It took exactly thirty days for the city to forget.
In the slums of Sector-4, memory was a luxury that few could afford. The past didn't put food on the table, and grief didn't pay the rent. So, the city did what it always did: it swallowed the dead, digested the loss, and opened its mouth for more.
The rain had returned, heavier than before, washing away the grime of the last month. It peeled the edges of the old "New Horizon" posters pasted on the crumbling walls, turning the smiling faces of the pioneers into dissolving pulp.
But the Guild was efficient. For every poster the rain destroyed, a drone pasted two new ones.
[ BATCH 2: RECRUITMENT OPEN ]
[ BE A HERO. BE A PIONEER. ]
[ SIGNING BONUS INCREASED: 55,000 CREDITS ]
The price of a human life had gone up by five thousand credits. Inflation, presumably.
Anya stood by the window of Unit 404-C, watching a drone hover outside. It applied a fresh holographic decal to the lamppost directly opposite her apartment. The golden light of the ad spilled into her room, illuminating the clean floor, the new furniture, and the hum of the high-grade air purifier.
She didn't close the blinds. She forced herself to look at it.
Physically, she was unrecognizable.
The Mana Purification Serum—the expensive, gold-standard treatment reserved for Upper Plate citizens—had worked miracles. Her skin was no longer translucent and grey; it had a healthy, flushed tone. Her hair, once brittle and falling out in clumps, was growing back thick and black. She had gained five kilograms. Her lungs, once filled with fluid and poison, now expanded fully, greedily drinking in the filtered air.
She was the picture of health.
She was the picture of Aryan's success.
But her eyes were old. They were the eyes of someone who had peered behind the curtain and seen the gears of the slaughterhouse turning.
"Batch 2," she whispered, her voice steady. No cough interrupted her.
Down on the street, life went on.
The noodle stall owner, Old Man Ji, was shouting at a customer.
Two kids were chasing a stray dog through the mud.
A group of laborers was huddled around a fire barrel, drinking cheap synthetic gin.
Nobody talked about the 10,000 people who had vanished a month ago.
Why would they? The credits had cleared. The debts were paid.
In Sector-4, if your debt was paid, you didn't ask questions. You thanked the gods and kept your head down. Silence was the receipt for the transaction.
Anya turned away from the window.
She walked to her workstation. It wasn't a pile of scrap anymore. It was a professional desk, equipped with high-end tools: laser solders, micro-scanners, and a pristine set of screwdrivers.
She sat down. She picked up a damaged logic-board she had been repairing for a local drone mechanic.
Her hands moved with precision. Click, solder, fuse.
She worked fast. She worked perfectly.
She didn't need to work. The 38,000 credits still sitting in her account could feed her for five years.
But she worked because stopping meant thinking. And thinking meant wondering why the Grey Checkmark on her tablet hadn't turned blue.
Ding.
The door chime sounded.
Not a screech of metal. A polite, electronic chime.
Anya stood up and walked to the door. She checked the camera feed.
It was the Landlord, Mr. Gupta.
A month ago, Gupta used to bang on the door and threaten to throw them out if the rent was two hours late. He used to look at them with disgust.
Now?
Anya opened the door.
Mr. Gupta stood there, smiling. He held a small box of sweets.
"Good evening, Anya beta," he said, his voice dripping with sugary respect. "I hope the new heater is working well? No issues with the power supply?"
"It works fine, Mr. Gupta," Anya said, standing in the doorway. She didn't invite him in.
"Good, good. I just wanted to drop these off," he offered the sweets. "A small thank you. Since you paid the rent for the whole year in advance... you are my best tenant. A model resident."
Anya looked at the sweets.
Money changed everything. It rewrote history. Suddenly, they weren't the 'rat-kids' from the drainpipe. They were 'model residents'.
"Thank you," Anya took the box.
"Have you... heard from him?" Gupta asked, his eyes darting to the interior of the apartment, looking for signs of more wealth. "Your brother? Is he enjoying the new planets?"
Anya tightened her grip on the box.
"He's busy," she said coldly. "Building a world takes time."
"Of course, of course! A hero. We are all so proud. Tell him the whole building asks about him."
Liar, Anya thought. You just want to know if there's more money coming.
"I will," she said. "Goodnight, Mr. Gupta."
She closed the door. She locked it.
She threw the box of sweets into the trash.
