Eliot's POV
If Hell exists, it doesn't smell like sulfur. It smells like sweat, cheap perfume, and cigarettes. And above all—it throbs at a hundred and forty beats per minute.
Every bass drop from the monstrous sound system punched my ribcage with the tenderness of a jackhammer.
I was curled up on a designer bar stool (so designer it didn't have a backrest and was actively sawing my ass in half), shoulders up to my ears.
I'd shoved neon-yellow foam earplugs so deep I was afraid I'd poke my brain, but the noise was still deafening.
"ELIOT! MOST IMPORTANTLY—DON'T HAVE TOO MUCH FUN!" Thomas screamed three inches from my face.
My best friend was grinning like a maniac, his face washed in epileptic strobes from the mega-club. This was his fault. He'd won three VIP "All Access" passes on some local radio station for Stella's ultra-private concert.
Me, I hadn't asked for anything. I just wanted to revise while eating my pasta.
But Thomas had insisted—arguing we had to "celebrate my survival" after Senator Delacroix's death.
I looked down at my drink.
A Perrier.
Eighteen euros.
Eighteen goddamn euros for bubbles and a lemon slice. My hands were shaking so much holding the hard plastic cup that the lemon was making waves.
It was scorching down on the dance floor below, but up here in the elevated VIP section, industrial AC blasted polar wind straight into the back of my neck. In my faded hoodie, I looked like a shivering hostage waiting for ransom money.
"LOOK AT SARAH! SHE'S ON FIRE!" Thomas yelled again, pointing toward the crowd.
I threw a miserable glance over the velvet railing. Sarah was down there among the privileged, dancing with a grace and carelessness that fascinated me as much as it terrified me. She wore a sequined dress that caught the laser light, laughing brightly, radiant. She was in her element.
Me, I was a biological anomaly in this glitter microcosm.
I got violently bumped by a guy in a silk shirt unbuttoned to the navel. My €18 Perrier nearly tipped. I let out a tiny strangled squeak and clamped both hands around the cup to protect my liquid investment.
Breathe, Eliot. Find the exit.
I scanned the room, neck stretched like an anxious meerkat. Green and purple beams burned my retinas. I was desperately searching for the small glowing green rectangle of salvation—an emergency exit sign—or at least a bathroom sign.
A tiled place. Cold. And most importantly… silent.
That's the exact moment I felt it.
A shiver.
Not the shiver from the club's freezing AC. No. This was reptilian—sharp, unpleasant prickling born at the base of my skull, right under my neck, then spreading down my spine.
It was the exact same sensation I'd felt in Prague right before I drank that champagne… or at university right before I met Valmont's eyes.
My bad-luck "Spidey-sense." The catastrophe barometer had just gone feral.
I froze. My eyes widened in the intermittent strobe darkness. A strange heaviness seized my muscles—like some part of me, lurking in the shadow of my own mind, had suddenly woken up with a growl, sniffing a mortal threat in the room.
Something was wrong. Something terrible was building under this mess of decibels and confetti.
I needed to find those damn bathrooms. Fast.
Stella's POV
Fifty thousand watts of pure power made the air vibrate around me. Suspended fifteen meters above the ground by my invisible harness, I flew over a sea of raised hands and ecstatic faces.
Pyro flame jets burst from the stage in infernal heat, lighting up my silver sequined bodysuit.
The crowd screamed my name.
Stella. Stella. Stella.
I smiled—that angelic smile, rehearsed for hours in front of the mirror—and belted the chorus of my global hit.
On the surface, I was their goddess. The icon of love and empowerment.
In reality, I was shopping.
From my perch I had a perfect view of the VIP section. That was where the real merchandise was.
Singing made me millions, sure—but it was nothing compared to the dizzying profits generated by The Abysses.
Three floors below, behind reinforced, soundproof doors, my richest clients—oligarchs, oil magnates, corrupt princes—waited patiently for the catch of the day to be delivered.
I swept the VIP area with my eyes while executing a millimeter-perfect choreography in midair.
Too old. Too skinny. Too fake. And then I saw her.
