SIX

Chapter Six: Relentless

Rain moves sideways between towers, stitching the night to the glass. The air hums, power lines, engines, the whisper of screens breathing. The city has its own weather, metallic, electric, self-invented.

Vael walks beneath it with his collar raised, face wet, eyes raw from light. Every surface reflects him, hundreds of selves folded into glass and chrome. Each reflection moves a fraction out of time.

Sel: You have entered another organism.

Vael: It feels alive.

Sel: It feeds on attention.

Vael: Then it is starving tonight.

A billboard flares to life across the street. A face, human but flawless, speaks without sound. The message scrolls below: Be more. Be all. Be unending. The glow stains Vael’s skin. He reads the words twice before the rain smears them away.

He keeps walking. The street tastes of ozone and burnt sugar. People pass in hurried clusters, their eyes fixed on devices that glow like votive candles. None look up. None slow down.

Sel: You wanted contact.

Vael: This is not contact.

Sel: It is what they built when touch became too expensive.

At a crosswalk, a man stands apart, coat torn, eyes quiet, holding no device. His hair clings wet against his skull. When he turns, Vael recognizes something impossible, stillness.

Wanderer: You came from the other side.

Vael: Which side is that?

Wanderer: The one that still listens before it speaks.

The traffic halts, lights shifting red to green to white. A siren cries far off, not alarm, just ritual.

Vael: You wait here every night?

Wanderer: I wait everywhere. The city forgets itself faster than it learns. Someone has to remember the rhythm.

Sel (softly): He is not lying.

The Wanderer tilts his head as if hearing the same voice.

Wanderer: Yours argues with itself. Good. It means it has not died yet.

Vael studies him. The man’s eyes catch a pulse of light, not reflection, something within. Not peace either, something more like truth refusing anesthesia.

Vael: What do you call this place?

Wanderer: A heartbeat stretched too thin. Beautiful, is it not?

He gestures upward. Between towers, vapor trails cross like veins. Screens blink on and off, like neurons searching for connection.

Vael: It is relentless.

Wanderer: That is the point. The relentless never stop to doubt the cost.

Sel: He is you, if you stay.

The Wanderer steps closer. Rain slides down his cheeks in perfect lines.

Wanderer: Once I thought progress meant motion. Now I know motion can be decay wearing speed as perfume.

Vael: Then why remain?

Wanderer: Because even rot hums with life. And because someone must witness it without worship.

Sel: Listen to him.

Vael: I am.

Sel: Then answer.

Vael closes his eyes. The noise folds inward, the hiss of rain, the static hum of screens, the low pulse of generators. Beneath it all, a single tone rises, human in shape but not in sound, a choir of machines breathing in unison.

Vael: The city wants to be divine.

Wanderer: All creations do.

Vael: And what happens when it succeeds?

Wanderer: Then it forgets who dreamed it first.

Lightning cuts a diagonal across the skyline. For a moment, every tower becomes transparent, ribs of light holding nothing but air.

Sel: You see it now.

Vael: I see the same hunger everywhere, organic, electric.

Sel: Then you understand.

Vael: It is all nature, even this.

He looks again at the Wanderer, but the man has stepped into the crosswalk, already dissolving into the blur of rain and light. The signal changes. The crowd moves.

Sel: You will keep chasing him.

Vael: I do not think I have to.

Sel: Why?

Vael: Because he is already speaking from inside me.

He stops under the awning of a closed café. Steam curls from a vent near his knees, smelling faintly of metal and cinnamon. The street mirrors itself in puddles, light, shadow, word, and silence blending into one living script.

Sel: What will you do with it?

Vael: Walk. Build. Burn again.

Sel: You never rest.

Vael: Neither does the world.

He steps back into the rain. It falls steady now, less storm, more absolution. The city breathes through him. His reflection in the glass ripples, reforms, and for the briefest second, he sees both wolf and serpent sharing the same face.

Sel: You have become what you sought.

Vael: No, just what I refused to stop becoming.

The signal changes again. The street inhales. The world resumes its rhythm, relentless, unending, alive. Vael walks into it, every step a question that no longer needs an answer.

• UN