The city had stopped breathing.
Layla felt it in the way the air clung to her throat, heavy with exhaust and rain, in the way every street corner carried silence like a trap. London didn't sleep anymore; it stalked.
She pulled her hood lower, skin tacky with sweat and grime. Her stomach knotted hollowly, the ache long past hunger and into a sharper place—like her own body had started eating itself. Sleep hadn't come in days, not real sleep. Just jolts of half-dreams, mirrors bending out of sync, reflections that moved without her.
Her legs carried her forward anyway, boots whispering against slick pavement. She kept her head down. She'd learned: eye contact was invitation. Every face might be a witness. Every witness might be a knife.
Ahead, the drone sweep came first as a hum—mechanical, rhythmic, forty-one beats apart, like the world had grown a clock it couldn't ignore. Then the light followed: a white cone slashing the alley in perfect lines.
Layla pressed flat against brick, heart climbing her throat. The air shimmered faintly around her skin, her nerves too thin to hide the twitch of resonance. She bit her lip until she tasted iron. Stay still. Stay blank.
The drone hovered, scanned.
Across the alley, a man froze mid-step, arm glowing faintly through his sleeve. His eyes went wide. "Wait—"
The light intensified. A click, then a burst. His body snapped rigid, tattoos flaring like overexposed film before collapsing into ash that smeared across wet stone.
The drone drifted on, indifferent.
Layla's legs shook, but she forced them to move. One step. Then another. She didn't look back. Looking back was invitation too.
The walls carried their own warnings. Red graffiti bled across brick: INK BELONGS TO US. Beneath it, black spray scrawled by someone else: REGISTRY IS A CULL. She'd seen the slogans everywhere, like rival prayers competing for the same altar.
Her eyes caught on another line, fresh and crooked: GHOST WITHOUT INK. FIND HER.
Her breath stuttered. Paint still dripped down the wall like blood.
She ducked under scaffolding, into a narrower passage where rain pooled in rainbow-slick puddles. Her reflection wavered back at her, pale and hollow-eyed, lips trembling a half-second out of sync. She clenched her jaw. "Not now," she whispered.
The puddle smiled anyway.
Layla kicked it, scattering her own face into fragments. Water splashed her jeans, cold enough to sting.
Everywhere, the hunt pressed closer. Civilians moved like shadows with ears. A woman at a bus stop watched Layla too long, eyes narrowing, before yanking her child close and whispering into his hood. A group of boys in an underpass fell silent mid-laugh as she passed, their gaze lingering on her hands tucked too deep into her sleeves.
Suspicion was currency now.
She cut left, slipping through a fence where wire curled like teeth. The lot beyond was gutted—burned-out cars, weeds punching through cracked asphalt. She crouched behind a rusted frame, catching her breath.
Her ribs shuddered with each inhale. She tugged her hood lower and tried not to shake. But the twitch came anyway—the glass window of the ruined car rippled faintly, her reflection lagging. Her eyes in the glass were older, colder. They mouthed a word she wasn't speaking.
Her breath came ragged. She shoved away from the car, stumbling back into the street.
Bootsteps.
Rebels emerged from a side street—red cloth tied around their arms, spray cans swinging from their belts like trophies. Their eyes scanned, sharp and hungry.
One spotted her. "Oi—"
She bolted.
Her lungs screamed. Boots slapped puddles, echoes chasing her into narrower streets where light barely reached. She cut corners sharp, weaving through scaffolds and dripping plastic tarps. The rebels' voices followed—"Ghost! Stop her!"—and then the hiss of aerosol cans as they marked walls even mid-chase, claiming space with their creed.
Her hood slipped once, rain slicking her hair to her forehead. She yanked it back down, chest burning.
The city was alive with suspicion. Faces turned as she sprinted past. Some startled, some looked away too quickly. One man pointed. She ducked into another alley, shoulder scraping brick.
Mirrors were everywhere. Windows, puddles, chrome siding of abandoned cars. Each one trembled with her reflection. Each one mouthed words she wasn't saying. No. No. No.
She pressed her hand to her chest, feeling the hum beneath her ribs. It wanted out. The city wanted her. Both were going to get their way if she wasn't careful.
Another drone hum rose overhead. Light swept too close. She stumbled into a stairwell that reeked of piss and rust, crouching low as the beam passed. Metal hissed, the screws in the railing twitching faintly toward her pulse. She shoved them down with her palm, whispering through grit teeth, "Stay."
