Hollow

There was a place which occupied roughly a quarter of Neo-tokyo middle area,

which was also most of the western quadrant. It was Neo-Tokyo's warehouse section. While other cities had their own warehouses, none of them were as big as this one.

Each building was at least three stories tall, constructed from rusted iron panels and reinforced concrete, their roofs sagging in places where decades of rain and neglect had taken their toll.

The layout was a grid-like maze: long parallel alleys cutting between the structures, just wide enough for cargo trucks to pass through. Flickering streetlamps lined the cracked asphalt roads at irregular intervals, casting jagged shadows that danced with every gust of wind. Most lights were broken or half-dead, leaving pools of darkness between them.

Pipes ran along the walls of many warehouses. Some still active, spewing steam into the night air with hissing bursts that sounded like dying breaths. Garbage and debris cluttered corners, and graffiti covered nearly every surface: cryptic symbols, gang tags, warnings in half-erased paint.

In the distance, a few of the larger warehouses still bore company logos—half-peeled letters spelling out names like Kyushu Cargo, Neo-Logistics, and Mitsushima Synth-Foods, etc.

In the daytime, the entire area would be bustling with activity. Forklifts carried pallets in and out, cargo containers were loaded into trucks, and drivers barked orders over the din of their engines. Now, the warehouses were still and silent, their doors sealed with chains and heavy padlocks.

A wall surrounded section-M. This wall was the boundary between the living and dead (cargo). While it was only four meters tall and could not compare to the city walls, it was wide enough for people to walk on top of it. The large doors set into its side were sturdy and could not be easily breathable.

There were staircases to the left and right of the doors, and watchtowers along the length of the wall. The guards took turns observing the area below them as they yawned from the watchtowers, in shifts of five men at a time.

A handgun-wielding guard absentmindedly looked out to the sector, and said to his yawning colleague:

"Tonight's quite peaceful too."

"Yup, there were only five robber's earlier, right? That seems a lot less compared to the past."

"Hm, could it be the economy of the nation is finally getting better so that people don't steal from here? That would be pretty lucky for us if it were true."

The other guards were drawn in by the topic, and began speaking up:

"No, they've probably just realised it's pointless. Besides, if it's just a few unarmed people, we can deal with them."

"I think the most troublesome ones are the ones who're high on drugs."

The guards laughed lightly at that.

One of them leaned against the railing, cigarette dangling from his lips, watching the empty alleys below with half-lidded eyes.

"Yeah, those junkies are always twitching and screaming like ghosts. Hard to tell if they're attacking or having a seizure."

Another chuckled. "At least they don't come in groups anymore. Remember that one time last year? Twenty of 'em stormed Warehouse 12B thinking it was full of stimulants?"

"Turns out it was just frozen tofu."

"Still… when I think about it, I've got a bad feeling about the lack of theive's right now."

"…Why's that?"

"Ah, I just feel like we might have missed something out during our watches."

"You're thinking too much. There aren't that many people normally. They say that they only pop up frequently when they bring the military equipment here while fighting China. So on the flip side, this is what happens when there aren't any big wars, right?"

The soldiers nodded to each other in agreement.

"I heard—"

A guard who was about to speak suddenly shut his mouth. Another guard, who felt easy about this, spoke up:

"Oi, don't scare me—":

"Quiet!"

The silent guard looked straight at the area, as though he could see through the darkness. Following this, the other guards turned to look at the area one after the other.

"…Didn't you hear it?"

"Were you imagining things?"

"Though I didn't hear the wind blowing or the grass moving… I think I can smell blood. It smells just like it did then…"

"Come on, don't joke about this sort of thing."

"…Eh? Ah, oi! Look over there!"

One of the guards pointed to the warehouse, and everyone else looked toward the spot he was pointing at.

Two guards were sprinting for the doors. Both of them panted heavily, their eyes bloodshot, and their sweat-slick hair stuck to their foreheads.

A growing sense of dread filled the other guards as they saw this.

Guard patrols in the area moved in groups of at least ten. Why were there only two people here? Judging by the way they had no weapons and were running for dear life, they had panicked and fled.

"Open, open up! Hurry up and open the doors!"

Upon seeing the two men shouting in front of the doors, the guards hurriedly ran down the stairs and let them through.

Before the doors could even swing fully open, the two guards forced their way in. They collapsed to the ground but kept scrabbling on.

"What the hell…"

The two pale-faced guards who had just escaped section - M interrupted their questioners, panting and shouting:

"Close, close the doors! Quickly!"

This strange behavior sent a chill down the spine of the other guards. Working together, they pushed the doors shut and barred them.

