The Builder's Heart

The coffin was just slightly longer than my body, and wide enough for me to sleep in one position. The velvet cushions, wooden carvings, and gold accents were made for a prince or a lord, not a general on the run. Yet escaping a dangerous, evil regime meant using whatever vehicles were on hand, and for me they were a coffin and the ocean.

My world had been one you might have seen in fairytales, full of princes and princesses, nobles who used magic, and knights in glistening armor. Yet that fairytale had a horrific ending, and so it was fitting that one of its only survivors had floated away in a coffin.

The other piece of my past, one which kept me from throwing myself into the ocean during my journey, hung around my neck as I now stood. Very un-albatross-like, it was a steel chain with a ruby locket on the end. The locket was shaped like a human heart, which might seem morbid to many, but the builder had insisted that the human heart was just as romantic as the popular idea of a heart.

"As long as the heart beats, you are still you, and everyone loves the heart." He had kindly eyes and a voice like the sunrise, a sunrise I wished I could see through these gas-choked skies. My eyes were watering.

I had landed on the shoreline of The Shadow's beach after maybe a week. I needed water, alcohol, food, and a bath, in that order. Yet nothing in this...city...seemed to invite me to some sort of clear comfort. Shadows which vaguely resembled buildings rose from streets slicked by refuse, and neon lights lit the dripping streets like makeup running down the face of a ditched date. Something like a hotel rose next to me as I entered the city, and so I entered, hoping for some kind of solid shelter and reprieve.

Apparently the sign on the inside said, "The Rusted Lung," which was a very inviting name and image. However, the tables inside were barely breathing with people, and almost everything was made of metal and scraps. The barkeeper, a woman with some sort of metallic prosthetics on her arms and with a neon, glowing right eye, nodded for me to come to the bar. "Ay! Come over, don't block the sunlight while I'm pouring drinks!" she called, sounding more like a crow calling during a graveyard shift. Nevertheless, I listened to her and came to the bar. If this shambling bar and inn fulfilled my needs, then I would be satisfied for the day. "What's the name, stranger? Bright-red hair, no augmentations, those rags, you look like a pirate out of one of them stories," she continued.

I indeed had bright-red hair, but as I had looked at it in the faint reflection of the bar table, I saw the salt from the sea had turned it very dull and heavy. My eyes, which were normally a bright amber, did not look much better. "Lang, Miss. A rum, if you have any of that here, please," I requested.

"Lang. That's a funny name. You're definitely not from here...And rum? Need to convince me you're not a pirate!"

I laughed, but secretly I was grateful that she had spoken my name. I had needed to hear someone speak my name again, lest I forget it over time. "...Well, I sailed here in a coffin, not a ship...and uh...I don't have a talking parrot, which I would have eaten by now..." As I mentioned this half-joke, she seemed to motion to someone else I couldn't see. Two minutes later, I had a steaming platter of something like pork, rice, and eggs.

"Hope you don't mind artificial. This place doesn't have real animals, not that I've seen. Still pretty good if you add enough salt," the barkeeper warned.

"I'll...skip the salt, thank you," I politely declined. In reality, if I ever tasted salt again I figured I would go insane. I took a bite of the unsalted pork and then devoured it, glad to cling to life and to hear the churning of my stomach again. "...So what's this place called?"

"Well this city is The Shadow. You would think the government could make better names, but not for the people they call 'throwaways'. I'm guessing you were a 'throwaway' when you got here?"

I remembered the last moments of my life in that other world. Fighting against the Empire's soldiers, watching various shades of red, purple, and black drain from the world around me. Blood, blood, and more blood. Too many dead soldiers, many whom I had trained and protected. And yet in all of that blood, I had searched for moonlight. For Yue, for the one person who had given me solace, for my confidant. Gone, just like almost everything else around me. The man who had built my pendant was his cousin, and he was also gone. Yet their blood had not mingled with that of my men, whose general had vanished like a spineless shadow himself...

"...You could say that."

The barkeeper nodded, and she got my glass of rum. She also got water to chase it down. "Well, there's not much love you'll find here, but there are beds, which feel something like love. If you travel too far into The Shadow, you might get lost. Though...there's someone else who landed here a week ago. Weird, like yourself."

I gobbled my non-eggs and stared at her. "...Weird?...What did they look like?..."

"Well, not a pirate like you, but...they got into a fight with some Enforcers. No augmentations, so of course they were suspicious. Nice long, flowing hair though. Seemed to be able to escape, but there's no telling where they're hiding. Looked like a lady, but eh. Everyone can change their appearances so easily now you can't even tell without talking to people," the woman explained.

