Doomsday Wonderland

The road was occupied with overturned vehicles. The asphalt surface was cracked, and there were broken trees littered haphazardly here and there. When Lin Sanjiu reached the foot of the rampart, she raised her head and gazed in a trance at the words on top of the gate. For a moment, she felt that she had transferred into another apocalyptic world.

“Mistral: Sector 9?”

Lin Sanjiu had never heard of a name like this, nor had she ever seen a building such as this before.

Mistral: Sector 9 looked grand and unique, but it wasn’t large. The city walls on both sides were merely a few meters long. It looked similar to a city from ancient times to a certain degree. The only difference was that the spot where the observatory should be was replaced by a train railway.

Inside the outer wall, there was a higher inner wall, which created a unique scene of a castle above a city. The walls were connected by several large cyan stairways, and the entire city looked like a two-storey building.

The surface of the rampart was well polished, which gave the wrong impression that it was carved out directly from a large grey slab. One would only realize that the rampart was built using some weird materials when they went closer. As Lin Sanjiu put her palm on the wall, a ripple formed on the surface. No matter how small an external force, it would be mitigated and dissolved into nothingness.

“Every fortification in every sector of Mistral is built from this material,” Puppeteer’s voice came from behind Lin Sanjiu, snapping her back to reality, “Mistral is a conglomerate consisting of 17 sectors. Sector 9 is the smallest, also far more impoverished than the other sectors.”

‘There is no nation here?’

Lin Sanjiu then lifted her hand from the wall. She still couldn’t come around from the shock. She turned around and looked at Puppeteer. The latter’s eyes stared past her, unblinkingly watching the city. A deadly calmness graced his pale countenance. He looked no different from a dead man. And were it not for the wind-tousled black hair that draped over his shoulder, he looked nothing different from a dead man.

The more calm he looked, the more uneasy Lin Sanjiu felt.

Puppeteer was not a liberal man. It was very unlike him to just let her go. Even though Lin Sanjiu felt guilty for her previous actions, she had no choice but to stay vigilant. After some thought, she asked tentatively, “Should we go in?”

As if he did not hear the question, Puppeteer took a few extra seconds to react before lowering his head and staring at her.

His gaze was still as gloomy as ever, filled with chillness and bereft of any emotion, enough to make Lin Sanjiu’s blood turn cold. However, as Puppeteer’s body quivered, the immense pressure that came along with the gaze disappeared. As if waking up from a dream, Puppeteer recoiled a step back. He looked at Lin Sanjiu inexplicably, moved around her, and went straight into the gate.

From the fleeting glance Puppeteer spared on her, Lin Sanjiu found something different. It wasn’t the same glance he usually threw at her. It seemed like she was now a stranger to him that happened to block his path.

‘He doesn’t recognize me anymore?’

Lin Sanjiu was stunned by the thought. She swallowed the words back into her throat and went after him.

There was a half-meter thick overhead gate in the center of the rampant. It was raised half in the air, leaving a four meters high gap, enough for people and vehicles to pass through. The arterial road outside was destroyed, and the nearest public vehicle to the gate was a damaged grey locomotive that fell from the wall above.

Puppeteer’s pace was quick and light. As if an energetic teenager, his steps were interspersed with short sprints. Lin Sanjiu did not want to lose track of him, so she picked up her speed and went into the gate.

The iron gate was laced with rust, giving it a brown finish. Multiple colonies of mold had settled down in the seam of the gate, and an unknown plant overran the wall. There were puddles of filthy water everywhere on the ground, which contributed a lot to the malodor that filled the air. Since she still needed to keep an eye on Puppeteer, she spread herself too thin that she stepped right into one. The wet sensation around her ankle prompted her to lower down her gaze. When she raised her head once more, she froze.

In the blink of an eye, the man clad in a black leather jacket was gone.

“Dammit! Where has he gone?”

Lin Sanjiu chided and strode out of the gate. She looked to her left and right, but she couldn’t see Puppeteer anywhere.

The gate was connected to several of the city’s central passageways. Asphalt pavements, electric tracks, and green cobblestone pavements were built right next to each other. It looked as though several eras were having a gathering here, and it didn’t look that bad, to be honest. The houses, shops, and erections—all of them were covered in a layer of rust and dust. They all stood stock still, staring quietly at the female intruder that was brave enough to step into their territory.

Lin Sanjiu walked a few steady steps forward. A swirl of wind picked up the leaves and rubbish next to her feet, but Lin Sanjiu saw nobody there.

The Veda had tapped into Puppeteer’s last memory of his world before the apocalypse arrived and made it into a reality. Lin Sanjiu could find no reason behind this action. What would they gain from doing this? Also, it appeared to her that once Puppeteer entered his memory, he would lose his “current self” and return to his old self.

