The roulette den was hidden in the belly of a collapsed theater. The old marquee still clung to the roof, letters long burned out, pigeons nesting where actors once bowed. Inside, the velvet seats had rotted to dust and the stage was nothing but cracked boards and bloodstains. The laughter echoing through the hall had the shrill edge of cruelty—desperate people trying to sound alive in a place that only sold death.
Kai kept his hood low as the three of them slipped into the shadows at the back. The stink of sweat, liquor, and gunpowder hit him instantly. A circle of gamblers crowded around the stage, their eyes fever-bright. In the middle, under the cracked spotlight, a boy barely older than Kai had been when he first bled for Sovereign sat trembling. A revolver was pressed into his hand. Across from him, a scarred brute with one eye shouted encouragement, slapping the table like this was some carnival game.
"Spin it, kid!" the brute barked. "Don't waste the bullet. Spin it clean!"
The crowd roared approval.
The boy's hand shook so hard the revolver rattled against the table. His lips moved in silent prayer, though no god listened in the Lawless City.
Renn's jaw clenched. "Bastards."
Kai felt his chest tighten. Velnix stirred against his ribs like a restless heart. Matt's shadow rippled under his boots, already reaching for the stage.
"Not yet," Kai murmured. "We move together."
The boy raised the revolver, tears cutting through grime on his face. The crowd leaned in, hungry.
Matt was the first to act. His shadow surged forward like liquid night, swallowing the scarred brute's legs and yanking him to the ground. The revolver snapped upward—only to be wrenched from the boy's hand as Kai flickered forward with Residual Step, catching the weapon before it could fire.
The crowd gasped. For a heartbeat, confusion reigned. Then the gamblers reached for knives, pistols, clubs.
"Game's over," Renn snarled. Her pistol barked twice, dropping two of the nearest thugs with clean shots to the chest.
Chaos erupted.
Kai fired the revolver into the air, the shot booming across the ruined theater. "Run!" he shouted at the boy, shoving him toward the exit.
The kid bolted, stumbling through the crowd as Renn and Matt tore into the gamblers. Matt vanished into his own shadow, reappearing behind a man with a machete and snapping his neck before dragging him under like quicksand. Renn moved like she was born for this—each shot precise, her grin sharp as glass.
Kai moved with deliberate calm. He ducked under a swinging pipe, slammed the revolver into its wielder's jaw, and felt the crunch of bone. Velnix flared around his arm, skeletal ribs bursting outward to pierce another attacker's chest. The man screamed once before collapsing.
The gamblers broke, some trying to flee, others too drunk on adrenaline to quit. Those who stayed died quickly. Renn dropped one with a shot to the knee and another with a bullet between the eyes. Matt's shadows dragged two more into the boards of the stage, their screams cut short as the floor swallowed them whole.
When the smoke cleared, the theater was silent again. The gamblers lay scattered across broken seats and cracked wood, blood soaking into the boards. Only the echoes of gunfire remained, rolling through the empty city blocks outside.
The boy was gone, vanished into the alleys. Kai hoped he made it far enough to matter.
Renn wiped her pistol on a dead man's coat. "Well. That was cathartic."
Matt emerged from the shadows, his expression unreadable as always. He glanced at Kai. "You all right?"
Kai nodded once, though his hand still gripped the revolver too tightly. He forced himself to lower it, the metallic taste of violence heavy on his tongue. "They won't play this game again."
"No," Renn agreed. She stepped up onto the stage, surveying the carnage like a queen admiring her work. "Russian roulette's done. At least here."
She turned back to them, her grin curling sharp. "So. What next?"
The smell of cordite and blood still clung to Kai's clothes as they stepped out of the ruined theater. The city beyond hadn't noticed—or hadn't cared—about the massacre inside. Lawless City nights always drowned violence in more noise, more fire, more sin. Neon signs buzzed weakly, some flickering out as the wind carried ashes from burning Red Circle cars down the boulevard.
Kai kept his hood low, the revolver tucked into his cloak. He exhaled slowly and finally broke the silence.
"Let's find somewhere safe," he muttered. "I've got a soulprint to check."
Renn laughed under her breath, not quite unkindly, but sharp enough to sting. "Damn Resonants. Always fiddling with your magic stamps like you're checking a receipt."
Matt arched a brow as they passed under a broken streetlamp. "You're not one?"
"Nope." Renn slung her pistol back into its holster with a practiced spin. "I'm mundane. Born with nothing, raised with nothing. But my guns have never failed me. Steel and powder beat spirit smoke any day."
Kai tilted his head at her, one good eye glinting. "You keep up just fine."
She smirked. "Better than fine. Besides, Resonants are rare in this cesspit. If I needed a ghost to fight for me, I'd be dead years ago."
Matt's shadow twitched at his feet, curling around his boots as if it wanted to argue. But he said nothing, just gave her a thin smile before looking ahead again.
The three of them ducked into an alley, following the twisting arteries of the city until the noise dimmed. Kai leaned against a rusted fire escape and let the weight of the documents press into his ribs. He could feel Sovereign humming faintly at the back of his skull, a reminder that the folder wasn't just ink and paper. It was leverage. It was power.
He closed his eye for a moment. Soulprint screens flickered in his mind, numbers and words shifting like dust. Burdens, boons, stability percentages—lines of himself catalogued and measured. Something new glimmered there, buried beneath the fight and the Flowride. A gift or a curse, he couldn't tell yet.
"You look like you're about to faint," Renn said, crouching by the fire escape and lighting a cigarette. "How long does it take to check one of those things?"
"As long as it takes," Kai answered flatly, forcing the screens away. The air already tasted like rust and blood; he didn't need smoke on top of it. "We've got more to deal with."
Matt glanced between them. "What's next?"
Renn grinned around her cigarette, teeth catching the neon glow. "Slave zoo?"
The words dropped into the alley like a stone in water. Even in the Lawless City, the phrase carried weight. A place where men, women, and children were penned like beasts, sold to fight in arenas or shipped to factories. Red Circle's ugliest coin-purse.
Kai's jaw tightened. "Yeah. Slave zoo next."
Renn blew a lazy ring of smoke and shrugged. "You're the boss."
For a moment, Kai almost smiled at that. Not because he believed it—Renn never gave her loyalty freely—but because she said it anyway, like a promise scrawled in ash.
They moved again, back into the veins of the city.
The streets grew darker as they pressed east. Red Circle's banners still hung tattered from the sides of gutted buildings, but after the Flowride, most compounds were smoking husks. The people they passed were hollow-eyed, scarred by debts or drugs. Some stared too long, some scurried away. Nobody interfered.
Kai walked at the front, cloak brushing the cracked pavement, Velnix thrumming faintly against his shoulder blade like a heart he couldn't quiet. Matt stalked a half-step behind, his shadow stretching and retreating with every flicker of neon. Renn hummed to herself, spinning her cigarette between her fingers, eyes sharp even when her grin was lazy.
At the edge of the district, they stopped. Beyond a chain-link fence sagging with rust, the zoo squatted like a carcass—half-collapsed domes and cages built from scavenged rebar, floodlights flickering on and off. Figures moved inside, too small and too many to be guards. The laughter that carried on the wind wasn't joy.
Kai stared through the fence, his hand tightening on the revolver. "Next."
Renn flicked her cigarette into the gutter and crushed it beneath her boot. "Guess we're about to put some animals out of their misery."
Matt's shadow rippled eagerly, as though it too understood what was coming.
And the three of them stepped forward.