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Chapter Text

DISCLAIMER
This is NOT a crossover, but a Worm alternate universe (AU) that draws heavy thematic and conceptual influence from the Nasuverse, particularly Tsukihime, Kara no Kyoukai, and to a lesser extent, Fate. Elements from these works are reimagined within Worm's setting and metaphysics.

This is a reinterpretation, not a fusion.

CONTENT WARNING
This story will contain graphic violence, psychologically disturbing imagery, morally ambiguous to villainous characters, and sexually suggestive content, including manipulation and obsession. Themes of death, identity loss, trauma, and cosmic horror are present throughout. Reader discretion is advised.

She Who Sees Death
by 'TheSmilingFox'

.

Blue Blue Glass Moon

Beneath the Imaginary Sky

1/The Girl Who Didn't Die
A Study in Restraint

Life was a fragile thing.

Not delicate. Fragile.

It insisted. Clawed. Sank its teeth into the world and screamed 'I deserve this'.

It cracked under pressure but never stopped pushing.
It fought and carved space out of a world that didn't want it.

And it always came at a cost. To another life. To the world. To something.

A tree took from the soil. A lion took from the lamb. Even a bacterium stole a little warmth before it burned out.

But some lives were quiet enough to pass for peaceful. So small, so neat, so harmless you'd think they belonged. They took just enough to go unnoticed.

'This one's not taking more than it gives,' you might say. 'This one's in harmony.'

Lies. Pretty lies.

Then there were the loud ones.

Loud like a brass band on fire. Loud like they wanted to be noticed. Like they were proud of how much space they took up. How much light they swallowed.

The lives that shoved their existence down your throat as if it were a gift.

"Taylor! What are you doing on the floor, you? Clumsy as usual, dummy."

Sweet, lively Emma. Bright as a supernova.

Sharp voice. All presence and noise. The star of her own stage play.

She laughed as if the world owed her a reaction. Walked like gravity bent for her convenience. She'd always needed an audience. To be the moment.

She tripped me. Stood over me, one foot planted in victory.

I didn't look up at her right away. I was too busy watching my lunch die.

My tray had hit the floor hard. Chicken-thing, mashed green something, a splash of brown that might've been beans. Colors and textures…

…Splattered like a failed dissection.

I didn't flinch. Didn't cuss. Didn't cry.

I just watched the mess. Let my hands hover at the edge of the spill like it might bite me.

I hated messes. Hated disorder. Even a drop of that slob on my fingers could ruin my whole day.

But I wasn't looking at the food. Not really.
I was looking at the lines.

Black. Twisting. Wrong.

So sharp they felt loud.

They ran across the floor. Through the puddle of juice. Along the crack in the tray. Lines that didn't belong in a cafeteria or a high school or a normal life.

But there they were.

I shifted. Got up on my knees. Looked at Emma.

Beautiful. Almost glowing. Hair the color of a burning flag. Skin like a pharmacy ad. Teeth that knew they were perfect.

She had her pose locked. Chin up, chest out, one heel forward, almost daring someone to not admire her. Arms crossed, hips angled just so. She was proud of what she'd done, as if it'd been a brave thing. A dog who'd slapped a chained lion.

Her friends snickered. The cafeteria turned its back.

She basked in it. Loud, beautiful… so satisfied with herself.

A celebration of life.

She stood like a girl who'd never known fear.

But I wasn't admiring her.

I was examining her.

Because the lines were there, too.
All over her.

From her wrists to her shoulders. Around her collarbone. Up her neck. Across her cheek. Segmenting her face into neat little murder puzzles. A marble statue with cracks like vines carved into her skin, parts so distinct I could almost name them.

I didn't smile. I didn't twitch.

Just slid my hands into my hoodie.

Took the paperclip between my fingers. Bent it. Straightened it. Then bent it again.

Felt its shape. Its flaw. Its edge.

I stared at the line that crossed Emma's throat like a string waiting to be plucked.

All that noise. All that life. All that insistence on being seen.

And still—

She had lines like everything else.

Still black. Still jagged.

Still waiting.

So easy to cut.

I blinked. Squared my shoulders. Tried to meet her eyes instead.

"…This is childish, Emma," I said, voice low. "You didn't have to make a mess just to bother me. There are cleaner ways to be a pain."

The girls behind her snickered like I'd delivered a punchline. Emma, red-haired and smug, didn't even blink.

"Mess? Childish?" she parroted, drawing out each word like she was savoring it. "Taylor, from where I stand, it's ob-vi-ous you tripped and fell all by yourself. The only childish thing here is you, blaming other people for your own clumsy little mistake. But I guess that's normal for a weak girl. Can't own her faults."

I rolled the paperclip between my fingers. Bent it. Straightened it. Bent it again. My gaze wandered - not to her eyes, but to a line.

It ran horizontal across her nose. Clean. Neat. A scar waiting to happen.

"I guess you're right," I murmured. "Why admit you're a bitch when you can just be one and everyone applauds?"

The girls stiffened. Emma didn't flinch. She held her smile, calm and unwavering, eyes locked on mine like she was waiting for something.

A reaction. A crack. A twitch. Was it the challenge she liked? The honesty?

Or was it just the thrill of watching her prey squirm?

I didn't know. Didn't care.

What I knew was this: there were lines on her skin. Dozens. Crawling down her arms, creeping up her throat, bisecting her face into fragile, flawless fragments. It would've been too easy. One step forward, a hidden paperclip in hand, a gesture that could pass for a touch—a brush of hair, a caress, a mercy—

One second was all I'd need.

Just follow the line.

"Careful there, Emma. Flea-bitten mutt bites back."

A new voice. Sharp. Lazy. Smug.

Sophia slipped in beside her, one arm slung over Emma's shoulders, a serpent coiling around its mate. She grinned at me. Ugly grin. Daring grin.

She was beautiful too, in a tighter, hungrier way. Where Emma shone, Sophia smoldered. Muscular, tall, relaxed in how she leaned… but I knew better. She could spring the moment she saw fit. Her posture didn't hide her strength. It flaunted it.

Life again. Not loud like Emma. But not quiet, either.

A kind of life that didn't need to scream. Fangs did the talking.

And she had lines too.

My fingers froze on the paperclip.

Sophia wouldn't let me get close. She'd break my wrist if I tried. I'd have to move faster - much faster. And even then, jabbing the tip of the clip into one of those lines in time…

Not likely.

I glanced at her free hand, where her fingers played absently at the seam of her jeans.

My head throbbed.

More lines. Finer ones. Winding over her knuckles, across her palm. If she grabbed me—or punched me—

Yes.

That would be enough. Enough time to line up the paperclip. Enough of an opening to end something.

I blinked. Closed my eyes. Tried to breathe through the pressure building at the base of my skull.

"You two…" I said finally, voice low and flat. "Stop wasting my time. If you want something from me, say it."

They laughed. In unison. Like it was all just a game. Like I was the joke.

Emma gave me a look. Not cruel. Not mocking.

Warm.

Unbothered.

Affectionate, almost, like we were still friends. Like nothing had changed.

"Why would we want anything from a failure like you?"

The laughter came again. Louder now. Genuine amusement. They were having fun.

I let go of the paperclip.

Turned. Walked past the mess of my lunch without a second glance. I wouldn't clean it. Wouldn't even pretend to care.

And as I stepped out of the cafeteria—

"I wonder the same thing," I whispered. "Why?"

I kept my grades passable. Not worth praise. Not bad enough to get flagged. Just… steady. Enough to keep anyone from asking questions about focus or distractions or what it's like to stare at a page too long and get a migraine.

I could've done better. A-student, probably. If I'd tried.

But focusing meant paying attention. And paying attention meant noticing the things I wasn't supposed to.

Too many lines on the page. Not margins or underlines. Just… interruptions. Slashes through the letters, curving between words. Always in motion at the edge of my vision.

If I looked too hard, the world got loud. Not sound. Not really. Just something in the back of my eyes. Pressure. Like I was being watched from behind the paper.

I was used to it. Mostly. Like my mom used to say about her ears - there's a kind of ringing you stop hearing after a while. Doesn't mean it's gone. You just get tired of flinching.

The board was a mess of chalk dust and geometry. Mr. Hallward's voice droned somewhere to my left. Something about Pythagoras. I could still hear Emma behind me, whisper-laughing with her latest best friend. Paper balls occasionally tapped my hair. I ignored them.

She hated that more than yelling.

My thumb rolled the eraser under my desk. Just something to do. The rubber was smooth. The ridges weren't.

I didn't look at them. Not directly. Just felt.

I shifted. Let go. Picked up my paperclip instead.

Bent. Straightened. Bent.

Something pulsed behind my eye, brief and sharp. Just a warning. I closed my hand. Focused on the numbers on the board.

No tracing.

Only in my room. Only alone. That was the rule.

Anywhere else was… not okay.

Another paper ball hit my head. Snickers followed.

…I'd once asked Emma—back when it still felt safe to ask—why she suddenly became the poster girl for all American high school mean girls. A redhead Regina George.

She used to be cool. Stylish. A little too talkative, sure, but I appreciated that back then. I tried to meet her halfway, even if I wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer when it came to moods or social cues. I tried.

Now? She handed out insults like compliments. Threw in a 'good for you' like I'd survived something funny. One or two hollow smiles. Never any words to fill the silence.

Not like before. Not when it felt… easy between us.

Maybe I offended her somehow. I didn't know what I did - but I also never asked for forgiveness. Maybe that's what this was. A test. A signal. Some backwards way of asking if the friendship was still alive.

Because people didn't turn on their best friends out of nowhere.

…Did they?

Huh.

Did Emma know about the lines?

Had she ever noticed I was keeping something from her?

Was that why she was angry?

I never told her. It hadn't felt necessary. Like a weird trait or an uncomfortable kink - you didn't need to say it out loud. It didn't feel relevant.

At least, not to us.

…Did it?

Maybe it wasn't the secret. Maybe it was the fact I'd kept one.

But by now, I didn't even want to ask. All this drama felt artificial. Forced. Like a moral dilemma I was too dense to decode.

Maybe I was just messed up. Things really don't get more transparent than 'oh, I see lines I can touch - and if I'm feeling extra unwell, I can cut them.'

I'd run out of patience for subtlety.

And maybe that was the real flaw.

Maybe I should've tried harder. Pushed myself. Asked her, really asked her.

Bump.

Another paper ball.

I tapped my paperclip against the desk. Blinked.

Maybe she just wanted to play rough, and I was playing the game wrong.

I gave myself a little pat on the back. Put the paperclip in my pocket.
Got up. Stretched.

Mr. Hallward paused mid-sentence.

"Hebert? Something wrong?"

I didn't answer. Just stepped out from behind my desk and glanced at Emma.
She was laughing with her new friends. A great time was being had.

I grabbed my chair with one hand. Lifted it.

Hurled it straight at her.

The thing clanged off her desk and clattered across the floor. A girl screamed.

Pencils. Notebooks. Chaos.

"What the fuck, Taylor?!" Emma shrieked, hand to her chest, eyes wide with outrage. "You fucking psycho!"

"Hebert!" the teacher yelled, voice sharp and high. Said something else I didn't bother processing.

I just stared at Emma. At the girls beside her. At the students now staring at me like they'd never seen me before.

My lips curled at the corners. I imagined the shape of a smile. Ugly, toothy, involuntary.

I turned to Mr. Hallward.

"I want to go to the principal's office."

And as the teacher reeled back in silence, as the room stilled in confusion, as I stashed my hands into my pockets, I could only keep thinking one thing—

—Why?

Sophia slammed my locker shut. Nearly caught my fingers. Might've broken them.

I let a second pass. Rubbed my knuckles. Then turned.

She had that little smile again - tight, knowing. Arms crossed, weight on one leg. Up close, I could see just how carefully she presented herself. Clean. Sharp. Efficient. Not pretty like a model. More like a tool. Something honed for a job.

I respected that.

The same way you might respect a pedophile for admitting what he is. Or a suicide bomber for seeing it through. Honesty is honesty, even when it's disgusting.

Maybe that's what Emma had seen in her.
Maybe that's what I didn't have: the honesty.

She watched me in silence. Smiling. Just a twitch of her lip.

"What's the matter, Hebert? Weren't you grabbing something? Go ahead. I'll keep an eye out."

I said nothing. Reached for the lock.

Didn't even bother to shield it. Emma would get the combo again anyway - maybe from a teacher. Maybe from a janitor she smiled at too long.

Click.

Sophia's fist crashed into the door again. A shock of wind brushed my hoodie back, the clang rattling up my arm. I stared at the dent. Right in the steel. Right where my head could've been.

Dark green. And on its surface, dark lines spidering all over.

The paperclip was still in my pocket.

I didn't reach for it.

Not here. Not yet.

"Sophia," I said.

"Yeah?"

I slid my hands into my pockets. Didn't face her right away. Then I turned.

Smiled.

"Don't."

That wiped the smirk off her face for a second. Not all of it. Just the corners.

"That a threat, Hebert?"

"No," I said, calm, flat. "Just a heads-up."

She didn't respond. Not right away. Just stood there, staring. I stared back, straight into her eyes, unblinking.

After a long pause, she scoffed, pushed off the lockers, and walked away without another word.

I turned back to the dent she'd left behind. Looked at the metal, at the lines scrawled from the point of impact.

I lifted my hand and pressed my knuckles into the mark.

They fit. Almost perfectly.

I closed my eyes.

"Why, really…?"

I bit into my sandwich.

For a second, I felt the lines on the bread, the ham, the cheese - faint textures brushing against my teeth like silk threads snapping.

I swallowed and stared across the courtyard from my little patch of shade.

Students were talking, laughing, chasing each other, basking in the midday sun.
So many smiles. So many warm words. So much joy.

So many lines.

Life was fragile. That was the first truth. But it was also beautiful, absurd, euphoric, agonizing. A dream stitched together by a frantic god with trembling hands, desperate to preserve the illusion just a little longer.

The lines only made it clearer. But you didn't need to see them to know.

All those boys and girls, savoring their 'Blue Spring.' That's what they called it in Japan, right? The season of youth. The bloom of adolescence. The shimmer of life at its brightest.

I took another bite.

A school shooter could show up any second and paint the cherry blossoms a dark red.

Tragic, sure. But not shocking. Not anymore.

It was happening somewhere else, right now. Probably a few states over. Probably a few cities over. And the irony of it all? In a world where someone could turn your blood to crystal or reduce a forest to ash with a blink, some lunatic with a rifle wouldn't really make it to the news.

How… quaint. Like the teenager with a gun missed the memo that he'd need a costume and a codename to really matter.

We had lockdown drills. Escape routes. Safety handbooks. We had names for every flavor of catastrophe.

Somehow, murder with a manufactured tool sat lower on the scale than the kid who kissed you and made your heart explode. Or the girl who cut you in half with a thought.

The talking heads still argued the causes. Still debated the fixes.
Ban the guns. Treat the minds. Save the children.

Meanwhile, no one noticed the quiet little fact—

—Dead is dead.

Whether it's by bullet or power or accident. The method's just another flavor in the horror show.

It was the truth. And they all danced around it - pretended it wasn't there. God forbid anyone say it aloud.

Maybe if they had, things wouldn't have turned out so ugly.

Maybe the kids would've been forced to think—really think—about what happiness meant, who they were sharing it with. Maybe the adults would've stopped pretending there was a safety net. Accepted that the end was always right there, waiting. Guns or no guns.

If Death didn't take with a scythe, it took with plague. With famine. With sword. With beasts. Didn't the Bible say so?

Maybe then, the world would've gone a little quieter. Maybe they would've appreciated what they had before they lost it.

And maybe—just maybe—Emma wouldn't have been so fucking stupid as to rush the end of what we had.

It was always going to happen. But why speed it up?

I took four bites from my sandwich. Small ones. I chewed slowly.

The school shooters never scared me. Neither did the guns. Not really.

If anything about them unsettled me, it was this — at some level, I think I understood them.

The news, the experts, the parents, they always said it was anger. Bullying. Something broken. But that never felt like the whole story.

It wasn't just revenge. Not just rage. Not even the desperate bid for twisted justice.
Because let's be honest - nothing anyone could've done to them ever truly merited death.

Death was too easy.

I'd seen the footage. Teenagers—kids, just like me—armed to the teeth, cornering their classmates. No conscience. No hesitation. Holding the moment hostage.

Maybe that's what they were really after.

The silence.

That still, breathless hush after the screaming stops, when no one talks back. When no one dares laugh. When everything stands still. And the only thought left is: I made this. This is mine now.

My eyes drifted across the yard. I saw Emma, basking in the sun. Laughing with the other girls.

A line ran down her temple.

I didn't want to make her bleed.
I just wanted her to shut up.

…Then again, it'd have been too easy.

And what was Emma, in the end, but a stupid little girl?

What were years of friendship, whispered secrets, and hollow trust in the grand scheme of things?

On a planet billions of years old, in a universe older still—

Less than nothing. Dust pretending to matter.

It shouldn't have rattled me. Shouldn't have taken up so much space in my head.

Should've been like everything else. Disposable.

I bit down—

"Ow."

Not on the sandwich. On my finger.

I shook my hand, mild pain pulsing.

Blood welled up. A single drop. Fat. Heavy. It ran, followed a line along my skin.

Veered slightly.

Then surged forward again, carving a delicate path.

I watched it. Not horrified. Not even annoyed.

Just… interested.

The way it gathered, bloated, crept forward like it was alive.

I popped the finger into my mouth.

"Ewww, that's gross."

New voice. Not Emma's cold lilt. Not Sophia's dry sneer.

Something chirpy. Too bright. Too loud.

Too… alive.

I looked up.

Emma. Again.

No Sophia. No clique. Just her… and a new girl.

Painted lips. Painted nails. Painted everything.

Wearing what a fifteen-year-old might think looks elegant: midriff-baring T-shirt, denim shorts so tight they looked like they were punishing her hips. She struck a little pose beside Emma, one hand on her waist, glaring down at me like I was gum stuck to her shoe.

She was covered in lines, too.

And seeing them on someone trying that hard to be cute - it felt like holding a Barbie doll.

So fake. So fragile.

"It is gross," Emma echoed, her voice saccharine. "Oh, Taylor! Don't worry, it's not the blood. That's normal. It's just you."

They laughed together. High. Sharp. Grating.

I stood. Dusted off my pants. Looked at them.

"Emma," I said, not sparing a glance at the thing beside her. "I see you still have nothing better to do with your life."

She crossed her arms. Still queen of her own empty kingdom.

"And I see you still don't have one," she snapped back. "I make friends. This is Madison. Say hi to Taylor, Mads!"

"Hiii~" the other thing drawled, giving me a lazy wave.

"Taylor's fine," Emma added with a grin. "Smells like ass, but you get used to it. Or not. That's why I had to leave her."

More laughter. More performance.

I stopped sucking the blood from my finger. Slipped my hand into my pocket. Found the paperclip. Bent it. Straightened it. Bent it again.

I smiled.

"You should use some lip balm, Emma."

She tilted her head, smiling sweetly. "And why's that, T?"

I shrugged. "Your lips'll crack if you keep talking so much shit. Combine it with the constant ass-kissing, and we're looking at a chronic case. Might want to see a dermatologist. Or a therapist. Or a surgeon, if you want your face sewn back together next time it breaks."

Emma scoffed, smug as ever.

Madison blinked, covering her mouth with long-nailed fingers like she wasn't sure whether to gasp or giggle.

"Oh-em-gee. She's so… rugged," Madison said with a wince. "Was this really your friend, Ems? I don't see it."

Emma flicked her hair over one shoulder.

"Friend?" she laughed. "No. It wasn't like that. It was more like holding hands with your baby cousin - the dumb one. Making sure she didn't choke on her juice box."

More laughter.

I watched the lines shift across their faces and bodies as they moved, breathed, laughed.

I breathed.

Clenched my fist.

Tensed.

Then lunged.

My fist cut through the air, stopped an inch from Madison's face.

She froze.
Squeaked like a cornered mouse. Emma flinched.

Madison stared at my knuckles, wide-eyed and trembling, her shoulders shrinking inward like her body was trying to disappear.

I leaned in.

Close enough to smell her perfume, feel her breath stutter.

"What the fuck," I said, voice low, "are you laughing at?"

Then I flicked her forehead. Hard.

She jerked back, clutching her head like I'd hit her with a hammer, eyes watering.

"Owwwww…"

I straightened. Turned to Emma.

No smirk on her face now. Just a tight jaw, shallow breathing. Irritated. Caught off guard.

"You were my friend," I said. "At least, to me, you were. And that's the only reason I won't knock that pretty little jaw out of alignment. Not today. Not unless you make me."

I took a step closer.
Made sure she was looking at me. Trying not to look at the lines.

"You want to expand your social circle? Go ahead. Be my guest. But keep screwing around, and you'll learn something ugly. Something real. So be a good girl, Emma. Stay out of my way."

Then I spat in her face.

She recoiled with a sharp gasp, wiped it off with the back of her hand, and glared at me like she couldn't believe I'd done it.

I didn't look back.

Just kept fiddling with my paperclip.

Thinking about the lines.
Thinking about life.
And what comes after.

Why, Emma?

Third Period. World Issues.

The heater ticked like it was chewing gravel. Dust curled in the window corners. Overhead, a flickering light buzzed just enough to make my jaw clench every few seconds. Mr. Gladwell droned about geopolitical conflict like he was half-asleep - probably was. I pretended to take notes, though I already knew everything he was saying. The page beneath my pen was filled, two columns deep, with observation.

Madison sat behind me, chewing gum with her mouth open - like always. She whispered every few minutes to the girl beside her, too low for Gladwell to hear, just loud enough for me.

The seat next to mine was empty.

Emma used to sit there, before she moved to the front where everyone could see her, admire her, laugh at her clever little jabs. Now it was just an empty desk between me and the world.

I never let my bag stray far from it.

Sophia was diagonally behind me, two rows over. I always knew where she was, even when I didn't look.

The bullying had stopped.

For a while, they tested the waters. November started strong - one petty, day-ruining stunt after another. And then… nothing.

Emma still laughed from across the room, her voice pitched just high enough to carry. Madison tagged along, chirping like she wanted to sound clever—but I could practically hear her brain short-circuit every time the topic wasn't me. Sophia gave me those looks—body loose, casual, mouth twitching into either a grin or bared teeth. A predator, waiting for a signal.

But the hands-on mockery? The sabotage? That stopped.

No more missing notebooks. No more shoves in the hallway. No more ruined supplies or 'accidental' spills.

Just silence.

And for a moment, I enjoyed it. The stillness. The quiet ache of solitude without the sting of a slur or shove. Some faint, foolish part of me thought… maybe this was a trade. Maybe losing the only person I could talk to meant I'd finally get to be left alone.

Ridiculous.

They thought I was stupid.

There's no universe—no roll of the cosmic dice—where creatures like them just stop. I hadn't scared them off. I'd only bought time. And if there was one thing I knew, it was that neither my spineless father nor this corpse of a school would lift a finger when they came back.

So I stood my ground. I moved forward. I stayed alert.

Because every time I let myself relax—even for a second—I focused on the lines again. Thin. Dark. Fragile.

No one else saw them. But they were there. Like nerves beneath skin. Like fractures under paint.

Just like Emma.
Just like the rest of them.

Waiting.
Always waiting.

I toyed with the usual paperclip, scraping it against the desk.

It was slightly deformed from the constant attention - bent, straightened, bent again. Ad mortem.

They'd come back. Eventually. Somehow.

How?

What shape would it take this time? Were they biding their time? Wearing me down from a distance?

Was this lull its own kind of cruelty? A moment of stillness designed to break me in the end?

I closed my eyes.

If I knew anything, it was that anxiety played into their hands. I had to stay calm. Cool.

I would never give them more space in my head than absolutely necessary.

Just enough to survive them.
Just enough to recognize them for what they were – an annoyance.

They would never break me.

That part of me was already gone.

I bent the paperclip again. Twisted it. Massaged it into a jagged wire.

This time, I didn't straighten it. I slipped it into my pocket.

It would be enough. In an emergency.
A flick of the wrist. A moment's hesitation.
And I could cut their lines.

I squeezed the wire. My fingers trembled.

I could do it.
I would do it.

But still—

Am I allowed to?

The thought hung there.

Thin. Barely spoken. Not for anyone else.

A pause.

A breath…

Why pretend anymore?

December passed in a blur. So did winter recess.

Life continued. Classes happened, until they didn't. I skipped a few while we still had them. Called it maintenance. Recharge.

I could handle watching lines in my bedroom, or scanning the subtle fractures spiderwebbing across my father's shoulders.

But at school? Seeing the same ugly faces, miraculously stitched together day after day… it was an eyesore.

Even then, the faces started to fade.

Blurry edges. Forgotten names.

I tossed the old pictures of Emma I'd kept in my desk drawer - leftovers from a different life. They hadn't meant much when I first brought them home. With time, and repetition, and a string of disappointments too long to count, they became pointless.

Dead weight.

It was… nice, in a way.

Not happy. Not whole. But nice, like a plant might think life is nice.

Wake up. Sunlight through the blinds.

Push through a workout. Drink water. Shower. Sleep. Maybe a book, if the silence got too loud.

Nothing extravagant. I didn't go out. Didn't travel. Didn't feel the need to.

Going out meant change. Change meant stimulation. And if all I was going to see were the same sights, lined with the same cracks, then what was the point?

Better to stay where I could control the angles. My house won by default.

Going back to school felt spiritually painful. Not scary. Not even stressful. Painful.

Like stretching a scab until it tears open again. Or worse - like making a habit out of getting whipped across the back and feeling bored by it.

The ritual of repetition turned sharp things dull.

Not less painful. Just… expected.

I didn't even bring my schoolbag.

Just a thin, spiral-bound notebook I'd tucked inside the waistband of my jeans. A pencil in my back pocket.

No pretense. No armor. Just enough to take notes if I needed to fake it.

As I walked, I slipped my hands into my coat pockets. Cold air bit at the seams, found its way under the layers.

And there it was.

The wire.

Bent. Slightly twisted. A faint smear of oxidized grey against my fingers.

I'd forgotten it was there.

Or maybe not.

Maybe I left it there on purpose.

Maybe I knew—somewhere under the silence, the routines, the numb rituals— that this day would come.

I walked through the doors of Winslow.

The cold followed me in, caught in the seams of my clothes. I could've pulled my hoodie up - shielded my eyes, softened the glare of the lines that flickered at the edges of my vision. But I didn't.

I preferred a clear view. Just in case.

I turned down the hallway toward my locker.

My fingers brushed the wire in my pocket. Gripped it.

The metal had warmed against my palm, but I could still feel the sharp edge where I'd bent it too far.

Sophia leaned against the wall ahead. Phone in hand. Brows furrowed.

She looked bored. Like the world didn't deserve her attention.

I didn't glance her way.

I stopped in front of my locker.

The lines pulsed across the door, thin, dark, trembling.

I didn't open it.

Something dark smeared the tile below. Dried. Rust-colored.

More of it pooled under the door, tucked in the crevice like a secret someone tried to forget.

I felt my lips twitch.

Behind me, Sophia still tapped at her screen. Her thumb moved slow. Lazy.

A predator at half-mast.

I turned my head. Just a little.

Saw the line run from her temple to her collarbone - clean, straight, inviting.

I tightened my grip on the wire.

"Early bird catches the worm," I said quietly. "Don't you think so, Sophia?"

She didn't look up.

"Hmm? What?"

I blinked. Once. Twice.

"You're pathetic," I said. "And weak."

That got her.

Her head lifted. One eyebrow arched like she was bored at a math problem. Not impressed. Not yet.

"Don't project, Hebert," she muttered. "It's bad enough I'm freezing my ass off in this shithole. If you want your spine rearranged, book an appointment."

"I'm here."

My hand rolled the wire slowly in my pocket. Pressure. Release. Pressure again.

Sophia snorted. She gave me that grin - equal parts condescension and boredom.

The kind animals give when they think you've forgotten what their teeth look like.

"You don't want to do that," she said. "You wouldn't live."

I didn't blink.

"Don't project, Sophia."

We stood there, locked in silence. Eye to eye.

I had already counted how many hits I'd take. Two. Maybe three. She was fast, but not enough.
It would hurt.

But I'd win.

My fingers tightened around the wire in my pocket.

Then Sophia snorted. Smiled. That smug, lazy grin.

"Skedaddle, Hebert," she said, flicking her phone at me like it was a leash. "Go on with your sad little life. Don't ride my ass this early just 'cause you can't handle a dead raccoon."

I didn't move. Just stared at the smear on the tile below my locker.

Dark. Dried.

The kind of brown-red that used to be something alive.

"…A raccoon," I echoed.

"Or a goose. Or maybe a fucking chow, I don't know," she muttered, not even pretending to care. "You think I'm gonna poke at a dead animal just to remind you you're beneath dirt?"

I licked my lips. Cold air stung the inside of my mouth.

Stole a glance at the locker. Then back at her.

Liar.

The wire itched against my palm.

"So childish," I said softly. "This is meaningless."

Sophia grinned wider. A flash of white, feral and amused.

"For once," she said, "we agree."

I didn't answer.

I turned to my locker.

I didn’t really need to open it, but I wanted to see what kind of joke they thought was funny this time. Morbid curiosity to kick off the week, right?

I dialed in the combination with calm, deliberate clicks. The door creaked open.

The lines inside the locker pulsed, sick and sharp. Like veins under skin.
And within…

No raccoon. No animal.

Just a mound.
Wet. Shapeless.

Dark blood congealed with shredded paper, bile-stained pads, half-melted trash bags. Something viscous hung from the hook, like a tendon.

The stench hit me like a slap. Sharp and rotten and human.
My eyes watered.
My stomach twisted - knotted tight, then dropped.
Bile climbed fast, hot and bitter.

I swallowed it back. Stepped away.

Fingers curled tighter around the wire.

Footsteps behind me.

And in that nanosecond, I thought—

How uninspired.

I drew the wire. Whirled.

Her line flickered in my vision, clean and dark, just above her brow.

Just a second and I'd—

"Hah!"

Her hand cracked down on the back of my head. Hair twisted in her grip.

The wire slipped from my fingers. Clattered on the tile.

She yanked.

I stumbled forward, caught the lockers with both hands.

She shoved again. I hit the metal hard.

When I didn't go in on the first try, she smacked me again.
A sharp knee drove into the small of my back.

"What were you gonna do with that little thing?" she breathed, hot and close. She was grinning. I could hear it. "Whatever. Now get. In. There!"

Each word came with a blow. A shove. A snap of her knee.

I held on. Gagged once, swallowed twice.

The smell from the locker was unreal.
Clogged every breath. Soaked into my sinuses.
Rot and copper and something fleshy.

I reached back with one hand. Grabbed her wrist.

Tried to trace the line with my thumb. So close.

Another knee to my spine.
My grip slipped.

I stumbled again - closer. The smell thickened. My head swam.

"Stop fighting, you pitiful piece of sh—"

I slammed my elbow back into her ribs.

Crack.

She gasped - stumbled. Her hold loosened.

I twisted. Tried to fall with her, drag her down.

But the nausea crashed back like a wave.

I slapped a hand over my mouth. Stumbled.

Sophia snarled.

She punched the back of my skull.

Stars burst behind my eyes. I dropped forward.

Then, her final shove. All weight.

I crashed face-first into the locker, into the pile.

I kicked. Scratched.
Tried to find her line again, trace it with my nail.
Missed.

The filth squelched beneath me.

She pushed on the door. I stopped it with my foot.
She slammed it.

Pain knifed through my ankle. I gritted my teeth. Shifted. Blocked it with my knee.

She slammed again. One. Two—
Three.

It clicked shut.

Dark.

I heard her slap the metal.

A muttered curse. Steps fading.

I tried to breathe.

The air was thick. Warm and wet with decay.

I twisted. Curled my legs. Something soft and yielding slid beneath my heel.

I pressed my forehead against the door. Searched for the crack near the hinges.

Cold air whispered through. Thin. Almost nothing.

Still.

I smiled.

"…It sure is dark in here."

Time passed.

I couldn't say how much.

Didn't care, either.

For once in my life, I tried to look on the bright side of being stuffed in a locker full of rot.

