They say it started on a rainy Tuesday.
No announcements. No blood pact. No revolution.
Just a whisper—
"He's a 2% now."
At first, it sounded like nonsense. A joke. A street name. A code.
Then someone got shot in broad daylight for laughing at it.
The joke stopped.
No one made it official. There was no press release. No system registration.
But the city listened. And worse—the city obeyed.
There used to be order here. It was corrupt, slow, broken—but it existed.
The cops took bribes, but they still wore badges. The courts were rigged, but people still showed up. The mayor made speeches while his men ran weapons at night.
The balance was ugly, but it held.
Then the gangs got smarter. They stopped fighting for streets and started buying blocks. Lawyers became lieutenants. Politicians started taking orders instead of giving them.
The city forgot its name. Just started calling itself "the District."
The people in charge? Nobody really knew. You couldn't vote them out or call them. You just heard names. And if you heard the same name more than three times in a week, you knew they were important.
It wasn't the strongest man who changed everything. It wasn't even a killer.
It was a quiet one. Smart. Calculated. The kind of man who never raised his voice but never needed to.
He took over five neighborhoods in six weeks without firing a bullet. People said he never smiled, never threatened anyone.
Just asked questions.
Just made offers.
And when someone asked how dangerous he was, a kid from the East Side muttered,
"He's gotta be at least… two percent."
That was it. The moment it began.
People laughed. For a while.
Until the man he replaced—the old boss—was found face down in the river. Bricks tied to his ankles. No autopsy. No investigation. Just one word sprayed on the bridge above him:
2%.
A few weeks later, someone else was called "3%."
Then 4%.
Then someone hit 5%—and everything changed.
No more last names. No more titles. Just percentages.
A ranking system no one fully understood, but everyone respected.
You didn't apply for a percent.
You earned it.
Through fear. Through loyalty. Through what people said when your back was turned.
A man didn't need to kill to climb. He just had to make the city move for him.
Money helped. Territory helped. But reputation—that was currency.
Someone once asked how the system worked.
The answer?
"You'll know what you are… by how quiet the room gets when you walk in."
There was no leaderboard.
No app.
No official count.
The numbers spread like urban legends.
But the city knew.
A low-level enforcer got caught claiming 1%. The guy was a nobody—some idiot with a shaved head and a loud mouth.
He got left in pieces across four trash cans. One in each borough.
That's when people realized:
Faking your percentage is suicide.
So they let others define it. Quietly. Behind your back. In fear or awe.
Soon, even the cops played along.
You pull over a 3%? You walk away.
You interfere with a 5%? You get reassigned—or buried.
Nobody hit 100%.
That wasn't the goal.
The highest ever recorded was 20%.
They say he never spoke above a whisper.
Controlled half the city. Could have taken more, but he didn't want to be seen.
He vanished. Some say he died. Others say he left on his own.
Some say the city itself erased him—because 20% was too close to total control.
And the system, they say, doesn't allow that.
"20% is the ceiling. Get higher, and the city swallows you."
Harry James—he never chased numbers.
But he held 5%.
That was enough to make murderers kneel and politicians beg.
He wasn't loud. He wasn't flashy.
He moved in silence, because real power never had to explain itself.
It was late. Maybe midnight. Rain again.
A man and a woman—gunned down in an alley behind a shuttered laundromat.
Clean hit. Professional. No wallets, no struggle, no trace.
But there was a boy.
Small. Quiet. Sitting between them like he hadn't moved in hours. No blood on his hands. No tears on his face. Just staring at nothing.
Harry James found him.
He didn't kneel. Didn't ask his name.
He just stood there, cigarette glowing in the dark, and looked at the boy like he already knew.
"This city runs on numbers now," Harry said, voice flat.
"If you want to survive… learn how to count."