As Samori and Bean slipped away from the burning hotel, no one noticed them. The crowd's eyes were fixed on the inferno, the flames swelling with such ferocity they lit the cavern-city brighter than any lamp had ever managed. The blaze drew the people of Howl into the streets, their faces washed in orange light that defied the darkness of the underground caves.
In the throng, a woman in a grey house robe checked her watch—9:52 p.m. Her child tugged at her sleeve, pointing toward something else, something urgent. But the mother, too irritated at being dragged from sleep by the fire, refused to look. What her child saw would have turned the crowd into a mob: a man dragged into a black van by the Howl Police, swallowed before anyone else noticed.
"Shut up, girl. You shouldn't even be out of bed," the mother hissed, never lifting her gaze from the blaze.
Inside the van, two officers loomed over a frail man with a crooked toupee and a thin, unsettling mustache. His face was a swollen mess, blood glinting in the dim interior light.
"We told you not to kill them, idiot—just to scare her!" one officer barked.
"I… I ain't know," the man mumbled through broken teeth.
Howl was a city built on labor and survival. Every citizen worked or starved. Families had been trapped in its 25 levels for generations, mining the minerals that fueled the surface world. Rumor claimed Howl once stretched 50 levels deep, but rising floods had drowned the lower half, killing those who lived there. The water climbed higher every year, swallowing lives without pause. People labored on because they believed survival could be bought—hard work might earn them passage to a higher floor, a safer life.
The surface was always dangled as a dream, projected on massive screens across the city. Sunlit fields, open skies—visions meant to confuse and pacify. Police patrolled every block, wielding the idea of the surface as both carrot and whip, just as they enforced the endless grind of the mines.
Samori and Bean lived on the 25th level, the lowest and most brutal. The floors below had drowned long ago. Life there was harsh: cramped greyish homes built from government rations, violence simmering in every corner, neighbors ready to betray for scraps. A single park at the city's center mocked the poor, a pocket of artificial greenery out of reach for most.
Back in the van, the officers pressed their interrogation.
"Did you find what we told you to find?" one asked, voice sharp with impatience.
The mustached man trembled. He already knew the truth: he would not leave this van alive. The larger officer, Cam, shifted in his seat. His body was blocky, almost inhuman, and his hands moved slowly as he fished for a cigarette. But instead of lighting it, he shoved it between his teeth and chewed, grinding it to pulp.
The mustached man whimpered as if the act itself caused him pain.
"Not yet, Cam. We need him alive!" the smaller officer insisted, desperate to wring out information before his partner lost patience.
From outside came the noise of officials rushing to douse the hotel fire. Cam exhaled, almost relieved. In a few days, Level 25 would drown, the government had said. One more problem erased.
The 25th level was the worst, Cam thought. Too many citizens who sensing their Potential—their hidden power—and too many others whose unknown Distortions threatened to awaken under pressure. It made policing harder than anywhere else. But Cam didn't care. They would all be dead soon enough.
Every person in Howl carried a Potential and a Distortion. But few ever learned of them; the grind of work and the constant fight to survive buried those truths. The police existed not to protect but to suppress. Their only mission was to prevent anyone from awakening fully because if the people of Howl ever discovered what they were capable of, the entire system would collapse. The government feared one thing above all: uprising. And if that happened, the waters would be unleashed, drowning every floor, leaving even the police as nothing but bones in the dark.
Everyone in this world carries both a Potential and a Distortion two halves of the same curse. A gift of power always comes with a cost, bound to the bearer's very nature. Someone might fly, but never land again. Another might heal others, but feel their pain tenfold. In Bean's case, she slips into minds, hears thoughts, speaks without words yet she can never use her own voice, never show her face twisted by laughter or grief.
The government fears Distortions as much as the Potentials. A power alone can be weaponized, controlled. But a Distortion is wild, unpredictable, and proof that no person is entirely containable. That is why Howl's police exist: not to protect the people, but to smother the awakening of both.