The fire from the ruined relay center burned through the night. Its glow spread across the ruins, licking the walls of nearby towers that had long since lost their names.
24 sat against a cracked concrete pillar, breathing in shallow bursts. His coat was torn open along the ribs where shrapnel had bitten through. Steam rose from the wound each time he exhaled.
The girl—he still didn't know her name—knelt beside him with trembling hands. She'd found a strip of fabric from a curtain and tried to clean the blood from his side.
"Stop," he muttered, voice low, roughened from smoke.
"If I stop, you'll bleed out," she shot back. Her small voice shook, but her hands didn't. She tightened the cloth around his ribs. "Does it hurt?"
He looked down at her, expression unreadable. "Pain's just a reminder you're not dead yet."
She blinked up at him, and for a moment, the silence between them wasn't filled with fear or sirens—just the crackling of fire and the hum of the wind.
Then the hum changed.
It started deep in his chest—a vibration, a tremor spreading through his bones. The air around him rippled faintly, bending light. His veins glowed faintly blue for a heartbeat, then faded.
The girl recoiled. "What's happening to you?"
24 closed his eyes. "Too many jumps."
The void inside him was alive again, restless, pushing at his limits. Every teleportation tore something invisible in him—something no doctor could ever fix. He could feel it now, whispering under his skin, tugging at his thoughts, stretching the distance between what he was and what he used to be.
Elias…
The name came again, faint, echoing in his skull. He didn't know who it belonged to.
When he opened his eyes again, the world swayed. The firelight dimmed. The sound of the girl's breathing faded, replaced by the murmur of hundreds of distant voices. A vision flickered—white walls, metal tables, men in lab coats whispering above him. A needle sliding into his spine.
He snapped back with a gasp, hand gripping the hilt of his shorter blade. The girl froze.
"Don't," she whispered.
He blinked, lowering the weapon. The vision dissolved like smoke.
She moved closer again, wrapping her arms around her knees. "You're sick," she said softly. "Like… broken inside."
24 looked away, staring through the broken window where the night stretched endlessly beyond. "They made me that way."
"Who?"
He hesitated. "The people who built me."
Outside, the wind carried the distant sound of engines—slow, heavy, methodical. Not patrols. Something larger.
He stood, ignoring the pain in his side, and peered out into the darkness. Beyond the ruined streets, red lights moved in formation, cutting through the smoke.
EGI transport drones. Dozens of them.
"They're sweeping sectors," he said quietly. "They're looking for us."
The girl rose beside him. "Then we run?"
He turned his head slightly, gray eyes reflecting the firelight. "No. We move."
And as the first searchlights swept the ruins, he blinked from the window—gone in a ripple of distorted air.
The girl felt the air pull around her, and a moment later, the world snapped sideways. They were on a rooftop two blocks away, the relay center burning below.
She collapsed, shaking, dizzy from the teleport. 24 stood unmoving, his breathing steady but shallow. His veins still glowed faintly in the firelight.
"Next time," she whispered, "you'll tear yourself apart."
He didn't answer. He just watched the sky as the drones fanned out like vultures over the dead city.
Somewhere in the distance, a calm voice echoed from their loudspeakers:
"EGI Directive 2045. All anomalies will be contained. The last of the Black Division will not escape."
24 gripped his long blade and whispered, almost to himself—
"Then they'll have to catch a ghost."