Chapter Ten, The Cycle.

Ticking of the clocks and twitching of the machines' hands all work together to accomplish greatness for some, but also, to accomplish misery and poverty for another.

Acidic rain pours down on each muddy shoulder and the steamy air suffocates every breathing lung. When you're at the depth of hell, you can never tell what heaven is. And that's why hardly anyone rebelled. They thought that this is mercy, that the few coins their masters threw monthly at them were a heavenly gift they are grateful for, Its their well that keeps them pumping life into a dead world in hope to create a new lively one.

Back at the dorm room where Merit lied on her bed holding an old notebook, a diary, that belonged to someone she feels she could remember. The noise of the happy girls made her ears buzzing and there was nothing sh can do to silent them, they were her source of annoyance, but also, her reason to compete.

"Jackson is a very familiar name. Even the cover itself looks familiar. Do you agree, Elvey?" Merit asked Elvey who popped up out of her pocket to see it. He twitched his head right and left reading through the few words on it, he then looked at her and gave a nod of agreement.

"Can't you remember it?"

"A little bit I think.."

"Well, it was in your bag before you came here."

Merit tightened her eyes and kept squeezing her head hopefully till she remembered it, and quickly, she hit her head with her palm. "Yes! I stole it with the man's bag!" She said, going through the pages quickly to refresh her memory.

"But..How did it get here?" She asked Elvey.

"You must have had it since you came here..You just don't remember."

"What's wrong with my memory these days? Ugh" She said, "Hopefully next time I'll open this cupboard to find a family as well." She laughed but Elvey couldn't laugh as well..It wasn't a type of joke to laugh to.

"Let's read it?" She asked Elvey but but before he could answer her, the dorm room door was kicked upon quickly as two guards and the main instructor got in.

All the girls had their mouses tightly shut as they Jumpd off their beds and stood straight.

The instructor was a fearsome lady who was known to have a huge collection of leashes in her office that left quite a remarkable sign on each of these girls, she was huge and fat and wore a manly suit that seemed as if she was about to burst out of it, she tightly pulled her hair backward in a ponytail that showed her withdrawing hairline and at last, glasses decorated this grim face.

"I'll cut straight to the point." She said with her thick voice that pierced through everyone's ears.

"One of you, a little filth in here, Faked her signing to her last mission and her acquired items are nowhere to be found, I wonder which one of you dared to do that" The instructor moved slowly among the beds looking at each girl deep in her eyes with suspension and disgust. Merit wasn't afraid. She knew it wasn't her fault, and it wasn't the first it happened.

"I'll give you a minute to come out." She said, standing at the door and holding her pocket watch, and as the minute started, all girls started to look at each other, sweating and stuttering nervously waiting for the girl, which they all apparently knew, to come out.

They all looked at here. A brown-haired short one with bright hazel eyes. She hesitated to take the first move as the instructor kept counting the remaining ten seconds.

"10..9...8.."

As the girl felt the pressure break her apart, she took the first step, but, it was futile as another one took two steps ahead of her. It was Lydia.

Lydia courageously walked forward to the instructor, Merit looked with her eyes wide opened, "Stupid.." She muttered as the guards took her out.

"Your friend wasn't the first, but surely, she'll be the last."

The instructor followed Lydia out and the girls breathed again as if she was suffocating them. Sighs of relief echoed across the room and everyone went back to their beds and whatever they were doing except Merit and the wronged girl.

Merit froze in her place eyeing this one girl in mixed emotions, it was disgust and admiration. Disgust for letting Lydia take the beating for her and admiration for her rebellious acts. Merit hated the fact Lydia acted brave, Merit wasn't familiar with the act of sacrifice neither she was familiar with the reason driving such actions.

The dorm room had the dim light of the candles Darken the girls grim faces. Some of them laughed and played, others silently listened to the rain drops hitting the ceramic ground of the exterior of the hideout. They couldn't see it, there was no sunlight in this place, in fact, for the past few months, hardly any sunlight blessed these ruthless lands.

Merit's fear of the instructor made her forget the diary she had, she slept above it resting with her eyes focused on the cracked ceiling, the bell rang and the girls laughs were gone within a second, Merit felt her back hurt as if she was a sixty years old woman. She got up and smelled her sweaty and muddy clothes and looked at her messy hair realizing at how painful this life was, and overall, she couldn't help but think of Lydia and how the leash will have its own new signature on the girl's back tonight.

It brought painful memories back.

"All this so you could meet him, Anysa?" Giggled the girls in the corner as they talked to the girl who couldn't surrender to the instructor who looked shameless and guilt-free, Merit couldn't help but eye her in disgust as she walked out of the room carring her winter coat on her back.

"Girls are awful." Sighed Merit.

"Not just girls, humans, all of them." She continued as she hurried through the main hall making sure to avoid Elijah at any cost.

"Are you awful too, Merit?" Asked Elvey who popped out of her pocket.

Silence went on for a moment as Elevy thought Merit was ignoring that question, but he was wrong.

"Yes, I am." She laughed.

The ranking board was hung high on the ceiling of the hall. Merit allowed herself to take a look only to find herself placed as the 17th this week.

"17 out of 500?!" She gritted her teeth angrily as a hand touched her shoulder disturbing her rage.

"Low..So low" Laughed a familiar voice beside of her, it was Elijah mocking her rank as he looked to find himself in the top five.

