Chapter 19:
Codex Wars: Judgment Of The Forsaken
By the end of the day, Ezra finally reached the Grayfloors.
Or, as the elders still muttered through rotting teeth: Subfundus.
And it was exactly as he remembered it. Except now it was worse. Much worse.
The chimneys, towering high, vomited black soot without pause, dyeing the sky in an oily shroud. Above, what once might have been the heavens was now nothing but a mass of ducts, suspended tracks, and poorly maintained turbines, completely blocking any natural light.
The brightness, when it came, was greenish and sickly, reflected through clouds of chemical gas that festered between the decaying buildings.
The structures looked moments away from collapse, towers of corroded iron stitched together with rusted plates and hanging wires like dead vines. Steam hissed from cracked pipes. Toxic drips oozed from exhaust towers like the drool of some slumbering beast. Everything shook. Everything creaked. Everything reeked.
And no one stopped.
The ground? A grotesque mosaic of aged oil, dried blood, and unidentifiable biological waste. Slabs of stone and twisted metal formed makeshift sidewalks over boiling sewer canals. Where there wasn't metal, there was stone, and when there was neither, all that remained was sludge.
Cyber-eyed rats rummaged among scraps of food and forgotten corpses. Patched-up drones with trembling wings and blind cameras hovered half a meter off the ground, sparking and beeping, their noises lost in the muffled cries from the alleys.
On every corner, a boiler spat steam, a motor combusted, or a sudden flame erupted from some system failure. The ambient sound was a constant collapse: cracks, hisses, faint sirens, gunshots in the distance, or close by.
The people? They moved quickly, always looking down, checking their surroundings, or keeping a hand on their pockets. Gaunt bodies wrapped in heavy coats and rags stitched together with copper wire. Many had parts of their faces replaced by plates, prosthetics, and mechanical eyes. No one there was whole. Not in body, not in soul.
Children with dull eyes and worn-out respirator masks darted between adults deformed by labor and chemical radiation.
Elders with tubes in their necks begged for favors in robotic voices. Armed teenagers picked pockets in groups, ready to vanish into the shadows if spotted. People coughed up blood. Laughed to themselves. Sold things that shouldn't exist.
And most importantly: no one cared.
The flow continued, like a current of blind survival. Hesitation there meant disappearance.
Ezra kept his hood low and his steps steady. He didn't draw attention when glancing sideways. He didn't answer any calls. He paid no one any mind, and rightly so.
"Damn watch..." Ezra growled, fingers sliding with irritation over the metallic shell.
The device, though seemingly new, stubbornly refused to cooperate. As he walked through alleys choked with vapor and soot, he tried navigating the interface of the gadget Elmar had given him earlier.
Heart rate check? Works.
Body temperature? Also.
Time? Of course.
Tracker? Active and very visible.
But what really mattered, access to the Network, firewall systems, protocol syncing...
Nothing. It was like trying to use a twenty-year-old terminal in a world that had rewritten itself more than three times.
"For some reason, I can't access the firewall…" he muttered through gritted teeth. The screen flickered with bluish tones. Command lines frozen. "How the hell am I supposed to access the network like this?"
The watch blinked again, as if mocking him. Ezra snorted, nearly punching his own wrist.
"What's the matter, kid?" Mazzareth appeared over his left shoulder, materializing with an air of curiosity. A mischievous glint lit up his eyes, always amused in the face of chaos.
However, Ezra didn't answer right away. His jaw was locked, clenched tight like rusted steel. His mind, meanwhile, blocked out every external stimulus, as if the world around him had been muted by a white noise of frustration.
"Shit… should've tested this crap when he gave it to me." He had assumed, from the modern design, the absurd number of sensors, the sleek interface, that he was dealing with something high-end.
He'd trusted the looks. Though slightly worn, it had a modern shell, multiple sensors, a clean, responsive interface. It looked top-tier. It looked… but it was just a pretty shell with the brain of a pre-war watch.
"This thing must have a fried network board or something..." he muttered, more to himself than to Mazzareth.
He tried everything. Rebooting. Forcing connection. Stimulating IP scans. Nothing. No ping, no active frequencies, not even an archaic protocol. The connection simply didn't exist.
"That thing's more offline than a forgotten grave," Mazzareth quipped with a half-malicious grin, perched on his shoulder like a cynical conscience. "And to think — even now, defective products still exist… You humans are truly… astonishing."
"Just one more reason I'm down here..."
Without Network access, he was practically blind. No updates. No news from the past four years. No safe routes, no mapped red zones, no access to contracts, favors, or transit keys.
It had delayed him more than he cared to admit. And worse, even if he had the most updated maps, they'd be useless down here.
