Chapter 2 : Newton's Laws in the Junkyard

Location: The base of the Wall ("The Shredder" floor)

The world didn't return with light. It returned with a jolt.

Ren came to inside a metal box. It was pitch black, freezing, and the air tasted of rust and stale urine. He felt the movement—a massive, hydraulic groan. Like the stomach of a titan.

Whir. Click. Whir.

This was the Wall. The "Shredder." The conveyor belt was currently moving "material"—and him—from the Clean Side to the Dumping Ground.

Ren tried to sit up, but his head cracked against something hard. He felt around in the dark. The plastic leg of a mannequin. Crinkling bags. Sharp glass shards.

"Mom... Dad..." he whispered, but his voice was swallowed by the mechanical roar.

Suddenly, the floor vanished.

The bottom of the container swung open. The fall only lasted a few seconds, but to Ren, it felt like an eternity. His stomach pressed into his throat.

Impact.

It wasn't soft. He slammed into a mountain of trash and rotting organic waste. The impact knocked the wind out of him, his ribs groaning but miraculously not snapping. He tumbled down the slope of junk—over jagged metal sheets and broken furniture—until he came to a stop in a puddle. The water was black and oily.

Ren looked up.

Towering above him, at an impossible height, was the Wall. Searchlights swept the sky at the top, but down here in the abyss, the light never reached the floor. Only the red warning beacons flickered like angry eyes.

No Entry.

Ren tried to stand. His left leg buckled. His ankle was badly sprained. He was in shock, but the grief was being slowly overtaken by a cold, sharp survival instinct.

Think, he hissed to himself, gritting his teeth against the pain. Panic = Adrenaline = Bad decisions.

He looked around. This was no place for humans. The horizon was blocked by mountains of discarded washing machines, car chassis, and construction debris. The smog sat in the valley like a thick, poisonous fog.

He began to move, limping. Every step crunching on something broken.

Then he heard it.

Not a rat. Something more metallic. It came from behind a gutted car wreck.

Ren froze. His heart hammered in his ears. The moon—which looked a sickly reddish-orange through the smog—illuminated something in the shadows.

A creature crawled out.

It wasn't large—perhaps the size of a big dog. But it had no skin. Its body was a mass of rusted, exposed wires, and its legs were made of dozens of wired-together, rusted garden shears. Its "head" was the dented skull of a plastic doll with tufts of matted hair.

Click-click. The shear-legs snapped against the concrete.

Ren backed away. "What the hell is that...?"

The creature turned toward him. It moved with terrifying speed, sparks flying as its metal legs scraped the ground.

Run? No. Limping. Speed: 2km/h. Creature speed: approx 15km/h. It'll catch me. Fight? No weapon...

Ren scanned his surroundings. He was in a narrow lane between two car wrecks. Patches of oil slicked the ground. Beside him was the skeleton of a construction scaffold, holding a heavy, dangling concrete beam by a single, frayed steel cable.

The monster shrieked—a sound like metal on a grindstone—and lunged.

Ren didn't run. He remembered his physics class. "The coefficient of friction on an oily surface approaches zero. Kinetic energy isn't lost; it's just redirected into destruction."

Ren threw himself to the ground. But he didn't hide. He grabbed a handful of industrial grease from an overturned drum nearby and smeared it across the concrete in front of him.

The monster landed, its shear-legs slamming into the pavement. But the ground was a skating rink. Its legs found no purchase, and its own momentum sent it sliding uncontrollably forward.

Ren grabbed a discarded iron pipe from the ground. Not to swing it—but to use it as a lever. He jammed the pipe into the pulley of the scaffold holding the concrete beam. He threw his entire weight onto it.

The cable snapped.

The three-hundred-kilogram beam plummeted. The ground shuddered as it hit.

The monster vanished beneath the stone. There was only a sharp, metallic crunch as the shears were crushed, and a thick, black, oily fluid began to seep out from under the block.

