The Fear of the Unkown.

Loen Kingdom, Backlund

In a dark alley on the easter side of East Borough lay a young man no older than 16, surrounded by a pool of blood with bruises and cuts all over his body, his eyes looking into the void. It's quite clear from his injuries that his death was not painless.

At that moment, however, the index fingers of his right hand slightly moved, and his eyes closed and opened regaining the life they once had. After that, a cry full of pain came out of the young man's mouth, few seconds after confusion was written all over his face.

He was supposed to be in a villa on an island in the Caribbean enjoying his early retirement at the age of 19 after finishing a half-billion-dollar job, so how in the hell is he in a dark alley on the verge of death?

'Was it the client?' thought Grey while trying to remove and rip his shirt and use it as a bandage to stop the bleeding.

"I have lost too much blood and my body hurts all over. The surrounding is also unfamiliar… but looking at the building style and the bad air quality I would say somewhere in South Europe, that's a long journey."

'But how did I end up in this situation? Was there an assassin hidden in the servants I hired? I did a background check on all of them... but I guess it is possible if Mr. Client helped with such arrangements.'

"Something is still not right," said Grey while dragging his body to drink water from a broken pipe at the end of the alley.

'Let's say the assassin did manage to pass through all the obstacles I put in place and manage to stay out of my radar. Why would he put me to sleep and bring me here to torture me to death?'

'First, I did not have any aggression with the client I just know too much, if he wanted to get rid of the evidence, killing me quickly would have solved the problem. Second, even if the sleeping drug was strong enough to move me around the world, I would have woken up from all my injuries, but not only did I wake up after the deed was done looking at the state of my body, I shouldn't have been able to wake up again…'

Grey sighed and looked up "It seems that the sun is going down in about 2 hours, better find someplace to rest where I can treat my injuries and also see if I can find some food to eat, my body is too weak right now."

Using the wall of the alley as support Grey stand up and grunted trying to hold in the pain of moving his body. He looked around once again trying to find a trash can where people may have dropped some food and pieces of cloth to help with the bleeding.

He didn't dare go out of the alley looking like this unless he wants to stand out, then not only would he alert the assassin that he is alive he would have to run from the police as well.

As he was looking around Grey managed to find some dirty pieces of cloth and some branches but there was no trash can let alone food, trash was just thrown all over the alley piling up.

"Quite the horrible hygiene they got here" sighed Grey while he walked to the broken pipe that was still dropping some drops of water. "The pipe's designs are quite old too… well it's not that strange, some towns in Europe are still using Victorian-era pipe for either lack of resources or just because it is aesthetically pleasing to tourists."

As Grey started cleaning the cloth pieces, he started to think about what would come next. "Finding food should be my next priority my body is becoming extremely weak, and there is nothing to cover myself with for the night, so I need to at least create a small fire to keep myself warm. Tomorrow I should get out of here and see if I can hide in a forest for the time being, my wounds might get worse if I stay in this dumpster for long."

After using about half of the branches and some of the pieces of paper lying around Grey managed to start a fire. There was no need to cover up the smoke since one thing that Grey noted was that not a single human has passed through this area.

Finally, after warming himself a bit and making a decision Grey's face became stern and twisted while he looks in the direction of a manhole in the alley "Come on Grey don't act all scared when you had quite a couple of them in the past, they have a lot of protein and are quite nutritious it will surely help you recover faster..." said Grey as he tries to encourage himself.

After hesitating quite a bit Grey stood up and took a piece of paper from the trash pile, opened the manhole to the sewer, and there they were the most terrifying creatures in existence the cockroach.

He then very forcefully took the hand with the paper and grab a handful of them before wrapping the paper so that they can't escape and also suffocate them. After making sure they were 100% dead by putting them above the fire smoke, Grey use a piece of metal from the trash pile as a grill and cooked them.

Having "enjoyed" eating half of the roasted cockroaches Grey store the other half in a piece of cloth and began thinking about how he should leave this alley and go to the nearby forest without being seen. 'Although looking at the pipes designs and these buildings I would have probably guessed that I'm in a small town where its main income would be tourism, but this bad air quality says otherwise I'm probably in an industrial city and a big one. The reason why this part of the city is old fashion is probably because almost no one lives here…' Grey's train of thought stopped right there. The twilight already ended, and night came, and with it a moon as red as crimson illuminated the world as if it was an ocean of blood.

"A blood moon? No blood moons aren't that red they are orange at best and since when do moons give this much light? Something is really weird here." Said, Grey, a hint of fear can be seen in his face. A fear as old as humanity itself the fear of the unknown.