In the Subfundus, routes changed like a paranoid's mood: collapses, chemical floods, riots, boiler explosions, outbreaks of neurodegenerative gas… Every week, the map died and a new one was born. Always different.
But he didn't need a map. He knew the way by heart. Not because the place was simple. But because he'd been here before.
His destination? The core of the Subfundus. The city's blind spot. The black hole from which not even data escaped.
The black market.
A semi-official territory the Convention preferred to ignore, too much trouble to root out. So why not let it exist under "controlled conditions"?
Down there, contracts took shape without law. Bans were sold by the gram. Money and guns spoke louder than words, and implants didn't come with manuals, they came with scars.
Ezra wasn't looking for rare parts.
Nor upgrades.
Not even information.
Weapons, maybe. Those were always welcome.
But what he was really looking for... was someone.
Someone who could only be found in that hole where light didn't reach, and, curiously, wasn't welcome either.
✦ ✦ ✦
"Ashras?"
The word slipped out like a sigh, soaked in caution and memory. His voice made it sound as though it meant nothing, trying to ignore the memories it stirred.
The bartender looked up slowly, as if the question had passed through a thick filter of disinterest.
He kept wiping the glass with a frayed, grimy rag, so dirty it seemed to be part of the glass itself, only filthier.
"Haven't seen her in a while," he said, voice dry and almost rusty. "Word is she racked up a heavy debt… and vanished. Like all debtors do."
Ezra didn't answer at once.
The bar was cramped, suffocating, as if vapor and whispers had fused into a dense fog that filled the air with rust and nicotine.
A wet cough sounded behind him, followed by something thick being spat on the floor.
Farther back, two men hunched over a greasy table, arguing intensely over the fair price of a second-hand mechanical heart.
Ezra brought the glass to his lips. The liquid inside was a murky amber, thick. It burned like solvent and left a trail of heat that didn't warm, it seared.
He didn't ask the name of the drink. He knew sometimes, ignorance was a kindness.
"You know who she owed?" The words came out heavy, sluggish, dragging through the heat and pollution in the air.
The bartender paused. For the first time, he set the glass down.
Raised an eyebrow slowly.
Then placed his knuckles on the stained counter.
"If I knew…" He paused. "…I wouldn't still be here."
Ezra tilted his wrist slightly and activated the watch display. The screen projected a simple string of numbers, a harmless-looking calculator app. But the numbers began to climb, line by line. It wasn't much, not enough to turn heads up in the higher tiers of the city. But down here, in the Grayfloors? It was the kind of amount that made men vanish for less.
That was his pocket money, left for him by his mysterious benefactor.
"I'm no rookie in these parts." A subtle tap. An extra zero. "How much?"
The bartender smiled, revealing nicotine-stained, rust-flecked metal teeth. His left arm, a poorly maintained prosthetic, creaked faintly as he moved. But he didn't look at Ezra.
He looked at the numbers.
"Well, well…" The smile widened. "Apologies. Your clothes were a bit too clean. Thought you were… foreign."
Ezra didn't blink. His stare held firm. "Don't play with me."
The vapor behind the counter hissed louder, as if something, or someone, had just moved through it. Inside the mist, a silhouette wavered, almost imperceptible.
The bartender's smile vanished. He leaned in slightly, his voice now carrying a quiet urgency, almost intimate. "For old times' sake, I won't take it. But I'll give you some advice…" A measured pause. "…things aren't how they used to be, young master Ashenguard…"
His tone shifted. Colder. "…or should I say: ex-young master?"
Ezra's pupils dilated.
"First, fix that disguise." The man examined him with a practiced eye, as though he could see beyond the fabric. Pity he didn't know this was Ezra's real face now. "I'll give you credit, you do look like a true hooligan. But your face… still the same."
Ezra felt a chill crawl down his spine, the kind that rises from the inside, especially when he sensed something bad was about to unfold.
"So pay for your drink… and leave. Now. Before he realizes you're back."
Ezra frowned. "He…?"
Filip didn't respond. He only gave a subtle nod of his chin toward the side, toward an old, cracked window, fogged with condensation and chemical dust.
Ezra turned slowly. Not enough to draw attention. Just enough.
And there… in the dimness, beyond the glass and the shimmer of rising heat…
A pair of eyes watched him.
Fixed. Unmoving.
They didn't blink.
Ezra felt the drink burn his throat a second time, without even swallowing.
"Don't forget…" Behind the bar, Filip said, barely audible, "…you're a debtor too."
And then he whispered, like invoking something worse than death: "Ezra."
And from within the steam…
it moved.
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