The mission began, and the Lawless City was a shit show.
This was my first Black Omen assignment, but I wasn't about to tell anyone that. Not when the briefing had already painted a picture of hell.
We sat around a cracked table in the HQ safe zone, maps spread out and cigarette smoke hanging in the air. The handler tapped his finger against each district, naming factions like curses. Red Circle—cartel kings of the surface. The Russians—feral remnants living underground, whispering in tunnels. Packs of child soldiers who treated firefights like games, their laughter echoing after the gunshots. And the rest? Hookers working in daylight, drug dens where kids traded rations for poison. A cesspit that never slept.
And Kai was in it.
The thought hooked under my ribs the whole time.
Our objective sounded simple on paper: retrieve a classified document from a CIA operative embedded in the city, then exfiltrate. In reality, it meant walking blind through a nightmare, praying you didn't attract the wrong kind of attention.
---
We went in light—just sidearms and blades, nothing flashy. The streets smelled like rot and fuel, neon bleeding across puddles of filth. People didn't look at us, but I felt their eyes anyway. Predators don't always announce themselves.
We didn't even make it two blocks before the game began.
A whistle cut through the alleys, sharp and mocking. Then came the gunfire—not aimed to kill, but to herd. Shadows darted rooftops to rooftops, laughing. Hunters. They weren't out for territory or supplies. They were out for sport. And we were the prey.
We ran. Boots slamming cracked pavement, bullets whining against walls. At one corner a child no older than twelve leaned out with an AK, grinning as he sprayed low, forcing us deeper into the maze. They didn't want us dead yet. They wanted us running, desperate, cornered.
Two operatives broke formation—one didn't come back.
By the time we smashed through the back door of a gutted pharmacy, we were panting, bleeding, and down a man. The hunters' laughter echoed outside, then faded. They'd find us again. They always did.
---
The CIA operative was waiting three floors up, in a room where the windows were boarded with rusted metal. He looked hollowed out, his suit filthy, a pistol trembling in his grip.
"You're late," he spat, voice cracking.
"We got chased," one of the operatives snapped.
The the CIA operative who real name was unknown was quite young and didn't argue. He shoved a bundle of folders and photos into my hands. "That's everything. Names, locations, the Concord will know what to do. Just get it out of here before I end up gutted in the street."
I opened it just long enough to see photographs of men shaking hands, coded strings of letters, maps marked with symbols I didn't recognize. Sensitive enough to kill for. Sensitive enough to die for.
That was when the glass shattered.
Gunfire sprayed the room. Hunters had tracked us. The operative took a bullet to the shoulder and dropped screaming. We returned fire, dragged him behind cover, and bolted before they could pin us in.
It was chaos in the alleys again—shadows flickering, bullets whining, laughter chasing us. We pushed through a market square where corpses hung from hooks like livestock. Pigeons scattered in bloody clouds. Somehow, we kept moving.
When the dust settled, only four of us were left standing.
---
We stumbled into a collapsed factory that smelled of rust and oil. The silence there felt like salvation. For the first time since the mission began, no one was shooting at us.
We patched our wounds in the dark. One operative lit a cigarette with shaking hands. Another stared blankly at the wall, whispering prayers under her breath.
The folder of documents sat heavy in my lap. We had what we came for. Extraction was possible. But my mind wasn't on the folder. It was on Kai.
I could feel it—the wrongness in the air, the way the city bent and pulsed like it was alive. He was in it, drowning in the same cesspool we were, and if I walked away now, I'd never forgive myself.
I stood.
The others looked at me, confusion cutting through their exhaustion.
"Take the documents," I said, pressing the folder into the leader's hands. "Get them to extraction. Don't stop for anything."
He frowned. "And you?"
"I've got someone to find."
---
Extraction was already arranged. The Concord had a machine for it—a miracle and a horror. A rift engine, cobbled from someone's soulprint, turned into cold machinery. It could tear open a rift anywhere in the world, but only once every two months. A cooldown, they called it, like it was some game mechanic. In truth, it was the echo of a person burned into gears and wires, their life traded for the ability to escape. Fascinating and terrifying all at once.
They would get out. They would live.
Me? I pulled up my hood and turned back into the Lawless City's neon-stained dark.
Kai was here.
Mattethis was worried. He knew Neo would be too.
And he wasn't leaving without him.