Prologue: Manifestation

Black, heavy darkness surrounded me. I was engulfed in the color of despair.

Solitude.

I had fallen into the deepest end; a place to find, but nowhere to depart. Here, I noticed an entity. It found me, guided me, and unraveled its principles through my mind.

Singularity.

It stood there, like a sphere of condensed manifestations waiting to be opened. And so I grabbed it. When I did, its structure collapsed, and it seeped into my skin. It travelled into my body where it circulated throughout my veins.

Opening, loading, it revealed the true intention.

Greed.

I wanted more. The feeling was immense, and my emotions too.

Where was I again?

I looked around me; gloomy shadows tied around my body.

"This must be a dream," I spoke aloud. My voice echoed forwards, but backwards at the same time. I noticed my sound reverberating through the thin air that enclosed my dimming vision.

Liberation.

It had been three months since we all escaped A.X.A.'s underground facility. It was to my surprise that we'd all make it out alive. But I'm glad we did. The group has held on tightly ever since the scents of strelitzias.

The smell of freedom.

We were suddenly exposed to an open world of unknowns, other than the half of us with our half-assembled memories. We only knew a few clues: districts, the sun, and the Cardinal Nexus—our government. But knowing that we were convicts, we chose not to abide by the rules. We were taken by A.X.A. for a reason—we were irregularities. We were labeled as misfits of society, so why would we allow them to lead us after being gone for so long? We wouldn't. Again, we were convicts.

{ LEVEL 1 THREAT: EMERGENCY }

We'd been bolded by the highest threat level imaginable. Public enemy number one—that was us. The Nexus had even put a death sentence over our heads—not because we threatened the country, but because we scared them with our revelation.

They only believed that we threatened them.

"Make it a reality then," Venus had told me. I was skeptical, but I held some resentment towards the public eye that looked at us with suspicion. It was like looking at a newborn child and fearing them for the atrocities they could do once they grew up.

"Why not? Might as well take advantage of the power they'd bestowed us." I devised my plans.

The belief that we threatened the public was going to become a reality, but the public could only blame their own insecurities.

By now, we'd reached the three month mark, but we still have yet to be caught. We've been in and out of districts, but with only our capabilities being exposed, we couldn't even fear being recognized. Whoever had leaked our documents to the public prior to our escape had not thought it through. Our names, our genders, and our physical descriptions were missing from that 'Forbidden Document'. The public only had our abilities to fear. But it was the unknown variables that invoked even more fear.

I understood it now. The public was truly the embodiment of 'fear the worst'. But whether that 'worst' was to come or not was completely up to us. We'd been given all the power to control the tides of this country. The potential was gathered into our hands, or rather, my palm.

"Just know that I won't listen to any of you imbeciles. Not unless the instruction's from Midas…" Venus' statement shocked the ears of everyone in the room. They all turned towards me, but they nodded in agreement.

"Midas was the one who devised our escape plan after all…"

"Right? I wouldn't mind appointing him our leader." Veronica's voice was suddenly loud with its words.

"Leader…?" Ian lowered his face with skepticism.

I gulped.

He lifted his face with approval. "Sure."

Suddenly everyone in the room was looking at me, ready to hear my next instruction. The power in my mind grew. I even felt my hand itch with the emotional energy from myself alone.

"Okay." I raised my authority. "Everyone listen…"

They had been listening since the exposition of our kidnappings back at A.X.A. We were in a tight boundary, set against our wills for months, and even years. But we overcame those Overseers with my ideas, and moved up towards the surface.

Outside where the sky was colored and the air was lighter, we had no sense of security. Although we were being held against our control, the containment cells were somewhat cozy. Cozier than being out in a world you'd forgotten. But with the remnants remaining of our withered minds, we managed. We'd even found a place to accommodate. It was both small, but large, and we'd come across the area by complete chance.

Situated, at last.

We've been free for some time now, but we've chosen a direction from which we can never turn back on. We were the menaces of society, and they'd even labeled us by the infamous classifications—the Seven Sins.

I smiled when I saw this. We all did.

"They fear us that much? How pitiable."

We'd all been given an unexpected sense of strength; judgement over those that quavered. We could decide fates with our rejuvenated hands and eyes, while their eyes darted, and their hands trembled.

Innocents. These people that feared us were all innocent. That was my initial sympathetic train of thought. It reminded me of the pitiable face I'd seen on the way up from A.X.A.

"KILL ME."

Pluto was innocent, and lost with his mind. An innocent soul like his didn't deserve to suffer the way he did. No existing innocent life deserves to suffer when they haven't attributed to it.

But we all suffered tremendously too. The only difference was that we did, apparently, attribute to it.

Irregularities.

We properly learned of those once exposed to the real world through the countless broadcasts being shown on the massive screens. An irregularity was what an individual who disobeyed the law was called. At least, that's the conclusion I'd drawn from it. From every example of an irregularity I'd seen on broadcast, all of them had committed a crime of some sort, being labeled alongside a threat level.

It was very dehumanizing.

