Speakers blaring orders: "RETURN TO YOUR HOMES. REPEAT, RETURN TO YOUR HOME S."
From the shadowed undercity of Sector 9, fire bloomed like an answer. Molotovs arced into the air, their glass bellies shattering against APC hulls. Gunfire cracked from the rooftops as the Neonfall Resistance lit up the sky with tracer rounds and explosive charges.
Captain Ryze, the iron bastard of Edenia's north command, stood atop his command vehicle with a rail cannon slung over his shoulder, his voice cutting through the chaos like a blade. "Engage all hostiles. No survivors."
Civilians ran screaming through the once-bustling market district, now soaked in blood and ash. Children clung to their parents as plasma rounds shredded walls and bodies alike. Resistance fighters in scrap armor and glowing visors ducked into ruined buildings, returning fire with cobbled-together rifles and stolen tech.
The city moaned as power grids collapsed. Holograms stuttered, turned to static. From the Shatterspine Bridge, rebel commander Vei-Lun broadcast a war cry. "This is our city. Our light. Let them try to steal it."
Her voice echoed over pirate frequencies as she detonated the bridge supports, sending a CPG convoy plunging into the neon-lit river below.
"Deploy Revenants." The Revenants dropped from the sky like reaper angels—elite enforcers clad in jet-black armor, genetically augmented, glowing with serum rage. They moved with inhuman precision, slaughtering every rebel in sight. Blood sprayed the chrome walls of the Sky Market.
Still, the rebels fought. Down in the District 17, where the old metro tunnels twisted like veins, flame-thrower units lit the darkness in bursts of roaring fire. Explosive traps turned narrow passages into hellish furnaces. Rebel fighters, gaunt and wide-eyed, screamed the names of their dead as they surged into combat, knowing they wouldn't come back.
Above them, the spires of corporate towers erupted in flames. Skyscrapers once filled with song and vice now rained down glass and steel. A gunship spiraled out of control, struck by a stolen anti-air turret, and crashed into the heart of District 6, igniting a firestorm that spread from building to building like a divine punishment.
Families crouched behind vending machines, their sobs drowned by sirens. An old man dragged his bleeding daughter through rubble, shielding her from the madness. A synth-pop track played on loop in a nearby bar, eerie and hollow. "This city will not kneel!" came Vei-Lun's voice again. "We are the storm beneath the neon!"
CPG responded with orbital strikes. Three blasts carved through the skyline like a god's wrath, vaporizing entire blocks. The resistance faltered. Screamed orders became desperate. Ammo ran dry. And still, the CPG advanced.
The smoke hadn't yet cleared from the last barrage when the next wave of rebels surged into the cratered ruins of Downtown Spiral. They came like locusts—scavenged armor, glowing eyes behind rebreather masks, wielding arc-blades and plasma-charged hammers. The streets trembled beneath the thundering march of vengeance.
Inside the CPG mobile command cathedral—a towering juggernaut of steel and circuitry parked at the edge of Jinjahan's old Parliament—General Calloway stood still as stone. He watched the holoscreens blink red one by one, each signal a fallen unit.
"They're multiplying," muttered his chief tactician. "We neutralized seventy-three cells in five hours, but new ones keep emerging—like they were waiting for this."
"They were," Calloway growled. His eyes narrowed, tired yet ice-sharp. "They wanted a bloodletting. Let's give them one."
He turned toward the command altar and inserted his biometric key. A golden light engulfed the screen. Three protocols flashed in sequence: Containment, Cleansing, and finally, Extinction.
"Sir," a young officer stepped forward, horror blooming behind his visor, "Extinction includes civilian zones—schools, hospitals, housing sectors—"
"Collateral," Calloway said. "They made their choice when they stood between us and order."
Down in the sublevels, rebel tunnels ignited as the CPG dropped seismic bombs, collapsing entire corridors with the rebels still inside. Screams echoed up storm drains, carried by the smoke.
But for every buried body, two more rebels emerged. Farmers. Teachers. Mechanics. Tattoo artists. Programmers. They came armed with tools turned weapons and eyes burning with loss.
In District 3, a CPG outpost was overrun by a mob led by ex-Councilwoman Mira Rehn. She moved through the chaos with a broken banner in one hand and a repurposed shock lance in the other, shouting, "For the children they burned!"
When her body fell beneath sniper fire, her second picked up the banner. Then the third. Then the seventh. Even the dying refused to let the banner drop.
Inside the command cathedral, Calloway stared at a live feed from District 7: an orphanage turned triage center engulfed in crossfire, children screaming as they clung to nurses pinned under rubble. Rebels defended the building with kitchen knives and stolen pistols, refusing to abandon it.
"Burn it." The cathedral's cannons lit the sky. One blast. Then two. Then five. District 7 disappeared in an instant of light and fury.
In retaliation, rebel saboteurs took out the main power core of the CPG's eastern line. A rolling blackout swept across the battlefield. The city, half-burned and bleeding, became a silhouette of pure madness. Under the shroud of darkness, they came again.
