Chapter VI 命に嫌われている (Inochi ni Kirawarete Iru) – “Hated by Life” – Part III

Ashes and Wires (Talgat’s POV)

The dorm lights dimmed into night-cycle, washing the room in muted amber.

Talgat sat at the cot’s edge, his reflection faint in the dark glass of the observation lens above the door — one of CSDS’s ever-watching eyes. He had memorized its rhythm days ago: an eight-second sweep, a heartbeat pause, then a brief static flicker before the next pass. Predictable. Lazy.

He reached beneath the cot and pulled out a rough device he’d built from scavenged drone guts — a cracked holo-chip wired to an old heat emitter and a burnt projector lens.

He flicked the switch.
A faint shimmer appeared: a man lying in bed — himself.
The projection glitched now and then, but from a surveillance feed it would pass as truth. The heat emitter masked his thermal signature, registering steady warmth like a resting body.

He smirked.

“Cheap tech, predictable eyes,” he muttered. “That’s how cities fall.”

He’d spent nights studying the patrol patterns on a stolen terminal, watching each camera blink across the residential loop. Eight seconds of blindness, every rotation. The system was efficient — but not cautious. Machines that learn routine stop questioning patterns.

He slipped on his jacket, adjusted the comm-link embedded in his collar, and tapped twice on the wall panel. A faint, coded pulse answered.

Korren’s frequency.

“You’re still there, old man,” he murmured. “Still pulling strings.”

He moved toward the vent at the back of the dorm, prying open a loose maintenance grate he’d discovered during his first week in CSDS. Behind it, a narrow crawlshaft stretched into the undergrid — a place forgotten by the settlement’s new architects.

Above, the projected image of “sleeping Talgat” shifted once, breathing in sync with the room’s ambient hum. To the watchers, he was exactly where he should be.

The real Talgat was already halfway down the shaft, boots echoing softly against rusted steel. The air smelled of old coolant. He liked that smell — mechanical.

It was the only kind of life he trusted.
Machines didn’t scream when you failed them; they just stopped working.
People were noisier. Harder to fix.
Yet something about them — their unpredictability, their curiosity — still held his attention.
Just like he saw it in Nyla.

He pushed that thought down and emerged into the lower service corridor. He crouched beside a whining pressure valve and tightened it until the sound steadied. The hiss faded, leaving only the pulse of distant generators.

He wasn’t supposed to be here.
That was the point.

Overhead, two children sprinted across the walkway, laughter bouncing off the metal walls.

“Race you to the fountain!” one shouted.

Talgat froze. The wrench in his hand tightened.

For a moment, the sound cracked through memory — before Korren, before the raids — when laughter wasn’t weakness but life.

He exhaled sharply. “Soft… that’s how people die.”

One of the kids tripped.
Instinct overrode thought.

Talgat climbed up from the hatch, caught the child by the collar, and set him upright with a gruff motion.

“Watch your footing, runt.”

The boy blinked up at him, wide-eyed. “Thanks, mister!”

Talgat didn’t reply.
A faint smile threatened at the corner of his mouth, quickly buried.
His chest tightened, a quiet turmoil twisting beneath the surface.

The wrench trembled in his grip.

You’re getting soft, old dog.

He hated how true it felt.

He ducked back into the lower corridor as faint voices filtered through a conduit door — sharp, hushed, calculated.

“You sure you can breach the Thorium grid without alerting Zhang’s sentries?”

“Relax. We patch the override before the system update at 0400. Once the raiders hit the south sector, no one will trace it.”

“And casualties?”

“Collateral. Better a few dead than another year under Zhang’s ration rule.”

Talgat’s jaw tightened.

He recognized the first voice — one of Daren’s men.
Sloppy, overconfident, always whispering deals in the wrong corners.

But the second voice, the one on the comm…
Filtered, faint, familiar.

Not enough to confirm — but enough to chill him.

Daren didn’t speak like a raider.
And Korren is too careful to be using his real voice.

Still, the phrasing… the timing… the intent…

I wouldn’t doubt if it was him.

Talgat stepped deeper into the shadows, silent.

“So that’s your game,” he murmured.

He didn’t care for politics — but he knew the scent of chaos.

And chaos, he thought grimly, was Korren’s timing.

Unseen above the maintenance sectors, one of Zhang Bo’s private surveillance nodes blinked awake.
Its parameters shifted quietly from routine watch to observation priority:

Talgat.

The rifle scope’s faint blue glow painted Nyla’s face in cold light. Her bionic eye adjusted automatically, tracking heat signatures across the distant perimeter.
Through the scope, the dome shimmered like a mirage — civilization pretending to be paradise.

Every few minutes, her visor logged a familiar cycle: patrol rotations, security drones sweeping the same routes, the illusion veil rippling faintly above the horizon. The pattern never changed.

Korren’s voice crackled through the comm.
“Report.”

“Perimeter stable,” she replied. “Same guard rhythm. Zhang’s keeping his defenses analog — proud of it, I think.”

Korren chuckled low. “Pride is a fortress that never survives the first breach.”

