"Citizen: 73-8C-11, your escape ends now."
Bang!
Reality is often harsher than imagination.
Glad had only made it a few blocks before hitting a dead end in an alley stacked high with discarded construction materials.
Trapped.
A wall of metal blocked every escape route.
Three morality bots glided forward silently, forming a precise semicircle, pinning him against the cold wall. Their top-mounted sensors cast crimson beams, like chains locking him in place, nowhere to run.
In the distance, a squad of heavily armed enforcers in black-and-red uniforms closed in fast.
Leading them was a strikingly tall, athletic woman, her face half-hidden by a high-tech visor, revealing only a taut jawline and sharp lips. Her commanding presence screamed she was no ordinary city enforcer.
Glad couldn't help but let out a bitter laugh.
After twenty-some years of a mediocre life, his "grandest" moment was being hunted down by a warrior straight out of Paradise Island legends.
A rare "honor" most criminals would kill for.
"Citizen: 73-8C-11," the woman spoke, her voice filtered through the visor, stripped of emotion, cold as code. "Your resistance ends here. You've violated Articles 7, 11, and 23 of the Heavenly Morality Code. Surrender and accept standardized correction. It's your only option."
Vrrrm!
The charging lances and injection needles on the morality bots' arms locked onto him.
A dead end. No way out.
"Ends?" Glad echoed softly, as if he'd heard a joke.
"?"
The woman's brows furrowed slightly under her visor.
The man cornered against the wall didn't look desperate. Instead, a sly, almost mocking smile crept across his face.
"Fire!" she barked.
But—
BOOM!
A dull, massive explosion roared to life.
Not from any weapon, but from the metal grate under Glad's feet, which collapsed without warning, revealing a pitch-black hole.
A powerful suction yanked him down, and he vanished in an instant.
"What?!"
"A trap!"
"Evade! Scan the hole!"
The orderly alley erupted into brief chaos. The morality bots scanned the opening while enforcers scrambled for alternate routes.
Then—
BOOM!
An even louder, more destructive blast roared from below the collapsed hole. Scorching air and thick black smoke billowed upward, clearly meant to obliterate the tunnel's structure and stop any immediate pursuit.
The alley filled with dust, the enforcers' comms buzzing with urgent calls and orders.
Glad, of course, was long gone. He was sliding down a steeply angled metal pipe at breakneck speed. The explosion's vibrations rumbled above, but the emperor's personally designed insulation layers absorbed most of the shock.
Only a faint tremor reached him.
The weightless slide lasted minutes until he finally reached his destination: a vast, dim space, damp and tinged with the faint smell of rust.
Area A-312, the sewers.
One of the few blind spots in Heaven's sprawling surveillance network, a glitch left over from early construction and system compatibility issues. A secret passage the resistance had quietly maintained.
Stumbling slightly, Glad steadied himself. His eyes adjusted to the faint glow of emergency lights and trickling water.
He was unharmed, though his adrenaline was still spiking, his heart pounding like a drum.
Scanning the area for morality bots and finding none, he exhaled, then carefully pulled a hand-drawn, plastic-sealed map from his jacket's lining.
Under the dim light, his fingers traced the route to the resistance's secret rendezvous point.
Okay… third fork, turn left, then up a maintenance ladder…
He licked his dry lips, tucked the map away, and started to move.
But before his foot hit the ground—
A calm, almost lazy voice sounded from just behind him. "Judging by that route… you're headed to the resistance base, huh?"
"Yes, sir," Glad answered instinctively, nodding. "We've gotta go through—"
"?!"
That voice.
This place.
How could anyone be here?!
His face paled, and he spun around, pupils shrinking in the dark as he stared at the source.
A figure stepped out from the deep shadows of the pipe he'd just slid down.
A long black trench coat, completely out of place in this world of steel and concrete. The hood was slightly up, obscuring part of the face, but in the faint light, Glad caught a faint, unreadable smirk.
Him?!
The stranger from this morning, the one he'd glimpsed under the execution platform in Central Square, who'd vanished into the crowd like a ghost!
"You?!" Glad's voice echoed sharply in the empty sewer.
---
Lock had been in this strange world for a full day now.
As a mature adult, he lived by one rule: see it with your own eyes, verify it yourself.
Despite Jorno's detailed and shocking explanations, Lock chose to take it slow, to measure this so-called "Heaven" with his own eyes and heart.
He'd appeared that morning atop a skyscraper, his gaze cutting through thin clouds to take in the city below.
Countless sharp-edged buildings stood in perfect rows, like a giant's building blocks, reflecting cold, uniform light. Wide roads crisscrossed, dividing the city into neat grids. Capsule trains floated above, gliding silently on invisible tracks with flawless precision.
On the streets, throngs of people in gray-blue uniforms moved like worker ants, a silent, relentless tide.
Lock sighed, his form flickering like a breeze, landing silently on a residential rooftop. Using Star Platinum, he heightened his senses.
But he heard no family chatter, only stifled breathing. No smell of breakfast, just disinfectant.
Following a young man named Glad through the day, Lock watched from the shadows outside a narrow window, seeing the numbness on Glad's face. Then he glanced at the screen displaying a familiar yet alien "emperor."
Lock reached a conclusion.
This place was shrouded in something intangible yet heavy, pressing down on every person, every home, every inch of space.
Not anger, not sadness, not even numbness.
It was… control.
A bone-deep, instinctive control, dictating every word, every action.
Lock's brows furrowed, a complex feeling stirring in his chest.
He wasn't judging the morality of this society—civilizations could take many forms, and this hyper-orderly existence wasn't inherently right or wrong.
But Lock felt a deep confusion, tinged with… disappointment.
Clark, his nephew, carried the warmth of the sun, the purest kindness. Raised with love, trust, and care, he was meant to create a world of hope and freedom, where people could breathe easy and smile.
Even if Jonathan and Martha died that rainy night, Jorno said this world's Clark was raised by Lock.
So what—or who—created a ruler who built a place like this?
Gazing at the cold, perfect city below, Lock sighed silently.
This was one hell of a heavy, impossible puzzle.
But for now…
His sharp eyes locked onto the small figure darting out the door and vanishing around a corner.
Time to take a closer look.
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