Rain hit the city like it was trying to wash the fire away. Steam rose from cracked pavement. Sirens echoed behind them, fading, then lost.Gwen moved fast through the alley maze. Billy stumbled to keep up, bare feet splashing through puddles.“Where are we going?” Billy gasped.“Where no one looks,” Gwen said. “That’s the only safe place left.”They cut through an abandoned parking structure, lights flickering above them. Gwen stopped beside a rusted service elevator. “Inside.”Billy hesitated. “I don’t even know who you are.”“Then you’re learning already. Don’t trust easily.”He pressed a button that shouldn’t have worked, but it did. The elevator groaned and sank lower than any basement should’ve gone.Billy watched the floor indicator tick past numbers that didn’t exist. “There’s no, there’s no level twelve.”“There is now.”The doors opened to a vast chamber, old subway tunnels converted into a training hall. Candles, medical tables, walls lined with symbols that pulsed faintly

New York never really slept. It just blinked slower after midnight. Billy moved through back alleys, hood up, hands buried in his jacket pockets.The rain had stopped, but the air still carried smoke, faint, metallic. He rolled the blackened coin between his fingers. Same sigil. Same weight. Just colder. Gwen hadn’t come back. Not all night.A voice echoed in his head, Nina’s: Find the truth before he finds you. Billy muttered, “Yeah, easy for you to say.”He turned onto Seventh, slipping between the hum of neon and exhaust. Ordinary people passed him, cab drivers, late-shift workers, lovers arguing under umbrellas, all of them blissfully unaware that the city pulsed with power beneath their feet.He ducked into a diner, the kind that smelled like burnt coffee and broken promises.The waitress looked up, unimpressed. “You gonna order or just stand there lookin’ guilty?”“Coffee. Black.”“Sure thing, mystery man.”He slid into a corner booth, eyes scanning the place. A TV flickered abo

Rain hammered the pavement, slicing through the night in silver lines. Billy stopped in the middle of the street, palms open to the downpour.He could feel it, the pulse under the storm, Gwen’s signature woven through every bolt of lightning. A code only a student could read.Nina shouted over the thunder, “You good, or are you communing with the weather now?”He didn’t move. “He’s alive.”“You sure?”“I’d know his resonance anywhere.”“Well, great,” she said dryly. “Your undead mentor’s shooting lightning at the skyline. Totally fine.”He started walking again. “He’s sending a message.”“Or bait.”Billy didn’t answer. He ducked into an alley, water streaming down the walls like veins of mercury.Nina followed, muttering. “You’re insane.”“Maybe. But I’m not wrong.”They turned a corner, the hum of power stronger now, sharp enough to make his skin prickle.Billy reached out, touching the brick. A faint pattern burned under his fingers, ancient runes, Gwen’s script. “He marked this,” B

Smoke still clung to the skyline. The Argus Building was a black scar now, its top floors collapsed, lightning still flickering through the clouds like a dying heartbeat.Billy stood in the rain, watching emergency drones hover around the ruins. Sirens wailed. News choppers circled. Somewhere beneath the chaos, Gwen’s energy still hummed.“Time to go,” Nina said. Her hair was soaked, eyes sharp.“They’ll be here any minute.”“Let them,” Billy muttered. “They already think I did it.”“Yeah, and the way you look right now? They’re gonna be right.”He glanced down, his hands glowed faintly blue, every pulse visible through the skin. Nina touched his shoulder. “You’re burning out. Whatever he did to that machine, it’s in you now.”He shook her off. “I can handle it.”“Sure. You handled the exploding skyscraper great.”He almost smiled, but didn’t. “We need to find out where he went.”“Can’t exactly call him.”“No,” Billy said, scanning the skyline. “But I can trace the signature.”He clos

Rain slicked the streets like liquid glass. Billy’s boots splashed through the puddles as the Helix Tower loomed ahead, fifty floors of black glass humming with energy.The whole structure pulsed faintly, alive with blue light running through its veins. Nina glanced up. “You sure you’re ready for this?”“No.”“Good. Means you might survive.”She tightened the strap on her weapon. Billy flexed his fingers, light crackled faintly between them. “Security grid’s on full lockdown,” Nina said. “You fry one circuit wrong, the whole place knows.”“Then I won’t miss.”They slipped into the shadow of a maintenance tunnel. The hum of power surrounded them, heavy and rhythmic. “Feels like walking inside a heart,” Nina murmured.“It is a heart,” Billy said quietly. “The city’s heart. His heart.”They reached a steel door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.Nina crouched, pulling a small device from her jacket. “Give me sixty seconds.”Billy placed a hand on the lock. “You’ve got three.”Blue lines c