yōgai-shima: the city at the end of the world. When Tokyo burned and the world beyond Japan’s borders fell to pieces, Yōgai-shima became the home to millions of survivors. An artificial island that floated somewhere in the Sea of Japan, clinging to the side of a manmade mountain, Yōgai-shima was perhaps the largest metropolis remaining anywhere in the world and it was made to weather disasters like the ocean storm that perched above it.
The city of Yōgai-shima was made from a thousand-thousand buildings that clustered together, creating a cityscape that stretched from one end of the floating fortress to the other, its expanse held back only by the foam of the sea’s turbulent waves. The first generation of buildings that dotted the island’s surface were almost entirely identical, being put together by automated machines and algorithms rather than by men and architects. Though many of those structures had been knocked down and pulled apart in the decade since, all of Yōgai-shima’s buildings were made to endure. More than that; they were built to devour.
Even as the raging storm tried to pluck the blasphemous isle from nature’s waters, the island of Yōgai-shima fought back. Spears of iron and steel unfurled from the rooftops, thrusting into the sky to draw in surging lightning while streetlights transformed into spiraling windmills to take in the wind. Pipes built along the sides of buildings gulped down the rain and drains opened in the streets to hold back flooding. With each passing moment, more and more of the hurricane’s fury was eaten up by Yōgai-shima.
Thunder, wind, and rain: Yōgai-shima ate it all, and perhaps more. Looking up at the heights of the buildings that crowded around him, Saburo felt that Yōgai-shima wasn’t simply drawing in a little extra power from the storm as it passed by, but that the island was feeding on something more elemental. The metal rods that probed the clouds seemed to be pulling them down, as if they sought to drag the storm from the sky. Nothing built by man could do that, right? But if the city was made to withstand the harshest of calamities, its people were no less determined.
Up and down the streets of humanity’s last refuge, men and women stood in formation, heedless of the downpour. Dressed in water-proof parkas, they walked beneath awnings that unfurled from the sides of buildings to blunt the impact of the rain. Small, heated shelters stood at the corner of every intersection to allow pedestrians to warm themselves while they waited for the lights to change. When the endless stream of cars was finally signaled to halt by a series of floating lights, a transparent cylinder unfurled from the ground so that the men and women travelling on foot could cross without being buffeted by the wind. Even in the face of a natural disaster, the working class of Yōgai-shima never stopped. They couldn’t.
Whether they were walking to work through a rainstorm or driving one of the hundred vehicles filling the streets, or commuting on one of the city’s large green buses, no one in Yōgai-shima had the luxury of sitting still. Yōgai-shima demanded that every man, woman and child run the race of survival without exception. No one had a free pass in Yōgai-shima; you were either studying and proving to the powers that be that you were a useful economic resource to be invested in, or you were earning your keep however you could. If you couldn’t do either, Yōgai-shima had no interest in allowing you a single inch of living space. Pay your dues or get off the island; that was the only way to survive, and that was what separated Saburo from the army around him.
Somewhere along the way, Saburo had stumbled. He’d fallen, and no one was there to help him. He’d truly believed himself fortunate when he was among the first few people to come to Yōgai-shima, especially when so many others didn’t get the chance. Before the Downfall, before Tokyo burned, Saburo had been a construction worker. He’d helped raise up a thousand different buildings all across Honshu, and when Yōgai-shima needed its foundations laid, his company had been contracted to do it.
He still remembered those early days before the destruction of Tokyo when Yōgai-shima was still a secret to the world at large. He and a thousand other workers were living in a camp on the east side of the flat concrete island, sitting in the shadow of the white mountain that erupted from the sea for some esoteric purpose. Their homes back then were tarp tents and shipping containers, and days were filled with hard work, while the nights were filled with booze. It was strange to Saburo that when he thought of “home,” that encampment was the first thing that came to mind, rather than anyplace in Japan proper. But memories of his homeland had faded in the past ten years, and nothing remained to go back to.
He remembered the Downfall when it happened, though he’d been fortunate enough to be miles away. It was the tail end of an otherwise normal working day, and the sun was setting when there was a terrible shaking in the earth beneath Saburo’s feet. He glimpsed a bright burning light in the south, so blinding that it seemed like a second sun was rising while the first began to set. The clouds were swept away, and the seas raged, and Saburo feared the entire concrete island would collapse into the water and disappear.
When the bright light vanished, Saburo and the other workers stood at the southern coast, staring across the sea toward home, unable to describe what had happened. Communication with the mainland had been cut off, and those left on the island were forced to try and understand their circumstances by themselves. Pondering the possibility of a nuclear war breaking out, they huddled in their steel shelters as storms swept over the sea. But those storm clouds were darker than today’s, and they spit red bolts of lightning as they wept black raindrops, staining Yōgai-shima and its white mountain. The chaos carried on only for a week; that was what Saburo’s rational mind remembered, but time had blurred the sharp recall of his heart, turning those frightful days when the sun stopped shining into an eternity. Even so, the madness ended eventually.
When the storms passed, a fleet of ships followed, ferrying passengers from Japan to Yōgai-shima. Japan’s need for a refuge from the endless insanity of the twenty-first century had reached a tipping point and the boats travelling between Honshu and Yōgai-shima brought with them more workers and machines than ever before. New technologies were put in practice to raise Yōgai-shima from a concrete plain up into a working metropolis overnight, and Saburo, and his comrades, were left to watch, useless.
Pushed to one side, the men who’d worked the foundations of the artificial isle were abandoned as an army of machines took over. Saburo remembered how he marveled as he watched buildings being designed, printed, and put together like puzzle pieces in a matter of days. He saw things he’d never seen before, and things he couldn’t explain, in the building of Yōgai-shima, but when the work was done, Saburo was certain that he was unwanted.
