The address in the message led them deep into the outskirts of the city, to a zone long abandoned after industrial collapse and political neglect. Roads here crumbled into gravel. Streetlights leaned like broken ribs. Every building wore dust like a burial shroud.Zara studied the photo again while Adrian drove.The room.The figure waiting inside it.“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked, voice low.“No,” Adrian said. “But I don’t get to want anything anymore.”She didn’t press further. She didn’t need to. He could feel her fear thrum through the air like static. For him. For herself. For the truth waiting at the end of the road.The car rolled to a stop.The building stood three stories tall, windows shattered like jagged teeth. The corridor in the picture was on the second floor. Adrian felt the memory pulse at the base of his skull—something old, something buried, pushing upward like a beast waking from hibernation.Zara touched his arm. “Whatever’s in there… it won’t rewr

Rain fell in sheets over East Harbor, turning neon lights into streaks of blood-red glow across puddled streets. Adrian moved through the storm like a shadow wrapped in darker shadow. No footsteps. No breath. No presence.The Triad territory was alive tonight—lanterns lit, drums pounding from somewhere deep inside their maze of alleys. A celebration… or a warning. He could never tell the difference with the Black Fang.His instincts prickled the moment he stepped off the main road.Something was wrong.Too many lookouts pretending not to look.Too many civilians staying indoors.Too many lanterns lit all at once.The Triad wanted him here.They wanted him badly.He walked straight into their trap anyway.---The First StrikeHe turned a corner.A blade flashed—fast, vicious, silent.Adrian leaned back. The sword sliced through empty air where his throat had been a second before.The assassin blinked in confusion.Adrian didn’t.He twisted the attacker’s wrist, snapped it, and slammed

The hideout sat beneath an abandoned metro station, sealed behind rusted steel doors and layers of graffiti no one bothered to read anymore. Adrian found it because his instincts dragged him there—like a compass pointing to danger instead of safety.The coded message he stole from the Triad lieutenant wasn’t an address.It was a pattern.A pattern he recognized without remembering why.The tunnels smelled of mold and metal. Water dripped from above in slow, rhythmic beats, the echoing sound like an old heartbeat. Adrian moved silently, every step calculated, every breath controlled as if this place might swallow sound whole.Ahead, faint blue light spilled from an opening.He wasn’t alone.He wasn’t ever alone anymore.Adrian stepped inside.Rows of server racks hummed. Screens stacked on metal shelves flickered with static. A thousand blinking LEDs glowed like constellations in the underground dark.A secret archive.A digital tomb.He scanned the room, instincts whispering warnings—

Rain drifted through the alley like thin smoke, soft enough to mute footsteps, heavy enough to erase tracks. Adrian moved through the darkness without sound, without hesitation. His instincts were a humming wire again—vibrating, warning, tugging him sideways just before a knife spun through the air where his throat had been.He didn’t see the attacker.He felt her.A ripple in the dark. A breath too controlled. A shift in weight designed to be silent—but not silent enough for him.The second knife came fast. Adrian snatched it midair and flipped back into the open street, boots hitting wet asphalt in a low crouch.“Still faster than the knives,” a woman’s voice murmured.Adrian stiffened.Not because he recognized the voice… but because his body did.A figure stepped from the alley shadows, hood dripping with rain, posture loose but deadly. She moved with a liquid grace that triggered something deep in him—some memory locked behind scorched walls in his mind.The hood dropped.Selene.

The safehouse is too quiet.Too clean.Too surgical.Adrian stands in the center of the old bunker-like room, the cold metal walls reflecting the dim emergency lights. Dust floats through the air in lazy spirals—yet nothing here feels old. Everything feels… paused. Waiting.Selene places the small black device on the steel table between them.It looks like nothing—no logos, no buttons, no ports. Just a block of matte black metal, roughly the size of a hand.But the moment Adrian touches it—it pulses.A faint white ring glows along its surface.Selene tilts her head, observing him like a scientist watching a test subject. “Only you can open it,” she reminds softly. “It was keyed to your blood.”He grits his teeth. “Why?”“You’ll understand soon.”The ring glows brighter, reading him.A click echoes.Then the device unfolds—quiet, seamless, mechanical perfection—becoming a thin holo-pad. Lines of encrypted symbols project upward, swirling like floating ash. With each passing second, th