The Last Heir of the Forbidden Family

An Old Debt

Chapter 17: An Old Debt

"We stay here, he dies on that table in ten minutes," Kenji said, dropping his empty holster onto a grease-stained workbench with a hollow metallic clatter.

Seraphine didn’t look up from where she was pressing a blood-soaked compress against Dorian’s violently heaving chest. Her fingers were slick with crimson, her breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps. "He’s going into organ failure, Kenji! Look at his skin—the crimson light is burning right through his veins. Field medicine isn't going to stop this. What else can we do?"

"I’m going to fix it," Kenji snapped, snatching his heavy trench coat off a rusted hook and shrugging his good arm into the sleeve. "Keep pressure on his subclavian artery. If he stops breathing before I get back, punch his sternum until he starts again."

"Wait, you're leaving us here alone?" Seraphine’s voice cracked, rising an octave as she frantically shifted her weight to keep the pad pressed down. "Voss’s mercenaries are crawling all over the lower sectors, and Vane's syndicates are watching every alleyway! Where the hell are you even going?"

"To collect an old debt," Kenji muttered, already turning toward the back exit of the auto-repair shop. "Keep the lights off, keep your voice down, and pray to whatever god you still believe in that nobody smells the blood leaking off this floor."

"Kenji, wait!" Seraphine’s desperate plea was cut short as the heavy steel door slammed shut behind him with a dull, echoing thud.

The neon-lit slums of the lower district hummed with a sickly violet discharge, casting long, fractured shadows across the rain-slicked pavement. Kenji kept his head down, pulling the brim of his cap low over his eyes as he navigated the labyrinth of narrow alleyways. Every puddle reflected the aggressive flicker of holographic billboards advertising corporate life-extension tech—the very same technology that was currently tearing Dorian’s body apart from the inside out.

His shoulder throbbed with a white-hot intensity where a piece of shrapnel was still lodged near his collarbone, but he ignored the pain, pushing his boots faster through the sludge. He didn't have time to bleed, and he certainly didn't have time to hesitate.

Ten blocks deep into the decaying heart of the meatpacking ward, he stopped in front of a heavy, grease-caked sliding door marked by a swinging, rusted meat hook. A flickering neon sign overhead buzzed erratically, casting the words MALONE’S MEATS in a bruised purple hue.

Kenji didn't bother knocking. He hit the reinforced steel panel three times with the heavy butt of his hand in a precise, rhythmic cadence—two short, one long, two short.

A heavy deadbolt scraped inside. The door cracked open an inch, revealing a single, bloodshot eye staring out from the gloom. "We're closed. Animals are processed at sunrise, not midnight," a gravelly, rasping voice barked from the darkness.

"Open the damn door, Malone," Kenji growled, stepping directly into the sliver of light so the overhead neon caught his scarred jaw. "Unless you want me to remind the entire ward about what happened down in the Sector Four quarantine zone twelve years ago."

The door swung inward with a shriek of ungreased hinges. Standing in the threshold was Silas "Slick" Malone, a massive man wearing a blood-splattered butcher’s apron over a stained gray thermal shirt. His forearms were covered in pale, jagged surgical scars, and his cybernetic left eye whirred softly as it adjusted, locking its green reticle onto Kenji’s face.

"Kenji?" Malone grunted, his gaze dropping briefly to the fresh blood soaking through the younger man's trench coat before dragging his eyes back up. "I heard you got yourself blown up in a corporate black-site raid. You look like absolute hell."

"And you look like you're still running a butcher shop out of a slaughterhouse," Kenji retorted, pushing past the heavy-set surgeon into the dim, chillingly cold interior.

The room smelled overwhelmingly of antiseptic, cheap disinfectant, and raw iron. Stainless steel tables lined the walls, covered not in cuts of beef, but in jars of synthetic organs, glowing bio-mechanical components, and trays of surgical steel glinting under harsh overhead fluorescents.

Malone slammed the heavy door shut, throwing the deadbolt and spinning around to face his uninvited guest with a narrow, suspicious glare. "People don't drop by my shop at midnight for a social visit, Kenji. Especially not men carrying Voss syndicate heat on their coat. You brought a tail."

"I shook my tail two blocks back," Kenji said flatly, stepping up to the central steel table and slamming his remaining gear down onto the metal surface. "And I didn't come here to chat. I need a stabilized neural-suppressant drip. Heavy grade. Enough to slow down an accelerated meta-human metabolism."

