Chapter nine, The Cycle.

A month had passed since Merit's contact with the mysterious voice.  Heavy rain soaked the muddy streets of Jacklot. Street vendors rushed to cover their machinery from the acidic rain in hope not to lose their only profit in this poor town. The robots' eyes were teary with the impure water as if they were genuine cries of pain echoing from their steely depth.

In the muddy streets, Merit walked with a heavy bag on her back that made her fall deep into mud, but that seemed like the least thing that would concern her. The rain soaked her icy white hair and her shiny eyes lost their glimmer, black circles embraced her weary dim eyes as she walked slowly and silently.

This gloomy state drowning her was only caused by her burden and confusion. The bag on her back was filled with stolen machine parts. She kept wondering if this was the right thing to do, spending a life of stealing to build a new empire she may not even live long enough to see, the mysterious signs of unease disturbing her everyday constantly ever since she lost the camera made her start seeing life from a completely different perspective, a dark one.

Her diaries became more crowded and filled everyday, there were no new notes, there was nothing to fill the emptiness inside her, nothing but a mission after a mission making her grow more bored and less excited about the life she has ahead of her.

"Something feels.. Wrong."

Merit stood in the midst of the rain with people around her running to cover their goods, she kept sniffing the rain as if she'd know what was wrong from it, she kept eyeing the place in a suspecting manner that her legs didn't dare to move an inch, and she was right, something was truly wrong.

There was it...Again.

Merit's dim eyes grew wider in fear, her head spun around and she felt unbalanced, the familiar sight hit her once more, the grey sky turned grim black.

Screaming echoed among the terrified people who left their goods behind and ran like maniacs, yet, Merit remained quite and calm, this time, she decided to conquer her fear and face this nightmare she thought she'd never understand.

"So, that's it.. I knew it. "

Merit felt an unexplained sense of bravery that made her drop her bag and take her note out, avoiding all crowds panic and gluing herself to a wall of an alley as she starred at the black sky beating with a red light each few seconds until a siren turned on.

She scrippled the sky in a messy way and drew everything around her as she anxiously gasped for air and tried to shelter her ear from the noise by her shoulder, her quivering hands made the drawing even sound more creepier and mysterious.

The sky was as black as coal. People's faces were as pale as the moon, they stumbled upon each others in muddy ponds and almost killed each other in attempt to find a shelter in this bleak darkness where only the glitching moon guided them. The sirens grew more ear piercing and unbearable, most importantly, an old memory ravaged through her misty vision.

Merit's eyes strayed away from her note and only starred at the black figures popping out behind each corner in the street. Quietly observing the panic and almost expressionless towards the masses falling over each other like sewer rats, their black hats covered their pale faces but Merit could already see through them. Their iron hands and robotic smiles, their non human attitude and shiny black shoes, she knows all that. It's all familiar.

Merit crawled to the back of the alley as the siren grew louder and louder. The sky kept flickering violently showing static screen and white lights, Merit succumbed to her fear knowing it'd eventually be a dream.

"Impossible" She cried as she took her pen and started drawing the men with black hats and flipped quickly to another page and drew the static sky, and as she did, the countdown was already starting.

"System back again in 10, 9 , 8.."

Heaven knows what mankind is capable to do in their darkest hours. In this absolute madness, a man dragged another one from his collars all the way to the alley where Merit hid herself, the man was screaming gibberish words like a maniac as he held the struggling one, Merit took her note and crawled even further into the darkness, all the way beside the rats and trash with her quivering hands and dizzy vision.

Mankind is a disgraceful one.

Violence fed their untold desires, their cloak of sanity and purity burned in the midst of the unraveling chaos, hiding behind fear as a fortress sheltering them from the outcome of their cruel actions, not only the sky watched.. Merit watched it as well.

"Give me the goddamned keys before I fucking kill you, Jared!!" Screamed the man as he punched the other one that he even fell to the floor.

"They are not mine, I can't do it, let me go" Cried the other one as he sat in a begging gesture asking for his life to be spared.

"If you don't give them to me, we both are doing to die you stupid!! I said give them to me." Said the man as he punched him once more, but this time the other man dared to resist. His fate was sealed.

A punch after another another, blood splattered in the air, slowly, the resistance became non-existant, and the counting was over.

"3, 2, 1, system fully repaired"

Merit closed her eyes tightly avoiding seeing the dead man in front of her, her warm tears flew down her cheeks as she realized that the streets were just as they were before, no screaming, nothing, she opened her eyes and wiped away her tears as she looked in front of her, daring to see the man who was killed, but to her surprise.. He was right by the end of the alley, speaking quietly with his murderer.

Memories are poisonous.

Must always be cleaned.

Again. Merit finds herself somewhere unfamiliar in an unexplained situation, she held her closed note and got up away from the trash cans and the stench of dead cats and rats, she carried the heavy bag again while rubbing her eyes wondering, why is she here? And over all, why does she feel so much uneasiness and disturbance?

As she exited from the alley while fixing her eyes on the muddy rain-soaked ground without paying attention to any passing by cold wind or smelly acidic rain, her heart sinks even deeper into her chest as she sees a few red liquid droplets falling from a robot beside her.

"Familiar" she said as she stopped walking and instead, starred at this malfunctioned robot, she sighed painfully as she tried grabbing the tiniest memory attached to this strange feeling of familiarity towards these liquid drops which sounded weirdly close to blood moved her thoughts around like a whirlwind revolting against her well to leave this place and carry thid weight back to the hideout.

Memories are such a fragile thing. So easy to forget only if one let's go of its importance. Trauma and pain are the worst type of memories, they cling and leech off hearts until they suck their brain dry, some people's mind are trapped within a certain time and day, as the clock ticks, the seconds stay still and the mind suffocates from the monotony of this memory.

