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Scene Six: Fight Club
The room smelled of spice, cigars, sweat, and greed.
Gone were the flashing lights and synthetic music. This separate space was another world, hidden just beneath the pulse of Club Gen-Z. It was a sanctum of vice. Couches lined the curved walls, occupied by men and women draped in confidence and danger. Velvet curtains, private booths, and softly glowing floor lights made the place feel sacred and savage.
They were beautiful, in the same way predators are.
Each had someone tending to them. Girls resting on laps, men pouring drinks, laughter that carried knives behind it.
Emily tightened beside Brian. Her hands clenched unconsciously.
These weren't guests. They were hunters.
Brian glanced at her and gently took her hand.
"Don't worry," he whispered, voice calm. "Nothing will happen to you."
She smiled nervously.
They walked further in. Brian scanned every angle with precision. He wasn't here to party by any means.
He spotted him. A man in a silver party mask, sitting at the corner of a stone bench, shadowed but sharp-eyed.
Brian approached with purpose. "Need Ecsta-Z. For two."
The man studied him behind mirrored lenses. His voice muffled through the chrome. "You new?"
"New to this part," Brian replied. "Not new to the chase."
The Silver Mask nodded once, then tipped his chin toward a hallway cloaked in red velvet. "Through there. Ask for the name Marco."
Brian offered a short nod. "Appreciate it."
Inside the chamber beyond, the mood shifted again.
It was less elegant and more brutal. The music was gone. The ambient hum filled the air, accompanied by the dull crackle of static and the occasional click of firearms.
A bulky man sat behind a curved table, cigar smoke swirling above him like a crown. Cash, drugs, and cred note bundles lay uncounted before him. Two guards flanked his seat, silent and broad.
"Are you Marco?"
He looked up lazily as Brian and Emily entered. His eyes narrowed.
"You're a new one."
Brian smiled faintly. "Oh, so I'm in the interrogation room?"
Marco chuckled, deep and slow. "We've been in business too long, kid. Distinctions must be made."
"What kind of distinction?"
"Customers…" He tapped his cigar, and the ash fell into a crystal tray. "…and dead cops."
Brian's grin widened. "Well, I'm not one of them."
"I'm glad you're a customer." He gestured to the seat. "Sit."
Brian strolled to the chair, eyes drifting across the room. One vent. Three armed guards. One exit door. Heavy steel. Scanner lock.
He sat calmly.
"You got me wrong," Brian said quietly.
Marco's eyes flickered. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Brian's eyes turned colder.
"I am not either one of them."
He moved faster than breath.
He kicked the table leg in a blur, causing a domino of falling cash and crates, a calculated distraction. The guards flinched, just enough.
Brian snapped forward, grabbing the first guard's wrist, twisting it until the bone cracked, and the pistol dropped. His knee came up into the second guard's chest, fast and brutal, breaking two of his ribs.
One reached a concealed blade. Brian knocked it out of his hand as soon as he got it. Catching the knife midair, Brian sliced the power cable of the table's under-desk alarm.
The boss tried to stand. Brian was already beside him. Marco saw a glint of steel. A syringe was in Brian's hand.
"You're dead now," Marco growled, reaching for his pistol.
Brian leaned toward Emily, who stood frozen at the door. "Do I look dead to you?"
Emily shook her head vigorously, her eyes wide in fear.
"You're not wrong, though," Brian said calmly, turning back to the boss. He jabbed the injection into Marco's neck.
The effect was instant. Marco's eyes rolled slightly, limbs going loose and unresponsive, voice slurred.
"What… did you… do…"
"Sedative. Mixed with synaptic disorienters. You'll live. For now. I have a few questions."
"Why would I… tell you… shit?" Marco mumbled.
Brian pulled a chair closer and sat with one leg crossed, looking casual.
"Because I'll ask politely."
He leaned in.
"How long until someone else comes in?"
The boss blinked. "Ten… maybe fifteen…"
"Where is Ecsta-Z manufactured?"
Silence.
Brian lightly tapped Marco's chest. "Your lungs will seize up in forty-five seconds. Next time, I'll increase the dose."
"Redhook Bay… Sector 3… under the old port tunnels…"
"Who runs it?"
"…Amari Kresh… East syndicate…"
Brian nodded. "And the hidden exit?"
Marco hesitated. Brian slowly rolled up another syringe.
"Behind the sculpture. Steel frame. It is lock coded. The number's the year the outbreak started."
"2010," Brian whispered.
He stood.
"Good talk."
Brian grabbed the boss by the collar and dragged him like luggage. Emily followed silently, still shaken. They moved past the sculpture in the hallway. Brian ripped the decorative canvas aside, revealing the steel hatch.
He punched in 2-0-1-0.
The lock hissed. A door swung open.