A young brunette—radiant—dancing like she didn't have a single thought in her skull, in a sparkling dress.
An angel face. Natural. Just the right amount of carelessness.
Perfect.
The Russian billionaire in Box Four would pay a six-figure fortune for something that fresh.
I caught my head of security's eye—posted near the VIP bar.
A colossus, six-foot-three, packed into a luxury-server uniform.
While holding my highest note, I ran my hand languidly through my hair and tapped my left earlobe twice with my index finger.
The code.
The fake server nodded almost imperceptibly. The deal was sealed.
From above, I watched him prepare the Blue Cocktail at the counter.
A sweet mix. Innocent-looking.
But saturated with a massive dose of synthetic GHB. One sip and the pretty thing would collapse "from fatigue and alcohol." My gorillas would discreetly escort her through service corridors under the crowd's sympathetic gaze, and she'd wake up directly in the padded hell of The Abysses.
It was a perfectly oiled machine.
Fail-proof.
The massive server moved toward his target, expertly navigating his silver tray through the VIP dancers. He was two meters away. I was already savoring my commission.
And then a pathetic grain of sand, dressed in a washed-out gray hoodie, jammed the gears.
A scrawny boy—trembling on his bar stool since the start of the concert, holding a glass of water like it was life support—stood up suddenly. At that exact moment, the lighting booth swept the VIP area with a powerful green strobe laser.
The beam hit him right in the face.
From my harness I saw his eyes fly wide, his water drop with a silent scream, and both hands slap over his face like he'd been blinded.
In panic, he stumbled backward, blind.
His foot caught on the heavy brass base of the velvet rope post marking the VIP boundary.
He lost his balance and went down, arms windmilling, with the grace of a startled chicken.
And of course—of course—with a mathematical precision that made my teeth grind, he crashed full-weight, back-first, into my server.
The impact was brutal. The giant, surprised, grunted and tried to catch himself. The tray flew up.
The precious Blue Cocktail drew a perfect parabola over their heads… then smashed miserably onto my gorilla's polished leather shoes, splashing the student's pants on the way down.
The target—the pretty brunette—noticed nothing. She kept dancing.
Me?
I saw everything.
Blood boiled in my veins. My voice wavered for a quarter second in the mic. That miserable little runt—this genetic accident in dirty sneakers—had just cost me hundreds of thousands of euros with one ridiculous slip.
I saw my gorilla glare at the student, massive fists clenching until his knuckles blanched.
Make him pay, I thought, cold rage. Take him into the corridors and break him.
Eliot's POV
"I—I'm so sorry! It's the laser, I didn't see anything!" I yelped, trying pathetically to wipe the sticky liquid off the colossus's shiny shoes with my hoodie sleeve.
The "server" looked down at me.
He didn't look like a server.
He had the build of a safe and scars on his knuckles that were definitely not from opening champagne bottles. His eyes were two murderous slits.
Before I could back away, his hand—the size of a ping-pong paddle—slammed onto my throat.
He lifted me off the ground like I weighed nothing. My sneakers dangled, my undone shoelace swinging sadly in midair.
"Sir has had too much to drink," he barked at Thomas and Sarah while shaking me like a rag doll. "He's becoming a danger to himself and others. I'm escorting him out."
Thomas, who couldn't hear anything over the music, gave me a big thumbs-up and a wink—probably thinking the bouncer was taking me to VIP toilets.
Thomas, you traitor, I screamed internally as the giant carried me away.
He dragged me through the crowd, shoulder-slammed a heavy padded door marked STRICTLY NO PUBLIC ACCESS, and tossed me inside. The door shut with a thick, final thud behind us.
Silence—brutal.
Stella's music became a distant, dull heartbeat, a sly vibration in the concrete. We were in a dim service corridor lit by flickering neon.
It smelled like stale beer and bleach.
The colossus cracked his neck vertebrae with a carnivorous smile.
"You just cost me a lot, cockroach," he growled, voice icing my blood. "I'm going to break so many bones you'll look like a thousand-piece puzzle."
My brain screamed for help. Anxiety paralyzed me.
