The sky above District 9 was never truly black.
It was always a bruised shade of purple, a fusion of dense industrial pollution and the arrogant glow of neon lights from the city center.
Beneath it, acid rain fell in thin drizzles, turning the cracked asphalt into a dull mirror that reflected holographic ads of cabaret dancers' thighs and "Super-Human" genetic supplements.
In a narrow alley squeezed between two crumbling apartment blocks, the stench of rotting organic waste mixed with the sharp scent of machine oil.
THUD! CRACK!
The sound was short and final.
No Name pulled back his bloodied fist.
Beneath his feet, a man twice his size collapsed, clutching his face that was no longer symmetrical.
Worn-out cash and a pack of cheap synthetic bread the target of today's operation lay scattered between them.
No Name wasted no time.
With efficient, silent movements, he picked up his spoils.
His breathing remained steady, barely affected by adrenaline.
For him, violence was no longer an extraordinary event; it was routine, as natural as breathing.
He leaned his frail back against the damp concrete wall.
His cold eyes stared toward the distant neon lights.
The old man who raised him used to say there was hope out there.
But after that man died from a lung infection they couldn't afford to treat, No Name learned one thing: hope was a luxury commodity, not sold in the outskirts.
He tore open the bread with his teeth.
It tasted bland, like chewing a wet sponge, but it was fuel to keep his heart beating for another day.
There were no teachers, no parents.
Only the streets had taught him how to dodge a blade and when to strike at a nerve.
"Kill or be killed," he muttered softly, his voice nearly swallowed by the hum of hovering vehicles passing overhead.
As he was about to step out of the alley to find a drier place to take shelter, something strange happened.
The atmosphere suddenly fell into an unnatural silence the kind that pressed against the eardrums.
No Name froze.
His instincts, sharpened by years in the slums, screamed that something was wrong.
He turned his head.
And that was when he saw it.
The raindrops that should have been falling… suddenly stopped right before his eyes.
Floating. Motionless.
As if time itself had lost the courage to move forward.
The world stopped breathing.
No Name slowly extended his hand.
The tip of his finger, still smeared with blood, touched a droplet of rain suspended in midair. It felt ice-cold, solid like a glass marble.
The roaring noise of massive factory engines and the distant wail of police sirens once the chaotic melody of District 9 vanished without a trace.
This was not mere silence.
This was absolute void, swallowing every frequency.
The survival alarm in his mind screamed.
He stepped back, instinct urging him to run from this impossible anomaly.
But as the worn sole of his shoe pressed against the ground behind him… the asphalt was no longer there.
The neon lights flickered one last time before dying completely.
The filthy alley, the damp concrete walls, even the stench of rot and rust everything dissolved in an instant.
Reality itself seemed forcibly stripped away from existence.
Now, No Name floated in the middle of an endless abyss.
There was no up, no down.
His eyes tried to adjust, but it was useless. The darkness here was so dense it felt like liquid, drowning his vision.
His body was free from gravity, drifting like dust in a vacuum.
Yet an invisible pressure crushed his chest with unbearable weight, making the blood in his veins feel as if it were boiling, his heart rebelling violently.
Then, within that suffocating void, the temperature dropped sharply.
Something was there.
It did not come from afar.
It formed slowly, emerging from the very core of the darkness itself.
Its shape was irregular, nothing more than a mass of shadow far blacker than the void surrounding it.
No eyes.
No face.
No clear limbs.
And yet… No Name could feel it watching him.
A gaze as sharp as a blade, peeling away his sanity and piercing straight into the depths of his soul.
The aura of the entity was ancient far too ancient.
Its presence radiated pure terror, the kind that could shatter bones at its mere existence.
No Name, a boy who had never feared death in the filth of the streets, now found himself unable even to swallow.
His lungs froze, as if air itself had been forbidden in the presence of this being.
The entity moved closer. Flowing soundlessly, cutting through the void.
From within its writhing shadow, something resembling an arm slowly extended.
Resting above what seemed like its palm was a sphere of pitch-black energy. It pulsed slowly, yet lethally, draining the remnants of sanity around it like the heart of a long-dead star.
The creature did not offer a choice.
Nor did it wait for permission.