Chapter 11: The Birth of Rei

Air.

Real air.

It hit my lungs like fire. Sharp, cold, alive. After fifteen years of recycled poison, it burned in the sweetest way. I thought I’d forgotten what the world smelled like. Rain. Asphalt. Oil. People. Freedom.

But it wasn’t freedom, not yet. It was a box—a coffin—unzipping.

---

I didn’t wait for them to open it.

Somewhere in that black void, something primal snapped loose inside me. My knees jammed against the suitcase lid. My shoulders screamed. My muscles tore like paper. I didn’t care. I pushed. Harder. Until the zipper’s teeth ripped free with a metallic shriek.

And then I spilled out like afterbirth onto the wet pavement.

Face-first into filth and rainwater. Gasping.

The sky greeted me.

I froze there, on my hands and knees, staring upward like a man seeing God for the first time.

Clouds, heavy and bruised with stormlight, drifted across a sky the color of old slate. No stars. No purity. Just grey. And yet—it was infinite.

No ceiling. No fluorescent chokehold. No steel cage.

I laughed. The sound clawed its way out, raw and broken, before turning manic. I laughed until my ribs ached, until rain filled my mouth, until strangers stopped and stared.

They stared because I was feral.

A man crawling out of a suitcase in an alley, barefoot, gaunt, clothes hanging like rags.

Their eyes judged. Phones rose, lenses hungry for spectacle.

Click.

Flash.

Good. Let them watch. Let the whole city see the animal they tried to break.

---

I staggered to my feet. The alley stretched behind me like a throat, slick with oil and neon reflections. Ahead, a road pulsed with life—cars roaring, horns stabbing, voices bleeding from storefronts.

Fifteen years gone, and the world still moved like a machine that never missed me.

I walked toward it. Not because I belonged, but because I needed to feel the weight of reality crash into me.

Each step was pain. My muscles shook, malnourished yet vibrating with rage and hunger. My bare feet slapped waterlogged concrete. Rain slid down my face like baptism, washing off the stench of the cell.

I reached the edge of the alley.

And there it was.

People.

Umbrellas blooming like black flowers. Shoes splashing through puddles. Children tugging at sleeves. Lovers huddled close under neon rain.

I froze. Because it wasn’t just sight—it was sound.

Life. A thousand overlapping voices. Laughter. Arguments. Music leaking from a bar door. The shriek of a train in the distance.

I dropped to my knees and screamed.

Not in despair. Not in pain.

In something older. Wilder. The sound of a man dragged back from the grave and thrust into the stormlight.

And when I screamed, the world stared harder.

---

I tasted blood. Didn’t care. My palms slammed against wet asphalt as if I could press myself into the earth, become part of it again.

“Fifteen years,” I whispered to no one. “Fifteen years, and you didn’t break me.”

A sob ripped through the words, then laughter again.

I was a paradox, and I loved it.

Alive. Broken. Born again.

The Birth of Rei.

---

But then, amid the blur of faces and umbrellas, something colder sliced through me.

A presence.

Not among the crowd. Above it.

I lifted my head slowly, neck muscles screaming, and scanned the rooftops.

And there he was.

A man in black, perched like a carrion bird on the lip of a rooftop across the street. Coat billowing in the rain. No umbrella. No haste. Just watching.

Watching me.

I couldn’t see his face—only the faint gleam of glasses catching neon fire.

He didn’t move. Didn’t flinch when our eyes locked across the storm.

But I saw his lips curve.

And then he spoke.

Not to me—too far for sound to reach—but I read it in the way his mouth shaped the words.

> “Now let’s see what the beast does with freedom.”

---

Beast.

The word rang like iron inside my skull.

And then he was gone. One second there, the next—a blur swallowed by rain.

My pulse thundered. My breathing tore ragged holes in the silence between car horns.

They let me out.

Not out of mercy. Not out of error.

This is part of it.

The Game isn’t over.

It’s just begun.

---

I staggered into the street. Tires screeched. A horn bellowed like an animal. Someone cursed in a voice that sounded alien to my ears.

I didn’t care. The city lights burned into my pupils like knives, each sign and billboard screaming colors I’d forgotten existed.

Red. Blue. Green. Alive.

And through it all, one thought crawled under my skin like a parasite:

Why me?

Why lock me in a room for fifteen years? Why feed me scraps, show me visions, teach me patterns only to spit me back into a world that no longer knows my name?

Unless the answer isn’t who did this.

But what they want me to do now.

---

I reached the other side of the street and collapsed against a wall slick with graffiti and old rain. My chest heaved. My stomach churned with a hunger so sharp it felt like knives carving me from the inside.

And then—metal clinked against concrete at my feet.

A phone. Black. New.

Next to it, an envelope fat with bills.

I stared at them like offerings to a god I didn’t believe in anymore.

No one around. No hand placing them. Just there. Waiting.

The phone buzzed.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

I picked it up, fingers trembling. Screen glowing against the night. One message burned into it:

“Find me.”

---

Rain drummed harder, drowning the city in silver needles.

I clenched the phone so tight my knuckles went white.

Find me.

Not a command. Not a plea.

A challenge.

I smiled. Slow. Razor-edged.

Because whoever wrote that didn’t understand one thing.

I’ve been hunting ghosts in my head for fifteen years.

And now I have a name for the first one.

---

Foreshadow:

The man on the rooftop introduces the concept of “the beast,” implying Rei is a pawn in something bigger.

Phone and cash appear → sets up the twisted game mechanics (psychological and physical).

Rei’s feral rebirth moment → shows he’s no longer just a detective—he’s something else now.