No class today. No lectures, no stares. No forced small talk with people who didn't know whether to pity or ignore me. So in a twisted, backhanded way, this wasn't the worst alternative.

Still. If this was the 'positive,' I probably should've stayed home.

I kept my forehead pressed to the cold steel. Tried not to shift. Tried not to disturb the grotesque gift my lovely classmates left for me.

Something oozed under my leg when I shifted wrong.

I didn't shift again.

There was a tiny gap in the door. Cold air slid in - thin, metallic. Enough to keep me from passing out. I breathed through it. Centered myself. Counted.

One breath. Another.

Every now and then, I'd accidentally inhale too deep. The stench punched through my nose like a fist - wet rot, old blood, bile.

And yet… I was getting used to it.

Footsteps. Voices. Laughter.

I lifted one hand.
Knocked. Once. Twice.
Hard.

"Hey," I said, loud enough for the echo to carry. "Get me out of here. Bring help. I'm dying. Or something."

Silence.
Seconds passed. Maybe minutes.

Still nothing.

"So much for the whole 'social animal' thing…" I muttered.

That had been my third time asking. Third time's the charm, right?

I didn't bother again. Just leaned back. Sank into it.

Tried to think of something clean. Cats. Puppies.

Anything not covered in blood and filth.

Didn't work.

I smiled anyway.

Sophia had won. Pathetic, cruel, small-minded… but she'd listened to her instincts better than I listened to mine. She hadn't hesitated. Hadn't overthought it.

She waited. She struck.

If she wasn't a killer, then she was something adjacent.

She'd tasted violence before. You could see it in the way she moved, in how relaxed she was about it. This wasn't stress. This was dominance. A small, theatrical display of power. A petty horror show.

And yet… It was all so boring.

Was this really what they came up with?

Did they think I'd cry? Scream?

Beg?

There were more creative ways to break someone.

Take my lunch.
Call me my mother's name.
Ask me to divide by zero in front of the class.

That would've been worse.

The thought came with another whiff of decay. I gagged… then laughed, sharp and sudden.

"God," I breathed, between shudders and amusement. "This was supposed to hurt. That's so cute."

I imagined Emma in here instead.

Would she scream? Thrash?
Tear her throat raw screaming for rescue?

I didn't know.

But if this was their idea of fear…

Then they'd never truly felt it.

I should've seen it coming, though.

They'd ended their adorable little terror campaign not out of mercy, but strategy.

To get me to relax. To lower my guard. All so they could deliver their chef-d'œuvre in adolescent cruelty.

In a roundabout way, it worked.

I remembered December. A girl I didn't know sat next to me at lunch. Too much smiling. Too easy with the laughs. Told me she liked my hair, like it wasn't just hanging limp and frayed at the ends.

I asked her if Emma helped her rehearse her lines.

She didn't come back the next day.

In hindsight, that wasn't the mistake. It wasn't that I missed the signs - it was that I wasn't paranoid enough.

A lion's no match for a pack of hyenas, if they jump him just right.

This wasn't much different.

Their only real mistake was leaving me alive.

And even then, their work lacked finesse. It had all the subtlety of a second-rate horror flick.

Just blood. Just gore. Just the kind of viscous, foul mix meant to jab at some ancient instinct—
This is diseased. This is wrong. Get away.

Cheap. Primitive.

Predictable.

I let my forehead rest against the door again. Cool air trickled through the gap. Thin. Metallic. Just enough to keep my head clear.

I breathed in. Counted the seconds.

Considered my options.

No one was coming. I'd banged the door. Called for help. Even humored them with a plea.

Nothing.

I wasn't asking again. So they'd forget I was here.

Honestly, I could've napped, if not for the fermented trash I was nestled in. Rotten fluids. Slime. Something wet beneath my thigh that shifted when I moved.

It made staying here any longer… less than ideal.

So... what now?

There wasn't much I could do in a locker. Not much except one thing.

I opened my eyes.

The lines were there.

Crawling across every surface. Veins of light in the dark. Here, in this claustrophobic little box, they glowed faint red. Pulsing like embers under skin.

I watched them shift across metal and rot. They were beautiful, in a way.

Always had been. Truthful, too, in a way nothing else was.

I closed my eyes again.

"No."

Three years.

For three years I'd seen the lines. Everywhere. All the time.

And in three years, I had never traced them in front of another person. Not at school. Not outside.

Only when I was alone.

Only in my room.
Only on small things - erasers, scraps of paper. Insects, sometimes.
And it was always me. Me and my hands. Me and my conscience.
No one else.

That was the rule.

No exceptions.

Three years of control. Three years of silence. Three years of pretending.

All of it unraveling because of three stupid girls playing horror movie.

"…No."

I wouldn't break for them.
Not for this.

To be honest, the bullying wasn't even the problem.

It was noise. A distraction. An irritation that reminded me to keep a lid on it.

Maybe I needed that pressure. Maybe the universe was warning me.

'Don't get comfortable. Don't let the lines become a toy.'

Maybe this—this locker, this filth—was a cautionary tale. A reminder.

I'd accepted it. The burden. The boundaries.
Just because I could see the lines—touch them, cut them—didn't mean I got to escape my life through them.

Emma would still be Emma, cut or uncut.
Sophia, the same animal.
The world wouldn't shift just because I did.

And yet… under that same logic…

Did it even matter if I held back?

They'd try to crush me either way.

I opened my eyes.

The lines glowed softly in the dark. I stared at them.

"No…"

I had been ready to cut Sophia.

Mapped the lines across her body. Every path. Every end.

It would've been swift. Clean. Final. Not revenge - just reflex. She wanted to hurt me, so I'd stop her. That simple. A natural reaction. No drama. No guilt. Just a mess to leave behind.

I failed because I hesitated. That's all.

But this?

This wasn't reflex.

This was a choice.

One I never thought I'd make.
One I didn't even need to make.

But again…

Did it matter?

Did anything I chose still matter?

I slid my fingers into my pocket. Fumbled. Empty.
Then I remembered - I dropped the wire. Outside.

I bit my lip.

Back home, it was easy. Controlled. Ritualized.

Tracing the lines kept me sane. Cut once, the world quieted. Like popping your ears after pressure builds up.

Every time I followed a line to its end, I remembered how to breathe again.

But this wasn't that.
Not a habit. Not an urge.

A decision.

Was it the wrong one?

No.
There was no wrong anymore.
Just... different flavors of moving forward.

I had chosen restraint.
Chosen to pass. To blend in. To keep living - even when I didn't deserve to.

I turned my pockets inside out. Nothing.

I let my forehead tap against the locker door. The smell hit me again. Sour. Wet. Decay thick in the air.

Didn't matter.

I'd endured worse.

But that was always mistake, accident, consequence.
Tragedy.
Sin.

This?

This would be on purpose.

Three years of silence. Three years of holding the line.
Three years of punishing myself for things I couldn't fix.

Surely… surely one cut was fine.
One cut.
Then I'd walk out.
Go home.
Sleep on it.

I knocked my head against the metal again.

"No," I muttered. "That's not how it works."

Because if I cut now... then what?
Pretend I could walk away unchanged? Pretend I hadn't chosen this?
Pretend that sin by ignorance and sin by action don't weigh the same?

Could I really accept that maybe… none of it meant anything?

"…Ah."

Something clicked in my lungs. In my skull.
A gap opened where the pressure had been.

Yes.

It really was all for nothing.

And I'd been too stupid to see it.

Three years of this.
Three years seeing the truth in every line, every crack, every person.
Three years spent pretending it mattered. That restraint meant something.

It didn't.

All that posture, all that silence - useless.
The worst kind of performance: the one nobody saw.
If I didn't cut, I'd stay the awkward, pitiful girl everyone wished they could ignore.
If I did? I'd be a monster.

…I was a monster.

I'd just dressed like a sheep. Played at being human.
And what did it get me?

A locker. A metal coffin.
A burial, minus the eulogy.

I clenched my jaw. Felt the pressure settle behind my teeth.

Then—
A memory.

My back pocket.

I slipped my hand in. Felt the filth clinging to the fabric. Warm. Wet.
Fingers closed around plastic.
I pulled it free.

A pencil.
Cheap. Blunt. Just sharp enough.

I looked at the lines again.
Really looked.
They pulsed, deeper now, crimson threaded with black. Like veins under a bruised sky.

Should I cut it?

I gripped the pencil. Tension flared in my wrist.

Will they see me if I do it?

This wouldn't be like the paperclip. That had been play. A ritual.

Will I… still be me?

This was a blade.

I inhaled. Didn't smell rot anymore. Or blood. Or bile.

Just the cold clarity behind my eyes.
Just the stillness that comes before a decision.

"If I'm going to die again…"

My hand stilled. The pencil lifted.

"…Then I get to choose how this ends."

I drove it forward.

Slow. Careful. Methodical.

Aimed at the line running down the center of the door.

Then stopped.

Too messy.

If someone found a steel door split in half, they'd ask questions.
They'd look too closely.
They'd see more than they were meant to.

Not yet.

I scanned again. Tracked new paths.

There - along the hinges.

Yes.

Quiet. Efficient. Clean.

I steadied the pencil. Drove it forward - into the line.

It sank without resistance. No friction. No sound. Just steel parting around truth. And me, reaching for it.

My breath hitched. My lips twitched into something too sharp to be called a smile.

I plunged deeper, right to the knuckle. That was the limit, bone too wide for the path I carved.

Then, slowly, I dragged the pencil downward.

One clean motion. No hesitation.

The door groaned. A metallic clang echoed down the hall.

A crack opened. Cold air rushed in.

I shifted lower. Found the next hinge line.
Pressed in. Drew it down.

Somewhere in the distance, someone laughed.
Not at me. Just at the day.

The final joint gave out.

The door crashed down onto the tiles, loud and final.

I stepped through. Out.
Into the light.

Unbound.

Alive.

My knees buckled slightly. I caught myself on them.
They were trembling. So was I.

I looked down.

Filth smeared across my legs. The ruined locker at my back. The corridor ahead, washed in gray.

My pulse thundered in my ears.

And there—at my feet—my wire.
I bent. Picked it up. Ran my fingers along its curve. It hummed against my skin.

I slipped the pencil back into my pocket.
Let out a breath that shuddered on the way out.

"Next time," I said, low, steady, "I won't hesitate."

I pocketed the wire. Straightened up. Looked around.

Eyes were on me.
Half-confused. Half-horrified.

They didn't look so ugly with the lines now.

They looked… easy.

I turned. Walked.

There were things I needed.
A shower, first. Then… a knife.

Why? I wasn't sure.

Couldn't explain it. Couldn't even find the words.

Maybe that was always the problem.

I smiled.

"Why not?"

Chapter Text

1/The Girl Who Didn't Die
Inverse Impulse

There are a couple ways a person handles a crisis.

First one's the classic: hit the floor, sob, scream like the world owes you something. Pathetic. Human, sure, but about as useful as a solar panel at midnight.

Second: anger. The yelling kind. Fists to the sky, howling for justice like the heavens give a damn. Stupid, but it's got muscle. Still would end with tears.

Me? I'd figured out the third option. The best one.

You don't flinch. You don't scream.
You don't feel.

Not fake stoic, not that 'I'm a grown-up' self-help garbage. No. I mean real stillness. Dead air between the ears. Heartbeat like a metronome. Just another problem. Just another line to cut.

Turns out, once you ditch the emotional noise, everything becomes annoying. And annoyances? Those were easy. You squashed them, solved them, wiped them down like smudges on glass.

Still. Cutting my locker open?
That was gonna be an annoyance down the line.

But right now, I had a more immediate issue: I smelled like dead raccoon and cheap horror marinated in sewer water. The gas station clerk didn't ask questions when I bought half a shelf of wet wipes. Credit to him. He looked at me, winced, and rang it up. Not like my dad would.

Unfortunately, the lights were on when I got home. A voice spilled out from inside - loud, raw, panicked.

He was on the phone.
Probably the school.

Perfect.

The downside of having a dad who worked union was that his schedule was uncomfortably flexible. Sometimes he was around. Sometimes he wasn't. Sometimes he vanished for two days and came back like nothing happened, smile on his face and ready to be everyone's best friend.

It meant I never really knew if I had the house to myself… or if I'd have to pretend I wasn't just slightly annoyed by the sound of his voice in my airspace.

I didn't hate him. He wasn't a bad person. Just… loud. Familiar. Present.

And I had a low tolerance for presence.

With Emma, I could choose to go to school or not. With my dad, there was no choice. We lived in the same cage. And the more I saw of him, the more the lines got in the way. They were always there, etched into his frame. Whispering. Suggesting. Tempting.

It made it harder to see him the way I used to.

Then again… how did I use to see him?

I didn't go to the front door. I circled to the side of the house and crept up to the window. Pressed my ear to the glass. Listened.

"—You mean to tell me nobody saw my daughter walk out? No teacher, no monitor - not even a student?! Jesus Christ!"

Silence.

Bam.
Something hit the floor. Hard.

Classic Dad.

"If I'm paying taxes to send her to school, the bare minimum I expect is that someone notices when she disappears! She's fifteen! Fif-teen! I don't think that's too much to ask!"

Pacing now. Fast, heavy. The kind that filled a house with footsteps and frustration.

Another crash. A groan. Maybe a kicked chair.

Then, lower: a rasped growl into the receiver.

"…Be straight with me. A teenager doesn't just walk out the front door. What happened to my daughter? What are you not telling me?"

I pressed my ear closer to the glass. The lines shimmered faintly across the windowpane, slithering under my skin like veins mapping my cheek. Inside the house, something shifted - a groan, maybe two. The soft, repetitive thud of anxious pacing. His foot, probably.

A gust of wind hit my face. The smell clinging to me thinned slightly, less putrid with the cold rushing in. But the wet, sticky filth drying on my pants pulled at my skin like glue and rot.

I didn't mind.

"Now you're just running in circles," Dad said, voice too calm, the kind of calm that comes right before a scream. "You don't want to tell me. I - No. No, don't pretend you give a rat's ass about her. This is just damage control, isn't it? How long was she gone?"

A beat of silence. Then the floor creaked. Another slow, heavy step.

"An hour," he repeated. "So that means two. Maybe more."

A breath. A pause. The warning in it rang louder than a shout.

"I swear, if I find her with so much as a hair out of place, a lawsuit'll be the least of your problems. I will… no, let me finish. Let me fucking finish."

Another pause.

"A 'little problem'? A girl doesn't vanish out of a school for a 'little problem.' It's either some twisted joke or something horrific. And my Taylor—"

A crack in his voice. A whisper of something not said.

"My Taylor would never do something like this. Not without a damn good reason."

A laugh crawled up my throat.

I swallowed it.

I appreciated Dad's vote of confidence - really, I did. And I genuinely didn't want to ruin his generous image of me.

Not for my sake. For his. He needed someone to believe in.

If only he knew people didn't always need a reason to do terrible things. I was just catching up to the common denominator.

His footsteps grew louder, heavier. A storm was brewing, and I wasn't in the mood to get drenched in it.

I peeled myself from the window and walked to the front door. Slipped inside.

He didn't notice. Still growling into the phone. Still pacing from one end of the living room to the other, dragging the phone cord like it was a leash on his own panic. We didn't have cellphones—he hated the idea of them—so he looked a little ridiculous stretching the landline to its limit, back and forth, back and forth.

His brown hair stuck up in places. His neatly pressed checkered shirt had gone rumpled, probably from the way he'd claw at his side when he was anxious. He did that when I was little, too - grasped at the fabric like he was trying to hold himself together.

"Calm down? Calm down? Oh, for a man whose daughter just went puff, I'd say I'm goddamn zen," he snapped, with a brittle little laugh that had too much edge to be real. "I'm going to call the police. Then I'll search for her myself. And if I don't find her, I swear I'm coming down to Winslow to grab you by the scruff of the neck so we can go door to door, together—"

"Dad."

He stopped mid-step. Spun around.

The breath caught in his throat—an audible gasp—as if I were a ghost. He gripped the receiver so tight the veins on his hand bulged, the lines tracing across his skin in strange, symmetrical shapes. His eyes widened behind the lenses of his glasses.

I just stood there. Hands in pockets. Watching.

He opened his mouth. Nothing came out. Then, half-dazed, he raised the phone to his ear again.

"Never mind. She's here," he muttered. "This isn't over."

He hung up. Exhaled like he'd been holding his breath for years. Shoulders dropped. His head dipped forward… and then he moved.

Came toward me like gravity pulled him.

He opened his arms.

No pause. No question. Just that raw, automatic instinct - protect the child.

I raised a hand.

He froze, confused.

"I smell like shit," I said flatly. "So maybe don't—"

He stepped forward anyway and wrapped me in his arms.

"I don't care, Taylor. Just let me... just let me do this. I was so worried."

I tensed, instinctively trying to angle my head away, to bury my nose in his shoulder and find a patch of hair, anything to block out the minty punch of his deodorant. Not that I hated it. Just… I'd had enough of overwhelming scents for one day.

And it wasn't really about getting him dirty.

It was the lines. Always.

From a distance, they were tolerable, part of the background, like static on an old TV. But up close, seeing them etched across his skin, wrapped around his ribs like thread pulled too tight, like he'd come apart if I tugged just once—

It made something twist inside me. Curl, knot, crawl.

You'd think after three years I'd be used to it. After all, I preferred seeing them on him than on strangers. At least home had familiar lines.

But even now, seeing my dad—the only person I still had—stitched up like some fragile plush toy with seams ready to split...

I couldn't look at him. Not directly.

So I tilted my head back. Focused on the ceiling. Followed the red threads crawling across the plaster instead.

He kept me in the hug for a solid minute.

Then he started.

"Taylor, what—"

"I'm fine," I cut in.

He went still. His arms tightened reflexively before slowly, reluctantly, he eased back just enough to get a look at me.

I didn't meet his eyes. Focused on a spot on the wall past his shoulder. Beige. Cracked paint. A flake hanging loose.

"What happened?" he asked, voice low but firm, his hands squeezing my shoulders.

"I'm fine," I said again, flatter this time.

His fingers pressed tighter. Not enough to hurt, just enough to hold on. I still didn't look at him.

"Yes, Taylor. I can see you're safe and sound," he said, calm but stretched thin. "But I'm not. The school called. Told me there was an incident - something serious. They wouldn't say what. And then you just… disappeared. Like you vanished into thin air. Do you know what that does to a person? To a parent?"

I licked my lips. Let my gaze drift sideways.

Nice plant in the vase nearby. Healthy, green. Still covered in lines.

"…Which part?" I murmured. "The part where I left? Or the part where no one stopped me?"

His grip loosened, almost instinctively. But his shoulders went taut. I saw it, felt it - his heart speeding up behind his ribs, breath shortening, pressure building under the surface like a boiler on the verge.

He held it. Ground it down.

"I was scared," he said. Just that. "Now I'm scared and confused. I want to understand what happened."

A pause. His brow furrowed.

"Where are your glasses?"

I blinked. Reached into my hoodie pocket. Pulled them out and slid them on.

"They were dirty," I explained.

A lie, of course. With them on, the lines were sharper. Too close. Too loud. I could ignore them—mostly—but lately they'd begun to annoy me like an itch you can't scratch.

"I'll tell you," I said finally, voice steady. "But only if we talk about it like adults."

He drew in a long breath. I could see it in his face, the words he wanted to say: You're not an adult.

And he'd be right.

But he just nodded.

"…I'm listening."

I nodded. Licked my lips. Took a second to weigh my words - something blunt enough to clue him in, but dull enough not to make things worse than they already were.

"Someone shoved me into my locker," I said. "They locked it. Left something inside to rot. That's what happened. I got out. I'm here. I need a shower."

Silence.

He didn't yell. Didn't swear. Didn't say a damn thing.
That was worse.

I couldn't read him anymore. But his jaw clenched hard enough to make the veins rise along his neck. He breathed in through his nose. Slow, steady, forced.

"…Something dead," he echoed. "You're filthy. What was it, Taylor?"

"Organic matter. I didn't check. Just… a lot of it," I said. My hands stayed in my pockets. My shoulders didn't twitch.

His grip on my arms tightened. Just slightly.

"Why would anyone…" He trailed off. Searched for something sane to hold onto. Failed. "What the hell is this? What could possibly lead to this? You didn't - no, there's no way you had anything to do with this. You're not - this isn't some prank, Taylor. This is… this is something else."

I nodded again. Blinking didn't help the pressure building behind my eyes, so I just exhaled.

Smiled.

"The word you're looking for is bullying," I said. His fingers jerked, but I kept going before he could settle on it. "But that makes it sound like I sat there and let it happen. Like it worked. It didn't. So they escalated. And that didn't work either. So really, I'd call it a waste of time."

"This isn't just a waste of time, Taylor, Jesus," he cut in. "This is criminal. This is - fuck. How long has this been happening?"

"Since high school started."

That stopped him. I heard him deflate. His arms dropped to his sides.

"…And were you ever going to tell me?"

I shrugged. Tilted my head. Met his eyes squarely.

"No."

Dad didn't say anything to that. He just shut his eyes, crossed his arms, and threw his head back with a long breath through his nose. I just watched him. Waited.

He was a skinny guy, all in all. Still had the look of someone who'd been the poster nerd growing up - too lanky for sports, too intense for jokes. But the tousled hair, the uneven brown beard that never quite settled into his jawline, the rough, cracked texture of his hands… all of it suggested a man who spent his days trying very hard not to look like a thug. Not a fighter. But he had the temperament. The anger. The kind of man who kept a wolf chained in his ribs and smiled like it wasn't there.

But he pushed it down. Swallowed it like a bitter pill that never got easier. The rage filtered through little tells - his jaw tightening, his heel tapping, his eyes fluttering open just a second too fast.

He was the one who taught me how to hide my cards. If you get angry, you lose. That's what he used to say.

It was ironic coming from him—so easy to rattle, so quick to boil—but once I'd peeled away the hypocrisy, I realized it was probably the best advice a parent could give.

The world doesn't care why you snap. Only that you do.

He was sloppy in applying it. Still led around by the nose of his conscience. Still ruled by that raw, pounding instinct to make things right.

Me? I'd perfected it. Even now, I wasn't sure if he realized I was doing the exact same thing he was. Hiding the crackle. Smoothing the wires.

I hoped he didn't notice.

I had enough issues as is.

Dad took a second to settle down. Arms crossed. Eyes still shut.

"You can't just not tell me when something like this happens, Taylor."

"Sure I can."

"You shouldn't," he snapped, quick to rebut. "When I say this is criminal, I'm not exaggerating. I could - I should sue. This is insane. Locking someone in a locker? Organic matter? What is this, a TV show?"

"Not really," I said, shrugging. "Just people with too much free time and not enough therapy. My biggest concern right now is whether I can salvage these jeans, or just burn them."

"Taylor, I swear—" He stopped. Bit it back. Breathed through his nose. "Who was it?"

I tilted my head. Stared at a crack on the wall.

"I didn't see who shoved me in."

He made a vague, frustrated gesture with his hand.

"Okay. But come on, you must have an idea. If this has been going on for a while, then you've clocked someone. Anyone. We need names. If we're going after the school, I need leverage. I need to know who to call, who to confront—"

Something twisted in my gut. Cold and oily.

Righteous fury always had a bad aftertaste. I felt a smirk trying to break through. Flattened it with effort.

"I didn't see who pushed me," I said. "But I know who thought of it."

He exhaled like I'd given him a winning lottery ticket. Opened his arms.

"Great. Write them down. We'll—"

"No."

His arms dropped. Confusion set in behind his glasses.

"Taylor?"

"I'm not naming names."

"…They destroyed your locker. They put you inside it and you're just going to let it go?"

"No," I said, voice even. "I'm not giving them the satisfaction of watching me beg for help just so they can get away again, this time with plausible deniability and a fresh coat of school PR."

His jaw clenched. Arms crossed again. Tight. Like he was holding himself together.

"I'm not going to stand here and watch them play sick games with you, Taylor. I understand this is a lot, but don't let pride—"

"Pride?" I cut in, sharper than I meant.

He stopped.

I licked my lips. Tongue over my teeth. Fingers flexing in my pockets.

"Don't insult me like that," I said. "Don't call this 'pride.' I did tell the teachers. I have tried going through the channels. Nobody did a thing. You think this'll be any different now that they've finally gone too far?"

He looked like he wanted to argue. I didn't give him the chance.

"I thought we were going to talk about this like adults. And as far as I know, adults don't throw tantrums over injustice. They take the hit. They move on. So let's do that. Be adults. You and me."

Silence settled. Just his breathing and my thoughts. I wasn't sure which was louder. Or more annoying.

"…This is wrong," he said, finally.

"Yes, dad. It's wrong."

Another pause. Another sigh.

"I'm not going to accept this."

"Yes, dad. I know."

He started tapping - his foot on the floor, his finger on his arm. Some little rhythm to wrestle control over the fire in his head.

"Won't you let me help you?" he asked, quieter this time. "We could think of something. Try something. I can't just let this happen. Not to you."

I sighed through my nose. Shook my head.

"I don't need help," I said. "I need a shower. And jeans that don't smell like death."

He started to inhale, probably gearing up to push again. I raised a hand before he could.

"You want to help? Okay. I want to skip school for a week. I'll catch up. If you want to raise hell with the school, fine. Just leave me out of it. Say I'm traumatized and can't speak if you have to. Doesn't matter. I've got a feeling they'll call you anyway to ask who's paying for the locker I broke."

He stared. Took a few seconds to chew on it.

"…How did you get out?" he asked.

"I just did," I said. "Doesn't matter how. I'm here now."

The hot water splashed down my head, over my skin, between my toes. For a second, it felt like I was standing beneath a downpour of liquid fire, burning away winter, boiling the cold right out of my bones. It hurt in the way a good massage hurts - pressure on a knot that finally gives.

And like that, I unraveled.
Just a little.

The tension. The irritation. The exhaustion. All buried for a moment… drowned under the water.

I liked hot showers. They helped me focus. Gave me something besides the lines to fixate on. White noise to fight the white noise. And if I could've stayed there all day, every day, I probably would've.

But today… even the water couldn't drown everything out.

My fingers curled into fists. Then relaxed. Curled again. I tried to grasp a paperclip or a pencil that wasn't there. I felt it anyway. Imagined the texture, the weight, the press of it between my fingers.

"Hmph."

I drove the invisible tool forward.

My fingertip pressed into the white tile. Right into a jagged, dark line. It gave just a little. Enough.

It felt good.

Yesterday, I wouldn't have touched a line in the bathroom or in the living room. Definitely not in the kitchen. Cutting them had been off-limits; part of a rulebook I wrote just to keep myself stable.

But that version of me was gone.
And her rules were gone with her.

I pulled my hand back. Raked wet hair from my face. Let the water hit again.

Dad didn't press much after I explained I didn't need saving from one lousy locker prank. Not really. He'd reacted with that inevitable instinct parents have - to turn their kids' problems into their own. To make tragedies out of second-rate comedies. Or worse, to try and fix something beyond fixing.

Luckily, he was too tired. Too sad. And—just enough—understanding.

I'd met that understanding with honesty. Over the years, I'd learned a simple truth: no matter what I did, he'd never be truly happy with how I turned out. So I stopped trying to explain myself. I didn't feel guilty. Didn't need to.

He was my dad. I loved him. We took care of each other in our own way.

That was enough.

Simple. Efficient. Uncomplicated.

Sad, maybe. But things didn't have to be happy to work.

Unfortunately, things weren't going quite as smoothly as I'd hoped.

Sure, I was ninety-nine percent certain Emma was still fuming because I hadn't cried for mercy, and Sophia was probably nursing a cracked rib - but none of that mattered.

The environment itself was the problem. School. Home.

Students. Family.

Everything was noise.

I didn't mind fixing things.
But I couldn't fix every goddamn thing.

Water got in my mouth. I spat.

It got in my eyes. I didn't blink. And for half a second, I thought I saw lines shimmering in the spray.

I rubbed my face. Exhaled.

Brilliant. Not even hot water worked anymore.

I needed to adapt. Find new coping mechanisms. New ways to handle average, everyday, soul-scraping stupidity.

And more than anything… I needed a better way to vent.

I crossed my arms and let the water burn the cold off me, rinse the grime away.

Rocked on my heels. Almost slipped. Caught myself on the wall.

The thoughts started to line up.

Right. Step one of problem-solving: identify the problem.

People usually wrote it down. I hated writing. Too many lines in the way.
So… say it aloud.

"I… am angry," I tried.

Nothing. No release. No weight lifted.

I licked my lips. Tried again.

"I'm sad."

Still nothing. The water ran down my face like tears.
Didn't feel like mine.

I tapped my arm. Sighed.

"I'm… hmmm."

Rocked again.

Snapped my fingers. "Oh. I'm disappointed."

Something flickered in my chest. Close, but not quite.

Not disappointed. Not exactly.

I looked at the wall. At the way the lines fractured across the tile.

And then it hit me.

"…I'm bored," I said.

And that one landed. That one rang true.

"I'm so bored I could just kill someone right now."

A moment came and went.

A laugh clawed its way up my throat.

I let it out.

It didn't sound real. Dry and hollow, like static through a broken speaker. Still - it was a laugh. That counted for something. I didn't like mine. Never had. Too sharp, too brittle. I could count on one hand how many times I'd laughed in the past three years, and most of those didn't even feel like me.

But things were changing.

Maybe it was time I started accepting more things about myself. Even the ugly ones.

I shut off the water. Stepped out. Grabbed a towel and scrubbed myself dry. Clean now. In one piece. Unbroken.

Sophia would have to do better next time. She'd have to kill me if she really wanted to make it stick.

I stood in front of the mirror.

Raked a hand through my hair. Black, too long, too tangled, always trying to fall in front of my face. I liked it that way. It distracted from everything else.

And, if I was being honest? I was pretty. Not in the vain, edited model kind of way. But in that genetic-lottery, thanks-mom kind of way. I had her bone structure. Her cheekbones. Her mouth. Classic beauty, if you liked girls who looked like they'd bite instead of kiss.

Unfortunately, I also had Dad's temper, carved into my expression; eyes that narrowed instead of sparkled, lips that curled into a sneer faster than a smile.

A pretty face built for scowling.

But the eyes? The eyes were all mine.

Blue. Not the soft, dreamy kind. No. Something sharper. Something wrong. Electric, almost radioactive. Under the right light, they shimmered like broken glass.

Dad said they used to be green. Like hers.

Then the accident happened.

Then the lines started.

Wasn't hard math.

Something shifted inside me that day. Something essential broke loose and never clicked back into place. Or maybe that's just me trying too hard to poeticize tragedy. Give meaning to the mess.

I stood there a moment longer. Watching myself.

Then I flipped the bathroom light off.

My reflection stayed. Just a vague silhouette now… except for the eyes.

They glowed. A cold, brilliant blue in the dark.

…Yeah. Probably not a coincidence.

I flicked the lights back on.

Toweled off my hair in the half-assed way I'd grown used to - no dryer, no styling. The curls would riot the second they hit cold air. I liked it that way. Messy was honest.

It also helped with the scar.

Just a faint line above the carotid, easy to miss unless the light hit it just right. One of the seven, but the only one that ever showed when I wasn't half-naked. I liked that my hair covered it. That I didn't have to explain it. That nobody asked.

The others stayed hidden. Tucked beneath sleeves and fabric and silence.

Little ghost stamps of a long night.

I didn't mind them.

But I didn't like seeing them, either.

I marched to my room. Put on my glasses once I was inside.

The lines snapped into focus, black, jagged, twisting. More precise with the lenses, crisper. Almost artistic. But here, at least, they didn't bother me as much. Maybe because they were mine. Or maybe because I didn't need to pretend I didn't notice how broken the world looked through the glass.

My room, too, was what I liked to call a 'strategic mess'.

Clothes—clean and dirty—were scattered across the floor in familiar constellations. A half-eaten chocolate bar had been banished to the corner like a forgotten sin. Notebooks were sprawled in semi-graves across the furniture, their pages filled with bored class notes or sharp, meticulous sketches of bones, tendons, eyes.

I hated mess. Filth. Disarray.

But a clean room was worse. Clean rooms made the lines pop. A perfectly made bed or a tidy desk became a map of fractures and weaknesses.

Too visible. Too loud.

It gave me headaches.

