I wasn't sure how long I spent down there in the basement, only that by the time I'd stopped crying my joints ached from staying locked in one position for too long, and my eyes burned. What I did know was that by the time I left the sun was low in the sky, and it shone down into my eyes, nearly blinding after the darkness of the basement.

When my eyes finally adjusted, and after I blinked away the impressions the sun had burnt against my eyelids, I was greeted with a street that looked like it had been hit by a bomb, or several, years ago and nobody had bothered to repair it. Small tufts of grass poked through the concrete in uneven intervals where particularly heavy pieces of debris had shattered the asphalt and concrete, and what had once been the 'side' verge had at some point transitioned into just a verge, the boughs of the trees bending low under their own weight over sidewalks that were overrun with weeds which crept through cracks and around the outside.

The front lawns of homes were completely overgrown, some covered in flowers that had spread from their original bed to coat the entire lawn, others were just a mess of weeds that nearly rose to the top of my shin in height.

It was weird, like the city had been abandoned immediately after whatever had happened and nobody had ever made any attempt to reclaim it.

Buildings were left half lying down where they'd fallen or been blown apart, nearly every house like a corpse giving testament to something huge having happened here. It was as if the entire place had been turned into a memorial, which gave me the horrible feeling of walking somewhere I wasn't supposed to, like I was desecrating a temple.

There was no sign of either of the two men that had kidnapped me, though I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. The idea of running into them again wasn't something that filled me with joy, though a part of me suspected it was inevitable if I ever wanted answers to the hows and the whys of how I got here or who I was. Yet without them, there was no sign of any life in the street, there wasn't even a breeze, surrounded by houses as I was, trapping the whole place in an uncanny stillness that I was almost afraid of breaking.

The silence was oppressive too. Other than the occasional bird song, I was left alone with my thoughts and the feeling of my bare feet scraping against the street as, without any clear destination, I had no choice but to start wandering from street to street, just letting my legs take me anywhere as long as it was away from that basement. So it was that I left the building behind, a nondescript family home no different than others that were around me. Still, I thought that it would be a day too soon if I ever had to step inside it again.

Progress through the city didn't provoke any memories, not even the slightest stirrings. Passing by storefronts and parks that I thought might have once been local hotspots, where teenagers would have hung out in front of, or families would have done their weekly shopping, nothing came to mind. I was a stranger to this place as much as I was to myself.

And all of them were just as devoid of life as each other, except the weeds that were slowly starting to encroach through the cracked concrete and asphalt and the occasional bug. I checked inside some of the shops, calling out as I did so, but all of the shelves were empty of everything bar a thick layer of dust and the staff room, unlocked, held nothing but long abandoned mugs and broken vending machines and more importantly no people. After a while I stopped checking them, just stopping to peek in through the entrance to briefly see if anything stuck out to me but nothing ever did.

One time I thought I saw a fox, or a dog, watching me inside a shadow cast by a building on the corner of a block; the small store built into the ground floor long since shuttered, with windows all shattered inwards and enough paint peeled off the sign above the door that it was unreadable.

As I got closer I realized that the proportions were all off, its head reached nearly to the floor above, where a hole had been blown outwards, the detritus from which still lay scattered across the street.

But as soon as I got close enough to maybe make out details it was gone. Its tail, too long for a dog, flickered around the corner as it darted away and out of sight before I could see what it was. I only caught a glimpse of a flash of… green? My lack of memories might have been playing tricks on me, but I was pretty sure about what I saw.

Whatever it was, I could hear it as it slipped away. Its claws were sharp enough to dig into the concrete, as evidenced by the deep gouges in the sidewalk where it had passed, the distance between each step increasing the further away it went. Around the corner, there was already no sign of it, the 'track' heading into an alleyway on the other side of the street and off to who knows where. For a moment I was tempted to follow it, it would at least have given me some kind of direction but looking at the marks again, I was struck by how deep they were. It was hard to estimate, but it looked as if my entire fist could fit inside the indent of a single claw. Yeah, maybe not. Though not knowing its location was almost worse, like a nagging whisper that it could be watching me at any time, as it had been just now.

I shivered, taking a deep breath as I was reminded again of the feeling of wrongness that seemed to be soaked into the city; the silence, the lack of people, whatever that thing had been… for a moment I could feel eyes boring into my back, but there was nobody in the shattered windows, or any of the doorways or alleyways. I even checked the insides of a couple of buildings as I walked randomly through the seemingly deserted city. Every one of them was just as ransacked and abandoned as they looked from the outside, full of empty cupboards with doors hanging off their hinges or completely missing and walls that ranged between barely there and obvious health and safety hazards. None of them had any food in them, and nothing came out of the taps except the squeak of rusted, unused metal.