"What happened? What about the others?"

As they heard this question, a haunted look appeared on the guards' frightened faces:

"They, they were killed!"

Upon realizing that eight of their fellows had lost their lives, the guards immediately turned to their captain. He immediately ordered:

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"…Oi, one of you go upstairs and take a look!"

A guard hurriedly climbed the stairs, but halfway up, he froze in place.

"What, what happened?"

The guard at the top of the stairs didn't respond. He simply stood there, unmoving.

His mouth opened and closed silently—like a fish gasping for air.

Then, with trembling hands, he pointed into the darkness beyond the wall.

All eyes turned toward where he was pointing.

And then—

They heard it.

A low, rhythmic click… click… click…echoing from deep within Section-M. Like metal claws tapping against concrete in perfect time. Slow at first… then gradually picking up speed.

Closer.

Closer.

"W-what is that?!" someone whispered, voice cracking.

No one answered.

Because in that moment — every single floodlight lining the inner perimeter of Section-M snapped on simultaneously with a harsh electric hum, bathing the entire warehouse district in blinding white light.

And what they saw made their blood freeze:

The first thing to appear, silhouetted by the floodlights, were figures. Large figures. Mechanical, lumbering, and yet with a terrible grace. There were at least a dozen of them, all moving in a way that couldn't be described as "walking." Instead, it looked more like they were glitching—blinking in and out.

The guards stared at the figures with horrified eyes, their throats dry and their blood pounding in their ears.

The figures weren't running, not exactly. More like they were moving in a jerky, unnatural way, their limbs bending at angles that made no sense.

Closer now, the sound of mechanical grinding and hissing metal became clearer. The figures had no eyes, just blank metal visors that seemed to bore into the guards very souls.

If something like the undead were real, they would look exactly like them.

The guards could not help their shivering.

Because the area was surrounded by a wall, these things could not attack the common folk as long as the wall held out. However, even if they mobilized all their guards, it was doubtful whether they could fend off such a massive horde of these things. The guards were essentially normal citizens, and they had no confidence in wiping out these creatures.

In addition, some of them seemed to have implants on them alongside weapon's. If things went poorly, the guards might end up dead themselves.

Doom. Doom.

A guard turned to the captain with wild eyes.

"What do we do?!"

The captain hesitated—just for a second—but in war, a second was enough.

"…Seal the outer gates. Sound the alarm. Call HQ, tell them Section-M is compromised—non-human hostiles, possible cyborg units, unknown origin. And…"

He swallowed hard.

"Evacuate all nearby sectors. No one goes in or out until we have backup."

Swallow.

"The ones behind, take your guns and shoot the one's getting close to the doors!"

The guards remembered their duty as they heard the orders, and they started firing savagely at the creature's below them. The things covered the land like a flood, so any hit of theirs found a home in rotten flesh.

They fired, hit, and fire again.

Tainted blood spilled over the ground, while the guards' noses were soon inured to the stench of decay. They repeated the same motions over and over again like workers. They killed several of them, which fell to the ground and were trampled to paste by the ones behind them.

One guard, looking at them, had a realisation.

"Sir, these are dead bodies!"

He looked down at the creature with wide eyes, his rifle still smoking in hand.

"These aren't machines… they're bodies. Dead people—reanimated. I saw a face… it was Tanaka from patrol three days ago!"

Another guard gagged, nearly dropping his weapon. "But Tanaka died in a car crash! They buried him!"

The captain's face darkened as he watched one of the things slam its mechanical fist against the reinforced door—*once, twice*. A crack splintered through the steel.

"They're being controlled," he muttered. "Someone's puppeteering them."

And then, as though aiming for that moment—

"Uwaaaaaaaah!"

A scream pierced the air. As the other guards turned to look, they saw something long and wriggly curled around another guard's neck.

It was a slimy, black object — an cable.

The creature that had shot forth this length of metal was someone who's entire body was covered in red, torn, tattered robes.

The metal cable pulled at the guard's body.

"Hyaaaaaaa!"

Before his friends could save him, the guard wailed and fell—

"Save, save me! Someone save me! Agyaaaah!"

—His screams filled the air. Every guard saw the terrible fate of their colleague, eaten alive by the throng of creatures.

The armor which protected his body and his attempts to protect his face only prolonged his suffering. His fingers, his calves, his face, all of them were picked clean.

"Fall back! Get down from the wall!"

After seeing the mace hand, the guard captain ordered a retreat.

All the guards hurriedly ran down the stairs, and they could hear the sounds of the creature's banging at the doors getting louder. The doors themselves began groaning under the strain.

