1:45am, Friday the 10th October, 2132.

When the doors of the service elevator opened Aiden stepped out into what looked to be an abandoned corridor. It was dark and hadn't been cleaned for some time, and the ceiling was high enough to be shrouded in a darkness. Part of him immediately wondered if something lurked up in those shadows but he was too shaken to care and began to walk uneasily past bland turqoise doors as he grappled with feelings of simultaneous and unimaginable hunger and desire.

He reached a set of doors at the end and pushed them open to find himself in a large, empty lobby - the bottom floor of a massive tower that was lost in a forest of them. A large, circular reception station was in the middle of the room, with a security station at the far end, a fleet of elevators against two walls and a large, open flight of stairs that led upwardto the floors above. Aiden looked up above him and realized that the inside of the tower he was in was hollow - and endless layers of glass balconies went up for hundreds and hundreds of storeys.

And yet there was nothing. No people, no lights, no dim flashing of electronic equipment or the sounds of air-conditioning, or the low hum of thousands of electrical currents that could sometimes be heard when your ears were as good as Aiden's now were. There weren't even any signs, or posters, or logos to reveal just who owned this building, or what it had been used for. There was just Aiden.

Several large, glass doors made the entrance of the place, and Aiden walked over to them with no desire other than to leave. He tried one and then another, but found that they had been locked, and he did not want to draw attention to Hiromi's hideout by breaking the doors open. He turned and decided to try the security station, knowing that Yuji had likely come through the building when he left and that there had to be a side-entrance somewhere. The security kiosk was open and he passed through it and into a back room with a small break room and a kitchen, and through that into a locker room where all the lockers had been opened and emptied. He walked down one of the aisles towards a door in the back, but as his hand reached for the handle he heard a distinct yet silent clicking, and a shadow seemed to move in the corner of his vision.

Aiden turned his head to find that Yuji was sitting on a seat in the corner of the room. His eyes were slightly red as though he had at some point cried, and he had watched Aiden silently as he lit a cigarette and placed it between his lips. "Didn't expect to see you here," said Yuji.

"What are you doing?" Asked Aiden as he turned to look at Yuji. Yuji had a handgun lying across his lap and he was leaning slightly back in his seat as he put his lighter away.

"Me? Nothing. What are you doing?"

"Trying to find the way out," Aiden told him with his eyes fixed on the gun.

"There's a back security door through there, down the hall," Yuji said, gesturing to the door that Aiden had been about to open. "You abandoning our little alliance already? What about the corpo guy we were gonna grab?"

"It's better for everyone if I left," said AIden. "I'll just get you all killed."

"Maybe," Yuji replied. "Guess you got some powerful people after you, right? Maybe people who would leave me and my crew alone if I delivered you." Yuji's hand began to slowly drift towards his handgun, but when Aiden took a step back he suddenly snatched it and raised it at him. Aiden stopped.

"You don't want to do this," said Aiden.

"How do you know what I want to do?" Asked Yuji as smoke was blown out through his mouth and his nose. "You know, it's strange. Back down there with Hiromi, I wanted to be on your side. You have a natural charm about you, you know. You're like a dictator."

"Do you know how many people have tried to kill me tonight?" Aiden asked him. "It seems every chance I get to find respite, someone else comes and tries to shoot or stab me. None of them could kill me. The soldiers at Fukaya General couldn't kill me, Sarratt couldn't kill me, and you won't be able to kill me."

Yuji shrugged and kept his gun steady. "I don't want to kill you," he said. "I just want to save my friends. Too many have them have already died tonight because of you, and more will probably die in the next few days because of you. I know what you're doing - you're running away because you're scared, because you have no idea what you're doing. But I'm a leader to my gang and I don't have that option, so why don't you sit down?"

Aiden looked at him for a moment in silence, then shook his head. "You're trying to keep me here with the threat of violence but there are two problems with that plan, Yuji," he said. "The threat of violence doesn't scare me anymore, and you wouldn't have the heart to shoot me even if it did."

He turned back towards the door and reached for the handle, and Yuji fired his gun. The deafening sound of the shot filled the locker room as the stink of smoke came from the nozzle of the gun, and the wall a foot away from Aiden suddenly had a large, black hole. "See?" Aiden asked, then he passed through the door and shut it again behind him.

Aiden left the building through a side door that led to a small, empty side-road that was little more than an alley. He felt the pangs of hunger again - coming and going in echoing waves, but they were slowly lessening in both frequency and intensity. Eventually he went out onto the road in front of the tower to find dozens of people going about their night-lives. Vehicles moved along the roads at breakneck speeds - some hovering and humming, others spraying water from the earlier rain all over those who walked at the roadside.

Aiden stepped out into it and felt safe again. He found himself surrounded by people and against all expectations that fact was not an amplifier of any anxiety he had, but rather a cure for it. In a crowd he was just another face, another man who was passed over by the eyes of every other, and despite there being so many people he felt for the first time that their attention was not on him.

Even so he did not know where to go, so he picked a random direction and walked. He must have walked for at least an hour, turning corners and peering down alleyways and watching out for anything that might be hostile. He felt safe and secure in his explorations, and even when the occasional group of bikers rode past he knew they would not pick him out from a crowd. Those bikers must have been after the Centipedes; Hiromi had told him about their rival Spiders gang, and they wore the outline of a spider on the back of their suits and carried metal bars and other melee weapons. Still - they were not looking for him.

After some time Aiden found himself on an unusually quiet street consisting of what looked to be mostly apartment buildings, but he went down it anyway and found something he had never expected to see. Between two buildings a space had been cleared not for a road, or an alleyway, or a parking lot, but a garden. It was walled in an oriental style, with an open passage that led under a red, wooden torii and onto a stone path surrounded by trees and plants and flowers. Overcome by his curiosity he entered the garden, and though he did not know the names of those plants, he found that rare bed of nature both beautiful and fascinating.

