I BLEED. RED - Chapter One: YOU ARE YOU. I AM ME

Steel heels thundered against the icy crust, drowning out the wet, sickening thuds of flesh on flesh.

The vibrations rattled up through the soles of Yosemina’s boots, but she didn’t dare look.

Keeping her head low, she dove into the wake of the drill-workers. The brawl was a death sentence for the men in the ring, but for her, this press of desperate, sweat-slicked bodies was the only cover Sector 4 offered.

She shoved deeper, risking a glance over her shoulder. Nothing but a sea of identical red silhouettes. Suddenly, one visor locked onto her—a flash of reflected light. Then another. Then three.

No way. There’s no way you’re still following me, you fucking freak.

Ahead, the crowd cinched tight, cutting off her exit.

Yosemina drove her shoulder into the wall of laborers, clawing at the stiff, heavy canvas of their environmental suits.

“Move, you sundamn idiots!” she hissed, the panic finally clawing at her throat.

Then the surge hit. A collective, blind shove crushed her against the makeshift ring’s edge. She buried her chin in her collar, eyes fixed on the frozen slag beneath her boots.

The violence bled through her suit anyway: the high, keening scream of a severed oxygen hose, followed by the jagged static of a hundred suit-comms.

Don’t move. Don’t look. He can’t hurt you here.

She forced her breathing to level, fighting the tremor in her hands. She had risked a puncture for a single, flavor-soaked synthfare gel-packet. Pocket change. A handful of credits that wouldn’t even keep her fed for a day, and now Paris was hunting her through a death zone to collect.

Stupid. You greedy, stupid bitch. How could—

Her thoughts were cut short by a familiar, sickening rhythm.

The thundering steel heels advanced across the icy crust—the signal everyone knew better than to ignore.

The crowd locked.

A thousand laborers froze into red statues.

Yosemina hunched, using them as a shield.

She didn’t turn. She didn’t need to. The tension snapped with a wet crunch.

In the quiet that followed, the crowd fractured, scrambling to carve a wide aisle through the snow and stripping away Yosemina’s physical shield.

She had no choice but to look.

A slab of ice-fused shale sat lodged in the ruined glassstone of the dead worker’s helmet. The victor hovered over the body, fists hanging numbly at his sides as he fought for air.

Around his boots, a stain of deep burgundy seeped into the snow. It steamed in the bitter air, shaming the simple crimson of the dead worker’s suit.

Only then did the Caeruli Overseers cast their shadows over the ice.

The glare from the lightspires caught the metallic sheen of their copper skin where it lay exposed by sharp blue uniforms. The severe lines of the synththread fabric plunged low, framing unnatural, towering frames and metallic collarbones that didn't shiver. Not even in this wind.

The surviving fighter did not retaliate.

“Worker 7-1-6 of Sector 4,” the foremost Overseer intoned, its copper lips mimicking human syntax with a mechanical cadence. “Violation of Contract Law One: Destruction of Corporate Labor Assets. Sentence: Immediate Termination.”

Its bare steel feet were sunk slightly into the snow, toes curled as if the cold was something it could feel.

Worker 7-1-6 opened his mouth, perhaps to beg, perhaps to scream, but no sound came. A backhand from the Overseer struck his helmet. His neck snapped with a dry crack. The body dropped, folding into the crimson mass of the first worker.

“Return to work,” the Overseer said. Its voice did not rise. It didn’t need to.

Yosemina grimaced at the two bodies.

The execution ended the tension in the crowd. Suits loosened as laborers scattered, each terrified of idle time citations. Yosemina immediately slipped among them, dropping her chin and moving with the herd.

She broke away at the edge of the processing ring, plunging into the labyrinth of trenches that scarred Sector 4. The frantic crunch of boots faded as she navigated the narrow, ice-slicked corridors between the heavy machinery. She kept her head down, counting the massive, thrumming generators until she reached her assigned claim.

She drew her spanner and rounded the final ridge of frost-heaved shale.

She stopped.

A pair of scuffed boots stood rooted in the thick snow.

You’ve got to be kidding me…

“Messy,” Paris murmured. He didn’t look at her. His helm was tilted toward the chasm, watching the Overseers drag the limp bodies away. “The shale. Imprecise. A simple puncture to the suit would have sufficed. Saved the expenditure.”

