Rainwater cascaded through the bullet holes in the Crown Heights tenement roof, pooling around Leo's stolen Timberlands. He stared at the mold-speckled mirror – three weeks since the train disaster had bleached his hair bone-white, two days since his canines started retracting with an audible snickt. The bracelet's runes pulsed lazy crimson, sated on dollar-store blood bags and Victor's cryptocurrency bribes to the coroner's office.
"Yo, Lobo!" Victor Chen kicked open the bathroom door, his neon-green prosthetic arm humming with overclocked mining rig parts. "Got your new ID."
The holographic card stank of burnt silicon. Leo Gutierrez, 22, licensed HVAC technician. Victor's homemade printer had superimposed Leo's wolf-pupil eyes over some dead janitor's face.
"Cost you three teeth." The hacker tapped his molar implant. "Got a sweet deal on Dark Web dentures."
Leo flipped the card. Microprint along the edge revealed Victor's real employer – Nightwatch subcontractor code Mjölnir-7. The same logo was laser-etched inside the bracelet.
"Relax," Victor snorted, tossing a burner phone loaded with Tor browsers. "Ex-employee benefits. They still think I'm mining Monero in Rikers."
Moonlight sliced through barred windows, illuminating their "office" – a defunct Chinese takeout joint turned hacking den. Deep fryers now cooled quantum computing rigs, woks repurposed as satellite dishes stealing Elon's Starlink bandwidth. The real treasure glinted in the walk-in freezer: twelve crates of military-grade biosensors labeled Fragile – Lunar Colony Prototypes.
"They track lycan DNA," Victor whispered, breath fogging in the subzero air. "Shifters pay six Bitcoin per gram."
Leo's claws extended reflexively. The nearest crate emitted a pained whine, its contents squirming against the frost-rimed glass. Something with too many joints pressed against the lid.
"Easy, Fido." Victor adjusted his ocular implant, the lens flickering with blockchain confirmations. "We move these through the old Underground Railroad tunnels. You sniff out cops, I bypass biometrics."
A cockroach skittered across the floor. Leo crushed it without looking, the crunch syncing with Victor's nervous swallow.
"Payment upfront." Leo tossed the insect carcass into a dented wok. "And I want the buyer's chain code."
Victor's smile died. LED lights from his arm rig reflected in the grease stains on the wall, forming the Eihwaz rune – the same symbol burned into Samuel's chest during their last encounter.
"Thought you didn't do family reunions."
The freezer lights flickered. Biosensors thrummed in their cages, harmonizing with the bracelet's vibrations. Leo's enhanced hearing caught the telltale click of Victor's thumb disengaging the safety on his hidden Derringer.
"Relaxation's bad for business," Leo growled, palming a stainless steel meat tenderizer. "Ask your Nightwatch buddies."
Glass shattered upstairs.
Victor's drones swarmed from nests of Ethernet cables, their buzzsaw blades sparking against the steel security shutters. "Cops?"
"Worse." Leo inhaled deeply – burnt cinnamon and cordite. "Bounty hunters. Russian accents. Carrying rhodium-coated blades."
"And here I thought you smelled like wet dog for fun." Victor dumped a duffle bag of EMP grenades onto the deep fryer. "Back exit's through the dumpling freezer."
The first hunter crashed through the ceiling in a shower of plaster. His ocular implant glowed wolf-gold, face a patchwork of skin grafts and circuit boards. Leo's claws met rhodium steel with a shower of sparks.
"X-07 specimen," the hunter snarled, voice glitching between Russian and static. "Return to—"
Leo slammed him into the deep fryer. Boiling oil popped and hissed as the man's circuitry shorted out. The smell of burnt pork and melted polymers filled the kitchen.
Victor lobbed an EMP grenade. "They're jamming my signals!"
"Good." Leo grabbed the hacker's collar. "Means they want you alive."
They barreled through the dumpling freezer into a rat-infested alley. Victor's drones formed a whirring shield, their blades chewing through pursuers' Kevlar. Somewhere above, a surveillance helicopter's spotlight carved through the rain.
"Safehouse!" Victor gasped, pointing to a condemned flower shop with shattered greenhouses. "Got a Faraday cage in the back!"
Leo froze.
The shop's display window held a single surviving orchid – night-blooming Epiphyllum oxypetalum, Mom's favorite. Its fragrance cut through the alley's rot, triggering memories of her humming Norse lullabies while pruning venomous hybrid plants.
"Move your ass!" Victor yanked him inside as bullets shredded the orchid.
The Faraday cage turned out to be a walk-in refrigerator lined with Bitcoin miners. Victor collapsed onto a stack of GPUs, fingers flying across a holographic keyboard. "They're triangulating your bracelet's emissions. Got maybe six minutes before—"
Glass shattered.
Samuel stood in the doorway, rain sizzling where it touched his rune-scarred skin. In his arms lay Jessica's twitching body – half her face stripped away to reveal fiber optic nerves and liquid mercury veins.
"Miss me, cub?"
Victor's drones turned their blades on the vagrant. Samuel caught one mid-air, crushing it to sparking debris. "Cute toys. Let's trade – the girl for the biosen—"
Leo's claws found Samuel's throat. The old man didn't bleed – just laughed as mercury oozed from the wounds.
"Still emotional." Samuel dropped Jessica's body. "She's just hardware. But you..." His finger tapped Leo's chest. "...you're the master key."
Police sirens wailed. Victor grabbed a server rack. "We gotta—"
"Stay." Samuel's voice cracked like a whip. The Bitcoin miners whined, their LEDs forming the Dagaz rune – breakthrough. "It's storytime."
Jessica's remaining eye snapped open, projecting holograms into the condensation. Leo saw Mom pregnant in a Nightwatch lab, Dad injecting her with glowing serum. The ultrasound image shifted – the fetus had claws.
"Your cradle was a test tube," Samuel crooned. "Every memory before age twelve? Neural implants."
The bracelet burned. Leo's vision tripled – seeing Victor's terror, Samuel's smirk, and his own reflection in Jessica's chrome-plated iris.
"Tick-tock," Samuel whispered as the hologram showed a countdown – 00:06:23. "Midnight's coming."
Victor's monitors exploded in a shower of sparks. The Faraday cage door slammed shut.
Outside, howls rose – not wolves. Something with diesel-engine growls and hydraulic joints.
Inside Jessica's chest cavity, a Geiger counter began clicking wildly.