Kai woke with the city already alive beneath his window. Vendors shouted prices into the streets, carts clattered over cobblestones, and the hum of Zone Alpha never softened. He smoked one down on the balcony, let the ash fall, then put himself in order.
Today was GRARC.
Three days a week—that was the contract. Not full enlistment, not freedom either. Just a tether long enough to keep him connected, short enough to let him breathe.
The GRARC station sat like a fortress squatting on the edge of the plaza. Barricades funneled civilians through scanners. Spotlights hummed overhead, washing everything in pale light. The air reeked of oil, sweat, and burned coffee.
Inside, the noise sharpened: phones ringing without pause, radios barking clipped reports, boots hammering tile floors. Detectives argued across desks stacked with case files. Case boards sagged under the weight of string and photographs. It wasn't order. It was survival painted to look like order.
A clerk barely glanced at his papers before stamping them. "Second floor. Detective wing. Orientation."
Kai followed the directions, weaving through corridors that smelled of cigarettes and ink. He was pointed toward a desk shoved against the wall of the detective offices and told to wait.
He sat, listening to the storm of the precinct grind around him.
Then the door opened.
A boy stepped in, white hair falling sharp around his face, a streak of red cutting through it like paint, and eyes black as ink. He wore his jacket loose, posture slouched but sharp, like someone who'd long since stopped asking permission.
Kai recognized him instantly. The memory cut sharp: Omen Trading, crates of M-88 tranquilizers, his smirk as he'd signed the order.
The boy's expression flickered with the same realization. Then his mouth twisted into a grin.
"…Well. Small world." He stepped forward, hand out. "You're my new Resonant aid? Figures. Name's Avren."
"Kai."
"Yeah," Avren said, grin widening. "I know."
Introductions finished, Avren motioned him out toward the main wing.
The precinct looked worse up close. Phones screamed. Officers argued. Case files stacked high enough to swallow desks. On one wall, gang routes from the Free City spidered across a map. On another, photos of missing Resonants glared from beneath red marker.
Avren dropped into his chair opposite Kai's, kicking a drawer closed with his boot. His desk was buried in folders and glass vials, some capped, some still smeared dark. A faint copper smell clung to the air around them.
He saw Kai notice. "Blood analysis," Avren said, tapping one of the vials with a pen. "That's my specialty. Every fight leaves traces—spatter, residue, pulse-burns in the veins. I study it, map it, figure out who bled where and why. Resonants leave fingerprints in their blood. Demons too. Someone has to make sense of the mess."
He leaned back, cigarette dangling from his lip. "They call me a Resonance Blood Analyst. Fancy title, but it just means when things go bad, I get handed the stains and asked to tell a story."
A sergeant stormed by, slammed a stack of folders onto Kai's desk, and barked, "Read these, sign the top forms, and be ready. Resonants like you? You're here to go into the field. Breach containment, missing cases, rift flares—you'll be the hammer. Avren's the eyes." He was already shouting at someone else before Kai could reply.
Avren flipped open a file like it was a comic book. "See? They expect me to trace the trail. They expect you to walk it."
Kai skimmed his first folder. Smuggling reports, rift disturbances, unexplained Resonant deaths. The kind of cases that didn't stay on paper.
"They've got soldiers for muscle," Avren continued, tapping ash into a tray overflowing with cigarette ends. "But soldiers don't see what we see. Pulse signatures. Anomalies in the way blood burns. The city's cracks aren't obvious unless you're wired for it. That's where you come in. You'll handle the things that bleed too fast or vanish too quiet."
Kai closed the file, silent.
Avren smirked. "Don't worry. I'll keep the paperwork balanced. You just make sure whatever we find doesn't eat me alive before I can write the report."
The precinct thundered on around them—boots stomping, phones ringing, voices crashing together. Somewhere in that storm, Kai had just been claimed by another rhythm.
And whether he liked it or not, he was now the other half of Avren's work.