When the army of machines went away, a human wave of refugees hit the city and Saburo knew that the world had changed forever. Millions of men and women struggled to carve out their new lives among the grey, lifeless towers of the city, pretending that it was still the same world they left behind. Fortunes changed in an instant; rich men became poor, and the powerful became weak. Those that depended on the logic of the old world and its resources found themselves overwhelmed, but those that could adapt to the changing times reaped prestigious rewards; Saburo supposed he was of the former, not the latter.
In the wake of the island’s founding, new businesses became in demand, and the yesteryear construction company Saburo had worked for had gone out of business. What was its name? Saburo couldn’t remember, but he did recall that he didn’t much grieve its loss when it disappeared. He’d always thought he had a leg up.
Saburo had never found love and never had the time for a family. That gave him an advantage over his coworkers, he’d imagined, all of whom had a brood of mewling mouths to feed. The contract to work on Yōgai-shima had been generous, though that was too small a word for the money they’d been paid. Even though Saburo was among the men pushed to the side in the rush to finish the city, he’d still received an ample sum. There was no one to share it with, so Saburo kept it all to himself, but it didn’t last forever. Nothing did.
When the money dried up, Saburo was forced to realize that his work had, too. The construction workers of days past were no longer needed. What the city of tomorrow needed weren’t strong backs and steady hands, but men trained to guide and control fleets of drones so that entire neighborhoods could be stitched together at the same time. What was Saburo to do? A fifty-something man with the wear and tear of decades of manual labor, with no skills, and no family. The other construction workers were similarly out of work, but they’d hit the ground running, all the same.
Some had thrown themselves into the new industries to stay, learning new skills to adapt to Yōgai-shima. Those that didn’t learn new skills put their knowledge of Yōgai-shima’s innards to good use; machines may have raised the skyscrapers, but men had hollowed out the ground beneath it, and there was a tidy profit to be made in smuggling contraband through the tunnels. And those that weren’t able to change or brave enough to navigate the maze-like confines of the island still had one last refuge: family.
Yōgai-shima had no social welfare. There was no unemployment, nor did the government recognize the rights of anyone that couldn’t work. If you couldn’t provide something useful to the island, you weren’t welcome on it. Family was the only exception to this rule of everyday life. Whether it was dictated by bloodlines or love, whether you were born into it or found it, family was one of the few things you could rely on when life hit you hard in Yōgai-shima. By the time Saburo found that out, it was far too late, and his failure to find a family of his own was one of the few regrets he let himself feel.
Over the last few years, he’d lost everything. When the money ran out, he had to give away what few valuables he had. Eventually, those ran out, too, and when he had nothing more to sell, he had nothing to pay the rent with. He was thrown out onto the streets shortly thereafter, left with little more than the clothes on his back. Life was difficult for Saburo, but he never allowed it to drive him to despair. When life demanded something from Saburo, he gave it with an understanding smile.
Life could always be worse. Well, that wasn’t the way Saburo liked to see things. Rather, from his perspective, there was always something to be thankful for. He may not have a home, he may not have a job, but he was still on Yōgai-shima, and that was something to be thankful for. He couldn’t imagine being homeless anywhere else in the world.
Even so, Saburo couldn’t help but feel the divide between himself and the other citizens walking the streets. He’d found a water-proof parka in a trash bin that someone had thrown out, and he’d used it to protect himself from the endless downpour from the storm above. Life had its little ways of giving Saburo just enough to get through hard times, but the parka had another gift as well. It let him blend in.
Walking down the street in the morning in this part of the city would have seen Saburo stick out like a toothache. He was dressed in a ratty, stained flannel shirt and a pair of fishing waders with torn leather boots; while the men and women marching to work would be dressed in suits and designer clothing. The parkas made Saburo uniform with the rest of the city, and that allowed him to travel further afield than he’d normally allow himself to.
He wasn’t a complete fool, of course. No one lived on the streets of Yōgai-shima for a decade and didn’t know how to keep their head down and avoid attention, and Saburo did just that. He kept his face turned to the ground, preventing him from making eye contact with anyone around them. When a pack of pedestrians walked up the sidewalk, Saburo gave them space to avoid attracting attention. He didn’t speak to anyone, but he just kept walking.
Where he was going, he wasn’t quite certain. For most of his time in Yōgai-shima, he’d lived in the Foundation Ward, the easternmost part of the city. It was where he’d lived in the work camp, and where he’d lived in his apartment, and where he’d lived after he’d been kicked out, too. Foundation was like Saburo, in that it had fallen on hard times; for whatever reason, the eastern ward had never been able to find its footing in the midst of the city’s chaotic early years, and it had fallen into disrepute among its counterparts. Saburo was thankful for that, seeing that the Civil Police and deportation squads didn’t make their rounds in Foundation very much.
He couldn’t stay in Foundation anymore though; not in this weather at least. He’d been living in a small storm drain on the far side of the White-Mountain Sanzu between Foundation Ward and Sin Ward, but that little hideaway had been flushed out by the raging storm. Without a place to go, Saburo had ventured west, crossing into Sin Ward. He tried to find himself a place among some of the homeless camps there, but things were somehow even worse in Sin Ward.
The communes in Foundation weren’t luxury by any means, but the Towers seemed to possess a kind of community spirit that made them ward off tourists that might want to harass the local transient population. That wasn’t true for Sin Ward. The homeless camps on the west side of the Sanzu river were constant targets for harassment. Saburo had only stayed there for a day or two before a gang of bikers had torn through the camp, circling runaway vagrant men and women like a pride of lions circling prey. Saburo had run wildly, heading away from the chaos and further into Sin Ward.
After the panic faded away, Saburo had kept walking, having nothing better to do. He moved further and further west, even though his instincts told him that moving away from Foundation meant it was far more likely that he would be picked up by the Civil Services. He walked south and west, skirting the most opulent sectors of Sin Ward, but he didn’t move so far away that he couldn’t look on the city’s splendor from a safe distance. But he didn’t stop there.