The universe had a sense of humor like that. I stopped laughing a long time ago.

I opened my closet and pulled out clothes that allowed movement - light, flexible, forgettable. I slipped into black track pants and a marine-blue hoodie, the kind I could fade into the background with. Then I pulled on an old pair of sneakers. Dusty. Stiff. But they fit like memory.

I stood still.

Focused on the clean scent of deodorant and cheap floral perfume. On the subtle give of the floorboards under my feet. On the restless twitch in my hand, aching to wrap around something thin. Sharp. Cold.

"Knives," I muttered. "I need knives."

And off I went.

Kitchen drawers. Dad's old toolbox. Any place that might hide a forgotten edge. It only took half an hour. A bit of quiet raiding, nothing too invasive. I came back with a stash of blades - kitchen knives, steak knives, broken utility blades. All gleaming. All waiting.

I laid them on my bed like a surgeon preparing for something more than surgery.

Then I retrieved my other 'stash'.

Erasers. Cheap, generic blocks I used to pretend were for stress. Now they had a different purpose.

Targets. Test dummies. Sacrifices.

The paperclip had worked. The pencil, better.
If my nails were longer, maybe they'd do in a pinch. But I bit on them like a rat trapped in a maze and old habits were faster than new intentions.

Time to graduate. Toys were for coping. I needed tools for cutting.

I picked up a serrated table knife. The kind we used on meat when we could afford meat. It was old, clean, the plastic handle pale and chipped. The tip had snapped off years ago, but the edge still caught light like it wanted to matter.

I placed a fresh eraser in front of me. Found a diagonal line running across the surface. Drove the knife in.

It sliced clean. Too clean. The line split like butter. The serration left no marks. No resistance. Just a quiet snap and a flawless, gleaming seam.

Perfect. Wrong.

"Not good."

It was lightweight, thin. Easy to hide. But the grip was wrong, and the draw awkward. The edge would snag on my clothes.

Too easy to lose. Too easy to stab the wrong thing or cut a line by accident.

I laid it down.

Picked up a heavier kitchen knife - broad, clean, dangerous.

My reflection blinked at me in the blade.

It was bigger. Sturdier. Solid handle. Mirror-polished steel. Looked like it could take a finger off in one go.

I tested it.

Another eraser. Another line. Another cut. Smooth, surgical. Nothing of the kitchen knife remained in the result.

I flexed my wrist, rotated it, felt the weight of the blade.

Too heavy. Too honest. Too... loud.

I set it down beside the first.

"Terrible," I said.

It was a perfect knife… if I were casting for a slasher flick.

But I wasn't here to scare people.

I was here to get precise. To solve. To cut.

My hand hovered over the lineup of blades like I was picking out jewelry.

After a few seconds of quiet judgment, I went for the butter knife. Probably grabbed it in a rush - half an afterthought, half a joke. It was small, barely longer than my palm, with a thin, rounded blade that couldn't cut butter if the butter put up a fight.

Still, I pressed it into another eraser. The result was the same as before. Clean, silent, immaculate. A perfect split, like the material had been waiting for permission to break.

I turned the knife over in my hand. Slipped it into my pocket. Felt the weight, or lack of it. Took it out again. Turned it once more, then laid it down gently with the others.

"Who would've known," I muttered. "Size does matter."

It had all the perks; light, subtle, easy to carry. But let's be honest. If anyone saw me lopping off pieces of rock or metal with a butter knife, it'd raise more than a few eyebrows. It wasn't just impractical. It was suspicious. Walking around with one of these was less 'normal girl' and more 'high-functioning lunatic'. It practically screamed I have powers, and questionable taste in cutlery.

And beyond that? Too easy to lose. Too easy to break. Not worth it.

I moved on.

Picked up a box cutter. Pushed the blade out with my thumb. Heard the familiar snick as the metal clicked into place. Heavier than the butter knife. More honest about what it was meant to do.

I liked it. Compact. Efficient. Foldable. No frills. Perfect for someone who wanted to cut and keep cutting without making a statement. It had that satisfying weight that made my wrist feel balanced.

But…

A teenage girl walking around with a box cutter? That wasn't subtle - that was suspicious on arrival. No teacher would let that slide. No cop would walk past it. Even if I could justify it, I'd still have to carry that attention around with me, and I had enough eyes on me already.

I clicked the blade back in. Set it down beside the butter knife.

And then I stared at the rest.

Table knives. Steak knives. A fruit peeler. Even Dad's rusty old pocketknife with the bent corkscrew and dull blade. I tested them one by one, each with its own brand of disappointment. Either too long, too clunky, too flashy, or too breakable. Tools meant for kitchens, not for what I had in mind.

They were the best you could find in a house like ours.

But not good enough.

I needed something better. Something that made sense. Something compact but reliable. Heavy enough to mean business, light enough to move fast. Something I could carry without looking like I was about to rob a convenience store or dissect a frog.

Something that fit me.

I crossed my arms. Licked my lips. And then it hit me, clean across the face, like a slap.

What did girls my age even carry?

"…Shit," I muttered. "Girls don't go around with knives."

That was going to be a problem.

Back when Emma and I were still friends, I'd learned that girls interested in appearances always had some kind of survival kit on them: lip balm, compact mirror, tweezers, nail clippers. Just in case. It was all surface maintenance.

I sure as hell wasn't interested in surface maintenance. But I still needed something. Something functional. Something that wouldn't raise eyebrows.

What was uniquely Taylor, anyway?

"Taylor…" I said under my breath. "What is a Taylor?"

No neat answer came. But a few adjectives filtered to the surface like oil in water:
Efficient. Adaptable. Unwilling to put up with bullshit. Very willing to put down bullshit.

I tapped my fingers against my bicep. Stared into the lines until my eyes felt raw, as if they might blink the answer into existence.

Then the metaphorical lightbulb went off.

I jumped to my feet and jogged out of my room, heading for the basement. Dad's old toolbox was still there, heavy with rust and regrets. I cracked it open and rummaged until I saw it - old, half-dusty, half-shining. A dark red handle. A little white cross on a red shield.

A Swiss knife.

I picked it up. Felt it in my hand. The shape was perfect. The weight, balanced. Easy to carry. Easy to justify. Full of useful things - tiny tools for tiny problems. But best of all…

…Sharp, if needed.

I found the thumb stud, pressed it, and a blade popped out. Still sharp, despite the years. Not long. Not flashy.

Just right.

Back in my room, I tested it on an eraser. Clean cut. No resistance. Every slice sent a little jolt up my arm like the edge was slicing through more than rubber.

Then, just because I could, I split the table knife in half. Then the kitchen knife. Both snapped apart like props. I left the butter knife alone - something about it made me feel bad. Like kicking a kitten. The box cutter I stashed away for emergencies.

I pushed the blade back into its compartment and held the Swiss knife in my hand.

Finally. My blade.

Now… all I needed were more things to cut.

And lucky me, Brockton Bay had no shortage of things that needed slicing

Chapter Text

1/The Girl Who Didn't Die
A Study in Cutting

Night crept in slow. A slit-moon flickered behind bruised clouds, as if hiding something. The kind of sky that promised rain but never followed through - at least not yet. The forecast said midnight, maybe later. Said it like a fact. Like guessing was the same as knowing. Like it mattered.

The morning chill had vanished. Heat clung to the pavement now, thick and wrong, pressing onto my ribs and making my skin crawl. A breeze swept by, light and irregular, just enough to raise goosebumps. I sank deeper into my hoodie, folding in on myself. One hand in my pocket. Fingers playing with the Swiss knife.

Click. Twist. Fold. Unfold.

Across the street, shop windows lit up one by one. Neon buzzed to life. Cars hissed past in streaks of white and red. Streetlights blinked on together like they'd rehearsed it. And just beneath the glow, beneath the ordinary… there they were.

Lines.

Hair-thin, ink-black, spiderwebbed through everything. People. Asphalt. Air.

The world came apart if you knew where to look.

I didn't blink.

Didn't need to.

…I'd never left Brockton Bay.

Not for vacations. Not for a move. Not even a school trip, unless I counted the aquarium tour in third grade, and I didn't. If I'd ever been anywhere else, I couldn't remember it. Maybe that was the accident's fault. Maybe not. Dad said we used to go places. I had no reason to think he was lying, but memories don't grow back just because someone says they existed. He didn't talk about it and I didn't ask.

Point was… this city was all I had.

I didn't know the countryside. Didn't know other cities. Hadn't seen New York or Austin or Chicago except in headlines or cheap textbook photos, and those were always the same: skylines under pastel sunsets, people crossing streets like they had somewhere important to be. Maybe they did. I wouldn't know.

But if I had to guess, I figured those places were just different coats of paint on the same rot. More steel. More lights. Bigger bills. Same gutters. Same cracks. All manicured and shot from angles that made you forget they smelled like piss and debt up close.

I couldn't picture myself anywhere else.

Not because I was happy here. I just knew the rules. Knew the cracks. Knew where the rot and violence split apart from the skyscrapers and heroics.

I liked that.

It was easier, seeing where to cut, in a place like this.

Brockton Bay used to mean something. Trade, shipping, cranes moving in smooth rhythm while money changed hands. That all rotted out when the work dried up, and what was left behind was everything nobody wanted: rusting metal, broken families, angry people with no prospects.

Some clawed by. Some packed up and vanished. The rest?

They festered. Got mean, desperate. Ugly.

The Docks were the result. A skeleton of a district, bones of warehouses and factories poking out of the skyline like crooked teeth. Rats, junkies, gangbangers - everyone circling the same dead waters, biting at scraps, biting at each other. Even the rats probably wanted to leave.

The Docks were also perfect… for trouble. For people who wanted to disappear. For things that needed doing in a place where nobody asked questions. A place where no one noticed a body sagging in an alley, where blood mixed too easily with puddle water….

…Nah.

I stayed away.

I wasn't going there. Not yet.

Too soon. Too raw. Too reckless. I didn't even know what I wanted to do with these lines, and I wasn't cocky enough to think seeing them somehow made me special. Little Taylor plays with knives and thinks she's hot stuff… until someone sharper comes along, cuts her down.

Like Sophia.

She literally stood no chance but it wasn't her inside my locker, was she?

A few well-placed words, some attitude, and voilà. The perfect sneak attack.

I wasn't making that mistake again.

A smart girl knew when to test the water and when to stay dry. The Docks, as I was, were suicide. Poke the wrong person out there, you get carved up for parts, or worse, sold by the pound.

Maybe the Nazis would think my nose crooked enough to string me up with piano wire over it. Maybe a Merchant would lace my drink with drywall and call it a good time.

Not worth it.

Tonight wasn't about making a point. Wasn't about justice. Tonight was about learning. About seeing how things fell apart. Me, a blade, and a city full of lines.

That was enough.

And this part of downtown was a good testing ground. It kept its mask on.

South-east quadrant. Just far enough from the Docks, close enough to light. The skinheads here still pretended they had jobs. The buildings had names and glass facades instead of graffiti tags and boarded-up teeth. No gunfire, no screaming. Just the dull hum of late commerce and overworked lives trying to forget the waterline was rising.

I liked it. Just enough crowd to blend into. Just enough quiet to cut through.

My hand played with the Swiss knife in my pocket. Thumb circling the stud. Then a click. Steel kissed the air beneath the sodium lamps.

"…Let's do this."

The blade flashed, small and neat, perfectly sharp. I licked my lips. Searched.

There - a bench, wood warped, paint flaking. A man slept on it, layered in every kind of blanket except warm. His breath wheezed beneath the noise.

I passed close. Not too close. Fingers brushed the air, traced black fractures only I could see. Hairline cracks along the wood, corners, bolts, seams waiting to surrender. I sliced through two as I walked by.

Crack. The upper corners of the backrest snapped off clean. Wood clattered beside the man's head. He stirred, grunted, rolled deeper into his cocoon of cloth and regret.

Good.

Next.

A loose cable dangled just ahead, buzzing faintly, frayed copper swinging like a trap for the careless. I wrapped my hand in my sleeve, pinched the knife tight.

One quick motion. Blade through a thin black line.
Snip.

The wire hit the grass like it was never dangerous. The buzzing stopped. The silence felt clean.

There was something like approval in my chest. Not pride, just… confirmation.

I moved on.

Hydrant. Lamppost. Trash bin. Another bench - empty this time, clean target if I wanted it.

Then I heard it besides me.

Music. Low and syrupy, coming through solid brick. A thrum of base, then breath. Flesh. Moans. The wet rhythm of skin against skin. Voices leaking out between grunts and groans. Someone laughed, gasped, cursed. I caught half a name and a promise no fifteen-year-old was meant to hear.

I pressed my palm to the wall. Closed my eyes. Heard everything. Then opened them again - just enough to catch the lines.

This one was messier. Spiderwebs dancing across brick like the aftermath of old violence, zigzagging over an oddly skilled recreation of Banksy's 'Girl with a Balloon'.

I chose a line running diagonal between said girl and her balloon. Drove the blade in.

Dragged.

Didn't wait.

CRACK.

Behind me, stone hit the street. A scream, halfway through a moan, cracked open the silence. A woman shrieked. Someone shouted "What the fuck?" and I was already three storefronts away, smiling into my hoodie.

I didn't laugh. But I could've.

Cut. Move. Cut. Move.

Fast. Decisive. A second of tension, the lash of my wrist, and it was done. I didn't even need to put strength into it. Sink the blade, drag it through the line, waste not one breath or second too long.

That was the method. No flourish. No idling. No hesitation. Nothing anyone could follow. Nothing they could prove.

Just the result.

Then I heard them.

Footsteps. Boots on pavement. Laughter with too much teeth. Voices that slurred their vowels into violence.

I pocketed my knife. Pushed the blade back in its place. Lifted my head, searching.

Across the street - a pack.

Men. A few women. All white, all dressed in bad leather and worse ideas. Black jackets with stylized skulls, patches like failed history exams, and enough steel studs to set off an airport scanner. A swastika or two. Lightning bolts. The usual self-parody.

One of them nudged another, nodded at a woman walking past, whistled. Another said, "She don't look pure," and got elbowed for it. The girl just kept walking, fast.

I stayed still. Hood up. Blade gone. Just another shadow.

They passed me. One of them glanced my way… saw nothing. Just a girl. A lump of fabric and quiet.

"Yo, they got good pizza down on 18th," one said.

"Only if you ignore the Arab making it."

"Still better than the black guy who made yours, Trent!"

Laughter. Stupid, sharp, bitter.

I didn't care. Not really. Not about the talk. Not about the swastikas. I'd seen the same kind of trash but with makeup back at Winslow. Same cruelty. Different brand.

They were animals hiding behind rules they made up. Pushing pain into the world because they didn't know how else to feel real.

I let them walk.

My power wasn't good with moving targets. Not yet. And I wasn't ready to test it on a group that might pull a knife or a gun or worse.

They could play Hitlerjugend for now.

I had other targets. Cleaner ones. Lines to trace. Things to break. Problems to fix.

Brockton Bay was a strategic mess. Like my room. If my room had crime families, trigger-happy capes, and a waterfront made of rust. It was like any other city. Patches of good, stretches of bad, nothing so extreme it made you dizzy.

But the 'good' was usually just bad with a better smile and PR. And the bad? Ethnic turf wars, designer drugs cut with acid, and people who could flash-freeze you for stepping on the wrong corner.

Still… I could lose myself in it.

Carve a trail. Leave little breadcrumbs of entropy behind me. Nobody looked twice.

And what I did wasn't even that bad - just cuts in the right places. A pole here. A cable there. Marginal inconveniences. Passive chaos. You could call it community service. Pro bono, deranged public works.

"…Yeah, right."

Yeah, no. That was a lie I hadn't earned.

I liked cutting things.

That was it. No manifesto. No deeper truth.

Only Taylor and her knife.

I spaced out my hits - every two streets, turn on the third. No straight line, no pattern. Just a drifting algorithm of minor destruction. So far, so good. No capes knocking. No police scanners pinging. Only the steady hum of a city ignoring itself.

Noise made good cover.

I got bolder.

I passed a lamppost that hadn't worked in weeks. Probably months. Simply standing there, sucking tax dollars and blocking sky.

Click.

I traced a line down the pole, jagged, vulnerable. Walked faster.

Behind me, a long, slow whine. Then metal gave out. The crash hit like a car wreck - glass exploded on pavement, a rain of bright shards. Someone shouted "Fock!" like it hurt their dignity.

Maybe city hall would actually fix it now. Probably not.

I turned the corner. Hid the knife.

Music rolled over the sidewalk. Bass-heavy, all swagger and thump. A new car idled at the curb, slick and smug, vibrating from the volume. At the wheel: pasty white kid, maybe eighteen. Gold chains. Gold rings. Gold watch. Flashing grins and a bottle tucked by the console like it belonged there.

I stopped. Watched. Tilted my head.

"…Hmm."

Crossed the street.

Two steps. One breath. Blade flicked open. I knelt like I dropped something and traced the rubber's line.

Snap-pop. One tire. Then the next.

Rubber peeled off like skin.

The car didn't move. The music didn't stop. He kept laughing - maybe at the lyrics. Maybe at nothing.

Didn't matter.

He wasn't going anywhere.

As I moved deeper into downtown, the lights swelled brighter - blue, gold, red. They shimmered off glass towers and pooled across windshields. Voices grew louder too, scattered arguments, drunken laughter, a child's sharp squeal like glass underfoot. The buildings looked newer here, polished, taller… glimmering as if beauty were a symptom of wealth.

I kept cutting.

Nothing big. Loose threads on coats, the plastic straps on electric scooters, a flyer stapled to a pole. A corner here, a wire sheath there. Just enough. The trick wasn't in slicing, but in vanishing before anyone looked twice. Sleight of hand. Ghostwork. A training run.

"You see that guy?" someone muttered behind me. "Weird little twitch in his hand…"

But I was already gone, absorbed by the current of bodies. Moving. Watching.

Still, this wasn't what I came for. Little cuts didn't make a difference. Not really.

No matter.

I'd waited three years. I could give myself a few more nights to get it right.

Every few blocks, I stopped.

Not to rest. I wasn't running.

Just… dizzy.

A lightness in the back of my skull. No nausea, no pain - just something off, like my bones didn't quite belong inside my skin. I pressed a palm to the nearest brick wall. Warm. Slick from the night's heat.

I breathed in deep. City air and hot concrete, pretzel carts and car exhaust.

Above me, Lady Photon grinned from a massive billboard, hawking a beauty serum designed for 'powered skin types'. Next to her, a looping PRT ad showcased the latest nonlethal ordinance in gleaming digital overlays. A handful of people actually stopped to watch.

Miss Militia stood frozen in patriotic salute, eyes bright beneath a digital flag.

Funny.

I'd heard her speak once. Accent just off enough to notice. Not American. But she wore the flag, so no one questioned it.

And then… there they were.

The lines, again.

Stretched like fractures across buildings, roads, people. Across me. They pulsed under neon and shadow, endless, shifting, inevitable.

In hindsight, I hadn't noticed them before.

Hadn't really looked. Not like this.

Not since… Emma.

We came here once. Twice, maybe. She'd dragged me out, talking about stores and shoes and cute boys with ugly haircuts. I'd pretended to care. Forced myself to look where she looked.

Not at the lines.

Never at the lines.

Too much noise.
Too much light.
Too many lines.

I let my head hang. The pressure behind my eyes throbbed, sharp and quiet.

"Hah…"

I exhaled through my teeth. It felt like something was waking up. Or waiting.

I pressed two fingers into my temples. A feeble effort, as if trying to massage a scream into a whisper. It didn't help. Not really. But closing my eyes narrowed the noise down to a single point, let me breathe through it. Focus elsewhere.

Until I felt breath too close to mine.

Eyes half-lidded, I saw a hand reaching toward me.

"H-Hey. You okay, lady?"

I slapped it away. Quick, instinctive.

"Fuck off."

He stopped, then huffed, more annoyed than hurt. "...Sheesh. Suit yourself."

Didn't answer. Didn't look. Just stayed curled up against the bricks, kneading at my brow like I could press the pressure out through bone.

It had been a while since the last headache. A real headache. Usually it only came after I stared at a line for too long, ten minutes, maybe twenty if I paced it. But this time I hadn't been watching one. I'd been cutting. Moving. Skimming through fractures.

I coughed. Swallowed the taste of iron. Peeled myself off the wall. Blinked into the buzz of the street.

The guy from before was a few feet away, coat cheap and stained with something brown at the elbow.

Someone brushed past him - no, more like clung to him. A different man. Greasy hair. Sunken eyes. Leather jacket two sizes too small, stitched over with flames and a forgotten logo. I barely caught the motion: a flick of the wrist, a twitch of the shoulder.

Then the wallet vanished into his jacket.

My breath stilled.

My eyes lowered. I turned away… but not before I memorized the pickpocket's gait, the rise of his spine, the angle of the stolen thing bulging against his side.

I waited five seconds. Six. Then let myself move, quiet as breath, shadows tugging at my hoodie.

Fingertips found the Swiss knife in my pocket. I rolled it between them. Cool. Familiar, already. The stud brushed against my thumb.

Click. The blade slid out partway, hidden in fabric.

Thump.

The sound was inside me. Not out. A pulse beneath my ear. A breath caught in muscle.

It was a good opportunity. No cameras. No attention. No cops.
Just a test. Just one. See how it felt.
I hadn't really tried it before. Not like this.

Fixing. Removing what was unnecessary…

…Cutting someone.

Thieves didn't need hands.

Thump.

I tracked his wrist. The lines wavered like threads in heat. Four of them. Maybe five. Jagged shapes shifting across the skin in vague patterns.

Thump.

One flick of my wrist. One simple trace. The line would break.

Thump.

The noise of the world dulled again. Engines dropped to a hum. Voices became wet cotton.

There was just me.
The knife.
The hand.
And the geometry of truth painted in ink-black ridges.

THUMP.

My heart beat against my jaw. Against my teeth. A rhythm now. Building. Warm. Hungry.

I pressed a finger to my throat. Carotid. It pulsed hot beneath the skin.

Wrong.
Too fast. Too loud.

THUMP.

I stepped closer. The knife slid free in my palm. My shoulder shifted, arm tightening like a spring.

One flick. One. I wouldn't even be here when he turned. Just a cut. The first.

What did skin feel like, when it gave way?
Rubber? Paper?
Wood? Brick?
Or just another black line, sliced clean through by something sharper than truth?

My hand tightened.

Then—

THU-MP.

White heat burst behind my eyes.

"S-S-Shit."

I reeled. Fumbled the knife back into my pocket.

My knees nearly gave, shoulder dragging me toward the nearest wall.

Pain screamed behind my eyes, drilling into my skull like a chisel.

My breath shook. Something warm ran down my lip. I tasted copper.

Fingers touched my mouth. Then rose.

Blood.

Bright and wet on my fingertips.

My vision wavered. Just for a second.

Then the headache hit. Hard. Another spike of white behind my eyes. I staggered sideways and caught myself on the wall again, fingers scraping along brick and paint, breath shallow and high in my throat. Just breathe. Just steady. Just oxygen.

I moved like I was drunk, one step at a time, head pounding in sync with my pulse. A dim storefront window reflected me as I passed.

Hood drawn. Pale. Eyes - too blue, too bright. A red smear below my nose.

I paused and rubbed the back of my hand under it. Real blood. Thin and dark. I stared at the stain. Licked it. Just iron. Flesh. Warm.

Not trauma. Not a punch. Something else.

…Too much strain? From the lines?

I touched my temple with two fingers and winced. The pressure was still there, but it had stopped clawing. I could breathe again. Think.

This had never happened before.

Was this what happened when I looked too close for too long…?

…No more cutting tonight. I'd gone too far already. I needed to stop. At least until I gathered more information. Until I learned how many lines were too many lines.

I leaned back against the wall, waited until the spinning stopped, then pushed off and started walking. I barely made it three steps before—

Sirens. Shouting. Lights blooming red and blue across the rooftops.

I turned. Police cruisers screeched to a halt at the far end of the street, cutting off an intersection. Officers jumped out, barking orders.

"Move back! Everyone off the street!"

"What's going on?!"

"There's a pursuit - get inside!"

A loud crash. Metal against metal. People scattered. Cops waved us back with outstretched arms and sidearms drawn.

And then—

A blur, low and sleek, tore around the corner. A car. Engine howling, tires squealing, doors open and arms jutting out, guns spitting muzzle flashes in bursts.

A man on a machine—chrome and hum and blue highlights—raced after it, spear raised, dodging bullets with timed stops and turns.

On the other side, a girl flew golden hair whipping behind her. She carried half a car door like some improvised shield, deflecting the gunfire like it was rain.

Glory Girl. Armsmaster.

Capes. Heroes.

One from the skies, one from the street. Coincidence or a silent call, I couldn't tell. But they moved like they'd done this before.

I blinked. Took it in. Robbers, maybe. Firearms. High-speed escape. The heroes had flanked them, were funneling them straight toward the blockade.

Police were already dragging a spike strip across the road. One cop tripped in the process.

"…Huh."

That was all I managed. That level of control, of communication… unfair, in a way. They had networks. Tools. Backup.

All I had were lines.

Just… cuts.

I looked down at the street beneath my feet. At the fractures I always saw now, winding along the pavement in a geometry only I understood.

And then… maybe not jealousy. Just curiosity.

If all I had were cuts… maybe I could still change things.

Maybe I could do more.

A woman near me shouted, "Is that kid hurt?!"

"Hey, don't go out there!" a cop barked, reaching out. I stepped just past his fingers.

One breath. Two.

I moved to the center of the street. Just a girl in a hoodie, swaying slightly on her feet.

I knelt. Tugged at my shoelaces like they were undone.

Slipped a hand inside my pocket and took the knife out, blade already drawn.

I raised my head just enough to catch the glare of headlights slicing through the dark. The car was barreling toward me at full speed, gunfire cracking from the windows. Someone inside was panicking, that much was obvious. They weren't slowing down.

I heard footsteps. Distant shouts. A couple of cops yelling, rushing toward me.

Too late.

What business was it of theirs if I wanted to stay exactly where I was?

My fingers tightened around the knife. I brought it down, the blade striking a line etched into the pavement only I could see.

The light devoured my vision. The roar of the engine drowned everything else out.

Glory Girl flashed into view. Her silhouette against the sky, a glimmering streak of gold and white. She dropped her car door somewhere behind her—just flung it aside—and rocketed toward me, shouting something I couldn't make out. Hair whipping behind her like a banner, arms outstretched.

I moved. Just enough. A hop sideways, quick and clumsy.

The knife dragged through the line.

I sheathed it in one motion.

BAM.

A blast of pain tore through my foot. I didn't scream. Just grit my teeth hard enough to bite through steel. My leg folded and I hit the street, eyes wide.

And I watched the line collapse.

The road sagged like it had lost its bones. The car's front dipped in - and then it went airborne.

It spun. Hung midair for half a breath. Slammed down with a crunch of metal and rubber, tires ripping off like paper. It skidded sideways, sparks flying, and came to a screaming halt just short of the police barricade.

I stayed where I fell. Didn't touch my ankle, though I wanted to. Needed to. Fire pulsed through it. I forced a few tears. Let my eyes water as the pain made my throat close.

Hands found me. Gentle ones, surprising for their size and strength. Someone helped me sit up.

I hissed, but kept the sound low. My body shook, but I made it seem like fear, not injury.

Glory Girl.

One arm braced me upright. The other hovered awkwardly in front of me, fingers twitching with hesitation. She looked like she was trying not to touch a porcelain doll.

"You okay?" she asked, voice sharp but steady. Two fingers went up in front of my face. "How many? Can you tell me your name? Birthday? Pain anywhere?"

I nodded. Swallowed hard. Let my voice crack, just a little.

"Two... fingers. Charlie. Thirteen. October thirty-first. And, uh… d-does being scared shitless count as pain?"

She huffed out a breath. A half-laugh. Relief, maybe.

"Doesn't count. But it means you're still breathing."

She squeezed my shoulder. I finally looked at her fully.

Platinum hair gleaming like silk. Eyes shining with a blue fire. A white outfit that walked the line between princess and general - skirt, shining boots, and a tiara that looked far too real.

Glory Girl. Larger than life.

A real hero.

Holding me.

And then—

The world tilted.

There were lines on her, too. But not just on her skin.

They shimmered above her body, slightly out of sync. A second set, phasing just a breath beyond her flesh. Different angles, different geometry. Like she wasn't just a person.

She was a symbol.

A… thing.

What is this…?

I blinked. And the lines remained.

Glory Girl's shadow passed over me before her hand did - gentle, strong, handling a girl that was made of paper. I tried to get up on my own. My ankle screamed.

"Can you stand?" she asked, stepping back just enough to let me pretend.

"Y-Yeah," I muttered, adding a tremble for effect, as if terror had knocked me off my feet and not a speeding car.

She didn't buy it, not entirely. Her eyes flicked over me and something in her jaw tightened.

"…Do I want to ask why you ran out after the police cleared the street?"

I gave her a crooked, dazed little smile. Tilted my head like I'd only just noticed the flashing lights and blue uniforms behind her.

"P-Police?" I echoed, blinking dumbly at the sirens. My gaze drifted to the toppled car down the road. "Oh. I didn't… I was just…"

That seemed to do it. She sighed, ran a hand through her hair. Big sister mode activated.

"Girl, I'm not gonna lecture you, but damn. Sleep. Veggies. Therapy. You look like a haunted scarecrow. And look both ways next time, alright?"

I nodded, slack-jawed and sheepish. "Yes ma'am."

She gave me a thump on the back. Friendly. Nearly knocked my lungs out.

"I'm not a ma'am. I'm like four years older than you, tops. Now get outta here."

She floated toward the wreck, pausing mid-air to glance back, at the street, the hole in the pavement I'd carved. Her brows creased, just a little.

I exhaled slowly as two cops approached, soft-voiced but firm, herding me from the street. I tugged my hoodie higher, let them see a harmless girl with bad luck and worse timing.

But as they guided me, I caught the glint of blue metal.

Armsmaster.

Still on his ridiculous bike, visor glowing faint with HUD data. Staring at the ruined asphalt like it owed him money.

"…Already on scene. Engaged. Civilian interference noted," I heard him say.

Then his head turned. Right to me.

I looked away.

Let them protect this poor, stupid girl.

My limp was harder to fake now. The pain in my ankle flared sharp every step. So when the cops turned, distracted by the medics, I slipped away - ducked into the crowd like some wraith in a hoodie.

I walked—limped, really—until the lights were distant noise. Until the adrenaline faded and the throbbing came back twice as loud.

Collapsed against a brick wall in some nameless alley. Pressed both hands to my face.

Not from the headache.

From sheer, unfiltered idiocy.

"Why the fuck did I do that?"

No answer. Just the taste of asphalt in my mouth and the feeling of blood in my shoe.

It hadn't been a plan. No strategy. Just instinct. Pressure. Maybe some twisted sense of justice. Or spite.

The silence offered no answers. Just lines. Just a breath.

I smiled into my palms. Let out a sigh that sounded like a laugh.

Of course.

"…Why not," I whispered. This time, not asking. "I liked it."

Chapter Text

1/The Girl Who Didn't Die
Hypnos

"…In recognition of their swift action Monday night, Mayor Christner praised Armsmaster and Glory Girl for their coordinated response to an attempted robbery. He cited their cooperation with law enforcement, low civilian risk, and minimal property damage. Notably, Glory Girl, often criticized for reckless tactics against gang activity, was commended for showing 'measured restraint'…"

Dad snorted into his tea, reclining deeper into the couch. "Armed robbery. Huh. I feel a bit old - I thought modern villains came with talking snakes or laser eyes. Feels like someone forgot to catch up with the times."

I shifted the ice pack on my ankle. It stung a little. The swelling was worse than I thought.

"You're imaginative, Dad," I murmured, adjusting the cushion under my leg. After a beat, I added, "I prefer the guns."

He glanced sideways, one brow raised, uncertain if I was joking. I wasn't.

"Oh?" he said, light, but testing the waters. "Why's that?"

I moved the ice again, this time to the side where the heat was starting to pulse.

"Guns are old. Predictable," I said. "We've had time to figure them out. Protocols, ballistics, angles of failure. A guy with a sunbeam stare? That's problematic."

He tilted his mug slightly, watching the steam curl.