There were no clothes in any of the rooms either, and no shoes for me to cover my feet with, so I was stuck wandering around in a blood-soaked top and bare feet. Strangely, the soles of my feet didn't hurt even when I felt them drag across broken bricks and glass, and a quick look at them after brushing away the small stones and dirt that had accumulated on them revealed nothing but unblemished skin; not even a scrape or any redness. I didn't have any point of reference but something told me that something wasn't right about my body. Whenever I stepped on a piece of broken masonry or glass I instinctively flinched, like I was expecting pain, and had to force myself to relax after I confirmed that it hadn't hurt me every time. The thought wasn't a pleasant one, so even though it seemed like I didn't need shoes they were definitely a top priority. For my peace of mind if nothing else.

I gave up on finding them in any of the houses though, after the most I found in any of them were the scraps of what had probably once been curtains but were now more like tattered rags with more holes than actual fabric. Whoever had once lived here was long gone, and judging by the dust that coated just about everything nobody had lived here since. But then how had I gotten here? Who were those two men that had clearly abducted me from somewhere?

The only answer I got was the silence of the abandoned house. It didn't make me feel any better.

Exiting the house and walking back into the street again, the sun was hanging high in the sky. It shone down directly above me, casting the shattered road in a stark light. The whole place really felt like some kind of graveyard, or monument and not knowing what had happened was really eating me up at the back of my mind.

It was maybe half an hour later when I turned onto a main road, one wider than any I'd seen so far that I saw the wall. Really it was more a wonder that I hadn't seen it already, the way it loomed over the city looked more like a mountain range surrounding it than anything man-made. Even so far in the distance, I could see a wide swathe of land had been cleared inside of it, leaving an open space where anybody on top of the wall would have easy sight lines on any people approaching from the inside. The houses leading up to it looked like toys next to the wall, just little squares next to the great rise of grey.

Well, I had a way out now. Or a direction at least. If nobody was manning the wall too then I'd just have to hope they'd left the door open or something, but having a destination in the distance to work towards was a world better than picking random houses and streets to search through for any sign of life.

All the way down the main street cars lay abandoned and wrecked, some of them in worse states of disrepair than others. One, that might generously have once been described as blue, looked like it might have been parked there yesterday if it wasn't for the missing windows and dented doors. Another was closer to just a metal frame, everything else lying around it in a solidified puzzle as if it had been melted by a great heat. None of them looked like they were road safe, not that I remembered how to drive one if I had ever known in the first place.

Left with no other choice, I started to trek towards the wall, eyeing the houses that loomed silently on either side of me as I went. Along the way, the highway split off into equally deserted streets, full of broken storefronts and homes and still no people. I did however start to notice some signs of life; graffiti painted onto the side of buildings that looked fresh, they all read along the lines of 'LOCUSTS', or 'LOCUSTS 4EVER!', and once I noticed one I couldn't stop seeing them. Whatever the 'Locusts' were, they seemingly wanted to plaster their names over everything they could. The further I went, the more they appeared, from just on the side of a store, to buildings that had so many layered over their outside walls that I couldn't see the brick underneath anymore. Many of them looked like they'd been sprayed on recently, the paint on them still fresh and vibrant and suddenly my alertness for any onlookers shot back up again.

But despite my best efforts, and the ever-lingering feeling of eyes on my back whenever I turned away, I still couldn't see anyone. I kept expecting someone to materialise in the empty window frames that watched down over me from above, or to step outside from a darkened door frame but nobody ever did. Even as I got closer and closer to the wall, and it rose higher and higher in my vision, I was left by myself in stifling silence that bore down on me like a physical force.

I tried whistling to myself as I went, still carefully stepping around fallen debris and pieces of broken cars, trying to lighten the mood but it petered out after a few moments. Breaking the silence felt unnatural, like it was pressing down on my chest as I walked. Maybe I was just ascribing feelings and emotions to nothing, but the silence was heavy.

