Part I – Farewell & The Road East
The morning before Kaodin left CSDS, the sky above the dome, he has a strange feeling yet unable to find an appropriate words to describe, as a shimmered, fractured sky that felt so Gloomy, with a wave of dark greyish clouds hovering toward the northeast.
The wind carried the faintest tang of oxidized iron and burnt polymer.
Every breath tasted faintly metallic.
And that reminds me of how Cee-Too used to warn me about how I like to breathe the morning air. a strange trait regular people wouldn't dare try, fearing permanent respiratory damage. And that's why I would jolt every time his words popped into my head.
Cee-Ar-Tee's footsteps echoed behind him as he walked through the cracked perimeter leading toward the outer, currently partially damaged wall.
"You'll take the eastern corridor," he said. "We've cleared most of the CCs in the 2 km proximity. Still, be extra cautious near the river. there might be CCs floating along the river downstream. The terrain outside… unpredictable, but survivable if you don't let your guard down."
"I will, Mr. Cee-Ar-Too. Thank you very much." Kaodin kept his gaze lowered, eyelids heavy, as if more words pressed at the back of his throat yet unfathomed to say it aloud, not yet.
Wawa hovered near his shoulder in spectral form, light-blue fur dimmed. The cub's posture mirrored Kaodin's stance, ears angled low, drifting close without touching.
His hand held tight on a strap of his pack creaking against his shoulder.
The pack was light: dried food, a folding tent, a small first-aid module, and a canteen.
Xiao Ying stepped closer, holding a slim matte capsule between her fingers.
"Hold still."
He turned toward her with a casual look and was met with a sharp slap.
"Ouch. What just hit my ear, Xiao Ying?"
She pressed the device briefly behind his right ear. A cold sting pricked beneath the skin, sharp but fleeting. A faint pressure formed behind his eye, then faded.
"Wow… what's that light?" His eyes widened, a faint glow reflecting across his pupils.
"There," she said, lowering her hand. "Neural tag synced. If the CSDS grid is active, I can find you. No external hardware. Don't mess with it."
Kaodin lowered his gaze and drew the current tighter through his core. Heat gathered low, then rose along familiar channels. Wawa's ears twitched first, then the cub stepped closer, stripes thinning as the air around Kaodin shifted.
The warmth pressed outward, brushing against the tag behind his ear. A faint distortion crossed his vision and steadied.
"Again," Xiao Ying said.
He pulled deeper this time. The strap of his pack creaked against his shoulder. Dust along the surrounding trembled in a thin ring around his boots. Wawa's fur lifted, a faint crackle threading through the light-blue stripes.
Xiao Ying leaned in, watching the slight shimmer near his temple. Her fingers hovered near his ear.
"That's enough."
Kaodin eased the circulation down. The pressure behind his eye receded. Wawa's fur settled flat again.
"It's stable," she said. "Just keep it under control out there."
Something like this would have been unimaginable in his time. And yet here it was: a centuries-old system patched into the body instead of wrapping around the body. Only signal and bone. The design struck him as quietly ingenious. He found himself thinking that, if possible, he should bring something back for her in return.
He checked the compass tucked into his pack strap. The needle settled toward the east.
"Why didn't Xiao Ying make you something to help navigate this barren world? The way east is quite far, you know."
"It's okay, Mrs. Hong. Before I came to meet you all, this is already more than I could ever be grateful for."
Mrs. Hong stood near the underground vault's blasted door with Xiao Ying beside her.
Xiao Ying stood beside Mrs. Hong, arms folded tight against her ribs. A faint bluish shadow pooled beneath her eyes. Strands of hair slipped loose from their tie, brushing her cheek. She blinked once, slow, then forced them open again, as if to forced herself to awake from her long-night tinkering.
When Kaodin caught her looking, she tilted her head and gave him a quick sideways glance, one eye narrowing in an exaggerated wink. The corner of her mouth tugged upward, and she stuck her tongue out for half a second before straightening her face as if nothing had happened.
"Don't fry the node," she said. "And don't ignore the comm… and you better come back quick, you hear?" She said it, then turned her face into Mrs. Hong's shoulder as Mrs. Hong wrapped her in a hug and lifted a hand in farewell.
Mrs. Hong smiled at him, though Kaodin could not tell whether it carried warmth or something held tight behind it. He answered, "I'll take care of it, and you take care of Mrs.Hong and yourself too,". The parting pressed heavier than he expected; they were placing their hope in his return with what was needed to repair his friend, his brother-in-crime, and the hope for a new life on a girl who had become something new in his life.
