This project. This damn project. It could take your life. It was surprising that no one died during it already. The hours, the discomfort, the horrible excuse for lodging . . . it was all so miserable. How any of them hadn't died from fatigue already was a mystery.

You were locked in. Forced in. Forced labor. Slave labor. All volunteered. You'd volunteer to save yourself and all the people around you, and instead you're forced to work. To dig. Endlessly digging. It was all for a crater. Creating a crater. Twenty-thirty-forty men all digging at once, scraping the crater's sides and stabbed down to give it that much more depth. And then another, a runner, would take all the excess dirt and drop it out, somewhere beyond the crater. They were already ten feet in, but most men worked at different paces, creating no truly level plain. Their crater, formed by the collective digging of dozens upon dozens of workers, was terribly lopsided and dangerous to walk in.

This goddamn project.

The Rubicon project . . .

It was all presented with good intentions. The Rubicon River was a supposed energy source beneath the surface of Purgatory: a veritable river of pure energy. The energy that could give life. It was all supposedly concentrated into a winding surge of pressure, running underground as a river. If they could reach the Rubicon River, then they could harness that energy. They could bring life to the Unreal. The only problem was accessibility. It was supposed to be seventy feet or so underground. This godforsaken crater became a necessity to reach it . . .

Some of the men that signed up had only self interest in mind. There were others, however, that sought the Rubicon and the potential it allowed them, strictly for the benefit of others. Those were people like Ozrik, one of the most respected and known men working on the project. He was the fasted of them all, making him perhaps the luckiest. Rather than dig, that man could just run. Delivering messages back home, getting rid of stacked dirt in the crater . . . anything that had him running, he was tasked to do.

Then, there were the overseers. There were two, to be exact. They were amongst the social elite of the Unreal City, and it was believed they'd been that way for some time. They were the King's men: Attis and a man known only as "the Seeker." Attis was well respected and well liked. He worked alongside of the men and just as well of a job as any of them. He was kind, generous, and understanding, despite the fact that no one was leaving 'til it was time for them to go. Sometimes they had those vacation breaks, but they were such a ways from the Unreal City that it was all so scarce.

And then there was the Seeker. When Attis wasn't at the site, the Seeker was. Rarely were they ever at the same place at the same time. At best, he did the same brand of work as Ozrik. At worst, he did nothing. Nothing but watch, mindlessly, aimlessly. He was the real slave driver of the two overseers, the one that made them all realize how permanent this job really was. He spoke so infrequently, but had an intimidating presence about him. Dozens of men could have risen up against him, but he had such an air of authority and power about him that not a single one of them did such a thing. Except for one.

But for everyone else, it was a matter of digging. Constant, endless digging. Some of the men hadn't been home in weeks. In time, they all might succumb to exhaustion and have little want for this job any further. It started with one, though. It started with him.

He'd taken up this job for a truly unique reason: no reason at all. It was something to do, something beyond mindless games and pointless socializing, but it was nothing more than that. He had no care for others or himself. Reality and Unreality were regarded with equal disinterest and, on the worse days, disdain. Most of the time, he was cold and distant--unfeeling in every way imaginable. Other times, he was downright hateful. Coldness, however, was the best he could manage: he'd no love for anyone, and couldn't bring himself to pretend such a thing anylonger.

Everyone knew him as Toushikyo.

He had an awkward look about him--outlandish, for all intents and purposes. On top of his short, scrawny stature, he a bizarre color of hair, though fitting. Both his hair and his eyes were a cold and icy blue. To stare into his uncaring, unfeeling eyes was to witness the full extent of nihilism offered to the Unreal. He'd no care for these people, this job, or the future. He'd no care for much of anything at all. On this particular day, though, he fell into disdain for the job. He was done with it. Through with it.

With sweat sticking and matting his hair and loose work clothes to his body, Toushikyo released a sigh and stood, arching his back and working his spine until it could crack no more. Until this day, he sweated through exertion, but never experienced the full extent of its discomfort. This day was amongst the scant few moments when their Unreal world took a temperature above a stagnate neutral. It was hot, and his unnaturally cold internal temperature could not keep up with it. He felt all the pains of a winter thaw, and considered himself through with it.

Toushikyo let his ordained shovel hit the earth. Its wooden frame bounced upon the rocks, and Toushikyo made no effort to retrieve it. With a heavy feeling in his chest, a sick kind of feeling, he decided outright to part from this job. He crossed the crater, receiving many a strange stare from his fellow--none of which questioned him. Sometimes, a person just had enough and needed a break for an hour or so. It wasn't uncommon. Toushikyo climbed the ladder, cleared the ten feet height from the bottom of the shallow crater, and wordlessly began for town.

He didn't get far.

On this day, Attis (and Ozrik both) were absent from the excavation. They were back in town on their own personal breaks, which left the Seeker in charge. Toushikyo blinked only once before he found the man standing before him, stopping the nihilist instantly.

The Seeker, like Toushikyo, was not a large man. At most, he had powerful leg muscles (while Toushikyo hadn't much powerful muscles at all, and barely any excess built up from digging for these last few weeks), but they were mostly equal in stature and height. The Seeker, however, was a walking enigma: none had seen his face. A constant shadow, cast by the hood of his jacket all the way up and over his eyes, loomed over his face, even down to his jaw and neck.

