District 9 never slept. It just blinked slower when the sun went down.
Shimura sat in the dark behind the old power station, blanket wrapped around his knees, a scrap of heat-conductive foil pulled from a junkyard cooker tucked under his shirt. It didn't help. The cold got into his bones anyway. He watched the flickering lights of drones sweeping across rooftops and imagined, for a moment, that they were stars. That the world above the slums was warm and clean.
His mother hadn't spoken in three days.
Not real words, anyway. Just murmurs. Names. Apologies to people who weren't there.
Takeshi, mostly.
Shimura didn't know why that name made his fists clench. But it did.
He opened the floorboard again. Just to look.
The badge was still there. Bent. Blood-specked. The lamination cracked from age. He traced the words with his thumb.
Takeshi Shimura, Project: Bloom Cognitive Clone Initiative, ACCESS LEVEL: BLACK VEIL
That last line had always bothered him. Black Veil. He'd heard it whispered in street corners - tied to vanishing children, rogue bio-tech labs, and unsanctioned enhancements. The kind that turned people into weapons. Or worse.
It wasn't just coincidence.
He wasn't born with this thing inside him. He'd been made.
Engineered.
A metal clang broke his thoughts. Three boys stepped out of the fog - older, hungry for violence, the kind that grew in kids who were raised by knives instead of parents.
He didn't react. He'd seen them before. Feral thugs from Block 8. Scarred up. Jittering from cheap injectors. One had bolts drilled through his arms like decorations.
"You still playing statue, freak?" the one in front sneered. "That blanket yours?"
Shimura didn't answer.
The leader smirked and kicked the foil blanket into the puddle. "We asked you a question, mutant."
There it is, Shimura thought. They see it too.
The way he didn't blink. The way his shadow never matched the light.
Another boy cracked his knuckles. "He's going to copy again. Let's see it. Let's see your circus trick."
Still Shimura said nothing.
But something shifted.
A second self shimmered into view behind him - a blur, translucent, flickering in and out like a stuttering light.
The boys took a step back.
"...The hell?"
"Don't touch him," one whispered. "That's not normal Bloom. That's some lab-grown shit."
But it was too late.
The first boy grabbed his arm.
And everything broke.
The world shattered into versions.
One Shimura surged forward. Another ducked left. A third screamed something no one understood. The copies poured out of him like spilled blood, each one more twisted, more unstable. Some blinked out the second they were born. Others hit the attackers like wolves. There was no strategy-just chaos. Just fear wearing his face.
The pain hit a moment later.
One clone got stabbed. Shimura gasped, a bright spear of agony lancing through his chest.
Another got its head kicked in. Blood filled his mouth, though his head remained intact.
Another fell into the fire barrel. The heat - the screaming - nearly made him blackout.
He collapsed to his knees, retching. The clones kept moving without him. Kept killing.
And deep in his mind, he heard them.
"It hurts."
"Why did you make me?"
"I don't want to die again-"
"Not like this-"
"We're you - we're you - we're YOU-"
Shimura clutched his ears. "SHUT UP!"
But they didn't.
They never would.
By the time the clones vanished - melted into steam and echoes - the boys were gone. Or broken. It didn't matter. One had a bent pipe sticking out of his leg. Another was dragging himself away, sobbing like a wounded animal.
Shimura laid flat in the mud, shivering, blood dripping from his nose.
Above him, the power station pulsed with blue static.
And in the reflection of the puddle, a figure watched him.
Not a clone. Not another him.
Older. Male. A man with eyes just like his. Cold. Exact. Precise.
The image vanished the second Shimura blinked.
But something inside him knew.
Later that night, back in the container, he confronted his mother.
"Takeshi." He said the name, soft but sharp. "That's him, isn't it? My father."
She flinched like he'd struck her.
"You said...not again. You begged him. I heard you."
She looked at him with tears rising. "I didn't know what they'd do."
Silence.
"Was I even born?" he asked. "Or was I just... started?"
Her mouth opened. Then closed. Then opened again. "You were my son. You are my son."
"That's not what I asked."
The moment stretched thin. Fragile
She looked away.
And Shimura knew.
That night, he made a decision.
He would find the man with his face. He would find the Black Veil. And he would tear the truth out of them - one clone at a time.
Not because he wanted answers.
But because he wanted someone to hurt.