Cee-Ar-Tee extended a hand, waving off with his emotionless face but with the glistening kind and hopeful eyes he always had.
"Director Zhang asked me to tell you something. He said. 'Keep your guard up when meeting King Kadavar.' He believes you'll understand what that means when you face the man yourself."
Kaodin didn't fully understand. But he bowed, grateful for the delivered message anyway.
"I'll remember. Thanks, Mr.Cee-Ar-Tee. Take care."
When the makeshift outer lock groaned open along with the photogenic veil flickering slightly before it hummed a straight sound as the veil opened steadily, Kaodin quickly moved out before the veil began acting up again. a new lesson for my combat training, a new challenge for my life, and a strong determination I have to achieve for everyone at the CSDS.
And it was as if the day was blessing him. shining a burning ray of light through the cloudy rain straight into Kaodin's eyes. and he had to raise a hand against it.
Wawa padded out first, his spectral fur flickering in the sunlight, half translucent, half smoke.
The heat made him shimmer like a mirage.
Mrs. Hong called after Kaodin, voice carried by the wind.
"The east leads to the old railway basin! There's shelter there. if you reach the river, follow the left bank until the ruins of a temple. You'll know it when you see it. And it's almost storm season. watch out too, Kaodin!"
Kaodin turned just long enough to raise his hand in farewell.
Storm season? Did I hear it wrong? I never heard there's a storm season in this region before, though… or maybe that's just what they usually call rainy season.
He wanted to say something. thank you, maybe, or I'll come back soon. but the words stayed behind with the others.
Kaodin could only smile and wave back at them.
But as he turned back toward his path, wiping his eyes from the dust with his hand as he walked toward the navigated direction from his watch, his heart was full of determination to find the cure for both Liara and the new heart for Cee-Too.
Arriving at the crossroad, Kaodin lifted his canteen and took a sip. He turned once more toward the massive wall of CSDS, now reduced to something no larger than a tree nut against the horizon. From this distance, the dome no longer resembled a grand metropolis. It looked like an abandoned yard of metal and smoke, thin trails rising evenly as if the city had slowed its breathing.
Automated drones hovered above the rebuilt vault entrances, carrying bundles of steel beams. Children in dust-grey uniforms ran behind them, their laughter trailing faintly in the wind. The sight diminished with every step he took away from it.
It was a place he would miss. The people he had met there had settled deeper than he expected. For a moment, the thought of returning to his own family drifted further than it should have.
By midday, the air had turned dry and biting.
He walked along the old railway basin. Outside the dome, the land stretched wide and brittle, concrete ribs rising from cracked earth, the horizon wavering in heat and dust.
His footsteps scraped against loose gravel and the wind carried no shelter here.
And then, once, a long shadow stretched past the shell of a derailed tram. He paused, watching the angle of the metal and the way the grass folded inward as night approached, the entire scene shifting into an orange, shimmering glow.
As he drew in a breath, the scent changed. The putrid trace of rot and the faint sweetness of dried blood gave way to something floral, aromatic enough to ease the tightness in his shoulders.
Wawa dropped low to the ground and angled his head sharply toward Kaodin in warning. Kaodin followed at once, lowering into a crouch as he moved quickly toward the rusted, grass-covered rail track, where a single bogey stood at a diagonal beside the partially collapsed sky tram.
Clank…..
"Hey… there, boy… I'm so sorry. Do you have some… food… or drinks… to spare for our family?"
The man's voice came warped, slurring at the edges as if most of his teeth were gone. His back bent beneath a woven hat and a thick grey, carpet-like cloak. Blue jeans hung loose over black boots left unlaced. In front of him rolled an old supermarket cart, grease-darkened and fenced with iron bars, some sections uneven as though cut or gnawed away, Kaodin noted. Inside lay something shaped like a small infant, wrapped in the same grey cloth lined with faint yellow-red stripes.
He pushed the unoiled cart forward slowly, the wheels scraping in a high-pitch, maniacally eerie screeched tone as he approached Kaodin's position, and he thought.
He had faced worse before, and this man carried the same smell as the one who tried to eat him. Oily grease clung to him, mixed with a scent that did not resemble any known meat; closer to rotten putrid death itself.