Merit took the offense and didn't answer, instead, she quickly grabbed his hand and swiped it off her shoulder with a raging expression.

"We'll see about that" She told him as she quickly left him announcing the reality of the competition between them, Merit acknowledged the spark of hatred between them, and finally, she wasn't going to hide it.

Merit went and signed her name at the assignments cabinet and took her bag, she found that she's assigned to keep picking even more machine parts, it was the most painful and exhausting assignments in this place.

"I keep grinding myself for even more power to go on and still find myself at the bottom? What the fuck is wrong with this place." She muttered to herself as she walked out if the hideout through the elevators and landed in Humberback, the oldest area in the empire.

It was a gloomy day befitting to the mood of the young girl. Skies were thickened by the poisonous smoke and the sun was hiding behind that layer of complete darkness. The acidic rain kept falling down in an attempt to wash away the city from its impurities but even that rain was an impurity the city created.

The ground in Humberback was old and cracked making Merit's ankle almost break as she carried the heavy weight on her shoulders. The street she walked in had the oldest houses, the Crumbling old woody ones with the sorceress and black magic charms hanging on each black house.

The smell of mud and fuel turned over Merit's stomach making her want to puke the cookie she ate in the morning, but as she walked with her eyes glued to the ground, a familiar smell mixed with a new one broke through the street and went to her nose making her stand still and move her eyes through the street for its source.

It was the smell of hot chocolate drink and freshly baked cinnamon cake all with an odd smell of spices and ingredients that are new to her. These smells made her nose go crazy and she felt the urge to break through the place where that smell came from.

She stood and took a breath to purify these smoke-filled lungs, that smell flooded her insides with warmness and nostalgia, and she finally traced the smell to an old wooden house fortified by ancient charms and had eyes painted all over the porch.

It was strange for her to bring herself into knocking on a stranger's door, but, to her surprise the door was half opened which let her slip in without any consideration for the consequences.

The house had nothing but candlelight to guide her in. Through the small corridor she found herself inside a crowded house with old dusty furniture that had old ornaments and mats that hardly anyone used anymore.

The essence of this house echoed nostalgia within Merit but the silence within it gave her a warning to leave, but the smell grabbed her steadily and pushed her inside to follow the smell once again.

That unexplained mixture of wizardly spices and motherly cake could make the sanest go mad. Merit found herself in the old kitchen standing in front of a fire oven baking nothing but two small cinnamon cakes with no one watching them.

Merit used the heat to heal her shaky body from the icy weather as she moved around the kitchen slowly observing the countless spices and ingredients that were spread all over the kitchen with different colours and smells.

"Isn't that enough for today's tour?"

The old voice reached Merit from the living room. It belonged to an old female which Merit was terrified to see.

"Don't be shy little girl. Come, let me see your face." Said the old lady ushering Merit to go to see her.

Merit took off her winter coat and heavy bag and walked across the crowded furniture to see a figure sitting by the fireplace on a rocking chair sewing a scarf, due to the darkness folding this room Merit had to close in slowly to see who she was talking to until she finally did.

"Long time no see, Merit."

Colliers town, the far edge of the empire.

Colliners was the end of the living lands, hardly populated and hardly beating with any means for life, this town was forsaken by the authorities and swallowed by gangsters wars and unsettling activities which everyone acted blind to.

In a small office at the top of an old mansion under the white lights an old man shouted with all of his might at someone standing at the door approaching him slowly.

"There's nothing I can do to stop this. You either come with me or you stay here in rot this place with no ashes to bury." The man said as he approached him and the white lights showed who this man. No one but Antherford's right hand man, Troy, who wore a coat with hood covering almost his entire face.

"I'm not forced to leave behind everything I've built over the ages over someone's cruel ambitions." Sighed the man as he calmed down and sat back again on his glorious chair as a samurai sword was decorating this old fancy gang leader room. With gold and red ceiling and walls and many stolen paintings that made the room stand out as a genuine gang leader room..

The old wrinkled skin had faded dragon tattoos and ancient words of wisdom that befitted an old gangster. Someone that fought many filthy battles folded away from history pages, that man was Wilkins, the oldest gang leader in Colliers town, with Troy fighting his will to stay, he still holds his decision to die within his home's arms.

"So, this is it?"

"Yes, you've been kind to me for such a long time, Troy. But a man's loyalty always bounds him to his homeland."

"What about the rest?"

"We share the same passion for loyalty just like we share the same passion for bloodlust, young man. As for Jenne, she's all yours. Take her before its too late."

"Fine then. As you wish, Wilkins. Just as stubborn as you always have been, I'll leave you be. Jenne will be in safe hands."

"I trust you to make her forget. To make her heal and always trust my decisions, I gave you the most precious thing a man could ever posses, and I know you'll keep her safe."

"I'll do anything to keep her safe. I don't want you to worry."

The old man shedded a tear as he watched the old town with the few lights lit at the midnight mist, "So this is it, Colliers?" He said as he wiped his tear with a quivering hand, "After all of these years, they wipe us out like that?" He said as as he kept tracing lines on the glassy window with a broken pitiful smile that was met with a sympathetic one from Troy who could do nothing but watch silently.

"Our souls are cheap, this empire values no one but the energy they salvage from the workers sweat, Go Troy..Go."