The city was a maze of firelight and steel. Alarm bells rang in waves, summoning marines, bounty hunters, and every cutthroat with half a pistol. Malik threaded through it like smoke, chains dragging faintly behind him, his bare feet silent against the cobblestones.
The auction block's echoes still rang in his ears the jeers, the numbers, the branding. He ran not only from the marines but from that humiliation carved into his bones. Tonight wasn't about escape. Tonight was about erasing that memory.
He ducked into an alley. A squadron stormed past, boots hammering the street. His mismatched eyes tracked them, toxic green and blood red catching the lantern glow. Malik's hand tightened around his wrist chain. One lagged behind.
The mistake cost him.
A quick yank, a muffled choke, a limp body dragged into shadow. Malik didn't linger. He took the rifle, stripped a satchel, and moved on. Hunting his hunters.
But the chase escalated. The city became a cage, squads circling tighter with each passing moment. Gunfire sparked in distant alleys, shouts echoing across the rooftops. Malik's lungs drew steady breaths, but his body thrummed with something new an edge humming in his blood. He could feel the wind shift when boots landed nearby, smell the difference between gunpowder in a chamber and one already fired.
It wasn't learned. It wasn't practiced. It was instinct.
Then came the bullet.
The shot cracked from a rooftop, faster than thought. Malik had dodged countless shots before, but this one carried weight, as if death itself bore down on his skull. His body jerked aside violently before his mind even registered, the round tearing through the wall instead of his head.
He crouched, chains ready. His heart thundered. That wasn't like the others…
But there was no time to dwell. The squad in front of him surged.
The alley became carnage. Malik's chains whirled, breaking rifles, crushing throats, splintering skulls. He moved like a storm, efficient and ruthless. Bullets cut the air around him, some grazing flesh, but none slowing him. By the time silence fell, the ground was littered with bodies. The sniper had vanished, leaving Malik with only the rising weight of blood on his hands.
He ran again. Toward the docks. Toward air. Toward freedom.
The warehouse gave him temporary shelter. He staggered inside, breath ragged now. Blood seeped from a gash across his side, warm and slick, forcing his hand to press hard against it. The pain brought clarity. And with it, something else.
He felt it first as a twitch at his back. Then it coiled free.
A tail.
His eyes widened as it swayed behind him sleek, powerful, unnatural. Black, with faint crimson streaks pulsing faintly under the moonlight seeping through the high windows. Malik gripped it with trembling fingers, his chest heaving.
He didn't know what it meant. He only knew the world would never see him as human again.
Boots struck outside. Torches flared through the slats. Voices barked commands. The warehouse doors boomed as marines threw them wide.
"Surround him!"
"Bring him down!"
Malik staggered to his feet, chains hanging from his fists. His body was battered, blood dripping freely, his breath shallow. The dozen rifles raised at him promised death. For the first time since breaking his chains, he felt cornered.
And something in him broke.
It wasn't fury it was will sharpened into a single, blinding edge. He refused. Refused to kneel, refused to return to chains, refused to die forgotten in the dark. His vision tunneled, heart pounding against shattered ribs, blood spilling down his side.
I will not fall here.
The air ruptured.
Pressure slammed through the warehouse, invisible but undeniable. Torches flickered violently. Marines stumbled, some gagging, some collapsing entirely with whites of their eyes showing. The ones still standing trembled, their rifles shaking in unsteady hands.
Malik didn't know what had happened. All he knew was that the air itself had bent to his defiance.
They charged anyway. Desperation made men stupid.
Malik answered with his own. Chains blurred, striking with a finality he hadn't possessed moments before. Every swing was backed by something more than muscle now will itself seemed to carry his fists. Bullets fired wildly, some cutting into his flesh, but he didn't stop moving.
When silence finally fell again, the warehouse was a graveyard.
Malik staggered outside into the night, chest heaving, his body screaming. He leaned against the wall, eyes lifting to the moon overhead. His tail twitched slowly behind him, faint streaks of crimson glimmering, like veins waiting to split.
He spat blood into the dirt and let out a low, bitter laugh.
The world thought they'd caged him. Tonight proved otherwise.