The rain never left that alley. Not in her mind. Not even now, years later, when Selene Arlen stands under humming morgue lights, peeling latex gloves from bruised knuckles.
She was fifteen when the city taught her that the world doesn't care about fathers, daughters, or promises whispered through cracked teeth.
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Fifteen.
Her father's voice was a rumble behind her ribs. He called her Starling. Said she had wings in her bones. She never felt them — not until the night they bled out with him.
They'd been walking home, cutting through backstreets behind Vinny's Pawn & Guns — him with an envelope of hush money tucked inside his coat, her with textbooks in a torn backpack. She remembers the neon sign flickering overhead: GUNS • PAWN • CASH • OPEN — stuttering like a dying heart.
The shadows moved first. Three shapes, dripping black raincoats and cheap cologne. The alley narrowed behind them — dumpsters, chain-link fences, city rot seeping into concrete.
"Mr. Arlen," one of them crooned, voice muffled behind a crude crow mask. The beak bobbed as he spoke. "The Flock sends its regards."
Her father didn't plead. Didn't fight. He just put himself in front of her.
A gun. A flash. Thunder in her ears. His body hit the brick so hard it echoed.
Selene's world narrowed to his fingers reaching for hers — his breath a steam ghost leaving his lips.
Run, Selene.
She didn't.
She watched the masked man raise the gun again. Watched feathers stuck to the gutter slip loose in the wind. Watched her father's eyes glaze into emptiness.
She hid after. In trash. In dark corners. In herself.
And when the sirens came, she didn't say a word.
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Now.
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The morgue is freezing. Humid breath coils in front of her face as she bends over the table. The toe tag says UNKNOWN MALE, 30s. Two bullets in the chest. Wallet missing. Nobody will come for him.
Selene snaps on fresh gloves. Scalpel, forceps, bone saw — her tools are simple. Clean. Honest. She slices flesh while overhead bulbs flicker like the same neon sign from that alley. She pretends the buzzing is thunder. Pretends the smell of antiseptic is rain on concrete.
She pulls secrets from the dead. A watch tucked into an inner pocket. A crumpled receipt from Rosie's Bar. A sliver of red cloth under his fingernails.
She files it all away. Officially, she's just the cleaner. Quiet. Invisible. A phantom that wipes away the stains so the city can keep pretending it's clean.
Unofficially — she listens.
When the cops come down to drink stale coffee and joke about 'another stiff,' she listens. When the grieving come to identify a brother, a son, a father — she listens. She pays off an old uniform named Phelps, twenty bucks at a time, for extra whispers: who's running guns, who's feeding The Flock's endless appetite for pain.
It's not enough. It never is. But the dead don't lie.
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After hours, she sits in the break room. Cheap plastic chairs. Coffee like burnt motor oil. Her phone vibrates. A text from Evan: You coming tonight?
She types Yes. Stares at it. Deletes it. Tries again: Running late.
She'll never make it. She knows it. He knows it too. Her life is built on broken promises — one more fracture in the bones won't kill her.
---
She clocks out at 2:00 AM. Slips into the rain — of course it's raining. The city's heartbeat. Her heartbeat.
The bus drops her four blocks from the docks. Broken streetlights, cracked pavement, rusted fences. The Nest is buried behind shipping containers and rusted cranes — an abandoned warehouse no one cares to claim. Inside: steel racks lined with tools. Feather-shaped blades. Drones that hum like insects in the rafters. Spare disguises hanging like molted skins.
Micah Torres's voice crackles in her ear as soon as she flicks on the breaker. Wraith. Her ghost. Her irritant. Her only friend who knows the whole truth.
> "You're late, Selene."
"I had a date."
"How romantic. Was he cold and dead on a table again?"
She smirks. Peels off her wet coat, hangs it on a nail. The winged cloak waits on the wall — matte black, weatherproof, lined with glide panels and reinforced plates.
"What did you find?" she asks.
Micah's feed flickers onto the old projector — grainy street cam footage. A man in a cheap suit, passing a duffel bag to another in a dark alley. The same alley. Always an alley.
"Same crew. New leader. Moving guns through the East Docks tonight. Recognize this?"
He zooms in. A crow tattoo on the man's wrist — cheap ink, but it stirs the thunder in her ribs.
"The Flock."
"Family reunion, huh?" Micah's tone is too casual. He knows it digs deep.
She pulls the gauntlets from the rack. Slides her fingers in. Talon blades click home, sharp enough to whisper through bone.
Her father's voice is thunder in her head: Run, Selene.
She never did.
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Outside, the city waits — filthy, hungry, unaware that tonight it will see wings against the storm.
The Black Raven rises for the first time — and this time, someone will bleed for the past.
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END OF CHAPTER ONE