The sun rose over Jinjahan with cruel indifference. Smog clung low to the skyline, stained orange by the mid-afternoon glow. The city never stopped. Never cared. Not even after a massacre.
In every public square, train station, and food stall, The Jinjahan Herald aired its emergency broadcast—its glossy screen flickering with blood-stained headlines and state-sponsored venom.
"REBEL LEADER DANTE ALIGHIERI CONFIRMED DEAD."
"TERRORIST LED BY FORMER OFFICER, MUTANT SYMPATHIZER, AND FOREIGN JOURNALIST."
On screen: Dante's old ID photo, face younger but already wild-eyed.
Then: Kim Taehyung's image—expression flat, uniformed, from his rookie years.
And finally: Aisha Malik, wind-swept hair from her field reports, looking far too proud for the propaganda flashing beneath her.
"Dante Alighieri, born in Rowenna, 1 Hwayeol 1284, executed after confrontation with JPD forces in Sewer District 19-B. His accomplices include Kim Taehyung, born in Iryebin—home of the rare Noctelily flower—on 4 Bitgaram 1288, and Aisha Malik, native of Jinjahan, born 4 Geuul 1280. "All citizens are advised to report sightings. These individuals are armed, dangerous, and in connection with a radical pro-mutant terror network."
The screen flashed their last known photos again. Framed like monsters. Like enemies of the people. While inside a mold-ridden warehouse outside the Slag Quarter, the resistance's last embers flickered.
The eight of them sat around a stolen military ration crate, eyes locked on a portable static-filled screen as the broadcast looped again. Their faces, their names, now etched into enemy history.
Kim shut it off with a smack of his palm. Silence. "We're officially ghosts," he muttered, his voice hoarse.
Aisha sat beside him, jaw clenched. She hadn't spoken since morning. Her eyes were glassy, lips bloodless. Not from fear—from fury.
Toma, sitting cross-legged near a cracked pillar, kept twitching. Every now and then, he'd glance at the others like he was waiting to see them die too.
Finally, Maren—the youngest of the group, a twin-tailed medean girl with burn scars—broke the silence. "So what now? We run forever?"
"Where?" muttered Jevik, the one-eyed zwart with a thick accent. "They've got our names, our faces, our birthdays. They'll scrape every checkpoint, every scan."
Beside him, Azra—stoic, massive, half-deaf—tightened her fists. Her bones cracked like dry wood.
"We could go underground," suggested Lioh, a lanky albino mutant with kinetic lungs. "Like deeper than the sewers. There's a tunnel system under Old Yarth Market. Forgotten routes."
"That's a myth," scoffed Nera, the only one with a tech implant. "And even if it's real, if Vaele wants us dead, he'll find us. Eventually."
Kim stood, rubbing the bridge of his nose. The pressure was building behind his eyes. "We don't run," he said finally.
They all looked at him. Aisha lifted her head, her voice barely a breath. "Then what?"
Kim looked down at her—at the blood on her collar, the fire barely held in her bones.
"We make them pay for Dante," he said. "But smart. No more storming in. No more dying loud."
He turned to the others. "We hit where it hurts. Secrets. Signals. Sabotage. We burn their lies down brick by brick."
Kim stared at the blank screen for a long time after turning it off. The others argued in half-whispers—some wanted to flee, others to fight—but Kim heard none of it.
His mind had drifted, tunneled backward. To the moment it all began. That foggy night. That man in the mask. He hadn't even wanted to follow at first. It felt like a setup. A trap. But there was something in the man's voice—calm, knowing, impossible to ignore. And there he met Dante. Now Dante was gone. But maybe… he wasn't the only one.
Kim's eyes snapped up. "Aisha."
She looked at him, blinking through the haze of grief. "Yeah?"
"Masked Man. The one who told me to find Dante. You know who I'm talking about?"
At first, she didn't respond. Her brows furrowed, like digging through layers of memory. Then—her eyes widened. "Wait… he wore black gloves. Always whispered, never showed his eyes. That guy?"
Kim nodded. "Yeah. That's him."
Aisha leaned forward, energy crawling back into her limbs like old fire finding dry wood. "He's an informant. From District 7—deep industrial zone. Off-limits to most. Real ghost-type. Used to feed me info for exposes… real shady stuff. High-level leaks."
"Does he work for anyone?" asked Nera, interested now. "Or just floats between?"
"No one knows," Aisha said. "Some say he used to be CPG. Others think he's just a madman with too many favors owed."
Kim's fingers drummed the metal table. A spark flickered behind his eyes.
"If he knew Dante's whereabouts… he might know more. Allies. Safehouses. Maybe even the rest of the network."
Azra grunted. "If he's still alive."
"Then we find out," Kim said, standing. "Masked Man brought us to Dante. Maybe now he can bring us to the next step."
"District 7's a fortress," warned Jevik. "Tight as a vault, crawling with drones and private militia. We walk in, we walk into fire."
It took days of crawling through filth and shadows. Every checkpoint bypassed. Every drone dodged. District 7 was more fortress than zone—towers of metal and neon, haunted by corporate war machines and private enforcers. But they made it.
A hidden lift beneath an abandoned steel yard groaned open, revealing a chamber lit in humming blue and red strips. Security eyes blinked silently in every corner. Concrete met server towers humming like nervous hearts.
And standing in the center—cloaked in matte black, face covered by a featureless chrome mask—he waited.
