VOL. 1: CHAPTER 10: THE CITY THAT WATCHES BACK
Kaloi's City did not welcome them.
It measured them.
The doors of Latvier closed behind Sionu with a sound that felt heavier than metal. It wasn't a slam. It was a seal, like the last page of a contract being pressed flat and signed by reality itself. The air outside was different immediately, thicker, louder, filled with a thousand overlapping anxieties that pressed against his senses like static against exposed wire.
Smoke still clung to the streets, smeared low and stubborn, refusing to lift even as the sun climbed higher. Sirens wailed in staggered rhythms, not chaotic, but patterned. Sionu noticed that first. Someone, somewhere, had choreographed the panic.
Blitz stepped up beside him, bat hidden beneath her coat, posture loose but coiled. The faintest shimmer of mist followed her movements, curling close to her body like an unspoken threat. Ultimo walked on Sionu's other side, shoulders squared, each step deliberate. The ground beneath his feet seemed to firm itself instinctively, as if it recognized him as part of its structure now.
No one spoke.
They didn't need to.
Kaloi's City did enough talking for everyone.
Windows lined the street like unblinking eyes. Some were cracked open just enough for phones to peek out. Others were fully barred, faces shadowed behind steel and fear. People watched from doorways, from behind parked cars, from the thin illusion of cover that comes when you don't want to be seen but you also don't want to miss history.
Sionu felt it immediately.
The attention.
Not the sharp hunger of the infected. Not the predatory calculation of the military.
This was different.
This was witness.
Blitz leaned in slightly, her voice barely audible. "You feel that?"
Sionu nodded. "Yeah."
Ultimo muttered, "City got its eyes open."
A military drone hovered two blocks down, its lens turning toward them with slow precision. It didn't advance. It didn't retreat.
It observed.
Sionu's electricity stirred in response, instinctively bristling, but he forced it down. He remembered Kael's words.
Respond. Don't react.
They moved forward.
1) INDIGE VILLAGE
Indige Village had never been a village in the romantic sense. No cobblestone streets, no historic plaques. It was a dense sprawl of apartment buildings, corner stores, open-air markets, and community centers that had been holding the line for decades with underfunded programs and stubborn pride.
Now it looked wounded.
Police tape flapped uselessly in the breeze, sections torn down or ignored. A city bus sat jackknifed across an intersection, abandoned mid-evacuation. A group of people clustered near a closed grocery store, arguing loudly with a soldier behind a barricade.
"We got kids in there!" a woman shouted, voice raw.
The soldier didn't respond. His visor hid his eyes, but his stance screamed rehearsed indifference.
Sionu slowed.
This was the edge of the infected zone.
He could feel it.
The hum beneath reality grew louder here, vibrating against his sternum. The electricity in his veins responded, not surging, but listening. Somewhere nearby, SOL was twisted, frayed, being consumed and re-routed by something that wore human skin.
Blitz inhaled slowly. The air thickened just a bit.
Ultimo shifted his weight. The concrete beneath him tightened, like a jaw setting.
A man stepped out of the crowd and noticed them.
Then another.
Whispers started.
"That him?"
"Yo… is that the light dude?"
"Those the ones from the church?"
Phones lifted.
Sionu's stomach clenched.
Visibility.
This was what Kael meant.
He stepped forward anyway.
2) THE FIRST INFECTED THEY DON'T KILL
The infected man stood in the middle of the street like he was waiting.
Mid-thirties. Denim jacket. Blood dried dark along one sleeve. His posture was wrong, spine tilted slightly back, head angled like he was listening to music no one else could hear.
His veins glowed faintly beneath his skin, not bright, not dramatic, just enough to notice once you knew what to look for.
His eyes found Sionu instantly.
And lit up.
"There you are," the man said, smiling wide. Too wide.
The crowd recoiled.
Someone screamed.
A soldier raised his rifle.
Sionu lifted his hand, palm open.
"Don't," he said, not loud, but firm.
The soldier hesitated, confused by the authority in Sionu's tone.
The infected man laughed softly. "They told me you'd feel like that. Like standing near a storm."
Blitz whispered, "Who told you?"
The man's head twitched. "The choir."
Ultimo's jaw tightened. "I don't like that answer."
The infected took a step forward.
Sionu felt the pull immediately, like gravity reversed for a heartbeat. The hunger in the man's SOL tugged at his own, curious, covetous.
Sionu breathed through it.
"You don't have to do this," Sionu said, voice steady despite the tremor in his chest.
The man blinked, confused. "Do what?"
"Feed," Sionu replied.
The word landed heavy.
For a moment, something flickered behind the man's eyes. Pain. Recognition. The ghost of who he used to be.
Then the glow in his veins brightened.
"They said you'd say that," the man murmured. "Said you think you better than us."
Blitz stepped forward, mist curling sharper now. "Nah. He think you still you."
The infected's smile faltered.
Sionu took another step closer.
The electricity inside him stirred, but he didn't let it spill.
He reached out.
Not with power.
With presence.
The man recoiled slightly, like a dog uncertain whether a hand meant comfort or a strike.
Sionu closed his eyes for half a second and did what Kael had taught him.
He asked.
The electricity responded differently this time. Instead of bursting outward, it softened, spreading through the air in a faint, almost invisible lattice. Not a weapon.
A field.
The infected man gasped.
His body convulsed, not violently, but like something inside him had been interrupted mid-bite.