He planted his feet, pulled his massive arm back, and launched a devastating right hook—loaded with all the force of his one-hundred-twenty kilos—straight at my jaw.
I shut my eyes, waiting for my head to detach from my shoulders.
But the impact never came.
At the exact millisecond his fist was about to pulverize my face, my body made a decision without consulting my will. Before my brain could even form a command, my knees bent with absolute fluidity.
I dropped into a crouch.
The giant's fist sliced the air a millimeter above my messy hair, sending a little cold draft over my scalp.
I opened my eyes, stunned by my own dodge.
But the madness didn't stop there.
Before I could even think Whew, I'm alive, my right leg snapped out.
My foot whipped off the ground with lash speed. A heel strike—surgical, dry, merciless—smashed into a precise pressure point on the colossus's tibia.
The sound was dull.
The reaction was immediate.
The giant's sciatic nerve screamed. His right leg collapsed under his weight like a tendon had just been cut. Already off-balance from his huge hook expertly dodged, he couldn't recover.
He pitched forward violently, arms churning the air.
He practically took flight and slammed headfirst into a massive rack of empty aluminum beer kegs stacked against the corridor wall.
The metallic crash was deafening. Half a dozen fifty-liter kegs collapsed onto him.
The giant didn't move. Total KO—stunned by metal and his own momentum—a bump the size of a tennis ball already swelling on his shaved skull.
I stood frozen in the corridor. My right leg was still half-raised in a perfect martial posture, fists up by my face like a pro fighter.
I blinked, short of breath, heart pounding.
I slowly lowered my leg and stared at my worn sneaker in complete disbelief.
"Wow…" I whispered into the corridor silence.
I'd done it. I'd really done it.
"Adrenaline is insane!" I murmured, a relieved smile stretching my trembling lips. "I was so right to watch that self-defense tutorial by that ex-GIGN guy on YouTube last week. And I thought it was total snake oil! The human body is incredible when survival's on the line!"
I dusted myself off, proud. I'd dodged and countered like a pro. Pure survival reflex.
Still, reality returned fast. The monster wasn't going to stay unconscious under beer kegs forever. I had to get out before he woke up with murder cravings times ten.
I needed an exit.
I ran to the end of the corridor and shoved open the first fire door I saw. Behind it, a spiral staircase dropped into darkness.
Convinced it led to the underground parking lot or an emergency exit, I crept down, hands sweaty, fleeing the noise and the gorilla.
But guided by my legendary karma, I had no idea I was descending into the club's entrails—step after step—toward the infamous Abysses.
Stella's POV
The curtain fell under a thunder of hysterical applause.
Still panting, skin coated in sequins and sweat, I stormed offstage, escorted by my usual bodyguards. But my mind wasn't on the show anymore. I wanted my cut.
The little brunette in the glitter dress should be waiting for me—beautifully asleep—in padded Cell Three of The Abysses.
I took the private elevator that sank deep beneath the club's foundations. The doors opened onto the sterile, silent corridor of my underground kingdom.
"Igor?" I spoke into my earpiece. "I'm coming down. Is the merchandise ready?"
Only static answered.
I frowned. Igor never left his radio off. Never.
A bad feeling tightened my throat. I quickened my pace, my platform heels clicking on polished concrete, and shoved open the heavy door to Cell Three.
Empty.
Silk sheets untouched. No sleeping brunette.
No Igor.
Fury rose like lava.
This wasn't a delay. Someone had blown my operation. Worse—someone had entered my sanctuary.
The image of that miserable hoodie student collapsing onto my server in the VIP area flashed through my mind.
Impossible. That pathetic insect couldn't have neutralized Igor.
I spun on my heel, face warped with rage. If there was an intruder in The Abysses, they were about to learn why I was the uncontested queen of Paris nights.
I marched toward the main storage room—where I kept concert pyrotechnics… and the dozens of kilos of white powder meant for my most exclusive clients.
I opened the secure desk drawer at the entrance and pulled out a chrome semi-automatic pistol—cold, lethal.
I was going to clean my own house.
Eliot's POV
Heaven existed.
It smelled like dust and cold metal, but above all—it was silent.