"…Touché."

The TV droned on, voice bright and urgent beneath a veneer of neutrality.

"…Mayor Christner also praised the heroes' quick adaptation to the situation, noting the suspects were apprehended within five minutes. He cited the incident as a success for independent hero groups, arguing they can respond to threats more efficiently than the PRT, which often struggles under bureaucratic constraints. Critics, however, claim that the city's lenience toward unsupervised teams like New Wave is just another sign of administrative impotence - especially given the rising influence of criminal groups such as Empire Eighty-Eight and the ABB…"

Dad waved his mug vaguely at the screen, frowning.

"Can't say I disagree with that part," he muttered. "I've seen more of those ABB kids around the boardwalk lately. Loud, always itching to start something. I just wish the city would stop milking the crime stats for campaign ads and start actually training more capes."

I shifted the ice pack against my ankle. The cold bit deep. A sharp, nerve-pinging jolt shot up my calf and into my hip. I let it crest—then vanish—then settle.

"They don't care," I murmured, eyes still on the flickering screen. "The Protectorate doesn't care about order. Just appearances. Leash first, tame second, release last. Criminals are just the ones they haven't collared yet."

Dad went still. He didn't argue. Just sipped his tea, watching me over the rim. That same worried glance he gave me whenever I said something that skated too close to therapy talk.

"That's a bleak way of looking at it," he said eventually. "You sure about that? I mean, yeah, some of those guys in spandex are walking disasters, but…"

I sighed, eyes half-lidded. The TV droned on. I didn't listen.

"The government had nukes, Dad," I said. "They'll always be the bigger threat, no matter who they're pointing at. The Protectorate's just their PR stunt. A kennel for the twenty-first century's nukes. The kind that breathe, bleed, and have these things called 'feelings'."

He didn't answer right away. I took it as a chance to drive my point in.

"Imagine a gun that cries after someone pulls its trigger."

I felt him shift on the couch. Felt his stare as I changed the ice to the other side again.

"It is problematic," he conceded with a resigned tone to his voice, not even bothering to argue.

The reporter's voice cut through the quiet.

"…Brockton Bay will experience a peculiar accumulation of humidity over the following days, coupled with a rise in temperature. People are recommended to wear light clothes but be prepared for eventual downpours Friday through Sunday…"

"How's your foot?"

I eased the ice pack off my ankle. The skin underneath had gone blotchy and tight. "Swollen."

Dad hummed, blew on his tea like it was still too hot, and took a sip anyway.

"Does it hurt much?" he asked. "Didn't catch how you twisted it. I could take you to the doctor. They'll poke at it, give you something if it needs it. Might even sneak in a general checkup. Your mom always wanted us to do those, remember?"

He paused—too long—and added, lighter, "And after that, if you're up for it… we could grab some ice cream. It's getting hot. The weather guy said so."

He gave me a crooked grin. It didn't sit right on his face - too sly, like someone else's grin had wandered onto him by mistake. I'd seen that look in the mirror more than once, and it never meant anything good.

I stared at the ceiling, tracking a jagged line, and let my hand drift out lazily like I needed help reaching something.

"Some biker pushed me. Fell wrong," I said after a moment. "Did school call?"

The mug paused mid-twitch in his fingers. He blinked once, then set it down a little too carefully.

"Yeah. Once or twice."

"Did they ask you to pay for the locker?"

The next silence landed heavier. His reply came dry and deliberate.

"They mentioned damage to school property has to be covered by the parents." A bitter exhale. "Didn't seem too bothered by the part where you were locked inside. Guess it's more important the lockers look nice than students staying safe."

I curled my toes. The joint ached when I tried to move it.

"How much?"

"That's not something you need to—"

"We don't have the money," I said, not meeting his eyes. "Not for ice cream. Not for a checkup. I'll find a way to cover the locker. It was my mistake. I should've waited."

He didn't say anything at first. Just shifted in his chair and let out a quiet, breathy chuckle.

"You're fifteen," he said softly, like it still surprised him. "You don't need to get a job to cover some busted metal. Just rest. Let the foot heal, or I will drag you to a doctor."

Another beat.

"I get it, and… thank you. But honestly? I'm more pissed at the school than their invoice."

I paused. Stilled my breath. Let my fingers glide over the ice pack's seal, slow and deliberate. The plastic crackled faintly. I imagined slicing it open, watching the cold bleed out in ribbons. Did it matter whether it spilled solid or liquid?

Would it matter if it was blood?

Dad had made up his mind. I was the innocent bystander in a teenage tragedy. No point arguing with a verdict already passed.

Easier this way. Simpler.

I could've worked - would've, gladly. Shift after shift in some fluorescent-lit backroom, counting screws or lifting crates, anything to earn enough for the locker. Maybe a second knife. Not to replace the first. Just to have options.

But a job meant hours away, and too many hours away needed permission. Which I wouldn't get. Not from him. Not with this ankle. The foot throbbed in sync with my pulse, a petty little drum of limitation.

Heberts never changed their minds. They crystallized them, polished them, passed them down like heirlooms. Not fatal. Just... enduring. Like rust.

I looked at him. Nodded. Twitched my lips into something vaguely smile-shaped.

"Okay, Dad," I said. "Thank you."

He huffed - something halfway between a laugh and clearing his throat.

"For what, kid? Saving you from the horrors of a nine-to-five?" he said, pushing up from the couch with a grunt, mug still in hand. "Pay me the locker when you're twenty. Just take it easy, alright? It's been a couple rough days."

A tic fluttered beneath my right eye. A couple rough days. That was one way to phrase it.

I smiled. Or tried to. It was easier not to look at his face, his features all cut up by the lines, like some uninspired puzzle of a human face. I fixed my eyes on his chest instead. Less movement there.

"Giving me credit now?" I muttered. "You should've been a banker."

He stepped closer. Bent down. Pressed a kiss to my head. Careful, as if I might crack open.

"I ain't got patience for numbers, kid," he said. His voice had warmth. His mouth curled at the edges - I saw it. "Stay home and stay safe, okay? Call me if anything happens. Or if you need anything. Anything at all."

I hummed. "Work?"

He sighed, slow and gravelly. "I wish. Gang violence is up again, guys want hazard pay now. City Hall's pinching every penny. Same old story. I'd rather be here, but, you know."

"Money," I said, adjusting the ice on my ankle.

"Yeah. Money," he echoed, with that tired huff that sounded more like surrender than agreement. "We do need that."

And just like that, the pain dulled – an unwelcome courtesy. I let my back sink into the couch cushions and glanced up.

I didn't mean to meet his eyes. I tried not to, usually. Not out of fear, exactly. Just a habit, like avoiding open windows in a thunderstorm. No point inviting anything in.

But I saw him, anyway.

The glasses hid part of it, but not all. There was something wrong in the way his eyes sat in their sockets. Not just tired. Deeper than that. Like someone had scooped out rest and replaced it with something... vacant. Still, they softened a little when they met mine. Affection. Concern. And something raw behind it, twitching just beneath the surface.

I couldn't name it. That made it worse.

…When was the last time he slept? Really slept?

Not the nodding-off-on-the-subway kind. Not the one-eye-open-on-the-sofa kind.

When did the city last leave him alone?

I licked my lips. Tried to smile. Just a little one - not the cracked-grin I used to keep people from asking questions. A real one. Or close enough.

He didn't smile back.

The lines on his face didn't still. They shifted, like shadows on water.

He patted my head, once. Then turned and walked out of the room.

I blinked. My hand was wet. Meltwater from the ice pack. The pain in my foot was quieter now. Manageable.

But not gone.

I clicked off the TV. The screen went black. For a moment, I saw myself—blurred, pale, ghostlike. A reflection stitched with faint red fault lines.

Two blue pinpricks glowed in the center of the screen.

Watching. Waiting.

The room was quiet. Too quiet.

…It wasn't enough anymore.

Not the screens. Not the furniture. Not the voices behind glass.

I needed something warm.

Something breathing.

The public library was my usual retreat when I needed to vanish. Not in the dramatic sense - just to go somewhere and exist quietly. Somewhere I could sit for hours and stare at nothing without Emma throwing shade at me or Dad hovering with that sad, well-meaning silence of his.

I never came for the books. I had shelves full at home, handpicked, owned. Borrowing always felt wrong. Like pretending. So when I wanted a book, I bought it.

But the library had other uses. Computers. Noise dampening. Shelter. A place to close my eyes and not explain why.

Today, I wasn't sleeping.

The walk from home throbbed up my leg, pain blooming and fading with every step. But I'd had worse. Pain didn't matter if I could disassociate from it - and I could. That was the one thing I had always been good at.

It took me thirty minutes. I pushed through the glass doors and drifted to the back, past dead-eyed undergrads and two kids arguing over a sea creature slideshow. I found a station. Sat. Let the plastic seat creak under my weight.

The screen was dark. I pulled the chair closer, leaned forward, and slipped my hand into my pocket. The knife was there. I thumbed the edge. Folded. Unfolded. Folded. The screen hummed to life with a flicker.

A landscape appeared. Too green. Too cheerful. Some curated stock photo of rolling hills and empty skies. It felt obscene.

I stopped fidgeting. Clicked open the browser. Typed 'gang violence brockton bay recent'.

The results loaded faster than I needed.

ABB. Nazis. ABB. Nazis. A few splinter gangs already dead and buried. ABB against Nazis. Nazis claiming retaliation. Half the names were forgettable, the rest already ghosts. There were numbers. Injured. Crippled. Dead. Concerned headlines about teenagers on drugs, and teachers asking for more funding.

Click. Scroll. Click. Scroll.

The screen glared back at me. My reflection was faint. Shimmering between open tabs and search results. Blue eyes. Pale skin. The faintest shadow of something behind me that didn't exist.

Same as always.

I stared at the screen until the headlines blurred into one long, twitching line of static.

Every few seconds, another name. Another mugshot. Another body. Sometimes with a photo, sometimes just a block of text - 'suspect at large,' 'fatal altercation,' 'no arrests made.'

It was hard to tell whether the dizziness was from scrolling too fast or from the sheer volume of it all.

Crime in Brockton Bay: updated live, like a sports ticker.

You'd think the government would do something. A coordinated strike, maybe. Use the capes like scalpel and bone saw. Cut out the rot in one sweep. It wasn't like these people were subtle. They weren't misunderstood.

They sold poison to kids who looked too much like siblings I didn't have.
They carved up neighborhoods and charged rent in blood.
They lit fires, left bodies, put price tags on human beings and called it business.

I hadn't let it bother me, before. Dad kept pushing pepper spray on me every time I left the house. I never took it. It felt like admitting I was prey. Like I was supposed to walk smaller, talk softer, wait for a man with a knife to decide how my story ended.

The same way talking about Emma made my teeth hurt, thinking about gangs did too.

As if I was supposed to step aside and let the world rot around me. As if I needed protecting from them.

As if they weren't the ones who should be afraid.

I didn't go out much anyway. Home was safer. Home was quiet.

But the headlines didn't stop. They didn't even slow.

Territory clashes. Child overdoses. Bodies in rivers.

A girl my age with her wrists zip-tied and her eyes gone.

One a day. At least. Like clockwork.

…It didn't make me angry. Didn't make me cry.

If anything, it helped.

There were names on this list nobody would miss.

I wasn't trying to be righteous. I wasn't looking to make a statement.

I just needed something to cut.

And if someone had to be on the other end of that, it might as well be subhuman trash.

Still, I wasn't stupid. If I was going to go hunting, I'd start small. Someone soft. Someone who wouldn't get back up.

Deep breath. New tab.

I typed 'Empire Eighty-Eight'.

The results came fast. I clicked the ugliest site on the front page - an amateur wiki slapped together by people with too much time and not enough shame.

Two black swastikas twisted into a crude 88 greeted me, stamped over a red field.

Fancy.

The Empire wasn't a gang. Not really. Calling them that was like calling cancer a rash. They were a white-supremacist terror cell dressed up like neighborhood thugs.

They didn't just believe in racial hierarchies. They enforced them. Proudly. Publicly. No masks, no metaphors. Kill a non-white person to get in. That was their initiation.

I remembered a kid back in school, blond, square-jawed, smug. Said joining them would be cool. I figured he was joking. Maybe he wasn't.

'Pathetic', I used to think. Too caught up in ideology to actually get anything done. Too loud, too dumb. But visibility had its perks.

You didn't have to dig deep to find a skinhead. And it wasn't like the cops could arrest every white guy with a bad tattoo and worse ideas.

They were easy. Obvious.

Ideal.

I scrolled down.

Crimes, affiliations, sightings.

Then the capes.

Kaiser. Hookwolf. Krieg. Fenja and Menja. Night and Fog. Stormtiger.

The screen blurred slightly as I skimmed their death records.

Impaled with iron.
Cut to pieces.
Beaten to death.
Crushed - twice.
Unknown cause - twice.
Torn apart by wind.

I kept reading. Imagining. Testing myself against them like it was a math problem. Like that would help.

I stopped at the eighth death.

Swallowed dry.

…They weren't just street thugs with bad taste in iconography.

They had powers. Experience. An identity.

If I carved up one or two of their skinhead interns, they wouldn't shrug it off. They'd treat it as a declaration.

A threat to the tribe. A target to hunt.

They'd come for me.
And I'd die.

Three years of stagnation and a single night of experimentation didn't exactly stack up against trained murderers in body armor.

I closed the tab.

Empire Eighty-Eight was off the table.

I leaned back, hand pressing against my stomach until the tightness eased.

One more breath. Slow. Measured.

This wasn't a war. Not yet. I wasn't tearing down an empire or playing hero against swastikas and capes.

I was just… hunting. Picking the right prey. Nothing more, nothing less.

I shut my eyes for a moment. Another breath in. My gaze drifted left, right - a sweep across the rows of shelves and the lone librarian behind the desk. No curious eyes. No one close enough to see my screen.

A misstep of my foot sent a sharp throb racing up my ankle. I hissed between my teeth, adjusted my leg until it stopped screaming, and set my hands back on the keyboard.

'ABB brockton bay'.

The page I chose looked like it had been thrown together in an afternoon by someone who'd never met a spellcheck. Perfect. I didn't need history books or surveillance logs. Just enough to see the shape of them.

Compared to the Empire, the Azn Bad Boys looked smaller, less… monumental. No grand speeches about bloodlines. No whitewashed armies. Just a street gang, but one that knew exactly who belonged and who didn't.

Their idea of 'Asian' wasn't a slur - it was a checklist. Chinese, Japanese, Korean. Teen, adult. Male, female. Didn't matter. The only requirement was a drop of the right blood, and once they marked you as theirs, it wasn't really a choice.

Their territory was the Docks. Every Asian kid there grew up under the same shadow. Not if, but when someone in red and green came knocking.

The ABB read simple on paper. Drugs. Guns. Prostitution. Terror through intimidation. The boilerplate recipe for any gang that wanted its name carved into a city in blood and fire. They stopped reading simple when you remembered they were just as infamous as the Empire Eighty-Eight—maybe more so—with the added advantage of being harder to predict.

Fewer soldiers. Looser structure. Less money. Fewer capes.
Sharper teeth.
Wilder bite.

I tapped my fingers against the mouse. No need to skim; there wasn't much to skim.

If the Empire was an international cult of white supremacy, the ABB was an armed pack led by old-world warlords. Local. Direct. Transparent. A Frankenstein's monster of Yakuza and Triads, stitched together from people who should've hated each other on principle.

I scrolled down. Pictures came up - fuzzy, half-lit, always at a distance. Two capes total.

Lung, their leader, didn't show himself often, but his name carried weight. The photos caught him in fragments: a tall, broad man, shirtless, red-and-green dragons crawling over his skin in ink. Black hair in wild tangles. A metal demon mask.

In the rare shots of him fighting, he was never quite the same size twice. Always a little taller. Always a little worse. Skin bleaching to a dull grey as metal forced its way out from underneath. Flames licking at orange veins pulsing from within his flesh.

An animal built from steel and fire.

A predator that didn't need to leave its den, because everything living nearby already knew exactly where it slept.

Thump.

My hand rose to my chest. Not from pain. Not from discomfort. Just… to press something quiet.

Thump.

It was familiar in a way I couldn't name. No weight. No texture. But I'd felt it before - in the same way you 'know' a stranger you've never met.

Thump.

Recognition without memory.

Thump.

I smacked both my cheeks, hard enough to make my eyes water.

"Focus."

I scrolled down.

Second in command - Oni Lee.

Two pictures, both worse than Lung's. A shadow cut from cheap resolution. Tactical gear bristling with knives, pouches, and an uncomfortable number of grenades. A pale demon's grin glared under a hood, striped in green where eyes should've been.

The second photo showed three of him, in three different places, all mid-motion.

I exhaled through my nose. Read further.

My brow twitched at 'teleportation'. My mouth went dry at 'suicide attacks'.

Lung was the boss. Unmovable. A fortress of scales and heat.

Oni Lee… he tripped something deeper. Not an animal. Not a predator. A blade that walked. A killer.

Either of them would end me. One would split me in half. The other would cut me open and feed me his explosives.

Still… they were only two. And I wasn't after the big fish. I wanted the current. The swarming shapes that followed behind.

ABB foot soldiers would do just fine. If they'd joined willingly, I wouldn't think twice.

If they hadn't… well, maybe I'd be doing them a favor.

I shut down the computer. Stretched until my shoulders popped.

Considered my options.

The Docks didn't appeal. Not because I was scared—though, maybe, a little—but because my power wasn't the kind of thing you just… brought somewhere and expected to work. It was too good, too sharp, too final. And still, I knew it wasn't enough by itself. It needed instinct, reflex, something fast in the moment.

I could read the lines - see how they curled, straightened, throbbed against the world's surfaces. How slow they slid across skin, how quick they darted over steel. And I could feel it. That ease, that obscene effortlessness of sinking something into them and watching everything come apart.

But that was all it was right now. Sight without speed.

Against Sophia—a basic, textbook bully—my hands had lagged behind my eyes. Against the Docks? Against people who lived violence every day? That was walking into a jungle with a revolver and hoping the first bullet hit.

I closed my eyes. Swallowed the lump pressing against my throat.
This wasn't hero-versus-villain.
This was a hunt.

One strike. From the dark. When they never saw it coming. If I missed, I left. Simple.

I nodded to myself, stood, eased weight off my bad ankle. Noon might be safest for scouting - enough daylight to see, but too early for real trouble to be out. Later would be riskier… but maybe riskier meant easier to read their patterns.

I glanced sideways without thinking.

Paused.

No.

A laugh almost clawed its way out.

"No way."

At the far end, hunched over a table like she'd been dropped there by mistake, was a girl with bleach-blonde streaks over chestnut hair. Designer sweater, perfect nails.

I circled for a better look at her face, the way a cat circles a half-recognized bird. Then slapped a hand over my mouth as a snicker escaped.

Madison Clements.

In the library.

Reading a book.

"…Well, butter my ass and call me a biscuit."

I drifted around her table like a lazy comet, orbit after orbit, always keeping a shelf between us. Five passes in, it was definitely her. By the sixth, I had to look away, shoulders shaking, biting my lip to keep the laugh from exploding into something hyena-loud in the middle of the library.

When the tremors passed, I pushed my glasses up, tugged my hood back, and closed in from behind. Close enough to see without casting a shadow. I leaned just a fraction, angling for the title.

Dark blue hardcover. Gold-leaf letters.
The Theogony.

A snort escaped before I could strangle it. I looked away fast, wiping a tear from the corner of my eye.

Madison Clements. Queen of tight shirts, fresh manicures, and bad bleach jobs… reading Hesiod. In a library. Voluntarily.

Why bother trying to make sense of anything anymore? The world was clearly ending. The signs were right here - a girl I'd bet money couldn't recite the days of the week, reverent over Greek classics.

I edged closer, enough to catch her voice. A low murmur, rhythmic, like she was coaxing the words into place.

"And Nyx bore hateful Moros, and black Ker, and Thanatos…"

Her pen hovered over a notebook, tapping once, twice. Pages already bloomed with sticky notes, margins thick with neat, curling lines of ink.

"And she bore Hypnos, and the tribe of Dreams…"

The rest of the verse completed itself in my head without permission.

Then she bore Blame and painful Misery - dark Nyx did, the goddess.

My stomach gave a faint, inexplicable twist.

Madison simply hummed to herself.

"So Night gave birth to Doom and Fate… and also Hypnos and Thanatos. Sleep and Death."

She plucked a sticky note from somewhere, pressed it down with care.

"Sleep is gentle surrender," she whispered. "The nightly rehearsal of death. Death is the final sleep… the one you don't wake from."

Her pen moved again - this time not in words, but shapes. Two little masks bloomed side-by-side: one slack with drowsy peace, the other a cheerful skull, tiny scythe propped beside it.

It should've been funny. Now it wasn't.

Adorable, yes. But also… like watching someone braid a ribbon through a noose.

Done with simply watching, I drifted closer, bent down, and murmured into her ear—

"—Did Barbie lose her fashion magazine?"

"Hya!"

She jolted, bumping the table, the book clutched to her chest like it might shield her. Painted lashes fluttered. Her gaze darted up and down me, recognition blooming into something tighter, smaller. She shuffled her notebook behind her like I hadn't already seen it.

"T-Taylor," she stammered.

"Hi, Miss Clements." Hands in pockets, I didn't break stride. "Ready to present your thesis on Greek mythology?"

Her eyes flicked to the cover she was holding. As if caught with contraband, she stuffed it behind her back, straightening into a pose that was all hips and defiance…if you didn't notice the uneven weight in her stance.

"T-That's none of your business," she said, swallowing the tremor in her voice. Then a twitchy little smile. "What about you, Taylor? F-finally washed off the smell?"

I smiled back, slow.

Then snapped a hand forward in a feint.

She squeaked, eyes squeezing shut, before I slipped my hand back into my pocket.

"Still got it…" I muttered, before speaking up. "Yeah. Most of what you girls dumped in there stayed in the clothes. Didn't have to scrub too hard."

Her makeup stayed perfect. Everything else didn't. The lift of her brows. The single bead of sweat tracking past her temple. The way her weight kept shifting from one heel to the other.

She gathered herself enough to start, "You better—"

"Who was it?" I cut in.

A beat.

Her throat bobbed. "Who what?"

"Who came up with the idea for the locker?"

We held each other's eyes for a moment. Mine didn't move. Hers faltered. The proud pose sagged into something smaller.

"…Sophia."

I kept my eyes on her. Long enough for her to start shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Then I closed mine, gave a small nod.

"I see. Thanks."

Her arms snapped across her chest like a shield.

"Do you actually think you're cool?" she shot back, voice just above a whisper but sharp at the edges. "Acting like nothing fazes you? Playing the dark, mysterious, tragic girl?"

She tilted her chin, trying for defiance. "You're a freak, Taylor. If you laughed along, nobody would've put you in that locker. But you… you scare people. You call girls bitches. You're a psycho."

I raised a brow. Let the words hang there. Then I shrugged.

"Do you like getting hurt, Madison?"

The fake bravado faltered for a beat.

"What…?"

"Do you like getting hurt?" I said again, even tone, as if asking the time.

Her breath hitched. "If this is—"

"I'll hurt you, Madison."

Her arms unfolded. Her fingers brushed the table behind her, eyes flicking over it like she was measuring how fast she could get around it. Under the makeup, her face tightened, just enough to show something older than fear - instinct.

"I'm not mad at you," I said, hands in pockets, gaze steady. "I don't think you're a bitch. But I will hurt you if it makes you stop bothering me. Nothing personal. Nothing cool about it. Same way there's nothing cool about dumping trash in a locker because you think the girl inside is freaky."

I stepped forward. She stepped back until her thighs hit the table's edge. Her head turned slightly, looking for space that wasn't there.

"The only reason your nose isn't broken," I murmured, leaning in, "is because I know you weren't the one who came up with it. Sophia had her bright idea. Emma thought it was hilarious. And you? You just went along for the ride. You wouldn't cram someone into a locker. You'd just stand off to the side and laugh. Better me than you. Right?"

Her lips parted, but nothing came out.

"I get it," I said after a moment. "If I'd been a little more insecure, I might've done the same. But I'm not. So here's something for you - don't let petty girls feed you ideas you don't believe in. Being ignorant's normal. Being cruel's a choice. Choose better."

I straightened, giving her space.

"Oh," I added casually, "I like your makeup. You're cute."

She blinked. Once, twice. Her mouth hung open, shaping a word that never quite made it out. Her gaze slid down—not to the floor, but somewhere inward—and the faint tightening at the corners of her mouth made me wonder if shame actually looked like that.

My eyes drifted to the dark-blue spine still peeking out from behind her. I let out a breath, a dry puff of air that might've been a laugh.

"…If you ever want to borrow something, I've got a copy of the Iliad at home," I said, already turning away. "Just don't set it on fire. I will break your nose."

I started walking, keeping my gait even, hiding the limp. I'd made it only a few steps when a voice caught the space between us. Soft. Unsteady.

"…I'm sorry."

I stopped. The library's hum filled the pause.
I didn't look back. Didn't answer.

Then I kept walking.

I had work to do.

Madison's apology stayed behind along with her perfume. I limped my way out of the library and, after around an hour, into the Docks.

The talking heads on TV loved to gush about 'vulnerable communities,' as if growing up broke or in a bad zip code made you some kind of moral saint. I never bought it.

I wasn't rich, wasn't starving, either. Just a white girl from a so-so neighborhood who preferred staying home unless I had a damn good reason. That kind of life made it easy to tune out whatever ugliness was going on outside. Usually, I liked it that way.

Winslow didn't let me forget it existed. Neither did this modern recreation of Mordor.

The moment I hit the edge of this place, something in me bristled. My shoulders pulled in, breath caught high in my chest. Not fear… closer to irritation, the kind that made my hand itch for the knife in my pocket.

As if the air itself was daring me.

Everything here looked ruined in the same tired, hopeless way: boarded windows, half-collapsed brickwork, graffiti layered thick enough to feel like bark. If someone jumped me from an alley, that would've felt more honest than nothing at all.

Part of me wondered why the city hadn't just torched the whole place and been done with it. Pretending these people had any future beyond jail or a slab felt like a bad joke.

…Not that I was one to talk.

I tugged the hoodie lower over my head and kept walking, eyes skimming ugly, low-rent housing and the sagging frames of warehouses halfway to collapse. No point in dwelling on how nasty poverty could get… everything here already looked like it was straining to be worse.

Seeing the lines shifting across the whole mess made it easier to stomach. It was a tiny but helpful reminder. There was something far worse than the smell or the rot.

It didn't take long to spot ABB colors.

First came the toothless drunk mumbling into brick, then the hooker who sized me up and made an offer until I answered with a middle finger. A block later, there they were - a loose knot of guys posted on a corner, smoke curling from their mouths, laughter carrying down the street. They passed handguns and knives between them like they were comparing phone cases, the metal catching light in sharp flashes.

Even at a distance, I could clock the common thread - all East Asian, or close enough in my eyes. No Indians, no Thai, nothing like that. Even in a melting pot like Brockton Bay, some groups kept their borders tight.

Red and green clothes, inked dragons and snarl-faced demons creeping across their skin. The kind of thing that belonged in a different century, but I guessed some parts of the world never caught up.

I pressed my back against a wall, paint flaking against my hoodie, just out of sight of the ABB's street corner. My hand dipped into my pocket and came back with a folded strip of paper. A gutted teabag spilled its contents into my palm - cheap leaves, dark and dry. I spread them across the paper, working slow, fingers moving like I'd done this a hundred times.

Looked enough like weed if you didn't look too close.

Then I slid down into a crouch, hood low, face hidden.

A lone girl in a hoodie who kept glancing too long before looking away? Suspicious. But a hunched addict, folded in on herself like a broken marionette, scratching at paper in a shadowed corner? Background noise. They wouldn't look twice… as long as I didn't drift too close. Not that I doubted they'd shoot me for sport.

I stayed in the Docks for hours, melting into alleys, crouching low, fingers twitching at scraps of paper like they had a will of their own. Once, a wiry man with glassy eyes lurched over to ask if I was 'moving in'. I slapped his hand away. The smell of rot clung to the air. Damp crept into my ankle until it throbbed.

Worth it.

By the time the light turned orange, I'd counted thirty ABB members moving through the streets. Probably more I didn't see. They looked like idiots—swaggering, laughing—but their routes were tight. No one walked alone. Always three or more, blades or pistols flashing under streetlights. Sometimes they'd kick in a door, break a few things, stroll out grinning with crumpled bills. Other times, it was just a random addict catching a boot in the ribs.

No Lung. No Oni Lee. Lucky me - their muscle was stretched thin across the Docks.

The prostitution spots were easy to mark. All ABB girls, every one inked in red and green dragons curling down bare arms. They were the dangerous ones. The corner grunts barely noticed me. The women watched everything, eyes scanning while they leaned on lampposts. Out here, they'd see too much.

I kept my distance, watched from the shadows.

By the time the light bled out of the streets and shadows swallowed the corners, I was still hunched over my strip of paper, scratching at it like it was a stubborn lottery ticket.

…This isn't working.

The ABB might've been just a street gang on paper, but out here they moved like someone had drilled them. Always in threes. Always sweeping the same loops. Loud and sloppy in that teenage way, but too consistent for it to be an accident. Someone had told them: Don't give anyone an opening.

Lung's house. Lung's rules.

Three of them together? I wouldn't last long. Even if I managed to drop one before the others reacted, the rest would scatter, call for backup, spread my description faster than lice. No easy prey here.

For a moment, I pictured peeling a skinhead off a street corner instead. Fewer moving parts. Less chance of being ventilated.

I shut my eyes, breathed in dirt, damp concrete, and something sharp and metallic in the air.

Patience.

There was no hurry. Patterns always had weak spots; it was just a matter of waiting for them to slip. So I stayed. Let Dad worry. The animals came out at night, and I needed to see them prowl.

It was during another lazy circuit of one ABB patrol that something finally bent. One of the trio peeled off, laughing at something only he thought was funny, flashing his friends the finger. Kid with a fade and a white tank top, dragons curling up his arms. His buddies shifted on their feet, uneasy, but let him go.

Breaking formation. Why?

I slid after him, keeping to corners and pools of shadow. The prostitutes were landmines scattered across the sidewalks—gaudy traps with sharp eyes—and I had to weave past them without a second glance. School had taught me that one useful skill: hiding.

The trail ended on a side street lit by a single busted lamp. The kid was leaning over an ABB girl, arm braced against the wall. Black hair, too much gloss on lips and lashes, clothes that caught the light like oil.

I eased forward into the darkness of an alley.

"…Make it worth your time, Lily," he was saying, syrup dripping from his voice. "Your shift's over, yeah? I'll take you someplace nice. Dinner, then a hotel. My treat. Everything."

Her sigh was pure boredom. "The goods are off-limits."

He grinned like he'd been waiting for that. "You're not just goods to me. You're special. I don't care what you do. I'll treat you right. Not like the others. What do you think, ojōsan?"

Her hand went to her forehead. A groan.

"Are you deaf, James?" Her voice stayed soft, but it carried steel. "Boss said so. We don't consume our own product. You try, I enable you, and we're dead. Either he hangs us… or Bakuda plants C4 somewhere creative."

"There you go again, being so pessimistic," the young man said, grin tugging at his lips like he thought persistence was charm. "Nobody's gotta know. And I'm not just buying you - I'm inviting you. There's a difference. You're a human to me. I'll take care of you—"

"I don't want you taking care of me, you retard," she cut in, voice low and sharp enough to slice the air. "I'm already doing just fine without you putting us both in the ground. I've got my mom and my little brother to protect. I'm not leaving them for dead just because you want your dick wet."

Their voices tangled in quick bursts - his syrupy promises, her steel-edged refusals. A hiss of threat from him. A short, derisive laugh from her.

I eased back a few steps, letting the shadows take me. My heartbeat thumped against my ribs, eager and hungry. This was something. Not much… but enough.

A sudden crack split the air. My shoulders twitched before I forced them still. Leaning in again, I caught him cradling his cheek, eyes wide. Lily stood in front of him, trembling - not with fear, but with anger.

"Fuck off already!" she spat, each word vibrating in the air. "I don't want your money, and I don't want some Prince-fucking-Charming in my life! I just want to live!"

