"If you scream, you will draw the attention of the scavengers, and they will tear you apart before the chemical infection can even finish the job," Richter whispered to himself, his voice sounding like dry gravel grinding together.
He lay collapsed on a pile of sodden, oil-stained rags in a discarded iron shipping crate deep within the Slum Sector. The air here was thick with the stench of rotting garbage and sulfur, a far cry from the crisp, industrialized fumes of the Aethelgard Upper Docks. His entire body shivered violently, not just from the biting cold of the midnight draft leaking through the gaps in the metal, but from the searing, absolute agony radiating from his back. The toxic canal had carried his broken form away from the slaughterhouse of Sector 9, throwing him onto a trash heap like common refuse. He had survived the acid, he had survived the current, but now he had to survive the aftermath.
With a monumental effort that caused his vision to black out for several seconds, Richter forced his left arm to move. His right hand was completely useless, a mangled mess of crushed bones and blackened, dead flesh wrapped loosely in a piece of torn cloth he had found on the floor. He could not rely on it. Everything now depended on his remaining hand.
He reached into a small, rusted toolbox he had managed to drag from a nearby scrap heap earlier that evening. His fingers brushed against a spool of thin, discarded copper wiring and a blunt, heavy upholstery needle. There was no medicine here. There were no pain-killing herbs, no sterile bandages, and certainly no clean water.
"You wanted me dead, Galileo," Richter muttered, his teeth clacking together as a fresh wave of feverish heat washed over his skin. "You thought the chemical runoff would dissolve my bones. But I am still breathing."
He hooked the copper wire through the eye of the needle. His hand shook so severely that it took him three agonizing attempts just to thread the metal. The back of his coat had been entirely destroyed by the flaying knife and the acidic steam, leaving the raw, melted skin exposed to the filthy atmosphere of the slums. The acid had successfully cauterized the blood vessels, preventing him from bleeding to death, but the skin was beginning to split apart as he moved. It needed to be closed, or the damp rot of the Slum Sector would claim his life by morning.
Richter reached behind his own back, his left shoulder cracking from the awkward, strained angle. He felt for the edge of the torn flesh along his upper spine. The moment his fingers brushed against the raw tissue, an electric shock of pure pain shot straight to his brain, forcing a muffled choke from his throat. He bit down on a piece of hard rubber tubing he had placed between his teeth to prevent himself from biting his own tongue off.
He pressed the point of the needle into his skin.
The blunt metal resisted at first, bending slightly against the hardened, burned outer layer of the wound. Richter pushed harder, leaning his back against the iron wall of the crate to provide leverage. The needle pierced the flesh with a sickening pop. Richter clamped his jaws tight around the rubber tube, his eyes widening in the darkness as tears of pure, unadulterated torment flooded down his cheeks. He could feel every single millimeter of the wire tracing its way through his nerves as he pulled it taut, drawing the two jagged edges of his skin together.
"One," he counted in his mind, his breaths coming in rapid, shallow wheezes. "Just one. Do it again."
He moved the needle down an inch. The process was agonizingly slow. Without a mirror, he had to rely entirely on his sense of touch, feeling out the gaping tears where Galileo had peeled back his skin. He pushed the needle through a second time, then a third, stitching his own flesh together with the same cold detachment he used to apply to fixing broken steam engines.
Every stitch was a battle against his own body's instinct to pass out. If he lost consciousness now, he would never wake up. The fever would consume him, or the rats would find him before the wire was secure.
"Is someone in there?" a rough, mocking voice suddenly called out from the darkness outside the iron crate.
Richter froze, the needle still embedded halfway through his skin. He held his breath, ignoring the burning fire in his back. He listened carefully to the heavy, uneven footsteps splashing through the mud outside. It was a scrapper, one of the low-level thieves who hunted for copper and dying bodies in the dark alleys of the Slum Sector.
"I see the blood on the floor, mate," the voice continued, closer now. A shadow blocked the dim moonlight filtering through the crate door. "You look like a fresh corpse. Let me see what you have in your pockets."
Richter did not move. He let his body slump forward, lowering his head into the dirt, allowing his useless right hand to dangle limply in plain sight. He made his breathing shallow, mimicking the final moments of a dying beggar.
The scrapper stepped inside, a rusted iron pipe held loosely in his hand. He looked down at Richter's ruined back and the crude copper stitches protruding from the flesh. A look of disgust passed over the thief's dirty face.
"Gods above, you are an ugly one," the scrapper sneered, poking Richter's shoulder with the tip of his pipe. "You look like someone threw you into an industrial furnace and forgot to turn it off. Get up. Give me your boots."
Richter let out a weak, pathetic whine. He slowly looked up, keeping his eyes unfocused and dim. He trembled excessively, letting his jaw slacken as if his mind had been broken by the trauma. "Please," Richter whimpered, using a high, cracking voice that bore no resemblance to the confident tone of the former inventor. "Don't hit me. No money. No boots. Only pain."
The scrapper laughed, a cruel, mocking sound that echoed inside the small crate. He kicked Richter's thigh, not hard enough to break bones, but enough to make Richter roll over into the dirt. "Look at you. A useless, crippled dog. You aren't even worth the effort to kill. Keep your trash, beggar."
The thief turned around and walked away, spitting onto the floor as he exited into the rainy night.
Richter lay in the dirt for a long time, listening until the footsteps vanished completely into the distance. The encounter brought a dark, grim realization to his mind. His old identity was officially dead. Richter, the brilliant partner of Galileo, the co-creator of the revolutionary Cruor-Steam formula, no longer existed. To the world, he was gone. To the people of Aethelgard, he was just another anonymous casualty of the city's ruthless criminal underworld.
