Rain in Breakwater never cleaned. It only smeared the city's filth thin—oil into the gutters, mold deeper into brick, blood down drains where rats lapped it like wine. By morning, the streets always looked the same. Sometimes worse. Breakwater didn't change. It rotted.
Ash Moreno leaned against a chipped mailbox under a sagging awning on Gutterline, eyes narrowed through the rain. Hood up, collar high, jacket soaked through—but the cold kept him sharp.
He worked a lighter open and shut, the metal's click steady as a heartbeat, drowning the city's noise. The flame flared once—small, stubborn—then hissed out. He pocketed it, thumb lingering on the warm case.
Bad habit, he told himself. Just something to keep his hands busy. But the truth was—he liked fire more than was healthy. It obeyed as long as you fed it. You decided when it lived, when it died. A neat trick, if you ignored how easily it could turn on you.
The job was supposed to be simple. Too simple.
Salvo's text had been short: Yellow pack. No heroics. Tonight. A photo came with it—a kid, seventeen maybe, sling bag bright canary yellow, hood up, shoulders hunched. Fresh meat.
Ash's jobs were usually messier. Smash-and-grabs, quiet collections, smuggling things in and out of districts that had more checkpoints than they had working streetlights. But every so often, Salvo would send him something light, like this. A reminder that not everything had to end in bruises and blood.
He didn't trust jobs that were easy.
Gutterline breathed around him, same as always. A baby wailed two floors up, silenced by a curse and a slammed door. Further down, voices clashed in two languages, sharp and jagged, neither side listening. On the corner, a generator coughed against the rain, filling the air with the stink of ozone.
Ash shifted against the rusted mailbox, eyes lifting to the banner draped across the opposite wall.
Renew Breakwater: Safer Homes, Brighter Futures.
Rain had sagged the fabric until the words drooped like a joke. Beneath it, plaster ran green with mold, a drainpipe bent at a broken angle. Safe homes. Bright futures. Sure—if you lived in the towers uptown, where storms were just weather on glass. Out here, "renewal" meant bulldozers and arson dressed as progress.
Ash sniffed, spat into the gutter, and kept his eyes on the job.
The courier arrived twenty minutes late. Hood tight, shoulders hunched, shoes splashing through puddles without conviction. Canary sling bag—right on cue.
Ash studied him from the shadows. Too obvious. The kid checked his phone every half-minute, eyes dragging across corners too long. A nervous animal waiting for the hawk. Rookie mistakes. A good courier vanished. This one was a landmark.
The boy parked himself under the eave of the bodega, glancing down the block, muttering something into his phone. Whoever was supposed to meet him wasn't coming.
Ash pushed off the wall. Rain disguised the steps, softened the sound of his boots. He stopped a couple feet away, pitched his voice low and easy.
"Bad night to linger."
The boy jerked like he'd been caught stealing. "I'm just—waiting for someone—"
"Someone who's not coming." Ash tilted his head, the move casual, like he'd overheard it from someone else. "COA swept two blocks over. They'll loop back. You don't want to be here when they do. Cut through the laundromat alley, you'll come out clean."
The kid frowned, squinting like he was deciding whether Ash was a threat or a lifeline. Somewhere down the street, a siren rose, echoing against wet brick. That was enough. The boy bolted into the alley.
Ash followed, shoulder to shoulder, like they were old friends running from the same storm.
The choke between dumpsters stank of rust and piss. Ash stumbled, shoulder clipping the kid. Instinctively, the courier reached to steady him.
That was all it took.
Ash's knife whispered low, slicing the strap clean. The bag dropped into his hand. Smooth as a trick. The boy only realised when Ash was already muttering an apology, vanishing into the hiss of laundromat steam.
Simple. Clean.
No heroics.
The bag hung heavy on Ash's shoulder. He ducked back under the awning to wait out the sirens. The city buzzed around him like it always did—arguments, neon signs stuttering, the rain falling steadily enough to feel like it would never stop. He should've walked away right there, delivered the pack to Salvo, and gotten paid. Maybe even treated himself to a hot meal.
He should have.
But Breakwater never let things end neatly.
The scream shattered the street—high, sharp, desperate.
Then the smoke rolled out.
The scream snapped something inside Ash before he could stop it. He didn't need to look. He already knew where it had come from.