I blinked and stared at my cup of rum. It glistened dully like maple syrup, like the passing of halcyon summer days. I drank it down, and it stung just right. "...Do you...think they're still in The Shadow?" I inquired, my voice finally showing some of my weakness.

She thought for a minute, before she glanced out the door behind me. "...They probably haven't gone to the Above. That's the town for 'good' people. Without good parts, they won't be able to go up there. Get a room, I'll let you stay for free for a while here. And if you find who you're looking for...maybe you two can be headed for better things." The barkeeper probably had not seen much hope in her life, but she tried to generate some hope for me, from the bottom of her heart.

"As long as the heart beats, you are still you, and everyone loves the heart.

"Well...I won't be getting new parts for my heart...if that's alright."

"To be honest, you seem like a nice boy. I'd rather you not," the bartender responded with a smirk. She could have been someone's no-nonsense mother. She paused to think, and then nodded, as if she had remembered some key detail. "They had ocean-blue eyes too. Bright enough I almost thought they were lights. I could see them from in here. I hope they don't get caught, for your sake."

"...They won't," I answered. I had a feeling. I knew he would be fine. I had been a general, he had been an assassin. But...I had to find him soon. Someone, anyone, who might recognize and remember me.

She gave me the keys to my room, and I promptly found it upstairs. Before I left again to find Yue, I searched for a mirror so I could really see myself. The mirror in the room was scratched and had some questionable stains, but I saw my face. Amber eyes, dull crimson hair, a five-o'-clock shadow, and skin dulled and wrinkled by saltwater. Yet I was still me, somehow. A hand slipped over my pendant, and for a minute my heartbeat slowed.

After I dropped...absolutely nothing in my room, I decided to go looking for Yue. The city streets outside once again had few to no markers, and people seemed to avoid me as I passed. More neon lights, more technology that was covered in rust or barely working. I saw that many people did have prosthetic devices of some sort on their bodies, but they were all old or not working well. Most importantly, they scrambled into their homes and into buildings when the "Enforcers" moved through the streets. They were the only beings that glowed, with neon-emblazoned metal vests and augmentations that made them appear to be eldritch, weaponized beings sifting through the shadows for prey.

I was so entranced by one that he managed to catch me, and an arm made of metal grabbed at my arm made of flesh and dragged me into the streets.

"SHOW AUGMENTATION ID." A metallic voice screeched out of a talking box in the man's face.

Nobody asked for my name, nobody asked where I had come from. To them, I was the sum of my parts. Yet I could not panic, and being a military man in my bones I managed to hide my terror well. "...Augmentation?"

"RESISTANCE AND/OR AGGRESSION WILL BE TREATED PROMPTLY. SHOW AUGMENTATION ID." Someone had rehearsed their lines well.

I searched around for something that could work as an augmentation, and I looked at my pendant. A terrible sacrifice, if I so made it. Yue would kill me if I lost it, I thought. But I pulled the pendant and hoped they could not see my pulsing heart behind it.

A clawed hand tightly held the pendant, almost choking me as it examined the tiny memento. It was built with love, a technology they would not recognize. I could only hope they would knock me unconscious, and not kill me in the streets on sight...

"ANCIENT AUGMENTATION. ARTIFICIAL HEART. NEEDS MORE EXAMINATION. UPDATE AUGMENTATIONS WITHIN SEVEN DAYS OR FACE CONSEQUENCES. FIRST WARNING."

A silent pause, and they grouped together and marched away. Once again, I did not show my relief until they left. I was terrified, and then relieved, and I could feel sweat pour off my aching skin as they left. That was it. Ancient augmentation, update in seven days. Updating the heart sounded like a comically impossible task. Updating my little pendant seemed blasphemous as well. Yet I would solve that issue after I found Yue. For now, this "augmentation" was enough.

As I walked, I was reminded that I needed to get my coffin off the beach, otherwise the Enforcers would take it away. One of my last memories of that world. Maybe Yue was there, looking for me...

The beach filled my heart and stomach with a thick, viscous sense of dread. Yet now I returned to this place, and I could see the city from the outside. Rotten, curling into itself like a spider's corpse, dulled colors and dying lights. Yet from one small death to another I traveled, hoping to take two negatives and to make a positive.

And indeed, I got three.

Yue's eyes blended with the water, except they were a shade darker. I noticed them when the man examining the coffin swiftly turned his head to hear my heavy footsteps on the beach. A raw moment, two people with nothing artificial on them, both of them staring across a bone-colored beach and making an old connection.

My sunburnt and toughened face gave the biggest smile I had made in months. When I re-entered the world behind me, smiles would be rare. Darkness would fall and my life would become uncertain. I had to build one for myself out of this moment. Seven days lay behind me, seven more ahead. I had to build them, starting with the next steps across the beach.

In The Shadow, I would make my moonlight again.