chapter 3

Coffee became Ellie’s best friend, or rather, her only friend. Coffee in the morning, coffee for lunch, coffee for dinner. Just to sleep less. After work, she hid in her tiny but cozy apartment. Eager to escape the outside reality, she sealed the door with two locks and one massive bolt. The girl checked every nook and cranny of her apartment to ensure no stranger had crept into her home while she was gone. In the end, she yanked the door bolt to test it. Now, she could exhale. She was safe.

In her kitchen corner, she put a kettle on the electric hotplate and took a cup from the cupboard. While waiting for the water to boil, she glanced around her den. The kitchen, bedroom, study, living room, and hallway all fit into one room. Where the kitchen ended, the office began. Her desk with a monoblock and a semitransparent screen stood pressed against the bed, and a purple armchair divided the bedroom from the hall. The tiny bathroom, albeit small, was a separate room with a door.

Ellie reminded herself to eat, as she often forgot about food because of her constant anxiety. She fished out a stale cookie from a kitchen drawer, making a mental note to restock more food. Since she was always afraid of losing this safe space, food was the least of her worries.

Ellie waved her hand near the screen, and it lit up with a blue light. Preview tiles appeared on it, offering content the system algorithm had selected especially for her. They reacted to her proximity, the previews spinning and flashing to attract the human’s attention. Ellie caught a familiar face in one of the flickering images. She rewinded the screen with her fingers, choosing that specific content tile. A crime column popped up, and the strangled girl from her dream looked at her from the screen.

The sense of security of her apartment, nurtured behind the locks, evaporated like mist. Ellie tapped the news piece. The patrol found Maria’s body a few hours ago, while Ellie had a dream about the murder yesterday. Sickly fear crept up Ellie’s spine. Maria might have been alive at the time of her dream.

Ellie wondered if her illness was progressing. She was either losing her mind or the dream was real, making her a crime witness. Was she insane, or was she having these dreams for a reason? Ellie’s head was about to explode. She remembered how Maria felt in her last moments, thanks to the tramp’s brutal display under the bridge. Could she have warned the woman and thus saved her life? Would the murder have happened anyway? Ellie collapsed onto the bed and pulled her knees up to her chin. She closed her eyes and made a wish not to dream.

***

Ellie was standing under the bridge on a starry night. Mud flowed lazily along the walls of the old canal. The girl wished to turn around and walk away, but the dream pulled her toward the fire. Flames burst from the dumpster, illuminating the same tramp beside it. He didn’t notice her yet or pretended to ignore her. Ellie crept closer, and he laughed. Today, she was more annoyed than scared. She knew how it all ended, and just wanted it to be over. When Ellie’s trembling fingers tapped his elbow, he jerked toward her and gripped her shoulder.

“Do you want to see it again? My pleasure!”

The stranger pulled out an old-fashioned gun from his pocket and aimed it at her. Ellie screamed in fear, but the deafening sound of a shot choked her yell, drowning her in blinding pain. The second shot hit the girl’s face. Then darkness followed. The last image before she died was the crooked smile of that tramp she hated.

She was a spirit again, but couldn’t hover over the city this time. Something was dragging her down. Even in her astral projection, Ellie panicked when she descended below her level. The force yanking her down did not weaken and pulled her through the layer of gray mist onto the Bottom.

Ellie looked around, finding herself in a derelict avenue. Battered buildings gawked at her with broken windows, resembling the dead of the old world. Without a proper burial, they continued their existence in this eerie afterlife. Absorbed by a sticky silence, Ellie moved farther down the street until reaching an intersection. A traffic light still hung from a rusty pole, wrapped in rotten weeds and pieces of torn plastic bags.

The once-wide avenue turned into a narrow path, littered by junk piles and bare carcasses of traditional cars still parked near the sidewalks. Mounds of scrap blocked her path, and sometimes hills of rotting garbage reached the size of several stories. The girl discerned a familiar building with shabby granite walls, which she had seen from the aerocar in the morning.

Ellie stopped and listened. A faint rustling of someone’s steps disturbed the dense silence, coming from behind the building. Her heart pounded, and she yearned to be anywhere but here. She wanted to wake up. She didn’t want to be a silent witness to atrocities anymore. She squeezed her eyes shut and then flung them open, but she was still standing in the middle of an abandoned town on the Bottom.

A tall, dark-haired young man in a leather jacket walked toward her. A black mask with a white skull hid his face. Although he wasn’t the monster Ellie expected to see, he looked dangerous. Armed with a shotgun and an old-fashioned pistol in a holster, he also carried a machete strapped to his back, along with metal chains with sharp hooks on the ends. The man sauntered between the piles of junk without making a sound, as if following a daily routine. Something caught his attention, and he turned in Ellie’s direction. Although the girl was sure he couldn’t see her, she froze as if before a predator, hoping he would walk away without hurting her.

