The city bled rain.
Water ripped down windshields and scaffolds, threaded gutters into silver ropes, turned every streetlight into a smeared halo. The sedan's wipers scraped a metronome against the glass—skrrk… skrrk… skrrk—steady as a pulse. Headlights tunneled through curtains of water, catching the white slant of downpour and the brief glare of signage before swallowing darkness again.
Arkellin sat in the back, not slouched, not stiff. Balanced. The cut of his freshly tailored suit looked too clean for the hour, but the shirt beneath was damp at the ribs where the bandage tugged when he breathed. He ignored it. The phone on his knee cast a cold rectangle across his hands. On the screen, a map pulsed with a single red dot at the edge of the docks. EAST DOCK—CONTAINER YD 6. The dot blinked. Waited.
Up front, the driver—Jax, older than the car and twice as stubborn—leaned into the wheel, jaw working a toothpick he'd forgotten to throw away. Beside him, Lian cradled a compact carbine in a sling under his coat, eyes flicking between the side mirror and the rain-slashed road. Their shoulders told more truth than their faces: tight, coiled, eager to make this ride end in a way that could be counted.
No one filled the silence with talk. They knew better.
"Two minutes," Jax said finally, voice sandpaper-low. "Flooding on Harbor Row. We'll cut under the cranes."
"Lights?" Lian asked.
"Keep them," Arkellin said. "We're not ghosts tonight."
The car surged forward as the road dipped. The smell of salt and diesel thickened, layered over by the metallic tang of wet steel. Far ahead, in the murk, the black skeletons of loading cranes shouldered up against the sky—prehistoric things frozen mid-feast. Lightning stitched a white seam across the clouds and lit the harbor in negative: the ranks of containers, the narrow catwalks, the chop of black water shouldering the pilings. Thunder followed late, rolling under the chassis like a distant freight.
Arkellin lifted the phone again. The dot had shifted ten meters, then stilled. KANE scroll-typed beneath it in Lian's clipped, practical hand from ten minutes earlier. The name laid a pressure across Arkellin's knuckles he didn't shake off.
He pulled the trigger.
Memory bit in clean and cold: sheet-metal walls, the stink of gun oil wet with rain, the muzzle's bloom too close to dodge. Not the first bullet of his life. Just the one meant to be last. The body had thrown sparks, the world had narrowed to a keyhole, and betrayal had spoken in a voice he'd fed at his own table.
He pulled the trigger—but who pointed his hand?
Kindrake's arithmetic clicked in the silence, neat little rows of cause and leverage. Arkellin's streetsense answered with a snarl: you still close your own fist. Both truths occupied the same spine now, and neither let him forget the shape of the debt.
Jax downshifted at the turn. Tires hissed over a film of water and oil, then bit. The sedan slid under an iron ribcage of girders and out toward the container yards. A guard hut squatted at the gate, yellow light leaking through plastic blinds; a bored night man looked up, saw the car, and looked down again as if his life depended on not seeing. Maybe it did.
Lian's earpiece crackled. "Unit Beta on the east fence," a voice murmured, thin with distance and storm. "No motion on thermal. One hot spot near YD 6, could be power, could be a person. Hard read."
"Alpha?" Lian said.
"Waiting in the transit lane. Wind's throwing the mics. Smells like a refinery in here."
Arkellin studied the nearest stacks as they ghosted by: blue boxes scabbed with rust, dull orange, battered green. Numbers stenciled in a font that pretended to make order out of the ocean. Between rows, the lanes cut narrow, the rain turning each into a river. Good for noise cover. Bad for footprints.
"Stop here," Arkellin said.
Jax braked by a blind corner choked with pallets. The engine ticked as it cooled. Wind knifed through the small crack Jax cracked in his window and pushed the rain's breath into the car.
"Positions," Arkellin said, and they went without ritual.
Lian slid out first, a black smear melting into darker shadows, breath already controlled to the rhythm of the storm. Jax reached into the glove box, thumbed a tiny switch, and the trunk popped with a muffled click. He moved around the rear, lifted a false floor, and handed Arkellin the matte weight of a suppressed sidearm. It fit the hand like memory.
"Three routes," Jax said, voice gone to the practical tone he used when fear might be listening. He lifted two fingers, then a third. "Main lane straight to Yard 6—fast, loud. Catwalk along the floodlights—dry, exposed if anyone's looking up. Or we swim the alleys: left-left-right through the stacks. That one stinks, but it's quiet."
Arkellin looked past him into the lanes. The main strip shone with a thin sheet of standing water, neon reflected in it from a crane's hazard lamp. The catwalk ran like a spine along the backs of the boxes, slick with algae, lit every twenty yards by sodium lamps that hummed a tired yellow. The alleys were dark and mean, perspective crushed by corrugated walls, puddles black as holes.
