Chapter Text
Book of Lenny
Mang-chi, that prick. If he hadn’t ran like a coward the second he heard footsteps we might have stood a chance inside The Library.
Pete must have been the glue holding the team together then. The moment he died, I know there was no way we’d last long. He was the leader! The one with ambition, a light in these dark and gruelling times.
It was his dream to join a finger and live a cosy life in the lower ranks, doing as told to scrape by in a bit of a better position than a rat. Can’t say I blame him, sounds like an ideal life.
I always wanted to join a band. Or make my own. Not one like the pianist and the maniacs that try to replicate that performance, I wanted to make music for music’s sake. I found an old record player in the trash, actually. I got it working in a few days thanks to some Yurodivye passing by. Managed to find some batteries for it too in some wrecked buildings. It might only have ten songs available, a cheap piece of junk, but I owe it a lot for keeping me distracted.
I don’t know if Mang-Chi had a dream. He wanted to fit in, I know. Avoid sweepers at any cost, hated the fingers. If he did have one, it was probably to live in a high-grade alley. He wasn’t too ambitious.
Here I am, talking about dreams… Life’s too rough for those, no point in ever hoping for something. Not in this hell. Pete’s an idiot for following her into that alley, but… Maybe I’m being a hypocrite by saying that.
A girl named Eri approached me. She worked for a fixer's office, and it was around three months ago. It was an opportunistic deal, be her eyes and ears and ensure a warm bowl of food and enough water to last as long as you stayed loyal. I took it, obviously. Never told Mang-chi nor Pete about it, figured they might not appreciate word getting out.
That leads us right to here… The target in some ditchy alleyway with a body that worked for the Rusted Chains group we somehow managed to catch off-guard. Eri wanted the stomach. Try and find where they ate so they could surprise them. I’m not exactly sure it worked like that, but we tried anyway…
Book of Eri
Two months ago, Yun proposed.
I don’t know what possessed him to do it, but I accepted, even if I didn’t feel the same— if he even felt that way in the first place. He didn’t take a knee and propose, never one for romance. I wouldn’t have expected him to anyhow. Thinking about him with a flirtatious smile? Being half decent in his affections? Eugh, it gives me the heebie jeebies.
Anyway. I found him in my office after work. It was just after Zwei South Section 6 got dismantled by the Abyss Maiden, and he had been invited to refill the ranks on the behalf of ninety percent of the office dying. Didn’t think he’d come back after that, despite staying in touch and giving out favours every so often. It turns out marriage has a few financial perks in the city; they’re the things that really drew me in.
We signed the forms in a few hours and got two fake rings for appearance’s sake, and I haven’t found myself regretting it since. Yun’s a nicer person deep down than I thought. It’s just this City that’s casted any softness into a hard shell.
I only regret that I’m not dying with him.
Book of Yun
‘Zwei Section 6 needs more hands. Capable, unwavering, and loyal.’
That was what Director Isadora said to me on my first day during the interprocess interview. I didn’t think much about it, brushed it off as a needless saying. But her words didn’t end there. She continued ‘But who am I kidding? There’s none of that in section 6. You’re loyal to money aren’t you? To your own benefit? Do well, get paid well. I won’t beat around the bush, junior, if you can’t hold your own against the monsters that lurk around here, give up now or you'll be used as bait.’
I suppose I should have been offended. The way she said it however, it didn’t feel like a snide remark. It didn't feel like a warning either. She was right, wasn’t she? I was loyal to the highest bidder like any sane fixer was. Even though I was a good bit older than her, I really was just her junior, huh?
Dying in a place like this… Eri breaking her promise… Love’s a cruel thing.
Book of Arnold
Eight months ago, when District 23 was properly savaged and W Corp had to permanently shut down, was when I met Mo and Consta. They were a little ragtag band back then, but we were all scared of what was to come and so we formed our own little pack. Our own syndicate to try and survive in the storm to come.
Ha, looking back on it, everything was worse than I could have imagined. I didn’t think things could ever get this bad. It’s almost comedic. They say almost 72% of all fixer offices have been shut down now, before Hana put their foot in. It's because of the uh… Abyss maiden, a star of the City. I haven’t heard much about it and there’s a good reason for that. I don’t want to come across whatever that thing is, if it’s able to ravage The City and nests like this.
All that being said though? There’s a lot of new opportunities around. So much open space for everybody. I wanted to try and join a workshop, maybe we’d get lucky and it would turn into the next Wing for the area, but the inquisitors of N corp happened to survive the attacks, despite almost all of district 14 being reduced to rubble.
It’s only thanks to Miss Yujin that any of us lived the second we stumbled into their sight.
Book of Consta
What’s your favourite food? I loooove food. It’s my favourite question to ask, even if I can’t answer it. From pizza, ramen, paella, dumplings, esbein, hell even a good old burger and fries make me feel fantastic.