"Old man, I'm looking for food myself. Since you're here, I'll search elsewhere instead. Please don't mind me."
Kaodin drew the white knuckle-guard cloth from his pocket and began winding it around his hands. The fabric tightened across his knuckles, then climbed in steady turns along his forearms, each pull firm and measured.
He no longer had the small aluminum clipper he once used to secure it. That piece had been lost somewhere beyond the rift. When the wrap reached its final length, he pressed the loose end flat against the seam and worked it inward beneath the previous layers, tightening it with a final pull until the tension held on its own.
"Is that so? Then why don't you join us? Let us see what you have, so we can share, perhaps."
Wawa remained hidden, close enough to catch the faint trace of dried blood from the man's boots. Kaodin held his intent in check. His senses aligned with Wawa's, where they stood, were surrounded.
As the thought settled, figures began to emerge from the shadow of the rusted bogie and along the narrowed row of what had once been a train station, now turned into a nest of these hollowed men. More than Kaodin could count. Men. Women. Even children near his own size, and Xiao Ying's.
"Come rushed on the boy, the one who catch him first get to pick his part, NOW GO." The man shouted.
Kaodin quickly cleared the rim of the rusted bogie and sprang upward, turning his hips through a spinning back kick with his left foot aimed at the man's head. As the man loosened his cloak, a small limb snapped outward from beneath the grey wrap. Skin stretched thin and waxy. Fingers too long, nails darkened and curved. One hand gripped a knife nearly the length of Kaodin's leg seam, its edge cutting close to his exposed left leg as he rotated through the strike.
The kick failed to land cleanly on the head, but the heel still drove across the man's chest. The impact forced him backward, his breath breaking into a low groan as he staggered. The cart slipped from his grip and rolled into scattered brick and stone debris. Its momentum carried it forward before it jolted to a stop, and the thin infant cloth covering its contents began to unfold.
The fabric slipped away as the body uncoiled from itself, limbs emerging in reversed sequence, joints bending a fraction too far before locking into place. Skin clung tight across a rib-cage-frame-like cart's rim, pressed partly rotted skin outward in faint ridges. One arm stretched longer than the other, fingers overgrown, knuckles swollen as though bone had thickened beneath them. It rose slowly, the smaller hand hanging over the cart's rim.
Its head tilted sharply to Kaodin before it noticed Wawa who cut the sight before his master. Then it began, growling, sounded too raw to be a cry of a human crybaby, Kaodin thought as his eyes shot intensively at the thing before his very eyes.
Then, reacting to Kaodin's unspoken intent, it lunged with strength far beyond that of an ordinary infant. It hurled itself forward, the longer left arm snapping outward toward him. Its teeth, sharp and darkened as if never cleaned of dried blood, flashed as it closed the distance—only to be intercepted by Wawa hardened paws.
It cried out a sharp gashing tone again, before it started lunging at Wawa while trying to grab the cub but slipped through, yet, unfazed, it now stood on the ground three feet, with one longer arm as the third feet. It becoming more of a ferocious monster and less of a baby infant in a blink of an eye.
Kaodin paused, stunned by the sight, as he flashed clearly, it's not appeared as a baby yet, its deformity and the irritating snitch on his nose as the rotten stench hit him came; he had never seen anything like it. "What… have you fed the mother? Or what did you feed the baby?"
"Never seen a baby born from an infected CC, boy? You'll see more. Children, feeding time.", said the man who quickly cut distanced targeting at Kaodin, featured dual axe on both hands.
Wawa's outline tightened at Kaodin's flank. The blurred fur thinned, then drew inward along forelimbs and muzzle. Claw tips darkened into sharp density. The line of the fangs hardened.
He cut low across the creature's path, forepaw striking first. The impact met the hinge of its shoulder. Bone shifted under the contact. The small body twisted mid-arc before its teeth could close.
Wawa's jaws snapped shut along the upper arm, pressure driving through the joint seam. The creature shrieked as its limb folded inward.
Momentum carried it into the rail edge. It struck through metal, then skidded across gravel.
Wawa withdrew at once. The hardened edges softened back into spectral blur as he flew near Kaodin's side.
Kaodin stepped diagonally off the rail. Gravel shifted under his foot. His torso bladed further. The left axe grazed cloth and caught air before following by the right axe, and Kaodin shifted his shoulder rotated inward.
Rear hand struck along the collar seam.
The man's clavicle fractured under the torque. His arm folded inward. The axe fell.