The tenement flared from within, its windows blooming orange, as if someone had planted suns inside. Smoke boiled thick and oily, the kind that stayed in your lungs long after you staggered clear. Not a stove fire. Not an accident. Structural. The whole block was going to go.
For half a second, Ash's body remembered before his mind caught up. Years peeled away—another fire, another block. A door too hot to open. The taste of melted plastic in his teeth. Voices screaming until they didn't.
His chest tightened. His legs wanted to run. He even started, two steps away from the heat. Survival always shouted louder than guilt.
Then his hand brushed the lighter in his pocket, and the memory of silence hit harder than the fire. Three steps forward.
"Damn it," he muttered to himself, to the rain, to no one.
He tore his bandana off, dunked it in a filthy puddle, and tied it across his mouth. Cold water seeped into his skin. Useless, maybe—but habit. Then he shoved through the lobby door into the fire.
The heat punched him in the face. The stairwell was a furnace throat, smoke clawing down, thick enough to chew. People stampeded past, clutching whatever they thought mattered—bags of nothing, a child screaming under one arm, a goldfish bowl hugged to a chest. A woman shoved him aside, sobbing, hands empty, eyes wild. Someone shouted names up the stairwell, as though the building would give them back if they were called hard enough.
"Third floor!" another voice coughed. "Kids on three!"
Ash didn't think. Thinking slowed you down. He ducked low, muscles remembering before his mind could. The lighter's weight pressed against his thigh like a brand.
Second floor landing: paint blistered, exit sign half-melted, sagging red glow dripping down the wall. He grabbed the railing. Metal seared through his glove. His stomach twisted.
Third floor. The smoke was thicker, the air a knife on his lungs. He dropped low, belly nearly scraping the floor, eyes stinging. One flat—empty. A mattress was already smouldering. Another—cabinets popping in the heat like gunfire, plaster cracking overhead. He shouted into the noise, his voice ragged.
Nothing.
Then—a sound. Barely there. A knock. Not desperate. Hollow. Wrong rhythm.
He crawled, sweeping the floor with his hand until his fingers hit swollen wood—a cupboard under a sink. The door wouldn't give. He wedged his knife in, levered until the hinge screamed, wood cracking wide.
Inside, a girl.
Small. Nine, maybe. Curled tight against a bucket and a pile of rags turned black. Face streaked in soot, eyes wide—too wide—fixed on him like she wasn't sure he was real. She didn't cry. Didn't make a sound. Just clutched a spiral sketchbook to her chest like a shield.
She looked like every reason he'd tried to bury.
"Hey," he rasped, voice shredded by smoke. "You're alive. I've got you."
She didn't answer. Didn't blink. Just stared, trembling, waiting for the fire to finish what it had started.
He dragged her out, pressed the soaked bandana over her mouth, and shoved her under his jacket. She weighed almost nothing—bones, ash, silence. The sketchbook dug hard into his ribs.
The hallway was a pipe of fire. He kept low, following memory, counting steps with his knees. The lobby was already collapsing. Heat tore at his back, a blast that felt like claws. He pushed through the door and fell into the street with her clutched tight against him.
The street was chaos. Rain hissed at the blaze and lost. Flames roared from windows like furious voices. Neighbours screamed at the building as if they could shout it away. Others dropped to their knees, praying in languages the city had long since buried.
COA cruisers swung around the corner, sirens disciplined, lights sharp. Loudspeakers barked for civilians to step back. An officer's visor swept the crowd, pausing just long enough to make Ash's chest tighten. He lowered his hood, pulled Mina tighter under his jacket, and ran.
Ash pulled his hood low and ran. Head down, shoulders hunched, the girl pressed tight against him. The sketchbook jammed hard between them, grinding into his ribs. She didn't cough. Didn't cry. Silent as if carved straight from the smoke.
He cut into the alleys, winding through Breakwater's veins. The city was full of holes—slits between buildings, cut-throughs, maintenance tunnels. He knew them all. He bled into the cracks until the sirens thinned to echoes.
Behind the laundromat, under corrugated tin, he stopped. Steam hissed from dryer vents, mixing with storm-carried smoke. He crouched, tugged the bandana off her face. Rain carved pale tracks through the soot.
"What's your name?" he asked, voice low.