Perhaps it was the mask of the falling rain that emboldened him, but Saburo wanted to keep walking. He left behind the decadence of Sin Ward and continued further west, heading into the heart of the island. It was a foolish thing to do, but a perverse curiosity compelled Saburo to continue. Stepping foot into Central Ward was something he’d never imagined he’d do, but being able to see the heart of Yōgai-shima was a desire he couldn’t quench. He’d help to build the island, but he’d never been able to really see it.
Central was everything he’d imagined and more. Foundation had been nothing but squalor; a gangrenous wound that the rest of the island ignored. Sin was a world of splendor, being both glitz and grime in equal measure. Central Ward, though, was different.
Watching the men and women stalwartly soldiering through the pouring rain while automated vehicles dominated the streets, moving in a constant rhythm as traffic ebbed and flowed all made Saburo believe that this was what Yōgai-shima was meant to be. It was orderly, stoic, and articulated to the smallest detail. This was the city of the future; the way mankind was supposed to live in the twenty-first century. Marveling at the metropolis around him, Saburo momentarily forgot that he had no place in it.
Saburo’s wanderings became less and less focused as curiosity compelled him to marvel at the sights and sounds of the city. Over the constant downpour, a brief waft of warm air caught Saburo’s attention. Along that draft of heat, there was a smell: something light and buttery. Drawn by the scent, Saburo soon found himself standing before a storefront which took up just one small segment of a multistoried building. He stared in through the wide window of the establishment, looking at a small bakery. The inside of the eatery was decorated with pseudo-wooden tables and chairs with matching floors and cream-colored walls. As Saburo watched, rooted to the spot by his appetite, a young woman dressed in an apron stepped up. She had a headband to hold back her brown hair and held a tray of steaming biscuits and croissants which she placed on a rack in front of the window to tempt other passersby. She looked up at Saburo, noticing him standing in the window and smiled, automatically, but then, flinched when he smiled back.
It was at that moment that Saburo remembered where he was and who he was. The girl stepped away from the glass, turning her back on Saburo and he was left to look at his own reflection. An old man with a souring smile stared back, an uneven smile with missing teeth and what remained of them were rotten and brown. His hair, such as he had left, was in matted grey locks that fell down around his unshaven face. Saburo turned his back on the store, bowing his head again and pulling the cowl of the parka lower down around his face, but the anxious fist in his gut reminded him that it was already too late.
She’d seen him and she knew that he was a homeless man as sure as if he’d had it written on his forehead. He wasn’t supposed to be here; this city didn’t tolerate people like him. The fact that he’d been able to stay on the island for as long as he had was a mercy, but now that threatened to change. He’d tread on the good graces of the city, and stepped outside the social bounds that he’d been allowed to live in.
That girl; would she call the police? If she did, there was no hope. There was no due process in Yōgai-shima if you didn’t have a Civil ID. If you weren’t in the city’s records, the idea of rights or protections under the law were a ridiculous notion. Saburo had heard the tales; the Civil Police could do anything they wanted to you if they found you without an ID. At best, he’d be shipped off to a prison colony and be forced to work the rest of his short life. If he wasn’t so lucky, he’d be thrown into the sea. The fear of those old stories told to him by men he couldn’t remember melded together into blind panic and Saburo hastened to find an escape.
East; he needed to head east. Back to Sin Ward, back to Foundation. But which way was east? In his wanderlust, he’d gotten turned around. His eyes scanned the rooftops, and in the distance he saw a false moon hanging in the sky, the telltale sign of Tsukuyomi Tower, the crown jewel of Sin Ward. Using it as a guiding star, Saburo hurriedly shuffled in its direction, hugging his parka around him as he went.
In his haste to get away from Foundation, he drew looks from the men and women on the street with him. It was as though some magic spell had been broken, and whatever esoteric charm that had sheltered Saburo from the looks of the crowd had abandoned him. That, or perhaps he was never as invisible to them as he’d thought. Saburo kept his head down, trying to avoid the accusatory looks of those on the street, glancing up only on occasion to make sure he was still heading towards the luminous ring of distant Sin Ward. With each step, the world itself seemed to accuse him.
The wind picked up, howling accusations as it tried to bowl him over, and lightning flashed in the skies, branching apart to form a thousand glowing fingers pointing down at him. Thunder followed after, as if the storm was declaring “See! He’s right there!” But over the sound of constant whispering rain and the raging storm, there came another sound; a manufactured sound.
A whistling echoed up and down the streets, distant, but growing closer. The whistle warbled steadily up in pitch and then went back down again in a cycle. Saburo knew what it was as soon as it reached his ears: a siren.
Had the girl already called the Civil Police on him? Or could it have been any one of the faceless pedestrians on the street? No, that didn’t matter at all. What mattered was that the police were close and he’d likely be apprehended the moment they saw him. He had minutes to get away, or maybe only seconds!
Saburo threw away any desire to remain inconspicuous and ran across the eastern side of Horizon, desperately sprinting through the Golden Mile that connected the east side of the ward to its neighbor, Sin. The rain seemed to pelt down on Saburo like hurled stones, threatening to drag him to the ground while the wind yanked at his parka to pull him off his feet. The old man stumbled as the entire world attempted to hold him in place, but he kept pressing forward, his eyes on the illusion of safety ahead of him.
He staggered through traffic; his transgression met with the flash of blinding headlights and the honking of deafening horns. Shouts chased Saburo out of the street; their words reduced to gibberish in the constant clamor of the howling wind, but above the din Saburo could still hear the sound of the wailing sirens drawing closer. He continued to flee, ignoring the calls of passersby.