Merit suffered from an unexplained type of attachment to a memory, a mixture of nostalgia and pain, hate and Warmness, home and prison. And as an addition to this, her mind now suffers from glitchy memories overlapping each others, a man's death and his resurrection, a black sky and sirens, but it didn't take time till all these memories faded away and only the feeling of confusion attributed to them were washed away. But a certain evidence remained.

Merit headed back to the hideout with a gloomy face. She greeted everyone with a forced exhausted smile till she handed her bag to the overseers who gave her a look of discomfort as usual, now she remembers that she's less than a rat in this gutter, they're only a tool for a purpose. The awareness Merit possessed was only a slow passage to decay. At least the rest of the hideout believed in the cause of this "Organization" but she, she only wanted a shelter and food.

Looking at everyone's faces quietly she spotted a familiar one, a one she feared, it was Elijah.

"Hey, Merit. That was a heavy bag you had." Elijah smiled at Merit who smiled back forcefully.

She nodded instead of answering and went on her way to the room, she felt uneasy and certainly clinging on a feeling of fear of Elijah, and she was right.

Merit walked to the dorm room sighing and waddling like a penguin till she got inside to the empty room, everyone was on a mission to collect something and she was the first to come back. She's said to be the handiest chaser of her age and quite a smart one as well, although she herself doesn't acknowledge that, she definitely isn't convinced of it.

The empty dorm room made Merit quite relaxed. She moved around the long hall among the cramped beds looking at how each bed defined it's occupier, family pictures, painting and music posters. She walked till she reached hers. She stood still looking at its dullness and monotony, how it perfectly reflected her personality, it was late for her to discover how she had nothing on her mind, no colours to define her, no people to look up to, and overall, her personality was something she herself struggled to outline.

She threw herself carelessly on her bed with her muddy clothes as closed her eyes in exhaustion. Her mind was aching with the unexplainable memories that she saw as nothing but a nightmare she had before, could it be that her daydreaming led her mind astray?

"It's exhausting, isn't it?" said a feminine voice which slowly approached Merit who opened her eyes to see its owner.

"What's it?"

"This life..All of it."

"Of course it is, do you expect to be raised in a castle and fed gold? It's the real world."

The voice  belonged to a young Curly-head who hardly talked to Merit, she was called Lydia, she was quite the silent type in the hideout, Merit couldn't care less for this useless conversation.

"It shouldn't be like that." Sighed the girl, Merit still felt uninterested, and so, she didn't reply.

"You know, they executed my father" Lydia said, and Merit couldn't be cruel anymore and slowly got up to face her.

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. He was a worker in the industrial sector, I never knew what happened. Nothing but the letter we were sent. It said that he approached a restricted area..Something called..Corelight I guess."

"Oh..Corelight?"

"Yeah. Do you know anything about it?"

"No..Not really, I'm sorry for your loss"

As the room was filled with girls, Merit's head flooded with headache and disturbance. Corelight ringed a bell in her head, it was like a nagging pain within these distorted thoughts, and the noise inside this room made it even worse.

Merit walked slowly to her cupboard looking for a pill to calm down her exploding head, and as she opens it and looks through the missed up items she scattered, she stumbled upon something that's unfamiliar to her, something that stood out in this dull mess, it was a notebook.

"Jackson..?" she read the name signed at its cover, it said nothing but this name and few other ones that refered to his address.

"It doesn't fit...Nothing fits."

Milasic industries,

Willes Antherford's office.

The strong scent of fancy wine swarmed the room as Antherford stood in front of his glassy window overlooking the city of lights glimmering in front of him. A sip from this reddish liquid made him moan in enjoyment as he lit a cigar, the pleasure of a man standing at the top of a corpse hill was incomparable to anything else in this world. He was burden-free, regret never knew a way into this steel-coated heart. The smoke he blew off represented the sweat of countless workers, blood of martyrs executed and mothers sacrificing their children for the working labor.

A knock on the door disturbed his peace as his brows frowned, he ushered the person to come in.

"What's it, Troy?" He asked as he observed the city quietly.

"It's the control center. They contacted us."

These words sounded as if his assistant, Troy, had poisoned his leisure time with it. He sighed in terrible irritation as he turned off his cigar and sat on his chair facing Troy in an annoyed stance.

"They said that the power we harvested this month wasn't enough. Blackouts are destined to happen soon again."

"Huh? Not enough?" Willes glared at Troy in confusion as he was the carries of this unsettling news.

"Y-yes.." Stuttered Troy in fear, "They said the growing numbers of malfunctioned memories is our fault, and that if we don't do something about it, more energy will be used to repair this eventually leading to another blackout." He continued as Willes glared even more as if he was squeezing Troy for better news, but the truth is, there are no good news.

"So, what choices do we have?"

"I'm afraid it's not good either ways. It's either we eliminate the malfunctioned or sacrifice an element."

"sacrifice an element?! What's this?! A joke?"

"I'm sorry sir.. This is all we have."

Willes sat down muttering and sighing in rage as he kept connecting ideas together to come up with a solution as fast as he can, in his anger, he threw his glass of wine on the bright walls staining it as if it was blood.

"Fine. Kill them. But not just the malfunctioned"

"Do you care to explain?"

"Take out the remote villages..Wipe them! It will save us massive energy..GO!"

Troy didn't have time to think. He kept Willes' words in his head and it caused him nothing but pain and heartache..Willes just ordered a mass Genocide on the poor.

Willes couldn't care less for the souls that would be lost in the process, all that in order to accumulate enough energy to power up the city, strange reality, Isn't it?