She spun on her heel and strode away, fury in every stomp. I flattened myself against the wall as she passed, her perfume—cheap and floral—mixing with the sour air.

When I peeked again, James was still watching her go. His face was blank, but his body betrayed him: jaw clamping tight, weight shifting, a fist curling slow and deliberate at his side.

The corner of my mouth tugged upward before I could stop it.

Perfect.

I gave it a couple more days with my new, unsuspecting friend. Not to learn his favorite food or childhood dreams—he didn't strike me as the kind of person who had either—but to map the rhythm of his life. When he woke. Where he went. Who he walked with. How his stride changed when he was sober, drunk, or high.

James—'Little James' in my head—was maybe a few years older than me. Never saw him set foot near a school. He slept late, came out of some greasy apartment complex looking scrubbed and grinning like the world owed him a favor, then drifted into the day's work of being a gang member. No family I could spot. No real friends. Just the ABB, a steady rotation of cheap thrills, and the occasional beggar to kick when boredom struck.

If there was any pulse of warmth in him, it was for one of the prostitutes - Lily to her clients, May Lee when whispered between friends. He chased her every chance he got, circling back to her corner even when it risked both their necks.

Some might've called it tragic romance. I called it… leverage.

Lying in bed one night, Swiss knife clicking open and shut in my hands, I stared at the shifting red fracture-lines above me.

I had his routes. His habits. His soft spot.

I could go after him tomorrow. Stalk him. Finish it.

But my mind snagged on the thought - quiet, almost idle. Not fear. Not hesitation. Just… curiosity.

Was that all there was to people, once you scraped away the polish? Sleep. Eat. Hurt someone. Repeat. No capes. No heroes. No villains. No Asian, White, Black. Just animals in cotton and denim, itching to break something.

Sophia. Emma. James.

Me.

Not even dressed up with excuses… just a blade looking for something to cut.

Fold. Unfold. Fold. Unfold.
The knife clicked in my hands, steady as breath.

I watched the ceiling - those thin red fracture-lines shifting like restless veins. Three years, and they were the only thing that hadn't changed. Or maybe they'd always been there and I'd just learned to see them. One night to notice. Years to understand. And even now, I wasn't sure I did.

I only knew the lines were real, and they always came apart.

I stayed like that until time blurred. Then I got up.

Cold water splashed over my face in the bathroom sink. The cracked mirror threw my image back at me - fragmented, fault-lined. My reflection's eyes looked lit, wide, too still.

No more waiting.

I'd done the prep. I knew his patterns, his blind spots. One person no one would miss.
They'd thought the same of me once. They hadn't checked if I'd get back up.

I would show them how it was done.

"I will…" My voice faltered, as if I had to persuade it to keep going. "…do it."

Yes. Do what, Taylor?

"I will follow him."

Yes. And?

"I will… wait for the right moment."

And?

"I will hit him when his guard is low."

Hit? With a love tap?

"I will hit him with my knife."

Not the right word.

I swallowed, eyes drilling into my reflection.

"…I will cut him."

A simple fact. A statement of intent. Nothing more.

And yet - why did it feel like something was missing? The thought slipped away before I could name it.

…Didn't matter. Sophia had taught me the other lesson worth keeping: hesitation meant losing.

I pocketed the knife and slid out of the house before Dad came home.

Tonight, I'd hunt.

The night pressed in - thick, humid, clinging to my skin like the inside of a coffin. Or maybe that was just the hoodie, heavy and suffocating, trapping the heat.

I walked. Stepped over cracks, skirted the lines. There were too many tonight, webbing the sidewalks, slicing the streets apart. Maybe they'd always been there and I was only now seeing how badly this city was stitched together.

Storefronts slid past. Cars glimmered under jaundiced streetlights. Laughter spilled out of a bar, warm and human, brushing against me like a thing from another life.

My kind of good time wasn't the sort you shared. It didn't need witnesses.

Fold. Unfold. Fold. Unfold.
The knife was warm in my palm, a weight to anchor me. A promise in steel.

The Docks welcomed me in their usual way. Quiet where it mattered, crawling with ABB where it didn't. Their patrols were easy to ghost now. Too easy. I knew these streets like the inside of my bedroom. Shadows, corners, the safe gap between two parked cars, the sweet stink of garbage masking my scent.

It didn't take long to find James. His little pack had bunched up ahead, muttering.

"Fuck's sake, dude," one said. "Couldn't you wait 'til the shift was over?"

"Oh, go ffffuck a dog, Yan," James slurred. "I'm in a bad mood. Can'tshou be a pal and shut your ash?"

The words rolled out thick and uneven, like marbles spilling from a tipped bag. His hand swung loose, the glass neck of a half-empty bottle catching the light. Even from here, the alcohol stung my nose.

"Don't know about being your pal if you're gonna get us three killed…" the second said. "We're supposed to do our rounds. If we don't, boss cuts our balls. And I'd rather that than whatever Bakuda's got planned."

Glass exploded against brick—sharp, sudden—before James jabbed a finger at them.

"Bah! Ya know what? Fuck Lung. Fuck Bakuda. And fuck you two pusshies. I'm off to do shit, and you ain't telling anyone. Unlessh… you want everyone to know I'm being a bad boy. Hic!"

And then he staggered away, weaving into the dark, leaving the others frozen in place, faces pale under the streetlamp.

I slid after him, silent and slow. Even drunk, he wasn't ready to see me.

Not yet.

I trailed him the way I'd learned these past two nights - never closer than fifteen feet, never too far. Casual. Forgettable.

My ankle burned with every step, a white-hot thorn digging deeper the longer I walked. The pain anchored me, forced my pace into something deliberate. Hunger carried me the rest of the way. Not quick. Not sluggish. The kind of rhythm that predators knew by instinct. Slow. Steady. Lethal.

I already knew where he was headed. Lily's corner. A rendezvous dressed up as romance, but it reeked of something else.

Perfect.
Better than perfect.

Drunk. Infatuated. A man served up whole, his flaws piled on a platter just for me.

Fold. Unfold. Fold. Unfold.

My fist tightened on the knife. Energy—or something worse—buzzed in my bones, made my hand tremble with anticipation.

James finally found her. Lily leaned against a graffiti-scarred wall, scrolling her phone, boredom carved into her posture. Her eyes snapped wide the instant she spotted him weaving toward her.

"J-James? What the…?"

He hiccuped his way across the gap like a toy with a broken spring. "Lily… hic! Lookit you, ya gorgeous—hic—specimen of… human bein'."

Her face drained pale, then flushed crimson.

"…Are you fucking mental?" Her voice carried, sharp enough to cut air. "Have you lost what little brain you had left? What if someone saw you like this? You'll get us killed."

"Oh, fuck off with that…" He waved clumsily, his words slurred into each other. "Ain't got time t'worry… if yer afraid o' livin', then don't get born. Tha's what I say! Hic—"

She pressed a hand to her temple, exasperation warring with something softer. Her tone gentled, the way you talk to someone standing at the edge of a cliff.

"James… please. Stop this. Whatever you think is between us? Not like this. Not now." Her hands rose, palms out. "Just… come with me. I'll get you water. Then we'll talk. Okay?"

My jaw clenched so hard it ached.

Not now. Don't let her lead him away. Not when I was this close.

For a heartbeat, I almost gave myself permission: first him… then her.

The thought slid in smooth, like it belonged.

She didn't deserve that, did she? Just a girl trying to keep her family fed. Not a sin worth punishment.
But punishment wasn't why I was here. Justice wasn't, either.

Something inside me slackened - face, chest, mind.

She wore ABB colors, even if only by proximity. That was enough. One more body sinking beneath the tide.

If it wasn't me tonight, it would be someone else tomorrow. Wasn't that a kind of mercy?

I caught myself, slapped my palm against my cheek to ground the thought.
Focus. Only James. Anything else was restlessness, nerves, hunger trying to drag me off course.

I pulled air sharp through my nose, crouched lower, knife steady. Waited.

James swayed like a buoy in the dark, rubbing his face raw before he muttered through his teeth, voice drenched in liquor.

"Alwaysh… alwaysh so high 'n' mighty… like I need help. I jusht wanted… hic… a date. But yer chicken shit. All now, no later. So… so it's ABB forever? That it?"

Her head shook, soft eyes pulling toward him even as her mouth tightened.

"James, you know why I can't. If we're made an example… there won't be an after. I don't even know what I want. I just don't want to end up in pieces."

His hands snapped around her arms. She gasped, stiffened.

"Ah, fuck that. Alwaysh you, you, you… hic!"

She shoved at his shoulder, kicked against his stance. His grip only dug deeper.

"Let go! James, this isn't you!"

"Shaddup, you—hic—beautiful, infuriating bish," he slurred, dragging her closer, her palm smacking his face once, twice. He didn't move an inch. "I'm a… gentleman, yeah. Tonight, I'm payin'. Shervishes. A man of prinshiple…"

Her eyes flared. "Wait, no—somebody, hel—"

His palm clamped over her mouth. Her scream died against his skin. He hauled her stumbling into the alley, legs kicking uselessly against pavement.

My breath came fast, sharp.

Oh, James. You really are the gift that keeps on giving.

A quick glance - no patrols, no girls on the corner.

I slipped from the shadows, body low, knife firm, trailing them into the dark.

I slipped into the alley, rising once the streetlight no longer reached me.

The knife clicked open in my hand. I held it forward, almost tentative, like it could part shadows, like it could ward off the unseen shapes breathing the same stale air.

"James, plea—"

"Yeah, yeah… hic! Jush'… stay put fer a sec…"

I couldn't see them. Didn't matter.

The hoodie came off. The glasses, too. And then... there they were.

Lines. Crawling, jagged, twitching with that faint red glow, pulsing like veins threaded through a monster's hide.

My breath hitched. My grip locked tighter. I stepped forward.

Thump.

At last.

Thump.

The world was flat, quiet, still. Except for them - their lines tangled in erratic bursts, jerking against each other. One pressed, striking, shoving. The other wavering, grasping, greedy.

I raised the knife and aimed at the hungrier one.

THUMP.

Another step.
Another.

The thought gnawed the back of my skull again: what did flesh feel like? Metal, wood, brick, paper - I knew them all. But flesh? Bone? What would it be like when something sharp slid in and stayed there?

I'd denied myself the answer. Too long.

But tonight… tonight I didn't want to wonder. I wanted to know.

It was a leap off a rooftop. A baby dropped just to hear the sound.

THUMP.

The alley dissolved. No James, no Lily. Just a black stage, and the lines drawing me nearer, whispering.

THUMP.

Heartbeat in my ears. And beneath it, something deeper, raw, wrong.

For an instant, the rot was around me again. The coffin of rust and meat. Skin prickling, lungs gagging, pretending to breathe life where there was only decay.

Heat flared in my throat, sliding down as if I'd swallowed fire. Another in my arm, burning along the scar. Then everywhere at once - each scar screaming awake, every wound past or present glowing alive. I couldn't tell what was broken and what wasn't anymore.

I wasn't a body.
I was a hand with a knife.

THUMP.

Closer.

THUMP.

Closer still.

A low rasp reached me - gasping, growling. Them?

No. Me.

My own throat dragging up sounds I'd never heard myself make.

It didn't feel wrong.
It felt inevitable.

THUMP.

Pain split my skull, stars bursting behind my eyes. A hammer blow to the crown.

"Ah—h…hah."

I kept moving. Little steps. Baby steps. The kind you never walk back from.

THUMP.

A line shimmered steady across the dark, diagonal at gut-level. My target.

TH-UMP.

I could've stepped back.

I didn't.

TH-UMP.

The knife hovered. My other hand clamped my wrist to steady the tremor.

TH-UMP.

And with slow, merciless pressure, I drove the blade into the line.

The dark peeled back.
Moonlight spilled into the alley - thin, pale, enough to make everything sharp.

James hung there, caught mid-breath, trembling like wire drawn too tight. Whatever haze had dulled him moments before was gone; his eyes were wide, fever-bright. I watched his face from beside him.

Lily pressed herself against the wall. Her hand clamped over her mouth, nails scraping brick, chest heaving. Her gaze wasn't on James. It was fixed on me.

James's head jerked by inches, neck stiff, as though every movement burned. His eyes dipped down.

To my hand.

To the blade pressed into the black seam across his waist.

Then back to me.

"W–Who… the fuck are you?" His voice cracked, brittle.

I said nothing.

I shifted the knife. Just enough. Just a sliver.

Then drew it free, the steel sliding smooth. Pocketed it.

James's stare locked to mine, hollow and furious all at once.

"You little—" His hand left Lily, reaching.

Fingers brushed my cheek, then trailed down my shoulder, my arm… lower, lower, until his palm met only air.

He didn't crouch. He didn't stumble. He just looked bewildered, like gravity itself had betrayed him. And then - he was gone.

The sound came next. A wet tearing. Then a heavy, final thud.

I looked down.

James lay sprawled, staring at nothing, face frozen in terror. His fingers twitched against the dirt, useless. Red welled from the impossibly clean break at his waist, flooding out into the alley. The rest of him… gone.

No, not gone.

His legs still stood upright, blood coursing down the severed plane as if it were glass. His jeans darkened, soaked crimson, until the whole thing resembled some grotesque installation in a gallery.

Another thump. Lily slid to the ground, knees buckling. Wide eyes, fixed not on James's corpse, but on me.

Her lips moved, barely sound.

"Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please."

The plea wasn't for him.

I didn't answer.

The blood spread, glimmering in the moonlight. I watched it a while, lost in the slow widening pool.

Then I turned, my steps strangely light, and left the alley behind.

I don't remember when I got home. One moment I was outside, the next I was shutting the door behind me.

Shoes off. Upstairs. Then back down again.

Cereal. Milk. The crunch was loud in my head, louder than the clock on the wall. Sweet for a second. Then gone. Bowl rinsed, dried, stacked neatly with the others.

The house was empty. Dad must've been working late.

I sat in front of the TV. A man in a suit was talking about something urgent, lips moving fast, his voice too tangled for me to follow. I stared anyway. An hour of static dressed as news. Then black screen.

Upstairs again. Bathroom. Routine.

I washed my hands. Once. Twice. Three times. Four. The skin burned, pink and raw, lather stinging in the cracks.

When I looked up, the mirror gave me a stranger. Hollow cheeks. Lips cracked white. Blue eyes sharp enough to cut and yet vacant, like glass marbles dropped in a skull.

I tried words.

"I cut someone."

Too small.

"I ended someone."

Not quite. My lips twitched. The lines in them seemed to shift, to slither.

The right word crawled up my throat like barbed wire.

"I killed someone."

Silence.

The reflection shifted. Not me, couldn't be me - eyes spilling tears, brow clenched, mouth bent into a grotesque smile that felt like rot spreading.

But it was me. My face. My lips. My eyes.

My hand on the knife.

Air caught in my chest, broke loose in a gag.

"—hhhk!"

Milk and cereal erupted onto the tile, splattering my feet, burning its way out through my nose. I lurched for the toilet, hugging porcelain like it could keep me afloat.

"Ghhh - aaaghhh!"

More came, violent, choking, spasming. Until it wasn't food anymore. Until it was bile. Until it was red. My throat a raw, open wound.

I hung there, shaking, eyes streaming, snot and spit stringing down my chin. Every heave tore at me, every gasp scraping my chest like glass shards.

Somewhere between sobs, something else broke loose. A laugh. Thin, jagged, wrong. It tangled with the crying until I couldn't tell which was which.

"I… killed…" My voice rasped, wet and cracked. "Killed a… a person. Just… like that."

I clutched the toilet harder, as if I could wring the confession out and flush it away with the vomit.

"I killed someone… And I didn't feel anything."

That was the truth. Bare, unadorned.
I cut into his line. Split him.
Killed him.

And nothing came. No grief. No triumph. Just… satisfaction. That awful, greasy satisfaction. Too simple. Too clean. Like snapping the last piece of a puzzle in place. Like pressing the big red button you're not supposed to.

My stomach turned. I folded over the sink, retching until bile scalded my throat and chest. My neck throbbed with every gag.

Then came the motions. Wiping. Scrubbing. Tile, toilet, sink, floor. Spray, wipe, repeat. More water on my face. A rhythm. A ritual. Through it I laughed, I cried - except neither sound belonged to either feeling.

By the end, the bathroom shone, reeking of disinfectant. The lines still ran across the world. Black, jagged, writhing. Untouched. Undeniable.

I staggered back to my room, clutching my head like I could squeeze the noise out. Shut the door. Fell onto the bed. The lines followed me in, faint red sketches crawling through the dark.

I bit my lip hard.

'Lines'. That's what I'd called them for years. Harmless if I didn't think about them too hard. Safe.

But they never were. Were they? They couldn't be.

And I called myself smart. What a joke. I ignored them even as they stared back at me. Pretended they were geometry, cracks, patterns. Pretended they weren't… what they were.

What was constant? What was final? What never lied? What was always waiting?

Not truth.
Not weakness.
Not stitches or segments or cuts.

Cold. Indifferent. Absolute.

There was only one word for that.

Madison's voice floated back, a taunt, a reminder, a name I'd always known but refused to say. Not like this. Not with this sense of clarity.

I whispered it to the dark.

"And Night bore hateful Doom, and black Fate… and Death."

Death.

Not an idea, not a metaphor. Just… there.
Always there. Always waiting. Always one step sideways into nothing.

Had I known, deep down? Is that why I kept my hands off the lines for so long - because some part of me recognized what they were? Or was I only pretending ignorance, just to delay the moment?

I didn't know. I didn't know why I held back, or why this power landed on me, or how I was supposed to keep breathing with it carved into me.

But I knew what I was now.

Worse than weird.
Worse than dangerous.

A girl who could cut Death into the world.

And I had done it. Not by accident. Not in defense. Because I chose to. Because in the moment, it felt right.

And when the body fell, I felt nothing. No horror. No shame. Just the neat little satisfaction of fitting a puzzle piece.

That was the worst part.

My stomach folded in on itself. I pulled into a ball, whispering the word in my head like a verdict.

Animal.
Mistake.
Monster.

The air sawed in and out of my throat. I made myself consider paths, because that's what I did - problems, options, solutions.

First path: kill myself. End it here, cut the problem at the root. No more mistakes, no more risks.

Except I didn't want that.

I wasn't hollow, I wasn't hopeless. I wanted to live, even if the wanting itself felt obscene.

Second path: never cut again. Pretend the lines weren't there. Lie to myself. Pointless. They'd wait me out. A moment would come, and I'd give in.

Third path… the only path. Control. Structure. Rules. Bind the thing in my head with chains I forged myself.

I forced myself upright. Switched on the light. Found paper, pencil. My hands shook, but the first words came smooth:

NO CUTTING UNLESS THERE'S NO OTHER OPTION.

Cardinal. Untouchable. My knife didn't move unless there was no other way forward.

Then came the memory - steel sliding through James like nothing, his legs standing after his torso was gone. I tasted bile. I forced my hand down to write:

NO CUTTING UNLESS I UNDERSTAND WHAT I'M CUTTING.

Because I couldn't pretend it was just geometry anymore. Not when I didn't know what else I might unravel.

The third rule lingered, ugly, until shame pried it out of me. Too obvious, too late, but it had to be written:

NO CUTTING SOMEONE UNLESS THEY DESERVE IT.

No mistakes. No indulgence. Death had to be chosen, weighed.

I folded the page until it was small enough to disappear into the closet. Out of sight, but present, a weight tucked between my clothes.

I crawled back onto the bed, curled tight, tried to swallow down the sinking in my gut.

Tried to sleep.

Could not.

"…Like waking up from a dream," I whispered, "and into a nightmare."

Chapter Text

1/The Girl Who Didn't Die
Prelude to the Nightmare

It wasn't enough.

Light seared into my eyes - white, merciless, unblinking. For a moment I thought it was the sun. But no. Just a streetlamp. Midnight pretending to be day.

I stared anyway. My eyes stung, prickled. Was it the glare - or the jagged black vein slicing down the lamp's glass, splitting the brightness in two? I couldn't tell. I only knew it hurt. Eyes, head, everything.

Still, I kept looking. A moth to the flame.

Or maybe not the flame - maybe the seam. The tear in the world's fabric. Darkness pooled inside it.

Pain lanced through my skull. A slow throb answered from deep within, heavy footsteps on hollow ground. A fist hammering at a locked door. A broken drumbeat, ritualistic, patient, older than words.

Another pang. My knees buckled. I pressed a palm to the wall, eyes shut tight.

"Hhhah… nngh… gah…"

The rhythm followed me as I staggered forward. Into the dark. Along the wall.

"Ahhh… fhh… ffffaaah…"

It grew louder. Music, maybe. Or not. The pounding was inside, not out. I struck my temple with my hand, trying to jar it loose. Nothing. I tried walking in time with the rhythm. No use. My steps rang hollow.

When I forced my eyes open again, a smaller light burned ahead - flickering, ember-red. A cigarette.

The smoker emerged around it: a man in his twenties, sleek clothes traced with red and green, eyes sharp. He caught me staring, exhaled smoke, and scoffed. Then he strode forward.

"Hey, bud. You lost? Or you lookin' for—"

The silver shard was already in my hand, already sliding into the glowing line on his shoulder. I dragged it down. Flesh gave way with a wet tear, body parting cleanly in two.

Before the halves touched the ground, I struck again, carving the diagonal seam across his face. His skull opened, neat as butchered fruit, the twin halves of his brain glistening under the light.

I pocketed the shard. Smacked the side of my head.

Still too loud.

Not quite there.

My back struck brick - hard, cold. A meaty hand pinned me by the hoodie, lifted me just enough that my feet scraped the ground. Something sharp pressed into my throat. Night, broken off and polished into a blade. New. Imported.

"This is ABB territory, bitch. You searchin' for somethin'? Either way, you ain't leaving."

His lips twisted around the words, a grin - or a snarl, I couldn't tell. Both, maybe.

"Oi, Kiba. Kono yatsu shitteru ka? Kimochi warui… doko ka de mita koto aru ki ga suru."

"Shiranai yo. Hajimete miru. Demo… me ga hen da na," another voice answered, rolling in that alien tongue. Their language clinked against my ears like coins in water, heavy and strange. "Ano aoi iro… omae, cape ka?"

Floaty. As though the air thickened into tar, and I swam through it. As though I sank instead of soared, clouds curdling into black ocean. I blinked, and Death blinked back. Her veins lit up red, an electric scarlet.

"Moshi cape nara… boss ni tsureteku ze. Demo sono mae ni… ore-tachi no tanoshimi da, hahaha…"

Clasps rattled. Metal whispered against leather.

NO CUTTING UNLESS THERE'S NO OTHER OPTION.

There was no other option. No words bridged the gulf. Their language was a locked gate, their laughter a foreign hymn. We could not meet.

So.

They had to die.

The fragment of night nestled in my palm, folded neat. A thumb caress, and it opened into hunger. I pressed it to the glowing seam at his elbow. Drew.

His arm thudded to the ground.

"Wha… W-What… ah—"

He staggered, face twisting as the sound of pain clawed its way out. I silenced it - drove the fragment into the vertical line running belly to throat, split him upwards.

Right and left tumbled apart like broken doors.

A gasp hissed out from the other. A click… metal chamber rolling. His hand shook around a cannon of iron far too large for his hand.

"Stay… stay away. Or you're dead."

I swayed.

Giggled.

"Bang."

Smells like steel.

"Row, row, row your boat… gently down the stream…"

The words slipped from me like smoke, curling into the ear of the girl pressed against my chest. My hand covered her mouth, swallowed her sobs, her breath hot against my palm. She wriggled too much in the closet, catching jackets and sweaters hung inside with her frantic hands, but I pressed her still.

Outside, the world broke. Dark shapes crawled in fog, their edges scribbled with jagged lines. They overturned tables, slammed drawers, laughed in splintered voices.

"Merrily, merrily, merrily… life is but a dream…"

My song wove tighter as the girl trembled harder. Their laughter cracked louder. Glass shattered. Wood split.

"Hey, you hear? Boss wants the head of that creepy motherfucker," one of the shadows said, voice dripping casual. "The one who chopped our guys to bits. Probably a cape or somethin'."

"Why the fuck'd you tell me that?" the other snapped, his words jittering with a tremor. "I'd deleted it from my mind… shit. I was the one who found Tim Tseng, man. All carved up like… like a cow. Slaughterhouse style."

A pause. Silence like cloth tearing. The girl shifted. I hushed her with a breath.

"…Sorry, dude. I didn't know."

"Yeah, and ya don't wanna know. That shit was… unreal. I've seen Oni Lee blink around, Bakuda go batshit. But this?" His voice cracked thin. "This was a horror flick, man."

Thuds. Heavy. I pictured hands clapping, backs being slapped.

"Tell ya what. We find this bitch, teach her not to fuck with ABB, then I buy you a beer."

A laugh. A sigh. Agreement in breath.

"Sounds good. Tear this place down."

Their footsteps quickened, pounding closer, closer. The air tasted of rust and blood before the cut.

I eased my hand away from the girl. Soft. Gentle. Her mouth free. Then leaned close, breath brushing her ear.

"I'm going out there. If you stay silent, if you keep still… I won't come back for you. I won't finish their job."

Her body locked. Then a faint nod. Once. Twice.

The steel claw unfolded in my hand, whispering open like a flower made of razors.

I slipped from the locker into the storm of shapes and lines, hunting.

I feel sleepy.

The wall was cool against my back. I pressed into it, pressed until I thought I might dissolve into brick and shadow. Footsteps pounded outside. Too many. Five? Ten? The number slipped away as soon as I counted.

"Keep your eyes peeled! This piece of shit can't have gone too far!"

Glass screamed. A car shrieked back, its alarm like a dying bird. Boys' voices cracked into orders and curses, barking at phantoms. Gunfire rattled - metal biting air. I imagined them shooting at shapes only I could see. Shadows twisting, too fast, too crooked for their bullets.

"Hey! Right there! Smoke that fucker!"

A barrage. More shouting. Then scattering feet, the sound breaking apart into different alleys. None came to me. The warehouse stayed quiet. My dark corner stayed mine.

I curled tighter, arms around knees. The corpse across from me stared without blinking. Half a man. Eyes wide as saucers, oily hair clotted with blood, one gold tooth catching the dim. His frozen hand clutched a revolver, finger twitching near the trigger. He never got the first shot. With my foot, I nudged the steel out of reach, as if it might still leap to life.

Sleep pulled at me. My head dipped. Every noise snapped me back - glass breaking, voices echoing, the memory of a gunshot that hadn't come. I never quite fell under.

Minutes. Hours. No difference. Cold in my bones, hunger in my teeth. I wanted a sandwich. Or toast. Butter slick, marmalade sweet. The thought drifted like a dream I could almost taste.

Then the warehouse cracked.

Windows burst. Shards rained silver into my dark. My dark. Shapes entered - two, outlined with glowing veins of red. More hovered outside.

"Don't blink," one whispered. I still heard. "He likes to drop outta nowhere. Not this time."

The other muttered back. Weapons gleamed. A hammer's click. A blade's grin.

The knife in my palm hummed. I blinked once. Twice. Thrice.

NO CUTTING UNLESS I UNDERSTAND WHAT I'M CUTTING.

But I understood.
Shapes. Limbs. Spines.

Nothing complicated.

NO CUTTING UNLESS THEY DESERVE IT.

But they deserved it. They wanted me gone.

So I would make them gone.

I let my breath fall silent. My body low, sliding in the shadow. The lines glowed bright against their bodies, waiting, begging.

I rose and pressed the knife into the seam running down the back of a skull. Drew it open.

Smiled.

I'm hungry.

I blinked.

Another shape, silenced. I didn't remember the cut.

Just the halves on the ground.

I'm cold.

I blinked again.

His head was already open, eyes staring at nothing. My arm was still raised, the blade humming in my hand, but I couldn't remember the swing. Just the wet sound that still echoed in my ears.

I'm fine.

The alley was empty.

Then it wasn't - there were two of them, both on the ground, blood soaking the cracks between bricks. I was already stepping over them. Had I cut them? I didn't remember.

Only the red lines buzzing in the air, satisfied.

I'm fine.

I thought I was waiting.

But the sun was already lower, the air colder.

A smear of blood darkened my sleeve, drying sticky against my skin. I didn't remember whose it was. Or how many.

I need a shower. Or two.

I heard someone breathing in my ear.

After a few hours—days?—I realized it was me.

Could be worse.

Daylight barred me from the Docks. Every street clogged with blue uniforms and bright badges, patrols sweeping back and forth, even capes drifting across rooftops like hawks circling prey.

Night barred me too. The police thinned, but the gangs thickened. Clusters of boys under every streetlamp, metal glinting at their hips, knives glimmering in their hands. Warehouses glowed from within, broken windows alive with firefly light.

I stood far away, watching. Waiting. My fingers traced the slab of steel in my pocket.

Fold. Unfold. Fold. Unfold.

A heartbeat in metal.

Time blurred. Day into night into day again. Once, at four in the morning, I slipped from my hiding place and found the Docks unchanged - still armored in watchful eyes. Another night I crouched in a corner from sundown until the sun rose, my body stone, refusing food, refusing sleep, refusing anything but waiting.

Nothing.

The pattern never broke. The walls never cracked.

It was the belly of a beast, restless but never yielding.

And somewhere inside, the Dragon slept in his cave - patient, invisible. Dreaming with his eyes open.

Knowing.

It was never going to be enough.

I came home at some hour I couldn't name. It didn't matter. Time had no shape anymore, only hunger. I scraped together a meal - thin, mean, nothing warm enough to soften me, nothing heavy enough to slow me down. Just fuel. Just itch.

I paced. Back and forth, back and forth, a caged animal with too much dark inside. Crawled under the bed. Killed every light in the house and watched the glowing veins that spiderwebbed across the walls, red as arteries, pulsing. My eyes learned the dark the way lungs learn air.

I wasn't practicing to hide. I was practicing to cut.

Everything had lines. And lines existed to be opened.

I broke into my own house first. Again and again. I mapped every blind spot, every crack of sound, every curl of hair left behind. If I caught myself, I tried again. Until I couldn't catch myself at all.

Then the neighbors.

I listened at their kitchen as a mother told her eldest son he'd be going to college. I stood in a little girl's doorway as she slept, teddy bear locked in her arms. I shifted a table in a lonely man's home an inch at a time, for hours, until the sun came and went and he never saw.

I rehearsed until moving unseen was breath. Until vanishing was instinct. Until my father came home and the first thought in my skull was jump through the window, slip back in after him, see if he notices.

I don't remember sleep. Maybe I didn't. Maybe I refused. Only the pressure building behind my eyes, a throbbing ache, the empty pit in my gut. A heartbeat not my own, pacing me step by step, thought by thought.

I tried watching TV. The voices dissolved into static.
I tried reading. Words smeared into inkblots.

Night returned. Heavy clouds stacked over the city. Heat pressed down, humid, choking. My body begged for air, for movement, for escape. Instead, I coiled tighter into my room, cornered in shadow.

Knife in hand. Fold. Unfold. Fold. Unfold.

The wall darkened, became a stage. Shapes twisted there, blooming black on black: monstrous scenes, a theatre of night. And rising from them - a beast. Vast. Its arms flung wide in triumph, wings unfurling like fire born from a spark. Horns, claws, teeth. The heat of its breath almost kissed my skin.

I didn't flinch.

Because the lines glowed across its body. Crimson seams, winding and fragile.
Because even this shadow-dragon had an end.

I stared. Fold. Unfold. Fold. Unfold.
Then stopped. Pocketed the knife.

My gaze locked with the beast's on the wall, its shape sneering, daring. Waiting.

I licked dry lips. Curled tighter in the corner.

Closed my eyes.

"I will kill Lung."

Chapter Text

1/The Girl Who Didn't Die
Bite the Dragon's Neck

"Cut what breathes. Hide when seen. Kill the dragon."

Whisper. My voice sticks to the floorboards, sliding between the slats. Too loud. Too steady.

Lines writhe under the bed with me. Red, then darker, black, veins crawling away from the light. Shiver, twitch, gone.

Knife against chest. Cold. Press. Fold—click—unfold. Again. Again.

Heartbeat answers the metal. Steel claps, ribcage knocks back. Fold, unfold. Fold, unfold. My pulse is the hinge.

