Prologue: Them

The male cleaner made his usual rounds through the underground floor of Central City Hospital, two white cylindrical cleaning robots trailing behind him. He hummed under his breath. This level was used for temporary corpse storage; the living rarely lingered here. That was why it was so quiet.

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Passing an empty room, he sensed something wrong. He stopped. His hand trembled as he pushed the door open. Darkness filled the room, but the smell reached him at once—thick, warm, metallic.

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He covered his nose and fumbled for the switch. Light flooded the room.

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A girl sat in the corner against the wall. Thirteen, perhaps fourteen. Her chest had been cut open, organs scooped out. Her eyes had been gouged away. Only two hollow sockets remained.

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“Ugh. Them again.” He summoned the cleaning robots and reported it upstairs as if nothing had happened.

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He did not sound shocked. He sounded annoyed. As if this were routine. Why was there no investigation?

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Because this was the work of the underground “Them.”

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Hundreds of years ago, a trivial matter rippled outward. Peaceful assemblies became anti-totalitarian protests. Protests became foreign infiltration. Dominoes fell. The butterfly effect became a world war. Nations split into two major powers and bombarded one another with nuclear missiles. Nearly every concentrated city and town was hit. In the face of nuclear ruin, all were equal. Radioactive dust covered the sky. Black rain destroyed the ecosystem.

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After the nuclear winter, the world warmed again, but ozone depletion and nuclear famine had already done their work. Humanity nearly went extinct. The nations and civilizations that had started the war no longer existed.

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On an island in the Pacific, far from the detonation centers, the climate still shifted. Fewer than ten million humans remained. On this land, using the technology and resources left by their predecessors, they rebuilt a high-tech city. They named it “Paradise.” A place where humanity might multiply again.

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But humans were not the only intelligent beings in Paradise.

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Them lived in the depths beneath Paradise. Legend said They were monsters mutated from ordinary people infected by radiation. They came to the surface irregularly to prey on humans. The military was stationed at possible passages to the underground. Every day, soldiers fought to protect Paradise.

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To prevent panic, the government controlled information absolutely. No media had ever reported the true appearance of the underground monsters. No photographs. No footage. They could not even be described with names that might encourage thought about their origin or provoke speculation. They could only be called “Them.” An unnameable taboo. Yet everyone knew the fear Them represented.

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