First Chapter sneek peek                                                                                                                 Coreline

 

Written by• Justnox •

© 2025 Justnox

All rights reserved.

 

 Original Story

 

Author note: We are like lights in a city; blaze bright at night. We can't escape; turn darkness to light. Just like it, we stand out but hide, until one faithful day we burn out of sight.

Glow every day, as if it were your last on this earth.

Note - This story takes the time it needs to introduce and unravel its characters, world, and setting.

Let it spread its wings, and you will be surprised at how far it will take you.

 

ENTRY_log.00 - Designed to fall

Crossway / 1:32 AM

Welcome to Coreline.

It was raining again.

 

Coming from the Great Nexus, one could assume these raindrops were as pure as the ocean, at least on first glance.

The clean air and bright sky overhead added waving reflections of sunrays that pierced through the seeking water droplets. They emerged through small vent-like hatches. Many of which were placed all around the very, very top buildings of the city.

 

They were called ‘Scratchers’ Since they quite literally scratch the sky.

Here, only a few could afford to live this comfortable life.  They did not spare one glance at the seeking water, for it was only dropping downward, never to come up again.  After all, everything that went south lost value, right?

 

The rain continued to drip down. It eventually got blocked off by a thick quartz floor. Polished white.

Below a couple meters of floor, the city continued.  This time in dull gray colors.

Gone was the white, stale quartz altogether with the glass towers.

Gone was the sky and clean air.

 

The rain fled out of deliberate open conduct through to the other side. now pouring down, similar to a gentle waterfall. The streams slid down the buildings as they impacted onto some bridge-streets, floating from building to building, creating loose puddles between the connections.

The streams navigated through the mazes of apartments with belching steam and endless pipes.  Many shops and market stalls were either closed or completely soaked. 

 

The gentle sound of rain drizzled on the window.  The impacting sound got damped, humming peacefully in an unpredictable pattern.  The majority of the water is rapidly descending even deeper into the city's heart.

 

After yet another thick wall.  This is the time out of dirty concrete. The worn water burst out of rusty pipes through the other side.  The once gentle water now resembled a raging flood, hammering down like a tsunami. This far down the streets pulsed with the electric hum of billboards, their flickering glow drenching the streets in Neon.

 

Here, the impacted sprinkles splashed meters into the air. They painted themselves in Neon lights, sparklingly dancing off every surface. Deep into the city, the rain lacked its previous comforting blue. 

All that remained was a thick, chemical goo pumped straight from the climate ducts up north. It emerged from the Nexus district's weathering system, crossing every sector.

 

This wasn't the usual kind of rain.

It was the kind that Coreline called a ‘flush’. 

You see, rain in Coreline wasn’t weather, it was a policy. It automatically triggers when smog levels hit a critical density, equivalent to an ecosystem's response.

 

The PTC claimed it helped “push the haze down. Thin out the particles in the air… ” before choking the mid-levels. They should get ‘Recycled’ at the bottom - though nobody really knew where the bottom even lurked.

Bullshit, all it did was push it lower or turn an hourglass upside down. Word was, they even used it to wash away whatever they didn’t want found: evidence or sometimes even people.

 

The rain smeared the grime back into its old corners, to look away until it crawled out again like it had so many times before. Rain as the policy was like emotion as a command.

Yet somehow, the flush always painted the streets with glimpses of hope, as if it made everything seem a little lighter.

 

The city looked good in the Flush. Trying to wash its sins clean, even if they never came off. The only things that came off were the dry blood stains on the walls, but even those returned, eventually.

 

If you couldn't tell, Coreline was a special city, stacked on top of itself: district after district, sector after sector, and layer after layer. It was stretching in every direction, swallowing the horizon. Coreline was a beast that never stopped growing. 

It never slept. It feasted on people, with corruption until it choked on it, spitting out the smog-filled air, pain, and chaos that was boiling from within.

Progress here was built on concrete and blood. The future grows with the price of lost souls.

 

The sky? A lie, at least for most of Coreline's population. A patchwork of platforms, suspended streets, and shiny ad signs is the closest thing to stars they'll ever experience.

Life in Coreline is simple. It isn't cheap. It's owed. You work. You owe. Or you disappear.

 

At last, the water came down all the way to the Undercity, a place that had been rarely talked about - only with faint whispers and a hand held in front of your mouth. It too had been completely sealed off by a floor as thick as ten walls. People don't know what's in there.

They shouldn't.

 

This was where even the chemical gray goo had been pumped down. It was a place where not even the trash was worth throwing at.

Coreline was a harsh environment. 

These days, hardly anyone still believes in the system. They know the truth, they assume. So they stroll through the city, heads down, shoulders hunched, navigating around potholes and puddles of something you don't want to step in. 

Some herbivores drag themselves home from shifts that drain the last bit of their soul. Others, mostly carnivores, linger in the alleys, sharp-eyed and waiting for the next sucker to fall into their game.

 

It's a destructive economy that feeds on itself, a machine built to crush and consume.

It's the kind of city where you keep your creds close in your pocket and your back even closer to the wall. The government? Long privatized. Led by the CorelinePTC, which had been completely corrupt for decades.

 

The holo-ads promise a brighter future through CoreCo innovation. CoreCo, you ask? Well, they are the sister company of the PTC. Besides some minor other splits of brands, they manage infrastructure, at least they pretend to.

Projects are dropped the same week they started.

 

Poorly implemented Infrastructure , sloppy maintenance, and late buses, paired with ever-increasing prices. Just some of their business tactics.

Somewhere in the city... Someone is about to drown in the rain.He will set up a chain reaction that will kick off our journey through this city.

So once again, 

I welcome you to Coreline.

