Volume 2: Hecatomb - Part 1

At the border between Arcadia and Ceres, walls of black concrete rise.
Electric fences, sniffer dogs, watchtowers.
Among the shadows stands a vast supply depot—not to shelter people, but to contain them.
Refugees crowd the Arcadian side, with hell facing paradise. They want to cross. They cannot.
Mother Ceres, in her calculated mercy, sends food, but never shelter.

In the camp, diseases spread: measles, chickenpox, fevers, skin raw and exposed.
The government of Arcadia bans vaccines.
Ceres allows food through—bait that feeds both hope and chaos.

In the past, refugees were executed.
Now they merely wait—slowly dying.
Over time, Mother Ceres herself changed.
They say she changes bodies as one changes eras.
No one knows her face: she is a mirror, reflecting only whoever looks at her.

Women and children crawl through the dust, starving.
On the other side, healthy, well-fed soldiers watch.
Sometimes they throw scraps of food through the bars—not out of compassion, but contempt.
“Look at how freedom stinks,” they say.
The body of freedom lies there, refusing to rot. But it stinks.
It reeks of chaos.

A soldier shouts:
“Disgusting Arcadian scum! You’d never think we once came from your kind!”
“Women who sell themselves… ours are immaculate!”
“Where is your god now? Die, you sperm dumps!”
“Beg Mother Ceres for mercy! We are the blessed ones!”

On the other side, a man holds an old bowl.
He receives his diluted ration, a grayish broth.
The soldier stares at him, laughing.
“Want more?” He spits into the bowl. “Human filth.”

It was never supposed to be like this.
But everything grew worse after the invasion of the military academy, after the students were kidnapped.
Since then, hatred has worn a uniform.
Peace has become an accident.
And freedom...
freedom was still hungry for responsibility.

The Beggar with the Coin

A bearded Arcadian approaches the line.
His face is covered in grime, his eyes yellow, his beard caked with dust and dried blood.
The soldiers see him and laugh.
One of them kicks him in the back with the tip of his boot.
The man falls, rolls on the ground, and laughs at his own misery.
It is his turn in line.

The soldier ladles the thin ration into a rusty bowl.
The beggar shakes his head.
“I don’t want it for free... I want to buy it.”

Laughter erupts like gunfire.
“Would you look at that!” one soldier says. “Wednesday, six in the evening, and this filthy bastard wants to pay for food!”
Everyone laughs—including the beggar, with a hoarse, almost childish laugh.

Then he takes a coin from his pocket.
Old, but intact.
Its metallic gleam catches the soldier’s eye.
The laughter dies.

In one swift movement, the soldier grabs the beggar by the hair and drags him behind a concrete wall.
There, away from prying eyes, he beats the man until he spits blood.

“Where did you get this?” the soldier growls.
“Someone gave it to me...” the beggar replies, gasping. “They told me to buy food from the soldiers... that’s all...”

The soldier takes a deep breath.
He knows what the coin is.
Only one was ever minted, years ago.
A forbidden artifact, a symbol used to communicate between deserter agents.

He stands, wiping the blood from his glove.
He takes a ration pack from the supply stock and throws it onto the beggar’s body.
“Never come here again.”

He hurries away.
He orders another soldier to take his place.
“Emergency,” is all he says.

Minutes later, he gets into an armored car and drives along the road to Ceres’s forward outpost.
The journey is silent. No radio, no headlights.
When he arrives, he heads straight down to a small underground office.

A single lamp illuminates the metal desk.
At its center sits an old typewriter.

The soldier sits down and places the coin beneath the light.
Carefully, he splits it in half—the inside reveals a sequence of numbers and letters engraved in microcode.

He begins typing what he sees:
A3C-71X-FG09…

The keys echo like muffled gunshots.
The code makes no sense, but he knows it is a message.
A signal.

Tomorrow, when the armored train crosses the border, the sequence will be sent to Ceres’s Central Tower.
And, as always, no one will know it all began with a beggar...
and a coin.

Morning in Ceres

The following morning, the armored train tore across the horizon, slicing through the city’s metallic silence.
It was heading toward the Tower. Inside, among shipments of supplies, files, and ordinary correspondence, traveled an encrypted letter.
It looked harmless, a routine piece of mail, but decoding it—if it were stolen—would take years.

The train crossed the northern perimeter, passed through the automatic gates, and descended into Ceres’s underground city. Its steel wheels sang the hymn of progress.
The sorting conveyors turned at a steady pace; parcels, letters, and boxes raced from one machine to another, scanned by X-rays and ultraviolet light, decontaminated, sorted, and labeled.

The Central Tower pulsed.
Concrete corridors housed departments and divisions where men and women worked fervently.
Every movement was calculated, every second productive. Faithful, obedient children devoted to Mother Ceres—they knew that at the end of the day they would receive their rewards, the promised leisure, the satisfaction of a duty fulfilled.

