Night had fallen over the city, but the sky was far from dark.Billboards flickered against the smog-streaked horizon, drones zipped between high-rise towers, and above it all barely visible to untrained eyes the faint shimmer of the approaching storm painted a red coloured halo across the stars.
Eva's hover bike purred beneath her, the matte-black military chassis hugging every shift of her weight. It was a model strictly licensed for defence forces—capable of breaking the sound barrier in atmosphere—and yet no one stopped her. Perhaps they recognised the emblem of the USRI on the bike's side panel. Or perhaps, in these days, no one cared enough to enforce laws that would soon be meaningless.
She drifted through the wide avenues at a low glide, weaving between automated traffic like a ghost in the flow. Her silver hair trailed behind her in the wind, the city lights catching on each strand until it looked like a halo of broken glass.
Below, the streets were alive in ways that made her pause.
There were no riots. No screaming masses running for cover. Instead, she saw… living.A street musician sat cross-legged beneath a bridge, plucking a worn guitar while a small group swayed to the tune. Lovers leaned against food stalls, sharing skewers of steaming meat. A boy chased a mechanical dog down a side street, his laughter piercing the night like a fragile, defiant flare.
Eva's augmented vision caught every micro-expression the way joy lingered just a little too long in their faces, as if clinging to it could keep the storm away.
She banked her bike upward, hovering above an open plaza where a crowd had gathered. A projection dome in the square was showing the recorded footage from Pandora's Mars flyby. The crowd gasped at the image of the red planet turning slowly, then as the ship's shadow swept across its surface. The irony was not lost on her that the same mission they celebrated had birthed the very storm now coming for them.
She slowed the bike to a still hover, letting herself simply watch. This was not data. Not analysis. Not mission protocol. Just… observation.
Humans, Eva thought, had a strange instinct to dance at the edge of the cliff. And in some way, perhaps, it was beautiful.
She engaged the bike's engines again, rising higher above the city, the storm shimmer growing ever so slightly brighter in the night sky.
Ronny's sneakers slapped against the cracked pavement of the back alley, the echo bouncing between graffiti-stained walls. The neon spill from the main street barely reached here, turning the narrow space into a flickering tunnel of shadow.
Behind him, the heavy thuds of five pairs of feet closed in, their owners puffing curses with every stride.
"Get back here, Silva!" one bellowed, his voice bouncing off the walls.Another laughed, short and breathless. "Don't run, genius you are just makes it worse!"
Ronny darted around a dumpster, vaulting over a stack of shipping crates like it was a parkour course instead of a fight-or-flight sprint for his life. He wasn't panicked not exactly. His heart pounded, sure, but that was as much from the thrill as the danger.
"Could've picked any girl in the city," he muttered under his breath. "Had to be her, huh?"
Not that he was sorry. She'd kissed him first. Besides, living at the edge of the end of the world did strange things to people's morals. In Ronny's case, it made him allergic to regret.
The alley turned into a tighter corridor, its walls now glass and steel instead of brick, reflecting slivers of his own image as he ran. He caught sight of himself—dark eyes locked forward, hair a mess from the wind, lips curled into a smirk that was part defiance, part adrenaline high.
Behind him, one of the muscle-heads stumbled over a pile of trash bags. The others cursed at him but kept pace.
Unseen above them, a faint hum broke through the city's background noise.
Perched on the roof of a low-rise, Eva leaned forward slightly, her hover bike in idle drift. Her eyes tracked Ronny's movements with unblinking precision, every twitch of his muscles mapped in her eyes. She didn't interfere. She was measuring. Watching. Cataloging.
From her vantage point, the scene played out like some ancient street drama of the hunter and hunted, the prey grinning as if the chase was just a game. But there was something else about the boy his movements were sharp, calculated, and he made choices in fractions of a second that most adults couldn't.
She murmured to herself, voice lost in the wind, "Interesting."
Below, Ronny made a sudden pivot into an even narrower backstreet, thinking he'd lost them. But in the shadows above, the silent watcher followed.
The storm might have been three days away, but the city still had its own smaller tempests and Eva had just spotted one worth studying.
If Eva just covered her blue, mechanic eyes, she would have passed for any other human beauty a tall figure with an elegance that didn't quite fit the grit of the streets she drifted through. City to city, she wandered like a whisper on the wind, no destination, no urgency. Sometimes she played the hero, a hand to someone dangling from a ledge, a quick reset of a dislocated shoulder, a bandaged wound in an alley, little things, invisible to the larger world.
But this incident was different. She leaned forward slightly on her hover bike, its silent engine holding her aloft like a hawk riding thermals. Below her, in the tight arteries of downtown, she'd found a scene worth staying for.
A prey that was smiling.And hunters who were panting.
Her scans had told her this boy ran like someone who wasn't afraid to be caught. His movements were fluid but almost… playful, each turn and vault calculated to bleed his pursuers' stamina without burning his own. In contrast, the five heavy-set boys behind him were red-faced and dragging in air like it was running from them.
Eva's gaze followed Ronny's every step. She didn't just see the chase, she saw the patterns, the way his hips shifted to absorb momentum, the micro-second glances to gauge his environment. He wasn't just running away, he was learning his hunters in real-time.
She rested one gloved hand on the throttle, feeling the hum of the quantum engine beneath her. She had no reason to intervene yet. The boy wasn't in mortal danger. But there was something in his grin that made her think of a line from a human poem she'd once read 'Some fires burn brightest in the wind'.
She would watch. And if the wind shifted, perhaps she'd let him know he wasn't the only predator in the alley tonight.
Ronny skidded to a sudden halt, sneakers squealing against the wet pavement. The slap of footsteps behind him faltered, then stopped entirely.