Explosions shook the metro bridges. Buildings collapsed as both rebel and CPG troops were buried together. Mech units tore through civilian parks while children cried in abandoned malls turned safehouses. Calloway stared out at it all from his viewport.
The command cathedral shook with the distant thunder of collapsing towers as General Calloway strode into the comms chamber, cloak trailing ash and fury. The air was thick with the stink of ozone, blood, and failure. "Connect me to Mayor Caleb," he growled.
The technician hesitated. "Sir, the city's transmission grid is frag—"
"Now."
A surge of static, then the cracked hologram of Mayor Caleb flickered into life. His face was pale beneath sweat and grime, the once-pristine suit now stained and disheveled. Behind him, sirens wailed through the broken city hall, gunfire not far off. "General—"
"Spare me your excuses," Calloway snapped, his voice a furnace. "I gave you times. Times to keep this anthill from erupting. And now look at it—Jinjahan's turned into a goddamned funeral pyre because you couldn't hold the leash."
Caleb's lips parted, but the general didn't let him speak.
"You had one job. Keep the radicals buried. Feed them distractions. Promise them justice, delay it with process, smother it in ceremony. But instead? You let them organize. You let them breed delusions of freedom. You let mutants walk the streets unmonitored."
Calloway's eyes blazed, and his tone grew darker. "You think I care about what they call themselves? Alben, Zwarten, Medean—hell, even the horned bastards. Skin doesn't matter. Genes doesn't matter too. Pain does. Humiliation does. You humiliate anyone long enough, they stay quiet. But give them a moment of power, and they remember. They rise. They burn. And then they demand vengeance."
He leaned forward, hands clutching the edge of the console like a predator at the bars of its cage. "That's what you let happen. You let them believe they mattered. You gave speeches about unity and tolerance like some soft-stomached noble. You fed hope to the wolves, Caleb."
The mayor clenched his jaw. "I tried diplomacy—"
"Diplomacy is for men with clean hands." Calloway snarled. "This isn't about race. This isn't about class. This is about control. And you failed to maintain it."
Outside, the roar of battle intensified—one of the rebel warbands had hijacked a hover-tank, tearing through the CPG flank in District 11. The screen behind Caleb briefly lit up with the orange bloom of explosions.
Calloway turned away from the screen and barked at his officers, "I want martial law reinstated on every block. No curfew warnings. Shoot on sight."
Then, back to Caleb, his voice low and final. "Jinjahan is the worst example of why power must never be shared. You thought you were governing a city. You were babysitting a powder keg. Now I'm here to clean up your mess."
On the other side, Commissioner Roderik Vaele stood atop the central precinct watchtower, his black trench coat flapping like a torn flag in the storm of light and ruin beneath. His eyes, sharp as glass and twice as cold, swept across the burning skyline. Somewhere below, rebels clashed with mechs, civilians cried for shelter, and street kings dared to loot what was left. He exhaled smoke, then crushed the cigar beneath his heel. "Enough."
He turned to his command unit. "Deploy everyone. No more red zones. No more waiting for orders from above. I want every thug, punk, dealer, and gangbanger off my streets—dead or in chains."
"Sir, CPG already—"
"I don't give a damn about Calloway's armies." Vaele's voice cracked like a whip. "CPG are leveling buildings. We're cleaning the filth."
Moments later, JPD squads swarmed like hornets from every district station—riot bikes screeching through alleys, drones scanning rooftops, sirens howling not as warning, but as declaration.
They were the city's old blood—corrupt, brutal, but native. And tonight, they had a score to settle with every syndicate, gang, and mutant-run black market that had ever spat in their face.
The Krowne Boys fell first, their safehouse in West Ash leveled by breacher rounds. The Spinal Saints didn't last the hour, their cyber-augmented enforcers gunned down in an open-air church they'd claimed as sanctuary. Even the Nameless—those elusive data-runners that controlled the underground net—were found, burned alive in a power cell firebomb.
JPD's methods weren't surgical—they were personal. Rage-driven. Vindictive. This wasn't law enforcement. This was purge by badge.
On 9th Avenue, a JPD cruiser rammed a makeshift barricade manned by teenagers—some armed, most not. The officers exited laughing, swinging batons with a rhythm learned from years of unchecked authority. Civilians filming from balconies cried out until CPG drones silenced them with scatterblasts.
Downtown, a massive fire erupted as JPD set charges under an abandoned library used by mutant kids as a refuge. Flames painted the night sky, mixing with the CPG's airstrike plumes, turning the heavens above Jinjahan into a canvas of apocalypse.
The city's streets became death corridors, choked with smoke, sirens, and screams. People ran from one end only to be caught by the other—police clearing blocks like pest control, soldiers razing districts like foreign invaders.
In Old Vault Square, a rebel medic collapsed beside a wounded civilian. Above them, CPG jets passed like ghosts. From the alley behind, JPD stormed in with rifles raised.
"Friend or foe?" the medic begged, raising bloody hands.
The officer didn't answer. He just fired. Atop the watchtower, Roderik Vaele lit another cigar, face unmoved even as explosions danced on the horizon. "They wanted anarchy," he said to himself. "Let them taste what it really means."