"A crippled dog," Richter whispered, a slow, terrible smile breaking through his cracked, bloody lips. "Yes. That is exactly what they will see."
He raised his left hand and grabbed the needle once more. He continued the stitching, his movements faster now, fueled by a cold, calculating rage. He no longer felt the pain as a weakness; he accepted it as a constant reminder of what had been stolen from him.
By the time the first pale, gray light of dawn broke through the pollution clouds of Aethelgard, the wound on his back was fully closed. A jagged, ugly line of twisted copper wire held his flesh together, looking like a monstrous centipede crawling along his spine. He tied off the final knot with his teeth and collapsed back onto the rags, his strength entirely spent.
Months passed in a blur of hunger, fever, and careful observation.
Richter stayed hidden in the deepest shadows of the Slum Sector, allowing his body to heal as much as the hostile environment would permit. His back became a rigid mass of thick, insensitive scar tissue that restricted his movements, making him walk with a pronounced, halting limp. His right hand remained permanently deformed, the fingers clawed and rigid, unable to grasp anything heavier than a piece of bread. He stopped washing his face, allowing dirt and grease to cake into his skin, and he wore a tattered, oversized burlap cloak that hid the monstrous scars on his back.
He spent his days sitting by the corners of the crowded marketplace, watching the couriers and the enforcement squads pass by. He listened to the gossip of the local laborers and the complaints of the merchants.
Every piece of news he gathered confirmed that Galileo had successfully taken full credit for the Cruor-Steam project. The Upper Docks were booming, and Galileo's name was whispered with fear and respect throughout the entire sector. He was becoming a titan, built entirely upon the foundation of Richter's shattered ribs.
"He thinks he won," Richter murmured, watching a pair of Galileo's well-dressed guards push a street vendor into the mud. "He thinks the past is buried in the chemical waste."
Richter reached down and rubbed his stiff, twisted right knee. He knew he could not fight Galileo with physical force. He could not march into Sector 9 with a weapon and expect to survive the small army of mercenaries Galileo had hired with his new wealth. He needed an entry point, a way to slip into the system without anyone recognizing the ghost they had manufactured.
He needed a mask. He needed to become the very thing the scrapper had called him: a helpless, pathetic slave who posed absolutely no threat to anyone.
A commotion at the far end of the market square caught his attention. A group of heavily armed mercenaries was erecting a wooden platform near the main well. They were carrying banners bearing the crest of a local smuggling syndicate, one that operated closely within the gray zones of the shipping lanes.
A large parchment notice was pinned to the center post, attracting a small crowd of desperate, hungry slum-dwellers. Richter slowly stood up, leaning heavily on a piece of discarded timber he used as a walking staff. He dragged his right foot behind him, exaggerating his limp as he blended into the crowd of desperate men.
"Listen up, you scum!" a loud voice boomed from the platform, drawing Richter's eyes to the stage.
A tall, sharp-featured woman dressed in expensive, tailored leather and dark silk stood at the edge of the boards, looking down at the crowd with absolute condescension. It was Ghina, a notorious figure in the black market circles, known for her vicious nature and her immense greed. She held a heavy leather whip in her hand, tapping it against her high leather boots with an impatient, rhythmic click.
"My syndicate is expanding its operations into the lower trade routes," Ghina announced, her eyes scanning the sea of impoverished faces before her. "We need people who can handle the grunt work. People who don't ask questions, people who don't complain about the hours, and most importantly, people who can be replaced without anyone making a fuss."
The crowd murmured, men pushing forward to show off their muscles, desperate for even a single copper coin to buy clean water.
"I am announcing a grand trial," Ghina continued, her voice filled with a cruel, mocking amusement. "A competition to find a new house servant. An elite anjing penjaga who will guard the scrap cargo and do exactly as they are told. The pay is miserable, the food is rotten, but it is better than dying of starvation in the gutters."
Richter stood at the edge of the crowd, his eyes fixed tightly on Ghina's face. He saw the way she looked at the strong, capable men with suspicion, knowing they might try to steal from her or turn on her if the price was right. She didn't want someone strong. She wanted someone she could dominate completely.
"This is it," Richter thought, his fingers tightening around his wooden staff. "This is the door."
He purposely stumbled forward, tripping over a loose stone in the pavement. He let out a loud, pathetic gasp as he crashed heavily onto the floor right at the base of the wooden platform, his burlap cloak flying open to reveal his twisted, clawed right hand and his trembling, frail frame.
The crowd erupted into harsh laughter, stepping back to avoid the clumsy beggar.
Ghina stopped talking, her gaze dropping down to where Richter lay face down in the dirt. She looked at his deformed hand, his dragging leg, and the absolute lack of any threat in his demeanor.
"What do we have here?" Ghina sneered, walking to the edge of the platform and pointing the tip of her whip directly at Richter's head. "Are you actually trying to sign up for my guard squad, you pathetic piece of trash?"
Richter did not look up. He stayed on his knees, his entire body shaking as he raised his ruined right hand in a pleading gesture. "Please, mistress," Richter cried out in his high, pathetic voice, letting his head touch the dirty boots of the guards. "Just a piece of bread. I can clean. I can guard. Nobody notices a shadow."
Ghina stared down at him, a slow, malicious grin spreading across her face as she realized just how easily this creature could be controlled.
Aksara