It didn't take long to get to the point where the wall took up the entire horizon, enough so that I had to crane my neck to a frankly ridiculous degree. Whoever had made the wall had seriously wanted to keep something out, or they were overcompensating for something, and had clearly failed judging by the state of the city. The wall was a dull grey, with no adornments or labels on it to tell me anything, and as I got closer I could see that it looked like it was made from a dull, smooth metal. So smooth that it didn't look like there were any seams, as if it was made from one giant piece of metal that stretched and curved from where I was standing without ending until it disappeared out of sight. Atop it, the metal bulged outwards, still in one flowing piece, into a walkway so high above that anything on it was hidden from my view by the angle I was looking at from below. Lights lined the outer edge of it, mostly smaller ones but at regular intervals there were great big ones that looked more akin to something you'd expect to see at prisons. More importantly, the small ones were on. The first sign of power or human life that I'd seen so far, and the sight sent hope swelling through my chest.

Finally, I reached the clearing before the wall. What I had thought had been open ground was actually tens, maybe hundreds of houses worth of foundations that had been demolished. Where once somebody might have lived their whole lives, nothing remained except an outline painted in concrete lines. But all I could think about was the possibility of someone, anyone, being up there at the top of the wall. I was sure that if there was I'd look like an ant to them, and that my voice wouldn't carry even if I screamed, but I did anyway.

"Hey!" I yelled as loud as I could, so loud that my still rough throat protested in a violent twinge that sent me into a coughing fit, but I ignored it as much as I could and continued, "Hey! I need help down here!"

Nothing. I couldn't see if there was anybody up there to hear me in the first place, but if there was, they didn't say anything or give any sign that they'd heard me. None of the searchlights turned on, and no heads popped out over the edge.

"Hello?" I tried again, pushing my voice harder but it was already at its limit, leaving me leaning against the side of the last building before the clearing coughing what felt like lungs up through my throat.

I spent the next few minutes like that, intermittently calling out, hoping against hope that someone would respond. But nothing ever came. It was just as quiet as the rest of the city had been. When it became clear that either there was nobody there to listen, or whoever was up there wasn't listening, I eventually gave up, struck with a feeling of helplessness. Was I the only one in this city? I couldn't have been, I'd seen the signs even if I hadn't seen any people, but despite it only being a couple of hours the isolation weighed heavily on me. Or more like the lack of any human contact other than those two men, 'Eligos' and 'Valefor', their names permanently seared into my brain.

Staring out over the landscape leading up to the wall, swept free of any buildings, it looked like it was miles away, even if I knew it would only take me a minute, two at most, to reach it on foot. But what then? There wasn't a door to knock on, not that I could see, or any way to climb up the sheer face of it without handholds. I wasn't confident I'd be able to do it with them, without them the wall may as well have been the end of the world for how traversable it was.

But I had to try. So, picking myself up from the wall, I stepped out towards it. Or started to, before a click behind me stopped me in my tracks.

Whirling around, I came face to barrel with a rifle of some kind, the end of the barrel pointing directly towards me from feet away but the hole of it still seemed to encompass my entire vision. It didn't so much as tremble slightly, unerringly poised to blow a hole through my forehead at the twitch of a finger. It was hard to focus on anything besides that, but my attention did snap to the person holding it a moment later.

The first thing that popped into my mind was 'professional'. Everything about them screamed it to me. They wore full fatigues that, though worn down, showed a clear military bent, along with some kind of black body armour that covered their torso in a thick enough layer that their body shape was largely unreadable. Instead of finding myself looking into eyes, I only found myself standing panicked in a reflective visor nestled under a helmet almost as dark as the body armour but greener. No hair was visible, either shaved close or kept out of the way under the helmet. Under the visor, an unmarked bandanna or piece of cloth was wrapped around their face tight enough that I could see the outline of their nose pressing against it.

"I wouldn't go that way if I were you," she said, voice carefully blank but decidedly feminine. I could hear the controlled breathing in the flow of her sentences, and in the way the gun didn't budge from my face even when she spoke. She stood next to the building, where I had just been, the wall next to her coated in so many spray-painted tags that it almost seemed to be yelling up at the wall as much as I did.

I took a moment longer just to appreciate the sight of another person, though that feeling quickly faded in the sights of a gun. My hands raised, palms outward in a placating gesture automatically, keeping them in plain view.

"Thank god," I muttered under my breath, but I think she heard me, "what do you mean?"

She didn't move, but I got the distinct feeling that she was unimpressed with me, or my lack of knowledge.

"They'll gun you down before you can get within a hundred feet," the words came out like she was talking to a baby, like they were obvious. Suddenly standing in clear sight of the wall seemed a lot less appealing, "How do you not know that?" She asked, continuing into more rapid-fire questions before I could answer the first, "Who are you? What are you even doing here?" She jutted the barrel of the gun towards the wall slightly before it returned to my face.

Somehow, 'I don't know' didn't seem like the kind of answer she was going to accept, but I didn't have anything else to give.