Ren slumped against a car wreck, gasping for air. His hands were shaking. He'd killed it. He was covered in filth and grease, but he was alive.

"Hey!" a voice called from the dark. "That was something else."

Ren jumped, brandishing his iron pipe. A figure stepped out from the wreckage. It was a boy, maybe seventeen, his own age. He was thin, his face smeared with soot, his hair a tangled mess, but his eyes were sharp and intelligent. He wore an oversized leather jacket. He held up his hands to show he was unarmed.

"Easy, smart guy. I'm not looking for a fight. I just saw that trick with the oil. Not bad. You took down a Discard without a single scratch."

"Who are you?" Ren demanded.

"Kai. I live here," the boy said, gesturing to the ruins. "And you... you're not from around here, are you? I can smell it. Soap. Fabric softener. You came from over the Wall?"

Ren didn't answer. He just nodded.

Kai stepped closer. He held out a plastic canteen. "Want some? Water. It's not the best, but at least it's not radioactive."

Ren hesitated, but the thirst was a physical pain. He took the canteen. The water tasted of iron and plastic, but it was life. "Thanks. My name is Ren."

"Ren. Pretty name. Too clean for this place," Kai sat down on a pile of tires. "How'd you end up here? Debt? Murder? Or are you just some trauma manifestation?"

"My parents..." Ren stopped. The image of the black bags flashed in his mind. "They were killed."

Kai nodded. There was no pity in his eyes, only a grim acceptance. "That's how it goes. The Shredder doesn't discriminate. But you were clever with that Discard. Most Newbies just scream until they become dinner. You used your head. That's rare."

"I don't want to die," Ren said, handing back the canteen. "What are those things? Discards?"

"No one wants to die. But here..." Kai's eyes caught something on Ren's wrist.

The watch. A silver Seiko. His father had bought it for him when he got into the Academy. "Let this remind you that time is money, son." The glass was cracked from the fall, but the second hand was still ticking.

"Nice watch," Kai said.

Ren instinctively pulled his arm back. "It was my father's. It's the only thing I have left."

Kai smiled. "I get it. You know, Ren... down here, objects have souls. That's why they turn into monsters. We call them Discards. But people... sometimes we have to sell our own souls just to keep from turning into them."

Kai stood up. "Come on. I've got a shelter a few hundred meters away. Safer than out here in the open. I've got cans, enough food for a month or two. I'll teach you how to survive the wrong side of the Wall."

Ren looked at the boy. Kai seemed normal. Human. And Ren, who had just lost everything, was desperate for something to hold onto.

"Fine," Ren said.

They began to weave through the labyrinth of junk. Kai led the way; Ren followed, limping.

"Why are you helping me?" Ren asked.

"Because I see potential in you," Kai said, without looking back. "And because... I'm going to need your help with something."

They stopped in a dead end. High walls of scrap surrounded them on all sides.

"Are we here?" Ren asked.

Kai turned around. The smile was gone. In its place was a hollow, frozen expression.

"Sorry, Ren. I really do feel for you. But at the Market, they pay a lot for watches like that. Especially ones from the Top."

Ren tried to back away, but two figures stepped out of the shadows behind Kai. Two grown men, holding lead pipes.

"A trap..." Ren whispered. "You bastard! I thought—"

"You thought we were friends?" Kai shook his head. "You've known me for five minutes. Lesson one, honor student: down here, there are no friends. Only predators and prey."

One of the men lunged. Ren tried to dodge, but his sprained ankle gave out.

THUD.

The pipe slammed into his shoulder. Ren hit the dirt, the world spinning in white-hot pain.

"Hold him down!" Kai commanded.

Ren fought, but the two men pinned his arms. Kai knelt over him. He didn't look like he enjoyed it. He just looked like a man doing a job. He unbuckled the Seiko from Ren's wrist.

