The bass wasn't music; it was a heartbeat the city had stolen and wired into the floor. It came up through the soles and climbed the spine, a heavy, patient thud that kept time with flashing red strobes and a ceiling of mirrored panels sweating with condensation. Inferno Club breathed smoke and neon. Bodies tangled on the dance floor, silhouettes in crimson haze; the scent of spilled whiskey, citrus peel, and hot electricity hung thick enough to chew.
In the VIP booth above it all, Arkellin K. Andy sat like a storm biding its hour.
Black leather jacket creaking at the seams, dark shirt unbuttoned just enough to catch the lights, silver chain resting against his collarbone. His hair—midnight black with a thin white streak falling over his brow—looked like a blade caught in the rain. The table in front of him was a scatter of empty glasses, a square ashtray with a pair of crushed filters, and a single bottle of whiskey beading with sweat. He hadn't drunk much. He liked the burn, not the blur.
2:01 AM glowed on a digital clock over the bar.
He rested two fingers on the rim of his glass and watched the ring of condensation print itself onto the tabletop. Down on the floor, light strobed across faces that would be strangers tomorrow. Laugh. Kiss. Forget. His gaze tracked none of it. It slid past, through the heat and noise, into a room only he could see.
A hand settled on the back of the booth. Riven Holt, broad-shouldered and clean-shaven—his shadow since before the streets learned Arkellin's name—leaned in without crowding him. "You want me to clear the upper rails?" he asked, chin ticking at the balcony where a pair of men were pretending to be casual about their vantage point.
Arkellin blinked once, slow. "They're Dalca's?" His voice was a dry scrape, the kind that cut but didn't rise.
"Or hired by someone who wants to impress him." Riven's jaw shifted. "Too tidy to be locals."
"Let them look." Arkellin lifted the glass. The first sip was a blade dipped in honey—sweet for a blink, heat for a breath, then the ache that settled low and steady. He swallowed and set the glass down, aligning it with the edge of a damp ring already there. The small order of it calmed him.
A woman in sequins stumbled near the velvet rope, laughter like a broken bell. She blew a kiss at Arkellin without knowing who she kissed. He didn't see her. He saw a white corridor; the echo of boots; his hands red and slippery; the way her eyes—the last eyes that looked at him like he was more than a storm—had glazed over while his name broke in his mouth. He saw a muzzle-flash through a half-open door and a rose-colored dress crumple in silence.
You promised me you'd make it quiet, he had told the man who handled the clean-up.
I can make it disappear, the man had replied. Nothing in this city is truly quiet.
"Boss," Riven said softly.
Arkellin's thumb had found the groove on his lighter—scuffed chrome, solid, a habit that lived where cigarettes used to. He flipped it open, let the lid click shut. Open, click. Shut. The metronome of a man counting something only he could hear.
A server slid into the booth's shadow—black dress, tray balanced flawlessly. "Mr. Andy." She set a fresh tumbler beside his dwindling one, eyes down. "From the bar."
"Who sent it?" Riven asked.
"Compliments of the house," she said.
"House doesn't compliment us," Riven murmured when she left. "House charges double."
Arkellin tilted the glass but didn't drink. The surface wobbled, caught three different reds and returned them as one. He could feel it without looking—the way the booth at his three o'clock had rotated to face him; how Kane and Lewis—two of his—had gone silent over comms a shade longer than they should; the shadow by the emergency exit where no shadow should settle this long. Not the hit. Not yet. Just the city reminding him: you are never alone, and never with anyone.
Riven's shoulder brushed the leather as he shifted his weight. "We should roll in ten."
"We'll roll when the music dies," Arkellin said.
"Music doesn't die here."
"Then we'll teach it how."
His phone vibrated—a single pulse against his thigh. He slid it out and glanced at the screen. UNKNOWN: 1 new message. He didn't open it. He watched the sender sit there like a lit cigarette in a dry room. Then he locked the screen and returned the phone to his pocket. He knew which fire was his to start, and which was laid to burn him.
2:07 AM. The DJ shifted the set; bass dropped out for half a breath and came back twice as heavy. The floor cheered. Up in the rafters, the two watchers moved in mirror, like a rehearsal.
"Love is just another weakness," Arkellin said, almost to the glass. It wasn't philosophy; it was an autopsy finding. "Men kill for it. Men die for it. The city bills you for both."
Riven didn't disagree. "The city bills with interest."
"Collects, too." Arkellin's mouth thinned. He reached, took the fresh glass, and let the whiskey sit on his tongue before he swallowed. Less blade this time. More ash. He placed the glass down in the same neat line as the others, and a small part of him relaxed at the geometry of it.
Movement at the booth entrance. Kane shouldered in, face glossed with sweat, shirt untucked. He dipped his head. "Front's a little hot," he said over the music. "New faces. Not ours."
"We saw them," Riven said.
