Cain slept little. When he did, it was never clean. Dreams pressed close like damp walls, suffocating him in fragments he couldn't shake. A woman's scream folded into a gunshot. A hallway burning. The city itself, bleeding black smoke from every seam. He woke with his hand already on the hilt of his blade, knuckles pale in the dark.
Susan hadn't stirred. She lay stretched on the couch, wrapped in a ragged blanket, face drawn tight from pain even in sleep. Her breathing rattled like rusted pipes. Cain's eyes lingered, but only long enough to confirm she was still alive.
He pulled a chair close to the window. The safehouse's glass panes were streaked with grime, but through them the first veins of daylight crawled between towers. The city never looked new, only repainted, patched, stitched together from old bones. It carried history the way a corpse carried scars. Cain had learned to read those scars. Every scar told him one thing: the city ate what it wanted.
