So I wasn't imagining it…Cadmus was still running ops through him.
What I got from Lou so far were nothing but ghost trails…but ghost trails or not, every lead was worth chasing.
I stuffed the files into my jacket, wiped the phone with a cloth I pulled from his drawer—Lou always kept a stash for his guns. And of course, one jerry rig can of fuel. Fitting. Of course he kept one. Lou always thought the world might catch fire. He just didn't know it would start with him.
I soaked the room slowly, methodically. The mattress first, letting the fuel bleed into the torn seams. Then the curtains, the walls—each pass of the can hissing like a whisper. The smell was chemical, sharp, laced with finality.
I paused by the nightstand, looking down at the photo frame face-down on the floor. Lou had knocked it over at some point during the struggle. I flipped it over out of curiosity. It wasn't a family, Just a snapshot of him with a few guys in suits. Smiling. Grinning like he'd never bled a day in his life.
I dropped it into the soaked mattress.
Before lighting the flare, I stood still. Just for a moment. Just long enough to take in the silence. Not mourning, not reflecting. Just memorizing the feel of the room—like pressing your hand to a stone before you bury it.
Then I struck the flare.
The spark bloomed in a soft whoosh of orange-red. It danced across the trail like it had been waiting its whole life for this moment. Flames leapt greedily, swallowing fabric and paper and memory.
The fire bloomed like a slow exhale.
I walked out the door without a glance back.
Didn't need to.
I already knew what would be left when it finished screaming.
The night air hit like a slap—cold, bitter, real. I moved fast down the side street, head low, footsteps swallowed by the hum of neon and far-off sirens. A fire truck wailed somewhere behind me, converging on the motel as smoke began to claw up into the sky. Red and orange danced in the rearview mirrors of passing cars, but no one stopped. No one ever did in this part of Gotham.
I ducked into an alley, peeled off my jacket, turned it inside out. Blood had splattered the sleeve. Couldn't walk with that in plain view. My hands shook a little—not from fear, just... residue. Lou's blood. Lou's face. Lou's voice was still hanging in the air even though his lungs weren't.
A flickering sign buzzed overhead. I stepped past dumpsters and rats, kept walking until I found a dead stairwell behind a closed pawn shop. There, in the silence, I sat for the first time since the killing.
It wasn't remorse.
Just processing. Fire needs time to cool.
I pulled out the burner. No passcode. Idiot. There were messages—unread, timestamped within the hour. All marked with a sender tag: SK-9. Silas Kaine? Maybe. I saved them on the drive I pulled from the motel.
Then I crushed the phone under my boot.
Across the city—miles away, buried beneath layers of infrastructure and secrets—a satellite blinked to life. Its lens narrowed on the motel blaze, infrared heat signatures painting patterns on a digital canvas.
Deep beneath Gotham, in a concrete vault washed in pale blue light, the room hummed to life.
Hamilton stood in the center, arms folded. He hadn't aged. Still immaculate. Still hollow.
Monitors flickered. Thermal spikes. Coordinated pings. Triangulated paths and metadata weaving a trail.
"He's resurfaced," one analyst murmured.
Hamilton said nothing. He tapped a screen, pausing on a blurred image: me, slipping into the alley beside the fire, hood drawn, fists tight. Smoke curling behind me like a tail.
His voice, flat as steel: "Bring in Echo."
I didn't make it far.
Three blocks from the stairwell, I cut through a narrow pedestrian underpass lined with old murals and broken lights. Steam curled from a street grate nearby, and something about the way the air shifted made me slow down.
Maya Cruz found me in the haze.
She stepped out from the fog like she'd always been there. Like the city had shaped her from smoke and shadows. Leather jacket zipped up tight, hood low, her stance casual but coiled. No sudden movements. Smart. She knew me well enough to stay readable.
"You move fast," she said.
I didn't stop walking.
"You tracked me."