When Mo, Arndol and I decided on getting artificial bodies, I thought I wouldn’t miss it that much. Dead wrong, I was. I beside myself with grief when it slowly started to settle in– I couldn’t even feel hunger. It was horrible, like a hell of my own.
I could only continue with a facade of hope. I would have killed to even get an empty stomach, and even if the mechanical body only needed repairs every now and then, and cost so very little compared to an organic one, I loathed it more than anything else. Getting a full body prosthetic was the biggest mistake I ever made.
It was only a few months ago when the inquisitors of N corp came by, ready to purge us heretics without remorse. Would have died if Miss Yujin didn’t protect us. We pledged ourselves to her— It was Mo’s idea— and did whatever she asked of us. She was calm and efficient, I had a good feeling about her myself so I didn't complain much.
Any suspicion I had ever harboured immediately shattered when she overheard my troubles and bought me a cheap artificial stomach and tongue. It’s not much, and needs some medicine and a few other costly things to keep it running, but I’ll never take hunger for granted again. She's a saint for doing that. She gave me back what I treasured most and I'll never forget that.
I don’t regret dying here. I can only hope our books can be useful to Miss Yujin.
Book of Mo
I frankly don’t recommend replacing your entire body with a machine. Especially with one as cheap as this. I wouldn’t have gotten mine if I’d known about how uncomfortable it was. I'm not claustrophobic, but relaxing for too long and letting your joints rest can lead to them freezing. It's horrifying to zone off and, when you come back to your senses, find your body completely immobile. It takes a a few minutes to warm then back up.
Then there's the issue of brain fluid. It's a godsend to low grade prosthetics like this, but feeling some damn bio-treatment oil ooze into your literal brain? It's not an experience anybody could enjoy. It's an even worse feeling when you're starved of it though. Feeling your brain slowly shrivel up from a lack of a body is… It’s torture. Plain and simple.
… The info we died trying to get? Well, the info we came to the Library to conserve— its the last reservoir of K-corp technology. A… healer of some sort. Passively created in an area, needs energy. Found it in ruins of an old L-Corp facility. Didn’t do much for us, full prosthetics don’t work well with the ‘miracle’ stuff. The people with augments and tattoos instead though? It's priceless. It's just a pity we got cornered by N-Corp’s inquisition before we could depart with the information.
If we could just come to this Library, have our books properly documented… Yujin would be able to get the information we harbour. Didn't think I'd die a syndicate member working under a fixer.
Book of Pierre
Hahah… Look at me, once the chef of a Bistro of her namesake now grovelling in alleyways, eating scraps of sweeper leftovers. What a joke.
I thought the Library might have a few good monsters in it, something to really get this fake stomach of mine filled with some delectable meat, but that was just a load of bull. Beaten to death by two people, grade eight fixers or something. If only Jack were here…
Jack. My partner in crime. My sous-chef. My assistant and student. Big, strong, and a deep passion for cooking. Great at grinding down ingredients and kidnapping them off the street.
Catching ingredients with him. Watching him freeze up whenever I mixed a bit of fish into my stews. Seeing his prickly attitude at some rude pricks inside the Bistro. Hehe~ I can still remember when he started cooking one of their pinkies because it wasn't ‘strong’ enough— he looked so serious too! Like he wasn't being so childish! And seeing his face light up at tasting a new dish, a new recipe for him to test. Ahh~ those were the good old days.
The good old days. Before the whole ‘Abyss Maiden’ fiasco. Bullshit. The associations and wings were just covering their asses hard by pretending like the Black Silence and company had died or gone missing.
Ohho, no. Most certainly not. Hana couldn’t just allow everybody in the City to know half the fucking colors had gone rogue . I was there. I saw her! I saw the Black Silence, wearing some sort of mask as she ripped apart buildings like paper and murdered waves of fixers and syndicates. Almost all of district 23 was in ruins. First place she attacked in her rampage.
Took Jack with her. Never could find his body. Out gathering some ingredients just before the Night in the Backstreets when he was just unlucky enough to be caught up in a fight.
I’d know. I was there.
The Black Silence. I saw her in the flesh. And in just one swing of her mace, I’d been closer to death than I’d ever been. Stomach ruptured, spine completely fractured, front of my skull split into a thousand tender pieces.
Don’t know why, But a sweeper dragged me back when I was unconscious, when it would have usually liquidated my remains. That’s when I saw it– a sweeper mother. A huge, horrifying thing that reached up to the roof of the cavernous building it’d dragged me into. I was sure I’d die, that I was being fed straight to the source, yet I was wrong. Instead I saw an unfathomable look in her eyes, and when I passed out again, I woke up with these ‘augmentations’. A body of flesh and a body of a monster.
Not sure if I love it or hate it. It’s pretty damn useful though. There’s no good ingredients around district 23 anymore, almost nothing was edible before I got it. The only thing left are rats and scavengers. The taste is limited, and coarse and rough textures are horrid. But they’d be even worse if I still had a human tongue.
I suppose this is just karma. Kidnapping kids and raiding the oldfolk’s home was bound to come around someday, hm?