The sense of doom grew stronger. The chances of them holding out until help arrived were very low. Once the doors opened, the tide of death would flood in, and only the gods knew how many lives would be lost. Just as the guards were fully consumed by despair, there was a clattering of metal.

Everyone reflexively looked to the source of the sound.

Before their eyes was a warrior in full plate armor. Beside him was a beautiful woman who seemed completely mismatched.

"O-Oi! This place is very dangerous! Get out of—"

Halfway through the guard's shouting, he realized that there was a star clinging onto the warrior's armour.

An mercenary!

However, that ember of hope was snuffed out when he saw that it was a black star. Mercenaries of the lowest class could not possibly deliver them from this dilemma. A look of disappointment appeared in the eyes of all the guards present.

The warrior walked over to them.

There was no sense of clumsiness in his movements.

"Didn't you hear me? Get out of here now!"

"Ox, my sword."

The warrior's voice was softer than the guard's shouting, but it was surprisingly resonant even through the clamor of the swarming dead. The beautiful woman approached the warrior, and drew a broadsword from his back.

"Look behind you. It's dangerous, right?"

The guards turned around in response to the warrior's words, and they looked upon their doom.

They saw countless of them slowly climbing onto one over the other, like ants.

"Uwaaaaah—"

Just as the guards screamed and prepared to flee, a strange sight appeared before them. The warrior from just now raised his sword in a javelin-thrower's stance.

What was he doing?

In the next moment, that question vanished like mist in sunlight. The warrior hurled his sword with unbelievable speed. The guards hurriedly looked where the sword had flown, and there they saw an even more incredible sight.

The group, that vast, seemingly invincible creature, split back like it had been hit in the head by an even larger foe, before collapsing to the ground. A thunderous crash provided the proof that the creature had been knocked down.

"—These things in the way."

With that, the white warrior ran over to pick up his sword and advanced.

"Open up."

The guards did not seem to have understood what the warrior said. They blinked several times before they finally managed to parse the warrior's words.

"Don't, don't be foolish! There's a whole crowd of undead cyborgs on the other side of the door!"

"So? What does that matter to me, Sato?"

Faced by the absolute confidence of the white warrior, all of the guards were shaken to the core, and they could not respond.

"…Well, if you won't open up, it can't be helped. I'll go over there myself."

The warrior broke into a sprint and kicked off the concrete floor, vanishing over the other side of the wall. He had leapt over a four-meter-high wall in a single bound, and while wearing full plate too.

It was a scene that barely seemed real at all.

The guards could not bring themselves to believe the events which had just occurred. Each of them continued staring slack-jawed at the place where Sato had been.

The beautiful woman shot past the guards and nimbly bounded up the stairs. She hopped over the wall and landed on the other side.

Now all was silence.

They stared with open mouths and stunned eyes for a while, as though a typhoon had just swept past them. The first guard to recover spoke in a voice that trembled uncontrollably:

"Oi… do you hear it?"

"Hear what?"

"The sounds."

Even though they strained their ears to listen, they could not hear anything.

It was as though a veil of silence had been drawn across the land. The constant sound of the pounding on the doors from just now was nowhere to be found.

The frightened guards muttered:

"Oi, did that actually happen? That warrior… there were zombies like that, and so many of them, and he broke right through them… went straight ahead."

They were filled with equal parts shock and awe.

The reason why the noise had stopped was because the nearby "zombies" had been drawn away by a new target. Given that the sound still had not returned, it implied that they were still fighting and had not returned.

This unbelievable scenario drew the guards to the top of the walls to satisfy their curiosity. They could not believe what they saw from up there, and they muttered:

"What is this… that warrior… what kind of a man is he…"

Countless bodies littered the ground. Mountains of corpses were everywhere, covering the entire area. Although some of the "zombies" hung on to a thread of unlife and struggled weakly to move, all of them had lost the ability to fight.

The smell of decay floated over as they expected, and they heard the sounds of distant battle.

"…No way… he's still fighting? All these, and he could actually break through them! Incredible…!"

"Who was that warrior, anyway?"

"…He called himself Sato, I think… but calling someone with skills like that a black star is too much of a joke. He should be one of those legendary mercenaries with an diamond star, right?"

The others quietly voiced their approval. Someone like that could not be a mere black star mercenary.

There was no other possibility.

"We… perhaps we just saw a man of legend… a white warrior… no, a hero…"

Everyone else could not help but nod in response to that.

This kind of miracle, if it was not seen with their own eyes, no one would believe it.

"A knight from a fairytale."