"Ouch… He's not a normal boy. Watch out. He had something with him… a cat, a tiger… something flying around. And his Muay… he knows Muay."
"Look, I don't want to fight you. If you leave me alone, I just want to travel. That's all."
Two more figures stepped out from the shadow of the bogie. Their advance slowed as they caught sight of the distortion circling Kaodin and the tightened set of his frame. They hesitated, glancing between one another before shifting their footing on the gravel along with the rest of their group.
Then Kaodin and Wawa moved on, and before long the night had settled into a pitch-black darkness. It was a kind he knew from his hometown, far from any large metropolis, closer to the sea, where the sky once held scattered fields of flickering stars.
Now he relied on Wawa as he set the intent to find shelter. The cub required no reply; their focus aligned without words. Wawa angled toward a dry stretch beneath a small river bridge, marking it as a place to rest for the night.
As morning came and the sun pressed warm against his face, Wawa was already there, seated just beyond his reach. The cub's ears angled forward, tail flicking once against the dust. He held still, watching Kaodin with narrowed eyes, then stretched his forelegs long and arched his back before stepping closer as if requesting Kaodin for a smooch which he got it as a reward in response, the boy smiled.
As they progressed on the long trip.
Kaodin began with a five-kilometer morning jog. He removed his top and pants, folded them into his backpack, and kept only his boxer briefs on as he continued training while moving. Slow punches cut through empty air, elbows tracing clean arcs through the sunlight as he maintained steady control of his breathing.
Before he knew, the flow through his core settled into a smoother rhythm, steady and continuous, drawing heat outward, he became completely drenched.
Wawa watched from a low perch; ears angled forward. His tail curved once, then stilled. At intervals he shifted his weight and mirrored a step or shoulder turn, movements compact and measured, more observation than play.
When he stopped to rest, slightly panting, but still forced control breathing. He crouched beside a cracked service tunnel and listened while sipping slightly on his 1 L. flask.
The hum beneath the ground wasn't power like within CSDS; it was wind, whistling through hollow pipes.
For a moment, he imagined the sound carried voices. Cee-Too's laughter, Xiao Ying's constant chatter, Mrs. Hong scolding someone for burning soup.
It almost felt alive.
He ate one ration bar, dry and bland, yet beneath the plain taste lingered something that reminded him of the old training days. Plain rice, cold air, and the sound of his father's voice shouting, "True strength of our Muay isn't the quickest, the strongest, nor the hardest, but the defense. We defense so we can learn to adapt, adapt with the flow, and you will never lose to anyone, not like your…"
"Father never liked Singh brother's style, not even after he tried so hard to prove.", Kaodin mumbled, as he was gently combed on Wawa now, even in spectral state, began to have texture already. Felt like grabbing on a half-a-dozen chopsticks spine with fluffy cotton fur, Kaodin thought.
A sled of tears or sweat rinse off the corner of his right eye as he stood up and shed it off with his shoulder.
The sun dipped low before he noticed how far he had gone. He put his clothes back on, then signaled to Wawa his intent to camp by a ridge of rusted cars. The area resembled an old showroom, now reduced to a mold-stained complex of mechanical relics from a distant past.
Inside, the silence thickened.
Kaodin shotted himself through the trophy shelf behind the counter to reach the collapsed mezzanine partition above, eyes half-open, staring at the flicker of starry eyes above him
The world outside hissed like static.
His thoughts drifted to Liara.
He could still feel her, faint as the tremor of a heartbeat underwater.
The night before he left CSDS, as he slept, she came to him during the quiet time almost half-awake-half-sleep state—playing with Wawa, laughing soundlessly.
She'd always vanish when he reached out.
But that light she left behind stayed inside his chest, small but steady.
He whispered into the darkness,
"Hold on a little longer."
The words weren't for her ears; they were for his own, he thought, but with all of this journey, it's for him to search for ways he could return home too….
The night passed without alarm.
A faint breeze stirred the tent in the early dawn.
Kaodin stretched, bones cracking, body humming with restrained fire.
He looked toward where the sun rose, the sky pale again, the color of faded glass.
He packed, slung the bag over his shoulder, and began walking.
Somewhere far behind, CSDS continued to rebuild itself. laughter, hammers, arguments about soup recipes.
He couldn't hear any of it now.
Only the wind.
Only Wawa's soft pads in the dust beside him, now even Wawa grew weight Kaodin chuckled.