Farther ahead, someone whistled, and a gigantic dog charged at the masked stranger, knocking him off his feet. The dog crushed the man with its massive body and growled. The man cursed and kicked the animal, grabbing its head with both hands, trying to hold the dog’s teeth away from his face. The animal’s jaws clasped around his forearm instead. Blood dripped onto the man’s face, and he screamed in pain. He grabbed the dog by the ear and yanked. The dog snarled but did not loosen its deadly grip on his forearm, shaking its huge head from side to side.

Someone whistled again, and the animal let go of the stranger’s arm, jumping aside on command. The guy raised his head, glaring at the gun pointed at him. His good hand crawled to the holstered pistol on his belt, but his opponent was quicker. The dog’s owner shot him in the chest, then again in his forehead. The killer tore off the mask to check the dead man’s face.

“Gotcha.” He chuckled to himself and spat on the cracked asphalt. “Let’s go, Beast. They’ll come for the smell of blood.” He pocketed the dead man’s mask and ran away with his pet.

The new silence brought Ellie out of her stupor. She approached the body and studied the young man’s face. He was handsome, with masculine, chiseled features. She had never met him, but he seemed intimately familiar. The sight of his mutilated body made her sad, grieving even, which she could not explain. She fell to her knees before him, letting out a silent scream, ignorant of the growing roar around her. Dozens of bare feet rushed to them.

The hungry creatures ran, overturning the debris and piles of scrap, producing an incredible clamor that was deafening to the point of ear pain after the absolute silence. They jumped right through her, digging their teeth into the still-warm body, full of life just a few minutes ago. Less nimble, hideous humanoids hopped behind them, fighting for a better spot at the macabre feast. Weaker creatures, unable to reach the prey, licked the blood from the greasy ground with their bluish tongues. Naked, hairless bodies swarmed over the deceased like insects. Ellie, howling with grief before, now wailed with despair at not being able to push them away. The sounds of bones snapping and cracking became intolerable, and she shrieked to drown them out.

***

Ellie lay on the floor beside the bed, gasping with misery. Her body was still convulsing, and tears streamed down her puffy face. She was sweaty, and her white T-shirt rolled up, exposing her thin waist. Slowly, she regained awareness, her sobs becoming softer until she fell silent, still clinging to the worn carpet. The girl blinked. She was safe in her apartment.

Ellie got up and stumbled into the kitchen. She would’ve liked some alcohol to wash away her night terror, but it disappeared from the food distribution on her level two years ago. Ellie took a glass from the drawer and gulped the disgusting tap water. She dipped her head under the cool stream over the sink and froze again, sifting through the memories of her dream.

Somehow, she knew the man from her nightmare. Otherwise, why such a reaction? Because it felt real? Then Ellie remembered her detachment and indifference when she observed Maria in her last moments. That also felt real. She pitied the woman, but the world didn’t collapse under her feet.

She dashed to the computer and started looking through the most recent content pieces until she recalled that her vision took place on the Bottom. No news came from there. This idea made her queasy. No one cared about him, and no one would recover the young man’s body—if there was a body left. Ellie shuddered at the memory of those hideous humanoid animals swarming over him. Really, what was happening down there? Everyone looked only up with no idea what lurked beneath their feet. No one asked questions; the city’s residents focused only on their own survival. Should she follow suit?

Ellie paced in the tight space between the furniture, going through everything she knew about her dreams. Did she trust them enough to try to warn that stranger? He was about to die. Of that she was almost sure. She needed proof that her dreams were real before she did something stupid. Really stupid.

She bit her lip, jumping from one idea to another. No matter how much Ellie speculated about what to do, her thoughts boiled down to one point: if the young man was still alive, she had to warn him. The irrational fear of being too late or that the murder had already happened made her sick and anxious.

Darkness still ruled outside, and the human-made dragon was sleeping, its bright neon illuminating the clouds of gray mist. The girl remembered that the most vital transport connections between the mega-blocks operated day and night, so Ellie rushed to change into a black T-shirt, a leather jacket, and skinny dark jeans, which she tucked into heavy black military boots. At the door, Ellie slung a backpack with a bottle of water and her tablet, and tightened the straps of her bag to make it comfortable for running.

Before exiting, she stopped and bent over in fear, gasping for air. Her safe zone ended at her apartment’s threshold. She could turn around, undress, lie in bed, and imagine it was only a dream and nothing more. She let out a slow breath and grabbed the doorknob, stepping outside into the tunnel that led her into the city.