First Map

“If you could make a wish, what would it be?”

“A wish?” Satella cocked her head, glancing at the young boy, doubting the validity of such a question.

    At ten years old, there were already so few things catching her interest. Admittedly, an underground cage of steel wasn’t really a place stimulating her imagination. She was already thankful to be alive.

“Yes! It can be anything. Even feeling the warmth of the Sun, or running on the sand, barefoot.”

    Oh, unrealistic things.

    That was what she thought, taking a while to ponder. Remembering an episode from her favourite show. Actually, one of the last anime which got to air before the Fall.

“Hot springs…” She mused. “I would like to bathe in one.”

🜋🜋🜋

    A loud thump. A back hitting the ground.

    At a serene pace, her high heels ticked away the little time of respite granted to the bald man.

    Reflections of the artificial light ran over the black metal covering her body. Satella didn’t bother to remove her protective suit. She wasn’t here to stay. She was here to take.

“I know nothing, you’re wasting your time…” The man groaned, leaning against his brawny forearms.

    At least, she didn’t wear her headgear. Allowing her long white hair to cascade down her back, waving lazily at her steps.

    Barely had the man attempted to stand up before Satella drove a high heel into his chest, forcing him to admire her ankle.

    Not wasting her time in vain words, she simply extended her gun in his direction. It didn’t take long before the weapon reacted to her touch, the metallic parts reshaping, rearranging like the pieces of a puzzle. Larger, more ominous. Once the perfect size to carry around, it was now a plasma rifle, the blue glow it emitted reflected over the man’s polarised sports sunglasses.

“I remember your face. You were among the ones who came for Irvis, five years ago. He left with you.”

    She barely finished speaking before her rifle emitted a low hum, light glowing at its edge. Pity was absent from her purple eyes.

“Wait, wait. Let’s keep our calm.” He tried to reason with her. “He wasn’t the only one to join the project that day. You don’t truly expect me to remember them all now, do you?”

    But Satella was calm.

    Her index finger brushing the trigger, she was about to pull it.

“Japan. Ōsaka.” The man gritted his teeth.

    She pulled the trigger. A loud noise echoed throughout the otherwise silent office.

    Rolling to his side, covering his bleeding ear with a groan, smoke escaping the small crater now formed. Next to the place his head laid a moment ago.

“Arghh… Goddamn bitch.”

“That was for lying to me.” She informed, observing him dealing with pain. “Where in Ōsaka?”

“…I don’t know that much.” He paused, only to quickly add when he understood it was better not to test Satella’s patience. “Look, we split into different teams, and it’s been a couple of years since I’ve been assigned to Taiwan.”

    After a moment of contemplative silence, Satella’s plasma rifle shaped back into a modest gun. If she couldn’t obtain a more precise location, that was all she needed. All other issues could be addressed later.

“Ōsaka, then.” She uttered, already turning away from the bald man rising to his feet.

“You shouldn’t go there.” He added.

    More an advice than a threat.

    Satella paused. She didn’t turn back, contemplating the ground for a short while.

    Then, without a word, she resumed her path.

🜋🜋🜋

    Four months, that’s the amount of time it took Satella to find a valuable indication about the place Irvis went to. Four months since she left the bunker to join the surface, as part of the first chosen group from her community. They were escorted to one of the few parts of this world made appropriate to host life. As promised five years ago, when Irvis left.

    Except that the world was absolutely different from what they had left. It wasn’t just that it had been remade. It defied logic.

    Even after twenty years spent underground, even though she was eight when she barely made it to the bunker, as one of the few refugees who escaped Humanity’s Fall, she knew it wasn’t supposed to be like this.

    As Satella made her way to Taipei’s port, she glanced at the colourful buildings erupted over the land, as if placed randomly. A handful of them were even visible in the distance, over the once verdant Maokong mountain.

    Some lacked windows, others had only doors. But the most unnerving part was that some buildings erupted from other buildings, like branches on a steel tree.

    Taiwan had no inhabitants. No one aside from the bald man, and perhaps a handful of governmental agents. And that, despite the fact that the air was breathable here.

    Cautious yet unbothered, Satella ended up approaching the port when the ground began to shake, the rocks to jolt chaotically.

    Sudden havoc. Unprompted waste of time.

    In front of her, the ground was crumbling, reshaping. Until a construction of steel surged from the ground, forcing Satella to run in the opposite direction, only to be met by a similar phenomenon. Each time she managed to escape an emerging building, another one rose.

