The basement air hung heavy, reeking of scorched circuitry and ozone.

  Leo sat deep in the shadows of his folding chair, peering through his head-mounted scope at the circle of slouched figures before him. Which stubborn idiot blocked their prosthetic cooling vents again?

  A familiar, sharp jolt shot through his right foot.

  Xeno-Limb Rejection.

  Not the ghost of a missing limb, but the scream of a limb that was there—an alien graft, rejecting his very nervous system.

  He didn’t move. Moving was pointless. Endure. He needed the Virtue Credits from the Silver Ring; without them, there were no rations.

  At the service window, Oba was still broadcasting on an endless loop: "...Doctor Leo, this joint keeps jamming, sometimes it feels like..."

  Leo picked up his multi-tool, probed into the mechanical arm, and severed the artificial nerve bundle with a single, precise snip.

  But Oba didn’t shut up. He kept prattling on—about the price of the prosthetic, the warranty, and how he used this very hand to cradle his child and wipe his ass.

  If a mouth cannot output valid information, it is functionally identical to an anus.

  Leo clamped on his headphones. The sound of Bach, heavy and majestic as a tidal wave, instantly drowned out the basement's filth. Yet, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from Oba’s thick, flapping lips; a surgical schematic surfaced unbidden in his mind:

  Resection of the tongue. Installation of a semantic filter unit. Output strictly limited to valid syntax.

  The problem is, Leo mused, the concept of 'valid' does not exist in the cranial cavity of a Rat.

  He shook his head—stripping wires, scraping rust, swapping boards, fusing nerves.

  Twenty minutes later, the music ended.

  "Oh my god... this must be a gift from the Silver Supreme!" Oba cradled the silky-smooth prosthetic, blowing a whistle of admiration before jerking his chin at Leo’s own trembling hand. "Doctor Leo, why don't you replace yours? You’re a cripple, that's why you can't operate on the High Lords and have to rot down here with us, right?"

  Leo looked at him coldly. He felt no insult, only a clinical pity.

  Compensatory aggression. When the intellectually insolvent cannot find balance through skill, they seek superiority in the physical defects of others.

  Pathetic. Tragic. Irritating.

  He snatched the prosthetic back and slammed it onto the fat man’s stump. Uncleaned alcohol splashed onto the exposed neural interface.

  Oba shrieked like a slaughtered pig, nearly launching himself into the ceiling.

  "Stop pouring pig fat into the oil ports. Unless you want to breed maggots in your bearings." Leo tossed a small vial of lubricant onto the desk. "Use this. It's free. Get out."

  Oba scrambled away, grimacing, not daring to utter another syllable.

  Leo watched Oba and his kind scurry off, his internal commentary running cold. Yes, they might live to be a hundred, but their brains are locked at fifteen—eternally adolescent. Their only value is to serve as consumables. Biomass for the machine.

  Just then, the blast doors hissed open. A piercing, blinding light stabbed his retinas.

  The fat man screamed and prostrated himself on the dirty floor.

  Leo didn’t move. He narrowed his eyes against the glare. The Xeno-Limb pain granted him the privilege of not kneeling.

  The halo faded, revealing a figure standing before the stained-glass window of the underground sanctuary.

  It was Vivian.

  Her Holiness, the Fire Keeper of the Silver Ring’s new generation. The perfect idol projected from countless holographic billboards, now made flesh.

  She stood 175.0 cm tall—margin of error: 0.5 mm—draped in robes of moon-white silk. Golden wisps of hair curled around her neck, trembling with a life of their own.

  Leo stared at her profile. Compared to the digital perfection of the billboards, she was... surprisingly not inferior.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  He wanted to look away, but his optic nerves betrayed his will.

  Damn it. His heart began to pound violently. The biological instinct he hated most.

  Don't be a primate secreting hormones, he cursed himself. This is merely survivorship bias under the law of large numbers. A 'high-probability event' inevitable after billions of genetic recombinations.

  But the Divine absolutely does not draw straight lines!

  He zoomed in on the details like a man possessed, hunting for an asymmetrical nostril, a lip too thick... but he failed.

  At this moment, the old dog officiating the ceremony invited the Fire Keeper under the Silver Arc.

  "I am deeply grateful to you all, my brothers and sisters." The Fire Keeper clasped her hands over her chest.

  Leo immediately caught the flaw. The voice had zero friction; the overtones were pristine, like a perfectly tuned C-major piano.

  He smiled. Absolute perfection is a falsehood.

  This isn't a product of natural evolution. This is a perfect score on a gene-editing exam.

  "Truly, looking at you, you are so vibrant," the Fire Keeper continued, her voice dripping with artificial mercy. "Although you feel pain, although you bleed... But because of this, you can hear the flowers blooming in your lungs, smell the wind caressing your cheeks... That is the most precious perception the Supreme One left us..."

  The sound of blowing noses erupted around him. Oba was sobbing like a two-hundred-pound infant.

  Leo’s hand throbbed with a sharp, vicious jolt.