"Welcome," the Masked Man said, voice warped by modulator, metallic and ghost-like. "And… my deepest regrets. Dante was more than a leader. He was the spark."
Kim said nothing. Aisha stepped forward. "We need more than sparks now," she said. "We need an inferno."
The Masked Man turned slightly, the lights reflecting cold off his faceplate. "You'll have it."
The plan was madness. Pure, digital rebellion. As Jinjahan prepared for its Annual Alben Parade—a polished celebration of unity and peace—it would all come undone.
The resistance's tech-heads, under Nera's command, deployed stolen jammers across six city sectors. Satellite links would flicker. Drones would drop. Screens would go black. And in that blackout—truth would be born.
Aisha stood in the center of the studio the Masked Man provided, floodlights dimmed, camera rolling. Her voice was steady, her eyes burning. "I'm Aisha Malik. You know me. You've seen my reports. But what you haven't seen—what they never let you see—is what your government does in the shadows."
Images flared behind her. Hidden labs. Mutant corpses. Torture rooms. Secret prisons. Proof, timestamped, undeniable. "They tell you mutants are dangerous. That black and brown skin breeds chaos. But look closely. Who controls the laws? Who holds the guns? Who gets to walk free?"
She stepped forward. "We are not afraid anymore."
At exactly 21:00, the lights of Jinjahan died. Tower by tower. Street by street. The city fell into ink. Trains halted mid-track. Skyscraper signs blinked off like dead stars. Sirens screamed and then fell silent. Every channel, every broadcast, flipped to Aisha's face. Then… it cut.
Mid-sentence, her voice vanished. The screen cracked into emergency red. Then the government's seal appeared—immediate, suffocating.
"ATTENTION CITIZENS: THE PREVIOUS TRANSMISSION WAS A TERRORIST PROPAGANDA. DO NOT BELIEVE THESE LIES."
"STAY INDOORS. REPORT ALL UNAUTHORIZED MOVEMENT. OBEY CURFEW."
But it was too late. Within minutes, social media surged back through backdoor servers. Drones intercepted fragments of Aisha's message and leaked it further. Encrypted forums exploded. Old resistance cells reactivated. Riots sparked in District 3, 5, and 9. Fires lit rooftops. CPG patrols were ambushed.
Citizens poured out of their homes, shouting Dante's name. Holding signs with Kim and Aisha's faces. Some chanted. Others looted. The city spiraled.
In the chaos, the Masked Man stood at his terminal, his hands spread over a glowing map of Jinjahan erupting in flames.
"This," he said coldly, "is the price of silence."
He turned toward his followers. "I did this. I am the one who blacked out your towers. Who freed your screens. Who showed your truth."
A hiss as he removed the mask—only to reveal another mask beneath, this one white with painted red tears. A symbol, not a face. "I am not your savior," he said. "I am your consequence."
For one breathless moment… silence. No alarms. No sirens. No chatter. Jinjahan stood still, like a beast holding its breath. Then came the scream.
Just one. From a market in District 3. A man shouting racial slurs at a Zwart teenager. The teen snapped back. A shove. A punch. A bottle shattered. That was all it took. The dam exploded. And chaos was born.
The crowd swarmed like hornets. Vendors overturned stalls. Plastic tarp ignited from a tossed flare. Screams drowned the city's air as fists flew in every direction—Zwarten versus Alben, Medean versus anyone that looked too clean, too rich.
A group of mutants cornered a merchant who once sold them tainted food. His pleas were answered with a metal pipe to the jaw. Someone fired a gun. The crowd scattered. Someone else fired back. The crowd returned—with vengeance.
Meanwhile in district 6, an old labor protest turned battlefield. Hundreds of workers with Medean skin, hammers still clutched from the shift, now turned them into weapons. They charged the gates of the Alben-owned factory, chanting names of dead coworkers lost to unsafe conditions.
The guards panicked. Shotguns roared. Blood sprayed on machine parts. Mutant workers lit the fuel lines and grinned. The entire west wing exploded—glass raining like fire.
And in a warzone of privilege. Alben elites hid in luxury towers, watching the riots below like a holovid. But their walls weren't thick enough.
Medean and Zwart mobs broke through security doors with sheer numbers. Screaming filled the penthouses. An Alben man in a silk bathrobe begged for mercy.
He got a shattered TV screen instead. Flames licked the velvet furniture. Looters dragged designer bags through shattered marble halls, laughing with teeth red from blood.
Last to put into chaos, in district 1. A mutant girl, barely fifteen, climbed the golden statue of Jinjahan's first mayor. Her skin flickered with faint electricity. Below her, hundreds cheered. Then jeered. Then fought each other.
The crowd turned on itself—friend against friend, color against color. Trust died faster than breath.
The statue exploded when someone planted C-4 at its base. The girl went with it. Her electricity danced through a dozen bodies like vengeance.
Shadows danced across burning storefronts. Masked youths kicked in glass windows, dragged out crates of food and medicine, and clothes they'll never wear. The banks fell next.
One gang welded the vault door shut just to laugh as Alben bankers screamed inside. Another used a bulldozer to flatten a JPD patrol car mid-drive. The screams from inside didn't stop them.
Helicopters roared overhead. JPD tried to restore order. They were outnumbered, outgunned—and out-hated. Even some cops dropped their badges and ran.