"No," she said, falling into step beside me. "I watched the fire and did the math. You weren't subtle."
I glanced her way. "Didn't feel like being subtle."
"Yeah," she said. "I saw. The way you ended Lou... that wasn't just business. That was a warning. Problem is, now the wrong people are listening."
I stopped near a boarded storefront, leaned into the alcove.
Maya didn't flinch.
"You didn't have to kill him like that," she added. Less an accusation, more a fact.
I looked away. "He earned it."
"Sure. Maybe. But that doesn't mean you walk away clean. That kind of rage? It always leaves a trail."
We stood in the silence for a moment. The wind stirred trash along the curb. Somewhere a bottle clinked.
"Then why are you still here?" I asked. "You here to clean it up?"
Maya shook her head. "No. I'm here because you think you're off the radar. But you never were. Not really. They had eyes on you the second lit up lou on fire."
I straightened. "You're saying Cadmus saw the fire?"
"I'm saying Hamilton was already watching."
That hit colder than the wind.
"And he's not sending soldiers this time," she continued. "He's sending Echo."
That got my attention.
"Cadmus knows. Hamilton is watching. And he's not sending soldiers this time. He's sending Echo."
"Who the hell is Echo?"
She hesitated.
"They don't talk. Don't sleep. Don't miss."
"Clone?"
"Worse. Echo's a failed experiment that survived out of spite. They kept her on ice until something like you came back into play."
I didn't flinch. Didn't show it. But something sank in my gut.
Maya reached into her pocket, slow and deliberate, and handed me a grainy photo. Black-and-white. The figure in it was mid-leap—joints too clean, body all motion and edges. A mask like polished chrome. Fingers that ended in blade tips.
"She's already been activated."
I turned the photo over. A name was scrawled in pencil: Silas Kaine.
"You want Cadmus?" Maya said. "He's not just Hamilton's banker. He's the one who pushed for the off-books tech. The side projects. Project Helix. You find him, you find what Cadmus is really hiding."
"Why help me now?"
Her smirk wavered, softened into something almost human. She looked past me, eyes tracking the distant glow still smearing the clouds with red.
"Because I've seen what they do to the ones they don't kill," she said quietly. "The ones they keep. Strip 'em down, stitch them back together, and call it science. And you… you might be the only monster they built who still remembers to bite back when messed with."
"...." I can only stay silent.
"Thanks or no thanks, doesn't really matter" Maya shrugged me off, her usual smirk is back on full force now before turning back, leaving me alone with the warehouse still raging behind me.
I found myself crouched beside a rusted dumpster, shielded from the blinding fire and the streets. The wind cut through the broken bricks like a knife as echoes of sirens cut through the distance. I pulled Lou's notebook from inside my jacket, flicked on a small LED flashlight I picked up from his office, and started flipping through it.
Most of it was gibberish at first glance. Scribbles, crude shorthand, broken timestamps. But then I recognized the pattern—an old cipher. Not military grade. Sloppy. Street code. Lou always liked pretending he was smarter than he was. It made him feel above his own dirt.
I decoded it line by line. One entry stopped me cold:
"QX-17: rail yard. Night. Bring the product."
Coordinates, date, time. Clear as day now. Either a Cadmus drop point—or a trap dressed like one. The kind of thing you didn't walk into unless you were ready for things to go sideways.
I checked the time.
An hour to burn.
I packed the notebook, slipped into the shadows, and started walking toward the yard. Not fast. Not slow. Just enough to keep the fire in my chest from going out.
Because something told me this wasn't just a dead end or a lead.
This was an invitation.
The rail yard stretched out like a graveyard of metal and silence. Rusted trains sat crooked on their tracks, vines creeping through broken wheels and busted joints. Every footstep echoed like a question in the dark. I moved quietly, deliberate, one breath at a time, scanning every shadow.
Then it hit me.
Not a sound. Not a sight.
A whisper.
Not in my ears. In my head.