As he walked through he realized there was a small pond on one side, with a cobble path that looped around it. Various small, stone monuments lined the path with ribbons of red and white tied around them, and he recognized traditional japanese writing carved into their faces. As he continued on a little more he realized that at the end of the garden was a small, temple-like building that Aiden had seen in his history books as a child and that hadn't been built in Japan in decades.

"It's a beautiful building, isn't it? Surrounded by, yet so far removed from the forest of metal it's surrounded by."

Aiden turned his head to find a man stood just behind him who, though he was clearly the caretaker of the place, seemed as equally enthralled by it as Aiden was. The man wore what appeared to be a traditional black and yellow garb, a multiple-layered robe that was wrapped around himself, as well as wooden sandals that kept his feet held above the ground on prongs.

"Sorry," said Aiden. "I didn't mean to trespass. Or, well, I did, but I don't mean any harm."

The man laughed. His head was shaved but not bald and he had a full, dark beard with hints of grey. "Not to worry, stranger. Many people have never seen such a place - even the city gardens are artificial and too perfect," he said. "But this place? It is perfect because it is imperfect. It is through the imperfections of things that the natural order finds its true beauty and expresses itself. Imperfection is perfection."

"Are you a monk?" Aiden asked him. "You look and sound like one, and this place looks like a temple to me. I did not think there were many monks left."

"You could say that. There will always be those who are drawn to the spiritual, but as for traditional, ordained monks? There are not many," the man told him. "My name is Shinran, what is yours?"

"Aiden," he replied.

Shinran looked him up and down, then bowed slightly. "Would you like some tea, Aiden? I do not know your troubles, but I can see that you have them."

Aiden wasn't sure whether or not to be suspicious, but Shinran had already began to walk up along the path to the temple so Aiden followed him. "Are you this trusting of all strangers?" He asked the monk as he walked.

"Well, no. But I try to see the good in all before I see the bad," Shinran replied. Aiden realized that the temple was actually two smaller buildings connected by a wooden platform: one was an actual area of prayer, while the other was little more than a living space. Shinran went to this living space where the sliding paper door - shoji, Aiden believed it was called - was already open, and he stepped into a traditional room with a small heating platform that he placed a kettle on.

"I apologize for saying this, but I'm kind of surprised your garden hasn't been vandalized," said Aiden.

Shinran laughed a little at the remark. "It has a few times, but most people don't care enough to bother - there is nothing of value here, and unlike a building a garden will always regrow. It just needs a little tending to," he said. The kettle had already boiled, despite being only being heated for a few seconds, and soon the monk was pouring the water into ceramic mugs and reaching for bags of tea-leaves. "Come, have a seat."

Aiden found the situation so bizarre, yet he could not help going along with it. It seemed outright rude to refuse the monk, who appeared to want no more than to be hospitable, and so Aiden slowly sat by the kettle and crossed his legs. The monk, who was sitting on his knees, looked at the way AIden was sitting and seemed amused by it. "What kind of tea do you like?" Shinran asked him. "Green? Lemon?"

"I... Don't think I can drink it," Aiden sheepishly admitted.

"Hm? You are allergic?" Asked the monk.

"No, I just... I have a condition. I don't think I can eat or drink."

"Anorexia?"

"No. I'm just... Unnatural. Dark."

The monk had already poured two cups of tea, but when Aiden said those words he stopped and looked at Aiden closely. "You do not seem to be so from where I am sitting," said Shinran.

"But I am," Aiden admitted. "In fact, I shouldn't be here, I'm putting you in danger."

Aiden began to try and stand, but Shinran shook his head. "Sit down, lad," said the monk, his voice surprisingly strong. "You're already here, so you might as well accept a cup of tea from an old monk. I'll be perfectly fine."

Aiden lowered himself down again and Shinran slid one of the cups over to him. He slowly raised it to his nose and breathed in the steam as the monk carefully sipped from his and watched him. "You aren't going to try it?" Shinran asked him.

"I can't."

"Because you're unnatural," the monk said. "I do not know what is wrong with you, my friend, or what you have been through, but I do know that you are certainly natural. You are breathing, are you not?"

Aiden realized that he was.

"And your heart is beating, is it not?" Asked the monk.

Aiden realized that it was.

"Then you are natural," said Shinran. "You are living. And all living things require water - life cannot be life without it. It is one of the ultimate, fundamental rules of the natural world, and this tea is little more than water."

As though he had just struck an epiphany, Aiden realized that Shinran was right. He took the cub to his lips and, fighting against the feeling that it was somehow wrong, he began to drink.

"That's it," encouraged Shinran. "Overcome your anxieties. Overcome any negative beliefs that you will be ill. It is simple tea, water, and it tastes delightful if I say so myself."

Shinran's words seemed to sooth him, and any panic that came began to fade away as the hot tea settled in his stomach. He took the cup away from himself and then, after waiting for some time, realized that the sudden and violent urge to be ill was not there. "You were right," Aiden told him.

"Of course I was right," Shinran said. "Though I cannot imagine what illness you must feel for you to believe that tea would do you any harm. Yet it is not my place to judge, it is my place to help."

"I did not expect to find wisdom tonight," Aiden admitted. "Only violence."

"You run from it, don't you?" Asked the monk. "Violence. Fear. Doubt. I can see from the blood on your clothes, from the fact you have no shoes, that you have been running for some time. What is it, my new friend? Gangs?"

"I don't even know," admitted Aiden, as he took another sip of the tea. "I don't know anything anymore."