The false moon of Tsukuyomi filled his eyes as he stepped onto the bridge between Central and Sin Ward. Beneath Saburo’s feet was a concrete gulch into which storm drains emptied, producing a raging manmade river that flowed out into the sea. Rain drops and false hope blinding him, Saburo passed through the bright holographic banner that warned pedestrians from attempting to cross the boundary. He stumbled onto the concrete bridge, the sound of the raging waters beneath him blocking out the sharp whistle of the sirens, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
Bracing himself against the barricade on his right, Saburo used it to guide him as he crossed the span. The wind continued to howl and the rain kept falling, but the Civil Police and their haunting sirens seemed a world away, now. He crept across the walkway, clinging tight to the rail as he went, not ignorant to the danger of the waters beneath his feet.
Closer and closer he crept towards the far side, its own bright red banner flashing, which seemed to Saburo like a rope that marked the end of a marathon.
The wind howled.
Closer.
The sky above flashed blindingly bright.
Almost there!
Thunder roared and a wave of water crested the left side of the bridge and washed over the walkway, rushing towards Saburo. The peal of thunder drowned out the sound of the crashing wave and the mischievous fingers of the wind grasped at his parka, pulling it down over his face, making him blind to his oncoming doom until it was already rising over him. He looked to his left at the last moment, seeing only a wall of shifting blue-grey water, and the instant seemed to drag out as adrenaline flooded Saburo’s brain. Before he fully understood what was happening, the wave of water hit Saburo like a truck.
He was lifted off his feet and slammed into the concrete side of the bridge that he’d been leaning on, and all the breath in his lungs escaped in a wheezing exhale. Before he could recover, the water swept him off his feet, and he was carried over the side of the bridge. He tried to scream, but the rain and wind swallowed what little noise he could make. He clutched at the side of the concrete railing and his fingernails ripped, leaving bloody trails across the slick cement as he was pulled down into the manmade river.
He landed with a splash, his parka wrapping around him like a net in the current, tangling his arms and legs as he tried to struggle against the tide. He was tossed around by the river, barely able to stay above the water for a second before he was rudely pulled back underwater. The hood of the parka clung to his face, blinding him, leaving him with no sensation except for the pull of water against his body and the sound of water rushing past his ears. He struggled, desperately, but the cold and turbulent river numbed his arms and legs, stymieing any attempts to stay above its raging surface.
“Help!” Saburo gasped when he felt his head briefly rise above the water’s surface. “Anyone!”
The old man’s desperate croak was scarcely audible, even to his own ears, so loud was the roaring of the storm overhead. In short order he was dragged underneath the water again and it occurred to him that he was going to die. He would be swept out to sea in short order and never be seen again. No, that wasn’t true. He’d likely hit a filter long before then, and then be sucked up into a dark, lightless pipe where he’d be trapped to suffocate to death, to inevitably be found as a rotting corpse some days later.
The thought terrified Saburo, and it compelled him to keep swimming, even as he lost feeling in his arms and legs. The current pulled the parka away from Saburo’s face, allowing him to peer through the dark waters around him. Above him, the world flashed as a bolt of lightning crossed the heavens again, and Saburo saw it as a signal flare. He fought to swim up to that transient light, desperate to escape, but no matter how hard he fought, the light seemed to fall further away and, eventually, everything dimmed.
Saburo had always considered himself fortunate.
January 4th, 2044
08:45 AM
Central Ward
Horizon District
Deputy Inspector Atarashi Shin
“The emergence of a Human Calamity always coincides with a life-threatening situation. All care and consideration must be taken when an Inspector is directed to the site of an emergency to secure the area and locate victims that threaten to enter Exigency. Exigency can occur in any conscious human being, regardless of age, physical ability, or mental health. Once a human being has entered Exigency, they are classified as a Human Calamity and must be treated with caution. If physical mutations occur, the Human Calamity is to be considered a Casualty, and the Inspector(s) at the scene are entrusted with the responsibility of eliminating it upon identification.” -Human Calamity Response Bureau Standard Operating Procedures, Section 05a: “Disposal of Human Calamities: Identifying Human Calamities.”
The words of the Bureau’s internal legislature rang in Shin’s mind as he stood on a rainy street in the corner of Horizon District, the easternmost chunk of Central Ward. Buildings rose up around him on all sides, stretching towards the sky when the manmade island ran out of space to spread outward. The product of the same automated designers and builders, the buildings on all sides of Shin had nearly uniform appearances, being mass-produced for function rather than style or elegance. Buildings like these originated from the very inception of Yōgai-shima, being among the first structures ever laid down on the island. Though many of them had since been knocked down to raise more aesthetically pleasing structures in their place, pockets of first-gen buildings could still be found standing in stoic uniformity across the island.
In an attempt to breathe life into the block of identical edifices, their current owners had draped them in a nanite laminate; a smart-skin that could alter its appearance and texture to hide the bones of concrete beneath. The result was a party of buildings that were identical in layout down to the placement of their smallest windows, but each one had been given a different skin, with some of them disguised with a layer that imitated brick or marble or metal. Ultimately, it made the entire block more uncanny to the eye in a way that unsettled the passerby and made them stop and stare to discern what was wrong. But Shin didn’t have eyes for the strange buildings all around him; instead, he was staring at the device in his hand.
The young man was dressed in a black suit and tie with a white button up shirt, all of it made of a smart fabric not unlike the synthetic skins that clung to the sides of buildings around him. A product of twenty-first century technology, the suit could also alter its appearance and protect itself from wear and tear, a fact that it demonstrated as it repelled the downpour of water falling on Shin’s shoulders, not that he noticed.
Tuning out the city, the rain, and the storm overhead, Shin’s green eyes were looking downward at the slab of nanite in his right hand. The slim black brick of shape-shifting smart metal had produced a mechanical eye on the upper half of its face, through which it projected a beam of light that expanded into a blue screen surrounded by flickering digital sparks. The screen displayed a digital replica of the city around Shin, and the newly minted Inspector was absorbed by it.
