Nightmares never really left.
Jazz had them again last night. The kind that stick to your ribs like spoiled meat—dry throat, shaking hands, body soaked in sweat. No monsters this time. Just voices. Crawling things. Whispers in a voice too close to his own.
"You're a failure."
"You're just a weapon."
"You don't deserve peace."
They came in waves, silent and sharp, slicing through whatever calm he had left. Jazz never screamed. Not anymore. All he did was lie there, blank-eyed and clenched, waiting for the phantom to pass.
Eventually, he sat up.
Another morning. Another mask.
Out there, in the world beyond his bedroom door, Jazz couldn't afford to break. Kinetic control demanded focus, a calm mind. One misfire in a panic, and you could collapse a building—or worse. So he'd learned to wear a second skin, a soldier's shell. Marla had helped him build it over the years. Stoic posture. Steady breath. Blank expression.
But when he was alone?
It unraveled fast.
Jazz rolled out of bed, stepping over stacks of books Marla always nagged him to organize. Half were strategy manuals. The rest, history—about the Fall, the District system, post-collapse Asia. Beside them sat a photo of Marla, Lisa, and Tank—his twisted version of a family. His only version.
He tied his school uniform sloppily. Never liked the thing. Too clean, too "upper class." He thought it looked like something for snobby rich kids who never tasted dirt.
Still, he put it on.
He paused at the threshold of his room. Took a deep breath. Tightened his face like armor.
Then opened the door.
"I'm ready," he muttered.
From the kitchen, a familiar voice chirped through the halls.
"Jazz, come here! I've got something to show you!"
Lisa.
Jazz froze. That excited pitch in her voice never meant anything good—not for him, anyway. It always meant a new experiment. Another brain scan. Another KCE chip analysis. Another headache.
He pivoted on instinct and made for the door.
"Later, Granny!" he shouted as he ran out.
"You little sh—! Get back here! I need to work on you!"
Too late. Tank was already gone—he always left twenty minutes before Jazz did. So Jazz sprinted solo down the block toward Iron Ditch High, his usual route through the cracked walkways of Glassen Belt, District 3.
This was his world now.
A world that pretended it had order. Pretended it had class.
But Jazz knew better.
He knew monsters walked in suits. Not just in the wild or in labs, but in schools and city offices and council halls. Humans were the worst monsters of all.
Especially here.
Especially in high school.
When he first transferred into Tachibana High, he watched upperclassmen get off on pushing around the weak—nerds, scholarship kids, anyone who looked like they didn't belong. At first, Jazz didn't get it. Why let them do it? Why not push back?
He asked that question last year.
To a kid who'd just been beaten with a broomstick.
"Why don't you fight back?" Jazz asked him bluntly.
The kid didn't flinch. Didn't cry. Just looked up with a bruised face and hollow eyes.
"In a world like this," he said, "people like me don't get to fight back. I'm only here because of a scholarship. Everyone else—these rich kids, the ones whose parents are drug lords or corporate giants—they're untouchable. No one holds them accountable. If I swing back, I lose my chance to make it out of here."
Jazz never forgot that.
Especially what the kid said next.
"I'm fighting, just not the way you think. I'm gonna get out of here. Get my family out of Iron Ditch. I just have to survive."
There was something in that.
Something real.
Jazz didn't pity him. He respected it. Even now, he remembered what he told the kid before walking away:
"There's no bravery in silence. You'll be answering to people your whole life. End the cycle with you
The world they lived in—the so-called "Asia" that remained after the Fall—was carved into fragments. There were eight districts now, patched together after the monsters came fifteen years ago. Over 65% of the world population wiped out overnight.
Only three continents had survived: North America (militarized), Europe (under martial law), and Asia (fragmented resistance). Everything else—Africa, South America, the rest of the Pacific—was ruin. Forgotten ruins.
Trade died. Nations fell. Districts rose from ash.
Jazz's home, District 3, was called the Glassen Belt. A place for laborers and tradesmen. Not poor, not rich—just stuck.
The other districts were worse or better depending on who you asked:
Echelon Prime – Elite capital of what's left.
Zenith Sector – Corporate-dominated.
Rift Gluch – Black market haven.
Hollow Verge – Borderline collapse.
Silent Depths – Underground city.
Cathedral Black – Religious militant zone.
Then there was Iron Ditch—what the locals called the slums just outside the Glassen Belt.. Where kids fought to matter.
He didn't believe he could save them anymore. Not all of them. Not even most.
Sometimes, people had to learn to save themselves.
He climbed the last steps into school and opened the classroom door. Just as the bell rang.
That's when he noticed something strange.
The air felt different. Off.
Everyone was talking—but in hushes and whispers. Huddled in groups. Faces twisted in mockery.
And they were all avoiding someone.
Elena.
The star student. The girl everyone fawned over a few days ago. Now she stood alone in her seat, reading quietly while the others snickered and whispered behind her back.
The ones who used to call her "friend" were now the loudest.
Jazz frowned, watching from the doorway.
What the hell happened?
And why did it feel familiar?
Flashback: Six Years Ago
Rain poured relentlessly, turning alleyways into rivers. Jazz and Tank, both twelve, huddled beneath a dilapidated awning behind an abandoned storefront. Their clothes were soaked, clinging to their frail frames.
Passersby sneered, some tossing coins with mocking pity, others hurling insults.
"Get a job, you little rats!"
"Bet your parents are proud—oh wait, do you even have any?"
Jazz stared ahead, eyes vacant. Tank sat beside him, arms wrapped around his knees, silent tears mingling with the rain.
They didn't speak. Words felt useless. In that shared silence, they found strength, a mutual understanding that the world was cruel, but they had each other.
That afternoon, Elena didn't go home.
She walked alone—past her stop, past the station, until she reached the edge of District 3's old rail line. A forgotten place where trains rarely came, but where beasts sometimes wandered. Strained ones. Feral mutations no longer under control.
She stepped onto the tracks and waited.
No note. No call. No scream.
Just her, standing still as a distant screech echoed through the dusk.
A strained beast charged forward—its twisted limbs grinding metal against stone. And she didn't move.
Jazz saw it at the last second
"He saw her standing on the tracks. Just like he had once stood in the rain."
Then the nightmare began.
He didn't think. He just ran.
He tackled her off the tracks, both of them slamming into gravel as the beast stormed by with a guttural howl, missing them by inches.
Elena coughed, winded. "Why… why did you stop me?"
Jazz stayed kneeling beside her, eyes locked.
"Are you dying because you want to," he asked, "or because you feel like you have to?"
Elena's lip trembled.
"Because if that's the case… then you're nothing more than a slave dying for the master."
She turned her head away, shame and pain crumbling what was left of her composure.
"You don't get it," she whispered. "Everyone saw it. My past. The videos. I was trying to survive. And now they act like I'm garbage."
Jazz stood up slowly and extended a hand.
"Then survive on your terms."
Suddenly, a second beast emerged from the shadows—snarling, lunging. Jazz pivoted, dropped low, and drove his palm into the concrete. A spike of stone jutted up and pierced the creature clean through. It shrieked once—then went still.
Dust settled. Elena stared.
Jazz turned back to her, calm and quiet.
"You don't owe this world your death."
She didn't take his hand right away. But when she did, she gripped it like she was trying not to drown.