"Please... no..." Ren groaned, tears of rage and pain blurring his vision. "It's my father's... don't take it..."

"It's no use to him now," Kai said, sliding the watch into his pocket. "But for me? This buys a month of antibiotics for my sister. It's just math, Ren."

Kai gestured to the men. "Alright. We got the watch. The clothes are too bloody to sell. Just leave him."

"Should we finish him?" one of the thugs asked.

Kai looked down at Ren—bleeding, broken, and shivering in the dirt. "No. Not worth the effort. Just beat him enough so he doesn't follow us. Besides..." Kai looked away, a flicker of something like shame crossing his face. "...he survived a Discard. Maybe he's got his own luck."

"Throw him to the Discards then," the other thug laughed. "If he survives, it's fate."

They began to kick him. Ren tried to curl into a ball, but a boot caught him in the stomach, knocking the air out of his lungs. They dragged him deeper into the scrap piles and tossed him like a bag of trash.

"Welcome to the 16th Ward, kid," Kai's voice drifted over the scrap walls. "Learn fast, or die hard."

As Ren felt the darkness of unconsciousness pulling him under, a single thought hammered in his brain, louder than the pain:

They took it. They took my family. They took my name. They took the last thing I had.

Never again. I will never trust anyone ever again.

The stench was the first thing to pull him back to the surface.

It wasn't just trash. It was something sweeter, thicker, stickier. A mix of spoiled meat, rusted iron, and burnt rubber. It crawled into his throat, making him gag.

Ren groaned, his body a map of fire. Every movement sent shards of glass through his shoulder. He opened his eyes. It was dark, but a sickly, yellow-orange glow filtered down through the smog from miles above.

"Look at that. It's still breathing."

The voice was raspy, like grinding stones. Ren forced his head up. Three figures were crawling over the wreckage toward him. They were wrapped in rags, their skin—where it was visible—marked with pulsing black veins like infected roots.

Hyenas. Ink-addicted scavengers who had traded their humanity for a scrap of power.

"His clothes," one pointed with a rusted knife. "Real cotton. Bloody, but a rarity. And look at his shoes."

"Scuffed, but they'll sell. Buy us two doses of Dilutant at the Market."

Their leader, a hunched, twisted man, slid closer. "Got any money, High-Side Boy?"

Ren tried to crawl back, but his spine hit a discarded refrigerator. He reached for his pockets. Empty. The 15,000 yen he'd earned... gone. The envelope... gone.

"I have... nothing... leave me alone..." his voice cracked. This isn't real. This is a nightmare. I'm going to wake up and Aiko will be at the door and Dad will be complaining about the movie...

He slapped himself, hard. The pain was real. The smell was real.

The Hyenas laughed. A dry, rattling sound. "Nothing? Don't be modest. You've got two kidneys. A liver. And nice, soft skin. Ink hasn't chewed you up yet. The Doc pays well for parts."

The leader loomed over Ren, pressing the knife to his throat. The blade was cold and smelled of rot. "Don't struggle. If I slit your throat, the blood ruins the shirt, and then you're worth less."

Ren closed his eyes. His heart was a frantic bird in a cage. Is this it? My parents died because of me. I was tossed out like a broken toy. And now I die on a trash heap to be sold for parts.

I'm pathetic. Just a piece of waste. They were right.

CRUNCH.

The sound didn't come from the knife. It didn't come from a bone.

Something shattered in the darkness behind the Hyenas. A massive pile of broken mannequins and discarded toys—a small hill of plastic limbs—began to shift.

"What the hell is that?" the leader turned, lowering the knife.

A hand reached out of the trash. It was snow-white, glossy, but covered in cracks. Then another hand. Then a head.

The head of a beautiful, antique porcelain doll. The skin was flawless white, the lips a painted crimson. But the eyes were missing. From the hollow sockets, a thick, black sludge—Ink—poured down the face like a permanent tear.