"You should've stayed buried."
I spun, too fast—on instinct, not strategy—and something hit me low and hard, a force that collapsed the air in my chest. I flew back and slammed into a rusted pile of crates. Wood splintered. My ribs screamed.
I rolled, forced myself to my feet, vision swimming.
She stepped from the shadows without sound, no more weight than a breath. Smooth, silver mask without eyes, without expression. Her limbs moved with surgical grace, like she'd been designed in a lab by someone who hated softness.
No voice. No warning.
She struck again.
A blur of motion—too fast to track. Her foot hit my side and launched me into the side of a freight car. Metal groaned. Sparks rained. I hit the ground on one knee, coughing blood.
The Artifact inside me woke with a pulse.
Gold light flared across my arms. —bracing, forming blades. I couldn't even care how, all i know right now is one thing-survive.
She didn't flinch. Didn't pause. Just came at me again.
We collided like weather systems—blade to blade, power to precision. Her strikes were clean, measured. No emotion. Just an outcome. Shockwaves rippled with every clash. The gravel beneath us scattered like shattered teeth.
I landed one hit—cracked the edge of her mask. She staggered half a step.
Then she recalibrated.
Faster. Sharper. Colder.
She ducked under my next swing, drove her blade-hand into my shoulder, and twisted.
Pain lit me up. Gold light burst from the wound.
I screamed, not just in agony—but fury. It boiled up from somewhere deeper than blood.
I dropped, my body screaming with effort, and slammed my fist into the ground. The impact cracked the earth beneath me, a pulse of raw kinetic energy rippling out like thunder. It tore through the gravel, lifted dust and debris, and hit her like a wave.
Echo flew backward, a blur of silver and blades, and collided with the side of a freight car. The metal groaned, bent, and finally caved in with a sickening crunch.
But I didn't wait.
I staggered to my feet, breath ragged, shoulder pouring gold light like blood. My knees buckled on the first step, but I forced myself forward. One foot. Then the next. Fast, then faster. I wasn't escaping—I was retreating. Surviving.
Because I knew exactly what she was.
And I knew she wasn't down for long.
I didn't need to see her recover to feel the air shift behind me, like the rail yard itself had held its breath.
For now i need to get away, wherever away from this mess.
After what felt like a lifetime of running—three, maybe four blocks—I ducked through a crumbling fence and into the mouth of a forgotten maintenance tunnel beneath the city. The crate gave with a screech, metal screaming against metal as I forced it open just enough to slip inside.
Dark. Damp. Cold.
I collapsed against the concrete wall, panting, one hand pressed hard to my shoulder where her blade had pierced deep. Golden light still oozed from the wound—thick, warm, humming. It pulsed with each heartbeat, like the Artifact was trying to hold me together with strands of energy and spite.
I bit down on a scream as another wave of heat surged through the injury, nerves lighting up like they'd been lit on fire.
The tunnel reeked of rust and old sewage. Water dripped from pipes overhead. Somewhere deeper in the dark, a rat skittered.
My legs gave out.
I slid to the floor, back against the wall, letting the cold soak through my clothes. My breath clouded in front of me. Shaky. Shallow.
I looked down. The blood—if you could call it that—glowed faintly in the dark. The color of dying stars.
In the flicker of a faulty emergency light above, something shimmered in the puddle beside me.
A reflection.
But it wasn't mine.
Not even the shadow of the boy I used to be.
Archon….
The shape in the water stared back at me—armor forming where skin should be, eyes hollow and bright. A version of me twisted by fire and steel and rage. Built for war. Forged in silence.
And somewhere inside, that voice returned. Low. Final.
"You can't run from what you are. Not anymore."
Author's Note:
If you're enjoying the story and want to read ahead or support my work, you can check out my P@treon at P@treon.com/LordCampione. But don't worry—all chapters will eventually be public. Just being here and reading means the world to me. Thank you for your time and support.