Kane's eyes flicked to Arkellin. "You want the car at the back or the side?"
"The back," Arkellin said. The word was calm. The choice wasn't. Back meant the alley. Side meant the street. The alley had one way in and one way out. Traps were honest about that.
Kane nodded, tapped two fingers to his temple, and vanished again into the light. Riven's eyes narrowed. "You're walking into a funnel."
"I'm walking through it," Arkellin said. "Different thing."
Riven considered him for a breath, then relented with a tight exhale. He tapped his earpiece twice. "Lewis. Ready two. We're five minutes." Silence. "Lewis?" Static purred. He tried the channel again. "Lewis, confirm." Only the club answered: bass, shouting, laughter that sounded like teeth.
Arkellin looked out over the railing. The dance floor was a living map—exits, choke points, blind corners—drawn in moving bodies. He traced it with his eyes the way a pianist traces keys before the first note. The white streak in his hair slipped forward; he pushed it back absently and felt the small nick behind his ear where an old blade had kissed him once. The city never let go of its lovers. It left marks to find them again.
"Three by the service hallway," Riven said, low. "They keep pretending to toast. That's either nerves or rehearsal."
"Both." Arkellin's lips ghosted a smile that wasn't joy. "Let them drink. We'll go between songs."
"Which is when?"
"When I stand up."
The server returned as if summoned by the line, the same practiced step, the tray, the eyes that knew not to look into storms. "Refill?"
"No." Arkellin's voice was gentle in a way that made her flinch anyway. "Thank you."
She melted away. The watchers at the balcony made the mistake of nodding to each other. Kane shouldn't have chosen the alley. Lewis shouldn't have gone quiet. The DJ shouldn't have killed the lights for that extra beat three songs ago. The club shouldn't have put that emergency exit sign where it threw a shadow Arkellin could read like a confession.
2:12 AM. He rolled his sleeves once, neat to the same notch on each forearm. He looked at the glass, then at the ring it left, then at the world beyond the glass: sweat and red and want. He set both hands flat on the table, leaned forward, and stood.
Riven straightened with him. "You sure?"
"No," Arkellin said, and that was the truth. He picked up the jacket, shrugged into it, the leather settling over his shoulders like a history. "But I'm ready."
They stepped out of the booth, past the velvet rope that meant nothing, into heat and light. The crowd closed and opened around them, pulses syncing with the bass. Arkellin moved the way some men prayed—silent, direct, eyes forward. The watchers on the balcony pivoted as one.
At the stairs, he paused and glanced back once at the table—the three glasses lined like sentries, the thin white line of the lighter where he'd left it, the ghost of a life that might have been quieter if not lived here. Then he turned for the service hallway.
He didn't look at the digital clock over the bar as it turned 2:14 AM. He didn't need to. Time lived in his bones. The city had taught him that.
Behind him, the music swelled. Ahead, the hallway's neon flickered like a faulty pulse.
He walked into it.
The bass thudded through the walls long after Arkellin left the club floor. In the service hallway, the music dulled to a muffled vibration, replaced by the hiss of leaking pipes and the drip of water down the stained tiles. The emergency lights buzzed overhead, flickering in tired red, painting the corridor like an artery bleeding out.
Arkellin's boots struck the concrete with measured weight, Riven shadowing him on the right, Kane a few paces ahead. Two more of his crew followed behind—faces tight, eyes restless. The smell changed as they moved: from perfume and smoke to damp rot and spilled beer, then to the sour tang of trash as the back door swung open.
The alley was a throat of brick and shadow, wet from a drizzle that had smeared neon into bleeding colors across the asphalt. The dumpster at the far end overflowed, its lid half-shut, flies buzzing despite the rain.
Arkellin stepped into the damp air and inhaled once. Rain pattered on his jacket, cool against his skin. His breath hung in the chill, visible for the span of a heartbeat before the night swallowed it.
The others followed. The door hissed shut behind them with a sound far too final.
He caught it then—the way Kane's shoulders stiffened, the way the man behind him avoided his gaze, the way the alley seemed to breathe heavier than it should.
Arkellin slowed his steps. Riven noticed. His hand brushed the hem of his coat, fingers grazing the butt of the pistol holstered there.
From the shadow between dumpsters, boots scraped. Then another. And another.
Figures detached themselves from the dark. Ten at least. Faces masked, guns leveled, steel glinting in neon. Their footfalls were soft, too soft, rehearsed.
The rain turned heavier, drumming against metal, masking the faint clicks of safeties sliding off.
Arkellin's jaw tightened, but his expression didn't change. He let his gaze drift, cataloguing everything—angles, numbers, the way the barrel of a carbine trembled in one man's grip. His own crew froze, the space between them charged like a drawn bow.
"Kane," Arkellin said quietly, eyes still forward. "Why is the funnel full?"
Kane's silence was louder than thunder.
