The Outskirts, as the name suggests, lie beyond the City.
A sprawl of chaos and death—a slum where the humans who remain can only cling to life with minds twisted into grotesque shapes.
A landfill.
Everything the City no longer needs—every "impurity"—is scrubbed away. And the waste that won't break down gets dumped into the Outskirts in one big sweep…
So naturally, the strange and the impossible are everywhere.
"So you're saying… it's normal to run into ordinary humans in the Outskirts?"
Ke Ming pointed at the little girl kneeling beside a pile of rubble ahead of them—half naked, skin and bones—and clicked his tongue.
In the Outskirts, there were countless abandoned orphans. Countless Backstreets residents who couldn't afford children. Countless families broken apart, people pushed into dead ends—thrown out here to fend for themselves.
In a City where singularities bloom endlessly, human life is the cheapest currency of all.
Of course, because the Outskirts function as a dumping ground, nothing you encounter out here is too absurd to be believable.
Without professional equipment, no one can tell the difference between a little girl and a monster perfectly disguised as one.
Some things could replicate the placement of human organs with one-to-one accuracy—meaning that even if you dissected it until every blood vessel was laid bare, it still might not stop it from "reviving" and swallowing you as a snack.
"Still," Richard said, "cases like that aren't common. Compared to the Great Lake in the south, the west side of the City is relatively safer."
"Great Lake… what is that?"
"My dear Mr. Ke Ming," Richard replied brightly, "the Great Lake is, of course, a great lake! It's full of mermaids who love eating children—especially children who talk too much!"
"..."
Bored by his own joke, Ke Ming turned away and looked in another direction.
Abandoned children—lonely children—he'd seen plenty of those back in Alley 23.
The "ingredients" that had passed through his hands numbered in the hundreds, if not the thousands…
After repeating the same motions a thousand times, after losing any sense of guilt about taking lives, the fact he wasn't reflexively "making full use" of the child already counted as mercy.
Ke Ming nodded with satisfaction—definitely not because a skinny kid had no bite to it.
…
Richard, slowly giving up on "correcting" Ke Ming's worldview, rubbed at his brow in frustration.
Ever since meeting this kid, his habitual gesture had shifted from adjusting his glasses to massaging his temples—and he was starting to feel it might soon escalate into pinching his philtrum.
He genuinely wondered whether the boy was Ke's biological child. Sure, he knew plenty of crazy people in their circles—but none were crazy like this.
Even Alley 23 natives didn't talk like this—yet the kid had only lived there for a bit over half a year, and somehow he'd become more Alley 23 than Alley 23.
"Don't tell me those lunatics finally got tired of eating," Richard muttered.
Somehow, by sheer coincidence, he'd guessed the thoughts of a few "old friends" correctly. He shrugged and waved Ke Ming over.
"Rest here for a bit. We still need to find somewhere safer to spend the night."
They had set out before dawn, leaving right after Deep Night ended.
That timing was comparatively safe. Ordinary Fixers didn't dare face the aftermath of Deep Night—walk out too early and you might run into a Sweeper stuck in a crack somewhere, too late to return, and get eaten as a post-meal dessert.
They hadn't chosen that time because they feared Sweepers.
They chose it because they feared the Wings' eyes turning this way.
Richard shoved aside a section of brick wall stained with dark brown marks and clapped dust from his hands.
"We have to make sure our backs are safe," he said. "Buildings aren't just cover. They can also become perfect hiding places for monsters."
He glanced at Ke Ming—the kid was bang-bang-bang smashing rocks with his prosthetic arm.
Richard sighed.
"But you don't need to grind every remaining fragment into powder… You really are like your father. He used fire—"
Ke Ming rubbed his nose awkwardly. It had been a while since he'd heard the lovely sound of crushed limbs; it felt… unfamiliar.
The Outskirts weren't like Alley 23.
No low, cramped houses. No pitch-black winding lanes. No ragged signboards hanging crookedly…
Only ruins.
Collapsed, rotting structures everywhere, and every so often the faint, human sound of restrained groaning.
"This area is relatively safe," Richard said.
