Chapter 1: The Bodyguard They Threw Away
Rain always made the city honest.
It washed the perfume off the rich and the dirt off the poor, leaving everyone the same shade of wet and miserable.
Ethan Cole lay on the cold concrete of the loading bay, staring up at the hazy outline of skyscrapers through the falling water. The alley smelled of gasoline, wet cardboard, and his own blood. Somewhere above, neon signs flickered: a liquor store, a karaoke bar, a clinic that never closed.
He tried to move his fingers. They twitched, slick and red.
So that's it, he thought. Ten years of guarding other people's lives, and I die behind a shopping mall.
The SUV that had brought him here was already gone. It had left black tire marks and a fading echo of music as it sped out of the service road. Before that, there had been muzzle flashes, the taste of metal in his mouth, and a voice he knew too well.
"Nothing personal, Cole. You weren't supposed to hear those numbers."
Marcus Vale's calm tone still rang in his ears, even over the drum of the rain.
Numbers. Offshore accounts. Names of shell companies. Ethan had only been standing in the wrong hallway at the wrong time, walking a drunk investor back from the restroom. One open door, one overheard sentence, and suddenly his employer had decided the loyal bodyguard knew too much.
He hadn't even been given the dignity of a clean execution. One of the masked men had chuckled as they dragged him out of the SUV.
"Waste of good muscle," the guy had said, before pressing the gun to Ethan's ribs and pulling the trigger twice.
Now, those bullets burned like ice. His shirt clung to his chest and stomach, soaked and heavy. Every breath rasped like sandpaper in his lungs.
Ethan swallowed, his throat dry despite the rain. The city lights blurred at the edges of his vision.
He'd been a lot of things.
Street rat.
Runaway.
Gravehound.
The last word drifted up from memory like a bubble in deep water.
Gravehound Squad. Eight men and women who had sold their youth to private security firms and war-zone contractors. They had bled in desert cities and jungle compounds so that someone else's quarterly report could climb a percentage point. Half of them were gone. The ones who survived had scattered when the contracts dried up.
He had thought this city would be his retirement. Regular work as a corporate bodyguard. Decent pay. Clean apartment. No more waking up to mortar fire and satellite phones.
He had been stupid enough to trust a CEO's handshake.
Thunder rolled in the distance, low and lazy. Somewhere near the mouth of the alley, a siren wailed and faded. No one was running toward him. No footsteps. No panicked shouts.
The city didn't care.
Ethan tried to laugh. It came out as a wet cough.
He wasn't afraid of death. He'd seen enough of it for two lifetimes. What pricked at him now, needling under his skin, was irritation.
I wanted… at least a choice, he thought. Not dumped like garbage.
The rain grew louder. Or maybe his hearing was fading. Cold seeped into his bones, numbing the pain in a way morphine never had. His fingers stopped responding. He felt weightless, like his body had already started to float away from him.
His vision narrowed, the bright signs shrinking into distant points of light.
That was when he heard it.
A sound that didn't belong to the alley, the rain, or the city.
It was a clear, mechanical chime, crisp and pure, ringing directly inside his skull.
Ding.
Ethan's eyes jerked open wider than they should have, pupils sharp for one brief instant.
Another chime followed, overlapping with the first.
Ding.
If this is what dying sounds like, it's annoying, he thought.
Then a voice spoke.
It wasn't Marcus. It wasn't anyone he recognized. It wasn't male or female. It was flat, precise, and emotionless, like a machine reading from a script it had repeated a million times.
「Urban Sovereign System initializing…」
The words weren't in the air. They were in his head, bright as neon, cutting through the dull fog of pain.
Ethan stared at the sky, unblinking. He couldn't move his lips, but his thoughts sharpened around the voice.
Hallucination, he reasoned. Blood loss. Trauma. The brain firing nonsense while it shuts down.
The voice continued, ignoring his skepticism.
「Host profile: Ethan Cole.
Status: Critical condition.