The public masses looked at all these "irregularities" of people like animals who'd broken out of their cage. To me, this was a disgusting thought process. I could only imagine how we were looked at when we'd simply escaped with our lives from A.X.A.'s labs. "Escapees", "convicts", "dangerous individuals", the list of labels went on forever. There was no warm welcome back to the society of districts. The air was colder up here, denser with the tension of fear and disdain. It was a freezing revelation, but one we all should have expected. We wouldn't be welcomed back with open arms no matter whether we were escapees or not. Even before our kidnappings, we were already irregularities to begin with. That's why we'd been taken.

The blank space that remains are these irregularities themselves. Each one of us has wondered what irregularities we'd performed to earn us a spot in A.X.A. in the first place. We all claim that we are clueless, but I have the suspicion that some among us are informed. Veronica and Gian-Luca did have memory reformations just as I did, but no lips have spoken of irregularity relations just yet.

I myself do not know my own. My memories have cut off since the refraction of red light; the red sun's glow shining on my dozing face.

The Blood Moon.

With that image being my lasting memory from a life divided from now, it'd stuck by me and intrigued my ongoing thought.

What was the "Moon"?

Mr. C had given me his monologue on the matter. "Long ago, there once existed another sphere that panned the sky, but it wasn't the sun."

"Another sphere?" I had asked.

"It was called the Moon. Like the sun, the Moon emitted a bright circular light. But unlike the sun, the Moon only appeared at night."

How could this have been possible? From what I'd remembered in my curious days as an innocent Nexi, I performed endless research on the history of the country. Not once did the mention of a "Moon" ever appear. For some reason though my teacher, Mr. C, knew too much about it.

"The Moon is from a time before the Cardinal Nexus took control."

That was a really long time ago. According to my research, the Cardinal Nexus had established its power in 2060.

It was now the year 2158. It's been nearly a century.

I'd thought about this for all too long. Why did my simple teacher know of a non-existing historical event that happened too many years ago?

I might have already been given the answer to that question.

Returning to the moment, the blink of expansion; blood splattering the walls.

—The moment of Overseer Chamuel's death.

When I stood over his decapitated body while dangling the keys of freedom, I was reminded of an aura all too familiar to my past.

I was given the momentary relation; Mr. C was Overseer Chamuel.

The two spoke the same, thought the same, and even looked the same. But the most uncanny resemblance of all was their perfect ability to "guess" our minds. Mr. C never missed his assumptions on my classmates by even a near margin. He was always dead-on. This made sense to me now. It was his All-Seeing-Vision; the unparalleled form of clairvoyance he bore that no other mind could out-read.

What was an Overseer from A.X.A. like Chamuel doing up on the surface as a teacher?

What was an Overseer?

What was A.X.A.?

Why were they kidnapping irregularities and inducing their amnesiac bodies with powers?

There were too many blanks, too many unanswered questions, and too many unknown motives.

None of it added up to me. The world on the surface led by the Cardinal Nexus was so much more different. The technology between the surface and A.X.A. didn't even align. A.X.A.'s technology was 100 years ahead of them.

Where did their advanced sciences come from, and why did only they possess it?

Just when I'd thought that things were adding up, my mind relapsed and collapsed on itself with the blanks that piled up over time.

"IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!" I screamed into the void. The echoes wrapped around and bounced right back towards me, piercing my heart from all directions.

The pain from this uddering shock opened my eyes; I was suddenly invoked with a memory.

"Dexus are able to make contracts with partners from the Cardinal Nexus."

"You're partnered with someone from the Cardinal Nexus?" I had asked in response to Mr. C.

"Midas, as a teacher, it is necessary for us to receive bypasses to certain laws so we can teach you young Nexi!"

That was Chamuel's way of telling me that yes, he was partnered with someone from the Cardinal Nexus.

How could an Overseer from the underground world of A.X.A. find a connection with the Cardinal Nexus on the surface?

I thought about it. It clicked in my head.

"There must be a mole in the government..." An individual from A.X.A. planted in the Cardinal Nexus. How else would Chamuel have been given the privilege to become a teacher?

My own sentiment was starting to grow. My greed for knowledge scratched at my spine. I was paralyzed by the thought of uncovering these mysteries behind the so-called "Moon" and its origins. Mr. C, Chamuel, clearly knew lots about it, but he died by Venus' hands. If I could interrogate a dead soul I would, just for the sake of my own sanity. I wanted to know the details behind this erased past. I needed to know how A.X.A.'s overly advanced technology came to be. I would not stop until I fulfill my growing desire for knowledge. This everlasting greed for insight on all that has existed and all that will exist will be the death of me.

But I will not die until I uncover this truth I have chosen.

My first clue starts with Mr. Chamuel's words. They've directed me at a hint that in the government lies a connection to A.X.A. With Chamuel and his knowledge now gone from this world, I must find the next source of information that I can. To do this, I must get the Cardinal Nexus' attention and lead on this individual.

I will use any means necessary.

The Sin of Greed compels me.