He paused looking at the screen only to wipe the water from his eyes, being careful not to touch his blond hair; he’d spent a good twenty minutes styling it this morning, combing down the hair over his left temple into a neat part while he combed up his right bangs into a quartet of spikes, two smaller locks of upward hair placed in front of the larger set of spikes. It was a style he’d spent more time than he’d like to admit to get right, and though the rain was keen to wash out all traces of styling gel from Shin’s hair, he was eager to keep it neat for as long as he could. He delicately brushed at his bangs with his fingertips using the lightest touch possible before he returned to the digital display from the device in his hands.
Shin’s eyes looked to the map of the city rendered in deep blue, his eyes fixated on the red perimeter ring that marked the area around him. The red perimeter was slowly tightening as he watched, its exterior marked with the words “POSSIBILITY OF HUMAN CALAMITY EMERGENCE: 88%. EXACT LOCATION UNCLEAR.” Taking his eyes away from the screen, Shin briefly looked at the sea of buildings around him, scanning the pedestrians and the vehicles that packed the streets, all of which carried on their day without paying the man in black any extra attention.
“Where is it?” he asked, looking back down to the map as it flickered in the rain. He looked back and forth at the map as if expecting that whatever he was waiting for was going to leap out at him any second.
“Inspector Atarashi,” a voice spoke from the air, and the digital map wavered as the beam of light that produced it contracted. The luminescent map reshaped itself, transforming from a cityscape of light into the head and shoulders of a man dressed in a black suit like Shin’s. Kodera was a man with angular features and an intense pair of brown eyes, though he appeared the mild sort with his buttoned-up appearance and neatly pomaded hair.
“Go ahead, Forecaster Kodera,” Shin addressed the other man, holding his nanite communicator upward to look at the Forecaster’s digital replica.
“Where are you right now?” the Forecaster looked at Shin through a pair of glasses, his expression stern and his tone entirely stoic. It was a needless question, Shin knew: the Forecaster already watched his every move.
“I’m in eastern Horizon, south of the Golden Mile,” Shin answered dutifully. “I’m trying to locate the source of the Forecast, but I’m having a little trouble.”
“We’re getting some interference from the storm,” the Forecaster glanced down at something to his left that Shin couldn’t see before looking back. “The enormous amount of Hazard Energy contained in such a large meteorological event will do that. Still, what are you doing out in Horizon?”
“Well, that’s where I need to be, right?” Shin tried to play it off, but his instincts told him it wasn’t going to work.
“Yes, but I believe I directed you to wait at HQ until your mentor arrived, and then to proceed to the scene of the incident, did I not?”
“He was late!” Shin protested, earnestly. “You can’t expect me to cool my heels when peoples’ lives are in danger.”
“That’s exactly what you’re to do,” the Forecaster rebutted him. “As long as you’re a Deputy, you’re to act only at the discretion of your mentor. You are not to engage a Casualty if it emerges, unless in defense of your own life.”
“Even if other people are in danger?” Shin challenged the other man, but Kodera didn’t take the bait.
“You’ve been given your orders, Inspector,” the Forecaster insisted, coolly. “How did you even get out there, anyway?”
“I, uh,” Shin looked down the street, trying to remember which direction he’d come. “I ran.”
“You ran?” Kodera gave Shin a momentary skeptical look, but his features softened as he remembered that he wasn’t talking to an ordinary human being. “I see. Well, you still need to wait for Senior Inspector Asahi to arrive. I’ll let him know your current position.”
“Is this guy planning on arriving sometime today?” Shin allowed a little sarcasm to creep into his voice, despite knowing that talking rudely of his superior didn’t look good.
“He’s on the move,” the Forecaster confirmed, once more looking at something Shin couldn’t see. “ETA is ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes?” Shin asked aloud, almost scoffing in disbelief. “I ran here faster than that.”
“Remain on standby until you can join up with him,” Kodera continued to repeat orders that Shin wasn’t fully paying attention to. “If a Casualty does emerge, you are to keep a visual on it until Inspector Asahi arrives to support you. Do not engage. Inspector, are you listening?”
Kodera had noticed that Shin had lifted his head and looked away from his digital avatar, but Shin didn’t answer. The young man strained his ears over the falling rain, listening to a distant sound. Something warbled over the sound of the storm above, raising its voice high and low. A siren, Shin realized.
“Well, Forecaster, it sounds like they’re playing my song,” Shin glanced down at the hologram of Kodera and flashed a wry grin, even as his feet began to carry him in the direction of the sound. “I have to go.”
“Inspector!” Kodera called out sternly, but his next few words were cut off as Shin terminated the call. Shin stared at the empty space where Kodera’s image had been, knowing that he was already in trouble. Even so, it wasn’t in his nature to sit still.
“It’s your first day and you’re screwing it up already, huh?” a mocking mechanical voice came from the black device in Shin’s hand and the Inspector glared at the glowing orange eye that was peering at him. “Can’t say I’m surprised.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Shin muttered at the machine and the artificial intelligence housed within. “Just keep your thoughts to yourself.”
Shin raised his left arm and slapped the nanite device down across his left wrist, causing the black omni-tool to shift itself into a watch with the glowing eye as its face. He took a moment to orient himself in the direction of the sound, listening quietly to the faraway noise as it bounced off the walls of the buildings around him. As the sound grew louder and closer, Shin began to move.
He dipped into a delicate mental space, willing himself into action. Adrenaline flowed through Shin’s mind as he hovered between fight and flight, feeling fear and bravery in equal measure. Of all the things he’d learned in the past year training at the Bureau Academy, this was the most important. They called it “Exigency,” and being able to tap into it at will was the single determining factor that separated graduates from failures.
Ordinary humans experienced surges of adrenaline in moments of high tension, giving them the ability to become momentarily stronger or faster in response. For a Human Calamity, Exigency was much the same, but their bodies were flooded by not just chemicals, but by energy. Hazard Energy, the unseen particles that invited tragedies and miracles, flowed through Shin’s body, elevating him beyond the limitations of ordinary human beings.
