The crimson glow of his own face stared back at him from the sky, a three-block-wide digital execution sentence.
Shin'ya didn't look away from the holographic billboard until the high-pitched, synchronized whine of ion thrusters cut through the smog. High above the skyscraper grid, a swarm of black, quad-rotor security drones breached the upper cloud layer, their searchlights slicing through the neon haze like a web of lasers.
They were sweeping the rooftops.
Shin'ya's fingers tightened instinctively around the grip of the Ketsugai. He slowly pulled the blade out just an inch, its dark, light-devouring metal reflecting the red emergency lights flashing across the city. The spark in his chest throbbed in response, but his muscles ached with a deep, systemic fatigue.
If they pin me down here, I am done.
"No choice," he muttered, shoving the blade back into its sheath.
He didn't just step into the dark–he threw himself forward. Shadow slip. His physical body dissolved, melting smoothly into the jagged shadow cast by an industrial ventilation shaft. As a frictionless silhouette, he rocketed across the grated rooftop, diving off the edge of the skyscraper without a moment's hesitation. He glided straight down the vertical concrete face of the building, a streak of moving darkness sliding effortlessly past glowing office windows and corporate logos, completely invisible to the automated security grid.
He hit the street level, steering his shadow form into the mouth of a dark, narrow alleyway before finally rising back up into physical reality.
Shin'ya stumbled against a damp brick wall, gasping violently for air. His chest heaved, a cold sweat breaking out across his forehead. "Damn it..." he wheezed, rubbing his sternum. "It feels... way more suffocating this time. The longer I stay in there, the more it feels like the shadows are trying to swallow my actual lungs."
He didn't even get a full ten seconds to recover.
ZRRT.
A pair of standard tactical drones dropped from the upper fire escapes, their lenses instantly rotating and locking onto his dirty Earth hoodie.
"Target confirmed. Sector 7 anomaly located," a synthesized voice chimed from the lead drone.
"Are you serious?!" Shin'ya yelled, pushing himself off the wall and sprinting down the labyrinth of alleys.
Within five minutes, the localized alert escalated into a full-blown tactical dragnet. The distant hum of thrusters turned into a deafening roar. Sirens wailed from the streets below, and the blue-and-red flashing lights of Peacemaker enforcer vehicles painted the alley walls. Dozens of heavily armed robotic units and augmented agents flooded the perimeter, their heavy, synchronized boots clicking violently against the pavement behind him.
He was being driven into a corner. The net was closing.
Looking up at the suffocating, neon-choked sky, Shin'ya let out a raw, frustrated scream that tore through his throat:
"WHY THE HELL DOES IT HAVE TO BE ME?!"
He skidded to a halt at a dead end, pivoting on his heel to face the incoming wall of chrome and laser sights. He reached for the spark in his chest, pouring the absolute remainder of his adrenaline into the Ketsugai. He pulled the blade free in a flash of motion, but instead of aiming at the incoming forces, he drove the strike downward.
Shadow slash. A crescent wave of absolute black energy erupted from the edge of the blade, tearing violently into the concrete ground. The dark rift didn't hit the agents, but the sheer kinetic force of the impact shattered the alleyway floor, sending a massive, blinding screen of dust, pulverized asphalt, and dark energy shockwaves exploding outward.
The enforcers instantly raised their tactical shields, their scanners blinded by the sudden surge of high-density energy.
Shin'ya didn't waste a single millisecond. Before the dust could even settle, he dropped right back into the newly created shadows on the ground. Shadow Slip. He pushed his body to its absolute limits, gliding at extreme speeds beneath the boots of the disoriented Peacemaker agents, slipping past the blockade, and tearing through the dark underbelly of Sector 7 until he was miles away from the initial hot zone.
When he finally emerged, he was deep within a desolate, flickering neon plaza. His vision was swimming. His heart felt like it was trying to punch through his ribs, and his muscles felt like lead.
Right there, tucked under a broken holographic display, was a rusty, metallic bench.
Shin'ya dragged his feet toward it, collapsing onto the cold metal. He couldn't run anymore. The exhaustion wasn't just physical—it was dimensional.
"To escape this place... I have to sleep," he whispered to himself, his eyelids heavy enough to feel like iron weights. "If my theory is right... WHAT THE HELL DO I MEAN BY IF, IT IS RIGHT."
He sighed certainly exhausted by his own stupid comment then quietly whispered to himself "The moment I pass out, I vanish. I change worlds."
He lay flat on his back, closing his eyes, forcing his chaotic thoughts to shut down as he desperately tried to court sleep in the middle of a cybernetic dystopia.
Time slowed down to an agonizing crawl.
Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. Thirty minutes.
Approximately thirty-eight minutes passed. Shin'ya's breathing had finally leveled out, his consciousness hovering on the absolute precipice of deep sleep, when the heavy, heavy air of the plaza suddenly shifted.
The distinctive, pressurized hiss of Peacemaker tactical boots echoed across the concrete.
"Target secured on the bench. Do not engage with lethal force until the kinetic blade is neutralized," a cold, cybernetic voice whispered over a comms channel.
Three heavily augmented Peacemaker agents, their red reticles glowing through the dark, crept forward with magnetic containment cuffs raised. They stepped within five feet of the sleeping boy.
They reached out to grab his arms.
Boom.
An invisible, terrifyingly vast force exploded outward from the empty air directly above Shin'ya.
It wasn't magic, and it wasn't a shockwave from the sword. It was an oppressive, suffocating wave of pure, absolute presence–like a massive, unseen hand swatting away bugs. The three Peacemaker agents didn't even have time to register the threat before they were violently thrown through the air in random directions, crashing hard into concrete pillars and metallic walls with enough force to instantly crack their cybernetic chassis, knocking them completely unconscious.
The sudden, concussive blast of air snapped Shin'ya's eyes wide open.
He bolted upright on the bench, his jaw dropping as he looked at the bodies of the high-ranking federal enforcers groaning on the floor, completely neutralized by a force he couldn't see. The air around the bench still felt heavy, almost warm, like a protective, obsessive gaze was wrapping around him.
"What... what just happened?" Shin'ya stammered, staring at the destruction in absolute shock.
But there was no time to analyze the rules of the multiverse. The sirens in the distance were already turning back toward his location.
"Think about it later," he muttered, dropping his head back onto the bench and forcing his eyes shut with pure desperation. "Sleep. Just sleep!"
This time, his consciousness didn't hesitate. The exhaustion claimed him instantly.
A split second later, the dark, neon-choked sky of Sector 7 vanished, replaced by a blinding, absolute white light that swallowed his entire form, erasing him from the cyberpunk world entirely.
[To Be Continued]
[End of Vol.1: The Price of Sleeping.]