In the ruins below, a different fire burned — far from the safety of Nyla’s perch.
Korren sat within the broken amphitheater that served as his war room, hunched over a map scorched into concrete.
The firelight threw jagged shadows across his weathered face and the dull gleam of his cybernetic eye.

A raider stumbled through the archway — limping, armor spattered with blood.
“Report,” Korren said without looking up.

“The raid on the river settlement’s done,” the man said, catching his breath. “But one of our drivers did come back. Said he saw… women.”

Korren’s gaze flicked upward. “Women?”

“Three of them,” the man said. “Naked. Perfect. Just sitting by the roadside. Said they were cast out by raiders after they had been assaulted, begging for protection. The guy, ‘Don,’ prefer not girls, so didn’t touch ’em — just sent three of the new boys to… check.”

Korren’s tone stayed flat. “And?”

“Don tried to catch some shut eyes, laid the seat back, he said, that’s probably why no one came to him, and around five minutes off, alarmed by the scream of those boys, those girls hung on their thing and bite them in the neck, and he saw a group of men appeared from their hidden shade from those road barriers scattering around looking unlike any regular ruffians he’s met before. He said he was too outnumbered, and too scared to break in so rather to return back hurriedly and report you instead.”

The old warlord leaned back, the flicker of his cybernetic lens pulsing like a dying ember.
“Weird corpse worshippers,” he muttered. “The infamous fanatic Creed just fancy to come to the west of their territory — something or someone must have disturbed their ground or maybe they were out of prey.”

He looked toward the fire. “They wear human leather for robes, blackened from filth and blood. Parasites in the skin of angels.”

The raider hesitated. “What do we do about ’em, Chief?”

“Nothing,” Korren said, voice low, almost amused. “Let them feed. Their hunger keeps the wasteland clean — for now.”

The man shifted uneasily, unsure if it was a jest or a warning.
Korren gestured toward the door — dismissal, effortless authority.

As the raider vanished into the dark, the fire crackled louder, sparks rising like ghosts between worlds.
Korren turned his gaze toward the horizon — the faint shimmer of the dome reflected in his eye.

“Let the dead worship their hunger,” he murmured to himself. “We worship power.”

She hesitated, watching a pair of sentries trade shifts below.
“Talgat says we should wait. He thinks the settlement might change — if given time.”

The static paused. Then came his voice, colder.
“Talgat forgets what time cost us. You were a child when mercy killed your brothers.”

“I remember,” she said quietly.

“No,” Korren corrected. “You remember his version — mercy before fire. I remember the corpses hung from their water towers.”

Nyla’s grip tightened on her rifle. “He’s changing. He doesn’t kill without reason anymore.”

Korren’s tone sharpened. “Then he’s forgetting who we are.”

Her jaw clenched. “Maybe he’s remembering who he was.”

A silence stretched, filled only by the wind whispering across ruined metal.
Finally, Korren spoke again, softer — almost tender.
“You’re my best eye, Nyla. Don’t let sentiment blind your scope. You were never meant to see with mercy.”

“Maybe not,” she murmured, gaze still fixed on the dome. “But mercy doesn’t mean blindness.”

“Spoken like a child who still believes the dead can forgive.”
The line cut.

She exhaled slowly, lowering the rifle. Her fingers brushed a small, tarnished locket tied to her belt — a faded photograph inside: her and Talgat, younger, feral-eyed, alive.
She snapped it shut.

Lightning rolled far beyond the horizon, flickering over the dome’s illusion like veins of light under glass.
The storm was coming — and she knew which side of it she was on.
Or at least, she thought she did.

After a while

A shadow shifted at the far edge of the amphitheater.

Rogan stepped forward—augmented frame glinting dull red in the firelight.

Korren didn’t turn. “When the explosion starts, the CC will come running. You’ll take ten men and follow them in.”

Rogan grinned. “Under the corpses’ skin, huh? You always did have taste.”

“Mask the heat signatures with CC blood,” Korren said. “Smear enough of it and the security won’t be able to distinguish you and the CC, so you can use the CC as shield to sneak through the security.”

He finally faced the towering lieutenant. “Your priority is to get inside their base, find Daren and get the Crypthorium vault to steal or sabotage, when you reach inside, contact me. And remember, this task, if you are not confronted, then don’t fight unnecessary, we do our job, and let them clean up the CC mess. Oh and final thing, find Talgat and get him out too, if possible, if not, just leave him.”

Rogan’s grin widened. “And if he picks the fight first?”

Korren’s cybernetic eye flickered. “Then break him, but leave him breathing. I want to see what kind of fire he carries.”

The giant chuckled low, turning to leave. “Consider it done.”

The cargo maintenance bay slept beneath the trade sector — a hollow labyrinth of freight crates and humming turbines buried deep within CSDS’s mechanical spine. The air was thick with the scent of oil and ozone. Light spilled through ceiling vents in narrow gold bands, cutting across rusted steel.

Talgat leaned against a support beam near the service lift, his posture loose but alert. The noise of distant machinery drummed faintly through the floor — the sound of a city trying to hold itself together.