She stared. Her eyes were a colour he couldn't name in this light. She didn't answer.
Ash's eyes fell to the sketchbook clutched like a weapon. A half-burned sticker clung to the cover—school-issue, cheap laminate. The letters were melted, smeared into pits. One word still legible: MINA.
He nodded. "Mina. Good name."
She didn't respond. Just tightened her grip.
Ash's phone buzzed in his pocket. Salvo again: Where's my pack? Don't be sentimental.
He almost laughed. The pack. The job. The reason he was even on this block tonight. He shifted it on his shoulder. It felt heavier now, as if the girl's weight had seeped into it.
Mina's fingers twitched. She tore a page free from her sketchbook, hands trembling but precise. She shoved it into his chest like a confession.
Ash looked down.
It was the block. The tenement, the bodega, the very awning they'd crouched under. Rain sketched in pencil smudges—an arrow drawn to a rectangle on the laundromat wall.
Ash glanced up.
There it was. Service door. Painted the same mold-colored green as the bricks. He hadn't noticed it.
"You're good," he murmured.
No reply. Just those wide, unblinking eyes.
Ash eased Mina through the laundromat's service door, shouldering it shut behind them. The storm swallowed them again—rain dripping down eaves, puddles rippling under neon flickers.
Inside the laundromat, machines churned, steaming the air. The woman at the counter barely looked up. She sat on a stool, eyes glazed at a radio sermon, muttering along with every word. Ash kept his head down, the girl pressed against him, and slid through the damp heat like he belonged there.
They stepped out the back door into another alley. Narrow, quiet, mercifully clear of smoke. Mina's breath rasped faintly against his chest, but she didn't speak. Didn't cough either. Just silent, holding her sketchbook as if she'd drown without it.
Ash ran two blocks before slowing. His boots splashed through water pooled in the potholes, the rhythm steady and practised. Instinct told him not to stop—not yet. But another instinct, older and meaner, told him he'd gone too far already. The job wasn't finished. Salvo was waiting. The yellow pack dug into his shoulder with every step, reminding him.
He ducked under the skeleton of a rusted billboard. Once, decades ago, it had sold something expensive enough to need advertising. The paint was gone, streaks left like ghosts of words. Rust bled down into the puddles like watered-down blood. Rats skittered under the step as he crouched.
Ash set Mina on the concrete. She sat stiffly, sketchbook balanced on her knees, pencil already moving. The sound was faint, graphite scratching against paper, calm in a way the world wasn't.
He rubbed water from his face, tried to ignore the weight pressing down on him—the bag, the fire, the memory of another night. He flicked his lighter, let the flame live for a moment before snapping it shut.
"What the hell am I doing?" he muttered, though not at her. At himself. At the city. At the noise that never stopped.
Mina's pencil darted across the page. Ash leaned, saw the drawing. Circles, overlapping, smudged into halos. Streetlight halos in puddles, exactly like the one spreading at his feet. Her memory was too sharp, her eyes too precise.
Ash sat down beside her, elbows on his knees, staring at the street through the rain.
He should drop her off at the shelter. They'd take her in, find a relative—or pretend to. She'd vanish into the system, another name in a ledger. Maybe she'd get lucky. Probably she wouldn't.
He should finish the job. Deliver the pack, get paid, eat something hot. Salvo didn't like delays.
He should not be sitting here with a half-dead kid who hadn't said a word, who looked at the world like she'd already seen the end of it.
"Look," Ash said, voice softer than he meant. "I don't know what you've got left—family, friends, anyone. But right now?" He tapped his chest with two fingers. "You've got me. Tonight, that's the whole list."
Mina didn't look up from her sketchbook. Her shoulders moved, barely—a loosened knot.
Ash leaned back against the billboard post, the yellow pack pressing against his spine. His phone buzzed in his pocket. He ignored it.
The storm hissed around them—rain on rust, sirens bleeding into the distance. Breakwater kept rotting, oblivious to the soot-stained girl and the hustler who'd just wrecked his night to pull her from the fire.
Ash knew what he should've done. He also knew he wouldn't. Breakwater didn't forgive mistakes—it stacked them like bricks until you couldn't breathe.
He let his eyes close for half a breath, just to listen to the rain.
For the first time in years, it didn't sound empty.