Disclaimer: I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist, and I don't own any of the songs mentioned in this or the following chapters. If you sue me, I don't have any money either. Blame my boss.

Hey people! It's been a long since I last posted anything, but here I am again! So here are a few things you should know about my story:

It's complete. I've finished it, so you don't have to worry about not having the end of the story. It will be posted.

Also, each chapter was named after a song. The songs can be listened to on youtube or other place of your choice. The lyrics are related to the chapter or to part of it. My music taste is kind of crazy, but if you don't like a song, you may simply ignore the name of the chapter. You don't need the song to understand the story. So I apologize if my taste in music is different from yours.

And last, but not least, ssadropout did a wonderful job beta-reading this story for me, so if you have the time, go check some of her stories too!

Silence in the Void

Chapter 1 – Riot

Riot – Three Days Grace

The sunlight beamed on his face aggressively and the prospect of some fresh air came as a disappointment. It was scorching hot outside and the sun burned mercilessly the skin that had been in the dark for too long. Sweat evaporated quickly, and with each drop, the chance of survival became smaller. Dehydration was on the prowl, hoping to claim another victim soon.

Still, with all the energy he had, he ran. He ran down the cramped and narrow dirt streets, among the poorly-constructed shacks that sprouted from the ground everywhere, jumping over crates and barrels and scaring people out of his way. Right behind him shouts followed; angry voices that belonged to men who carried guns and knives, even swords. One of those maniacs had just tried to kill him with one.

Anywhere, anywhere he could hide. Anywhere he could sit and rest, be away from the sun. Anywhere. He didn't have a plan. He didn't have a place to go. The only thing he could do was try to get away from the people who wanted him dead. Women shrieked as they saw him, pushing themselves against the walls to be out of his way. A scared goat ran by his side and jumped over a fence; men yelled, making rude gestures towards him; children cried, but with curiosity tried to get a glimpse of the man running. Shots were fired to the skies, spreading more panic. The fugitive felt his chest hurt with the effort to breathe the dry air, but kept on running as fast as he could. This wasn't an easy task, however, for the streets were so crowded the place defied the laws of physics. But he had to run. He had to ignore the pain in his muscles and run to safety, if such a thing existed for him.

Survival instinct. That was all he had left. An instinct to survive, something inborn of every living creature on the face of the Earth – even in a place like this, punished by harsh weather and more than harsh living conditions.

As he went down an even narrower and more crowded way between stores and houses, he realized the densely-populated mess that this city was provided many alternative escape routes. So many people lived there, they formed walls. Walls of people walking home, walls that opened for him in fear, closing again as he passed. They would open for his pursuers as well, but not in the same order, leading those men to different ways. Confusion and chaos created an opportunity for him to escape. There might be a chance to live, to get out of that sea of people and shacks.

That place was Zhu Xia, an ever-spreading district of Qyang. Zhu Xia was a city on its own, maybe a world on its own. Qyang was a big and important city of Xing, close to the desert and populated by a cauldron of different cultures. Zhu Xia was a district that had grown out of control, far from any help from the government for many years.

Every year hard-working Xingese farmers from the west lost their crops to droughts. With no other place to go they hoped to get to Qyang and find jobs, but Qyang didn't open its doors to anyone. People ended up building shacks in Zhu Xia, also known in neighboring countries as the Slum City. And therefore, the Slum City continued to grow like a tumor.

And in the outskirts of the city, where the National Army still had a little – if any – influence over the population of Zhu Xia, soldiers watched the sea of shacks attentively, discussing military strategies.

"Intelligence has just radioed in. There seems to be some uproar north of here, about three miles into the district," said a man in uniform. His Xingese features were matched by a slight accent, despite his proficiency in the Amestrian language.

"Do you think it's related to the conflicts, Major Zhou?" asked another soldier, who spoke Amestrian as his first language.

"Out there it could be anything," the man replied. "It's out of our jurisdiction anyway."

The Amestrian soldier sighed, painfully knowing what that meant.

The Xingese army couldn't enter Zhu Xia. The Slum City was under the rule of the Guang Tahe, a powerful local militia that had made the place its realm for decades. A realm of smuggled drugs and weapons, where water was expensive and death cheap. The Guang Tahe grew with the city and so did its power. Ling Yao, the Emperor of Xing for almost two years now, wanted to take the militia down, but other matters had demanded his attention and he had waited. Now things had run amok and Ling had finally been forced to ignore other problems and turn to face the criminal military machine that had formed a nation inside his nation.