He patted a relatively level patch of ground and half-crouched in the gap between bricks.
"Most ordinary people in the Outskirts live like I do—resting while staying on guard. There are places where even a shadow can kill."
Ke Ming dropped down beside him and kneaded his aching calves.
"Once we cross the ruins of the former T Nest, we'll be close to our destination."
…
After a short rest, the two of them—one big, one small—set off again.
It wasn't late. The sun was bright, spilling freely between broken rebar and cracked concrete.
A few struggling green plants clung to panes of glass, stretching their leaves with careful desperation.
It was hard to imagine anything green growing where humans could barely survive, so Ke Ming—naturally—became wary.
"The edge of the former T Nest," Richard said. "We'll go around this section and we'll arrive."
"Former?"
"A broken Wing," Richard answered. "Worthless—or worse, harmful—to the City."
Seeing Ke Ming's confusion, Richard shook his head.
"At least that's how the Head judges it… Don't ask. That's all I know. When you meet Mr. Lovie, you can ask him."
"Then what about the people in the Nest—"
"The entire Nest was relocated into the Outskirts." Richard's gaze locked onto Ke Ming's eyes. "I don't know how. But in any case…"
"The more you know, the faster you die."
Following the road through the so-called former T Nest, they were lucky: the streets here were still passable.
Maybe the ruins were old enough that the rebar and concrete obstacles crumbled into dust with a single kick.
Unfortunately, the remnants of the former T Nest…
Had not weathered away with time.
Things that were unmistakably once residents of the former T Nest began to writhe and crawl toward them.
Their long, human limbs had degenerated. What remained at their shoulders and hip joints were pathetic lumps of flesh dangling in midair.
Skin split open, exposing pale meat. The fissures spread and interwove, outlining complex, filthy shapes that made the stomach turn.
And what flowed through their veins was no longer blood.
Instead, it was a transparent, arthropod-like fluid—tinged faintly blue in the light.
"Ugh. Definitely can't eat that," Ke Ming gagged, covering his mouth.
"Look on the bright side," Richard said. "At least they still have human faces."
With a kick, he sent aside one of the "helpful locals" that was wriggling forward on its belly, mouth gaping as it tried to bite Ke Ming.
He sighed.
"These… things can still be called human. They've just been ground down by hunger until they lost their reason."
That definition of 'human' is way too broad… Ke Ming thought.
He caught the two-handed sword Richard tossed him and brought it down hard on a writhing human face.
At first, he hacked with enthusiasm—the wet, crunchy splatter of mangled flesh felt weirdly satisfying, like crushing bubble wrap as a kid.
But a few minutes later, he regretted it.
There were too many. You couldn't finish them.
Cut one into pieces, and a few smaller ones would spring out of the meat pile.
It was hard to imagine just how disgusting the former T Nest's singularity tech had been…
These crawlers were so tenacious that even after being split in half, they could still twitch their way forward in search of food.
Leave them alone long enough, and blood vessels would extend from the severed wound, stitching the body back together.
Richard, briefcase in hand, slipped past a lunging "monster," grabbed Ke Ming, and forced a breakthrough in the direction of their destination.
"I call them 'earthworms.' Local specialty," he said. "Don't get bogged down. We're just passing through."
After they escaped the earthworms' territory, Richard found a building that looked stable enough and let them catch their breath.
Then he explained, "We'll rest here. Someone will come to pick us up."
Ke Ming rolled his shoulder, loosening stiff muscles.
"This is what you deal with every day? Being a Fixer is way too dangerous."
"For most Fixers, the Outskirts are a forbidden zone they won't even speak of without turning pale," Richard said. "That's exactly why no one would ever expect us to come here."
He reached up and removed his glasses.
"Even if they did think of it—'A Grade-2 Fixer dragging a child into the Outskirts is dead either way.' My cowardly former colleagues would report something like that."
He ruffled Ke Ming's hair.
"And so, Mr. Ke Ming—"
Richard wiped the thin fog off his lenses and put them back on.
"Congratulations. You're temporarily safe."
....
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