In the correspondence section, employees worked side by side, immersed in the machines’ steady rhythm.
One of them commented with a smile as he typed in codes:
“I broke my record at the pool yesterday. One hundred meters in a minute and twenty seconds. But I’m still a little slow—I caught the flu last week.”

A colleague replied:
“You’ll get better. I’ve been a little tired too; the general practitioner sent me to an orthopedist. I think I’ll need to replace my running shoes... or get new insoles.”

Another employee, opening a box of sealed correspondence, joined the conversation:
“The department doctor said my shoulder is inflamed. Probably from weight training.”

“At least you’re still working out,” a woman said as she arranged envelopes with mechanical precision. “I had my wisdom teeth removed last month. I recommend getting yours done soon. Recovery hurts more than they tell you.”

She laughed, but the laugh sounded rehearsed.

In the corner, another woman examined the worn fabric of her uniform.
“I need to request a new one,” she remarked. “The dark gray has faded.”
“Are the long skirts still available?” a colleague asked.
“They are. Below the knees, as always. But I prefer trousers. They’re more practical.”

The conversations flowed, light and ordinary.
Small domestic confessions swallowed by the sound of the machines.

Ceres lived in perfect harmony.
Every ache, every moment of fatigue, every quiet laugh was part of the Mother’s rhythm.
Nothing escaped her body.
Not even that letter, now gliding silently along a conveyor among thousands of others—toward the heart of the Tower.

An employee picked up the routine correspondence, insignificant in anyone else’s eyes.
But something caught her attention: the sender’s name was coded.
Only she was assigned to receive messages of that kind.

Without hesitation, she stood and went to her supervisor.
“CIC,” she said, almost in a whisper.

The supervisor shuddered.
He took the letter and placed it in a leather folder.
Without looking at anyone, he climbed into a small armored car, its silent siren activated. He said only this to the driver, dressed in dark gray:
“CIC.”

They drove for fifteen minutes through concrete tunnels lined with black marble, silent as catacombs.
At last, they reached a huge metal door. A simple sign was fixed to it:

CIC — Ceres Intelligence Center
Secret and intelligence affairs

The man got out of the vehicle, folder in hand, and waited for the car to return.
Two silencers stood guard at the black door.
He took a deep breath. He needed to speak with Lux, who was in charge of the shipment.
The silencers exchanged surprised glances—any delivery at this gate was an event that sent all of Ceres trembling.

Over the radio, the one closest to the door called:
“Lux, urgent message arriving.”

The door opened. A tall, thin man appeared, with slicked-back hair and an immaculate, stern uniform bearing a different rank. Without a word, he held out his hand.
The supervisor carefully opened the folder, apprehensive, and handed him the envelope.

Lux glanced at the envelope’s seal and smiled faintly.
Without a word, he disappeared through the massive metal door.

The supervisor remained standing, staring at the emblem at the entrance:

“The world is constantly at war; peace is merely an accident. Survival above freedom!”

As he returned to the car, he murmured:
“Mother Ceres, who feeds us, educates us, and devours us!”

The driver repeated the mantra in unison, and the car moved through the black tunnels, disappearing into the shadows underground.

Beyond the black metal door lay a reception room as cold as the city’s own gaze.
The hall was spacious, made of smooth concrete and lit by silent white lamps. Nothing was out of place: minimalist desks, neatly aligned papers, absolute silence.

Lux crossed the space without a word. In another room, he put on a lab coat, acrylic glasses, and thermal clothing. The air changed. When he opened the next door, a blast of cold enveloped him—the air of a refrigerated underground chamber, like a meat locker.

There, dozens of technicians and analysts worked at monitors, cables, and panels. This was the frozen heart of the CIC. At the back of the hall stood a colossus—a black block the size of a tank, three meters tall and six meters wide. One word was engraved in low relief upon it: INCOGNITUS.

It was not merely a machine. It seemed like a presence.

Lux approached. He opened a hidden compartment containing a screen and a keyboard. The CRT monitor slowly lit up, revealing the machine’s logo. With precise movements, he inserted physical keys—small metal cylinders that turned like the dials of a safe—then completed blood and eye recognition. The system accepted him.

A narrow slot opened. Lux carefully inserted the encrypted letter, almost ritualistically. The slot closed.
A blue line silently crossed the black block—a vivid, cold, living horizontal beam.
The reading began. No sound. Only the blue glow pulsing in the darkness like a heartbeat.

Within seconds, the paper was incinerated.
The smoke dissipated inside the machine itself.

Lux watched. The reflection of the blue light danced in his eyes.
For a moment, he seemed to bow in reverence to what he saw.

The machine fell silent.
Incognitus slept once more.

And Ceres dreamed—of her own eternity.

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