  He almost snorted aloud.

  Hear the flowers? Smell the wind?

  Pain is a damage alarm mechanism even slugs possess; it has nothing to do with divinity. And as for flowers... how many of these sewer Rats have ever even seen one?

  Just another tried-and-true farce. The rich buy indulgences, the poor smoke spiritual opium, and the Silver Ring harvests power from the ashes.

  Circuits are the only honest things left. 0 is 0. 1 is 1.

  He pulled his attention back to his workbench.

  But just as he lowered his head, a spotlight from the stained-glass window sliced across the room, cutting right across the slender curve of Vivian’s neck.

  His gaze welded to that patch of skin.

  Data Analysis initiated.

  Under direct, intense light, human skin exhibits translucent Subsurface Scattering due to the capillary network beneath—the "rosy glow" of life.

  But that patch of skin had neither highlights nor glow. The light died upon it.

  High-Density Lead Polymer Matrix.

  Leo’s mind froze. The notebook in his memory instantly snapped open to page 47, bottom right corner. A structural diagram floated onto his retina.

  For the "ticket" home, he had mined the database for ten full years.

  That’s right.

  That isn't a sunscreen coating. That isn't anti-fouling skin.

  That is legendary Class-IV Radiation Shielding Armor.

  You could throw her into a reactor core, and she’d walk out unscathed. But the side effects... the rejection pain must be excruciating.

  Why?

  Thunder pealed in his synapses. The neurons fired, piecing together the grim mosaic.

  He felt as if liquid nitrogen had been dumped straight down his spine.

  So that’s it. History is repeating itself!

  The so-called "Fire Keeper" is nothing but a single-person Noah’s Ark wearing human skin. A mobile nuclear bunker. She exists to continue praising a non-existent God on the scorched earth that is coming!

  And the "Sanctity of Flesh"? Just a placebo to paralyze the Rats before the apocalypse.

  The Lunar War is beginning again.

  At that moment, his Xeno-Limb pain erupted completely!

  Drills bored into his skull. The air turned into viscous gel. High-pressure concrete filled his lungs. The motherboard in his hand curled up, glowing red, green smoke rising like incense.

  Amidst the ashes of his vision, only kneeling silhouettes remained. And the Fire Keeper stood in the center of the ruins, glowing white under that layer of lead skin.

  But why? Why her? Why us?

  Trembling, Leo fished a metal tube from deep within his pocket and stabbed it viciously into his thigh.

  High-grade synthetic analgesic crashed through the blood-brain barrier.

  In the dim light, dust motes swam like bioluminescent fish. The sound of prayer distorted into a low hum.

  His train of thought derailed, dragging a chain of desperate logic towards delusion.

  No. I cannot die.

  I still have dreams. I must save myself.

  And this secret... this is my bargaining chip.

  I can't tell the others; they won't believe a junkie doctor.

  A trade.

  Yes. I must walk over there, point at her nose, and recite the chemical formula of that lead skin.

  To keep the Rats obedient, to win the Nuclear War, she has no choice but to buy my silence.

  Materials. Technology. Or... a ticket to Earth?

  The coastline that haunted his dreams surfaced in his mind. The humid air. The stable gravity.

  Yes! That’s it!

  Leo jumped up. The nerve pain in his leg vanished under the chemical flood.

  He stepped over the maintenance area, extending his twitching hand toward the woman bathed in light.

  "Look at me! Kindred! I have seen the truth inside you!"

  In that split second, the Fire Keeper’s gaze turned toward him.

  Leo smiled.

  She saw me!

  She is trembling!

  She is waiting for my judgment!

  She will kneel and beg for my mercy!

  However, in an instant, a wall of darkness—no, a man in black—materialized before Leo without a sound.

  An irresistible force clamped onto his neck. Like leashing a stray dog, pressing him back into the shadows.

  Everything happened in silence. No workbench knocked over. No sound. Not even the dust was disturbed.

  Kinematics at its apex.

  Before Leo could offer a professional assessment, a sliver of coldness touched his jugular.

  "Calm down, chem-head." The man’s voice carried the metallic tremor of striking copper. "I know you're excited to see the Fire Keeper, but now is not the time to get high."

  I didn't!

  Leo wanted to scream. Wanted to shatter the man’s jaw. Wanted to shout "Apocalypse."

  But his vocal cords were paralyzed. His limbs belonged to the drug now.

  The world began to spin, his vision collapsing into a singularity.

  In the final moments before consciousness vanished, he made one last, accurate deduction.

  But why send a bodyguard to stop me?

  Why use a neuro-paralytic? Instead of just snapping my neck?

  The answer is obvious: In broad daylight, she doesn't dare.

  She is afraid.

  Leo slumped on the ground, watching the holy white light drifting away, the corner of his mouth hooking into a knowing, broken smirk.

  She fears me.

  Thanks for checking out the first chapter!

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  Question: What do you think about Leo's theory on "Pain"? Let me know in the comments!