Thalyn woke to the creak of old leather and Korr’s gaze. He sat across the hall’s narrow width, elbows braced on knees, face lit by the sour glow of a lone lumen-strand drooping from the ceiling. The light gave his eyes the sharp, birdlike intensity of someone who’d been waiting too long.
“You’ve been out a while,” he said.
She pushed herself upright on the settee. The cushions still held the heat and shape of her shoulder. “Good news. I heard our message. Bad news, half the city’s already gone. We thought the warning was late, tossed it aside like an omen that missed the mark.”
Korr’s expression flickered between relief and annoyance. “You did hear it.” He rubbed his jaw, then leaned forward. “Means we can reach the past. Now we just need to send the right thing.”
He let that hang in the air for exactly one heartbeat. “The Commander and Elara are in trouble. Sent me coordinates. I’ll mark them on your map.”
A quick pulse of thought and the location etched itself behind her eyes, thin, glowing threads overlaid on the real world like constellations through a fog.
“Contact them only when you’re close,” Korr said. “The less time you’re broadcasting, the better.”
She stood, adjusting her satchel. The cube slid in first, the sphere after, its pressure vanishing when she willed the fear-field to silence. The ring slipped onto her finger. A subtle aura folded around her, tightening her presence until even the air seemed willing to forget her.
The front door hissed open onto the slums.
Here, the city wore its poverty like a defaced crown, grime caked into stonework that had once been ceremonial, bridges of corroded alloy webbing between squat buildings whose windows were blind with age. The slums’ elite strutted through the streets in scavenged finery, plated collars, stitched silks, filigreed shoulder-guards, wearing them with the unshakable confidence of the questionably sane.
Bodyguards lumbered behind in mismatched armor, armed with nothing standard issue. One woman led a six-legged beast with a head like a drooping lantern, its eyes dripping slow beads of green light.
Directorate patrols drifted by, three soldiers in black flak, not so much watching the street as hoping it wouldn’t notice them. Beggars called from stoops where shadows hung thick enough to drink.
No one looked at her.
She let the mental map flare again, focusing on the location. A tug low in her gut pulled her left, down an alley smelling of boiled spice and solvent. She kept to the shadows, letting the path tighten around her, the buildings passing by as if eager to forget she was there.
Two gang goons blocked a doorway ahead, leaning in over a woman clutching a satchel to her chest. Their laughter had the edge of knives. One of them leaned in, muttering promises she didn’t want.
Thalyn drifted closer, moving under a sagging beam. A loose panel hung above their heads. She shifted it with one gloved hand. It clattered to the stones beside them. Both men spun, swearing, just as she slid in from the side, heel snapping the first man’s knees forward. He slammed into the other, arms pinwheeling, and she punched the nearest steam valve.
Boiling vapor screamed from the wall, clouding the alley with metallic tang and rust. Staggering out, the men swore and clawed at their eyes. The woman was already gone, sprinting into the maze. Cursing the “pipes,” they limped off, more annoyed than suspicious.
Thalyn melted back into the shadows.
The pull in her gut sharpened. She skirted a checkpoint where a bored Directorate guard was trading quiet words with a man selling a corked vial of faintly glowing red liquid. A kid darted past, palming something from the guard’s belt without breaking stride.
The target location loomed close. She paused beside a half-collapsed beamwork, steel flanges drooping, and pinged the commander.
« I’m near. »
The reply was clipped and dry as gunmetal.
« Buyer’s shop’s been hit. We’re unarmed. Three with rifles, one thug interrogating the host. Be careful. »
The street was quiet enough to hear her own breath, and the faint hiss of something wet leaking deeper in the tunnels. She slid around a silo swollen with rust blisters, found a side door, its skin peeling from humidity.
“Let me.” Arvie’s voice was equal parts silk and smug.
A pulse rippled, something between a sigh and a death rattle, and the mechanism surrendered.
Inside, the air hung stale with dust and splinters. Shelves lay gutted, drawers yanked out like extracted teeth. Hurst and Elara stood against the wall, hands raised. The host sat bound in a chair, lip split, eyes locked on the man looming over him, tall, ugly, and wearing the expression of someone about to make a bad life choice. Three more figures lounged, with the casual menace of men who thought their job was already done.
From the doorway’s shadow, Thalyn’s eyes took in the place the way a predator takes in terrain, spotting every piece of cover, every weapon, every opportunity for a non-lethal takedown. Her pulse stayed steady. She hated killing when she didn’t have to. Still, she made a mental note of which bones would break cleanest if the evening turned uncooperative.
She slipped in, soundless. The interrogator’s gaze passed right over her, seeing nothing. She caught the rasp of the buyer’s breathing, the low grind of the leader’s voice.
The nearest rifleman suddenly pitched forward, his boot hooked on something no one noticed. His weapon skidded under a table. The second man bent to grab it, and the table smashed up into his ribs. The third turned toward Elara, his weapon slapped from his hands, spinning away.
Shouts filled the chamber, each man’s confusion feeding the others.
Thalyn moved through it like wind, clipping the backs of knees, wrenching an elbow until the rifle fell free, slide-kicking it toward the Commander. Hurst caught it in a single motion, already ducking behind an overturned cabinet. Elara dove for her own weapon, her expression flicking from fury to calculation in a blink.
By the time the weapon was in her hands, the buyer’s ropes were cut. He blinked like a man waking from a bad dream and bolted for cover without knowing who had freed him.
One man went down under Hurst’s shot. The others, dazed and breathing hard, found themselves unarmed and bound before they could even string a thought together.
Only then did Thalyn slide the ring off her finger.
Elara stared. “By the Divines, Thalyn?”
The buyer wiped blood from his lip, blinking as if he’d misplaced the last thirty seconds. “Where… when… how…?”
Thalyn just winked, sharp as a blade flick.
“Verrik,” Elara said, gesturing between them. “Thalyn Ka’el. Thalyn, Verrik Zorr.”
They didn’t stay. Verrik locked the shop, eyes flicking over his shoulder. “Don’t know where my brother is. Gang thinks I do. That’s all I’ve got.”
They still had passengers. Four gang muscles, battered and bruised, were herded ahead, wrists zip-tied, their faces flickering from stunned to “wait until my boss finds you.”
The little procession moved through the dripping alleys and up into a brighter street, where a Directorate checkpoint waited. The guards didn’t even stand up from their stools as they presented the catch. One guard gave the prisoners a once-over, nodded with the slow pleasure of a man accepting work he wouldn’t have to do himself, and waved them through without a single thank you.
Back at HQ, Verrik looked around the place as if expecting it to hold answers about his missing brother, but found only Korr and the rations waiting on the long table.
After explaining the situation to Korr, they sat down at the table and ate beneath the low hum of flickering ceiling strips. The gang problem coiled between them like a slow-acting toxin, something they’d have to excise before it spread.
When they finally broke for rest, Verrik claimed the settee with a grunt. Thalyn eased back onto her narrow cot, boots off, hands behind her head. The house fell into the slow breathing of tired bodies, but above it, she could feel the faint, arrhythmic thrum of the city, like the heartbeat of some sleeping giant that could, at any moment, wake in a foul mood.23Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqDQsSRwqlv
and then Add to home screen.