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The lock clicks in defeat, the sound bouncing off the walls and down the hall. Nobody comes to this floor anymore; it’s ‘haunted’. That’s why Akira’s here. A strange, otherworldly pull linked a strange, otherworldly man. He unconsciously thumbs the glove as he pockets the pick. The leather is uncharacteristically still, if the last two days have been anything to measure by.
Fear wars against hope about what he might find inside.
The stale air bites before he sees, but what a sight it is. Standing on the threshold, looking into the space Goro used to inhabit. Dust has settled over abandoned cups and cutlery, over articles pinned beside his smile, faded from sun and time. It clings like a preserving film, a perfect snapshot from nearly two years ago now. Akira’s been standing here too long.
He forces himself to take his first, shaky step into the man’s past. The apartment is modern, cold and almost unfurnished, all smooth stone and glass just like he always expected. It hurts in a way he can’t define, like an ache to warm it with life. Akira’s gaze roams toward rooms he can’t see into, his stomach swooping at the thought of intruding into Goro’s bedroom.
Dangling from a hanger at the back is a tan blazer, a tie looped through the collar. The pinstripes are as sharp as ever. Everything’s untouched, exactly like he left it, one day in December. Akira feels sick, and palpably alone. Then he sees it. A slash in the air, a blackened scar amidst the dust and light. It hovers three feet from the ground, silent and pulsating, a wound in reality.
The glove awakens, tugging.
Akira pries his phone from his back-pocket and scans the app menu. The eye isn’t there. The screen suddenly glitches, pixels bleeding sapphire and gold. When he looks up, the scar is shrinking, his last chance fading. He rifles through his bag, grabbing a fake pistol and knife to add to his blind hope. Frantically, he opens the group chat that he’s only just rejoined and writes the address and apartment number. Finally, he adds, ‘Found something about him. Metaverse, fading. I’m going in.’
Is he really doing this alone?
Yes. There’s no other choice.
He steps forward, weapons tucked into his jeans, and forces his bare hand into the scar. It’s wet and warm, dry and icy. A bouquet of rotting flowers stains the air. Something grips his hand and yanks him deeper, up to the shoulder, hungrily.
Akira isn’t resisting. His phone has started to ring in his pocket. It’s probably them, calling in a panic, but he’ll come back, and he’ll come back with him.
One more tug, and in he falls. The world spirals, apartment draining away.
Falling, falling, falling...
... And crashes to the ground in a heap.
“Yeah,” he winces. Badly out of practice. He rolls onto his side and stares up, but now only endless night sky wheels overhead. His gaze tips down to his hands, finding them wrapped in red again.
“I will carve my own path for myself.”
Goro’s words echo around him in greeting.
No lips speak them, and no breath feeds it.
Akira swallows thickly, then sits up. He is Joker once more, which means the Metaverse is here, however small. A splinter, always buried in their skins. An intruder again, he tries to reach the voice of Arsène he remembers so vividly. But only silence and his own beating heart answer. Around him, glassy walls of black brick tower high. A perfect cell to hold him, and only one gate out. The beautiful golden letters above it bely the torturous un-reality.
‘The Catacomb of Loss’.
On the air, like overheard music, the scent of burnt blood harmonizes with the acidic pluck of rotting flowers. But even alone, at the edge of this decaying void, there’s no other choice but to go on. For whatever lies beyond, for whatever remains, for what he’s always believed in his heart of hearts: Goro Akechi still lives.
Akira pushes in. The sky falls and the stars blink out. The obsidian urges him to hurry deeper, darker, footfalls echoing in the cold space. He arrives at a split in the path; both look identical.
“A maze,” he curses.
This place is soundless but for him. Holding out his left hand, grazing leather fingertips over the glass walls, he turns the corner. In theory, that’s all he has to do to solve it. But Goro’s mind was hostile, a war-zone, all barbed wire and gunfire. It won’t be that simple.
Something catches Akira’s eye, a lone light playing off the dappled glass, brightest at his fingertips. It’s coming from inside him—he’s the torch, the only light.