As she pondered, she walked along the electric track, which was already out of function.

The street plan of the inner city had evolved as a series of concentric rings: a massive wall encircling the inner city followed with a crowd of residential houses and a circle of shops. There was, however, a piece of scorched ground that interspersed amongst the rings. The outer city was brimming with the culture that screamed civilians. Every alley and crevice in between two buildings was put to good use. Clothesline, unwanted clothes, piles of rubbish—anything you could think of—could be found everywhere inside the deep alley.

The tacky motel, the suspicious clinic that claimed it could cure all kinds of diseases in the world, possibly low-quality fast food restaurant chains that occupied almost every shop lot on the street… The doomsday had utterly wiped out everything in the impoverished city, leaving nothing but hollow black shells behind.

The strangest thing was that there was nobody around.

The moment the thought surfaced in Lin Sanjiu’s mind, the hair on her back bristled. Her body that had survived countless life or death situations reacted before her mind could. Diving, she leaped out of the electric track and into the green cobblestone pavement. A barrage of attacks soon rained down onto the electronic track, reducing her previous standing spot into a maelstrom of metal scrapes.

Lin Sanjiu did not turn around to see the attacker; instead, she kicked a green billboard on the street into the air. The moment the billboard was in midair, an attack cut it into half. It dropped to the ground with a loud squeal. Using this as a way to divert her foes’ direction, Lin Sanjiu darted into an alley. The attacks stopped.

“She went inside!” Somebody yelled. But Lin Sanjiu couldn’t tell where it came from. “She has gone into the alley, boss. What should we do now?”

“What to do? You’re asking me what to do? If we cannot stop her here, all of us are as good as dead!” The man known as ‘boss’ yelled back in a fury. His voice created an echo that spread through the entire city. “Somebody go and call for reinforcements! The rest stay in your position! We have gone through this thousands of times, and we have killed countless of them! We must take her down here, whatever it takes!”

‘That’s weird…’

Taking cover behind a dumpster, Lin Sanjiu couldn’t help but feel suspicious.

This was merely the embodiment of a fragment of Puppeteer’s memory. Why would the residents here react to her presence? Lin Sanjiu should be a nobody that didn’t exist in this place.

‘Could it be that the Veda turned this place into a self-containing reality? But why are they all showing hostility towards me?’

“Stay in your position! I repeat, stay in your position! Don’t engage her in a tight corner!” The boss gave another command. This time, Lin Sanjiu heard it very clear; the sound had come from midair. And the only spot in Mistral that could provide people with such a position was the inner wall. In other words, they were sniping her from the summit of the wall.

“Lock down that area! Shoot on sight! We cannot let her move to another area! Hold on a little longer. The posthumans will soon be here to assist us!” The boss commanded.

“Yes, sir!” A group of people, at least a dozen of them, responded in unison.

Lin Sanjiu gave a start of surprise and astonishment. She yelled, “Stop! I’m also a Posthuman!”

Her voice was amplified by echoes, resonating loud and clear into the distance. It seemed that the people were stunned by her claim. After a moment of silence, the boss spoke; his voice was more apparent this time as he appeared to be talking through a speaker, “You are also a posthuman?”

“Yes! So stop the attacks!”

“Which sector did you come from?”

Lin Sanjiu came to a mental halt, as she did not know how to respond.

‘How is there any possibility that I would know how many sectors are in here?’ However, as the simple introduction Puppeteer gave came into mind in a splendid clarity, Lin Sanjiu gritted her teeth and yelled, “Sector 17! I came from sector 17!”

“So you are a friend from Sector 17.” The boss seemed slightly relieved, but he did not let down his guard. “What are you doing here? You should be guarding Sector 17 now.”

Lin Sanjiu was delighted that her trickery went well. Somewhat relieved, she yelled back, “My friend is a resident of Sector 9. I’m worried about him, so I came here to search for him.”

Lin Sanjiu would not have the answer if the opposition pressed on and asked her about the identity of the friend she was talking about. She had no idea of Puppeteer’s real name. But luckily, the boss chose to trust her. He asked loudly, “Did you get hurt? My buddies hit pretty hard just now.”

“No, it’s fine,” Lin Sanjiu replied. As she was figuring out what she should say next to fish for more information about this world, the sky over her head dimmed down. It was as if something had blotted out the sun.

Lin Sanjiu raised her head, meeting gazes with a few eyes through the slit between two buildings.

A group of five people silhouetted against the sky. Some of them were males, while the others were females. Each one’s appearance was weirder than the next. They stood atop two buildings, staring down at her. Once they found out that Lin Sanjiu had busted their guise, one of the men smiled, yelling at the same time, “Six, stop chewing the rag with her. We will be taking this Vindice down now.”