Chapter Text
The world is red when he wakes up again.
His eyes are sore and dry, as though he has kept them open for a long time. Something heavy and sticky clings to his lashes, making a slight pop audible only to him as he blinks slowly.
The world is still.
He slowly pulls himself into an upright position, body stiff and cold, like an old piece of tape being peeled off.
Something scrapes on the table as he moves. Slightly ahead of him, below where his head is. Painstakingly, feeling the complaints from the stiff muscle in his neck, he cranes over to look.
Small, fitting in his hand. Vaguely rectangular, one end jutting out. One of his fingers catches on a hook.
It’s a gun. The word comes to him, short and harsh. Something made to hurt others. The person who was targeted could be dangerous or innocent, but the gun didn’t care. It was a tool. An ugly one. But if it could hurt others…
The gun is the only thing he has in this world. It’s the only way he can hurt others before they hurt him. He doesn’t know which is the real reason he doesn’t let go of it as he stands up, the metal chair dragging sluggishly.
The hard edges of the tables dig into his palms as he braces himself, the room spinning in blurry shades of black. The only bit of color is a thin bright red smear that stings somewhere deep in his eyeballs.
He squints. Slowly, the smear comes into focus as the room slows down, revealing that it was attached to another device that descended shortly from the ceiling. A camera?
Are you thinking it can be used as video evidence?
Something grabs at his hair, so visceral and forceful his entire head, heavy and hazy as it is, is yanked along with it. It gets dropped on the ground with a loud thud that reverberates across his skull, muting whatever the voice says next, but fading just in time for another impact on his chest, as pointed and hard as the shiny black shoe of the —
He’s alone.
No one is yanking his hair. He’s not on the ground. There are no gleaming cuffs around his wrists. There are no shadowy figures holding out a clipboard and demanding a confession. There is no one. No one is coming to save him. No, there was only one person coming here, and that person was going to ki—
He feels more than sees the gun slipping from his clumsy fingers. He curls his fingers around the grip. After a moment of hesitation, he places a finger on the trigger, but doesn’t press down. He wants to leave, so he does. It’s almost surprising how simple it is.
He pushes open the door to the room, trying his hardest to pull his eyes away from the needles on the ground, and the vaguely round empty space in the blood spattered on the table that he somehow knows is there. How can he get out? How did he get here in the first place? He combs through his memory, but nothing comes to mind. Everything before the moment he first woke up is a terrifying blank.
The bite of the cuffs ache with every slight tremble of his hand. Stiff lumps rise and fall on the side of his neck every time he turns. Maybe that was for the best.
The door is unlocked, and he steps out into a long lit corridor leading to an elevator. The panel next to it reads B4, but that’s not what he notices first.
He notices the smell first. How could he not? The place smells musty, rusty, rotten, like it was held together by viscera long since dead. He looks around, trying to locate the source, but the only thing he can see is ruin. Paint peeling away from the walls like mold, jagged pieces of tile scattered across the floor, wires hanging bare from the ceiling like a noose from the heavens. If he squints into the darkness, he can see cracks along the wall that seem to grow with every step he takes, and bits of ash float against the dim lights that still remain.
He stops at the end of the hallway, where two options present themselves. He doesn’t want to take the elevator in this state, trapped in an even smaller space, blindly trusting that machinery he can’t even see will hold long enough to get him out of here. No, he thinks, casting his eyes to a green and white sign. It’s barely lit, but the little green figure is still recognizable. He’ll take the stairs.
He opens the emergency exit door. Where to go? Where even was the exit in this dying, decaying building?
His decision is made for him when a noise from downstairs disturbs the dead silence. Not words, but a high-pitched, desperate hum, as though someone's mouth was blocked from crying out for help. It could be a threat, but it's the only sign of life he’s sensed so far.
His left hand drags on the rails, the other never letting go of the gun. He can just barely tell where the next step is only by the dark imprints that come into view, each foot seemingly suspended in never-ending free fall before it meets the next step.