Onward he walks, a person with no shadow, a bright spot in the endless black. Deeper and deeper, the darkness thickens at the borders of his feeble glow, becoming almost physical. A crossroad appears.
Scrape.
Akira freezes. He feels a stare on him, like a laser dot on his skull. The walls of darkness around him birth eyes. Blood viscously oozes from their sockets as they find him. Unblinking, they stare accusingly, pinning him, weeping for him. Behind the eyes, a silhouette drips into shape. Grotesque scrapes ring out as it’s birthed, limbs writhing and jerking. There’s nowhere to go that isn’t watched, and Akira can’t look away as the silhouette lands and turns to him. Reflexively, he draws his gun. The horns, the beak. It’s him.
“Goro?” he breathes. The eyes flinch hatefully. A chittering chorus heralds its arrival, swelling to a crescendo as the silhouette pauses on the rim of Akira’s wavering light.
But hope persists. “Is it really you?”
It steps in, revealing a blackened sabaton, metal slithering higher in strands of interlocking steel. The black and blue stripes are shredded, faded and stained with old blood, clinging to the armor that forced it loose. The rest silently glides into view.
The scent of sickly sweet blood hits him first. A thick, cloying iron that hangs in the air between him and… this thing. It’s not Goro. He’ll kiss the fiery end of his gun before it’s Goro. All the eyes lining the walls flick to this thing. Unblinkingly watching, their new audience.
It stares at Akira, lizard-like head twisting unnaturally, analyzing. The joints crack and snap and creak and scrape. It used to be a mask, now it’s something more. Akira’s mouth floods with saliva as his stomach wrings with revulsion, his finger trembling on the trigger. The metal is cracked open like an eggshell. He can see the engine room inside, see Goro’s eye, spilling over with jealousy and sheer fucking sadness.
Now there’s only a single red light in the emptiness beneath the armor, a glowering point of virulent hatred. Now a killing machine, body and soul. The beak tears open, the banded, buckled metal popping and warping as it does so, revealing jagged teeth and more insatiable darkness. It howls for him. The eyes lining the walls all close as one—they can’t bear to watch.
Akira fires. A dull thud rolls through his arms, blankly staring at the horror in front of him as it lunges. Another round, another, another; they crumple against the armor like paper as he staggers backward. It lurches at him like every movement hurts, reaching out with its talons. There’s no need for a blade anymore, it wants to tear him apart with its hands.
His feet tangle and trip him, fear gripping his throat, vision darkening. One last pull of the trigger before he dies, shredded alive by the warped reflection of the person he cares about most. Someone he lost.
I couldn’t keep our promise. 
Agonized screams echo around. Akira’s sight returns. The suit of armor is howling, clutching its head. A bullet to the red eye.
Akira’s body moves by itself. Up, onto his feet, he throws himself down a passage, his leadened limbs racing to keep up. Behind him, somewhere in the darkness, an enraged roar bounces off the obsidian in pursuit. Roars like shearing metal and a wolf caught in a trap.
It screams, and screams and screams.
“JOKER! DON’T. LEAVE. ME.”
Akira throws himself into a corner and cowers, gun raised and shaking, muzzle jumping from shadow to shadow. Moments pass. The sound soaks away, but still rings in his ears. Inch by inch, he forces himself to his feet, hands still trembling. He can’t stay here, but now he’s lost, all turned around. Will following the wall still work? It’s better than nothing.
He starts moving, wishing he could make himself dark. All his lone light says here is, ‘Kill me’. Every step emits a ripple of sound, reflecting back at him, morphing in the darkness, becoming scrapes and snarls and the whisper of his name on a predator’s teeth. Step after step, he’s sure the next will be his last. The teeth never arrive, but the whispers grow.
They start to form words. Words in Goro’s voice that beckon him.
“We’re fairly close, after all.”