After wandering through an underground maze, I'd finally found a perfectly soundproof room. The walls were covered in thick black egg-crate foam. No bass, no lasers, no people.
Just the soft, pale hum of industrial neon.
The place looked like a huge storage warehouse. Crates stamped "Stella Tour 2025", cables, and at the back, giant shelves packed with blocks carefully wrapped in clear plastic.
I was so exhausted—stress and my "martial performance" in the corridor—that I collapsed onto a wooden trunk.
On the floor, I found a big heavy metal cylinder, as tall as my torso. A CO₂ tank, probably used for stage smoke cannons.
The metal was freezing.
Exactly what I needed to calm my cold sweats and lower my body temperature. I heaved it up, hugged it to my chest like a therapeutic teddy bear for distressed students, eyes half-closed, savoring the silence.
Then the heavy storage door flew open with a metallic bang that made me jump ten centimeters.
Stella stood in the doorway.
The pop star, idol of a generation, stared at me with eyes bulging with rage. Glitter makeup ran slightly, making her look like a deranged clown—and most importantly…
She was aiming a giant chrome pistol straight between my eyes.
"YOU!" she screamed, voice vibrating with pure hate. "What did you do with my bodyguard, you filthy little snoop?!"
My heart stopped. My brain shut down. I squeaked. A genuine little terrified-rodent whimper.
In a jolt of absolute panic, my arms—frozen—flew apart. My sweaty hands released the heavy CO₂ tank I'd been clutching.
Twenty kilos of metal slammed onto raw concrete—exactly on the top fitting.
CRAAACK.
The brass safety valve snapped clean off under the impact.
What followed lasted less than three seconds, but stretched into eternity.
CO₂, compressed to a phenomenal pressure, suddenly found an exit. It escaped with a shriek so high and violent it nearly covered my own scream.
Driven by the jet's force, the tank became an uncontrollable torpedo.
An improvised, blind, ground-to-ground missile.
The heavy cylinder shot along the floor, spinning in a cloud of frost, flying straight toward the door, grazing Stella's legs at terrifying speed. She barely had time to lower her gun and open her mouth to scream.
But karma wasn't aiming for her legs.
The metal torpedo smashed full-force into the shelf behind her—the one housing her secret reserve.
The impact was catastrophic.
Metal tore plastic. Dozens of kilos of ultra-pure cocaine—cut with the most brutal synthetic drugs on the black market—were pulverized in a fraction of a second by the collision and the icy air blast.
The chemical explosion was monumental.
A dense, opaque, hyper-concentrated white cloud surged forward, swallowing everything.
Stella—one meter away, mouth still wide open to order me to die—took the powder wave full in the face.
She inhaled violently.
The equivalent of several years of her own product poured into her lungs and mucous membranes in a single lethal breath.
Her pistol slipped from her fingers and hit the floor with a heavy clunk.
Her eyes rolled back instantly. Her legs gave out.
Struck down by a fulminant overdose—massive, brutal beyond reason—the queen of pop collapsed like a disjointed rag doll in the middle of the room, covered in an immaculate veil of chemical "snow" drifting gently down in the returned silence.
A cottony stillness settled over the warehouse, disturbed only by the dying hiss of the CO₂ tank now empty.
I coughed violently, waving a hand in front of my face to cut through the thick white fog saturating the air. A fine film of powder coated my shoulders, my jeans—everything.
I stood carefully and approached Stella.
The pop star lay on her back, motionless, half a centimeter of mysterious powder blanketing her. Her chrome pistol—surely a plastic stage prop—rested beside her hand.
I shook my head with a long, tired sigh.
"Honestly," I muttered, brushing my chest off, "they're really pushing special effects way too far. A fake-snow cannon in a closed storage room? And the smell of this chemical stuff is unbearable. It gives you a migraine from hell…"
I looked at Stella, convinced she was throwing a diva fit or had fainted from the shock of the tank's screech. Serves her right—she shouldn't have pointed her toy at me just to yell, I thought, petty.
Not wanting to get dragged into a hysterical star's tantrum when she woke up, I decided it was time to flee this hell.