The creature rose. It was three meters tall. Its body wasn't a doll, but a nightmare of wires, rusted springs, and rotting meat sewn together. Rags of a Victorian dress clung to its oily frame.

A Discard. An object given "life" by trauma and the INK.

"Mother... is that you?" the monster spoke. The voice didn't come from a mouth; it resonated from its chest like a scratched gramophone record. "Why... did you... throw me... away? Am I... not... pretty? Love... me!"

The Hyenas panicked. "It's a Class 3! It's too big! Run!"

But the monster was faster. It didn't run; it moved with the twitchy, unnatural speed of a broken machine. It lunged, its porcelain hands wrapping around the nearest Hyena.

The sound of the man's spine and ribs snapping echoed in the silence. He didn't even have time to scream. The monster squeezed until the body went limp.

"Why... won't you... hug me... back?" the Doll asked sadly, tossing the corpse aside.

The other two scavengers opened fire. Rusted pistols barked in the dark. The bullets sparked off the creature's porcelain chest, not even leaving a scratch. The Doll shrieked—a sound that pierced Ren's eardrums—and tore into them.

Blood and offal sprayed across Ren's face. Warm, salty, and real.

Ren didn't move. He was paralyzed. Watch. Don't close your eyes. See how it moves.

He couldn't fight. He was weak. But he could observe.

The Doll finished with the Hyenas. Silence returned, save for the creature's heavy, clicking breath. It turned toward Ren.

"You..." it stepped closer. Its porcelain fingers were dripping with red. "You... don't... love me... either... do you?"

It leaned in. Ren smelled it: old perfume, dust, and decay. He saw the cracks in the porcelain. He saw the way its joints worked. And he saw the neck.

Where the porcelain head met the meat-and-wire body, there was a gap. A small, exposed seam. And inside that seam, something black was pulsing. A thick, swollen vein.

The source. The Ink. That's what's keeping it alive.

Ren's eyes moved to the ground. There, in the mud and oil, lay the leader's knife.

It's my only shot.

The Doll reached for him. "Come... let's play... Mother said I was a good girl..."

Ren's hand trembled as he reached into the muck. His fingers closed around the hilt. He wasn't a hero. He was terrified. But he felt a new sensation rising through the pain: Disgust.

Disgust at this place. Disgust at the smell. Disgust at being a victim.

As the Doll leaned down to "hug" him, Ren didn't crawl away. He lunged.

He threw himself into the creature's embrace. To an observer, it looked like suicide. The porcelain arms were already closing to crush him.

But Ren wasn't defending himself.

With his right hand, he aimed. He drove the knife into the pulsing, black seam in the creature's neck. He buried it to the hilt.

The rusted blade snapped at the handle, but the point had pierced the vein.

The Doll let out a soundless scream. A thick, black, oil-like spray—the ink—jetted out, coating Ren's face, his eyes, his mouth, and his open wounds.

Ren didn't let go.

The Ink burned. It felt like liquid nitrogen and boiling acid at the same time. His skin hissed.

"AAAAHHH!" Ren roared.

But as the Ink entered his system, something happened. It didn't just burn. It resonated. He felt the Doll's pain. Her sorrow. Her rejection.

And Ren, in his madness and grief, didn't wipe it away. He let it in. He pressed his bleeding shoulder against the fountain of black ichor.

The pain was blinding. Ren felt his bones splinter, his blood boil. His heart stopped for a second, then restarted, hammering like a steam engine.

FLASHBACK

The world turned a blinding, clinical white.The junkyard was gone. Ren was inside a different body. A little girl. He felt small, weak, and shivering. He was kneeling in a piano room. The floor was marble, so cold it bit into his knees. The room was sterile, empty save for a black grand piano and a ticking metronome.

Click. Clack. Click. Clack.

"How many times?" a voice asked from above.

A woman stood over him. He couldn't see her face, only the perfectly ironed silk skirt and the glint of diamond rings.