As much as he’s infiltrating this place, so is it him—incising skin, dripping into his blood, shadowy fingertips fumbling at brain matter. Akira misses his friends. He’s alone here, in the heart of darkness, hunted and taunted. Unbidden, a whimper escapes him. His jaw locks up tight as that small sound rolls away, added to the mocking chorus.
At the next split, he moves left, but the glove in his pocket tugs right, hard. Into the unknown. Akira hesitates, a held breath before he takes the leap of faith. Right it is. The whispers seethe at his trust.
“You’re the one person I refuse to lose to.”
Akira’s light grows, almost to spite him. The glass bricks almost glitter now, reflections of himself following himself, looping. He breaks into a sprint as the chorus chant begins again, louder.
It’s coming.
He runs and runs and tries to ignore the growing echo of metal. Each breath burns, his lungs feel bruised and his limbs grow heavier and heavier. Every twist in the maze brings another corridor, and another. It feels like he’s been running for hours. Time slides by. It’s always behind him. Teeth tearing into his spine, savoring marrow, licking veins.
“You taste like new flesh.”
Something clicks. The world shifts. The metal footsteps cease. Panes of clear glass are inlaid into the dark bricks. There are bodies behind them, pale like statues, hands clasped together in silent prayer. Business suits and blouses between silk suits and tattoos. Body after body, plaques affixed to glass; names and titles. CEO’s and CTO’s beside Lieutenants and Captains. All mafia, different childhoods.
Goro remembers them all.
Ahead, sourceless spotlights click on.
A beam of refracted light illuminates another body behind the glass, and Akira doesn’t need a plaque. Kunikazu Okumura. Maybe it’s good nobody could come with him.
Ahead, new horrors await.
Standing upright in her glass coffin, centered, raised above others. The plaque reads: Wakaba Isshiki. A Researcher. A Mother. A first for all things.
Akira’s heart aches, but he can’t stop. There are no whispers left, no scrapes in the darkness. It hasn’t helped the atmosphere though, like walking to a freshly dug hole at gunpoint.
That’s when he sees the next coffin.
Words choke in his throat. It’s his very own. It’s occupied. A long black tailcoat draped over a buttoned vest. It’s him, and not him. There, and not there. ‘His’ body is breathed into the fabric, the swell of flesh in the clothing before it fades. Red gloves hold the plaque this time, posed for a mugshot. The plaque itself is different, too. ‘Joker’ it reads, dead center. Then, as the body breathes back into the clothing once again, the words change.
They become, ‘Enemy’.
He feels ghostly lips kiss at his neck.
‘Rival.’
The body fades back out.
‘Akira.’
The process starts anew. ‘Joker’, the plaque reads again. Across his face, bands of rainbowed distortion mist his features. Akira steps up onto the plinth, face to faceless. Claw marks are gouged into the glass, around the sides of the face, the heart.
It tried to get in.
He presses his hand atop his doppelganger’s coffin. The glass is warm to the touch, and fragile like spun sugar. The loop stops, the clothes sag empty and the blur disappears. The plaque is now blank. Behind the plinth and his coffin, the infinite corridor folds inward, space revealing space, like a mirror splintering.
Fear wars against hope about what he might find inside.
And what he might lose.
But he still pushes on. It’s darker inside, and only Akira’s light finds the person he’s been looking for.
Goro Akechi, his face strained, eyes closed and ringed with dark circles in the coffin he expected all his life. The trench-coat of those fake new year days is peeled open like a second skin. A red stain crawls from his heart, then rewinds.
“Goro?”
Nothing. The bleeding loops with the shallow rise and fall of his chest. Akira races to press his hand to the cold glass, but nothing happens. Grunting in frustration, he brandishes his knife and—
“That won’t work.”
Akira spins, covering the coffin with the other arm. His heart isn’t ready for what he sees. Another Goro, maskless but for his smile, clad in Crow’s princely garb. Behind him, another infinite passage. It wasn’t there before.
“Still protective, are we?” he remarks, a familiar sneer in his eyes. “Didn’t you see your coffin? It already tried that.”
Akira shifts, bringing the knife closer to his body. “Maybe I’m special.”