He burst into motion, racing down the street. The rain parted as Shin raced across the streets, each drop falling in slow motion. The rain that clung to Shin’s waterproof clothes streamed off him as he charged, and the rainwater that pooled on the sidewalk burst as his feet touched the ground.
He raced through the crowded streets of Yōgai-shima as the city around him seemed to fall into a malaise. The world blurred, and the human figures on the sidewalk slowed to the point that they seemed to barely be moving. The cars moving in the street struggled to keep pace with Shin as he accelerated. The constant ambient noise of the storm melded with the sounds of human voices, rumbling engines, and honking horns, becoming nothing more than audible chaos. Shin tuned it all out, listening only for the wailing siren in the distance.
Orienting himself only by the sound, Shin dashed, darted, and weaved through the busy streets towards his unknown destination. The men and women who ambled across the sidewalk didn’t seem to even perceive Shin as he went by, save for the rush of wind he created when he passed too close to them. He was careful to control his speed as he circumvented the pedestrians in his way; he hated to think what would happen if he struck them at full speed.
Vaulting over an intersection, Shin found his progress halted by a new kind of barrier. The street ended in a metal railing that ran from north to south, the barricade marking the borders of a gulch that split Central Ward from the eastern reaches of the city. A variety of bridges spanned the gap, some of them built for pedestrians, others made for automobiles. Metal signs erected a decade prior advised travelers that one sector of the city was ending at the divide, and another began beyond it, while flashing red signs floated in the air, warning those who wished to cross on foot.
Shin slid to a halt on the slick asphalt, noting that a crowd of pedestrians had gathered at the railing. Rather than cross, the men and women dressed in colorful rain parkas were talking among themselves and peering down into the pit on the other side. The sirens continued to cry out, sounding louder and nearer than before, auguring the imminent arrival of the Civil Services.
“Somehow, I get the feeling that this is the place,” the device on Shin’s wrist mused with a sarcastic tone.
“Shut up,” Shin slapped the face of the wristwatch with his right hand, reminding the AI that it wasn’t supposed to speak without his say so. He stepped forward, striding towards the group that was looking down into the pit.
“I didn’t see it,” a woman asked, bracing her hands against the rail as she looked down. “What happened?”
“-went over the side,” someone else said, perhaps having another conversation. “He just ignored the warning signs.”
“Where does the water go?” a third voice asked, high with curiosity and alarm. “Aren’t there any safety measures to help people that fall in?”
Rushing to the side of the barricade, Shin placed his hands against the concrete and leaned over, staring down into a manufactured river. It was a smooth concrete passage that descended some two dozen feet below street level, and it ran as far to the north and south as the city’s clustered confines would let Shin see. Massive storm drains pumped gallons upon gallons of water into the breach, half of it the product of the constant deluge of Hurricane Izumi, while the rest was saltwater from the sea that had been sucked up into the city’s labyrinthine bowels and was regurgitated back out again. Shin’s eyes scanned the raging current, trying to find any semblance of a human figure bobbing up and down amid the churning water. He couldn’t see anyone, but that fact didn’t deter him from what he felt he needed to do next.
The sirens whooped and red and white lights flashed as a pair of vehicles drove down the street in Shin’s direction, but the Inspector paid them little mind. Shin placed one foot on the railing that divided the steep drop into the waters below from the street, and he clutched at the lapels of his uniform coat, ready to throw it off. It was only the timely interjection of his digital assistant that held the young man back.
“You aren’t really thinking of going in there, are you!?” the device on Shin’s wrist demanded. “What is diving into the river even going to accomplish?”
Shin opened his mouth, trying to find the words to explain what he was going to do, when the sound of the siren whooped its last. He turned his head, his eyes landing on a white police car trailed by a matching ambulance. The doors of the squad car opened, and a pair of officers dressed in white uniforms with red brassards climbed out, shrugging on translucent raincoats as they did so.
“Hey, you!” one of the officers noticed Shin preparing to climb over the rail and he made a sharp gesture with one hand. “Get away from there!”
Shin hesitated for a moment and stepped away from the barrier, heeding the words of an authority figure. A split second later, Shin hardened his features and shrugged his coat back over his shoulders, remembering that he was the authority in this situation. With a practiced motion, Shin reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a leather wallet, which he held up to reveal his ID and the silver badge that marked him as an Inspector. The badge was a polished silver Chesire moon with a black orb between its horn displayed over an eight-pedaled flower. The eyes of the officer’s strayed to the symbol and then to one another.
“My name is Inspector Atarashi from the Human Calamity Response Bureau,” Shin introduced himself as the police officers eyed him with doubt. “This area has been marked as the site of a potential Human Calamity-related emergency. I need you to cordon off the area and escort these people out of here.”
“Yeah, we don’t take orders from you,” the first of the two officers rebuffed him after sharing a glance with his partner.
“This is an emergency situation!” Shin repeated himself, momentarily caught off guard by the officer’s argumentative mindset. “Everyone here is in danger and needs to be evacuated!”
“You let us make that decision,” the second officer insisted, cutting off any hope of a friendly conversation. “Is that badge even real? Let me see it.”
The second Officer stepped forward, but Shin tucked his badge away; he wasn’t about to let himself be admonished like a child.
“We don’t have time for this!” the Deputy’s insistence became prophetic, as a split second later, a painful sensation surged through his chest. He raised a hand to his breast, feeling a sharp and fiery sensation where he’d been hit by a piece of shrapnel a year prior. The wound had healed a long time ago, but the scar left behind had a habit of experiencing that initial pain all over again whenever danger presented itself. Realizing that time had run out, Shin turned back to the river and the voices in the crowd began to cry out.