Yosemina tightened her grip on the spanner. “Get out of my way.”

Paris turned his head. He stood a foot shorter than her, but his stillness was unnatural—a total absence of the shivering, shifting anxiety that plagued everyone else on the ice.

“You came up short,” he said.

“I gave you what it was worth.”

“Appraisal. I didn’t ask for an appraisal, did I?” He tilted his head slowly. “You withheld exactly two credits. Two point zero. It’s a strange number to withhold, Yosemina. It implies a calculation. A test of boundaries.”

“I needed it for this week’s rations.”

Paris didn’t blink. “Needed.” He tasted the word, letting it hang in the comms’ static. He took a single step forward. His gloved hand lifted, pointing at the frayed edge of her collar. “Market dictates price. Blood dictates penalty. It costs me more than two credits just to have this conversation.”

“Walk away.”

“Walk away…” Paris’s hand drifted closer, fingertips hovering a millimeter from the fabric of her suit.

Yosemina caught his wrist. “Don’t.”

He looked down at her gloved hand wrapped around his arm. He didn’t pull away. Didn’t even tense. He simply stared at it, as if her defiance was a fascinating, minor miscalculation.

“If the Overseers,” he said softly, tone remaining perfectly conversational, “calculate that an asset is… defective… they terminate it. Terminate. Why? You see… it isn’t malice, Yosemina. It never was. It’s just… accounting.” He gently, effortlessly twisted his wrist out of her grip and let his hand drop. “I need my accounts balanced. Tonight.”

He didn’t wait for a rebuttal. He stepped around her. His silhouette blurred into the red haze of the sector.

Yosemina exhaled shakily, loosening her grip as the spanner groaned in her hand. Two credits. She kicked at a ridge of frozen slag. “Two sundamn credits…” she muttered. She waited until he was a ghost in the haze, then jabbed a two-fingered gesture at his retreating silhouette. A pathetic, silent rebellion but it was the only thing she actually owned.

She turned towards the nearest drill to resume chipping at the ice, but hesitated mid-step. There was no point. Paris had given her a deadline, and manual labor wouldn’t balance her accounts.

She needed to move. Turning her back on the machinery, she cut down the icy trench.

Above her, the unyielding snow swallowed the weak glow of the lights, threatening to bury the dead before the Caeruli could even tag them.

She was halfway down the line when she spotted him.

Clause stood anchored beneath the harsh, blinding glare of a lightspire. The beam cut through the falling snow, casting long shadows throughout the ice. He stood a few paces back from the trench line, foreman’s insignia pitted and dull in the artificial light.

His helmet swiveled slowly toward the chasm, tracking the spreading burgundy stain and the distant silhouettes of the Overseers.

“Clause!” Yosemina called, shoving down her fear of Paris.

He waved a dismissive, gloved hand, attention never leaving the data-board strapped to his forearm. “Two more?”

“Two,” Yosemina confirmed.

His fingers tapped a rapid sequence into the interface. “Accident?” he asked, not looking up.

“Guess,” she replied, swiping a layer of frost from her helmet visor.

Clause let out a slow exhale. Through the clear, glassstone visor, his face was a landscape of deep-etched wrinkles, each line carved by decades of ice.

He glanced back down at the board and cursed softly. “That makes ten this cycle. Plus two barrel men who didn’t wake up this morning…”

Yosemina’s eyes patrolled the lingering crowd with him. “They’ll stand there gawking all day if they can. You want me to help haul?”

“No.” Clause waved her off, a dry cough rattling out of his suit speakers. “You’re already pulling a double. I’ll drag someone else.”

Yosemina glanced over her shoulder. The red sea of suits was shifting, and her paranoia flared at every visor that turned her way. Paris was out there, blending into the haze, waiting. She couldn’t stand here alone.

“Walk with me, then,” she urged, the words coming out a little too fast.

She resumed her trudge out of the chasm, maintenance sweep hopelessly interrupted. Her shift would likely end before the Caeruli finished their cleanup, giving her a convenient excuse to avoid the worst of the gore. She was, she admitted to herself, no better than the others in that regard.

