Chapter 8: Illegal Alien (6)
"Did you eat something rotten?"
Harune asked in dead earnest.
Kael looked at him.
"No."
"Did ya get exposed to a toxic canister or something? Yesterday's scrap had something mixed in that slowly turns your brain to mush."
"I'm fine."
"Does a fine guy talk about the surface?"
Harune scoffed in utter disbelief.
But as Kael's expression remained unchanged, the amusement slowly faded from his face.
"Are you serious?"
Kael nodded.
The old man took the cigarette out of his mouth.
"Wake up, kid."
Harune sat on an empty box beside a waste heat pipe.
The playfulness was completely gone from his face.
"There's no way up from down here."
"It shouldn't be impossible."
"Every bastard who says that starts out the exact same way."
Harune flicked the tip of his cigarette.
Blue ash fell to the ground, cooling instantly against the rusted floor.
"Oh, it can't be completely impossible! There's got to be a loophole! Someone must have made it up, so I'm gonna be the exception!"
He looked right at Kael.
"And then most of 'em drop dead."
"If it's most, then it isn't all."
"Don't play word games if you want to live long."
"I need to know precisely."
"I'll tell ya precisely then."
Harune leaned forward.
"To climb up, you need to clear the checkpoints. To clear the checkpoints, you need an ID. To get an ID, you need residency. To get residency, you need tax and work records. But to have those… you already need to be registered with the institutions on the surface."
"Hmm."
"Yeah. The bastards up top build the doors for themselves and pass around the keys. Anyone down here gets thrown down before they ever get close."
The old man gave a short laugh.
"What about illegal routes?"
Kael asked.
Harune laughed again.
This time with genuine, bitter disbelief.
"Oh, they exist."
"Where?"
"In the graveyard."
There was still not a trace of humor on Kael's face.
Seeing that the kid wasn't backing down, Harune put the cigarette back in his mouth.
"Transport pipes used by smugglers, sealed elevator shafts, old maintenance tunnels… things like that aren't completely fictional. But obviously, a route like that belongs to someone."
"Gangs?"
"Gangs, Corporate Security, Public Safety Bureau informants, organ traffickers… quite a diverse crowd, isn't it?"
Kael studied Harune's face.
"Have you tried it before?"
The old man didn't answer, merely exhaling a long plume of cigarette smoke.
That silence said it all.
"You failed."
"Way to put it delicately."
"Since you're alive, it wasn't a complete failure."
"Am I supposed to say thank you when you put it like that?"
"If you want to."
"Piss off."
Harune snapped.
Only after a while did he speak again.
"It was a long time ago. I was young back then, and both my eyes were fine. There were guys I used to work with."
"Did you try to go up together?"
"Rather than trying, we believed we could."
Harune tapped his lens with a finger.
"And this is the result."
Kael asked no further questions.
Harune's missing eye, his run-down stall… twelve years stuck on LL-19.
That was all the answer Kael needed.
"Have you ever seen anyone make it up?"
"By legitimate means?"
"By any means."
Harune shook his head.
Then he held up four fingers.
"Never seen it with my own eyes. But I've heard plenty of stories."
"For example?"
"There was a guy who saved up money and bought a fake residency permit. He was dragged away right at the checkpoint and never seen again."
Harune folded one finger down.
"A guy who snuck into a smuggling transport pipe. Word was he got shredded by a waste compactor halfway through."
Second finger.
"A guy registered as a subcontract laborer for a surface corp. He made it up, but three months later he came down as a corpse. Word had it that a few of his organs were missing."
Third finger.
"A guy sold intel to the Public Safety Bureau for a temporary pass. That bastard ended up hanged right here in the Lower Level. Informants don't live long."
Harune lowered his hand.
"Is that enough for you?"
"Not enough."
"Of course it isn't. You've already made up your mind about the answer you want."
Harune continued quietly.
"But that answer doesn't exist. Anyone born in the Lower Level or dropped into it usually ends up dying right here. If you're a little lucky, you die of old age. If you're unlucky, you die young. If you're exceptionally unlucky, you get sold off piece by piece."
"I don't plan on dying here."
The old man quietly stared at Kael.
"I've seen plenty of guys who said that."
"I'm different from them."
"I've heard that line plenty of times, too."
"And?"
"And like I said… most of them died."
Kael had to return; he hadn't survived everything so far only to end up buried in a place like this.
Leon, Eileen, Miria.
He did not even know if they were still alive, nor what had become of his original world after he vanished.
Had he simply been cast out while that hell raged on back home?
He was completely in the dark.
That was why he had to go up.
"There must be a way."
At Kael's words, Harune frowned.
"What did I just tell ya?"
"You said there are no normal ways."
"And I told you the illegal ones will get you killed."
"If there's a path that gets you killed, it means a passage exists."
Harune opened his mouth, then shut it.
He stared at Kael for a long time before finally letting out a defeated sigh.
"Guys like you are the biggest pain in the ass."
"I hear that often."
"And you never bother changing, do you?"
"I haven't felt the need to."
Harune crushed his cigarette against the ground and briefly scanned their surroundings.
They were at the edge of the market where most stalls had already closed for the night.
A few drunken laborers stumbled in the distance, and a small drone slowly drifted past beneath the dim, flickering light.
The old man waited until the drone disappeared… before speaking in an extremely low whisper.
"It's not that there's no way at all."
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