The Guang Tahe had become an international matter and a threat to the good relations between Xing and Amestris. At first by attacking Amestrian railways and trains that crossed the desert carrying goods to and from Xing, and now by showing that Amestrian people weren't welcome into Xingese territory, especially when they came to work alongside with the Emperor's officers.

Second Lieutenant Vato Falman observed absently as Xingese soldiers walked around a few dilapidated stores in the outskirts of Zhu Xia. Those stores sold merchandise produced inside the Slum City. The soldiers barely talked to each other, just kept on patrolling the street that was one of the few ways into Zhu Xia that was wide enough for a tank to go through. Not that the superior officers were likely to allow one to enter the slums right now.

"Hey."

Falman turned around and saw Lieutenant Havoc, who walked quickly towards him, looking quite agitated.

"Anything?"

"Colonel Bingham just talked to the Emperor. Said the whole thing will be one hell of a diplomatic issue between Xing and Amestris if they don't do something quickly."

"Do you think they will do anything? I mean, we know they can't simply invade Zhu Xia with a battalion. Lots of civilians would be killed," Falman said.

"I know. The Guang Tahe is probably counting on that. But…"

"But?"

"Turns out it's getting out of hand. The Tahe attacked a military post close to Zhu Xia, in section 11 south, about three hours ago."

"That's nothing new. They have attacked soldiers before, haven't they?"

"With mortars," Havoc continued. "The shells destroyed the post and even hit a nearby school. If it wasn't for the order to close the school this week, they'd have a lot more victims. The even more worrisome thing is that our officers analyzed the splinters of the shell casings and concluded the weapon used to fire them is manufactured in Drachma."

Falman shifted slightly, not liking how that sounded. Drachma involved in the situation meant the conflict could be much more serious than they had expected. Anything related to Drachma was bad news in his experience.

"Lieutenant Hawkeye was in the meeting this morning and she said General Ushi mentioned having information about Drachman weapons being smuggled into the country," Havoc explained. "The Emperor was furious with him. That bastard Ushi thought it wasn't worth doing anything about it and withheld the information."

Falman straightened himself, feeling irritated. Ushi knew about it and had taken the information lightly. Big mistake. It would be no surprise if the Xingese general was court-martialled for failing to report important information to the Emperor.

"Have they reached a decision about Mustang yet?" Falman asked, though not very optimistically.

"No. Man, I still can't believe it. If I had been quicker to notice..."

"You did everything you could."

"Maybe so, maybe not. I know I'll feel like crap for the rest of my life one way or the other. What difference does it make?" Jean confessed, lighting a cigarette.

Falman didn't know what to say. The two soldiers just turned to the street in front of them, one that led right into the heart of Zhu Xia. They both sighed, a shadow of grief already creeping up on them. The two Amestrian soldiers couldn't go into the Slum City. They didn't have permission from the Xingese government and even if they did, there was no way they would walk as far as a mile by themselves. They'd get killed before that. A single gunshot was fired somewhere, echoing throughout the slums, but it was impossible to say where it had come from, or where it had hit.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

More gunshots echoed a couple miles from there, fired to the skies by militiamen trying to scare the people into staying inside their houses as they hunted their fugitive. The man had been running for some time already, hiding behind shacks, moving under rubble and constantly eluding his assailants. But he was getting tired.

With another huge effort, he sprang from a hole in the ground that was used to keep trash before it was buried. Two Xingese lads almost jumped out of their skins as they saw the hunted man and cursed in their own language. The fugitive was already running down another street. A cart pulled by a donkey crossed in his way and he almost collided with it, scaring the animal and creating even a bigger commotion. Shouts behind him fueled his instincts and he kept on running. With each leap, with each step, every time he crawled behind a pile of wood or through an animal shelter, his energy was slowly draining and his body was giving out. He needed to rest. If he didn't, he'd probably collapse somewhere and that would be the end for him.

He risked running into a small barn through a hole in a wall, falling down on a stone floor covered with a very thin layer of dirty old straw. He rolled over, his clothes collecting straw from the ground. A scrawny horse pulled on a rope tied around his neck, trying to get away from him, but soon stopped and calmed down. A lot of noise still came from the street, and it sounded like his pursuers had continued down the street, but no one had seen him hide in that animal shed.

After a few moments simply trying to catch his breath, the man finally studied the place where he was. It was dark. The door was closed and only the window was open to allow the animals to stick their heads out and see the light of day. Now he noticed that he hadn't entered the shed through a door, he had literarily jumped through the window. The shed contained only a horse that had seen better days, a few straw bales and a clothes line that faced another window, opposite to the one through which he had entered. The already dry clothes on the line covered that window like a curtain and some more clothes lay on a pile of wooden boards, waiting to be washed and put to dry.