Outside, a guard standing near a black car looked up. He was startled by the crowd's sudden entry.
Brian moved. The guard barely got his arm halfway to his gun before Brian had him in a chokehold and rendered him unconscious.
He slung the boss into the back seat.
Emily climbed into the front seat, trembling. She didn't want to speak and moved with the flow.
Brian slid into the driver's seat, hands still steady, and pulled the car into gear.
Behind them, Club Gen-Z kept dancing.
Scene Seven: The Line Between
The car hummed down the sector bypass road, headlights cutting through the misty silence of San Francisco's outskirts. The air was tense inside, a result of the fractured trust.
Emily sat rigid in the passenger seat, arms folded tightly, eyes burning holes through the windshield.
Behind them, Marco lay unconscious, slumped in the back seat like discarded cargo, arms zip-bound, mouth gagged.
Emily finally snapped.
"You're insane," she hissed.
Brian didn't answer.
"You dragged me into this… this psycho, sci-fi mafia war shit! You just attacked a crime lord like it's another Tuesday!"
Still nothing.
"I'm done for. They will trace me, find me, rip me apart, and hang me up like a warning sign. My life is over!"
Brian finally spoke, voice calm, even.
"No, it isn't."
She stared at him like he was mocking her.
He reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a slim, black envelope. "Your name is Emily Ramos, birth sector 2F. Student ID from Halvick Academy. Father deceased, mother in out-of-zone hospice."
Emily froze. "How do you know that?"
He handed her the envelope. Inside was a flight ticket — outbound to the Washington, D.C. sector, identity cards, and a clearance chip.
"You're not safe in San Francisco anymore. But you will be there. New credentials, a place to stay, a six-month stipend, and a pre-arranged job option. Fresh start."
Emily's voice fell to a whisper. "You had all this ready?"
Brian nodded. "Some people leave footprints. You left a heartbeat."
Her hands trembled as she clutched the papers. "Why?"
"You got swept up in something that wasn't yours," he said. "That's not your fault."
He glanced at her, eyes soft but unreadable.
"I discarded your belongings, except for a few things that mattered. Please don't ask me which. You'll know when you see them."
They pulled into a near-empty terminal lot behind the airlift corridor. The airport's outer gates buzzed faintly under security lights. Drones hovered overhead.
Brian put the car in park.
"This is goodbye."
Emily opened the door slowly, still stunned. Her feet touched the ground like they didn't belong to her.
Brian rolled down the window. "One more thing."
She turned, still clutching the documents.
"Stay away from nightclubs. And from people who smile like me."
She stared at him, fury and grief tangled behind her eyes.
"You're an asshole, you know that?"
"I do."
She hesitated. Then, with a single bitter laugh, she turned and walked toward the security checkpoint.
Brian watched until she vanished inside.
Then he pulled the car back onto the road.
Somewhere beyond Sector 9, the world became ghostly.
The glow of civilization faded behind him, swallowed by distance and fog. Here, the roads gave up — asphalt crumbled into uneven dirt trails, grass pushing through the fractures like nature reclaiming what was left.
Brian drove; the engine's hum was the only sound in this silent world.
There were no cameras this far out.
No drones, no patrols.
No eyes were watching except, perhaps, those with hollow sockets and sharp instincts.
He stopped at the end of a narrow ravine where the ground curved upward, and there it stood — the City Wall.
A titanic slab of reinforced concrete, almost 100 meters high, ribbed with internal steel beams, smooth-faced and lightless.
It rose like a dead god's spine, slicing the sky in half.
No floodlights.
No electronics.
The wall had been redesigned after the first breach. There was no circuitry, sensors, or hum to attract them.
The Hollowed didn't see, but they could hear.
And sound was blood to them.
Brian stepped out of the car, his boots sinking slightly into the wet dirt. The cold hit him, sharp and clean. He opened the back door and slung Marco over his shoulder like a duffel bag. Marco groaned, stirring, but remained dazed, his limbs bound and mouth sealed.
Brian walked to the wall's base, carefully stepping over old bones tangled in weeds.
He knelt, brushing aside a camouflaged sheet of rubber and dry moss, revealing a climb route carved by hand and claw. A sequence of hidden notches, reinforced footholds, and grip spikes drilled into the concrete. It was a path no one in the city dared use.
No cameras meant no witnesses.
He adjusted his balance, his shoulder anchoring the weight of the tied, half-conscious Marco.
Brian adjusted his grip and began climbing, one foot after another. Marco was groaning weakly on his back, his limbs bound and useless.
The city below pulsed with its blind heartbeat, unaware of the predator scaling its walls.
At the top of the wall, the cold wind pulled at his coat.
Out there, beyond the walls, was the old world.
The one that tried to end everything.
And behind him, the last breath of San Francisco exhaled into the silence.