Location: Eastern Commercial District, Service Alley B-17.
Survival probability without intervention: 0.03%.」
Numbers. It was reciting numbers at him now. A bitter little smile tugged at his mouth.
"Sounds… about right," he whispered, though his lips barely parted.
The rain muted for a moment. Or maybe the rest of the world did. All he could hear was the quiet hum behind the voice, like the city's electricity had pooled behind his ears.
「System boot completed.
Welcome, Host.」
The word Host echoed strangely. It reminded him of briefing rooms, of being handed black dossiers and asked to risk his life for people who didn't know his name.
He tried to focus, to force his mind to do one last thing before it shut down: think.
If this is real… If it isn't…
He didn't get to finish the thought.
A new line of text blazed across the darkness at the edge of his vision, as if someone had pasted a transparent screen over the night sky.
[Sign-In Function Ready.]
Underneath, another line pulsed in steady rhythm, like a heartbeat.
[Would you like to sign in?]
The question sat there, patient and absurd.
Ethan's first impulse was to ignore it. Let the hallucination chatter while his body did what it was going to do anyway. But the words wouldn't fade. If anything, they grew clearer the more he tried to look away from them.
[Would you like to sign in?]
The alley was silent except for the rain. No footsteps. No cars. No sirens drawing closer.
If this was someone's idea of a joke, they were committing to the bit.
His vision dimmed again at the edges. The text flickered along with it, as if linked to his pulse.
[Warning: Host vital signs unstable.
If sign-in is not completed within 30 seconds, this body will expire.]
The detached way it said this almost made him laugh again.
"So you're… a salesman," Ethan rasped, surprised his voice still worked at all. It came out raw and broken, but the effort anchored him to his own body for a moment.
No response. The prompt simply remained, pulsating.
Twenty seconds, then. Or ten. Or three. He couldn't tell anymore. Time had lost its shape.
He thought of his tiny rented room with the leaky window. Of the dog-eared paperback on the crooked nightstand. Of the photo in his wallet of his squad, arms slung over each other's shoulders, faces sunburnt and grinning.
He thought of Marcus, clean suit and clean smile, turning away while the gun pressed into Ethan's ribs.
Do you really want to die here? the practical part of him asked. On someone else's schedule?
He didn't. He realized that with a sharp, sudden clarity that cut through the numbness.
He didn't care if the voice was real, if it was a glitch, a delusion, a stroke of lightning in his neurons. He cared that it was the first thing in hours that had offered him a choice.
Even if the choice was fake, it was better than none.
Ethan gathered what was left of his will and formed the word in his mind, since his mouth no longer seemed capable of shaping it.
Yes.
For a moment, nothing happened. No fanfare. No choir of angels. Just rain on concrete and the smell of rust and oil.
Then the world snapped.
The cold burned away like someone had ripped a blanket of ice off his body. His chest seized in a violent spasm, dragging in air that tasted of metal and ozone. Pain rushed back in a white-hot wave, so pure and total that for a second he wished for the numbness again.
Lines of light exploded across his vision, forming a grid over the alley, sketching outlines around dumpsters, fire escapes, graffiti-tagged walls. Symbols he didn't recognize flickered at the edges, resolving into clean, simple text.
[Sign-In Successful.]
[First-Time Reward Granted.]
The voice was louder now, not just in his head but in his bones, reverberating through him with each word.
「Congratulations, Host.
You have signed in at Location: Eastern Commercial District – Service Alley B-17.
Initial rewards are being distributed.」
Heat flooded his limbs, tingling into his fingers and toes. The ache in his chest loosened, as if invisible hands had reached in and twisted bullets and torn tissue into something whole. He tried to lift his hand and this time it obeyed, shaking but real.
What—?
Information overlaid the sky like an interface.
[Reward 1: Emergency Physical Stabilization – Applied.
Reward 2: Property – Riverside Micro-Condominium (Ownership: 100%).
Reward 3: Attribute Boost – Basic Combat Proficiency +1.]