I delicately stepped over her body, careful not to slip on the "snow," and left the storage room.
I climbed back up, found the main entrance, and sat on a small brick wall outside the club in the fresh air. I pulled out my cracked-screen phone and ordered an Uber while sipping the end of my lukewarm Perrier, hoping Thomas and Sarah would eventually come out before dawn.
An hour later, narcotics and vice squads stormed the mega-club. What should've been a "routine raid" to check trafficking rumors became the biggest drug seizure of the decade.
Police kicked in the soundproof doors of The Abysses. They freed a dozen drugged young women ready to be "delivered" to VIP boxes.
In a service corridor, they found a 120-kilo Baltic gorilla—deeply knocked out and embedded in a pyramid of beer kegs.
But the real shock happened in the pyrotechnics storage room.
Inspector Vasseur—eternal wrinkled raincoat on his back—stepped over the yellow tape and into the crime scene. The air still stank of harsh chemicals.
He examined the decapitated CO₂ tank, the pulverized shelf, and Stella's body—frozen in death by an overdose so massive her heart had probably exploded before she even hit the ground.
Vasseur narrowed his eyes. The scene was chaotic, violent—but it told a story. A deal gone bad? A trafficker dispute?
A young forensics tech jogged up, tablet in hand.
"Boss! We recovered security footage from the emergency exit and club entrance. Look. We've got a suspect leaving the basement right at the moment of the chemical explosion!"
Vasseur sighed professionally and took the tablet. He hit play.
On screen: a young brunet, hunched shoulders, wearing a gray hoodie and jeans dusted with a fine white film, calmly walked out the club doors. He held a clear plastic cup. He looked bored, tired, glanced at his phone while waiting on the sidewalk. One sneaker lace dangled miserably.
Inspector Vasseur's blood froze.
Air left his lungs. His heart stopped dead, then restarted in a frantic rhythm, hammering his ribs like a blacksmith's mallet. His hands shook so hard the tablet nearly slipped.
The Black Cat.
He was there.
The Demon.
The Anomaly.
The terrified equation formed in the old cop's brain: the boy had gone down into The Abysses. He'd neutralized a man closer to a bladed weapon than a human being by throwing him under beer kegs with terrifying martial skill. Then he'd coldly executed the pop queen by using a compressed-gas cylinder like a guided missile to unleash a lethal chemical storm.
And now he was leaving—serene—finishing his Perrier.
The young tech leaned in zealously. "We issue a national manhunt, Chief? He can't be far—we can ping his phone and—"
Vasseur shot his hand up and hammered the tablet's power button, killing the screen.
"You launch absolutely nothing," he barked, voice so high it didn't even sound like him.
The tech flinched. The whole forensics team turned, stunned.
Vasseur wiped a trembling hand down his sweaty face, eyes wide with absolute panic.
"Listen carefully, you amateurs," he said, pointing a threatening finger at his men. "This investigation is closed. The star went down to get her own stash. She slipped. She tripped on her own CO₂ tank, it exploded and blasted five kilos of pure coke into her sinuses. Tragic show-business accident."
"But Chief… the guy on the video—"
"What guy on the video?!" Vasseur screamed, crimson. "THERE IS NOBODY ON THAT VIDEO! It was a reflection! A ghost! A collective hallucination!"
He grabbed the tech by the shoulders, eyes wild. "You want to live long, kid? You want to see your children grow up? Then you look for NO witnesses. You delete that video, you file this case, and if you ever see that boy in the gray hoodie in the street… you change countries. Understood?!"
The tech, terrified by his superior's madness, nodded frantically.
Vasseur released him, adjusted his collar, and left the storage room almost at a run—refusing to spend one more second in a place where the Cursed Student had left his footprint.
Cause of death: Fulminant overdose by forced inhalation, following a compressed-gas blunt-force "barrage" (CO₂ cylinder).Verdict: Tragic pyrotechnic and chemical accident…Red Flag for a Crime Star: Never point a gun at an exhausted student while he's hugging a high-pressure cylinder. The universe always has a special-effects budget far bigger than yours.
End of Chapter 9.