Her powers were unraveling. Too loud. Too visible.
She waited until silence returned, then climbed out, every step weighted with dread.
The rebels' voices echoed from blocks away now, still hunting. Civilians whispered in corners. The drones would return soon.
Layla pulled her hood lower, every muscle stretched thin, and kept walking. Not toward safety—there was no such direction anymore. Just away. Always away.
And in every broken reflection she passed, her other self followed a beat too late, waiting.
The ruin smelled of rain and smoke.
Layla pressed her back against the warped doorframe, chest heaving as if the air itself were made of knives. The street outside was still alive with echoes—boots on wet pavement, the mechanical purr of drones—but the ruin swallowed most of it. The sound dulled against charred plaster and broken tile.
She slid down the wall until her knees hit grit. Her hood slipped; she didn't fix it. Sweat stuck to her skin in thin salt lines, stinging the raw patches where leather straps had once dug deep.
The place had been a shop, once. Half-collapsed shelving leaned against each other like drunks too stubborn to fall. Rainwater trickled down the fractured ceiling, dripping steady into a bucket warped by fire. A single flickering bulb dangled near the counter, powered by some forgotten line that hadn't yet been cut. Its light strobed to her pulse—faint, stuttering, traitorous.
She buried her face in her hands. Her fingers smelled of ash.
Deke's face rose unbidden, raw and too close. The glass between them, his throat glowing with the same marks she had hated in everyone else. His silence when she needed words. The sound of his body meeting the wave before hers.
Betrayal. Sacrifice. The words twisted into each other until she couldn't tell where one ended.
"You sold me," she whispered into her palms. The sound cracked like it might shatter her ribs. "And you died for me. What am I supposed to do with that?"
The bulb flickered hard, bursting once before steadying. Shadows along the shelves lagged a beat behind, like they weren't sure if they should keep following her. A puddle by the counter rippled in time with her heartbeat, sending her own pale reflection shivering across the surface.
"Stop," she hissed. But the resonance didn't listen. It never did.
She hugged her knees tighter, trying to make herself smaller, less noticeable. Every flicker was a beacon. Every ripple, a signal. Even here, buried in ruin, she couldn't keep still.
Footsteps.
Her head snapped up.
Not soldiers' boots. Softer. Hesitant. Someone picking their way through rubble with care rather than force.
The shadow that fell across the doorway was human-sized, hunched under a soaked coat. A civilian, maybe. The kind who'd stopped being surprised by ruins long ago.
The figure hesitated when they saw her. A girl in a hood, knees drawn up, eyes bloodshot and feral.
"You're just a kid," the voice said. A woman's, tired and cracked. She reached into her satchel and pulled out half a loaf of bread, wrapped in paper gone damp at the edges. She crouched, holding it out like an offering.
Layla didn't move.
The woman pressed on, her gaze gentle but wary. "Runaway, yeah? Half the city is, these days. Take it. I won't tell."
The bread smelled stale but real. Layla's stomach twisted sharp, a wolf gnawing its cage. She reached out, slow, fingers trembling.
Then she stopped.
The woman's eyes flicked once to her sleeves. To her hands hidden too deep, as if she already knew what they might reveal.
Layla pulled back. The bread hung in the space between them, patient and damning.
The woman lowered her hand, lips tightening. "Alright. Don't trust me. I get it. Just… don't die in here. Place will collapse if you breathe too hard." She stood, brushed plaster dust from her coat, and turned toward the doorway.
Kindness, fleeting as rain.
Layla's chest ached. The bread still smelled sharp in her nose, crueler than hunger itself.
Another voice, sharper, came from deeper in the ruin. "Who's in here?"
Layla's pulse spiked.
A second figure emerged, younger, wiry, with a strip of red cloth tied sloppy around his arm. A rebel. His eyes lit with something too close to awe when he saw her.
"No mark," he whispered, almost reverent. "You're her. The ghost."
Layla shoved herself to her feet, every nerve screaming.
The rebel took a step closer, palms up like someone calming an animal. "Don't run. We've been looking. You broke their bunker. You're proof. You belong with us."
Behind him, the civilian woman tensed, hand tightening on her satchel strap. She looked between Layla and the rebel, lips pressing thin, as if realizing what danger she'd nearly carried into her home.
Layla's throat closed. Deke's voice echoed in her head—She comes too—followed by the look on his face when the rebels dragged her away.
