The Rise From The Dust

Chapter 5: The Impact

The memories didn't belong to Shuga yet, but the raw reality of how he ended up in that tin-roof shack belonged to Maya.

​Two nights ago, far outside the neon bleed of the city lines, the world was nothing but endless stretches of dirt roads and thick, suffocating brush. Maya had been driving her battered, rusted flatbed truck through the torrential downpour. The headlights were flickering, barely cutting through the sheets of rain as she navigated the deeply rutted paths of the rural lowlands. She was heading back from a midnight run, her truck loaded with scrap metal.

​Suddenly, a shadow burst through the thick treeline.

​It was Shuga. He was stumbling, his tailored suit completely shredded, his knee collapsing under him with every step. He was a ghost draped in crimson, trailing a heavy smear of blood behind him in the mud. He didn't see the truck. He was running on pure, feral adrenaline, escaping the execution site.

​Maya slammed on the brakes. The heavy tires skidded over the slick, muddy clay. The front bumper clipped Shuga’s hip just enough to send his battered body spinning through the air. He crashed hard onto the hood before rolling off into a ditch, completely motionless.

​"Oh my god," Maya gasped, throwing the truck into park and leaping out into the freezing downpour.

​She scrambled down into the ditch, pulling out a heavy industrial flashlight. When the beam hit him, she gasped. He was lying in a rapidly widening pool of his own blood, the rain turning it into a gruesome pink mist around him. The side of his head was torn open where the bullet had grazed him, and his suit jacket was soaked through.

​Despite the horrific injuries, when Maya reached out to check his pulse, Shuga’s hand shot up out of the mud. With a grip like a closing vice, his bloodied fingers locked onto her wrist. His eyes didn't open. He was entirely unconscious, yet his body was still fighting, reacting defensively to her touch.

​"Let go, let go! I'm trying to help you!" she cried out, twisting her wrist until his grip finally went limp.

​It took every ounce of her strength to drag his dead weight up the muddy embankment and hoist him into the passenger seat of her truck. She ruined her favorite canvas jacket wrapping it around his head to stop the bleeding.

​Present Day: The Shack

​Back in the dim light of the present, the two unconscious thugs still lay groaning on the dirt floor of the workshop. Shuga stood over them, his fists still clenched, his breathing finally slowing down after the explosive burst of muscle memory.

​Maya walked over to a heavy iron locker in the corner of the room. She unlocked it with a loud click, pulling out a sealed, oil-stained plastic bag.

​"You want to know who you are?" Maya said, her voice still trembling slightly from the fight she had just witnessed. "This is everything you had on you when I hauled your bleeding body out of that ditch."

​She dumped the contents onto a wooden workbench.

​First was his tailored suit jacket. Up close, even caked in dried mud and deep crimson stains, the fabric was unmistakably luxurious—the kind of high-end wool only the city's elite could afford. Shuga reached out, his calloused fingers brushing against the silk lining. A phantom warmth sparked in his chest, but no memories attached themselves to it.

​Then, a metallic clatter echoed as a sleek, top-of-the-line smartphone slid across the wood. The glass screen was badly fractured from the tumble down the embankment, and the battery was completely dead.

​Shuga picked up the heavy phone. His thumb instinctively pressed the power button, but the screen remained black.

​"The port is choked with mud and river water," Maya said, stepping closer, her sharp eyes scanning the device. "But I can clean it out in my workshop. If I can get it to boot up, whatever is inside that phone is the key to your entire life. Your name, your people, and whoever the hell did this to you."

​Shuga looked from the broken phone to the expensive, blood-soaked cloth of his jacket. The contrast was jarring. He was dressed like a king, trained like a lethal ghost, yet dumped in the dirt of a rural wasteland like absolute garbage.

​"Clean it," Shuga said, his voice dropping into a low, hard register. He looked at Maya, his eyes steady. "Get that phone working. I need to know whose face I'm going to break next