"I'm not from around here," I said, in what I hoped was a confident voice, "As for who I am…"

I trailed off and scratched the back of my head, but stopped when I saw her finger twitch on the trigger at the movement.

"I don't actually," pausing for a second try and find any word that didn't make me sound insane, but came up blank, "know?"

It came out more like a question than I'd wanted.

"What?" Her voice was flat, disbelieving.

I opened my mouth to say something, closed it and then opened it again, before finally I settled on, "Yeah…"

"You expect me to believe you came out of Locust territory, looking like that," again, the gun barrel was used instead of hand gestures to wave down towards my shirt that looked like it was more blood than fabric and my lack of shoes, "and that you don't know who you are? If Back-Up wants to get another spy in then he'll have to try harder than that. On your knees."

She pointed toward the ground with the gun, while my head swam with questions.

"Locusts? Back-Up? You think I'm a spy?" I sputtered. This wasn't how I saw a conversation going when I first found somebody, though my expectations also didn't feature a gun, "I don't even know what the Locusts are."

There was a sound that might have been a snort, of derision maybe, "Knees. Now."

"Okay, okay." I slowly moved down to one knee, then to both. They were shaking so wildly that I was worried I'd fall over, "I don't know what's going on. I promise, I just want some help."

"I'm sure." She didn't believe me, "Is that the story he told you to go with or did you come up with it on your own? Doesn't matter. Look, make one wrong move and my friends," I thought I caught a flash of a barrel inside a shadowed window frame, but it was gone so fast I wasn't sure that it hadn't just been my imagination, "will put a bullet between your eyes so stay still."

Waiting for me to nod shakily, she circled around me, keeping her weapon trained on me at all times. For all I knew she could've been lying about there being others, but even if there wasn't, what could I do? Fight back against someone that was obviously well-trained, and well-practised with their firearm?

"Please," I half begged, on the verge of tears. Unable to see her as she moved around me, I could only listen to the crunching of her steps, each one an avalanche in my ears. It was almost worse than having the barrel of the gun constantly in my vision, "I don't even know what's going on. Who are you? What are the 'Locusts'?"

There were so many questions on the tip of my tongue that I couldn't get them all out, they tripped over each other until I blurted out the first two that popped into my head.

"I am the one asking the questions," she snapped at me, and for a moment I felt a flash of searing, irrational anger burn through me, so hot that I caught myself rising and turning towards her before I stopped myself, "Stay. Down. You're in no position to be making demands of anybody."

After a few deep breaths, the anger slowly subsided, and strength fled from my knees fled with it, sending me back down to the ground. What was that? It had come out of nowhere, it rose above the terror and confusion before disappearing as if it had never been there in the first place. Sure, there was some anger at being held at gunpoint, indignation that she just wouldn't listen to me, but not like that. For a second there, I had thought I was going to attack her. My hands trembled in the air.

"What were you trying to do at the wall? Is Luminosity trying to escape again?"

Her voice was intense, like every question she asked was vitally important but I was too lost to even begin to think how to answer. 'Luminosity'? 'Escape'?

"Escape?" She grabbed my hands roughly, uncaring as to how she twisted my arms into an unnatural position, making me let out a grunt of pain. A soft click later, metal latched around my wrists in a cold grip. Handcuffs? She released my hands, but I still couldn't move them more than a slight wiggle, metal clinking against metal as I did. Definitely handcuffs. Was she a part of the police, or the military or something? It would make sense with how professional she looked, but then what had I done to deserve this?

I couldn't see her face, but I could hear the scowl in her voice, "What part of 'you're not asking questions' don't you understand?"

"I can't answer any questions because I don't know the answers," I snapped back, unable to stop myself as that same anger roared back with a vengeance. It chafed against the restraints as much as I did and my arms pulled taut as I tried to force my wrists apart despite the metal holding them together, "I have no idea who this 'Luminosity' is, or 'Back-Up', or the 'Locusts', or," my voice got higher and higher with each statement until I was nearly shouting before I cut myself off, biting my tongue to stop myself from provoking the person with the gun. I expected to be hit over the back of the head with the gun, or yelled at again, but instead there was only silence. I didn't dare try and look behind me, but I took the quiet as permission to continue, "look," with a deep breath, I bit back the anger, "I woke up chained to a fucking chair, was interrogated by two psychos and the first person I've found in this place has me at gunpoint and won't tell me what the hell is going on!"