Slowly, Kane turned his head. His eyes—once full of the loyalty Arkellin had bought with blood and bread—were flat now, reflecting only the weak red of the emergency light. His lips twitched, not in regret, not in apology, but in resignation.
"Sorry, boss."
The words were ice.
Arkellin didn't wait.
His hand dipped inside his jacket, and in one motion the pistol cleared leather, snapping up with practiced precision. The first shot cracked, a muzzle-flash splitting the rain. One of the masked men spun back, chest caving under the impact.
Chaos ignited.
Gunfire roared, echoing like thunder trapped in a cage. Sparks flew where rounds chewed brick. Neon shattered as a sign over the door exploded in fragments of glass. The alley filled with smoke and screams.
Arkellin moved like water under fire. He ducked, pivoted, pressed his shoulder into the wall as rounds sprayed the space he'd vacated. He fired twice more—one bullet kissing a throat, the next smashing through a visor. Blood sprayed with the rain, painting the asphalt in darker streaks.
Riven roared, his own pistol barking sharp in reply. A masked man dropped, skull snapping back as a round tore through his temple. Another tried to flank—Riven met him with a knife, steel sliding under ribs in a grunt of pain.
But they were outnumbered. For every body that fell, two more pressed in, shadows filling shadows.
Arkellin's pistol clicked empty. He didn't curse—he moved. A knife slid from his boot into his hand, and he lunged into the nearest attacker. The blade punched into flesh, twisted, came free in a spray that steamed against the rain. He used the falling body as a shield, pivoted, threw the corpse into the path of another gun.
The alley reeked of cordite and blood. Steam rose where hot rounds met cold water.
And then—
A shot came from behind.
It wasn't from the enemy.
It was Kane.
Arkellin felt it tear through him—heat, shock, a jagged bite across his side. His breath hitched, body jerking from the impact. He staggered, turned, eyes locking on Kane. The man's face was pale but steady, his pistol smoking, aimed square at his chest.
The betrayal was clean. Practiced. Decided long before this night.
Arkellin's knees bent, his body fighting to stay upright even as the rain washed warm blood down his shirt. He tightened his grip on the knife, teeth bared in defiance, and lunged forward one more time—
Gunfire answered, a dozen muzzles lighting up the alley at once.
His world became flashes of white, red, black.
The last thing Arkellin heard was the hiss of the rain, louder than the guns, drowning the city's heartbeat.
The alley swallowed sound.
Gunfire still echoed in his bones, but Arkellin heard only the rain now—steady, merciless, hammering the asphalt until every drop merged with the blood spreading beneath him. His knees struck the ground first, then his shoulder, and finally his cheek pressed into the cold, wet concrete. The world tilted sideways.
The neon signs overhead smeared into ribbons of color, fractured by water pooling in his eyes. Red and blue lights from the street bled into the rain, dripping across his vision like veins torn open in the sky. His chest burned where the bullets had torn through; each breath gurgled, shallow, broken.
He tried to push up. His palm slid in the blood, skidding against the grit of the pavement. His knife slipped from his fingers, clattering uselessly near the gutter.
Above him, Kane lowered his smoking pistol. The man's face was pale, twisted with something between regret and fear, but his eyes held steady. No words. No excuses. Just silence—the kind that cuts deeper than betrayal itself.
Arkellin's lips curled, not in weakness but in mockery. Even now, with lungs filling with fire, he found the strength to laugh once, hoarse and raw. "So this… is the price of loyalty."
No one answered.
Rain ran cold over his face, washing trails of blood from his temple into the grime. His vision tunneled, darkness curling at the edges like burning paper. The city's heartbeat—the bass, the shouts, the chaos—faded.
And then he saw it.
At first he thought it was lightning: a pale flicker cutting through the storm. But it didn't vanish. It grew, white-blue, pure and impossible, spilling into the alley as if the night itself had torn open.
The masked men faltered, stepping back instinctively, guns lowering. Even Kane turned, eyes narrowing, lips parting in confusion.
The light ignored them.
It reached only for him.
Arkellin blinked, fighting the blur, pupils shrinking as the glow wrapped him in its warmth. He felt nothing of the rain now, nothing of the pain that had been gnawing through his ribs. The cold vanished, replaced by a strange weightlessness—as if the earth had finally released him.
So… this is how it ends?
The thought wasn't despair. It was curiosity.
The light bent, swirling, pulling at the edges of his form. He could feel his blood lift, his breath lift, even his memories stir loose like pages torn from a book. The laughter of the woman he'd once loved—her final scream—rose, then broke apart, dissolving into the radiance.
His body stayed in the alley, limp, riddled with bullets. But his self—his essence—was no longer chained to it.
Arkellin's last sight of Aurelia City was Kane's frozen stare, the neon smeared in rain, and the thin smile that tugged his lips as the light claimed him.
Darkness closed—and in its center, a door of light swung wide.