Weight of it - anchor in my hand. Sound sharp as a promise. Head prickling, spine tingling, the little hairs bristling just before a cut.

Close my eyes. Pain blooms. White fire behind them. Throbbing skull, hot nerves. Knife steadies me. Fold. Unfold. Fold. Unfold.

Tonight.

Breath shakes. My lips shape it again. Tonight.

Lung. His name tastes like smoke.

I know the streets. Every corner. Every blind turn, broken light, gun barrel. I see their faces when I blink - grunts, meat, already half-buried. Some with steel in their eyes. Most with fear.

The map is carved into me. I'll step into the jaws. Tear them out from the inside.

No capes will come. Not there. Not in that dark. The cops will hover, circle the carcass I leave behind, too slow, too afraid.

ABB rattled, stumbling, bleeding from cuts I already gave them. If I wait, they breathe again. If I wait, they grow teeth back.

Not anymore.

The room glows faint white. Cloud-weight pressing overhead. I don't have to look - I smell it. Damp. Rot. Humidity swelling.

Rain coming.

I whisper to the knife. To myself. To the approaching storm.

He dies before the first drop hits the ground.

I'll make sure.

Steps. Heavy. Dragging.

"Taylor," Dad's voice. Warm. Too warm. "I bought donuts. Your favorite. Chocolate inside."

Door creaks. Air shifts. I fold tighter, bones pressing bone, under the bed. Breath shallow. Stop.

"Taylor?" Again. Steps shuffle. Uneven. Hesitant. "You there, kid? Time for breakfast."

I don't move. Don't answer. Wait. Just wait. Until the pause. The sigh. The soft retreat of him leaving - defeated.

Gone.

Only me.

Hunger. Irrelevant. Cold. Irrelevant. Dad. Irrelevant. All of it stripped away. The only thing that matters - Lung. The dragon. Cut the head. Bleed the gang dry.

Tonight. One kill.

Then maybe. Maybe rest. Food. Maybe tell Dad. I did something right. Maybe see his face light, for once.

Picture it. Imagine - coming home after fire and blood, days of work carved into scars. Food, heat, pride. Three years of nothing undone in one act.

But no. Nothing comes.

Close my eyes - only dark. Only steel weighing down my palm. Only the faces. Shocked, terrified, realizing the blade is theirs. That pain is theirs.

Comfortable monsters, dragged into the dirt where they belong.

Open eyes. Lines writhe. Crawling things, red then black, shifting under the bed. Watching. Waiting.

I curl tighter. Tighter. Press ribs into knees, knees into chest. Disappear. Crush myself small. Hide forever.

Blink - gone.

Night outside. I don't remember falling asleep. I don't remember the hours. Only the dark.

Crawl out. Quiet. Move like shadow. Out the door. Out of the house. Slipping into the night.

Sky, bruised grey. Heavy. Sagging over me.

Winter night but wrong. Too hot. Too thick. Taste it on my tongue.

Metal. Blood. Rust bite. Dry throat scraping against itself. Air refusing water.

No-man's land.

Blue uniforms at the entrances. Major streets… light patrols, IDs checked, sheep herded. I don't touch those. Slip around.

Alleys worse. More eyes. More guns. Some sealed off, chained, silent.

Capes too. Their shadows stretched thin across the block. Relaxed. Tense. Always too much.

Flash of blue armor, towering. A machine gliding on a machine. Armsmaster. The loyal knight. Always circling. Always too near.

His visor cuts across me. Light glints. I dive into an alley. Breathe through my teeth.

Dangerous. Avoid. Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

Window. Small. Seconds only. Enough. Crawl across the street before his orbit closes.

Middle path. Not empty, not crowded. A street alive with voices, people arguing with the uniforms, shoving papers, cursing badges.

Police mumble back. Gang fights. Dangerous criminal loose. Words echo.

Unidentified.

Who?

Can't be me.

Doesn't matter.

The Dragon waits.

Closer. Smell their coffee. Bitter, burnt, clinging to breath. Hear them mutter - murder, overtime, not enough pay. The weight of their words barely holds. Easy to duck. Easy to slide under their flimsy cordon.

"Get out of my way already!"

Shouting. Voices crack. Feet scuff.

I freeze. Press low, behind a car.

Peek.

There - woman. Green uniform, tight, sharp. Muscle drawn under olive skin. White beret. Scarf, sash. Knife. Empty hands that could become full with steel and gunfire in a blink.

Miss Militia.

Animal in human skin. War wearing civility.

Too close. Too dangerous.

Crouch lower. Listen.

"Please, sir." Her voice… measured, clipped, almost ceremonial. "We just need a name. An address. For your safety. Then you can go."

Civilian spits back. Bitter. Mocking. "I ain't got time for this. You're paid to block me. Paid to waste my time. I'm not. Look at the clouds - it's about to rain! Great job, hero."

Noise builds. More officers gather, surround, contain.

Miss Militia caught. Busy. Herding sheep.

I move. Past them. Past the cordon.

Deeper. Into the Dragon's den.

Cut the Dragon. Don't breathe. Don't be seen.

The Docks. Streets hollow. Emptier than usual. Not safer. Worse.

Tension thick. Eyes everywhere. Watching. Always watching.

I press to walls. Hug alleys. Ghost in brick and shadow. Drift. Slide.

Warehouse. One of many. Windows - broken teeth. Lights inside.

I slip in. No sound. Drop low. Crouch.

Voices. Sharp. Hungry. Violet edges. Restless.

Count. Five. No… eight. Too many.

Wait. Wait them out.

Knife in my palm. Cold spine of it. Fold. Click. Unfold. Fold. Click.

Heartbeat answers.

"Damn, these babies… nothing like those little pistols! Feels like I'm a terrorist or some shit—"

Metal clatter. Moving parts. The weight of a gun in the air.

"That baby is an AK-47, moron. Point it at my face again and I'll break your arms. Boss wants a sweep. Eyes open. Focus or die." Gruff. Heavy voice. Accented.

Laughter in reply. Fake sharpness. "Hey, hey, that a threat? Don't like your tone, man."

Crash. Wood or box slammed aside.

"No threats. Just truth. You saw the last crew. Four men, cut into pieces. Dead meat. This thing - we don't know if it's a cape. Don't know if it's a monster. Doesn't matter. Guns are the bare minimum if we want to breathe tomorrow. Gear up and move out. You, you, and you, stay. Anything moves? Shoot. Then shoot again. And if it's bigger than you can handle… torch the place."

Boots on concrete. Steady march. Predators… or prey.

Doors slam. Light dies. Only scraps left to see by.

Dark again. Waiting.

I wait.

Minutes. Maybe more. Still. Until voices loosen. Laughter again, like nothing wrong.

"Shit, all this for one guy? Boss should take care of him himself."

A snort, sharp. "Yeah, genius idea. Except no one who's seen him lived, dumbass. The two who did? Hospital beds. Rat knows he can't touch the boss, so he hides. We gotta flush him out."

Silence. Shifting feet. Metal clack - magazine, chamber, weapon ready.

"…I dunno," another voice. Uneasy. "If he can just fillet people like that… I ain't sure even the boss could handle him. Just sayin'."

Silence again. Heavier this time. Knowing. Uneasy.

Good.

"Well, pray he can. Or we're fucked. Anyway - where'd the others go again?"

"The usual. Y'know, the factory. Green doors. Boss wants a meeting before the hunt."

Factory. Green doors.

The Dragon's den.

I lick my lips. Knife out. Snap. Unfold. Cold edge glinting in the dim.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

Slip behind one. Close. Close enough to smell sweat, oil, steel.

Close my eyes.

Hand moves—

—blur—

—flash of red—

—wet sound. Too close. Too loud.

Fingers sticky. Knife heavy. Lurch. Another shape in front of me.

Shout cut off halfway. Spray. Hot on my cheek.

Steel drags bone. Rips fabric.

Something crunches. Something collapses.

Breath ragged. Not mine.

Dark walls trembling. Dripping.

I blink.

Silence.

Lights out. Floor slick, shining. Walls sweating black.

At my feet - parts. Not whole. Scattered pieces. Flesh in the wrong places. Faces blurred into meat.

I don't remember.

Only the heat. The dizzy fog. The pulse in my skull. Satisfaction in my teeth. Daze curling around me, heavy, dizzy, satisfied.

"Thank you," I bite out.

I stumble. Shoulder hits a box. Hand slides inside. Touch.

Metal. Bullets. Guns.

Something round… Hard. Grip it. Lift.

Grenade. Weight heavy in my palm.

I stare a second. Then set it down. Keep going.

Another box. Fingers find shape. Turn it, tilt it toward the light. Red streak across surface. Letters.

Incendiary.

I bounce it once. Twice. Solid thud.

Fingers probe. Catch on metal ring. Pin.

Pull. Drop it back into the box.

Turn. Jog. Out of the warehouse.

Don't look back.

"Taylor. Please. Don't shut me out. I'm here."

A voice. Familiar. Warm. Too close.

I breathe wrong. Lungs scrape. Tear. The sound fills my head.

Cold air knifes between my ribs, drags at my bones. Steel in my palm. Heavy. Alive. It bleeds its heat into me, like it knows.

"No. You're not."

The warmth is gone. In its place, hunger.

Keep moving.
Walls, alleys, rusted containers. My hands brushing, clinging, needing contact.

Warehouses. Empty. Hollow. Dead.
Storage units. Lonelier still.

Then - noise.

Feet scraping. Voices layered, tangled.

Click-snap. Metal ready to spit heat, spit lead.

Found it.

Old factory. Rotting. Green doors peeling like skin. Light leaking through cracks.

Alive. No - twitching.

Something ugly that should've died, still crawling, still moving.

Crouch low. Crawl, circle.

Eyes on entrances. Shadows. Guards. All blocked.
Windows chained, doors sealed. Traps. Eyes everywhere.

No way in.

Unless…

A hole in the wall. Small. Wrong size for men. Right size for me.

For something lean.
For something that doesn't belong.

On my belly. Crawl.

Cobwebs cling, thread-tight across my mouth. Spider on my cheek.

Little legs twitching. I fork it with my blade. Drag it off. Smear it into cloth.

Gone.

Inside now.

Boxes stacked, half-open. Shelves crumbling, wood soft with rot. Light bleeding under a door. Muffled voices. Close. Too close. Not words - just pressure in my skull.

Hand on knob. Won't turn.
Locked.

I sink down again. Eye level with the floor.
Black lines across plaster, writhing. Cracks? No… veins.

Knife edge into one. Press. Pull. Slow. Careful.

Snap. Piece comes loose.

Fingers dig. Peel it away. Hold my breath.
Dust in my nails. Cold wall against my skin.

I put my eye to the hole.

Scores. Rows. Too many.

Green. Red. Wrong colors. Wrong here.

Skin carved with beasts. Dragons. Tigers. Teeth and claws crawling up arms, necks, faces.

Steel flashing. Blades. Pistols. Rifles. Tools meant for war. Toys in the wrong hands.

And all quiet. Breathing together. Waiting.
All turning toward one shape.

Back turned. Doesn't matter. I know.

Muscle coiled like rope. Dragons inked in red and green climbing his back, alive when his skin stretches. Shoulders like walls. Arms thick. Hands made for breaking. Jeans blue, clean, stupid… like a tiger in a hoodie. Doesn't belong.

Lung.

The Dragon.

I pressed myself down. Breath thin, scraping dirt. Nails biting grit. Hair spilling over my arms, hiding me. Still. Small. Watch. Listen.

His voice - low. A rumble rolling deep. Like a piano key pressed too long, too heavy. Dark sound. Inside my chest.

"Fifteenth to twentieth. Empty the houses. Parents first. Children… take them with you. Kill them if he does not come. Anyone runs, you shoot."

The words drop heavy. Not anger. Not rage. Something else. Recognition. The pulse of it thrumming in my skull.

He lifts his hand. Clenched fist. Symbol. Command.

"He likes to play hero. We make him play."

Fear. Unease. A word unspoken. A question pressed to their lips and swallowed back down.

Children? Or the killing?
Didn't matter. Didn't care. Fear would drag them. Fear would split open the night.

They'd obey no matter how sick they felt.

And somewhere deep—

I felt it.

Happy.
Furious.

Because he'd done this for me.

Because pain would ripple outwards from my shadow. Because he made them bleed for me.

Rush.
A piece clicking in.
Satisfaction jagged and sharp, lighting me up.

Seen. Finally seen. Not ignored. Not brushed aside.

Someone saw me and didn't turn away.

The men scattered. Feet on concrete. Weapons shifting.
Two figures remained.

One, a silhouette. Knife-edges. Guns, grenades. A shadow sculpted out of metal and murder. Pale demon mask stretched wide in its grin. Oni Lee.

Beside him - someone new. Smaller. Compact. Tactical gear strapped tight. Gas mask, lenses burning red. Black hair spilling loose, glossy in the factory lights.

Lung turns. A single finger, long, calloused, pointing. A spear aimed at his own hound.

"You. Follow the groups. Alternate. If they hesitate, kill them with the families. If you see that shit sneaking around… break his arms. His legs. Bring him to me."

Oni Lee nods. Holds still.

Then ash. Nothing. Gone.

Lung faces the other. She straightens, hand on hip, casual, too casual.

"Yes, mister bossman, sir," her voice sing-song, bright. "I walk around. Make things go boom-boom. Already know the drill."

"No." A rumble, iron deep. "Standby. Back to base."

"What?!" A snap of protest. "But I can blow that killer-wannabe fuck to smithereens! It'd be a cinch. Done and over. Beer after." Then, quieter, flatter, "Sir."

"Exactly. If you kill him, I kill you. Do not test me, Bakuda."

I swallow. Tongue scraping lips. Steel claw clutched tighter.

He won't share. Won't give anyone else the pleasure.

This was personal. Him and me.

And it would be. Just not the way he thinks.

I curl smaller. Bone pressed bone. Nails in dust.

Wait.

Wait.

Until footsteps dragged. Until Bakuda's whining trailed off into the dark.

Then—

"F-Fire!" a shout. Raw. Panicked.

A man at the entrance. Eyes wide, face pale.

"One of the caches – it's burning! Corpses too! It's him!"

The room ripples. Tension snaps through the air. Shouts rising, words tangling.

Bakuda spins, sharp, alert now. Red lenses flashing. Waiting for Lung.

He doesn't move. Doesn't blink.
Arms folded across his chest.

"Leave it to burn," he says. Flat. Heavy. "Do what I said. Now."

And just like that, they break. Scatter. Fear twitching in their hands, but obedience rooting in their steps. The ABB moves out.

Bakuda lingers. A hiss of whispers between her and him.

A growl in return, low, final.

She flinches. Backs away. Out. Gone.

Silence.

Just him.

Alone.

Broad back. Muscles corded tight. Arms heavy at his sides. Fingers curling, clawing nothing.

Still turned from me.

Lung waits.

Seconds stack. Then minutes. Then… nothing. I stop counting.

He doesn't move. Doesn't speak. Doesn't breathe, almost.

I curl tighter in the dark. Cramped hole in the wall. Locked room, abandoned room. Eyes fixed on his back.

Black lines crawl. Shift. Stretch over skin the color of smoke and dust. Not bone. Not muscle. Patterns. Wrong geometry. Slow. Too slow.

Carving. Writing the math of his death.

I glance at the locked door above me. See the lines crawl across it, too. Easy. Too easy. Cut through. Slip in. Finish it. He's alone.

Peek again—

Gone.

Walking.

Urgency seizes me. My lungs bite at my ribs. I move. Crawl. Scuttle. Slip through shadows, cling to walls, unseen.

The Dragon struts. His den empty, left behind. The blood and fire shrinking in his wake.

He walks into silence. Night. Dead streets. Windows shattered, doors ripped. Territory hollowed out. Nothing left but ruin.

And us.

THUMP.

I hug the walls. Boxes. Any shadow deep enough to bury me. Knife slick in my hand. Ankle throbs. Ignore it.

THUMP.

The lines glow. Dim red. Inside-out light. Crawling. Crawling.

They whisper.

THUMP.

My lips wet. Curl. The claw burns against my palm. Sweat freezes down my back.

Closer.

THUMP.

Closer.

THUMP.

Close enough to measure him. Tall. More than me. Too much. Fragile all the same.

One line. Diagonal. Across his back. Splits a dragon's snarl in half. Not so terrible. Not from here.

TH–UMP.

A worthy kill. A beast to look me in the eye. To fight back.

A rival.

TH-UMP.

I prowl. Knife steady.

Air presses on me, heavy, wet. My lungs claw. I don't need them.

THUMP.

Sky hums. Crackles. Ugly, swollen. Rain waits.

Saliva strings down my teeth. Something else too.

THUMP.

Legs coil. Ready. Ready—

THUMP.

He stops.

Hands clench. Knuckles pop. A growl rattles the ground. Not me. Him.

Challenge. Warning.

Recognition.

"I know you are there," voice deep, squeezing around my bones. "Come out and fight me, little killer."

I freeze. Stare. Breath held.

Raindrop.

One.

Then another.

Pat. Pat-pat. Pat-pat-pat.

The sky cracks open.

I leap. Run. Steps vanish into rain.

Lung turns, immediate, violent.

A grunt, deep. No - snarl. Animal.

Left arm erupts. Orange. Fire. Not a hand anymore. Claw. Dragon's talon. Swinging for my head. To crush. To melt.

And I see him.

The steel mask. Ancient.

Wrong.

Not a mask. That's his face. Flesh turned to metal. Monster.
Eyes burning. Wrathful light. Sun at dawn. Fixing on me. Target.

But I don't care. Don't look at the eyes. Eyes distract.

Arm. Fire.

Inside the fire, I see them. The lines. Moving. Shifting. Calling. Waiting.

Ready.

I swing. Knife in hand. He swings. Fist of flame.

I drop low. Too slow.

Agony bursts in my shoulder. White-hot. Searing.

Smell - burnt meat. My meat.
Hear - bones crack. Creak.

Acrid smoke in my nose. Half my body screaming fire.

I drive the knife. Into bicep.

Flames eat my hand, skin peeling, blistering. Doesn't matter. Drag the blade. Through him. Through the line.

I hit ground. Hard. Cough. Groan.

No. Not a groan. An animal noise. Wounded thing.

Shoulder screaming. Hurts - hurts so much.
Rain falls. Cold. Mixing with burnt flesh. Meat-water stench. Vomit in my throat.

But I've hurt worse. I've bled worse.

I crawl up. Push legs straight. Look back.

Lung. Still tall. Still there.

Flames crawling his arm.
Skin cracking, lava veins glowing orange, too bright.

Steam hissing off him in sheets. Rain evaporating before it touches.

One second. Two.

He stiffens. Growls. Breath heavy.

Neck turns slow. Looks down. Left arm.

Wet sound. Flesh ripping.

His arm falls. Dead weight. From bicep down.

Plop. Steam.

Stump smooth. Flat. Too clean. My line. My cut.

The red in the stump deepens. Crimson… then orange. Bright. Bleeding molten sludge. It hits the floor, eats through it. Fire-blood.

He straightens.
Sound again. Low. Rolling.
Growl? Laugh? Both? Neither?

Can't tell. His face - iron, unreadable.

But the eyes.
I know.

No fear.
No doubt.
No surprise.

Only fury.

THUMP.

I look into his eyes. See the lines shifting.

I can take him.
Dies tonight.

THUMP.

Flesh splits. Bones cracking, snapping, reforming.

Skin burns dull grey, like old ash baked into flesh.

Taller. Wider. Heat spilling off him in waves. Pants burning through at the legs.

Man becoming beast.

Bigger target.
Easier kill.

THUMP.

My body seizes. Muscles coil. Not thrill. Warning.

He can take me too.

He could kill me.

THUMP.

No. Won't. Can't.

Not after this. Not after everything.

One cut. The perfect cut.

I focus. A line, head to toe.

My hand clamps the knife tighter.

He tenses.
Wait.
Wait.
Wait…

I leap—

CRACK.

Stop.

"…ghhh—hhghhh—"

He lifts me.

Not claws. Not grabbing.

…Huh?

His fist - inside.

Chest split open around him.

No. No. Not right.

Metal-grey twisted into me.
Deeper. Further. Something creaks apart. Gives way.

Can't feel it.

No pain. No relief.

Just nothing.

Can't breathe.
Can't move.
Why?

He tilts his head. Curious. Almost bored.
My own head falls sideways. Won't hold. Too heavy.

One second. Two. Three.

He pulls.

Wet. Ripping.

A sound that shouldn't exist.
Blood erupts. Spray across his face. His hand dripping red.

I drop. Back first. Heavy. Too heavy.

Knife? Gone. Can't feel. Can't find.

Arms dead. Neck locked.

Lung steps into view. Black. Burning. Rain hissing against him. In his hand—

A lump. Flesh. Meat.

He lifts it, dripping, steaming in the rain.

I don't understand. Can't. Until he clenches his fist, and I feel nothing inside.

Sizzling in his palm. Cooking alive.

He squeezes. Pops.

Blood runs through his fingers.
Looks at me. Grumbles low.
Turns. Walks.

I can't move.

Sky above - dark. Or blind.
Vision shrinking.
Cold setting.

Thought drifts past.

I had him.

Another.

…Did I?

No answer. Darkness eats the rest.
So tired.
Just a nap. Quick nap.
Then I'll go home. Rethink.
Just one nap.

I'm tired…

DEAD END

Bite Not the Dragon's Neck

You challenged a dragon before your fangs had grown in.

"Learn when to listen to your instincts.
"The lines of death are everywhere - but some are surrounded by fire.
"Come back when you know how to bleed smart."

Chapter Text

1/The Girl Who Didn't Die
Bite the Dragon's Neck

"Cut what stops me… Hide when watched… Kill the dragon."

The words leaked from me in a whisper, seeping into the wood slats. I curled tighter under the bed, eyes locked on the shifting glow beneath the frame. The lines shimmered crimson, twitching like veins alive with blood, then sank into black when they crawled into the light.

I pressed the knife to my chest.

Fold. Unfold.
Fold. Unfold.

Each click echoed in my ribs, syncing with my heartbeat until I wasn't sure which was calling the other. Steel and pulse. Pulse and steel. My palm sweated around the hilt. I let it burn there, acclimating - weight, sound, the sharp prickle in the skull before the cut.

Pain bloomed hot behind my eyes, a fire that wanted more. I steadied it with the knife again.

Fold.

Unfold.

Fold.

Unfold.

Tonight.

I would kill Lung tonight.

I'd already mapped the Docks, every rotten street and alley, every face of the grunts who hadn't gone into the ground yet. I knew the guns, the hands steady enough to use them, the ones who flinched, the ones who didn't.

I'd walk into the beast's belly and cut until it stopped moving.

The capes wouldn't touch the Docks after dark unless a war broke out. The cops would circle the crime scenes like moths, dissecting what I left behind. The ABB was raw and rattled, formations cracked, nerves frayed. If I struck now, I could strangle the breath out of them before it returned.

Otherwise - they'd keep.

Keep robbing.
Keep breaking.
Keep killing.

Not anymore.

The light in my room was a dull white, muted through thick clouds. I didn't need to look to know they were swollen with rain. The air pressed heavy, damp, sticky in my throat.

Lung would be dead before the sky broke.

Footsteps. Heavy. Dragging.

"Taylor," Dad called. "I got donuts. Your favorite. The one with chocolate inside."

The door creaked open. I curled into myself, breath stilled, knife pressed against ribs like a secret I couldn't let him see.

"Taylor?" His voice was soft, cautious. "You there, kid? Time for breakfast."

I didn't answer. Couldn't. If he saw me crawl out from under the bed—if he saw me like this—it'd ruin everything.

My stomach growled. Loud. Treacherous. I clamped a hand against it, felt the hollow ache gnaw deeper. No time for that. No space for soft, useless things like food or sleep. There was only one thing left to do.

Dad sighed. The door clicked shut.

I stayed in the dark, cramped hollow. Tried to let the silence smother me. But the hunger clawed. Not the hunger for food - worse. Eating at me from the inside, stripping me raw. I'd been starving myself down to the bones, only what was necessary, nothing to slow me.

Still, the pain crawled up my spine.

Horrible. Unbearable.

…If I went into the night with this gnawing emptiness, I'd break before Lung did.

I crawled out slow, careful, like the world was watching me through the walls. Stood on shaking legs. Pocketed the knife.

Walked out.

Kept myself small. Moved quiet through my own house like it belonged to someone else. Didn't want to run into Dad. Didn't want him to see me. Didn't want to see him.

Downstairs. I stalked the hall. Peeked into the living room.

He sat there, mug steaming, donuts on the coffee table. TV flickering. Didn't even notice me.

Not really watching either. He had a book in his other hand.

The hunger clawed at me. Hollow belly. Tight throat. Saliva pooling. I squinted, forced myself to focus on the cover and not in the sensations. Couldn't make out the title at this distance, but I knew it anyway.

Weathering the Storm.

…A book he bought three years ago. After Mom. After everything. He'd finished it long ago. Why now? Memories? Wounds reopening? Or just circling back, seeing if the words felt different this time?

Didn't know. Wouldn't ask.

The ache in my gut chewed through my spine. Couldn't take it. But I couldn't just walk in, grab a donut.

Backed off. Slipped into the kitchen instead.

And there. More donuts. Waiting on the kitchen counter. The fancy ones, the kind we never bought unless it was special. My legs carried me before I thought. My mouth watered. My belly screamed.

A note sat there. I snatched it up with shaking fingers, chest tight.

All for you, kid. Don't eat them all in one go.

A little smiley face drawn beside it. Wobbly lines. Crooked. Dad's hand.

I froze. Stared down at the plate. Reached out.
The hunger tore at me. My throat burned. My eyes stung wet.

I wasn't sure if it was just the hunger. Or - something else. Something worse.

Didn't matter. No time for that. No time for Dad. Only this.

I picked one up. Pressed it to my mouth. Bit down—

"Taylor?"

"Hmmf—ghh—"

Choked. Swallowed hard, smacked my chest once, twice, until it slid down.

"…H-Hey, Dad," I mumbled, mouth still half full.

Footsteps. Close, steady.

"Easy there. Where were you?" His voice carried that awkward laugh of his, the one he used when he didn't know how to feel. "I checked your room, you weren't there. Did you… bathroom? Or sneak outside?"

"Foilef," I said around the donut, crumbs sticking to my lips. Too hungry to stop. "Didn't hear you. Sorry."

He put his mug down with a soft clink. Turned. Looked.

"There you go again, apologizing over nothing." He smiled faintly. "We've gotta break you of that, honestly. You don't nee—"

Stopped. Mid-step. Mid-breath.

Just stood there. Watching.

"…What?" I asked, stuffing another bite in, trying not to inhale it like an animal.

He didn't answer. Moved in slow, cautious. Like I was a cornered creature.

"Taylor," he said, softer now. "Are you okay?"

I chewed, swallowed hard. Raised a brow.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

His eyes roamed my face. Down, up. His hand lifted halfway, then dropped. "You look…" pause, "…you look terrible."

I tried to laugh. Came out flat. Tried to smile. My lips didn't listen.

"Bit harsh, Dad."

"I'm not being rude," he said quickly. "I just - have you been sleeping? Eating?"

"…I'm eating right now." I waved the half-gone donut. My voice caught. I forced it out anyway.

He didn't blink. Crossed his arms, shoulders tight.

"Before the donuts."

The word caught in my throat. I choked, coughed once, twice. Managed a hoarse, "Yeah."

But he just stayed there. Staring. Waiting. And I couldn't meet his eyes. Couldn't stand them. I locked onto the countertop instead, watched faint lines dance and shift there, phantom veins waiting to be cut.

"Is there something you want to tell me?" His tone leveled, that steady-dad kind of serious. "Or do I have to talk it out of you?"

I sighed through my nose, forcing calm.

"I'm honest about how I feel, Dad. No need to pull anything out. I'm fine."

His head shook slowly.

"You're my daughter. I love you more than anyone in this world. I would never push past your will. But I can't let you keep something buried if it's hurting you. You did it with the bullying. You almost did it with the locker. I won't sit and watch it happen again. Your wellbeing is not negotiable."

I slowed my chewing. Focused on the donut. On the chocolate bleeding out the middle. Something I could hold. Something simple.

He leaned forward. Voice pressing closer.

"I've been patient, Taylor. But I need an answer. A real one. What happened now? How do I help?"

Help. Not do you need it? Just… help, unconditional. Like love. Like friendship. Like things that burned hotter than hunger and weighed heavier than knives. Freely given, not so freely accepted.

And I didn't know what to do with it. Couldn't.

"Do I need to spell it out?" he pushed gently. His voice cracked just a little. "You're pale as chalk. Eyes sunken. Like you've been locked inside too long, but stepping out would set you on fire. Do you understand how it feels to see you like this? I can't simply—"

"I can't sleep."

It slipped out sharp, rough. A shard of truth. Enough to stall him.

He stopped. Silence heavy. Then a breath. I felt the panic soften in him, bend into something else. Gratitude, maybe. Relief.

"…Why not, kid?"

I licked my lips, dry and cracked. Thought of excuses, lies, half-truths. Thought of the book he read over and over, the nights he'd spent in the car, the emptiness that clawed like hunger and death at once.

My stomach twisted. With shame. With guilt.

One word cut through anyway. Heavy. Simple.

"Mom."

Another pause. Then…

"…Nightmares."

Dad didn't speak right away. I tore into another donut, sugar and grease sticking to my fingers. Halfway through I stopped, throat tight. I was chewing like an animal, feeding while dropping that kind of weight on him. The food sat heavy, twisting in my stomach with something worse than hunger.

Trash. That's what I was. For lying. For twisting the knife in wounds that hadn't closed. For being nothing more than a shadow at his table.

But there was nothing else I could give him. Better to stir up ghosts than bury myself alive with the truth.

I risked a glance. He was smiling.

"Thank you," he said softly. "For being honest."

The words dug deeper than the hunger ever could. I just nodded, bit again, kept my mouth busy.

"How often does it happen?" His tone sharpened. I forced a swallow.

"…On and off. No pattern. It just… comes."

He crossed his arms, nodding as if that meant something.

"I see. I understand. Would you want to talk about it? Maybe… not with me, if it's too hard. A therapist, someone you can open up to. An expert."

I shook my head, exhaled through my nose. "I don't need help, Dad. I'm not broken. These things happen, no matter what. Best to accept it and move on."

Silence. His eyes stayed on me. I pushed through.

"Knowing you're here… that's enough."

I heard him let out a long breath. Not tired, not beaten down the way he usually got - this one was light, almost relieved. He smiled like something had been set right. Maybe proud of me, maybe proud of himself, like we'd finally had a heart-to-heart worth keeping.

I couldn't tell.

All I knew was that his relief curdled in my stomach. Sat heavy on top of the donuts.

Maybe it wasn't the lie. Maybe it wasn't even dragging him by the nose. Maybe it was dragging her into it - Mom's name, fresh salt over an old wound. All to cover the black gnawing inside me.

He still looked at me like I was just his kid. His darling daughter. Not some starving thing chewing lies between bites of sugar.

"Okay," he said, voice soft enough to almost vanish. "Okay, I understand. But promise me… if something's wrong, you'll tell me. If you need me. I'll always be here."

My throat clenched. The hunger eased for a breath, like it had been soothed by his words, then came right back sharper. I nodded anyway. Forced out some raspy words.

"Thanks, Dad."

He left me to the donuts. I left for my room.

Thought about crawling under the bed again, but my body collapsed onto it instead. Pillow to chest, legs pulled in tight. The taste of chocolate and grease still clinging to my tongue.

I told myself I'd sleep. Told myself it was just tonight. Just one kill. Then maybe… maybe I'd rest. Maybe I'd eat without shame. Maybe I'd even tell Dad I'd finally done something good. That I was worth something. That he could be proud.

I tried to picture it - coming home to warmth, to a meal that filled me instead of hollowing me out. Tried to feel the weight of being useful, after three years of scraping by as nothing.

But when I closed my eyes, there was no warmth. Just the black of night. Just the weight of steel in my hand. Just the faces of people staring at me from the wrong end of a blade.

I opened my eyes. Saw the shifting lines again, crawling at the edges of everything. Waiting.

