The term meant nothing to Kai or Matt when they first heard it. Flowride assault. The words carried a rhythm, a pulse, but no meaning. Kai rolled it around in his head and found nothing but static. Matt muttered under his breath, "Sounds like some street slang."
But Renn was already moving before either of them could ask.
She lifted her hand high, fingers spread like a signal, and her voice cut through the hum of the Lawless City. "Red Circle!" she called, like a curse and a promise in one. Heads turned. Scarred men, tattooed women, all of them armed with rusted pistols or blades scavenged from corpses. Their eyes narrowed, then lit, and they fell in line behind her as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
At first, it was a handful. Then two handfuls. Then more. A crowd snowballed around them, boots striking the pavement in sync, steel clanging against steel. Within minutes the street was full of hard-eyed killers and desperate survivors, answering a call that wasn't even meant for them.
Matt glanced sideways at Kai, whispering, "What the hell's going on?"
Kai shook his head. "No idea."
They didn't have to wonder long. The trickle became a torrent.
When the junkies caught the word Red Circle, they spilled out of the alleys like vermin scenting blood. Skinny bodies, twitching hands, glassy eyes—armed with anything from pipes to syringes filled with gods-knows-what. Their motives weren't noble. They weren't looking for justice. They wanted chaos, a fix, the thrill of breaking something that wasn't theirs. But they came anyway, shouting and laughing, swinging broken bottles at the air.
The numbers surged until they weren't a group anymore. They were a tide. A thousand strong.
Kai and Matt weren't leading it. They weren't even guiding it. They were caught in its current, carried forward like driftwood on a black river. Renn's voice was the spark, but now the fire burned on its own. The roar of a thousand boots on cracked concrete drowned out thought, drowned out hesitation.
This was a Flowride.
The name made sense now. It wasn't a plan, or a tactic, or anything human. It was momentum. A flood of bodies that rolled forward until something broke.
By the time the defenders scrambled to man the turret above the Red Circle's stronghold, it was already too late.
The gun barked fire, spitting rounds into the street. Bodies fell. A dozen, maybe more. But the tide didn't falter. The dead were trampled, their weapons picked up by the next in line. The crowd pressed forward faster, louder, a wall of noise that swallowed fear whole.
Kai felt the vibration in his chest, his ribs humming with every step. Matt's jaw was tight, but his eyes were sharp, calculating exits even as he marched in the flood.
The turret screamed again, brass raining down, tracers streaking orange lines across the dark. For a heartbeat, Kai thought they might be cut down where they stood. But the wave didn't stop. It couldn't.
And then it was over.
The crowd slammed into the building like a storm tide. Glass shattered, doors broke, walls cracked. The turret operator disappeared under the crush of bodies, his weapon silenced in a heartbeat. The Flowride poured through windows and doorways, howling like a thousand mouths chewing the same scream.
Inside, the air turned hot and metallic. Gunfire snapped, knives clashed, and every corridor became a throat choking on violence. Kai was shoved forward, his back pressed by a dozen others, the roar of the mob filling every inch of his skull.
For a split second, he remembered what still sat untouched in his Soulprint: a boon, an attribute, a soul item. Treasures granted by Sovereign, waiting in the quiet. He hadn't looked at them yet. He hadn't dared.
And here he was, caught in a Flowride where quiet didn't exist.
A man with a crowbar swung at him. Kai ducked instinctively, the weight of the crowd shoving the attacker aside before he could swing again. Another body stumbled, got kicked down, disappeared beneath boots. Matt flickered through the chaos, shadow-stepping like a phantom, his fists landing quick and sharp.
The sound was constant. Metal on bone. Screams muffled by the roar. The stink of blood, sweat, smoke, and something sour and chemical rising from the junkies. It wasn't a battle anymore. It was a flood eroding stone.
Kai caught a glimpse of Renn at the front, moving with the fury of someone who had always belonged here. Her gun cracked, her blade flashed, and every time she shouted Red Circle! the mob roared back, louder, angrier, hungrier.
Kai's lungs burned. He pushed forward, his hood low, his body half-shielded by strangers he'd never see again. A man fell across his path, throat torn open. Kai stepped over him without thinking. That was the Flowride's truth—pause and you were swallowed.
A shot cracked too close. Matt appeared at his side, dragging him into a shadowed alcove just as a defender's bullet ricocheted off the wall. Matt's face was pale, his teeth clenched. "We're ants in a flood," he hissed.
Kai nodded. "Then don't stop moving."
They surged back into the hall, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers whose names they'd never know. Every step deeper into the building felt like sinking into quicksand. The Flowride was momentum, but it was also weight. Too much weight.
The defenders fell back room by room, their resistance crumbling under sheer numbers. The junkies laughed, slashing at walls, setting fire to anything they could touch. The veterans kept pushing, weapons slick with blood.
Somewhere in the madness, Kai's Soulprint pulsed. The unopened gifts throbbed like a heartbeat under his skin. A boon, an attribute, a soul item. He wondered what they were. Something to keep him alive? Something to cut through this madness?
But the crowd gave him no time. No pause. The Flowride didn't wait for anyone to think.
By the time they reached the central chamber of the stronghold, the defenders were gone. Bodies littered the floor, smoke coiled in the rafters, and the roar of the crowd echoed like thunder inside stone walls. The Flowride had broken through.
Kai stood in the wreckage, chest heaving, his cloak spattered red. Matt leaned against a shattered table, sweat streaking his brow. Renn stood tall, her blade dripping, her grin feral.
Kai still hadn't checked his Soulprint. But he could feel it calling now, louder than before, whispering beneath the roar of the mob.
Later, he told himself. Later, when the flood receded.
For now, he was still riding the flow.
Matt, Renn and Kai were in the head office holding the commanders at gunpoint while the Flowride crowd starts stealing everything not strapped down.