Pittsburgh City Hall, third floor. The Mayor’s Office.

The lights were off.

The only light came from the city glow filtering through the window, mingled with the curtain of rain that hadn’t stopped all day.

Martin Carter Wright sat alone behind the massive desk.

The usual mountains of paperwork were gone. All that remained was a single, thin sheet of paper.

It was the final projected statistics, delivered with trembling hands by his campaign manager, Scott Reed, just ten minutes ago.

Reid hadn’t even dared to meet his gaze. He’d put the paper down and fled as if escaping.

As a veteran who had clawed his way through Pittsburgh politics for years, he only needed a single glance at the data from a few key districts to know the outcome.

The South District—the slum he’d once dismissed as a garbage dump—had now become his tomb.

Voter turnout there was as high as eighty-five percent, and Leo Wallace had taken nearly one hundred percent of the vote.

And in the Union strongholds, which he’d always considered ironclad, the Union leaders who had once been his allies had lost control.

The rank-and-file workers ignored their leaders’ directives. They flocked to the polls to vote for the young man who’d eaten boxed lunches with them on construction sites.

Even the middle class, living in their single-family homes in the suburbs, the ones who most detested turmoil, had betrayed him this time.

His lead over Leo in the middle-class neighborhoods was less than two percentage points.

Politically, this was a massacre.

A crushing defeat with no excuses.

Carter Wright reached out and picked up his favorite cigar from the corner of the desk.

He picked up the cigar cutter, skillfully snipped off the cap, and then stuck the cigar in his mouth.

He fumbled for a lighter.

CLICK.

A flame danced in the darkness, illuminating his aged face.

He took a deep drag, the acrid taste clearing his head a little.

He had lost.

He’d lost to some upstart who couldn’t even pay his rent two years ago.

He’d lost to a "keyboard warrior" he’d regarded as an ant, someone he thought he could crush with a flick of his wrist.

He had underestimated the young man, and even more so, the long-suppressed anger in this city.

He’d thought that as long as he had Morganfield, Washington, and a few Union bosses in his pocket, he could sit in this chair forever.

He forgot that, in the end, the ones who decide who sits in this chair are the ordinary people lining up in the rain outside.

When the silent refuse to be silent and the ignored decide to make their voices heard...

...all the political maneuvering, all the money, all the condescending calculations seem so fragile, so utterly vulnerable.

RING RING—

The phone on the desk suddenly rang.

Carter Wright’s hand trembled, and ash fell onto the desk.

He stared at the phone. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

’There’s only one person who would be calling at a time like this.’

Carter Wright let the phone ring. Three times. Four. Five.

He reached out and picked up the receiver.

"Hello."

Leo Wallace’s voice came from the other end of the line.

"Good evening, Mr. Mayor."

"This is Leo Wallace."

Carter Wright leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

"I know who it is."

"Mr. Mayor, regardless of what happened in the past, I want to say..."

Leo seemed to be searching for the right words, trying to maintain his decorum or offer some token pleasantries.

"Don’t say it, kid."

Carter Wright cut him off.

He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling.

"I’ve seen it all."

"The data is clear. South District, North Shore, even Oakland. You won them all."

Carter Wright’s tone was terrifyingly calm.

"Congratulations, Mr. Wallace."

He paused, correcting his form of address.

"No, I should call you Mr. Mayor-elect."

"Pittsburgh is yours."

The other end of the line was silent for a few seconds.

Leo seemed not to have expected Carter Wright to concede so directly, so decisively.

"Thank you, Mr. Mayor," Leo’s voice came. "It was a tough campaign, I..."

"Hah."

Carter Wright let out a dry, hollow laugh.

"Don’t get me wrong, Wallace."

Carter Wright sat up straight. He looked out the window at the pitch-black, rainy night, at the occasional flash of police lights in the distance.

"When I said congratulations, I wasn’t happy for you."

"I was pitying you."

"Pity?" A hint of confusion was in Leo’s voice.

"Yes, pity."

Carter Wright stubbed his cigar out in the crystal ashtray, grinding it forcefully until the ember was completely extinguished.

"You must be feeling pretty good right now, huh?"

"You think you’ve conquered the world. You think you’ve trampled all us old-timers underfoot. You think you’ve finally gotten the key that can change everything."

"I was young once, too, Leo. Twenty years ago, I stood on the steps of this City Hall, just like you, thinking I could turn the world upside down."

"But take a piece of advice from me."

Carter Wright’s voice grew low.

"You’ll soon discover that winning this damn election is the easiest, simplest thing you’ll face in the next four years."

"Even the things we did to you during the campaign—the slander, the suppression—they’re all child’s play compared to what you’ll face once you’re sitting in this chair."

"You’ve won, but this is just the beginning."

"What you’re about to face is the hell I’ve been living every day for the past eight years."

"Budget deficits, a pension black hole, understaffed police, aging infrastructure, and the special interest groups you can’t even see yet, all of them watching you like Vampires."

"They’ll show up at your door every morning, right on time, with a smile on their face and a knife in their hand."

"You’ll find your power is pathetically small. You’ll find your ideals are as fragile as paper in the face of reality."

"You’ll lose sleep. You’ll be wracked with anxiety. You’ll have to shake hands with people you despise. You’ll be forced to sign documents that make you sick to your stomach."

"Until one day, you become me."

After saying his piece, Carter Wright didn’t wait for Leo’s response.

"Alright, enjoy your night, Mr. Mayor."

"I won’t interrupt your celebration."

CLICK.

The line went dead.

Carter Wright placed the receiver back on its cradle.

’It’s all over.’

He stood up.

He had sat in this room for eight years.

Every inch of carpet, every piece of furniture, bore his mark.

He had given orders here, received dignitaries here, and plotted conspiracies here.

This had been his kingdom.

But now, it no longer belonged to him.

The documents, the photographs—they all meant nothing to him now.

He only took the black trench coat hanging on the coat rack.

He had bought it when he was just a district councilman. It was old and a bit worn, but he had always kept it.

He put on the trench coat, turned up the collar, and walked toward an inconspicuous side door in the corner of the office.

It was a private passageway known only to the Mayor, leading directly to the back alley of City Hall.

Carter Wright pushed the door open and stepped into the dark hallway.

His footsteps echoed in the empty stairwell.

He had stepped down from his pedestal and walked out into the rainy night.

「A few minutes later, at the back entrance of Pittsburgh City Hall.」

A lone figure emerged.

The rain was still falling, not pausing in the slightest for the departure of an important man.

Martin Carter Wright, the titan who had ruled Pittsburgh for eight years, once all-powerful.

He hunched his shoulders, hands shoved in his trench coat pockets, head bowed.

His stooped figure quickly vanished into the thick darkness and the curtain of rain.

「Meanwhile, on the other side of the city.」

In a prefabricated office filled with cheers and champagne.

Leo held the phone, the line long dead, not putting it down for a long time.

Carter Wright’s final words still echoed in his ears.

’You’ll soon discover that winning the election is the easiest part of this job.’

Leo turned his head and looked out the window.

Pittsburgh, glistening in the rain, was a sea of brilliant lights.

Beneath those countless lights were countless families, countless hopes, and countless burdens that were about to fall upon his shoulders.

Roosevelt’s voice echoed softly in his mind.

’He’s right, kid.’

’Welcome to hell.’

’But don’t be afraid.’

’Because only by passing through hell can we reach heaven.’