Between skyscrapers rising through the dark, rain-soaked sky of Babylon City, a group of youths sat perched precariously at the bottom of a large neon billboard. Below them, a large freeway shrouded in haze, twinkling with light from a never ending stream of traffic.

“Babylon’s Southern Empire, providing peace and security before the Veil,” blared a sign written in bold red text, each character ten feet high. Below it, a fake smile stared down at the the youths from a huge billboard, purple-gray lips revealing pointed fangs, a glowing cannister of blue liquid suspended beside it. The words “Immortality with Vril,” gleamed seductively in neon. Dangling next to it, another youth hung suspended from a rope high above the others, deep in concentration, spraying black-light across the billboard. A large throw-up—partially complete—read “BOMB BABYLON,” in sharp interconnected letters.

“Yo, Thaqib!” yelled Malik, one of the youths perched below, hair cut short upon a thick head adorned with orange shades. “We’ve been up here too long, let’s get moving already!”

Up above, Thaqib continued to paint—oblivious.

“Thaqib!” Malik repeated. “You’re gonna get spotted up there—Mako are everywhere. Why’d you have to do it up so high anyway? And what’s with the old tech—painting it by hand? Could have just hacked it and changed it to whatever you wanted!”

Jazib, a short skinny teenager wearing a jacket two sizes too big for him replied, “That’s the best spot to see it from the freeway! And hacking is whack—don’t require any commitment, black-light makes ‘em have to come out here and buff it for real. You hack it, and they’ve fixed it in five seconds.”

“So what? Is it worth gettin’ caught in the open for?” Malik asked.

Thaqib looked down finally hearing the commotion below. “We got a mission! What are you doin’ here if you ain’t got what it takes to pull it off?”

“What do you think it’s gonna accomplish? Thought we were just having a laugh—this is going way too far!” Malik replied.

“Yo, this is our island, the Babylonians came and took it from us. How you gonna just sit by and let ‘em pretend like they own the place?” Thaqib yelled down.

“How many centuries ago was that anyway? Didn’t know you were that old Thaqib!” Malik replied, causing Samir—the last of the group, slightly plump and slightly slow, clothes a little too tight—to crack up laughing.

“One year or a thousand years—don’t mean jack! This is our home, they ban us from leavin’ our mark on the city—yet they’re free to stick up billboards of whatever they damn well please. They wanna shoot up on this Vril junk—that’s on them! They got everyone in the districts dreamin’ of getting a hit—even acting like they’re already doing it! These billboards got the people emulating their oppressors!” Thaqib yelled.

“Bah! You’re full of it Thaqib. Always have been. You spend too much time listening to that old-time religious stuff Rast’s always spouting,” Malik replied.

“Yeah!” added Samir, winking to Malik, proud that he’d understood him.

“Thought we were just having some fun getting up—why you gotta get so serious all the time?” Malik said.

“What’s the point in playin’ when we could be changing things up?” Jazib said, supporting Thaqib.

“Exactly,” Thaqib said, quietly turning back to the work at hand.

“Man, whatever,” Malik replied, turning back to stare down at the streets below.

They watched the cars crawling along the freeway, a hypnotizing loop.

“You hear about Taj from 312?” Jazib said.

“Nah, what’s up with him?” Malik replied.

“He’s gone missing. No one’s seen him for a week.”

“Man, so many people are disappearing these days,” Malik replied.

“Did he get sent to Hexagon?” Samir asked, pointing out to the harbour where the cement fortress of Babylon City’s maximum security prison sat isolated upon a small island.

“Where else?” Jazib replied. “At least, that’s the most likely explanation.”

“B.C.P.D. are cracking down on everything, probably just an excuse to get more people in there. I hear they just use ‘em for cheap labor,” Malik said.

“You mean free labor,” Jazib corrected.

“Who knows what they got cooking in there,” Malik replied. Samir turned, looking back out over the city, a ponderous look upon his chubby face.

“Whatever they’re doing, seems like they’re ramping it up if they need to keep locking so many people up,” Jazib said.

“Yeah—and they’ll use any excuse,” Malik replied. “Man—how long’s Thaqib gonna be up there?” he said looking up at Thaqib dangling over the billboard, concentrating on his painting. “We get caught in this part of the city and we’ll be next!”

Up above, Thaqib turned suddenly. In the distance beyond the harbour he saw the black wall that stood against the mist known as the Veil, or as the youth called it—Ghostgate, because of the stories people had told of seeing strange things within the mist. He didn’t know why, but whenever he looked at it, he felt a disturbing sense of anxiety—as though it were calling to him, calling him within. He didn’t like that feeling, as curious as he was to know what lay beyond the Veil, he preferred to ignore it as best he could. But something was happening now, he could sense it. He peered at the Veil, the cool swirling mist looked as it ever did.

The Veil was said to be an entrance to the domain of the Shayateen, a terrifying race that sought domination over all of Aotea. It was the Babylonians who had erected the wall, they had come from the north to save the southern islands from the Shayateen invasion.

The Shayateen, they said, had destroyed the civilization known as Zion that had previously ruled this part of Aotea. Thaqib and his friends were the remnants of the Zionese people, those who had been left destitute after the war against them.

The Babylonians had arrived on their shores to give them aid, or so they had said. They had built the wall to keep the Shayateen at bay. But that had been two hundred years ago and no one had seen the Shayateen since. The Babylonians declared themselves the saviors of the Zionese, and declared the southern islands as Babylon’s new southern empire. As they did in every land they occupied, they established a city to administrate their new territories and named it after themselves, and thus Babylon City was born.

No one knew what lay beyond the Veil, and it was forbidden to even discuss it. Babylon said the Shayateen lay in wait and could return at any moment. Thus the city had maintained a state of martial law for all 200 of the years Babylon had ruled it—with no word of when it would be lifted. The Babylonians after taking control of the island began to settle them with their own people from the north. They pushed the original Zionese out of the city and into the outskirts. Most, like Thaqib and his friends were forced to live in the cracks of the city, the places where no civilized Babylonian would dare set foot.

Thaqib pushed back on the billboard to get a better view of how his throw-up was developing. He stared up at that blue cannister and the smiling mouth, teeth bared, incisors notably longer and sharper than normal. This was the face of a Babylonian, this was an advertisement for them. It was only they that could afford what it sold—Vril, the so called life extending miracle. If there was one thing that obsessed a Babylonian, it was immortality, and this concoction was the nearest thing to it. It was said the Babylonians had once looked like the Zionese, but it had been the Vril that had changed them, what had turned their skin gray, their hair white and given their teeth that peculiar sharpness.

Suddenly, he felt that disturbing sensation again, the one from the Veil. He turned and noticed something strange, there seemed to be laser fire strafing through the sky.