She couldn't eat them. They tasted like hypocrisy.
She walked back to the window. The rain was falling harder now.
And then she saw him.
Down on the street, standing directly under the holographic recruitment poster, was a boy.
He couldn't be more than eighteen. He was skinny, wearing a torn oversized jacket that soaked up the rain. He had a backpack slung over one shoulder—a backpack that looked too empty.
He was staring up at the golden letters: SIGNING BONUS: 55,000 CREDITS.
Anya froze.
She knew that stance. She knew the slope of his shoulders.
It was the stance of someone who had done the math and realized their life was worth less than the bonus.
The boy reached out and touched the holographic light. He looked hungry. Not just for food, but for a way out.
"Don't," Anya whispered, her breath fogging the glass. "Don't do it."
She wanted to open the window. She wanted to scream down at him.
It's a lie! There is no paradise! They will take you and throw you into a hole and forget you!
She wanted to run down there, grab him by the collar, and shake him until he understood.
But she didn't move.
If she went down there... what would she say?
"My brother went. And look at me. I have a heater. I have food. I am alive."
The boy would look at her healthy skin and her warm apartment, and he wouldn't see a warning. He would see proof that it worked.
Her survival was the Guild's best advertisement.
She was part of the trap now.
By spending the blood money, she had validated the trade.
The boy stood there for another minute. Then, he seemed to make a decision. He tightened his backpack straps, lifted his chin, and started walking toward the Guild Spire in the distance.
Walking the same path Aryan had walked.
Replacing him.
The city didn't care that Aryan was gone. It had already found a spare part to plug into the machine.
Anya turned away from the window. She couldn't watch another ghost being made.
She went to the bathroom.
She turned on the tap. The water ran clear and hot—another luxury.
She splashed her face. She looked at herself in the mirror.
The face looking back was healthy, strong, and beautiful.
It was the face Aryan had bought for her.
"I hate you," she whispered to her reflection. "I hate you for leaving me here with the money."
But she didn't hate him. She missed him so much it felt like her chest was caving in.
She opened the medicine cabinet.
Inside, arranged in a neat row, were ten vials of Mana-Stabilizer.
She didn't need them anymore. The serum had cured her.
But she couldn't throw them away.
Next to the vials sat the old tablet. The one with the grey checkmark.
She picked it up.
She didn't turn it on. She didn't need to check the status. She knew it hadn't changed.
She walked back into the main room. The heater hummed. The air purifier whirred.
The apartment was a fortress against the misery of Sector-4. A golden cage built inside a slum.
She sat on Aryan's empty mattress. She kept it made, perfectly smooth, every day.
She lay down on it, curling up into a ball.
"I'll wait," she whispered into the darkness. "Even if the city forgets. Even if the posters change. I'll wait."
The rain hammered against the roof, drowning out the world.
Earth moved on.
The Guilds counted their profits.
The new batch of recruits marched toward the Spire.
And in the silence of Unit 404-C, the lie settled like concrete. Solid. Unbreakable. Permanent.
The story of Earth was over.
There were no more heroes here. Only ghosts, and the people paid to forget them.
THE FINAL TRANSITION
Far away from the warm apartment.
Far away from the lies of the Spire.
Far away from the safety of the System's jurisdiction.
The universe was not silent.
It screamed.
In the outer rim of the galaxy, in a sector marked on star-charts as "CORRUPTED DATA," a planet spun in the darkness.
It was a world where the rain wasn't water—it was acid.
Where the trees didn't grow—they hunted.
Where the System didn't guide—it glitched.
Planet-404.
Deep in the obsidian forest, under a sky bruised with purple storm clouds, a wreckage smoked in the mud.
Twisted metal. Shattered glass.
A transport pod, ripped open like a tin can.
There was no heater here.
There was no medicine.
There was no hope.
A hand, bloody and covered in mud, reached out from the wreckage. It clawed at the wet earth, dragging a broken body forward.
The boy who crawled out didn't look like a pioneer. He didn't look like a hero.
He looked like prey.
But as he lifted his head, gasping for air that tasted of copper and rot, his eyes opened.
They weren't the eyes of the boy who had left Earth.
They were cold. They were terrified. And deep within the pupil, something ancient stirred.
The Lie was behind him.
The Nightmare had begun.
[ END OF VOLUME 0: THE LIE ]