Soulless Soul

Chapter 3: Wandering Soul

"Alright. Down to business."

The officer sat back down, balancing the heavy tablet across his knees. The holding cell fell dead quiet. The chaotic blare of the street sirens had finally bled away into the thick city fog, leaving no background noise to hide behind. There was only the faint, rhythmic buzz of the overhead fluorescent tubes and the slow, steady drip of dirty rainwater pooling from Sky’s tunic onto the cold concrete floor.

"Can you still hear the voice?"

Sky blinked, staring at the small puddle between his bare feet. He’d almost forgotten it was there. For the last ten minutes, the sheer exhaustion of being hunted had numbly pushed it into the background.

"Yes," he said, his voice raw. "But it’s getting low."

A week ago, it was screaming—an agonizing, white-hot screech that tore through his skull, keeping him awake until his eyes bled from sleep deprivation. A month ago, it had been a relentless, oily whisper at the back of his mind that wouldn’t stop, no matter how many back-alley pills he swallowed. Now? It was as if someone had turned the volume knob down and was slowly walking away into a long hallway. It was faint and distant, like a speaker that used to be pressed directly against his eardrum was now playing in an empty room three doors down. It remained a low-frequency vibration in his teeth, but the words themselves were dissolving.

The officer frowned, the lines on his forehead deepening as he tapped a stylus against the metal edge of his tablet. "Looks like we’re running out of time."

"Time for what?"

"Time before it pulls you anyway, whether we’re ready or not. The latency period is closing." He tapped the tablet off, the blue glow vanishing from his face. He looked at Skies properly for the first time since the guards had dragged him in. It wasn’t the look he usually gave the gutter-rats or the low-level runners who cycled through these holding cells. He wasn’t looking at a problem anymore. He was looking at a person—someone about to step off a ledge.

"So. What’s your name?"

Sky hesitated. The silence stretched between them, heavy and damp. He felt the phantom itch of the voice try to answer for him, but he clamped down on it.

"Skies."

"Skies?" The officer raised a graying eyebrow. "What kind of name is that? Plural?"

"The only unique thing my parents left me in this world," Skysaid quietly. He glanced toward the high, barred window where the city pollution stained the clouds, then shrugged, the damp fabric of his clothes sticking to his collarbone. "So, that’s what I go by."

The officer didn’t laugh. He didn’t even smirk. He just gave a slow, solemn nod, as if he understood the exact weight of a dead parent’s parting whim.

"Fair enough, Skies. Let’s talk reality. How much do you actually know about the dungeon array? And I don’t mean the romanticized crap they tell in the back alleys to scare kids or recruit street gangs."

Sky scratched his neck, leaving a streak of grey grime against his skin. "Uh... the basics, I guess. I get targeted by a beacon. I get sent to an instance—a dungeon run. I challenge it and fight whatever horrors are inside. If I win, I come back with a few scars and maybe enhanced attributes?"

"That’s the main theme, yeah. That’s the propaganda version." The officer leaned back in his creaking metal chair, crossing his arms over his tactical vest. "But that’s not all of it. Not even close. The array doesn’t care about a fair fight, kid."

The voice in Sky’s head suddenly buzzed, a sharp spike of static that made his left eye twitch before it dipped again. Fainter still. A dying signal.

"Listen," the officer said, leaning forward. His voice dropped to a harsh whisper that barely carried over the hum of the lights. "And listen very well, because I won’t get to say this twice. The recorders on these walls log everything, but they’ll scrub this file if you drop."

Sky nodded, his entire body tensing.

"You’re right about the first part. You will be sent to a dungeon run. The array will claim its tithe. But it’s not like the retro hologames you see the rich kids playing uptown. You don’t just spawn into a safe zone, kill ten rats with a wooden sword, loot a shiny chest, and walk out with your pockets full."

"Oh?"

The voice was almost gone now. Just a faint, hollow hum at the edge of his hearing, like an old lightbulb filament vibrating right before it snaps into total darkness.

"No," the officer continued, his eyes locked onto Sky’s. "When you go in, your biological life gets digitized. Recorded. Literally. Everything you are is quantified by the interface. Health, stamina, physical injuries, cognitive stress. And once that numerical value runs out—you’re dead. For real. There’s no respawn screen. No second life. Your body here turns to ash, and whatever you were becomes fuel for the gate."

Sky’s stomach dropped, a cold stone falling through his chest. The abstract fear of the "dungeon" suddenly became terrifyingly mechanical.

"So make sure you don’t let your health bar run out. No matter what happens in there, kid." The officer’s voice cracked a little at the end, a sudden flash of raw vulnerability breaking through his professional armor. He cleared his throat quickly, rubbing a hand over his tired face. "Please. I’m begging you, Skies. I don’t want a localized dungeon gate opening up in the middle of Sector 4 because some stubborn kid didn’t watch his HP. I can’t fight those things. The department doesn’t equip us for it. I’m just a logistics officer. I’m not an Awakened."

Sky stared, his mind racing to process the terminology. "An actual health bar? Like a floating UI?" "Yeah. First thing you do when your feet hit the ground over there—check your Array. Don’t look at the sky, don’t look at the monsters. Check your runes. It should pop up on its own the second your consciousness stabilizes. If you’re lucky, you’ll have a decent base health pool. Maybe an armor bar too, if your mental fortitude is high enough. Maybe standard attributes. It all depends on the array’s initial scan and what it thinks of your potential."

The hum in Sky’s ears was barely there now—a microscopic whisper of white noise.

"Sir," Sky said, cutting across the officer’s explanation. His breath hitched. "The voice. It’s dying down completely. It’s... it’s stopping."

The officer sighed—a long, heavy breath that tasted of stale coffee and cheap tobacco.

"Yeah. The tether is locking in. That’s all the advice I’m legally—and physically—able to give you. If you’d come into the station a month ago when the whispers first started, we could’ve processed you properly. We could’ve given you preparatory classes. Tactical training. High-grade survival gear. Heck, even a hot bath and a decent meal." He gestured at Sky’s muddy, torn tunic with a tired, melancholic smile. "But now? The bureaucracy is too slow, and your timer is at zero. Son... God be with you."

"Thanks," Sky said. And he actually managed to smile back. It wasn’t because he was happy, brave, or ready, but simply because his muscles were frozen with fear, and he didn’t know what else to do with his face.

The heavy security door hissed open. Two towering guards stepped into the cell, one of them carrying a sterile metal tray. On it sat a heavy, pneumatic syringe filled with a thick, clear liquid. It looked bitterly cold even from a distance.

"Lie down," the officer instructed softly, turning his face back to his tablet.

Skymoved like a mechanical doll, climbing onto the thin, vinyl-covered cot. The guards worked in practiced, silent tandem, strapping his wrists to the frame. It wasn’t painfully tight, but it provided enough secure leverage to ensure he couldn’t thrash when the neurological shock hit.

The first needle went deep into the vein of his forearm—a sharp pinch followed by a rush of liquid ice that froze his blood. A second later, another needle punched into his shoulder. The liquid there felt like fire, blooming outward through his organs until the clashing sensations canceled each other out into a terrifying, numb nothingness.

The officer stepped out, and the heavy pneumatic seals of the door locked into place, plunging Skies into a silent, dreamless dark.

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