My chest heaved with emotion and breath, as much as I tried to contain it I was still pretty much yelling by the end of my impromptu rant. It probably wasn't the smartest decision, but I couldn't claim that I was thinking straight. Anger still seethed inside me, foreign in its intensity and how it overpowered even the fear that had been so overwhelming just moments before.

"These psychos," she said, after a few beats of tense silence, "were they all the same person?"

I blinked slowly, feeling the anger wash away like the tide at the unexpected question.

"No? What does that even mean?"

Taking a chance, I looked back over my shoulder at her. The rifle was still held at the ready and it was hard to tell with her face fully covered, but she was looking at me differently. Or at least, I thought she was. Instead of pointing directly at me, the barrel was facing slightly away and, although I didn't doubt that she could bring it to bear on me before I could do anything, she seemed to be listening to me. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking.

"Were they Capes?" She asked instead of answering, moving on faster than I could react.

Again, she said the words like they had an obvious meaning, or like I was meant to know what they mean, but they flowed over me like water. I could hear the capitalisation, the deeper meaning that I wasn't aware of, but it didn't even sound familiar to me.

"Like the fashion accessory?" I asked, slowly, fully aware that I was wrong but unable to offer anything else. Surprisingly, the military soldier (what else could she be?) snorted a harsh laugh, before pausing as if surprised at herself.

"Good one," she paused, tilting her head to the side and letting out a deep sigh, "only you're not joking. Do you honestly expect me to believe this shit? There isn't a single person in this city that doesn't know the Locusts, and now you're saying you don't know what Capes are too?"

Said like that, it sounded like the least believable thing in the world.

"I can't remember anything," I repeated, emphasising the last word heavily. There were basics, I knew what a car was, and streets, and I could speak but anything more specific? Any personal memories or experiences, gone as if they'd never been there, "I don't know how I got here, I don't know where here is, I've got no idea who you are, what's up with the wall," I paused to suck in another deep breath and finished quietly, "I don't know who I am. How many more times do I have to say 'I don't know' until you believe me?"

She looked at me for a few seconds more, the silence only filled by my furiously beating heart. Then a few moments more. The gun twitched towards me and I was sure she was going to shoot me, that that was it.

"The people who kidnapped you, do you know who they were?" It was impossible to tell from her voice whether she finally bought it or not, but the lack of a bullet between my eyes seemed like a good sign to me.

I shook my head no rapidly, even as their masked faces filled my mind in an instinctual flood of fear, "No, but they said their names were Valefor and Eligos, if that means anything to you?"

I trailed off into an unasked question, but the answer was obvious in how she recoiled away from me like I was a snake reared back and ready to lunge at any moment.

"Valefor and Eligos, you're certain?" Her eyes bore into me, the reflective mask doing nothing to stop her intense gaze from meeting mine.

"That's what they called each other, yeah. Both of them were dressed in these really weird costumes, Valefor was this guy in all white, he had a creepy ass mask too. Eligos was-"

"In black, spiked armour."

It wasn't a question.

"Yeah, that's right. Don't suppose you shot them before you found me?"

She didn't respond, instead making some kind of hand gesture while looking over my shoulder. I turned to find people seemingly materialising from the abandoned buildings, one, two, three… six of them. They emerged from shadowed door frames, all of them dressed similarly to the first lady and all of them armed with a variety of guns, all trained on me.

"You got all that?" She asked as if I hadn't said anything, "The Fallen, here. That can't be a coincidence."

One of them, a guy, responded, "Foundation will want to know."

He said it like it was the last thing he wanted to do, but with a tone of acceptance that said he'd do it anyway.

"Call it in," the lady said, sounding much the same, "our new friend here suddenly shot up in importance. Isn't that great for you?"

Sarcasm dripped from every word, but I couldn't help but ask, "Does this mean you won't shoot me?"

All of them laughed, as if I'd asked something ridiculous, or like there was some kind of inside joke that I wasn't getting.

"Not yet."

A/N: I live.

As always, not super happy with the chapter. Especially the dialogue, so I might come back and add some stuff to it later. And maybe edit some of the other parts near the first half, because I think it drags a little, but overall it's okay and (hopefully) readable.

Thanks as ever goes to my friend who beta-reads it before I post it.

I've recently gotten some more ideas for Tyrant, and how I kind of want it to mirror Doomsday in some ways which should hopefully be fun, especially because the idea should add some actual character to the titular Tyrant (eventually at least). As always, I'll be writing whatever my mind gives me dopamine cookies for, and whichever one doesn't leave me staring at a blank page the longest.

Hope everyone is doing well, and that you enjoyed the chapter.