Prince Goro snorts, sneer flickering hot. “Of course you are,” he snaps. “Thank you for opening the way. Now we finally have a chance.” He looks pleased at Akira’s evident confusion. “After all, I wasn’t sure you’d escape my… worst aspects.”
“Your worst aspects?”
“Of course, for we are all… me,” he says happily, flourishing a wrist.
Metal scrapes ring out. Akira’s heart slams into his throat, yanking his gun to ready. Another passage has formed and his stalker’s shape oozes into it. He can’t stop his hands shaking.
They fire and lunge at each other simultaneously. Both the bullet and the thing’s head slam into a glass-like divide. It keeps screaming, slamming its head, body and claws into the barrier. It wants to eat him, to tear out his heart and lungs and use them to breathe blood.
“As full of energy as ever, hm?” Another voice says, from his right. “Pity the Captain no longer exists, thanks to you.”
Akira doesn’t move his gun but twists to look. It’s another Goro, blazer and tie and an emptiness in its eyes.
“Joker,” it purrs. “Remember me?”
Shido’s cognition.
The Black Armor howls and tears at itself.
“Quiet down. The adults are talking,” Cogni-Goro disinterestedly commands.
The Prince continues, “It doesn’t want you here. In fact, I think it just wants to die…”
Cogni-Goro giggles. It’s a sickening sound. “Doesn’t this all seem so… nostalgic?”
Fire twists in Akira’s gut. “I’m gonna kill you,” he growls, blood and hate pounding.
It cackles, like Loki is here. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep. You’re a rodent with aspirations, much like he was.”
“Enough,” Prince Goro barks, glaring daggers. “None of this is helping.”
“Helping you to do what?”
“To show you what the poor boy needs,” taunts the warped reflection.
“To piece him back together, the right way,” professes the false Prince.
“DIE! END! ALL MUST—DIE!” screams the abandoned weapon.
The space rumbles. Three pedestals rise before each reflection, strange items resting atop. Some innocuous, others…
“Ah, I remember this gun,” coos Cogni-Goro. “Clearly it made quite the impression.”
Prince Goro drags his fingertip against his own mirror-like barrier. “As I suspected,” he says quietly.
Atop each of his three pedestals, there’s one totem. In the middle, a police identification card, stamped ‘temporary’. On either side, letters. One is titled, ‘Letter of recommendation’. It’s full of praise for Goro’s attention to detail and his character. The other letter says, ‘Available for full adoption’. There’s a picture of Goro as a child. He looks exhausted.
The Black Armor begins slamming its warped horns into the glass, the barrier shivering.
“What do I do?!” Akira asks, panic rising.
“Offer them. You’re ‘special’, right?” Prince Goro replies smoothly. “Choose what makes him, who he is.”
Akira steps back, eyes racing to the Cognition’s totems. That suppressed pistol, a pair of desk plaques that read: ‘Prime Minister Masayoshi Shido’ and ‘Executive Officer Goro Akechi’. Akira’s stomach turns. Goro still believed, deep down, that he would come out on top. The final offering is a single leaf torn from a notebook. On it, in a soft, looping hand that Akira knows is not Goro’s, it reads: ‘Shido, again. 9pm, wear silk.’
“Rebuild the broken child!” Cogni-Goro mocks. It leans in, forehead against glass. “And if you don’t pick mine, he’ll break under his own failures, his pain, his flickering guilt. You know I’m right.”
Akira would love to smash through and strangle that thing to death with his bare hands.
“That look is sending shivers down my spine.” It grins, eyes wide and hollow. “I bet you’d make death stick.”
“Ignore it,” Prince Goro instructs. “It’s insane. Look at your options,” he says, a hand to each of his partners in psychosis. “Even you can deduce there’s only one logical choice.”
The Black Armor’s glass cracks, the spiderweb of fractures growing. Its beak pecks again, steel teeth gnashing, coming to consume. The creature’s totems are just as varied; Goro’s red-serrated sword, a list of scratched-out names and a pair of scales, rusted and bloodstained.