Her hands trembled. Lights above flickered harder, bulbs humming to the rhythm of her heart. The puddle by the counter rippled again, reflections splitting, mouthing words she didn't say. No.
The rebel's eyes widened. He thought it was miracle. Proof of destiny.
Layla thought it was betrayal, waiting to happen again.
"I'm not yours," she said, voice low and ragged.
She pushed past, hood dragging shadows across her face. The rebel called after her, his tone urgent, hopeful, desperate. "You can't keep running forever!"
Her boots crunched glass as she left the ruin behind.
Outside, the air hit cold and wet. Sirens moaned somewhere distant. Drones pulsed their mechanical heartbeat overhead.
She didn't look back.
Trust was a knife. Even kindness could cut. She'd learned that already.
Better starving, alone, hunted—than handed over again.
She pulled her hood lower and slipped into the rain-slick alleys, shadows lagging just behind, waiting for her to falter.
Night draped itself over the city like a wet shroud.
Rain blurred neon into ribbons that bled down glass and pooled across cracked pavement. London didn't shine anymore; it leaked. Each streetlamp sputtered to life, one after another, until the alleys glowed sickly yellow and red, reflections stretched thin across puddles.
Layla moved through it like a shadow already half-erased. Hood tight, hands stuffed into damp sleeves, she pressed her body close to walls painted with slogans in fresh and fading layers: INK BELONGS TO US in dripping crimson, scrawled over by newer strokes of black: REGISTRY SAVES LIVES. The war bled even here, in graffiti and rumor, in rain-streaked declarations that no one fully believed.
Her stomach clenched sharp. She couldn't remember the last time she had eaten something that wasn't half-stale or stolen. Every corner smelled of frying oil or wet concrete, each scent a reminder of hunger grinding its teeth inside her.
She passed a knot of civilians gathered beneath a broken awning. Their voices carried low, urgent.
"They say she tore steel apart—"
"Unmarked, not even a line on her skin—"
"A trick. A rebel lie. Don't you see? They want us to believe in ghosts."
The words chased her like hounds. None of them knew her face, not yet, but the legend was faster than she could ever run. She slipped past, their whispers burning her ears.
The next corner stank of ozone. Drones drifted overhead, faceless eyes casting beams that scanned alleys like blades of cold light. One swept too close; she pressed herself flat against a shuttered café door, holding her breath until the beam cut away.
Her pulse refused to calm.
Somewhere deeper in the block, rebels chanted, voices rough from smoke and passion: Ink belongs to us! Ink belongs to us! A drumbeat pounded between syllables, trash cans turned into war drums. Their sound filled the night with something jagged and triumphant, a noise that wanted to be prophecy.
And through it all, Layla slipped unseen, each step an argument against collapse.
She turned down a narrow street where rainwater pooled knee-deep in potholes. Neon from a half-dead sign painted the water electric blue, as if the gutter itself was alive.
Her legs buckled once. She caught herself on the frame of a shattered shop window. The glass clung to the edges, jagged teeth reflecting her pale face.
She leaned close.
The reflection didn't obey.
Her forehead pressed to the glass, breath fogging the cracked pane. On the other side, her double moved a heartbeat late, lips shaping something she hadn't said.
Her throat closed. "Not me," she whispered, too soft for the street to hear. Her reflection mouthed the same words after, slow and deliberate, as though mocking her.
"Stop it," she begged. "Please."
The rain outside shifted, as if listening. The neon flickered. The puddles by her boots trembled in rhythm with her pulse. The resonance was small, but it was enough.
The hum started low, mechanical, just at the edge of hearing. Then louder. A drone's wings slicing through mist.
Her head snapped up.
White beams swept the corner, too sharp, too clean.
Run.
Her body obeyed before thought caught up. Boots splashed through water, spraying arcs of neon blue. Her lungs heaved against her ribs, raw air cutting her throat. She darted left, then right, slipping between scaffolds draped with torn mesh. Sirens pulsed faintly in the distance, echoing against the rain like hunting calls.
Her reflection followed her in every puddle, every smeared car window, every glossy surface she passed. Always a beat behind, always wrong.
The city chanted without her. Rebels roared her into myth. Civilians whispered her into rumor. Soldiers hunted her into prey.
But Layla—the girl beneath the hood, cold and starving and breaking with every step—couldn't find herself in any of it.
She only knew how to keep moving.
And so she did.
The city had chewed her thin.