Malone let out a harsh, dry bark of laughter that sounded like rocks grinding together. He crossed his thick arms over his massive chest, leaning back against a wall of refrigerated lockers. "A neural-suppressant drip? Do you have any idea what those cost on the black market right now? Voss and the Malphas Syndicate have locked down every supply chain from here to the orbital docks. I can't just hand a grade-four military shunt out to a walk-in."

"I'm not asking for a handout," Kenji snapped, stepping into Malone's personal space, his eyes narrowing into cold, unyielding slits. "I'm calling in the debt you owe me from the night in the red-light district when I pulled you out from under an Enforcer cleanup squad with three broken ribs and a burning hole in your lung."

Malone’s expression hardened, the cybernetic eye whirring faster as internal processing routines flickered behind his iris. He stared at Kenji for a long, agonizing moment, the silence in the butcher shop broken only by the steady, low hum of the refrigeration units.

"That was a long time ago, Kenji," Malone muttered, his voice dropping an octave. "Times have changed. Supplies are scarce, and the people hunting your little friends aren't just corporate rent-a-cops anymore. Vane's executioners are putting bounties on anyone caught harboring runaways."

"If I wanted a history lesson, I would've asked a librarian," Kenji interrupted, his voice dropping to a dangerous, low rumble. He reached down to his belt and unclipped his custom-built, matte-black automatic pistol—the firearm he had carried through a dozen war zones and syndicate skirmishes—and placed it gently on the steel tray between them. "That's a modified Type-9 suppressed automatic. Custom recoil dampeners, titanium slide. Priceless on the streets."

Malone looked down at the weapon, his heavy brow furrowing deeply. He didn't reach for it, but his gaze lingered on the meticulous craftsmanship of the grip.

Kenji didn't stop there. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his last remaining box of heavy-caliber shotgun shells, sliding the red plastic casing across the cold metal until it hit the edge of the pistol. "And that's my last box of armor-piercing slugs. That's my life, Malone. Every tool I have left to keep myself alive in this godforsaken city."

Malone stared at the gun and the ammunition, then slowly lifted his gaze to meet Kenji’s unwavering stare. A heavy, conflicted sigh rattled deep within the older man's massive chest.

"You're a stubborn bastard, Kenji," Malone muttered, shaking his head slowly as he turned around and began rummaging through a heavily locked supply cabinet against the back wall. "If Vane's boys find out I supplied this, they won't just kill me. They'll harvest my cybernetics and sell them to the lowest bidder on the black market."

"They won't find you," Kenji said, relief flashing briefly behind his hardened exterior before he quickly masked it. "Just pack the shunt and the stabilizing fluid. I need to get back before the kid's heart explodes in his chest."

Malone pulled out a heavy, steel-reinforced medical case stamped with a faded military serial number and slammed it down onto the table beside Kenji's pistol. He popped the latches with a loud click, revealing rows of glowing blue ampoules nestled securely inside molded foam padding, alongside a pressurized injector gun.

"Grade-four neural shunt," Malone said, his voice dropping into a professional, clinical tone as he checked the expiration dates stamped on the glass vials. "It's designed to interface directly with an enhanced nervous system and manually throttle the heart rate down by forty percent. But I have to warn you, Kenji—it’s going to feel like pouring liquid fire straight into his spine. If his body rejects the synthesis, the shock could kill him instantly."

Kenji closed the medical case with a sharp snap, sweeping his pistol off the table and sliding it back into his holster with practiced speed. "He dies if we use it, he dies if we don't. I'll take those odds."

Malone watched him scoop up the box of ammunition and tuck the heavy case under his good arm. "You always were a reckless lunatic, Kenji. Don't come back here when Vane finishes hunting you down. I'm moving my shop at sunrise."

"Appreciate the hospitality, Malone," Kenji muttered, already turning toward the heavy sliding door. He pulled it open just enough to slip back out into the neon-drenched rain, the cold night air hitting his face like a physical blow.

He had the medicine. But as he sprinted back toward the auto-repair shop through the darkening alleys, a chilling realization gripped his chest: getting the shunt back to Dorian was only half the battle. If Seraphine’s panic was right, and Vane’s network was closing in faster

than they could run, the real nightmare was only just beginning.