He stops after two flights of stairs. The sound, now clearly the sound of someone struggling, is as loud as it has ever been, coming from just a few meters beyond that door.
He places his hand on the metal doorknob, cold, as though no one had touched it on the long time. He takes one moment to let the chill ground him before he presses down and swings the door open.
The first thing he sees is a long object on the ground, the light of the emergency exit sign just bright enough to make out the parts of a body. Light hair that fell past the ears, the tips curling on the floor. Beneath it was a grey jacket and black slacks that faded into the darkness. The figure’s hands were tied by thick cables on his back, and he could make out similar binds around the ankles. As if sensing that someone had arrived, the figure turned and met his eyes.
His eyes were red, red as the blood that spilled from the bullet in his forehead. When he saw those eyes last, there was no mercy in them, only mania.
A sharp, glistening smile. Something long and thin and cold pressed to a place that would never heal. Case closed, a gentle, delighted voice whispered, words handcrafted to deliver him into the grasp of death. This is where your justice ends—
Sae Nijima's cognition of Ren Amamiya doesn't hesitate. He flees.
He slams the door behind him, so hard he thinks the building rattles with the force, but he dares not look back. He has to keep going. Is that the sound of footsteps behind him? Did Akechi get free of his bindings already? Any semblance of fear he felt when he first came down these stairs are long gone, the ground flying beneath him. At one point he missteps and falls onto the steps in front of him, just barely bracing himself so he doesn’t fall on his chin and break his jaw. Something warm spills in rivulets from his knee and his palms are raw and burning, but he barely notices.
His head is still bleeding from the bullet in his brain, after all. He can lose a little more.
He runs and runs until he physically can't anymore, when he spins around and there are no more flights of stairs left. The brief pause gives his lungs the time to register how much they burn, his legs how much they ache, and he almost collapses on the spot.
Almost. He blindly reaches out, and his hand catches on the door before he falls. He grasps downward before his fingers wrap around the doorknob. He yanks the door open, almost slipping because of the sweat gathered on his palms.
Just visible through the windows is the red sky of dawn. So beautiful, so vast, so unlike anything he’s ever seen, he can’t help but stop and stare. He knew that there was a world beyond the awful pain of the interrogation room, of the decrepit and deteriorating walls of the Police Headquarters. He knew, because Amamiya knew, and Nijima knew he knew. Of course he did. It was common sense to everyone. Knowledge taken for granted.
But not him.
Each tap of his feet on the concrete pavement, unlike the muted steps on the tiles in the Police Headquarters building, rings like music in his ears. He takes a deep breath, and for the first time in his existence, tastes air. The scent of leaves hanging from their trees, the stirring chirp of bugs and the twinkling lights coming to life in far away buildings as street lamps turned off, a city starting to wake up.
Is this what freedom is? Is this hope? This feeling rising in his chest, causing the corners of his lips to curl upwards, is that joy? Wonder? He knows so many words, but was unable to put any experiences to them all until this moment. He feels like he could burst, like he could read through an entire library and never know enough to describe this moment.
He looks back where he had come out of. The Police Headquarters had visibly decayed. Dry ivy hung heavy from the walls, mold drew along the dusty windows, and what little paint remained dissolved into ugly black streaks. In the distance, the brilliant neon lights of the Casino Courthouse flickered weakly. The giant letters reading WIN had fallen off the scales entirely, a mockery of what they once stood for.
With Nijima’s distortion no longer able to sustain the Palace, it would collapse soon. If he didn’t get out of here soon, he would go with it. The thought propels him forward. But where could he go?
As he looks around, his eyes fall on the subway station, leading underground. He recalls that Amamiya mentioned a place called Mementos when Nijima asked about their smaller targets. The Palace of Society itself, a place where Shadows roamed and Cognition reigned.
He runs towards it, and doesn’t look back when he hears the rumble of the Palace crumbling behind him.