"What… what are you doing?" he rasped.
Sionu opened his eyes. "I'm reminding you how it feels to be whole."
The glow in the man's veins dimmed slightly.
Not gone.
But weakened.
The crowd went silent.
Phones shook.
The soldier lowered his rifle, stunned.
Blitz whispered, barely audible, "Sionu…"
Ultimo stared, awe and fear tangled. "You ain't shocking him."
Sionu shook his head. "I'm grounding him."
The infected collapsed to his knees, gasping, clutching his chest like he'd just surfaced from deep water.
For a moment, it looked like it worked.
Then the ground answered back.
3) THE HUNGER DOESN'T LIKE LOSING
The street cracked.
Not from Ultimo.
From below.
A ripple moved through the asphalt like something massive shifting under skin. Several infected emerged from alleyways and doorways all at once, drawn by the interruption like sharks to blood.
Their eyes locked on Sionu.
Not Blitz.
Not Ultimo.
Him.
The choir.
That's what the man had called it.
A collective hunger.
A soldier shouted, "Multiple hostiles!"
The crowd panicked, scattering.
Blitz cursed. "Too many!"
Ultimo planted his feet. "Then we don't let them rush."
The gravity around him surged, controlled but firm. The ground bowed inward slightly, creating a subtle slope that made forward movement harder.
The infected snarled, slowed but undeterred.
Sionu's heart pounded.
This wasn't a battlefield.
These were people.
People being eaten from the inside.
If he lashed out, he could stop them.
But he could also erase them.
He remembered Kael's warning.
Power remembers.
Blitz moved first.
She slammed her foot down, mist exploding outward in a blinding cloud. Not scalding. Not lethal.
Disorienting.
The infected stumbled, coughing, vision stolen.
Ultimo clenched his fists and pulled.
Not upward.
Inward.
Gravity intensified just enough to pin the infected in place without crushing them, bodies bowing, muscles screaming as the planet suddenly weighed more.
Sionu stepped into the center of it all.
Electricity surged through him, brighter now, but focused.
He raised both hands.
The air vibrated.
"Listen to me!" he shouted.
His voice carried.
Not amplified by tech.
By SOL.
The infected froze.
Not all of them.
But enough.
"You're being fed on," Sionu continued. "Whatever's in you don't care if you live. It only cares if you burn."
One infected screamed, clutching his head. "MAKE IT STOP!"
Sionu felt the pull again, stronger now, the hunger trying to latch on.
He gritted his teeth and shifted tactics.
Instead of pushing outward, he drew the electricity in.
It hurt.
Not physically.
Emotionally.
He felt fragments of чужие memories brush against him. Fear. Rage. Hunger. Confusion. Regret.
His knees buckled.
Blitz shouted his name.
Sionu stayed upright by will alone.
"I can't cure you," he said, voice shaking but unbroken. "But I can give you a moment to choose."
The infected man from earlier looked up at him, tears cutting clean lines through grime on his face.
"I don't want this," he sobbed.
Sionu nodded. "Then hold on."
The electricity flared one final time, not as an attack, but as a stabilizing surge, a temporary dam holding back a flood.
The infected collapsed, breathing hard, veins dim.
The ground relaxed.
Ultimo staggered, sweat pouring down his face.
Blitz dropped the mist and rushed to Sionu, grabbing his arm. "You okay?"
Sionu shook his head. "No."
Then he corrected himself.
"But they are."
For now.
4) THE STATE TAKES NOTES
From a rooftop three blocks away, a long-range camera zoomed in on the scene.
Commander Hale watched in silence as the feed played out on a tablet in his hands. His expression didn't change when the infected fell or when the crowd screamed.
Only when Sionu stood in the center, electricity haloed and restrained, did Hale's eyes narrow.
"He's adapting," Hale murmured.
An aide frowned. "Sir, that looked like containment, not aggression."
Hale nodded. "Exactly."
He looked up at the city skyline.
"He's not a bomb," Hale continued. "He's infrastructure."
The aide swallowed. "Orders?"
Hale didn't answer right away.
"Begin narrative adjustment," he said finally. "If we can't paint him as a weapon… we paint him as a liability."
5) AFTERMATH
The infected were restrained by medics eventually, not soldiers. That alone made headlines later.
The crowd didn't disperse immediately.
They stared at Sionu.
Not cheering.
Not chanting.
Just watching.
A woman stepped forward, clutching a child to her chest.
"Is he gonna be okay?" she asked, nodding toward the collapsed infected.
Sionu hesitated.
"I don't know," he said honestly. "But he's alive."
The woman nodded slowly. "That's more than they been offering."
Someone else spoke. "You from Latvier?"
Sionu nodded.
A murmur rippled through the crowd.
Blitz leaned close. "You just made the church a symbol."
Sionu sighed. "Didn't mean to."
Ultimo muttered, "You keep doing that."
Sirens approached again, closer this time.
Blitz straightened. "We gotta move."
Sionu took one last look at the crowd.
At the fear.
At the hope.
At the impossible weight of being seen.
He turned away.
As they disappeared down a side street, Kaloi's City buzzed louder than before.
Not just with panic.
With argument.
And far below, beyond the streets and the soldiers and the infected, the Event Horizon pulsed again.
Not hungry.
Curious.
The Starborne had chosen mercy.
The universe leaned in, eager to see how long that choice would last.
to be continued...