“You could go try and rally them, you know,” Yosemina said. “Guess a crushed skull’s more appealing than this job.”

“Anything is more appealing than this snow. Hey, slow down a bit, kid.”

Yosemina forced a dry puff of air that was supposed to be a laugh. “What, the ice getting to your joints already, old man?” She meant for it to sound light, but her eyes snapped back toward the chasm before she even finished the sentence.

Clause didn’t laugh. He slowed his heavy, trudging steps, his helmet tilting as he followed her gaze. “What is it? You keep checking your back like we’re being stalked.”

“I am.”

Clause’s brow tightened under his visor. “By who?”

She hesitated, swallowing hard against the dry air in her helmet. “Paris.”

“Sundamn it, Yosemina. I told you to stop buying from him.”

Ahead, the portable steel ladder that led them from the reservoir came into view. Yosemina glanced back at the drill, its vibration thrumming through the ice beneath her boots. She scanned the shifting red suits around the machinery, but Paris was nowhere to be seen.

“He’s the only one selling in Sector 4,” she muttered.

They stopped at the bottom of the ladder. Clause gave her a long, hard look. “Do I have to say it?”

She sighed. “No.”

She reached up, brushing the zipped pocket where the meager pouch of tobacco sat. She needed it to take the edge off, to anchor herself to something real. Lately, she pretended the days blurred together, but deep down, she feared it was worse than that. She feared she simply couldn’t remember them…

Looking out at the wasteland, watching the relentless flakes bury the day’s tracks and tools, Yosemina wondered if the snow had already won. A snowfall so deep it could submerge the person she used to be. No. She shook the thought away, dropping her hand from her pocket. She couldn’t let her mind peer down that crater.

“What do you owe him?” Clause asked.

Yosemina shifted uncomfortably, rubbing the thick collar of her suit at the back of her neck. “Two.”

“That’s it? You’re risking your neck over two credits?” Clause let out a sigh. He tapped his thick glove against his utility pouch. It sounded hollow. “I’m tapped out until the cycle ends, kid. Or I’d spot you.”

“I wouldn’t take it anyway,” she lied, the cold knot in her stomach tightening. Clause held her gaze. “I’ll figure it out,” she added.

“You better.” Clause pointed at her. “You’re starting to show a pattern. That little freak is obsessed with them. I care about you too much to watch you get casual about this. You balance that ledger before the siren sounds, you hear me?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Good.” Without another word, Clause climbed the ladder, labored breath rattling out of his amplified speaker.

Yosemina stared at her empty, thick-gloved hands for a second, then followed.

They crested the ridge and resumed their trudge through the deepening drifts. This reservoir was carved deep beneath a sheer cliff face—a massive, man-made gouge in the earth that left the landscape looking wounded and raw.

Clause’s voice broke the rhythm of their march, his comms static clipping the edges of his words. “Still hearing them back there… reminds me of that blúvaris spill.”

Yosemina’s hand tightened slightly inside her glove.

He kept talking, words nervous and rambling, but she didn’t need it explained. She remembered. The bar. The vial. The spill. Raw blúvaris had hit the man’s visor like liquid glass. It hadn’t killed him cleanly. It had taken him apart while he was still breathing, gloves clawing at melting features as the world erased him piece by piece. They froze to death mining a substance that didn’t just kill—it unmade.

Two credits. That was all it took for Paris to decide what someone was worth.

“Yosemina.”

She blinked, snapping back to the whiteout. “Yeah?”

Ahead, through the swirling white, dark shapes materialized. Overseers methodically scouting the perimeter of the drill site.

Yosemina froze, instinctively holding her breath. The foremost Overseer stopped. Its copper face turned directly toward them, the blank metal featureless and cold. An unnatural thrum beat behind her breastbone.

Then—after a second too long to ignore—the Overseer turned back and continued its patrol into the storm.

Yosemina let out a shaky exhale.

“Don’t,” Clause warned quietly.

She frowned. “Don’t what?”

“Stare at them like that.”

The wind filled the silence.

Clause didn’t look at her when he spoke again. “We need to talk.”

“Now?”

“Not here.”

He finally glanced toward the fading Overseers. “Let’s take our break. Before they decide we’re worth a second look.”