Several the men stopped working as soon as they saw it. Toushikyo was trying to leave the Seeker wasn't about to let him. It was what many feared.

"Move," commanded Toushikyo as gruffly as he could--though his voice couldn't quite go that low, nor was it at all commanding. It was monotonous, mid-ranged, and quiet. Some might have even labeled him meek, though only when he wasn't upset. When he became hateful, everything changed.

"No," replied the Seeker.

All of Toushikyo's attempts to ever sound commanding or gruff were outdone by the Seeker. His voice carried the same nihilism of Toushikyo's, if not more, atop a deep and gruff voice. A vague rasp permeated within every spoken word. He was commanding. Authoritative.

Totalitarian.

Toushikyo opened his mouth to speak, but instead released a sigh. He shut his eyes and shook his head. This was ridiculous, he concluded.

"Your work here is important," the Seeker reminded.

"Funny," Toushikyo rolled his shoulders, "It doesn't feel so."

He opened his eyes to stare at the Seeker, and though he couldn't see the man's eyes, he tried to imagine what they might have looked like. Shortly after, he stopped caring what they looked like, or if the Seeker even had eyes at all.

"I'm going home."

"No. You're not."

Toushikyo shut his eyes again, shoved his hands into his pockets, and scoffed at the Seeker. Without a second thought, he stepped into the Seeker, brushed his shoulder hard against his, and pushed him out of the way. A king's man or not, Toushikyo could give two damns less about the Seeker or his insistence that they all succumb as work-horses.

In the end, Toushikyo never saw it coming. There was a pain, several pains, and a rush of air and rock; he felt battered and beaten by the end of it all, a flash of a second, right before he opened his eyes again. He found himself elsewhere, dozens of feet displaced from where he last stood.

He hadn't seen it, but some of the men did. Toushikyo brushed by the Seeker, who allowed it for but a second. He turned quickly, and with his index and middle finger, jabbed hard into the middle of Toushikyo's back. There was a crack and a snap, before the young man was lurched forward. He hit the ground forehead first. He rolled and tumbled dozens of feet, hitting hard against the earth, against rocks and stones displaced from the crater, cracking limbs and ribs alike. Momentum carried him for several seconds before he he finally came to a stop, soundlessly settled into a cloud of dust.

Toushikyo lay upon his back. It took him several seconds open his eyes. Pain erupted throughout his body. He'd felt it before, but not with such aggression. It was a crippling pain. He coughed as the dust cloud settled about him. Numbness, he was used to. Pain, he was not.

When he opened his eyes at long last, Toushikyo could see how badly he was hurt already. Tears ran throughout his baggy work clothes, under which all forms of scrapes and cuts lined his body. Lifeblood made passage from his hairline to his left eye, filling it with a stinging red and forcing him to leave it shut. One arm felt unusable. Some of his ribs felt broken. Toushikyo struggled to get up, but by the time he was so much as sitting upon the ground, he noticed the Seeker approaching him. He took in a sharp, pained breath as the man walked and stopped only when he stood within two feet of Toushikyo. He was comparatively tall, then. He towered over the rage stricken nihilist like a living, breathing shadow.

It was only then, when he was truly below the Seeker, that Toushikyo caught a glimpse of something of . . . detail. He found no hint of pigmentation or even his eyes, but he saw something of a frown, a sneer with bared teeth: edged and jagged teeth--yet perfectly aligned like something natural and healthy--that shone white in the presence of illumination. Those edged teeth fit together perfectly, and soon Toushikyo saw them move. It was a fluke that Toushikyo even saw a thing.

"You return home," the Seeker growled, "When we tell you to return. Now . . . dig."

Toushikyo took a deep breath. The Seeker renewed a feeling in him, a feeling he wasn't fond of, but one of the few he could actually recognize: hate. Pure and unbridled loathing. He refused to go down like this; smitten by a single blow, thrown to the ground and told exactly what he was to do like it was law, and death was the only penalty for breaking it. Toushikyo's already battered body was filled with aggression and new, temporary energy. Relief from fatigue washed over him, and he determined that the Seeker was his: he was going to break every limb in this man's body.

"Fuck. You." Toushikyo spat.

He dug his hand into the gray earth to pull himself up, but by the time he was almost there, on one knee, just ready to stand, he looked up. It was then that he saw the Seeker's hand, a clenched fist except for index and middle fingers, both of which were pressed firmly together and jutted out like the barrel of a gun. They were set an inch from Toushikyo's face.

And it was then that all things in Toushikyo's eyes faded to black.



An example was made. Toushikyo was taken off the project immediately, and--terribly injured--rushed back to the Unreal City. His life was spared and he got what he wanted, in the end. He returned home. The Seeker made sure this was as uncomfortable of a return as possible, however. It took him several weeks to heal enough that he could walk with a crutch. Such defiance was scarce from then on, especially when the Seeker was present. Collective fear kept the others working for a time, until work simply became a normal routine of life, and Toushikyo's defiance was little more than a bitter and inconsequential memory.