The material those clothes were made of wasn't nearly as nice as the clothes the fugitive wore, but they called a lot less attention. The man took off his shirt, holding his breath as he did so. His shoulder was injured. He had been stabbed the day before, merely for the entertainment of those who had kept him captive. It had stopped bleeding for now, but getting rid of that blood-caked shirt of his was nothing short of a big relief. He put on a dirty shirt from the pile, daring not touch the clothes on the line. Those covered the window and helped conceal him.

He proceeded removing his boots and pants. He had been wearing blue pants, for God's sakes. Anyone could spot him in those from miles away. He put on a pair of pants that had a dull tone of brown and looked around for shoes. Luckily, someone had left a pair of sandals by the horse's side. They were a bit small for him, itchy and dirty with dung, but better than walking barefoot and the boots called too much attention.

He looked again at the clothes he had left on the floor, trying to remember anything. What was he doing in those clothes? They looked like a military uniform. Was he a soldier? The man forced his weary mind to think again and tried to recover any memory from it. Any memory at all, anything that identified him. It was to no avail.

He had lost everything. His life had started about three days ago inside a completely dark room where it was impossible to see anything. He had stayed in there screaming for help and trying to find a way out of the darkness. He had tried to dig the ground, kicked the only door he found, screamed himself hoarse, but nothing had happened for more than a day. That was when someone had come to open the door, bringing about a hell worse than the empty dark room.

"What the hell do you want from me?" he had yelled as three men dragged him out of the basement into another room.

They talked to each other in a different language which the prisoner couldn't understand, and pushed him violently, punched him and kicked him to make him walk in the direction they wanted him to. He had tried to fight back, surprised that somehow his own body knew how to dodge a punch and counterattack, but that was when one of the men pulled out a gun, shooting the ground and missing his foot for about half an inch. The guy then pointed the gun at his right knee, a clear threat of a painful but not fatal wound in the gesture.

"I don't know anything. Whatever it is you want from me, I don't understand!"

He really didn't. He had woken up inside that dark basement and any previous memories had been completely lost. For hours he had sat in the dark, trying to recall how he had ended up there or where he had been before that. Nothing had come to mind. It was all a blank. A terrible and painful absence for nothing existed out of that dark room. He had even run his hands over his face and hair and realized in sheer terror, his own appearance was a mystery to him. He wished he had a mirror or anything that could reflect his image and allow him to identify the stranger that he himself was. But there in the dark, it would have been useless anyway.

The scrawny horse tied inside the shed pulled on the rope again and neighed, trying to move away from the stranger as he stood up. The man was wearing completely different clothes now, apart from a pair of white gloves that he now remembered to take off. He ditched them with the rest of the clothes and examined the pendant attached to the necklace he was wearing. It was a long silver chain, well concealed by his shirt. There were actually two objects in the chain. One was a ring and the other a dog tag.

A dog tag! That made sense if he was a soldier. He turned it around and read the words in it, desperately trying to get some meaning to his life.

BG R. MUSTANG

CENTRAL CITY AMESTRIS

6097 5674

Mustang looked at it, hoping the name could ring any bells. He stared at the void that was his own mind and the void stared back, but didn't answer. He was a man with no memories. What did the R stand for? BG probably stood for brigadier general, a high rank in the army. That he could tell. He was from Central City, in Amestris, but he was pretty sure the place where he was now was not Amestris.

He examined the ring he had found with the dog tag, but there wasn't anything written on it. Mustang finally hid the ring and the dog tag inside his shirt, cursing as he noticed the shoulder wound had started to bleed a little again. Fortunately, it wasn't that bad anymore.

"Who am I?" he asked himself, sitting on the floor again in order to wait for the sunset. Darkness should be safer than daylight. He didn't have any long-term plans to survive, but he knew that if he didn't keep on moving he would be killed very quickly. Perhaps he could find some water. There was some for the horse, but it was so muddy and disgusting he didn't have the guts to drink it. He just hoped no one would walk into that shed before dark.

Luckily for him, nobody did. The hours went by and nightfall came, covering the roofs of the shacks like a dark blanket. There still should be a lot of people out on the street, but that night, not many risked staying outside. Most people locked themselves inside their houses. The darkness was filled with the noise of shots and even an occasional explosion of a hand grenade. Men ran up and down the street, yelling, entering one or another house, asking the scared dwellers questions and then leaving, sometimes taking the men in fighting condition with them.