“What is that?” one of the onlookers pointed into the river where a pool of bubbles began to form on the water’s surface. A moment later, a column of water erupted from the river, cresting twenty feet high. Shin watched as the men and women of the crowd pulled their Augurs out, using the shape-shifting omni-tools to take pictures of the bizarre geyser, but none of them seemed to notice the human figure that fell out of it save for Shin.
Shin turned his back on the officers, watching as the human silhouette fell from the sky like an absurd raindrop. Dressed in a ragged grey raincoat, the figure struck the ground, somehow landing on its feet with a wet splash. The crowd of onlookers finally noticed the new figure now standing a dozen feet away and the officers did, too, but no one moved. The fire in Shin’s chest, however, did not abate.
“Sir?” Shin was the first one to move, cautiously stepping toward what he realized was an elderly man with a leathery skinned face. His hair was a long, stringy mess, and his cheeks were covered in an unkempt beard. His clothes were soaked and his torn flannel shirt clung to his sunken chest beneath the parka. The man stared gormlessly forward for a few seconds, then, he turned to look at Shin. He said nothing as he made eye contact with the Inspector and the two men held their gazes for several seconds. Then, the old man’s chest and stomach heaved.
“Bleh!” the old man began to vomit, and water spilled from his mouth. An endless stream of liquid poured from his lips, more than the old man’s lungs or stomach could hold. He didn’t choke or gag on the outpouring, but continued to stare forward, mindlessly and Shin simply stared, not certain what to do. The man had clearly undergone Exigency and moved beyond the likes of ordinary human beings, but what was Shin supposed to do now that he realized that?
“Human beings suspected of having entered Exigency cannot be allowed to remain among the normal population unmonitored. If you should encounter a Human Calamity during the course of your duties, and they remain unstated by the rigors of Exigency, they must be apprehended and escorted back to District Headquarters for evaluation and processing.” – Human Calamity Response Bureau Standard Operating Procedures, Section 05a: “Disposal of Human Calamities: Identifying Human Calamities.”
Reminding himself of the SOP, Shin raised his left wrist to place a call back to HQ, but he was interrupted when the fire in his bosom flared again. The old man’s eyes turned red as the veins in his eyes began to burst, and he wept red tears down his face. He gurgled on the endless stream of water that escaped his throat as he started to writhe on the spot. Shocked gasps sounded out behind Shin and the sound of boots splashing across the rain-soaked street told him that the pair of officers were racing forward.
“Keep your distance!” Shin stretched an arm out to signal to the two men that they needed to stop, looking over his shoulder at them to ensure they didn’t approach the Human Calamity the old man had become.
“You, uh, might want to do something,” the AI in Shin’s watch urged him as the young man turned to look back at the homeless man. Shin meant to shush the machine, but his words caught in his throat when the old man began to transform.
A small point appeared in the center of the old man’s forehead, causing his skin to bulge. Smaller deformations began to push out from the right side of his face and cheek until they split apart. In moments, a second face had emerged from the old man’s head: an eyeless face with a pointed nose and a wide lipless mouth filled with needle-like mismatched teeth. The nightmarish shark mouth emerging from the old man’s head bit at the air blindly while his original face was stretched and distorted, fusing into the trunk of the new growth as it continued to expand.
The transformation didn’t end there: the homeless man’s shoulders cracked and expanded as his arms began to change. The sleeves of the parka tore as an explosive growth occurred, and the old man’s arms twisted apart at the elbow with a shower of blood. While his original arms dangled lifelessly, two new appendages grew out to replace them. Coated in a layer of newborn blood, the new arms were primate like in their length, reaching to their owner’s feet. Both new hands had five fingers, but they had thick membranes between each digit, and all were tipped by three-inch claws.
Faced with the violent transformation, Shin found that the entire year he’d spent training for situations like this suddenly became useless. He’d attended lectures on Casualties, he’d seen photos of them, even run a few simulations against them in training programs. Seeing one, a real one, in person was entirely different. All Shin could do was gape, still holding his right hand up to hold back the officers.
“Warning! Warning!” the voice from Shin’s wristwatch suddenly blared out a report, its voice repeating itself as the AI projected its voice from every nearby electronic device, causing a sea of glowing orange lights to appear up and down the street. “This is an announcement from the Human Calamity Response Bureau! A Heavy-Rain Emergency has been detected in the Horizon District of Central Ward! All citizens within the radius of this broadcast should evacuate the area immediately following the routes provided to your personal devices! Please report to the nearest Type-1 Emergency Shelter or continue evacuating safely out of the marked perimeter! Avoid open areas and large bodies of water and stay alert until an all-clear has been sounded!”
Screams filled the street as people finally noticed the living calamity that was now amongst them. The Casualty growled through its new mouth, making a throaty gurgling noise as a trail of vapor whistled through its teeth. The creature hefted its new limbs, the claws twitching as if eager for violence. There was a small clap of thunder from behind Shin, a modest noise in comparison to the storm above, and something raced over his right shoulder. The Casualty, caught by surprise, stepped backward as the projectile struck it in the head before it bounced away. A shattered bullet fell into the street at the Casualty’s feet where it hissed as it cooled in the rain. Shin glanced over his right shoulder at the officer in white who held his service pistol in his hands, his face as pale as his uniform. Shin took the moment to glare daggers at the man before he looked back at the Casualty.
The Casualty screamed with both mouths, producing a horrid duet that echoed across the city. It lunged, bursting into motion towards Shin’s right, seemingly intent on pursuing the police officer that had incited its wrath. The spell that held Shin fast was broken, however, and the Inspector darted forward to intercept.