Layla stumbled through the rain as if her bones had lost their arguments with gravity. Each step dragged more than walked, boots heavy with water. The neon that smeared itself across puddles felt too bright, too sharp, stabbing her eyes with every reflection. Her breath rattled in shallow bursts, each one a coin spent from a purse already emptied.
Exhaustion didn't arrive suddenly. It had been gnawing for days, hollowing her cheeks, sharpening the bones of her wrists. But now it tipped from hunger into collapse. The world blurred at the edges. The rhythm of the drones above became lullaby instead of threat.
She found a hollow in the wall where scaffolding met stone, half-hidden by tarps sagging under the weight of rain. Crates leaned broken across one side, and rubble from some forgotten demolition filled the ground in jagged mounds. She slipped into the narrow gap like smoke curling into cracks.
It smelled of mildew and wet iron. A nest for rats. A corner no one wanted.
Perfect.
She sank to the ground, knees drawn tight, back pressed against cold stone that wept water through unseen seams. Her hood slumped forward until shadow swallowed her face. Her ribs ached with each breath, but the ache dulled as the air turned heavier, thicker.
The resonance hadn't left her. It never did. Even here, huddled in ruin, the puddles at her boots trembled faintly in time with her pulse. A shard of glass on the ground caught her reflection and lagged, lips parting too late. A flicker of neon in the tarp above strobed to the rhythm of her heartbeat.
She turned her face against her sleeve, willing it to stop. Willing the city to stop noticing her.
Deke's face still burned behind her eyelids. His silence. His betrayal. His death. The way his mark had flared, then stilled. The way his hands had pressed against the glass like a prayer too late to matter.
Her throat closed. The thought of sleep felt cruel, because sleep meant dreams, and dreams meant mirrors.
Still, her body refused to keep upright. Her head tipped against the wall, damp hair sticking to stone. The cold crept under her skin, numbing muscle, slowing her pulse until even the resonance quieted.
For the first time in days, she felt herself fading into stillness.
The city went on without her.
Distant chants shivered through the night: Ink belongs to us! Ink belongs to us! Each syllable thudded like a heartbeat, like prophecy shaping itself in alleys she would never see. Drones purred overhead, scanning beams slicing rain into geometric patterns. Civilians whispered in their flats and basements about the girl who shattered cages, the anomaly that bent machines into prayer.
And Layla—Layla was curled in the dark, no myth at all.
Her hands twitched, half in dream, half in warning. The glass shard at her side caught her reflection, late again, mouth shaping that same word she hadn't spoken. No.
Her lips moved faintly, unconscious, mirroring her mirror. A whisper without voice.
Footsteps scuffed the alley.
Layla stirred, lids heavy, pulse spiking enough to ripple the puddles again. She pressed back into the hollow, breath caught between waking and sleep.
A figure passed under the sagging tarp.
Not a soldier—no stiff rhythm, no armor. Not a rebel—no red band, no chanting voice.
Just a woman.
Ordinary. Wrapped in a patched coat, grocery bag dangling from one hand, umbrella in the other. Her shoes splashed softly through the rain, too used to puddles to bother dodging them. She walked with the kind of weariness only civilians carried—the kind that said she had already endured her share of small losses and had no room left for more.
The woman slowed as she passed the hollow. Her eyes caught Layla—hood drawn low, body curled small, grime streaking her cheeks, shoes soaked through.
For a moment, the woman simply looked.
Not with recognition. Not with fear. Not with awe.
Only with the tired compassion one gives to a homeless child. Another forgotten body pressed against cold stone. Another reminder that the city was too broken to fix.
Her gaze lingered, then slid away. She shifted her grocery bag higher on her wrist, muttered something under her breath—maybe a prayer, maybe nothing—and walked on.
Layla's chest tightened.
The chants of rebels in the distance grew louder, echoing against the walls like thunder. The hum of drones carved white lines through the mist above. Her reflection in the shard still mouthed no a beat too late.
But the woman hadn't seen any of that.
To her, Layla was no myth. No anomaly. No storm waiting to unravel the city.
She was just a girl, curled in the dark, cold and starving, forgotten.
The rain pressed harder on the tarp. Drops fell in steady rhythm, like the ticking of some unseen clock counting down.
Layla closed her eyes. For a fragile moment, she allowed herself to be only what the woman had seen. Not fulcrum, not hunted, not weapon.
Just a child.
The city kept moving.
The myth kept growing.
But in this corner, beneath scaffolding and shadow, Layla became invisible again.
END OF CHAPTER 6