"How many times have I told you? You cannot be late on the C-sharp." The voice was quiet. Terrifyingly calm.

"I'm sorry, Mother..." the girl (Ren) whispered. He felt the lump in his throat—the suffocating terror. "My hands... they're tired."

"Tired?" The woman knelt. Her face was beautiful, but her eyes were hollow glass. "The women in this family do not get tired. We are perfect. Or..." her smile twisted, "we are defective. And defective things must be corrected."

The woman grabbed the girl's hair. She didn't yank it; she pulled it back slowly, methodically, until the girl's neck was straining and she was forced to look into the blinding glare of the chandelier.

"Mother, it hurts... please!"

"Beauty is pain. Talent is blood. Look in the mirror!" She turned the girl's head toward the polished, black finish of the piano. "What do you see?"

"Myself..."

"I see a disappointment. A lazy, ugly little girl who doesn't deserve our name."

The woman moved suddenly. It wasn't a slap. She grabbed the girl's head with both hands and slammed it into the piano keys.

The wall of sound—the dissonant roar of the keys—mixed with the sickening CRUNCH of bone.

The world turned red. Ren felt the agony. The girl's cheekbone had shattered against the edge of the piano. Her left eye... a shard of broken ivory from a key had driven into her socket.

She tried to scream, but there was no air. She collapsed, blood instantly staining the white dress and the marble floor.

Her face was a ruin.

Through the throbbing pain, she looked up at her mother, waiting for help. For a doctor. For a hug.

But the mother just stood there. She looked down at the bleeding child with a look of pure, clinical disgust.

"Look at you," the woman said, wiping a spot of blood from her hand with a handkerchief. "Now you're as ugly on the outside as you are on the inside."

"Mother..." the child whimpered, reaching out. "Love... me..."

The woman stepped back so her shoes wouldn't get stained. "I only love perfect things. This... this wreck is not my daughter. This is just trash. Stay here in the dark. I don't want to see your face."

He was back in the 16th Ward. But something was wrong. His left arm was glowing.

The skin had turned white. The flesh had hardened, becoming smooth, cold, and flawless. His fingernails had elongated into jagged, serrated shards of porcelain.

The "Object" had become one with him.

The Doll tried to push him away, but Ren was no longer weak. The power of the Ink was surging through his muscles. Ren—half-conscious, fueled by a borrowed rage—drove his new porcelain claws into the monster's face.

He tore. He shredded. There was no technique, only the raw desire to destroy the thing that reminded him of his own rejection.

High above, at the top of a scrap-heap, three figures watched through the smog.

Kana lowered her binoculars, stopping her chewing gum mid-chew. Her purple eyes were wide. "No way... you seeing this, Boss?"

Gaiki stood beside her, hands in his pockets, a cigarette dangling from his lip. "I see it."

"The kid didn't run. He attacked it. With a knife. A fucking knife."

"And he absorbed the Ink raw," Ryaku added coldly, adjusting his wires. "Direct contact. He should be dead. His heart should have exploded, or he should have turned into a Discard himself."

"But he didn't explode," Gaiki smiled, a small wrinkle of genuine interest appearing at the corner of his eye. "Look. He's adapting. He's integrating."

Below, Ren stood over the remains of the Doll. He had torn its head off. The monster's body was melting into a pool of black sludge.

Ren stood there for a second, his porcelain arm glowing like a beacon in the dark. Then, his eyes rolled back, and he collapsed into the muck.

Gaiki tossed his cigarette and crushed it under his boot. "Let's go. Let's collect him."

"Why?" Ryaku asked with a sneer. "He's a freak. Volatile. Dangerous."

"No," Gaiku said, starting down the rusted ladder into the abyss. "He's a Recycler. He just doesn't know it yet. And he's going to be very, very hungry when he wakes up."

"The Boss is at it again," Kana muttered, following them down.

The darkness claimed Ren once more, but this time, he wasn't alone.