Who are they to tell Goro who he is? An ocean of lies and identity, bloated corpses reaching up, imploring. ‘Join us,’ they say. ‘It’s like falling asleep.’
Akira would rather die, just like Goro chose.
Something shimmers in his periphery, something hidden becoming visible.
A toy ray gun, almost buried in shadow in the corner of the room. Without hesitation, Akira strides over and sweeps it up. It’s a fragile thing, lights long dead. But it’s still here.
“What did you find?” Prince Goro asks, expression slackening as Akira holds it up. “That shouldn’t exist. It must be a trick.”
Akira doesn’t reply. The glass might hold another minute, maybe less.
“Really, Akira? We’ve been in Palaces together, this is textbook!”
“We’ve never been anywhere together.”
Another shimmer. It’s half submerged in the floor. Akira reaches through the solid liquid and pulls. The world around them cracks, fractures running through the ground, corner to corner. In his hands is a… plain white cup. His eyes linger as his thumb glides over the surface, memories enameled into porcelain. Leblanc.
“That thing is about to tear you limb from limb, and you’re playing with children’s toys and cups?” Cogni-Goro cackles. “No wonder he died saving you.”
Akira drops his knife and gun to the ground, trying to suffocate his guilt, the guilt that breathes and speaks and echoes in gunshots behind steel bulkheads.
Weapons won’t help him here. In their place, he holds the cup and toy gun close, like the precious things they are. Just one more.
“You don’t even know how to reach him without our help,” sneers the Prince.
The Black Armor’s beak pierces the glass. Blood stains the air.
“I don’t need your help. You’re not him.”
“You’re going to die with him, you fool.”
“If I have to.”
Akira follows the cracks in the ground, heart hammering with the splintering glass behind him. The final shimmer forms at the intersection of the cracks… It looks like a small grave, barely five inches across. Akira kneels, eyes flicking to Goro’s time-locked body. “Hold on, just a little longer,” he pleads, placing the new totems down, then starts digging. The grave is maybe six inches deep. His fingertips brush up against something. The space around him almost softens as he pulls it free and sees her. The photo isn’t clear. It’s small, faded and weathered, but Akira can still see her. Flowing auburn hair, refracting ruby eyes and a tired smile, taken in spring.
“I’d rather die than become that thing,” Cogni-Goro seethes from behind. “That broken husk. Reborn to grieve. Your inability to let him go sickens me.”
Akira gathers up his new pieces and moves before Goro’s coffin.
“And when he fails you? Betrays you? Disappoints you? What then?!” asks the Prince.
“I’ll love him anyway,” Akira answers.
He cradles the totems, tearing his red glove off with his teeth. He knew the answer from the start, and already possessed the key. The promise that led him here. Goro’s black glove slides effortlessly onto his right hand. It is comfortable and warm. Taking the ray gun, he presses it toward the coffin. The glass parts around the black-gloved hand, clad in belief in the face of all these horrors. The toy gun floats up, level with Goro's chest.
“Nobody can tell you who you are,” Akira says.
Next, the cup. Beside him, the armor breaks an arm through, reaching for him.
His voice trembling, he continues, “No-one, nothing can.”
The cup floats. Next, the final piece. He holds her out to him.
“So whoever you are, Goro, whoever you choose to be. Live.”
Her picture rises up, beside the gun and the cup. They start to glow. Death approaches.
Goro's blood-stain freezes, along with his breaths. Despair claws at Akira’s soul.
Then, Goro’s eyes fly open like he’s been shocked back to life. Wide, bright, pained, afraid, hopeful, he takes a shuddering gasp of air. The offering’s light suffuses into him as the bloodstain fades.
His clear eyes find Akira’s.
Our light shines together now.
The glass coffin cracks and Goro reaches through it, hands desperately cupping Akira’s face. Behind them, the desperate, begging voices are sharply silenced by three gunshots, and still he can’t take his eyes off Goro’s. Every moment, every feeling is contained within them.
“Akira… you’re here?”
“For you, always.”