The world came back to me in fragments, concrete ceiling, humming pipes, the stale taste of recycled air. My eyes opened to the half-light of the bunker, where shadows pressed against peeling walls and the faint buzz of a broken neon sign bled through a crack in the ceiling vent.
Home, if you could call it that.
The place was barely more than a reinforced box buried beneath the city's bones, built from scavenged steel and concrete slabs left to rot after the last war. My bed was a stripped mattress thrown across welded pipes, the sheets older than I was. A single metal trunk sat at the foot of it, marked with scratches that told more stories than I could remember.
I swung my legs over the side and sat up, the cold of the floor biting through my bare feet. The motion pulled my reflection into view, fractured in a shard of mirror propped against the wall.
Six-foot-three, jet black hair hanging loose over sharp features, and my eyes, too bright, too pale, almost white in the dim glow, stared back at me with a quiet intensity I had never been able to soften. They were the eyes of a predator, or a ghost, depending on who you asked. My build was lean but corded with muscle, every line earned from years of climbing, scaling, running, killing.
But those weren't things you noticed about yourself until someone else pointed them out. Alone, all I saw were pieces, fragments without a past.
Vale. That was the name the world knew me by, a codename, nothing more. Whatever name I had been given at birth was buried somewhere in the sixteen years I had lost, years erased as if they had never been lived at all.
I dragged on a black shirt, torn at the sleeves, and moved to the small kitchenette wedged into the far corner. Rusted pipes dripped steadily into a sink that hadn't shone in decades. A cracked radio on the counter whispered static.
Above me, the city pulsed, distant sirens, the low thrum of hover engines, the hollow clang of steel on steel as the endless machinery of survival ate through another day.
This was the world I lived in, a city that never slept, never cared, and never forgot. The city named Arcadia.
And yet, in the midst of it, I carved out my own existence, an assassin in the shadows, a ghost with no past, and the faint hope that someday, somewhere in the labyrinth of my lost years, I would find out who I really was.
I pulled myself out of my thoughts and started my morning routine. First came the weapons. Not guns, those were rarities, relics. Banned in Arcadia, hunted down by drones, and sold on the black market for more money than most men would see in their lifetimes. Guns were noise, and noise got you killed. My trade was quieter.
I opened the metal trunk and laid the tools across its lid, a sleek black metal dart launcher, two curved blades honed so fine they whispered when touched, coils of wire, a handful of sedative darts capped with needle tips. Every piece was cleaned, oiled, and checked. I worked them like an artisan, hands moving with the care of a man who owed his life to steel and silence.
When the kit gleamed again, I stripped off my shirt and dropped into movement. Push-ups, slow and deliberate. Pull-ups on a rusted pipe until my shoulders burned. Squats, planks, hollow holds, each rep tightening the body that had become my only weapon worth trusting. Sweat tracked across my chest, down the ridges of muscle carved from years of discipline.
The shard of mirror caught me between sets, jet black hair plastered to my forehead, pale eyes sharp even when the rest of me sagged under fatigue. I didn't look away. You had to face the thing you were, even if you didn't like the shape of it.
The earpiece crackled just as I finished the last set.
"Vale," Marco's voice slid into my ear, steady and certain. "Debrief at noon. Three blocks east, warehouse with the red stenciling. Boss will have payment waiting."
I wiped a sheen of sweat from my brow with the back of my hand, catching my breath. "Understood."
"I'll keep eyes on your route," Marco continued, all business. Then, softer, "Clean work last night. You didn't miss a beat."
The corner of my mouth twitched, though he couldn't see it. That was Marco, sharp when he had to be, steady when I needed it most.
"Be ready in thirty," he added. "I'll get you there without a shadow on your back."
The line clicked silent.
I packed light, one blade, two darts, and the launcher folded flat beneath my sleeve. I drew a jacket over my shoulders, checked the bunker one last time, and stepped into the stairwell. The city's hum pressed against me like a living thing. Another day, another job.
But in the back of my mind, the question never changed, if Vale was just a codename, who the hell was I really?