"Split," Arkellin said. "Jax, catwalk. Call shapes and light. Lian, alleys. Herd him if he runs. I'll take the lane."
Jax's mouth tugged down at the plan's edge, which was how he smiled when he liked something dangerous. "Roger that."
They moved.
Rain took Arkellin in the face as he stepped into the open. It was cold and clean and indifferent. He holstered the pistol high under his jacket, hands empty as he walked—not because he was careless, but because prey bolted on the sight of teeth. The lane gathered sound and fed it back to him: storm clatter, the tick of cooling metal, somewhere the loose chain's chink-chink as the wind worried it.
A sodium lamp buzzed overhead, haloed with mist. The streak of white in his hair drank the light and gave nothing back. He kept his step unhurried, his weight on the balls of his feet for the instant when stillness would have to become velocity. The bandage at his ribs tugged once, a reminder, not a complaint.
"Eyes," Jax whispered in his ear. "Two gulls, three dead bulbs, one live idiot at the far crane smoking under a tarp. No motion on the catwalks ahead."
"Heat trace," Lian breathed. "Low, left of YD 6, ground-level, moving slow. Size says adult male. He knows to keep to the edges."
Arkellin's hand found the seam of the nearest container, palm against the cold rippled steel, feeling the hum of wind driving rain across a thousand square feet of metal skin. He closed his eyes once. Saw the map unfold not in pixels but in lanes and turns, in choke points and lines of sight. Kindrake set the grid. Arkellin filled it with blood.
"Don't chase him into a box," he said softly. "Push him to light."
"Copy."
He moved again, and the yard obliged him with another flash of lightning. For a heartbeat, every sharp angle became a white drawing, and in it something flicked—there, a shadow pulling back behind a stack two lanes ahead. Not big. Fast. Wrong about which ghosts mattered.
Arkellin didn't hurry. He adjusted path. Let the storm carry his steps. Containers rose on either side like rows of tombs. The reek of rust and sea and old oil thickened to a taste on the tongue.
"Kane," he said—not into the radio, not to his men. To the rain. To the metal. To the memory that had been wearing his face since the muzzle bloom. The name steadied the breath. Cleared the noise. Kane, who pulled the trigger. Kane, who learned how prey feels.
A scrap of sound betrayed the man—just the heel of a boot losing purchase in a puddle. Lian's whisper followed half a second later from the dark: "Left stack confirms."
Arkellin stepped into the junction where three lanes met. The open strip beyond led clean to YD 6, its floodlight stuttering like a failing heartbeat. The red dot on his phone pulsed again, less a location than a promise.
He didn't speak his vow aloud. He let it hang behind his teeth where it stayed hotter.
You'll tell me who pointed your hand. Then you'll learn what it means to aim at the wrong man.
Wind shoved a wave of rain into his jacket; it hit cool against heated skin. He rolled his shoulders once and let the night lay down over him. Ahead, something shifted—the glint of wet metal, the hitch of a breath that wasn't his.
Arkellin walked into it like a man who had already chosen the ending.
The East Dock stretched like a steel graveyard.
Stacks of containers rose in crooked towers, their corrugated skins glistening with rain. Rust bled from bolts, oil pooled in black puddles that mirrored the stuttering orange lamps above. Chains clinked softly where the wind teased them, a sound like loose bones rattling. The air was thick with salt and diesel, every breath sharp, metallic.
Arkellin moved through the main lane with a predator's patience. His pace was measured, steps muted against the water-slick asphalt. One hand brushed the edge of his jacket, never straying far from the pistol holstered beneath. His eyes tracked every shadow, every glimmer of motion beyond the curtain of rain.
Above, Jax's voice crackled through the earpiece, low and tight.
"Catwalk clear. No eyes on the target yet."
Then Lian, softer, almost drowned by the storm:
"Heat trace again. Left side, YD 6. He's moving, slow."
Arkellin stopped beneath a buzzing sodium lamp. For a moment he closed his eyes, listening. The storm had a rhythm—drums of rain, moans of wind, groans of metal. And there: a discordant note. A splash too heavy, too deliberate, then stilled.
His eyes opened, sharpened.
He turned into one of the alleys, narrow and claustrophobic, the containers pressed so close the lane felt like a corridor built for ambush. Water ran ankle-deep. The reek of mildew and fish guts clung here, stronger, suffocating.
Ahead, a flicker of movement—the corner of a door swinging shut on a blue container, its metal latch clattering before silence reclaimed it.
Arkellin didn't rush. He paced forward, his free hand trailing the wet ridges of steel, the cold bite grounding him. Each step echoed, dulled by water.
Behind the door came the scrape of a boot, a breath caught too late.
Arkellin's voice cut through the storm, steady, almost casual.
"Kane."
The syllables carried like a weight, heavier than the thunder overhead.