The words made no sense stacked together like that. Property? Combat proficiency? He was lying in an alley with holes in him. He needed an ambulance, not real estate.
Yet the pain in his chest had dropped from a stabbing nine to a throbbing four. His breathing evened out. When he pressed his palm flat against his shirt, he felt wet fabric and sticky blood—but no fresh warmth seeping out, no gaping tear.
The bullets are still in there, he told himself. This is shock. Adrenaline. Something.
But his fingers felt along the ribs where the gun had gone off and found only tender flesh, no crater, no shredded holes. The blood on his shirt felt… old. Already cooling.
He sucked in a sharp breath.
No. That's not—
「Host's vital signs have stabilized at minimal survival levels.
Recommend immediate relocation to safe environment.」
The clinical report snapped his attention back to the voice.
He forced himself onto one elbow, groaning. The world tilted, then steadied. The neon signs were clearer now. The rain felt less like knives and more like cold needles.
"Who… are you?" he asked, each word dragging.
「Urban Sovereign System.」
The answer came without hesitation.
「A city-level authority and growth assistance program.
Primary function: To assist the Host in acquiring, stabilizing, and ruling urban territory.
Secondary function: Host survival and development.」
Ruling… urban territory?
Ethan almost laughed. The sound caught in his throat and turned into a cough instead.
"You've got the… wrong man," he muttered. "I don't even… own a car."
「Correction: Host now owns Riverside Micro-Condominium, Unit 1907.
Property deed has been digitally registered under Host's identity.
Key delivery: Virtual. Physical access available immediately upon arrival.」
As if in response, a new icon flashed in the corner of his vision: a tiny key symbol, turning over and over, hovering above a label that read [Riverside Micro-Condo – 1.7 km].
Ethan stared at it, rain dripping from his eyelashes.
He knew that building. Riverside was a glass-and-concrete tower by the river, the kind he'd guarded rich clients at. Units there cost more than he could save in five years of honest work.
The System displayed it like it was tossing him a spare motel room.
The urge to dismiss it as a delusion warred with something uglier but stronger in his chest: a tight, choking knot of resentment.
All the years he'd spent taking the worst shifts. Getting between guns and the bodies who paid him. Watching men like Marcus collect bonuses off his scars.
Now, a voice in his head was offering him an apartment and a way out of the alley.
Maybe he was dying. Maybe none of this was real. Maybe he'd wake up in a morgue.
But on the off chance this wasn't a joke—
Ethan planted his palm against the wet ground and pushed.
His muscles trembled, but they held. He got onto his knees, then one foot, then the other. The alley spun once, twice, then settled into focus. Every nerve in his body complained, but they complained like something alive, not like fading echoes.
He was standing.
Water cascaded off the brim of a crooked metal awning above him, splashing onto his shoulders. The city's hum came back into his ears: traffic on the main road, someone shouting three blocks away, a distant train horn.
He glanced toward the mouth of the alley. There were no bystanders, no curious faces. Just the wet, empty street and the washed-out glow of traffic lights.
The key icon pulsed again, a soft tug in his mind pointing toward the river.
「Tutorial sequence available.
Would you like to view basic functions of the Urban Sovereign System?」
The voice sounded as calm as it had the moment he was about to die, as if asking whether he wanted a receipt.
Ethan flexed his hands, feeling the absence of torn flesh where there should have been holes. He drew in a deep breath, tasting rain and exhaust and the faint scent of frying oil from a nearby food stall.
He looked down at the bloody shirt that clung to his torso.
Then he looked up at the invisible key hovering in his vision and the words only he could see.
Ruling urban territory.
He had spent a lifetime watching other people own everything. Streets. Buildings. Lives.
The chill that ran down his spine now wasn't from the cold.
"Fine," he said quietly, voice rough but steady. "You want a host? You've got one."
He took a step toward the mouth of the alley, toward the river and the tower of glass he'd never been allowed to enter except as muscle.
"Show me what you can do."