    But despite her reactivity, even despite the boost of speed provided by her protective suit, the skyscrapers ended up trapping her in an arena made out of residential blocks.

    Pausing in her tracks, Satella turned around, failing to spot any way out.

“Entering one of these bizarre structures doesn’t sound like the safest option.”

    Though, as she was coming to terms with what appeared as the only way out, a building erupted right from beneath Satella’s feet.

    Bracing for the sudden ascension, she knelt, hands pressed over the roof of a scarlet tower. At least she was lucky enough for the tower to grow straight and not inclined.

    The moment the growth of the unwanted lift halted, Satella rose to her feet, taking a few steps to glance down from her perch.

    Satella frowned.

    A few hundred meters above the ground was useful when necessary to make sure you were heading in the appropriate direction, not when heading there. Truly an unvaluable waste of time. To think that nature itself, given it could be called that way, was delaying further her reunion with Irvis. Detestable.

    Pressing a simple command was all it took for her protective suit to expand into a headgear.

    Without double thinking it, Satella took a few steps back before dashing forward, jumping into the void. Though she planned to land on a lower building first, using the boost built underneath her feet to stabilise, another block erupted from the one she just left.

    Taken by surprise, Satella’s purple eyes widened, yet she managed to keep her balance. Her foot touching steel, she redirected her inertia into a mad dash along the building.

    Crack.

    Glass shattering.

    Although she couldn’t control her trajectory enough to avoid stepping onto a window.

    Falling into the inclined building in a rain of glass shards, she crashed her back first against into the opposite wall.

    She made sure to make a mental note about not visiting Taiwan ever again.

    Sitting up with a groan, Satella took a glance around. No apparent form of life. No abnormal activity. Instead, the inside of the flat she fell into was disturbingly common. What was supposed to be the floor was furnished with a chair and a desk, a bed covered with soft-looking sheets. As for the ceiling, there were neons emitting an orangey glow.

    Well, common if not for the dubious gravity allowing the furniture to stand on the almost perpendicular wall. Even more disturbingly, Satella felt no urge to leave.

    She heard no more rumbling coming from outside.

“Maybe I could stay a bit, rest before leaving…”

    The place felt just that cosy. That was a feeling she hadn’t experienced in a long time now.

“Satella.”

    But then, a voice echoed through her mind. A smile, a distant silhouette floated before dissipating as she extended her hand forward.

    Realising with dread that she found such a strange place welcoming even for a moment, she quickly stood up.

“I need to leave this place.”

    She didn’t even bother to check if the door at her feet was open, she drew her gun, instantly merging into a plasma rifle…

    …And with a deafening sound, she made her way out.

    Falling out and towards the ground, she barely landed before the rumbling resumed. Except that Satella wasn’t the kind of woman to get trapped twice in the same way.

    Giving her trajectory unpredictable spins, pushing her speed boost to the utmost, she dashed towards the closest boat. Fortunately for her, despite being mostly unattended for decades, these weren’t simple boats but automatic engines powered by an independent source of energy which, unless it broke, should still work. Which, given the low hum, the vibrations emitted by the instrument panel, was still the case.

“To Ōsaka, Japan!”

    At Satella’s command, an artificial voice answered while the boat already pulled away from the port.

“The destination has been correctly registered.”

    With a glance back, she made sure no uninvited building was pursuing her, unsure at this point if they wouldn’t even surge from the sea.

    The vision of the cosy flat flashed through her mind.

“Strange.” She mused. “It was almost as if this place wanted to keep me.”

    Luckily, she seemed out of their reach. Freed from Taiwan’s grip.

    All that was to be found in the depths of the sea, the farther Satella got from the coast, were countless fishbones drifting away with the tide, as well as a noxious smell.

    No living creature was present in the sea, no one survived the Fall. If she didn’t wear her protective suit here, she’d be dead in no time.

    Making use of that moment of respite, Satella checked the data stored in her bracelet. A 3D hologram of the terrestrial sphere appeared. She brushed over its surface, zooming over the part of the globe she currently was at. The country known as Taiwan was coloured in red, a different name written over it. Atlas 0056.

    This was a file she managed to borrow during the last months she spent searching for Irvis. If most of the map was greyed and represented all the uninhabitable parts of the world, a few ones were coloured and labelled in a generic way. Including the place she was sent to, when allowed to return to the surface.

    Satella scrolled the map, scrolled the wide grey seas over which she was navigating, until reaching the north coast of Japan. Most of the country was highlighted in green, including a large part around Ōsaka, labelled as Atlas 0121.