The two Human Calamities collided in the street as Shin reactively entered Exigency. Sound and sight blurred as Shin moved beyond the bounds of ordinary human ability. The Casualty extended its clawed arms forward, viciously grasping for the man in white, and Shin snatched both hands by the wrists when he positioned himself between the monster and the officer. The Casualty struggled to overpower Shin, first trying to bowl him over, then trying to pull its hands free from Shin’s grip. When neither worked, the Casualty leaned its head forward, opening its massive new mouth to try and maul Shin’s face. Shin pushed the creature backward even as he held onto it by the wrists, twisting his head around to avoid letting the beast take a bite out of him. The two struggled in a deadlock and the city erupted into chaos around them.
Cars on the street began pulling away, fleeing the scene without any regard for safety or traffic laws. The crowd of onlookers broke away, running in all directions, screaming bloody murder. Gunfire popped in the street as both police officers opened fire on the struggling Human Calamities. The bullets bounced off the Casualty’s skin without success and Shin felt himself being jabbed across the back with what felt like hot pokers which made him realize he was being shot, too. He felt another bullet strike him in the back of the head and bounce away, and Shin gritted his teeth as a growl of anger escaped his mouth. He kicked the Casualty in the chest, breaking the grapple and sending the creature to roll across the pavement for twenty feet.
“Would you two get the hell out of here already!?” Shin turned back to the two officers and reached up to rub the hot spot on the back of his head. He held out his hand in front of his face, checking his fingers for blood. The sensation of heat blossoming in his chest brought Shin’s attention back to the monster, which had risen back to its feet.
The Casualty tilted its head back and filled its mouth with rainwater, gargling on it. Snapping its jaw shut, the Casualty lowered its head, letting the water run between its teeth and then thrust its shoulders forward, opening its maw. The water in its mouth spurted forward in a stream accelerated beyond the speed of sound. The Casualty’s poor aim caused the hydraulic cutter to split the street apart before it was able to steady its aim and direct the deadly current how it wanted. Shin ducked to the side as the stream flew past him and ripped the white squad car in two before destroying the engine block of the ambulance parked behind it.
“Somehow, I get the feeling this guy doesn’t like the police,” Shin’s AI observed.
“You don’t have feelings,” Shin reminded the machine as he pulled at his watch.
The nanite construction came apart at Shin’s touch, being designed to alter itself to suit his needs. The device was more than an omni-tool or a digital assistant: it was an Omen, the weapon of an Inspector. Holographic orange sparks flew from between Shin’s fingers as his Omen assumed another form and the black nanite flowed into the shape of a sword. It became a five foot long claymore with glowing orange stripes across the flat of the blade and the cross guard. Impossibly thin and equally light, Shin twirled the blade between his hands as he stepped towards the Casualty.
The weapon in Shin’s hand seemed to make the Calamity turn its attention to him and away from the police. Whether it could sense the danger he represented or the image of a sword struck a chord in the creature’s now animalistic mind, Shin couldn’t say, but he preferred that he was the monster’s sole target. After a moment of consideration, the Casualty opened its mouth again and filled its maw with water, prompting Shin to sprint forward.
The Casualty released blasts of water in Shin’s direction as he charged forward. The Inspector slipped between the supersonic water bullets with ease, but he still raised his sword to strike the liquid projectiles as he passed them by, scattering each one to prevent them from striking an innocent bystander or vehicle. He felt the force of each missile as it struck his weapon and the smart metal sword rippled with every impact but remained undamaged. While he focused on defensively destroying the water bolts, Shin couldn’t move at his full speed, but he still crossed the distance in a moment, and the Casualty was forced to change its approach.
The Casualty leaned to its right and then whipped to its left as it spit forth the last of the water in its mouth, creating a horizontal water blade that flew towards Shin. Unable to simply sidestep the monster’s attack, Shin came to a halt and swung his sword through the entire water blade, reducing it to a harmless spray. The moment Shin halted his approach, the Casualty sprang from the street, pouncing on him with its clawed hands outstretched.
Shin watched the Calamity descend towards him with its clawed right hand reaching for his throat. Instinct took over and Shin swept his sword down to his side and raised it up to intercept the attack. The tip of Shin’s claymore sheared through the concrete at his feet as easily as it cut through the air, and the bulletproof skin of the Casualty fared no better. The sable blade carved off the Calamity’s arm at the elbow, releasing a crimson waterfall. The Casualty’s arm splashed into the street and the creature stumbled backward a step. Despite how devastating the wound appeared, Shin immediately knew that he’d made a mistake.
“Shit! I should have gone for its head!” even as Shin reprimanded himself, he raised the sword up over his head and swept it around in an arc to decapitate the Casualty. However, the rainwater beneath the Casualty’s feet flowed with incredible force, producing a current that carried it backwards across the cement. The tip of Shin’s blade carved only a thin line across the monster’s throat, which wasn’t nearly enough to kill it.
The creature left behind a red trail on the sidewalk as it retreated some thirty feet away, slithering back and forth across the cement as it put distance between itself and the Inspector. The bloody path was quickly washed away even as more blood spurted from the stump of its severed arm. However, Shin knew that no amount of blood loss would kill something like the monster he faced. In the throes of Exigency, a Human Calamity couldn’t be killed without destroying its brain. On reflex, Shin had only maimed when he should have killed. Flicking the blood off his sword into the street, Shin raised his weapon and aimed to redouble his efforts. The Casualty, however, seemed to have other ideas.
Rainwater that had pooled on the ground began to flow towards the Casualty’s feet, as it had moments before. The water formed into a puddle that swirled around the monster’s ankles, then flowed up to his knees. Shin watched, his sword held up into a defensive stance, unsure what the Casualty was planning to do. A moment later, the water burst upward into a geyser, just as it had when the old man escaped the river. The Casualty flew into the air, flying away from Shin and into the city to the west. Shin watched as the twisted shape vaulted over a cluster of ten story rooftops and disappeared from view.
“Well?” Shin’s Omen asked, producing a glowing orange eye from the cross guard to glare at him. “What now, genius?”
“Isn’t it obvious? We’re going after it.”
Soon, the World Will End 