I curled tighter, tighter, as if I could squeeze myself small enough to vanish. Small enough to stop wanting.

When I woke, everything was dark. I slid out of bed, then out of the house, the hunger leading me on.

The sky sagged low, dark grey smeared with smoke. The air pressed down hot and heavy, wrong for winter. I could taste it.

Metal on my tongue. Blood on the back of my throat. A thirst nothing would quench.

Blue uniforms ringed the Dragon's den. Streets clogged with cops corralling people, waving papers, voices flat with exhaustion. I stayed clear of the big roads. Too open. Too loud. The alleys were worse - sealed with tape, flashlights, watchful eyes. Traps waiting for something like me to walk into them.

Capes hovered at the edges, some stiff, some slack. One in particular - blue armor, heavy frame, visor lit with cold light. Armsmaster. His patrol loop cut close, bike growling low. I shrank back into the dark, felt my pulse in my throat. Wrong time. Wrong hunter.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait—

Lag in his circuit. Just seconds, but seconds were enough. I slipped across the street, breath thin, body tight.

I picked the middle ground. A street cluttered with the herd, civilians bristling at barricades, cops barking orders, everything restless. Too busy to notice me threading through.

Coffee-stink on the breath of one officer. Complaints about murder, about shifts, about pay. Mundane noise, dull enough to cover me. I crouched, slid past their cordon, skin prickling as if the air itself wanted to catch me.

"Get out of my way already!"

A voice broke through, sharp, angry. I froze, ducked behind a car. Peeked.

She was there.

Dark green uniform, tight, clean. Olive skin taut with wiry muscle, scarf catching the light. Beret and sash bright against the fog, knife at her hip. Empty hands now, but never unarmed.

Miss Militia.

The air shifted. I shrank smaller.

War, given a human face.

"Please, sir." Her voice carried, steady, almost ceremonial. "We just need a name. An address. For your safety. Then you can go."

The man spat his answer, bitter and cracked. "I ain't got time for this. You're paid to block me. Paid to waste my time. I'm not. Look at the clouds - it's about to rain! Great job, hero."

Static buzzed in my head.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait—

More officers stepped in, voices rising, bodies shifting. Militia's focus divided, spread thin over sheep.

And I slid through the gap. Quiet, breathless, into the Dragon's den.

The Docks were thinner tonight. Fewer bodies, but thicker tension. Every step felt watched. Shadows bristled like hackles raised. I kept to walls, sliding through alleys, eyes low.

A warehouse ahead. Windows shattered. Lights bleeding through cracks. I slipped inside, crouched low.

Voices. Sharp. Hungry. Violet threads snapping restless across my sight. Five - no, eight targets. Too many.

Wait.

Knife in hand. Fold. Unfold. Fold. Unfold. The click echoed in my chest like a second heartbeat.

"Damn, these babies ain't nothing like those little pistols! Feels like I'm a terrorist or some shit—"

A smack, hard. Steel parts clattering.

"That baby is an AK-47, moron. Point it at my face again and I'll break your arms. Boss wants a sweep. Eyes open. Focus or die."

"Hey, hey, that a threat? Don't like your tone, man."

Laughter. A shove. Something crashed - a crate, maybe.

"No threats. Just truth. You saw the last crew. Four men, cut into pieces. Dead meat. This thing - we don't know if it's a cape. Don't know if it's a monster. Doesn't matter. Guns are the bare minimum if we want to breathe tomorrow. Gear up and move out. You, you, and you, stay. Anything moves? Shoot. Then shoot again. And if it's bigger than you can handle… torch the place."

Boots stamped in rhythm. A pack, priming itself for the hunt. Doors slammed. Lights dropped, leaving the bare glow of bulbs overhead.

I stayed still. Counted breaths. Counted seconds. Till their shoulders eased, their voices loosened.

"Shit, all this for one guy? Boss should take care of him himself."

"Yeah, genius idea. Except no one who's seen him lived, dumbass. The two who did? Hospital beds. Rat knows he can't touch the boss, so he hides. We gotta flush him out."A pause. The scrape of a mag slamming home.

"…I dunno," another muttered. "If he can just fillet people like that… I ain't sure even the boss could handle him. Just sayin'."

Silence. Uneasy. Thick with the weight of their own words.

Good.

"Pray he can, then. Or we're fucked. Anyway - where'd the others go?"

"The usual. Y'know, the factory. Green doors. Boss wants a meeting before the hunt."

My tongue dragged across my lips. Factory. Green doors.

The Dragon's den.

I unfolded the knife, the steel whispering open like a promise.

I waited.
Waited.
Waited.

Then I slid behind one. Close enough to smell the heat of him. My hand moved before thought. A flicker.

Dark.

The lights were gone, but I didn't need them.

The floor was wet. Sticky. My steps left quiet sounds that weren't echoes. The walls breathed, sweating red.

Shapes sprawled at my feet. Not bodies - too many parts, too few wholes. Things I didn't remember carving.

And they moved. Moaned. Scratched at air with fingers that weren't there anymore. Voices bubbling out in pieces, too broken to form language.

My stomach lurched. Something inside me twisted, sharp and sweet, a nausea that wasn't entirely revulsion. I staggered back, hand clamped over my mouth.

A box hit my hip. I slipped my hand inside. Cold metal brushed my skin. Bullets. Guns. Then - round. Heavy. Familiar. I pulled it up into the dim light.

Grenade.

I rolled it in my palm, its weight pressing deep into my skin. I set it down. Kept digging.

Another shape. Cylindrical. Letters catching light - incendiary.

A touch on my ankle. Fingers - or what used to be fingers. I jerked, breath tearing out of me, and kicked. A sound followed, broken and wet. The thing crawled anyway.

I yanked the pin and dropped the canister into the box. Fire would do what I couldn't.

But I hesitated at the door.

They were still moving. Still pleading in sounds too mangled to be human.

I swallowed hard. Then I dragged each one into the street. Every shuddering, half-living scrap. They clawed and moaned, too weak to stop me, too stubborn to die.

Behind me, the warehouse began to crackle. To breathe smoke.

I ran.

"Taylor… please. Don't shut me out. I'm here."

A voice. Warm. Too warm. A tether tugged inside me. My breath caught; the hunger loosened, dulled.

"I'm still here," I whispered back, and kept moving.

I pressed to walls and shadows, slipping between alleys and containers. The Docks were empty, but the air wasn't - it pulsed with something nervous, watchful. The kind of silence that twitched if you breathed too loud.

Then I heard it. Feet shifting. Voices stacking. The click and snap of guns being fed and readied. I followed the noise until I found it: a rotting factory with faded green doors, light bleeding through cracks like a corpse twitching on dirt.

I circled low, taking my time. Every window watched. Every door barred. Too many men to walk straight in. No gaps, except—

A hole. Just where the wall sagged into the ground. Too narrow for a man, wide enough for something thin, patient.

I dropped flat. Crawled. Felt cobwebs drag over my face, a spider caught on my cheek. I speared it with my knife and wiped the blade against my sleeve without breaking rhythm. Inch by inch, until I was inside.

Boxes, shelves crumbling to powder. A faint light under a door. I crept to it, pressed my ear. Voices, blurred. The knob refused to turn.

So I crouched again, belly scraping the dust. The lines writhed at the bottom of the wall, waiting. I slid the knife into one and dragged sideways. The plaster gave with a clean crack. I pulled the piece free, careful. Looked through.

A crowd. Dozens in red and green, skin scrawled with beasts and monsters. Knives, pistols, rifles… an arsenal in wrong hands. Every voice silenced, listening.

All watching the man at their center.

Muscle corded tight across his back, dragons burning red and green on his skin. Shoulders broad enough to carry violence like nothing. Hands thick and scarred, jeans too clean, out of place on something feral.

Lung.

The Dragon.

I pressed lower, breath shallow against the dirt, fingers clawing dust. My hair fell forward, curtains around my eyes. I listened.

His voice rolled out, heavy, jagged. Like the lowest piano key, pressed too long, too hard.

"Fifteenth to twentieth. Empty the houses. If you find a family, kill a parent. The children… take them with you. Kill them if he does not come. Anyone runs, you shoot."

The words thudded in my ear, rhythm steady as a war drum. Not rage. Not indignation.

Recognition.

He raised a fist in front of his face.

"He likes to play hero. We make him play."

The room shifted. Uneasy. Their silence wasn't morality - it was fear. A collective flinch. Not enough to stop them.

And in me, something cracked.

Happy. Furious. Both at once. Because he did this for me. Because people would scream and burn because of me.

And the thought filled me with a sick rush, like a piece sliding into place.

For once, someone saw me and didn't turn away.

The grunts murmured assent. Began to scatter. Two figures remained.

Oni Lee - skinny shadow wrapped in knives, face a white demon grin. And beside him, someone new. Smaller, armored in black, gas mask lenses glowing red. Hair glossy, straight, falling down her back.

Lung turned to Oni Lee first. Finger jabbing like a spear. "You. Follow the groups. Alternate. If they hesitate, kill them with the families. If you see that shit sneaking around… break his arms. His legs. Bring him to me."

Oni Lee nodded once.

A heartbeat later, his body unraveled into ash. Gone.

Lung turned to the other. She tilted her head, one hand on her hip, voice bright.

"Yes, mister bossman, sir. I walk around. Make things go boom-boom. Already know the drill."

"No." His voice dropped deeper. "Standby. Back to base."

"What?!" she snapped. "But I can blow that killer-wannabe fuck to smithereens! It'd be a cinch. Done and over. Beer after." Then, quieter, flatter, "Sir."

"Exactly. If you kill him, I kill you. Do not test me, Bakuda."

I swallowed hard. My tongue flicked across dry lips. The knife—my steel claw—tightened in my grip until my knuckles burned.

He didn't want anyone else touching this. He wanted me for himself.

Good.

It would be between us. But not how he thought.

I curled smaller, pressed lower to the ground. Waiting. Breathing shallow. Waiting until the factory thinned out, until Bakuda's complaints shrank into mutters.

Then—

"F-Fire!" a man burst in, eyes wide, voice cracked. Panic punched through the room. "One of the caches - it's burning! Our guys, they're… they're cut apart, but alive! It's him!"

The crowd jolted like a single body. Shouts broke out. Hands twitched for weapons. Bakuda snapped her head around, sharp as a blade, eyes locked on Lung.

He didn't even flinch. Arms folding across his chest, voice low, iron.

"Leave it to burn," he said flatly. "Do what I said. Now."

Something passed through them - clarity, or fear sharpened into obedience. The mob scattered, boots thundering out into the night.

Bakuda lingered, whispering sharp, fast. I couldn't catch the words. He growled, deep enough that the walls seemed to hum, and she fell back. One last glance, then she too slipped out.

Silence.

Only him left. Still. Vast. Arms hanging loose at his sides, fingers flexing like claws against the dark. His back turned.

Lung stayed there. Still. I counted seconds. Then minutes. Then stopped counting.

His back was a wall of muscle, black ink crawling over tan skin. The tattoos shifted in my eyes, lines writhing into patterns that didn't follow bone or flesh… etching something else, something older.

The script of his death.

I glanced at the locked door at my side, its seams alive with black threads waiting for a knife. Easy. Too easy. A cut, a crawl, and he'd be mine.

I looked back.

Gone.

He was already walking out.

Urgency gripped me by the throat. I slipped from my hole, slithered outside, kept to the dark as I rounded the factory. There - his shape against the streetlight glow. A giant strolling into dead ground. Empty street. Broken windows, gutted houses, nothing left alive. Nothing left but us.

THUMP.

I hugged the walls, the crates, anything that cast a shadow. Knife in hand. An ache twisted in my ankle. I ignored it.

THUMP.

The lines lit red, crawling over him, pulsing with every step. They weren't just showing me the kill. They were calling me to it.

I licked my lips. Felt them curl into a grin.

THUMP.

The knife burned hot in my grip. Sweat slid down my temple, cold as ice.

Closer.

THUMP.

Closer still. Close enough to see how massive he really was… and how breakable.

I fixed on a single line, a diagonal slash across the dragon on his back. From here, not a beast. Just a throat waiting to be cut.

TH-UMP.

A rival. A kill that mattered.

TH-UMP.

The hunger coiled, hot and wet in my chest.

TH-UMP.

The sky pressed down, swollen, ugly, ready to burst.

Saliva dripped between my teeth. My jaw ached.

TH-UMP.

I tensed. Every muscle pulled tight. Ready to leap.

TH—

He stopped.

Fists clenched. A growl rolled out of him, deep and raw, rattling in my bones.

"I know you are there," he rumbled, voice thick as iron. "Come out and fight me, little killer."

I froze. Eyes wide, unblinking.

The first drop struck.

Pat. Pat-pat. Pat-pat-pat.

The rain came.

I moved.

Lung turned instantly, a grunt tearing from him, half-snarl, half-laugh. His arm detonated in orange flame, clawed fingers of fire stretching for my skull. A dragon's talon, eager to crush, to burn.

And I saw him. Not a costume. Not a mask. A monster's face in flesh and steel, eyes lit with dawnfire.

I didn't meet them. Too dangerous. I looked at his arm. The flames. The lines shifting inside the blaze. Waiting.

Ready.

I swung as he did.

Duck low. The world went white-hot. Pain ripped through my shoulder, sharp, searing. The smell of my own meat cooking clawed at my throat. I gagged on it.

My knife carved across his bicep. The fire bit into my hand. I dragged anyway.

I hit the ground on all fours, choking, coughing like an animal left broken in the dirt. My shoulder screamed. Rain hissed against the burn, carried the stench into my lungs until bile rose.

But I'd known worse.

I staggered upright. Turned.

Lung loomed, fire-wrapped. His body was already splitting, veins glowing orange, steam ghosting up as rain boiled on his skin.

A beat.

Then he twisted his neck. Looked down.

A wet sound. Flesh parting.

His arm hit the ground.

The stump glowed, lava-bright, bleeding molten sludge that hissed and ate through the street.

He straightened. His chest rumbled.

A growl. A laugh. Both.

And his eyes—burning into mine—held no fear.

Only fury.

THUMP.

I cut his arm. Severed it as easily as anything else.

He didn't retreat. He didn't falter.

He'd kill me or die trying.

THUMP.

His body cracked, little sounds like breaking glass as his skeleton twisted, thickened, forced his muscles outward. White-hot blades erupted through his flesh, welding themselves into a second skin of metal. The mask stayed in place, the last remnant of something human caging what no longer was.

He stood there. Waiting.

THUMP.

Flesh split. Bone snapped. His skin greyed as ash over coals. Taller. Broader. The lines grew with him, stretching over his body, fusing with the veins of molten light pulsing beneath the armor. His legs smoldered through the ruined fabric of his pants.

Man to beast.

Beast to something worse.

THUMP.

The longer I stared, the less I believed.

THUMP.

I…

THUMP.

…I'd already failed. I hadn't killed him with the first strike. I hesitated. And hesitation was death.

The hunger lied to me. The lines lied to me.

I'd lost the fight before it began.

THUMP.

I stepped back.

He stepped forward, talons of steel gouging the concrete with each stride. His eyes burned holes through the mask, steady, unblinking.

Then his stump lashed out.

A whip of molten blood carved the air.

I threw myself flat. The stream hissed through the wall behind me, stone collapsing like sugar.

I rolled to the side.

His fist followed. The pavement buckled where I'd been. The shockwave sent me tumbling.

For a heartbeat, I thought of running. But then - lines. So many lines. A target crawling across his leg. If I cut it… cripple him. End him. Escape.

I lunged. Knife ready.

His foot struck out, a claw of fire and steel. I ducked late. Too late.

The graze ripped air from my chest. My body spun, weightless, collapsing into the street.

I clawed at the ground, stopped myself, choking for breath. My ribs burned. My shoulder screamed. My knife—charred, steaming—still in my hand. I gripped it until my palm hurt.

I looked up.

Gulp.

Lung smashed his remaining arm into a car.

Metal shrieked. He lifted it like a toy, hoisted it above his head, turned toward me.

"…Come on."

He threw.

The car filled my vision. Falling. Crushing. No time. No space.

Instinct. My knife shot out, desperate. Metal shrieked.

The blade sank into a line running across its frame.

The world cracked.

Rain exploded into my face as the car split, halves crashing down to either side. I lay between them, coughing, sputtering, alive.

Alive.

A sound scraped my throat raw. "Ha… haha."

I sat up. Every joint groaned like breaking hinges. Pain gnawed through me, bone and muscle and fire.

But I saw him again.

Lung. Taller now. Broader. A shadow crowned in flame, eyes burning through the rain. The stump of his arm dripped liquid fire, each drop hissing, eating into the street. Cracks blazed across his body like a furnace breaking free of its shell.

My heart slammed once, hard enough to hurt.

He would not stop.

I tried to stand. My legs buckled, dumped me back into the water. Rain splashed up cold against my face.

The ground rumbled beneath me – steady, merciless.

Footsteps.

Lung, closing in. Not rushing. Not cautious either. Just approaching.

I glanced around. Empty street. Empty buildings. No one left but him and me.

I dragged in a ragged breath, knuckles whitening on the knife. A fight meant death - too strong, too fast. Like a fly throwing itself at a furnace. Running was possible, but he'd catch me. Snap me. Burn me.

Think. Think.

I braced on the pavement, forcing my body to rise, and then I saw them. The lines. Slick and shifting, rainwater crawling into them like they were more than fractures - like they were openings, waiting.

My heart thudded, sharp and hungry. I remembered. The day I saw Glory Girl and Armsmaster in action, the way the lines moved across asphalt - death written into the world's skin.

I pressed my knife into the line beneath me and held it there, still.

I fixed my gaze on Lung, rising onto one knee. Let him see me. Let him hear me. The only chance I had left.

I breathed. In. Out. Let the rhythm settle into my hand.

Fold. Unfold. Fold. Unfold.
Thump. Th-ump. Thump. Th-ump.

And then I smiled from under my hood, lips pulled tight around the hunger burning my throat.

"Is that all you've got?"

He froze.

For a heartbeat, only rain. Only the knife in my hand. My own breath hissing in my ears. His eyes burned through the dark, shining and inhuman.

Then - gone.

Now.

I rolled, dragging the knife across the line as I moved. The world split.

Lung slammed down where I'd been, an eruption of fire and steel tearing into the street. Not just a crater. The ground gave way in slabs, sidewalk and asphalt collapsing with him.

I kept rolling. Staggered into a run, half-blind. Slid into an alley before the fractures could claim me too.

I didn't look back.

Didn't stop.

Ran until the night blurred together, until my body betrayed me and dropped me into another half-flooded alley.

I slumped against a wall, knife heavy in my hand before I pocketed it. My chest rose and fell in ragged gasps.

Rain drummed over me, into my eyes, until the world swam.

I tried to shape words, lips trembling.

"Next time…"

The rest never came. Or maybe I choked it back.

There wouldn't be a next time.

I wasn't sure why.

Wasn't sure if it was the fire, the pain, or the blood on my hands. I only knew that, at one point… none mattered. Not anymore.

It was all for nothing.

I curled into myself as the rain poured down, let the hunger slip, and finally—finally—let sleep take me.

1/The Girl Who Didn't Die
END

Chapter Text

1/Interlude
The Slasher

Dean woke up with something heavy pressing against his chest.

Not sadness. Not exhaustion. Just weight - dense, stale.

He sat up, the room around him still dim, the rain gone but its scent clinging to the curtains. His sheets were warm, his bed too soft, and yet the heaviness didn't lift. He rubbed his eyes and stretched, trying to shake it off. The air stayed thick.

He felt it then - faint lights in the fog of his mind. Two of them. His parents were awake. He could tell without listening: small, steady flickers of emotion glowing through walls, through distance.

He noted it absently. Then the weight deepened.

Not a cloud, he realized. Not really. More like the world itself had gone hollow, every breath dragging through syrup. He knew this feeling. He'd felt it before… the morning of a factory fire, a call from the Docks, a funeral with too many black coats and not enough words…

His heart lurched.

He was out of bed before the thought finished, barefoot on the cold floor, running down the hall. The house was warm, polished, expensive, but every step felt heavier, slower, as if wading through ash. His mind raced ahead of him.

What happened? Mom, Dad? Someone at work? Victoria—?

He burst into the living room.

"Something—" he started, breath catching. "—Something happened. What's going on? Are you okay? Is it Victoria?"

No answer.

His father stood in the corner, still and rigid, the morning light cutting across his face. The shadows swallowed half of it, leaving him expressionless - or maybe just emptied. His mother sat on the couch, dressed already, posture perfect, eyes wide and glassy. Her lips trembled before she spoke.

She didn't. She only lifted a shaking hand and pointed.

Dean turned.

The TV flickered blue and white. The news anchor's voice was low, sterile. He didn't hear the words at first. Only the rhythm of tragedy, calm and professional.

Then he saw the text crawl across the bottom of the screen.

'FOURTEEN CIVILIANS FOUND SHOT DEAD AT 17TH AND HARBOR — SIX CHILDREN AMONG THE VICTIMS — AUTHORITIES SUSPECT GANG INVOLVEMENT AT THE DOCKS.'

The air left him. His knees nearly followed.

He steadied himself as he often did at tense meetings and gathered oxygen. Clenched his fists, his jaw. Tried to ground himself, to ignore the scent of soot wafting around, the taste of copper settling heavily on his tongue.

He'd been there last night. Left before midnight.

Fourteen people killed. While he slept like a baby.

He swallowed something that wasn't quite there - something bitter, catching in his throat.

His father moved, maybe. A nod, or just the flicker of one. His mother's hands rose to her chest, fingers trembling as if she meant to pray. Dean couldn't tell. The world had congealed around him, his thoughts too slow, a black fog settling between him and everything else. There was a heat under it too, small and steady, burning somewhere low in his gut.

He turned for his room. Jogged into it with an urgency he couldn't articulate just yet.

Didn't even make it to the closet before his phone buzzed on the nightstand.

One glance… he saw missed calls stacking up. Wards. Supervisor Shane. Miss Militia. A string of unread messages crowding the screen until his vision blurred. He picked it up and scrolled to the latest.

A single text.

Director Piggot: Gear up and come. Now.

He was already moving before he realized it.

There was something about standing in front of a crowd that made Dean's stomach tighten. It wasn't nerves – he liked people, liked being seen. It was more like sitting in a room with his parents before they started arguing, that fragile quiet when everyone knew something was wrong but no one said it aloud.

He could feel it now. The tension humming beneath the bright lights, the cameras, the hollow shuffle of reporters setting up.

The PRT had commandeered one of the city's halls, hastily turned it into a stage for damage control. Director Piggot had called for the conference before the morning's chaos could spiral any further.

By the time Dean and the other Wards were ushered in, the room was already packed. Grey faces, flashing bulbs, the space swollen with something invisible.

The suit helped. It let him hide the small betrayals of his face behind layers of metal and circuitry. Still, standing shoulder to shoulder with the team—Armsmaster rigid as iron, Miss Militia composed but taut, the rest of the adults carved from stone—, it was hard not to shift his weight, hard not to feel like a kid pretending to be calm while the house burned down.

He could hide it, maybe. But he couldn't unfeel it. Couldn't tune out the pulse of emotion pressing in from every side.

For Dean, empathy wasn't metaphor. It was sense. Hearing color, in a way… only sharper, invasive, too much. Every person around him carried their own weather, and all of it poured into him at once: static, heat, smoke. The hall was packed tight, and normally that kind of crowd blended into white noise. But not here. Not today.

This was standing too close to a bonfire.

Anger radiated off the crowd, raw, directed. Some of it at the ABB. Some of it at the heroes standing before them. Now and then the flames licked his own armor, and though he didn't think he deserved it, part of him understood.

He could pick out the cold spots too. Reporters whose outrage wasn't outrage at all – just gleaming, predatory curiosity. They weren't angry. They were hungry.

He turned slightly, letting his eyes trace the line of the team. Vista looked tiny beside the adults, a splash of green and white against the dull suits and black cameras. She shifted from foot to foot in perfect rhythm – timed, a performance of composure. Dean didn't need to guess what lay beneath: fear, revulsion, a powerlessness that tasted of metal.

Clockblocker and Aegis stood still, arms crossed, both simmering. He couldn't separate their anger from his own anymore. Kid Win twitched beside them, nerves sparking bright and erratic. Dean almost smiled. He really couldn't blame him.

…Shadow Stalker was absent. Probably for the best. He didn't want to know what she was feeling. Not right now.

The adults were easier to read but harder to stomach. Miss Militia was all discipline, with something ugly smothered down, a flame trapped under glass. Armsmaster was… quieter. A slow churn of disgust, frustration, and something else. A waiting, coiled pressure. Expectation. For what, Dean couldn't tell. Maybe Piggot's words. Maybe for the chance to stop talking and start fixing a city that was, right now, bleeding out in real time.

The rest of the adult capes weren't much different. Dauntless radiated calm, a steady pulse that anchored the space around him. Velocity, on the other hand, was a storm in a bottle, impatience grinding against the walls of his restraint. Assault looked composed, though the tremor underneath told another story. And Battery…

Battery hurt.

Sadness rolled off her in quiet, rhythmic waves, so raw it almost stole his breath. She hid it well, but he could feel it anyway. He pictured himself standing close enough to hear someone crying through a wall. He wasn't sure if it was her or her emotions that felt… small. Compacted. As if she was mourning something tiny. And that was somehow worse.

He forced himself to mirror her calm. Empathy was dangerous in moments like this.

Then there was Director Piggot.

She stood at the podium, thickset and immaculate, the perfect image of bureaucratic control. Her hair precise, her suit crisp, her gaze sweeping the restless crowd as though she were measuring its pulse. Cameras clicked. Reporters leaned forward. Piggot didn't flinch. She let them wait, dangling the silence as bait, offering them the promise of outrage, of justice, of something to print in bold before noon.

To most, she looked unreadable. To Dean, she was worse.

No sorrow. No rage. No confusion.

Just the faint throb of a headache, and beneath it, cold and pure and bottomless hate.

It wasn't like the sadness or anger rippling through the crowd. Piggot's emotions were colder, directionless, yet perfectly contained. Emotional frost on the glass of her mind. Dean couldn't decipher if she hated the ABB, the situation, or everyone in the room for making her face it. Maybe all of them. He stopped himself from probing deeper. Some feelings were better left unexamined.

When the last murmur faded, the doors shut, and security gave the all-clear, Director Piggot stepped forward. She straightened her jacket, brushed a finger against the microphones, and drew a collected breath.

"Good morning," she said. Her voice carried easily. Measured, steady, cutting through without needing to rise. "I am Emily Piggot, Director of the Parahuman Response Team for the East-North-East branch. Some of you know me already. For those who do not, I regret that our introduction must occur under such circumstances."

A beat of silence. The room held still. Cameras clicked softly, cautious not to break the spell.

"I will be brief," she continued, folding her hands over the podium. "At approximately three o'clock this morning, emergency services received multiple reports of gunfire and screams from residential areas near the Docks. Within thirty minutes, PRT units stationed on the perimeter registered a significant detonation. Upon arrival, they discovered that a full block had collapsed, with additional structural damage extending into adjacent streets."

She paused again. The faint hiss of her breath slipped into the microphones, sharp and sterile.

"There were no civilian casualties resulting from the detonation," she said. "However, as units responded to the distress calls, they discovered several residences forcibly entered. Multiple individuals were unaccounted for. Based on the evidence at hand, responding officers suspected coordinated abductions. PRT and police personnel initiated a joint sweep of the surrounding area, assisted by local heroes. The search did not locate the missing persons or any suspects."

Another pause. No one spoke, the silence itself bracing for impact. Dean's chest felt tight. He forced himself to breathe.

"Approximately two hours later, at around five-thirty," Piggot went on, her tone unchanged, "emergency services received additional reports of gunfire near the Docks. Law enforcement arrived on scene and found fourteen deceased individuals laid out along 17th street. Among the victims were six children, none older than ten."

The last sentence hung in the air, brittle, unreal. Cameras clicked, hesitant, as if unsure whether the moment was over. Director Piggot gave the grim, calm reassurance that it was not.

"The Parahuman Response Team has confirmed that both the kidnappings and the subsequent executions were carried out by the criminal organization known as the Azn Bad Boys – the ABB," she said, steady, almost mechanical. "The detonation was likewise traced to the parahuman designated 'Lung.'"

Her expression didn't change, but her words sharpened by a fraction as she went on. "Preliminary forensics indicate the victims were executed with military-grade assault rifles, weapons acquired through illegal channels."

Dean didn't need his powers to feel it – the crowd's anger flared, close and snarling, a suffocating heat. The room was full of people searching for somewhere to throw their outrage, and the woman at the podium was the nearest target. Cameras clicked faster. Someone drew in a sharp breath.

Then Piggot continued, cutting through the rising tension with surgical precision.

"Negotiators were not engaged because there were no demands," she said. "This was not a hostage situation. There was no ransom, no contact, no claim of responsibility. At the time, every indication suggested an internal dispute within the ABB… until it was too late to intervene."

A pause. The faintest creak of the podium as she leaned forward, weight braced through her arms.

"Let me be clear," she said, each word clipped. "This was not random gang violence. This was a coordinated act of terror – one that claimed fourteen innocent lives. A message written in blood."

Her voice didn't change—the same even cadence, the same cool timber—but whatever lived beneath it sharpened, a blade drawn from its sheath. The feeling that crawled under Dean's skin pressed down, focused; whatever Piggot harbored wasn't vague disgust anymore but purpose honed to a point.

"Whatever their intent," she said, flat and relentless, "it is irrelevant. They crossed a line. They abandoned any pretense of discernment and acted with military force against civilians, adults and children alike. They aimed to shatter the peace this city has fought to keep."

She straightened. From where he stood Dean could see the hard geometry of her face. No plea, no wavering, only verdict. Whether it was conviction or a long-made decision, it felt like iron.

"For those reasons, effective immediately," Piggot continued, "the Azn Bad Boys are designated as a terrorist organization under federal classification for premeditated acts of violence and endangerment of civilians. Resources—time, equipment, manpower—will be directed to dismantle this group, seize their assets and illegal armaments, and bring every responsible party to justice."

The room exhaled. Cameras stilled. Reporters' mouths hung open. The silence had weight; it lingered in the stillness, something waiting to be filled with consequences.

"The PRT and the Protectorate will bring justice to Brockton Bay," she finished, folding her hands on the podium with a practiced calm. "That is all."

Everyone went silent. Not for lack of words, not out of fear. It was the breath before a storm no one could see the end of. Resolve and doubt wound together as tightening wire. Dean resisted the urge to step back. The air itself seemed to press against him, heavy with the reporters' hunger – the cruel, desensitized hunger for answers, for a story. Some, he realized with a flicker of disgust, weren't mourning the dead. They were savoring the scoop.

Director Piggot, immaculate in her stillness, finally broke the spell with a single phrase.

"We will now take questions."

The room erupted.

Voices clashed, rose, tumbled over one another. Cameras flashed anew, chairs scraped violently, the room turned fever-hot. Dean saw the heroes stiffen, the PRT security edge forward, ready to step in if chaos turned physical.

The first microphone found its way to a young reporter. Calm, poised, her composure almost obscene against the backdrop of mass death.

Perhaps it was shock. Dean knew it was just the thrill of being first.

"Director Piggot," she began, her tone polite, professional. "Sasha Gottlieb, Brockton Bay Gazette."

Piggot inclined her head. "Good morning, Miss Gottlieb."

"Good morning. You mentioned that the ABB's intent is irrelevant," Sasha continued. "But the sudden kidnapping and execution of civilians, without ransom or contact, marks a sharp escalation. Lung usually confined his violence to other gangs – short, brutal turf wars with the Empire, nothing like this. This looks less like a bid for profit and more like an ideological statement."

She paused, eyes narrowing just slightly, scenting blood in the water.

"Is there any link between this attack and the recent killings of Asian youths in the Docks, many confirmed ABB members?" she pressed. "Could this 'message written in blood' be retaliation? A show of strength against a new enemy cutting into their ranks? And—" Her voice lowered, almost conspiratorial. "—should the city be worried about a new, unpredictable cape taking justice into their own hands?"

Piggot let the question hang for a heartbeat before answering.