Footsteps echoed.
A figure emerged from the maze of crates: Daren, coat half-buttoned, synth-tobacco burning between two fingers. He smiled as if they were old friends meeting for drinks.

“You’re cautious,” he said. “Most men who walk into my sectors don’t walk back out.”

“You called me here,” Talgat replied flatly. “Say your piece.”

Daren’s grin lingered. “Straight to business. I like that.”

He exhaled a thin stream of smoke. “You’ve seen it — the cracks. Zhang’s running this place like a museum. Keeps the people tame, keeps the ideas small. We could rebuild the eastern grid in a month, if he’d stop hiding his experts behind policy.”

Talgat’s eyes narrowed. “You want a bigger cage.”

“Wrong word,” Daren said smoothly. “I want a stronger cage — one that keeps the chaos outside and puts order inside. We don’t deal in freedom, Talgat. Freedom’s a virus. What we want is control — real control. No laws, no votes, just results.”

“That’s slavery with extra steps,” Talgat muttered.

Daren laughed softly. “Call it what you want. Some call them chains; others call them systems. Systems keep people fed, paid, alive. And when trade runs smooth, no one asks whose hands are bleeding.”

Talgat leaned forward. “You’re planning something that’ll make this place burn. I can smell it.”

Daren’s smile thinned. “Fire purifies. Sometimes you must melt steel before you shape it again. Tell me, does Zhang look like a man who can forge a future, or just another caretaker delaying collapse?”

“Peace isn’t weakness,” Talgat said. “It’s restraint.”

“And restraint,” Daren countered, “is the luxury of the comfortable.”

He stepped closer, voice dropping. “You don’t talk like them. Yet, you move like a soldier, watch like a predator. You’re not Zhang’s man — not Korren’s, either. So let’s be honest. You want to survive, same as I do.”

He tapped the ash from his cigarette, eyes never leaving Talgat’s.
“You keep your secrets. I keep mine. When the change comes — and it will — stand with the ones who plan to rule, not the ones waiting to be saved.”

“And if I say no?” Talgat asked.

Daren smiled coldly. “Then I tell Zhang that Korren already has a man inside his walls. And I don’t think the old man’s mercy runs that deep.”
He tilted his head. “You’ve seen how civilized men kill — they shake your hand first.”

Talgat’s teeth clenched. “You think you understand control. But you’re just another raider wearing cleaner clothes.”

Daren chuckled. “Maybe. But I’ll still be the one standing when this dome settlement burns.”
He leaned close, his breath reeking faintly of synth-tobacco and ambition. “Think about it, soldier. There’s more than one kind of war.”

He turned and walked into the shadows, boots echoing against the metal floor.

Talgat stayed where he was, the dim light flickering across his face.
He could still smell the smoke, and the promise buried inside it.

Korren’s intention was simple in design, brutal in execution: use the merchant faction’s quiet rebellion as cover, breach the CSDS from within, sabotage the Thorium grid, and send his men to seize the Crypthorium reserves before Zhang Bo’s sentries could react during the blackout.

He had given Talgat the role of the insider spark — a small, controlled blast in the eastern conduit network. A single breach that would disable the dome’s field without collapsing the entire grid.

“A surgical strike,” Korren had called it. “Precise. Contained.”

But when Talgat studied the schematic through his cracked terminal, his jaw tightened.
The eastern wing wasn’t just power lines and infrastructure. It housed civilian quarters — mostly workers, families, and children who used the auxiliary schools and repair dorms clustered near the trade hub.

He stared at the flashing route on the display, pulse slow and heavy.
“That’s a residential zone,” he muttered.
“They’re non-combatants. There are kids down there.”

Korren’s reply came cold through the comm.
“Everyone’s a combatant when the world runs out of mercy.”

Talgat said nothing. His thumb hovered over the confirmation key, then withdrew.
He’d killed before — soldiers, raiders, zealots. People who understood the rules of survival. But this?
This was different.

He closed the terminal and muttered under his breath,
“You always said strength meant not hesitating, old man… but maybe you just never had anyone worth hesitating for.”

The cracked terminal dimmed, its signal bleeding into the grid’s background noise.
Miles above, within the central spire of CSDS, a silent alert rippled through Zhang Bo’s private network — one that wasn’t supposed to exist.

The feed stitched together fragments of the undergrid: heat signatures, faint sound, and Talgat’s silhouette disappearing into static.
Zhang stood before the projection wall, hands clasped behind his back, his reflection caught in the faint blue glow.

“Curious,” he murmured. “He moves like a soldier but hides like a ghost.”

Cee-Ar-Tee’s voice filtered through the side console. “An anomaly, sir. Unregistered behavior in quadrant seven. Recommend observation.”

Zhang’s gaze lingered on the frozen frame of Talgat’s departing figure.
“Observation,” he said quietly. “Yes. But not interference. Not yet.”

He turned toward the outer dome feed — where storm clouds flickered with crimson light far beyond the perimeter.
“Too many pieces moving tonight,” he whispered. “Let’s see which one breaks first.”