 

 

He pulled a mask off his head, heavily panting. Gasping for air, he tucked it under its arm, resting his paws on its knees for some stabilisation. The rain quickly began to wet his head.

*Cough *Cough

“Fuck. I can’t breathe through it anymore. Shit, shit, shit.”

 

He turned the device, inspecting its interior. It showed a flickering, red, and messy code all over the screen.

“ Oh, okay, now I see, this ... tin-can wanted to choke me to death. It deactivated the breathing flow system ... Oh, and denting my face too now, aren’t we trying? Because dynamic face tracking is offline as well. This shits falling apart.”

 

He squinted his eyes in despair, rubbing his temple.

“I usually give a dry shit about its enhancements, or stupid AI.

But right now it would have come in handy. I need a cig or else I'm gonna crash out.”

 

Digging his hand deep into his pocket, he desperately clenched a soaked cigarette.

He wanted to stop, but the urge was too strong to let go so easily, especially now. With the cig in his mouth, he pulled out a lighter from the back pocket of his pants.

 

Bending slightly down, since the mask still rested under his arm, he tried to light the cigarette. 

 

Click. 

Click.

 

Shaking, he tried to light it. The bursting rain made it difficult.

The lighter hissed in protest, its sparks again snuffed out by the downpour until finally... 

 

Fwoosh

 

A flame. He lit the cigarette. The fire gave him a sliver of warmth. It was a pale comparison against the city's cold, everlasting stare-down. 

And as quickly as it had emerged, it faded out again.

The first inhale stung his throat, but the familiar burn steadied his trembling hands just enough to keep moving forward through the rain.

Water trickled from his nose.

Each step he took, his boot splashed into shallow puddles reflecting fragments of distant lights and the concrete walls.

*Sigh"

 

I think I’ll leave the mask here. The GPS should be trashed too, by now. 

The failsafe’s ticking.  All that effort... 

and soon it’ll be completely corrupted noise. At least, it was a fitting end for it..."He threw it inside a trash can, covering it with the waste and debris inside.

His paw instinctively fell into the folds of his jeans, where he felt the dull edges of a counterfeit USB stick. 

In a burst of fury, he clawed into it and launched it at the dull, gray wall across, shouting.

"FUCK YOU!"

 

Crack.

 

It bounced off, breaking apart in the dim light, leaving behind a trail of shattered pieces now floating in a small puddle. 

He glanced at his reflection, but the only thing that looked back was a broken, haunted man.

 

His usual sarcasm and joking manner were replaced with bitter realization. His black and white fur reminded of something out of a 1900s black-and-white movie.  It was soaked completely through. 

It shimmered matt gray and occasionally reflected glimpses of light of the looming, dark corner where he stood.

 

He noticed bloodstains on his left shoulder. 

They were already dampened by the rain, but he made no move to wipe them away. 

Like the streets, scrubbed clean only to be stained again, the mark would return no matter what. 

Leaving it felt more like a choice than washing it away.

 

The cigarette rested in his mouth. Just above where his nose ended, a white stripe began, running between his eyes. 

A skunk. Broken down by the City.

The surroundings matched the mood, dull concrete slicked with rain, flickering signage bloomed by the downpour in an almost artistic way.

Steam rose from vents and broken pipes where a tiny bit of warm exhaust escaped. 

 

Only the faint hum of urban life managed to pierce through the rain and damp air.

It blended with the clattering, echoes of people talking, laughing, screaming, and phones ringing. 

 

Far in the background, trains and buses rushed by, just adding to the environment. Voices, muffled but clear enough to make out snippets,

"Anyway, I think I'm good for now. "

 

He took a final deep puff from the cigarette, trying to shake off the unease that was creeping up his spine all day long. 

The thought of what was about to happen gnawed at him.

"Damn, I gotta get out of this mess, explain myself? They wouldn't, would they? This has to be a misunderstanding!"

 

His head sank low as he eyed a picture in his pocket depicting his happy family. 

The photo was covered in mud, water, and dirt, just like his clothes. 

His gaze shifted back to the cigarette.

 Its ember flickered under the rain, burning dangerously close to his fingers.

"Can't possibly go home now."

 

He flicked the butt onto the wet ground, where at least five others already floated around, then he stomped it out with his heel.

 

Splash.

 

The silence around him now felt more suffocating than before, broken only by the rain hammering against the metal railings.

Heavy boots splashed deliberately on the waterlogged concrete, drawing closer.

"What the hell? Did they - these bastards."

 

His thoughts turned to his family. He grabbed the handle of a pistol that was resting in his pocket. 

It gave him comfort, but at the same time, a cold breeze ran down his shoulders, crawling under his skin, scratching his spine.

"The tracker's broken. How could they..."

 

He turned a corner and froze. A long, metallic barrel of a gun was pointed directly at him, checkmate.

His breath caught in his throat. Time seemed to stand still. His mind raced, but his body was paralyzed.

 

He could smell the faint, dying scent of the cigarette still on the ground, barely giving off any smoke, its last breath curling into the rising vapor.

A shadowy outline of a person pressed the weapon against his forehead. 

 

 

Rain dripped from the gun onto the man's paw, down his soaked sleeve.

He could feel the cold metal and rusted edge of the barrel.

 He closed his eyes before a strange, yet familiar voice whispered.

"I'm sorry, Smolder.  You shouldn't have fucked up that deal. We'll find the mask - eventually. You have been a funny guy though... What a shame.”

 

Click. Clack.

 

"Yeah fucker do it alr - "BANG.

 

The sound of the gunshot cut through the storm like lightning splitting the dark. 

Followed by somebody faintly whispering in to the chilling night wind. 

"Syndicate above all." 

 

 

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