From within, a curse. Then—motion. The door slammed outward, and a figure bolted into the rain. Hooded, lean, pistol in hand. Kane.
Gunfire cracked sharp, three flashes lighting the rain. Bullets chewed into the steel behind Arkellin, sparks scattering. He didn't flinch. He dropped into a low pivot, water splashing, the fourth shot passing where his head had been.
"Kane on the run," Jax's voice snapped through the comm, excitement cutting the gravel. "North lane!"
"I see him," Lian replied, already shifting through the shadows.
Arkellin pressed forward. No chase. No wasted breath. He followed the rhythm Kane set—the splashes of boots through puddles, the ragged breaths too loud in the night. Each step Arkellin took was deliberate, inevitable, his figure closing the distance like the storm itself.
Ahead, Kane slipped on a patch of oil-slick concrete, stumbled, then pushed harder, vanishing between two stacks where a floodlight flickered and hissed.
Arkellin stopped at the mouth of the lane. Rain plastered his hair to his forehead, the white streak gleaming under the dying lamp. He could see the trail: boot prints half-washed by water, the faint echo of movement.
"Kane runs," he murmured to himself, eyes narrowing. "But prey only buys time."
Lightning tore across the harbor, painting the lane in stark white. For a heartbeat Arkellin saw him—Kane, crouched by a stack, pistol trembling in his grip, eyes wide in panic.
The light died.
Arkellin stepped forward, unhurried, a shadow among steel.
The hunt was no longer beginning. It was already ending.
The floodlight above Yard 6 stuttered, buzzing weakly, fighting to hold back the dark. Its sickly orange glow spilled over the slick asphalt and the rust-scabbed containers, painting everything in rust and fire. Rain hissed down harder, slapping against steel, pooling in gutters, making the whole dockyard sound like a drum.
Arkellin moved with the storm.
His pistol was drawn now, matte black, rain trailing down its frame in thin streams. His other hand hovered steady, weight balanced on the balls of his feet. Each step was measured, deliberate—his boots sliding through puddles without hurry.
Kane crouched twenty meters ahead, pressed against the flank of a container, pistol clutched in shaking hands. The hood he wore was soaked, plastered to his face, his breath ragged in the cold. Lightning cracked, revealing the whites of his eyes—wild, frantic.
Arkellin didn't aim yet. He watched. He waited. He let Kane stew in his own panic, let the storm mask his silence.
A chain rattled loose overhead. Kane startled, swung his pistol at shadows, and fired twice. The rounds screamed off metal, ricocheting into the night. Sparks spat against the rain. His chest heaved, breath loud.
Then—silence again.
Arkellin stepped into the open, the floodlight bleeding across his figure. His streak of white hair gleamed, his suit plastered wet against muscle and bone, his pistol steady at his side.
"Kane."
The name was a verdict.
Kane spun, weapon up, eyes locking onto him. His lips curled into a desperate snarl. "You—shouldn't be here. You—" His voice cracked, drowned by thunder.
Arkellin raised his pistol. Smooth. Inevitable.
The distance between them shrank into nothing. Rain hammered the lane, drowning out the last stammer of Kane's words. Lightning flared, and in that heartbeat the world froze: Kane trembling, Arkellin steady, predator and prey caught in the same flash of white.
The trigger broke the silence.
Phut.
The suppressed shot cracked sharp but soft, swallowed almost instantly by the storm. Kane's body jerked, his pistol clattering from nerveless fingers. His knees hit the wet asphalt, water splashing around him. He gurgled once, breath choked by blood. His hood fell back, exposing his face—eyes wide in disbelief, as if refusing to accept the inevitability that had stalked him here.
Arkellin lowered his weapon a fraction, watching. No flicker of triumph. No cruelty. Just finality.
"Prey only buys time," he said quietly, voice almost lost to the rain. "And yours ran out."
Kane toppled sideways into the puddles. The storm rushed to claim him, washing the blood thin, carrying it into the gutters.
Arkellin stepped closer, nudged the fallen pistol away with his boot. He crouched briefly, not to close Kane's eyes, but to check his last expression. Terror. Recognition. The same look Arkellin had seen a hundred times, the one that never left him.
He rose again, pistol still loose in his hand. Lightning screamed overhead, thunder rolling so close it shook the containers. For an instant, his figure was burned in light—one man standing over a corpse, shadow stretching long, as if the dock itself bowed to him.
The comm crackled. Jax's voice, tight.
"Target down?"
Arkellin lifted the radio to his mouth. Rain dripped from his jaw, his voice steady, unshaken.
"Confirmed."
Static swallowed the reply. The storm howled.
Arkellin holstered the pistol, turned from the body, and walked deeper into the yard. He didn't look back.
The dock remained behind him, heavy with rain and blood, another ghost added to the ledger.
The hunt was over.
The war was not.