"The intent behind this tragedy is irrelevant," she responded, voice crisp. "It won't affect the PRT's response. The ABB will be treated as a terrorist entity, and dealt with accordingly. There will be no leniency, no soft approach. If necessary, lethal action will be taken. They have already shown they're willing to respond in kind."

She paused, just long enough for the room to notice.

"As for the nature of the message…"

Her eyes closed briefly. The silence stretched. Dean felt it hit as a pulse – irritation first, then the tremor of exhaustion, and underneath it all, the acrid taste of… panic.

"…The PRT is still investigating the individuals responsible for provoking this event," Piggot continued, her tone smooth again, mechanical. "We have confirmed only what's been reported – the slain youths were affiliated with the ABB. Several survivors are in custody and will be questioned once they stabilize. At this time, it would be premature to label this a gang dispute or the emergence of new parahumans."

Calm. Official. Her voice still sounded like safety when piped through evening news.

But to Dean, it rang like static. Every syllable carried the hollow hum of fear dressed as order.

Terrorism. The word itself felt antiseptic. Something to scrub the blood off the floor with. As if naming the monster could make it vanish.

The crowd rippled with half-whispered approval and anger. Cameras clicked again. A few of Dean's teammates nodded along, reassured.

Dean couldn't. He still felt the weight of fourteen extinguished lives pressing down, soft and insistent.

"We are in control of the situation," Piggot said at last.

The words came sharp, practiced… but to him, they sounded closer to a prayer. A quiet, desperate hope in a city holding its breath.

When the room exhaled, the relief felt almost real. Almost.

"This is bullshit."

The word cracked through the training room like a gunshot.

Aegis, Kid Win, and Clockblocker all flinched – the kind of reflex you get when something heavy drops close to your feet. Dean didn't. He'd felt the pressure building inside Vista long before she opened her mouth. Still, seeing the polite, composed girl swear like that hit harder than he'd expected.

"I mean… yeah." Clockblocker rubbed the back of his neck, helmet off, red hair sticking out at every angle. His usual smirk faltered. "Not gonna argue with you there. Didn't even get a full night's sleep before the news broke."

Vista folded her arms tight, boot tapping a nervous rhythm against the floor. "We could've stopped it," she said, voice low but shaking. "We knew something was coming. Lung doesn't take hits lying down. If the Director had sent us in sooner—"

She broke off, kicked the metal wall. The clang echoed sharp and hollow. She hissed and pulled back, clutching her toe.

"Damn it!"

The boys traded glances. An angry Vista was unfamiliar territory. After a beat, they all looked at Dean. He sighed, brushing his hair back.

"Nobody could've predicted this, Missy," he said gently. "You heard Piggot. This wasn't a fight we could've won cleanly. If we'd gone in sooner, more people would've died. Now the PRT can evacuate before they hit back."

Vista spun towards him, eyes half-lidded, bangs slicing across her face. Dean braced himself, not for the glare, but for the hurt beneath it.

She knew he was right. That didn't make it easier to swallow.

"Right," she snapped. "So we sit around while Lung proves what we already know, that he's human garbage. Maybe you should be director, Dean. You've got it all figured out, huh, pretty boy?"

She kicked the wall again, harder this time. The impact rattled through the training room.

"And where the hell is Sophia?!" Another kick. "She should be here with us!"

The echo faded. Silence followed.

Dean gave the others a helpless look. Aegis sighed, weary. Clockblocker's mouth twitched toward a grin that didn't survive long enough to reach his eyes. Kid Win looked ready to melt through the floor.

Vista froze. Then she folded her arms tight, exhaled, and dragged a hand through her hair. When she looked back at Dean, her voice had softened.

"Dean, I'm so, so sorry—"

He started to smile. "It's okay—"

"—No, don't," she cut in quickly, shaking her head. "That was rude. I shouldn't have snapped at you. It was childish and—" she let out a short, self-conscious laugh, "—just stupid."

Her shoulders slumped. Arms crossed again, this time like she was trying to hold herself together.

"I'm sorry," she said, quieter now. "Everyone's on edge, but that's not an excuse. I shouldn't take it out on you. I was dumb."

Dean let the apology carry a beat before glancing toward Aegis. The team leader gave him a small, permissive wave – his way of saying your call. Dean nodded and turned back to Vista.

"You're not dumb or childish," he said gently. "You're human. It's a lot to take in, and you reacted like anyone would. Honestly, you're handling it better than most adults in the building. You know I can tell."

He felt the flicker of shame in her chest waver, struggling against the comfort his words brought. He decided to push her toward the lighter side.

"…You're allowed to be normal," he said, flashing a grin. "We already have enough weirdos on the team. Sophia, for one. And Dennis."

Vista snorted before she could stop herself. Clockblocker choked on his own breath and started coughing between protests. Kid Win grinned; Aegis shook his head, smiling faintly.

"H-Hey! I'm not weird!" Clockblocker sputtered, sitting upright. "I'm the funny one! Okay, maybe I'm a little weird, but in a good way! Like, charmingly weird! Heroically weird! You know… manly!"

Vista's shoulders shook with barely-contained laughter. "Just weird, Dennis," she said, voice trembling with a smile. "Period."

"Missy?! Why?!" Clockblocker cried, betrayed.

That finally broke them. The laughter came hesitant at first, then freer, the kind that leaves something warm behind in its wake. For a moment, the weight in the room lifted.

A sharp hiss broke the quiet — the pneumatic sigh of a door decompressing. Dean turned toward it before anyone else did; he'd already felt the familiar warmth of her presence brushing against the edge of his senses.

"Well, isn't that music to my goddamn ears," came a confident drawl. "It's been all gloom and doom all day."

Glory Girl stepped into the training room like she owned the light. Her hair fell in a golden curtain down her back, her white boots clicked cleanly against the floor, and her grin could've powered the city if you bottled it. Whatever had broken the world outside, it clearly hadn't reached her.

Dean's chest tightened instinctively. A flicker of warmth, pride… then, faintly, the sharp taste of jealousy blooming behind him. Vista. He caught himself before the impulse to go to Glory Girl overtook him. The room had just settled; no need to stir it up again.

"Good day, Prince Charming," Glory Girl said, leaning in to kiss his cheek. He returned it lightly, a small smile tugging at his mouth. Vista's emotions rippled, green and bright, but steady.

Then Glory Girl turned toward the rest of the team.

"Bozos," she greeted with a lazy two-fingered salute. Then, to Vista, "Queen."

Vista hesitated only a second before bumping her fist against Glory Girl's raised one. "Princess," she said, trying to sound unimpressed. It earned a laugh.

"She's learning!" Glory Girl announced with mock pride. "Anyway, how's everyone holding up? Not too bad? Dennis not dragging down the collective mood?"

Clockblocker threw up his hands. "I'm the funny one!"

Glory Girl's smile sharpened. "You're weird, Dennis. That's what you are."

The team broke into laughter again, easy, genuine this time. Even Aegis cracked a full grin. Clockblocker slumped dramatically, muttering something that sounded like whatever.

For a fleeting moment, it felt like a normal afternoon.

Dean started to answer but Aegis was a beat quicker, voice easy but businesslike.

"We're as well as anyone can be," he said, rolling one shoulder. "It was sudden. Piggot's briefed us already, though. We're on standby until the Docks evacuation finishes. How's the city?"

Glory Girl snorted. "A total mess." She rolled her eyes. "Protests, a couple crimes I had to nip in the bud. Empire's laying low for now."

"They'd be fools to poke at us while we choke out the ABB," Vista said. Her tone was calmer, the analyst in her taking the long view. "Let the enemy spiral."

Glory Girl twirled a lock of golden hair, a smile more threat than charm. "Maybe. I wanted to break me a Nazi over my knee on the way over, though," she said, blunt and bright. "Fucking Lung. If I get near him I'll make him regret existing."

A quiet agreement moved through the room. Dean waited, then grinned. "So why are you visiting, New Wave's golden girl? You weren't drafted."

She arched an eyebrow, the grin widening. "What, blondie – you disappointed?"

"Nope." Dean shrugged, easy.

Glory Girl's smirk softened to something warmer; Vista's shoulders loosened a fraction. It was a small, honest gain, and Dean let it settle in.

"The PRT rang Amy. Wanted her to talk with the forensics department about the victims or something," Glory Girl said, tapping a finger against her forearm. "I came with her. With what's going down, I'm not letting her walk out alone for a few days."

"Panacea could probably stop someone's heart with a touch," Kid Win muttered, his tone a notch too small. "Wouldn't need backup."

Silence snapped like a wire. Glory Girl fixed him with a look; Kid Win's apology caught in his throat. She snapped her fingers and he jumped a bit.

"Damn right she could," Glory Girl said, the thought arriving, the joke suddenly turning serious. "Kind of like… what's that movie with the blonde assassin?"

"…Kill Bill?" Kid Win offered.

"Kill Bill!" she repeated, delighted, and made a ridiculous stabbing gesture with her hand. "You take five steps, you're done. Why didn't Amy think of that? She could be—honestly—a little Nazi-assassin. Tap 'em on the chest, send 'em to their fuhrer in five. Would save me a ton of PR headaches."

Dean fought a laugh. "Maybe because Amy's a doctor," he said. "Doctors don't usually kill people. Unless she's into selective malpractice."

Vista frowned. "What's with you and Nazis, anyway?" she asked. "I hate them too, but you're a headline magnet if you make it your thing."

Glory Girl shrugged, smug. "I'm a philanthropist. I improve quality of life by taking down bullies. Color doesn't matter – if you're a bully, I'll put you down. Brockton's just got an oversupply of wannabe fascist fucks. Someone's got to clean up."

"I think it's a Freudian thing…" Dennis slurred from the corner. "She's blonde, and she's got those baby blues too – Nazis are everything she needs to erase."

Glory Girl whipped her head around, mock-offended.

"Funny, coming from the redhead," she shot back, jabbed a finger at him. "You're biologically soulless, Dennis. It's a redhead thing."

Dennis groaned. "Soulless and weird! What else? Maybe I'm gay too?!"

Dean's grin did the rest. "With how you act around me…" he teased.

Laughter broke loose. Clockblocker started inventing excuses mid-snort; Glory Girl pretended to nod solemnly about 'strong competition.' For sixty delicious seconds they were exactly what they pretended to be: kids with absurd outfits trading trash talk to keep from thinking about grim stuff.

…Then the grim stuff arrived. Dean felt its coming – an almost tangible wave of exhaustion, fear, and anxiety made flesh. He was already turning toward the entrance before it even crossed the threshold.

The door hissed open. The air folded. Ward Supervisor Shane's head appeared, suit immaculate, hair tousled, dark crescents under his eyes.

"Aegis, Gallant. A word."

Aegis and Dean exchanged the look they always did—the silent, practiced shrug—and fell in step behind Shane as he walked off, giving the Wards and Glory Girl a last wave. They didn't ask; there was nothing to ask yet. Shane moved with that tired, efficient pace of someone carrying a problem too big for one man.

"Uh, sir?" Aegis called after him, voice steady but thin. "Is this about the ABB?"

"Yes." Shane didn't slow. That was all.

They fell into a quiet that felt sharper than the laughter had. The corridors gleamed white and empty; the building smelled faintly of disinfectant and coffee, similar to a hospital ward waiting for the next crisis. Kids in costumes, Dean thought, waiting for the playground to be safe again.

Shane stopped at a closed conference door, turned on them, and for the first time his composure cracked into something almost pleading.

"You two have the best records. You're the ones I trust," he said, voice rough. "This is big. If you think you'll screw it up, tell me now. I'd rather send you back than…" He shook his head and swallowed.

Aegis and Dean looked at each other. Aegis answered for both. "Sir, it'd be easier if you just told us."

Shane regarded them with tired appraisal, then explained in the bluntest terms he could. "I picked you because at least two Wards have to be briefed. Can you keep this to yourselves? For the team? Carry extra weight?"

Neither hesitated. They said together, "Yes, sir."

Shane gave them a long, flat look, set his hand on the knob, and nodded. "Then go in."

They stepped into the dark and the dark swallowed them. The only light was a pale rectangle from a projector, painting chairs and bodies in hard white. Shadows pooled in the corners; the room smelled faintly of stale coffee and disinfectant.

Dean picked up the signatures before his eyes could make sense of the shapes. Armsmaster leaned in a shadowed corner—metal glinting, halberd slotted against his shoulder—an impatience wrapped in restraint. Miss Militia sat forward in the front row, small in the light but loud in the quiet. Others clustered where the projector left them half-visible: capes, suits, the soft electric hum of people on edge.

Aegis and Dean slid into two chairs together. Silence settled. Why only two Wards? Why the secrecy? The questions hung until a soft click answered them, the door locking itself with a finality that made the skin along Dean's arms prickle.

Vice-director Thorburn then stepped from the shadows, all sharp angles in the projector glow.

"Good afternoon," he said, voice low and formal. He didn't smile. "Apologies for the abrupt call. This meeting concerns the city."

His words filled the room; Dean felt them like a band across his throat.

He smoothed his tie, eyes sweeping the dark before he spoke.

"From this moment on, nothing said here leaves these walls." His voice carried the weight of something rehearsed too many times, too carefully. "Any leak—any whisper—will be treated as treason against the PRT and the state. The penalties will match."

He paused, letting the silence press on the gathered officers. The hum of the air conditioner filled the gap.

"If you can't keep this sealed," he said quietly, glancing toward the door, "you may leave now. It will be unlocked for you."

No one moved. Aegis crossed his arms. Dean leaned back and listened to his own pulse. The capes stayed rooted like statues.

Thorburn glanced toward the darker side of the room and gave the smallest nod. A man slid forward from the gloom – tall, spare, suit not PRT-issue, skin dark, hair cropped close, a cleft chin and serpentine eyes that looked as if they didn't sleep. He stood with his hands behind his back, calm as a column.

"This is Mister Calvert," Thorburn announced. "He will walk us through the presentation. Listen carefully. Information will not be repeated. Ask no questions."

The projector hummed louder, and the rectangle of light swallowed the first slide.

A shape flickered, took form – a hooded figure drawn in stark lines. Black hoodie, black pants, a knife glinting in one hand. No face, only two cold blue eyes burning from under the hood.

Dean's breath caught.

Those eyes didn't look drawn. They looked back.

Calvert's hand rose, cutting the light between him and the image.

"This," he said evenly, "is an artist's composite, based on survivor reports. The individual responsible for the recent killings within the ABB. For the purpose of this briefing, we'll refer to him as the Slasher."

Click.

A new slide, bars climbing day by day, a red header reading DEATH TOLL.

"The Slasher is suspected to be a sleeper parahuman," Calvert went on. His tone was calm, a man dissecting chaos by syllables. "No records of anyone fitting his description exist prior to this week. No sightings, no incidents, no trigger events tied to these methods. That leaves us with two possibilities: either he emerged under extremely concealed circumstances…" His gaze lifted, razor-sharp in the half-dark. "…or he's been active far longer than we realize, and only chose to reveal himself now."

He turned to the smallest bar on the chart.

"The first victim was James Kanō, nineteen, only son of a dockworker. Low-ranking ABB. Killed four nights ago. The witness—May Lee Johnson—survived the encounter and provided our earliest description. Subsequent reports confirmed the same profile: dark attire, knife, blue eyes."

Calvert let the silence linger before his finger hovered at the taller bars.

"The rising body count—and the speed of it—suggests experimentation," Calvert continued. "Early kills were measured. Controlled. Then the tempo rose. One victim became two, two became four. By the time the ABB realized what was happening, a third of their numbers were dead or maimed. That kind of escalation isn't random. It's either refinement… or collapse."

He gestured toward the graph, bars spiking upward like jagged teeth.

"It's possible the Slasher was testing the limits of his power. It's also possible he lost control of it entirely. Either way, he left nothing behind; there were no statements, no symbols, no patterns beyond the bodies themselves. There was no theater nor signature."

Dean swallowed.

He pictured a fire that didn't burn to be seen. Just burned until there was nothing left. Not a man, not even a monster. A force.

Calvert went on, steadily, as if reading the newspaper.

"Preliminary profiling suggests a subject with obsessive tendencies – methodical, ritualistic, and rigid. The absence of any emotional or symbolic residue points to the act itself being both means and end. The kill is the ritual."

He paused.

"Fourteen dead," he said quietly. "Four survivors, each permanently crippled. No trophies, no contact, no communication. Only progression."

Dean's stomach knotted. Fourteen. Fourteen names he didn't know, but could feel… echoes in a church that had already burned down. Not a coincidence. Ritual.

Lung had not killed at random. He took as much as was taken from him.

"The increase in frequency," Calvert resumed, "may indicate deterioration. A loss of ritual control. The compulsion to complete the pattern—whatever it is—now outweighs the capacity to plan. A feedback loop. The intellect and the addiction have merged. Each kill feeding the next."

He folded his hands neatly, eyes cold in the projector light.

"In short: the Slasher doesn't kill for attention, revenge, or power."

A beat.

"He kills because he must."

Calvert let the silence breathe.

A low hum from the projector filled the void as his gaze swept the room, slow, pointed, a man measuring pulse by stillness. Dean could read the faces even in the half-light: drawn eyes, clenched jaws, the brittle stillness of people seeing too much. Fear lingered at the edges; fascination glimmered just beneath.

And in Calvert… nothing. Just poise, precision. The calm of someone dissecting a corpse rather than mourning it.

"This profile already makes the Slasher an extremely dangerous individual. An unpredictable, unstable murderer," Calvert said, his tone steady as the mechanical whir of the projector. "But that's only half the picture. What truly sets him apart is how he kills. And that," his gaze flicked toward the wall, "is why you're here."

The next slide clicked in.

The air seemed to contract.

Rows of high-resolution photographs appeared. Limbs, torsos, faces frozen mid-horror. Each body annotated with fine, colored lines tracing cuts too precise to be human, too numerous to be mercy. Numbers above every photo.

"The Slasher earned his title for this," Calvert went on, gesturing with a hand that didn't shake. "Each number corresponds to the cuts found on the body, ranging from one… to thirty. Note the pattern. Every incision is straight. No deviation. No tremor."

He drew a finger through the air, miming the lines with unnerving steadiness.

"There's no rage. There's no indication of flailing. Only deliberate, perfect motion. The restraint tells us as much as the violence does. Whoever this is, they aren't guessing. They know where to cut. They follow some internal map."

He paused on the final slide, where red lines crosshatched a corpse like an anatomy diagram.

"This is not improvisation," he concluded softly. "It's a system. A design. Which means we're not just looking at a killer."

A faint click echoed as the slide advanced again.

"We're looking at a Thinker."

The next slide came with another muted click.
The images weren't any kinder.

This time, the corpses had been pieced back together – pale limbs aligned like puzzle fragments, torsos arranged on metal tables, the outlines traced in faint blue marker. Some bodies bore clean, surgical bisects. Others were latticed with crisscrossing incisions. A few formed impossibly intricate geometries on the dead flesh. Patterns that seemed almost designed.

"Please note the geometry when the remains are reassembled," Calvert said. "It builds on the previous observation and adds another concern. The Slasher isn't merely cutting. He's drawing."

He let the word settle, then pointed with a pen to a photo where a ribcage had been divided into a perfect triangle.

"His power doesn't obey anatomy. It's not biology he's working with, but structure. These patterns suggest he's perceiving something abstract. Symmetry, vectors, fractals… perhaps even fault lines, if you look closely at the angles here…"

He stopped mid-sentence, studying the image like it might answer back. For a moment, the pause pressed down on everyone.

"There's… an aesthetic to this," he said finally, almost under his breath. "A logic we don't yet grasp. The cuts form a kind of language or ritual. If this were a Brute or a Blaster, the damage would be chaotic."

He gestured toward the slide.

"These wounds are… elegant. Too elegant. And also—"

The next image snapped on.

A car, bisected cleanly down the middle, two halves resting meters apart on a broken street.

"—The Slasher doesn't discriminate between living and non-living targets."

The silence that followed wasn't just shock. It was the weight of understanding.

Something in the air seemed to drop. Temperature, pressure, certainty. Dean felt it settle in his bones, the echo of shared dread passing between the suits, between Aegis and himself. Everyone had glimpsed the same shape beneath the surface and wished they hadn't.

Calvert didn't give them time to breathe before the next slide appeared.

Close-ups filled the wall. Raw, clinical photographs of the wounds themselves. The cuts weren't ragged, or charred, or even bruised. They were flat. As if the world had been folded and the crease had stayed.

"This," said Calvert, "is the most vital point regarding the Slasher."

His tone was measured… but something faintly uneasy sat behind it.

"The wounds are perfectly smooth. There's no tearing, no cellular trauma. Just… flat planes. It makes no difference whether it's flesh, clothing, steel, even asphalt. Every surface? Zero friction."

Another slide. The image zoomed closer, down to the textureless divide between muscle and air.

"I could summarize the implications," Calvert offered, before stepping aside. "But I think you'll grasp them better hearing from an expert. Would you come forward, please?"

Footsteps.

From the darkness at the edge of the room, a slight figure emerged. White coat, hood drawn up, moving like someone who didn't want to be seen. The projector light caught her face halfway, and Dean felt his stomach dip.

Amy.

She looked pale, even for her. Her eyes flicked across the room—at the screens, the suits, the heroes—, a cornered animal searching for an exit.

"This is Panacea," Calvert said, turning to her with professional courtesy. "I believe most of you are familiar with her work. She's agreed to share her observations on the victims. Miss Dallon, from a biological standpoint, how do these wounds compare to others you've encountered?"

For a moment, Amy said nothing. Just stared at the pictures. When she finally spoke, her voice was thin and brittle.

"They're… wrong," she said. "All of them. Wrong in a way I can't even describe. These aren't injuries. Not really. There's no cauterization, no tearing, no disruption. It's not something a blade, beam, or field could do."

Calvert inclined his head. "And the medical prognosis?"

Amy hesitated. Dean could see her hands tightening inside her sleeves.

"There isn't one," she said quietly. "This is past medicine. Beyond it. I tried to heal the survivors. To reconnect their limbs. I've done it before, even with worse damage." She swallowed, hard. "It should've been easy. The cuts are so clean."

Her voice faltered.

"But it wasn't. It was like trying to attach a lizard's tail to a person. Worse. The body rejected it. Every signal said the severed arm, the leg was… foreign. The muscles wouldn't rebind. The nerves wouldn't align. Even the bones… twisted away from the join."

She looked down, eyes shadowed by her hood.

"I managed to force reconnection after a few hours."

"But not recovery," Calvert prompted.

Amy shook her head. "There was no circulation. No electrical activity. The tissue looked healed, but it wasn't alive. Within minutes, it started to decay. Like it had never belonged there at all."

The words hung heavy. Dean could feel the silence expanding, filling every breath in the room.

Amy exhaled, almost trembling. When she spoke again, it came out like a confession.

"I can't heal these cuts," she whispered. "It's impossible."

Calvert gave a short nod. "Thank you, Miss Dallon."

Amy didn't answer. She just stepped backward until the light no longer touched her, vanishing into the dark with one last, uneasy glance at the screen.

The projector clicked again. The hooded figure returned. Same rough sketch, same knife, same blue eyes that burned brighter now, almost aware. Dean found himself staring back, unable to shake the feeling that it was staring at him.

Calvert's voice cut through the silence.

"From what we've gathered," he began, hands clasped behind his back, "we can draw several conclusions."

He raised one finger.

"First. The Slasher doesn't see reality as we do. He perceives structure, not life. To him, the world is made of lines to be divided. He cuts symbols, not flesh. It aligns with the psychological profile we've built, an obsessive, ritualistic compulsion driven by the act itself. He kills because cutting is the only thing that may feel real to him."

A second finger.

"Second. The Slasher's power entirely bypasses the Manton Limit. More precisely, it lacks it. There have been outliers in the past, yes… but never something like this. His ability ignores every natural limitation between living and nonliving matter. He can cut through a person, a car, a building, with the same precision. There is no safety net, no restraint. Whatever triggered this power… stripped that away."

He raised a third.

"Third. We've seen destructive powers, even catastrophic ones. But this is different. The Slasher doesn't simply destroy. He erases the possibility of repair. One of the world's strongest biokinetics cannot reverse the damage. That makes him more than lethal."

The fingers lowered slowly.

"This," Calvert said, looking up at the projected eyes, "is the definition of dangerous. No, not just dangerous. Final."

Calvert lifted a hand. Another click. The projector shifted – words and numbers appeared beneath the sketch of the hooded figure, white text bleeding into the darkness.

He waited a beat, his gaze passing over the room, then spoke.

"With the Vice-Director's permission," he said, "I'll provide my personal classifications and their strategic implications. The PRT may revise them as needed."

A low murmur of assent came from the dark. Calvert inclined his head and turned back to the screen.

"Primary classification – Stranger 8."

The words dropped like a verdict.

"The Slasher consistently avoids detection and confrontation. His power leaves no trace before activation. No sound, no light, no trigger. Every attack is over before it begins. Victims report nothing until the instant they're cut. The rating reflects the sheer lethality of surprise. When he strikes unseen, there is no defense, so extra precautions should be taken to establish contact before he does, thus making Stranger as the primary classification tactically necessary."

A flick of his hand. The next line lit up.

"Secondary – Striker 9. Physical contact is required. A single touch, and the result is total severance. No resistance. No matter the material or density, organic, metallic, or otherwise, the effect is absolute. Distance, therefore, is the only tactical countermeasure."

The next word appeared.

"Thinker 7."

Calvert's tone didn't waver.

"The geometric precision of his attacks—patterns, numbers, deliberate spacing—indicates advanced perception or computation. Whether this stems from enhanced pattern recognition, predictive insight, or a wholly non-human way of seeing, we don't yet know. The Slasher's confirmed one-hit kill retroactively intensifies the Thinker element and suggests a deeper connection between perception and lethality."

And then the final word blinked into view.

"Trump 8?"

A small question mark hovered beside the number. Calvert pointed to it.

"This remains provisional. The Slasher's cuts defy even Panacea's intervention. It's possible his ability interferes directly with other powers, disrupting their interaction with reality. Until we know whether the effect targets matter or the powers themselves, this classification remains under review."

He let the last slide linger. The numbers glowed faintly against the dark.

"The Slasher," he concluded, "cannot be approached as a normal parahuman threat. Every classification here carries its own death sentence if mishandled."

The projector clicked again. The white rectangle snapped to a glowing blank, and the room exhaled into a stunned hush. Calvert then dipped his head, hands folding behind him, and melted back into the shadows.

For a long beat no one spoke. What could you say? They had spoken of gang warfare a half hour ago — tactics, cordons, arrests.

This was not another enemy to be catalogued. This felt like a storm.

For about a minute, it was a storm – white noise, unspoken orders, the hum of tension sharp enough to taste. Then Dean caught it: the pulse of the room, the surge beneath the silence. His power tugged him back into focus.

Armsmaster in particular burned in his perception like a signal flare, frustration thrumming at the edges, curiosity glinting just beneath that surgical focus. Dean could almost feel the man dissecting the scene in real time. Was it the ridiculous numbers tossed around like weather data, usually reserved for international threats, city-ending entities? Or that someone in a hoodie and wielding a pocket knife had made them all look slow, tiny, for even one second?

Dean exhaled. The air tasted steadier now. Of course it was overblown. The Slasher wasn’t some apocalypse made flesh – just a parahuman with a twist. They had numbers, coordination, protocol. He was one man. One storm already breaking apart.

Vice-Director Thorburn reappeared at the edge of the light, rubbing the back of his neck as if trying to smooth the tension out of his shoulders. "Thank you, Thomas," he said, voice frayed at the edges.

Thorburn turned to the room and let the quiet settle into him before he spoke again.

"The reason you were called," he said, low and steady, "is not only to talk about Lung. Lung is a gangster who understands rules – he's brutal, but legible. Containment foam and force will blunt him. The ABB, as an organization, is effectively neutralized."

He touched the space behind him, as if indicating a line in the sand.

"But this—" He shook his head like someone removing grit from his eye. "—This is different."

He let the words hang, then pushed them forward. "We're not dealing with a criminal enterprise here. We're looking at a potential mass murderer with a capability that defies standard countermeasures. He cannot be negotiated with. He cannot be deterred in a conventional sense. In the worst case, containment may be impossible without lethal measures. In mere nights he has shredded a major gang's ranks. Left unchecked, he would do the same to anyone."

Thorburn struck the table once. Sharp, final.

"What Lung did was monstrous and criminal; we will pursue him. But the Slasher would make Lung's massacre look infantile. We will not wait until he turns his attention to civilians indiscriminately."

He straightened, folding his arms into a silhouette of authority.

"Director Piggot has authorized an emergency elevation: the Slasher is to be temporarily treated as an A-Class threat, until we gain further information on his abilities and motives. We are awaiting formal ratification from higher command, but operationally, we shall act like it's decided."

The words landed as orders. The room did not move, not because they disagreed but because everyone was recalculating — the city no longer a battleground between gangs, but a place under an advancing, incomprehensible threat.

Thorburn's gaze swept the dark room, and for a moment, the man in plain clothes felt more imposing than the costumed figures around him. Not because of power, but because of absolute conviction. Dean felt another pressure against his ribs.

"I'll say it again," Thorburn said, low and precise. "Everything said in this room stays in this room. An official statement will come when we're ready. Director Piggot wants you all to understand the cost of sloppy coordination: don't put your teammates in needless danger. Keep your eyes open."

He leaned forward, voice tightening. "If you see someone with blue eyes and a knife, run. Regroup. Call for reinforcements. Don't engage until you have at least five capes and sufficient manpower."

It wasn’t just Armsmaster flaring in Dean’s perception now. Every adult cape in the room burned bright with outrage, disbelief, defiance. Even the suits, usually dull, glimmered like struck metal.

From the shadows, he felt it in Amy too. Bitterness curled in her chest, sharp and familiar. She wasn’t a fighter, not really… but he could still taste her humiliation in the air.

Heroes told to run.

Dean’s hands had curled into fists without his noticing, nails biting his palms. He’d spent time and effort learning to keep his composure, to be the calm one. But this? This felt like someone spitting on everything they stood for.

What was the point of powers, of ideals, if the right thing meant retreating? Not even trying to fight back?

A chair scraped. Even before his power reached her, Dean recognized Miss Militia’s silhouette. Rigid, measured, but trembling with control.

“Sir,” she began, voice level but tight, “with all due respect, this seems like a disproportionate response to a singular, street-level threat. And it’s an insult, to every one of us whose duty is to protect this city. We can coordinate, investigate, contain—”

Vice-Director Thorburn didn’t interrupt. He listened, unmoving, his emotions spiking so suddenly Dean almost staggered. Rage. Cold, towering, leashed only by habit.

When he finally spoke, his voice was smooth again, but every word hit like a slap.

“Your strategic opinion is duly noted, Miss Militia. Your feelings, however, are irrelevant.”

The silence that followed was worse than shouting. The air turned brittle. Even without using his power, Dean could feel her restraint – the muscle in her jaw trembling, the effort not to respond.

Thorburn crossed his arms, eyes sweeping the room like a disappointed schoolmaster.

“This isn’t the time for ideals or speeches about justice,” he said, almost gently. “We’re putting out fires. Some lunatic with a knife played vigilante under our noses, and now Lung’s flaring up again when he should’ve stayed buried. We can’t afford losses because someone wanted to be noble.”

He inhaled slowly, as if centering himself.

“The Protectorate heroes are assets,” he said. “And we won’t lose even one asset to pride. Not like this. Not when we don’t even know what we’re fighting against.”

Thorburn lifted a finger and drew a hard line in the air.

"That is an order. Solo engagement with the Slasher is forbidden. Flee on sight."

The Vice-Director gave one last nod, and for a breath it felt like he was looking straight at Dean. Dean wasn't looking back. His eyes were still on those blue, painted eyes — no longer on the wall but branded behind his own lids: cold, assessing, patient. The knife in the sketch felt less like a prop and more like a promise.

An effortless, irreversible end.

"We will dismantle Lung and his network," Thorburn said, voice hard. "We will make them pay. And we will find this… creature, before it kills again."

Dean swallowed. The words were meant to reassure.

They landed like stones.

He didn't feel comforted. And neither did anyone else in that room.

He just felt the same heavy sensation as when he woke up. But now… it had a face and a name. And he felt it staring straight at him with a killer's eyes.