Srekk... sreit...The only sound in the room was the faint creak of an overturned wheelchair, its wheel spinning slowly in the air. Outside, acid rain poured without pause, hissing as it struck the grimy glass window of the apartment. A flickering red neon sign from across the street bled through the darkness, casting a sickly glow over the damp wooden floor now painted with blood.Elias coughed hard. Thick blood spilled from his mouth, soaking into the dust below.“Damn it,” he rasped, his voice nearly swallowed by the roar of rain.He dragged himself forward. Both hands clawed at the rotting wood, veins bulging along his arms as he pulled the dead weight behind his waist. His legs were completely paralyzed. Thin and useless, they trailed behind him, leaving a long smear of blood from the bullet wound in his right shoulder.Thud. A steel toed boot slammed into his side. Not hard, but enough to flip him onto his back like a dead insect.“You know something, Elias?” The voice was low a

A sharp, burning pain tore through Elias’s right shoulder. He jolted awake, his breath dragged violently into his lungs. His eyes snapped open, immediately met by the dim glow of a yellow bulb swaying gently above his head.“Don’t move, boss. I’m stitching your flesh back together,” Sloane’s voice came, cold and flat.Elias let out a strained groan. Cold sweat soaked his forehead. He realized he was lying on a long wooden table. The harsh smell of cheap antiseptic, alcohol, and old paper dust stabbed his nose. Around him, towering teakwood shelves loomed high, packed with thousands of dusty books. This wasn’t a hospital. This was a basement.“What did you use to knock me out?” Elias rasped, his throat dry like sandpaper.“A bottle of cheap whiskey I forced down your throat while you were unconscious,” Sloane replied. Her rubber-gloved hands, slick with blood, deftly pulled a black surgical thread. Sret. “I’m out of morphine. My local anesthetic was barely enough to stop the bleeding i

The acid rain fell harder over Saint-Bastian that night. Its roar sounded like thousands of pebbles thrown at once against the tin roof of the antique bookstore. Down in the basement, the smell of damp earth mixed with the thick aroma of freshly brewed black coffee.Elias sat in front of a stolen monitor, trying to hack into the lower sector police frequencies with his left hand, still marked by black necrotic veins.“Coffee.” Sloane set a steaming metal cup on the wooden table beside his keyboard. “Don’t spill it on the motherboard.”Elias glanced over, his eyes red from lack of sleep. “The police radio is dead quiet. Too quiet. Friday nights like this, the lower district is usually full of reports, brawls, robberies. This… nothing.”Sloane took a sip of her coffee, leaning back against the table. She had just finished cleaning her modified pistol. “Vancroft probably paid them off to shut down patrols tonight. Your father likes clean streets when his dogs go hunting.”“Is the van ups

Beep… beep… beep.The rhythmic pulse of the EKG filled the silence like an artificial heartbeat. The air inside the armored van felt stifling, thick with the smell of metal, sharp disinfectant, and dried blood.Elias lay rigid on a fold-out cot bolted to the van’s floor. His skin was pale as wax. A thin, clear oxygen tube looped around his ears, feeding air directly into his nostrils.Along the left side of his neck, the mark of hell itself, blackened veins from the Ghost Rot spread beneath his skin like poisonous roots.Elias slowly opened his eyes. His vision blurred, taking several seconds to focus on the gray steel ceiling above him. The first sensation he felt was numbness. Not just his legs. This time, he couldn’t feel his left hand.He tried to move his fingers. Nothing. His left hand, veined with black, lay motionless beside him, just like his legs.“Your nerves collapsed, El.”Sloane’s voice came from the corner of the van. She sat cross-legged on the steel floor, wearing a n