Two things stood out in the dim orange of the flickering streetlight Ronny stood tall, shoulders squared, eyes sharp and steady… while the five behind him were sweating, bent over, chests heaving looking like overworked factory machines seconds from breaking down.
"Look, guys," Ronny said, voice even, almost bored. "Britny came to me. Not the other way around. Not my fault, you know."
John, the largest of the group, Britny's self-proclaimed protector, sneered through labored breaths. "Yeah, right… and now my fist is gonna come to you, son of a.."
Ronny sighed, cutting Jhon and shaking his head like a disappointed teacher. "Fine. Have it your way."
In one smooth burst of motion, he dashed forward. His legs coiled and released like springs, launching him upward. The city's hum faded in Eva's sensors for just a moment, replaced by the sharp air displacement of his arc.
The kick came down like it had been aimed from orbit, his heel connecting squarely with John's temple. A perfect airborne wheel kick. To Eva this looked like replica of Hwoarang signature move from old game Tekken. She could almost see the boy's muscle memory tracing decades-old pixels in real time.
John crumpled sideways, a felled tree. The others roared and charged, but it was already over. Ronny flowed between them like a well-rehearsed combo string. Elbow to ribs, spinning back kick, low sweep. Each impact calculated, brutal enough to drop but not to kill.
By the time the last one hit the ground, groaning, Ronny stood over them with only a thin sheen of sweat, brushing imaginary dust from his jacket.
Up above, straddling her hover bike in the shadows, Eva tilted her head slightly. Efficient. Controlled. He didn't waste movement, and he didn't revel in cruelty. To Eva Ronny was very unusual character.
Ronny's gaze swept over the heap of groaning bodies one last time, a flicker of disappointment crossing his face not anger, not pride, just that quiet you weren't worth the trouble kind of look.
He turned and started walking, hands sliding into his pockets. The alley stretched ahead, lit only by the fractured spill of neon from the next street over. He'd taken maybe four, five steps when. Click. That unmistakable metallic tension of a trigger being pulled.
Ronny's head snapped around. One of the bruised muscle-heads had fished out a compact taser, hand trembling but eyes locked with ugly resolve.
The weapon discharged and the bolt stopped midair, fizzing and spitting, caught against the matte-black side panel of something sleek and humming. A hover bike. It floated just inches above the cracked pavement, its angular bodywork reflecting slivers of alley light. Straddling it was… well, her.
She sat with the kind of stillness you only see in apex predators. Aviator-style sunglasses clung to her face, somehow perfectly in sync with the faint blue glow that traced the bike's frame. An old-school denim jacket—faded at the seams—hung casually over a white t-shirt, the collar just loose enough to move with her breath. Fingerless gloves hugged her hands, the leather worn but cared for.
Her jeans fit like they were meant for speed, and the white-and-gray sports shoes on the foot pegs looked like they'd been broken in over a hundred adventures.
It was… cinematic. Like she'd just rolled off the set of some lost Hollywood action flick.
Ronny didn't know it yet, but Eva was studying him with the same precision she reserved for storms, asteroids, and battlefield maps.
Ronny tilted his head, still catching his breath, still wearing that crooked grin of someone who'd just survived a close call without actually feeling afraid."Wow! Thanks. I almost shit my pants. I don't even know where these dumbasses got a taser."
Eva didn't answer right away. She just swung one long leg off the bike, walked toward the would-be shooter, and in one precise, almost lazy movement, kicked the weapon from his hand. A second, sharper strike to the temple and he crumpled into the pile of his friends.
Her sunglasses caught the dim alley light as she turned to him. "Why are you here, and not in the evacuation lines?"
Ronny smirked. "Thanks, lady, but it's none of your business." He started to walk past her, then stopped just beside the bike. "As far as I can tell, those shelters are False hope. Beneath all the speeches and the banners, there are plenty of political leaders still not sneaking to safety. My guess? They know there's no escaping this. Either the storm ends tomorrow, or the whole planet in five days."
Eva analysed his calm and collected demeanour. Eva's head tilted slightly, the faintest crease forming between her brows. "First of all," she said evenly, "it is my business. Can't you see the military-issue hover bike? I was patrolling this sector when I saw you playing with these… bunch." She gestured at the groaning heap of teenagers. "Second how are you so clam while knowing that you will be dead in a few days."
Ronny didn't even slow his pace. The smirk never fully left his face, though it softened at the edges. "What's the point of being afraid of inevitable I just want to enjoy these last days".
Eva kicked the hover bike back into a silent glide, pulling up beside him so that she floated along at his walking speed. Her voice was calm but edged with something between curiosity and disbelief."How can you not think about it? It's not possible for humans to ignore an approaching crisis especially when they know they're in danger."
Ronny turned his head toward her, taking in her unreadable face, the faint hum of the bike. He drew in a deep breath. When he spoke again, his tone was stripped of bravado, the words carrying weight."What's there to think about? I still have a lot to experience… Worst has already passed for me anyway."
Eva's eyes narrowed slightly. "What do you mean?"
He didn't look at her—his gaze stayed fixed on the cracked pavement ahead."Yesterday, right after that speech, my dad was taking my mom and me to evacuate early. He had connections. We stopped at a gas station, place was packed. I told him I was going across the street to grab something to eat while they filled the tank. When I came out, all I saw was gas station exploding and shockwave of blast throwing back the glass door of store. "
He swallowed, voice steady but low. "No one in close proximity survived. Military came. Nobody knew the cause and for military investigation was not propriety. My parents were in the car, they didn't even got the opportunity to escape."
Only then did he glance at her, eyes sharper than before. "What I'm saying is… my family's gone. I can spend my last few days sobbing, but what good will it do."
Eva didn't answer immediately. The hum of her bike filled the silence between them.