The night went on, but the conflicts escalated. There in the outskirts of the Slum City, almost in Qyang territory, Xingese soldiers, aided by a few foreign soldiers, listened to their radios attentively, picking messages from intelligence agents. There was an army base in Qyang near Zhu Xia territory and a few posts in the frontier between the two cities. From the posts, soldiers from the National Xingese Army could gather some information to report to the base.

"Another explosion?" Lieutenant Hawkeye was surprised.

So many explosions coming from the Slum City… could it be him?

"Intelligence reports said it was a bombshell," Sergeant Fuery added, as though he had read her mind.

"Something is wrong there. Reports of conflicts have been coming in one after another the entire afternoon."

"Such a commotion is strange. The Xingese officers are worried that there is some dispute between the families."

The militia was run by two powerful families, the Wang family and the Ting Ting family. Nonetheless, just as there could be only one king in a country, there could be only one boss in an organization such as the Guang Tahe. Tao Wang, a skillful swordsman and horse rider in his early thirties, had become the ruler of the militia after his father's death ten years before. Despite being very young, he had a good mind for business and the Guang Tahe had thrived under his command. That, however, didn't keep the members from the two families from clashing constantly.

Riza stared at the newspaper photograph that had been published less than two days before and felt like she was going to be sick. She had looked at that picture a few times, and every time she did so again, she felt even worse. The headline on the first page was still shocking.

AMESTRIAN OFFICER TAKEN HOSTAGE BY TAHE TERRORISTS

The picture showed four militia men around Brigadier General Roy Mustang, who was untied and had his gloves on, but didn't resist. He stared blankly at the photographer, while four men staring menacingly at the photographer, pointed guns and knives at him. One of them was holding him by the shirt aggressively, but Mustang didn't seem able to react.

"Why didn't you fight them, Roy?" Riza asked the photograph.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the hurried steps of Second Lieutenant Heymans Breda, who stumbled into the office, bringing a crumpled piece of paper in his hand.

"He escaped! Mustang killed Tao Wang and escaped!" he shouted almost hysterically, showing Hawkeye the report he had.

"What? When?" Hawkeye asked, a glimpse of hope coming back to her as she almost yanked the piece of paper from Breda's hand.

"Early afternoon, a few hours ago. Intelligence just got this from a man they captured. That's why there's such a commotion out there."

"They're after the brigadier general?" Fuery asked.

"That too, the order is to bring him alive, not necessarily in one piece. But with Tao Wang dead-"

"Succession becomes a problem. Tao Wang didn't leave any heirs," Hawkeye finished Breda's sentence. "If they are busy fighting between them, the general will have a better chance of surviving. We have to help him. We have to get into the city."

"That would be suicidal," said a fourth voice, one that belonged to a Xingese general.

General Ushi walked into the temporary Amestrian office in the Xingese military base, carrying a copy of the report. His features were somber. He had been demoted for failing to report what he knew about Drachman weapons to the Emperor and would have to serve time in jail. He surely wasn't pleased about that.

"You can't enter Zhu Xia alone. But with Tao Wang's death, bloodshed is imminent. The army will have to interfere. The Emperor summoned all his counselors and… I believe we will invade Zhu Xia first thing in the morning."

"Do you think he has all night?" Hawkeye asked him angrily.

"Mustang isn't the priority anymore, he caused enough trouble already. There are millions of civilians living there. It's a densely-populated area. A war between the two families could cause thousands of deaths, especially if they keep using Drachman mortars and machine guns. I'm sorry to tell you this, but if I were you, I'd go back home and begin funeral arrangements."

"Mustang caused enough trouble?" Hawkeye said, her fierce gaze almost piercing through Ushi's head.

Breda just got in between the two of them, thinking that even though Hawkeye didn't usually lose her temper, it might not be a good idea to risk it. One offensive word could be enough to cause quite an incident. General Ushi walked to the door followed closely by his almost harassing escorts.

"General Ushi, what should we call you now? Colonel?" Hawkeye said, knowing that demotion was a big embarrassment in Amestris and even worse in Xing.

Ushi exhaled angrily, but didn't answer. He left the office, still followed by the escorts, and the three Amestrian soldiers remained there, desperation growing inside them quickly. Mustang had fought and eluded his attackers. But how could he get out of such a big place with so many people looking for him? And worse than that, if the order was to bring him back alive, it meant they wouldn't let him leave the living world easily if they caught him. It all had to be a horrific nightmare.

OK, first chapter up! I hope you liked it! Please, leave a review with your opinion! Come on, you know you want to! Click on the button! It's calling your name! So, thanks for reading and come back in a week or two for more!