I do not own anything in this story
Shinji slowly opened his eyes to a pitch black room. He felt cold; he rubbed his hands over his arms to warm himself up. His body hurt all over, his face felt swollen and he had dried blood all over his mouth from where he was kicked repeatedly. His t-shirt was torn and barely stayed around his shoulders. He could feel cold metal underneath him. After feeling around he found he was in a cage about three feet high and four feet wide. He felt through the bars of his cage and felt around. The area around his cage was moist dirt; he guessed he was in someone's poorly made basement. Shinji heard very light breathing and some slight whimpers somewhere in the dark, he knew he wasn't alone.
"Where am I?" Shinji asked his unseen roommates. "What am I doing here?" Shinji could hear distant conversation and footsteps getting closer. A door opened to reveal a sinister silhouette looming at the top of the staircase directly in front of his cage. A light shot through the room and the entire scene was illuminated. Cages were lined against the walls and in them contained shivering and terrified children. The children themselves wore tattered clothes far worse than Shinji and some wore none at all. All had gruesome scars covering their bodies and some were clearly missing limbs and large chunks of their flesh. At the top of the stairs stood Dyne with a short bald man and a taller skinny woman. Dyne mused,
"Finally up now tough guy? We were wondering back at headquarters if we had kicked your ass a little too hard. You aren't worth as much to these guys if you're dead. They want to get as much as they can out of you while your alive."
"What do they want" Shinji angrily shouted at Dyne. With a smirk Dyne said,
"Why they make money off of your guts short shit. Baldy here is Doctor and she is Nurse, they'll be your hosts until they're done with you." Shinji screamed at Dyne,
"I thought people of the church were supposed to help others!" Dyne and Nurse let out howls of laughter while Doctor let out many wheezy chuckles. Nurse told him in her nasally shrieking voice,
"Kid, there are no holy people in this city! This is Purgatory (actual name of the city) where all of the world dumps it's dregs, druggies, and scum! Why did you think we are the only city in the god damned desert of Shiretoko? We really are the end of the earth, this is where hell begins! (Shiretoko's literal translation end of the earth)" Shinji remembered since the third impact hit Hokkaido, most of the north including Shiretoko peninsula had become a wasteland where nothing would grow. Only the southern half of Hokkaido could grow crops or sustain life. The northern half however had turned into a giant desert, and right at the tip of the peninsula stood Purgatory or Shiretoko as his father had called it as he drove him there. Doctor interrupted his thoughts with a raspy voiced insult,
"You dipshit, the cross on this guy's back is red! You ever hear of a priest with a red cross? Hell no, this guy here is a Saint. He is a member of the Saints, one of the biggest gangs in this city!" Dyne grinned,
"Yep and as a Saint I felt it was my heavenly duty to bring you and your roommates here to your new home, with this lovely couple. Speaking of which, where is the money you owe me Doc?"
The wheezy doctor reached into his lab coat and pulled out a small stack of bills and handed them to Dyne.
"While you're here would you mind helping us 'dispose' of some old merchandise?" asked Nurse. Dyne sighed and agreed. Doctor and Dyne both went down the staircase and went to a cage to Shinji's left, Nurse followed behind them with a ring of keys. Nurse walked up to the cage and unlocked the door. Doctor and Dyne pulled out a small limp child and carried him by his arms and legs. The child couldn't have been more than seven years old and there he hung dead held by his wrists and ankles like a deer.
"This kid still has got some skin on him, so after we plop him on the operating table up stairs you can go home Dyne" wheezed Doctor. Dyne asked,
"I'm curious Doc, how do you get rid of these kids after you're done with em? The cops here are all crooked but it must cost you a pretty penny to pay them off so you can still do your business uninterrupted." Nurse laughed,
"We fix it so nobody will ever find these kids after were done. That is what the meat saw is for. Once we get done with the meat saw all we have to do is dump the bits and pieces in Stray Street (I will talk more about the geography of the town in following chapters) and the wild dogs there finish the job." Dyne laughed,
"Ha, pretty slick there you two. Sounds like a better scam than mugging random guys on the street." Dyne gave Shinji's cage a swift quick rattling it. "Enjoy your suite sport" Dyne and Doctor carried the limp child up the stairs and into another room. Nurse shut and locked the door behind them. In the dark Shinji spoke to his fellow captives,
"How do we get out of here? What is the plan to escape?" One girl answered,
"There is no plan, there is no escape. We get out of here just like that kid, dead."
Nobody spoke after that. Only the occasional whimper could be heard from the cages. Shinji could not rely on help coming for him; he felt the bars of the cage looking for a weak spot. The bars behind him had a rusted spot; he knew that was the way he would have to get out. He grabbed the bars with his tiny hands and pulled. He leaned back and held on with the tightest grip pulling as hard as he could, but only managed to tip the cage over. After two hours of trying to break the bars Shinji was exhausted. He couldn't let his captors know of his attempts so he used the last of his strength to tip the cage back over to its original position. He lay down in his cage and thought the fate that awaited him. He knew what that people upstairs were doing, they were harvesting organs. The scars he had seen on the other kids were surgery scars were their various organs had been removed. Shinji could stay awake no longer and fell asleep surrendering to fatigue, the nightmares he had that night would pale in comparison to the reality he would see the next day.