URBAN AWAKENING [FROM COURIER TO DEMI-KING]

The delivery was, according to the chipped screen of my old bike-computer, for 4:15 PM. The address was a fortified townhouse on the edge of what used to be Washington Heights, now just “The Heights,” a shaky neutral zone between the Bronx ruins and the Van Der Wyck family’s claimed territory.

The package in my courier bag was light, about the size of a book, wrapped in plain grey polymer-foil. The client, a reclusive alchemist who paid in real calories canned goods and clean water had been very clear.

“Do not open it. Do not let the Astor patrols scan it. Do not be late. The dampening field on the foil lasts precisely one hour.”

I checked the time. 4:02. I was cutting it close.

I weaved the reinforced bicycle through a canyon of shattered concrete and twisted rebar. Three years since the Great Resonance, and New York was a patchwork quilt of the modern, the medieval, and the monstrous. Vines with a faint electric glow crawled up the sides of bank buildings.

The air hummed, a constant, low-grade buzz of Aura that tasted like ozone and wet earth. It gave you a headache if you weren’t used to it. I was.

A low growl rumbled from a dark alley to my left. I didn’t look. Looking was an invitation. I just pedaled faster, my legs burning. The beast problem was always worse near dusk. They called the small ones “gutter-rats,” but that was too kind.

They were the size of Dobermans, with leathery skin and tusks that could puncture a tire. A pack could strip a man to bone in minutes.

I skidded to a halt in front of the townhouse. It was a pre-Resonance brownstone, but now it had a shimmering, faintly blue energy field over its windows and a front door that looked like it belonged on a bank vault. I slapped the palm-reader. A slit opened at eye level.

“Kai. Courier. Package for Alchemist Lin.”

The slit closed. A moment later, the door hissed open just wide enough for me to slip the package through. A gnarled hand took it, and in return, a cloth sack was thrust into my arms.

“Your payment. Now go. The field is flickering. Bad Aura currents today.” The voice was raspy, like stones grinding.

I didn’t need telling twice. Slinging the sack over my shoulder, I jumped back on my bike. As I turned, I saw it. A ripple in the air above the rooftops, like heat haze, but purple and black. A bad sign. That was a concentrated Aura surge, often a prelude to a beast tide or a family skirmish.

My shortcut back to my shelter in the old Grand Concourse subway station was through a long, corpse of a shopping mall. It was dangerous, but faster. The main streets were Astor-patrolled, and they liked to “tax” independents like me.

Inside the mall, it was twilight. Skylights were broken, letting in shafts of dusty light that illuminated empty storefronts and piles of debris. The only sound was the drip of water and the whir of my bike tires.

I was halfway through when the world trembled.

It wasn’t an earthquake. It was deeper, like a giant heart had beat once under the city. The Aura hum spiked into a deafening ring. My teeth vibrated. The cloth sack of cans grew warm.

Then the chittering started.

From every dark corner, air vent, and broken escalator, they poured. Gutter-rats. Dozens of them. Their eyes were pinpricks of red in the gloom. This wasn’t a random pack. They moved with a horrible coordination, fanning out, cutting off the way I came, blocking the exit ahead.

A trap.

My blood went cold. I’d heard rumors of smarter alphas directing packs, but I’d never seen it. I backed up, my bike between me and the nearest rats. I had a knife. It was pathetic.

The largest rat, nearly pony-sized with a scarred muzzle, stepped forward. It wasn’t chittering. It just stared, intelligence glinting in its cruel eyes.

Run. The thought was pure instinct. I abandoned the bike, sprinting for a collapsed section of ceiling that led to a service stairwell. The pack erupted into motion.

I was fast. Survival in New York made you fast. But they were faster. I could smell their foul, metallic breath. I burst out of the mall’s north exit into a wide, debris-filled plaza. The Grand Concourse. My shelter was just across it.

The sky was wrong. That purple-black haze had spread, churning. The Aura here was so thick it was hard to breathe, pressing on my skin like deep water.

I didn’t make it ten steps into the plaza.

From a giant crack in the asphalt, it emerged. The Gutter King.

It was a nightmare of the old city. Three rodent heads on thick, corded necks, each mouth lined with teeth like rusty nails. Its body was the size of a delivery truck, covered in matted fur and chunks of solidified sewer grime and concrete. Its six eyes locked onto me.

This was no trap. I was just in its way.

The smaller rats fell back, forming a shrieking circle. The King advanced, its bulk shaking the ground. I stumbled back, my knife feeling like a toothpick. There was no cover. Nowhere to run.

The center head lunged. I threw myself sideways, but a tusk grazed my side. Fire exploded across my ribs. I hit the ground hard, the wind knocked out of me. The taste of copper filled my mouth.

This is it. The thought was strangely clear. After all this time, dodging patrols and beasts, it ends here, in the open, for nothing.

The Gutter King loomed over me, all three heads drooling acidic saliva that sizzled on the pavement. The Aura pressure was crushing me. It felt like the city itself was trying to bury me.

No.

A deeper instinct, older than fear, roared to life. Not the urge to flee, but the raw, screaming will to exist. To take a breath after this one. To see the sun again. My hand, scrabbling in the rubble, closed around a twisted piece of rebar, slick with grime and my own blood.

As the beast’s middle head opened wide to bite me in half, the world… shifted.

The crushing Aura didn’t disappear. Instead, it became visible. I saw it streams of dirty gold, shimmering purple, and sickly green energy swirling in the air, pouring from the crack in the earth, from the beast itself. And I saw, pulsing at the base of the Gutter King’s central neck, a knot of chaotic, frantic energy. A swirl of colors that just looked… wrong.

A chime, clean and piercing as crystal, cut through the animal roars and the city’s hum.

<< Ding! >>