20:41 PM | Ironcliff City, The Veil Society Gala Entrance
A blur of silver cutlery, crystal glass, and low laughter dissolved behind Adrian as he stepped out of the gala. Ironcliff's city lights broke into jagged streaks across every parked windshield, slicing through the mist that hovered above asphalt like a theater curtain refusing to rise.
The night air held the memory of rain, petrol, smoke, and the expensive perfume of strangers drifting after him as if the evening itself resented being left behind.
He paused under the awning, jaw locked, as the chaos of the auction clung to him, electric, agitated, impossible to shake.
But it wasn't the auction that twisted in his chest like broken glass.
It was that single word.
"Handsome."
Spoken too casually. Too deliberately. Cutting through the numb fog he'd wrapped himself in since yesterday.
Yesterday.
It had been one day since he'd seen Marcus's shattered face on his phone screen.
One day since the world had gone cold and grey and wrong.
Twenty-four hours of moving through motions, breathing on autopilot, feeling nothing because feeling anything meant feeling everything, and he couldn't afford that right now.
And then she'd said it. Like it was nothing. Like words still had meaning. Like he was still a person who could be flattered instead of a hollow thing pretending to be functional.
Adrian's lips pressed into a hard line, something between anger and exhaustion. Who tosses that out mid-mission? A compliment as a weapon, smile sharpened to a dare, aimed at someone who was barely holding himself together with spite and caffeine.
The city around him felt complicit, every puddle reflecting neon light back at him like it was in on the joke.
He thumbed the fob, unlocking his car, a battered but loyal Lamborghini, paint dulled by years of surveillance runs and storms that had nothing to do with weather. He slid into the driver's seat, Ironcliff's skyline unfurling in the rearview as he pulled away.
Marcus should be calling right now, he thought, the intrusive thought arriving uninvited and unwelcome. Asking how it went. Making some terrible joke about my "date." Being alive.
But Marcus had been dead for exactly twenty-six hours and thirty-three minutes, not that Adrian was counting.
He gripped the wheel harder, knuckles white, and drove.
20:57 PM | Ironcliff Expressway, Northbound to Metro City
Traffic thinned near the docks, where hollow warehouses hunkered against nightfall, shadows stretching long and wary. The engine hummed beneath him, a steady pulse, the only steady thing left in a world that had tilted sideways yesterday and refused to right itself.
Adrian's mind replayed the evening on loop, but not the auction, not the targets, not the intel. Just her. Aveline's smirk. The glint in her eye as she dropped that one word. The way it had landed like a punch he hadn't seen coming, cracking something he'd thought was already broken past further damage.
Don't think too hard, handsome.
Like it was easy.
Like thinking was optional.
Like he hadn't spent the last twenty-four hours thinking in endless, vicious circles about everything he could've done differently, every second he could've shaved off the infiltration, every choice that might have kept Marcus breathing.
The drive north was a noir film scrolling past his window, rain-sheened asphalt, the metallic hush of tires slicing through reflections, billboards blurring into smears of color that meant nothing. His safehouse, tucked on Metro's border, waited like a memory he couldn't quite trust.
Tonight, adrenaline still crackling under his skin like a live wire, he let the radio play static-laced jazz. The kind Marcus used to hate. The kind that now felt like the only appropriate soundtrack to whatever his life had become in the space of a single day.
He couldn't shake that word.
"Handsome."
Flattering. Infuriating. Dangerously effective at reminding him he was still capable of feeling something, even if that something was just irritation and the sick, guilty awareness that he'd spent an entire evening not thinking about Marcus.
One day, he thought again.
It's been one day and I'm already forgetting. Already moving on. Already playing pretend boyfriend with a psychopath who probably doesn't even know his name.
The guilt tasted like copper and ash.
21:31 PM | North Metro City, Adrian's Safehouse
Inside, Adrian let the door swing shut behind him, the lock falling with a click that sounded too final. The apartment was a study in intentional anonymity: bland rental furniture, unremarkable art prints, the kind of space designed to be forgotten the moment you left it.
Perfect for someone who wanted to disappear.
Perfect for someone who already felt like a ghost.
He loosened his tie, Marcus's tie, actually, borrowed months ago and never returned, and poured two fingers of whiskey. The cheap kind. The kind you drank when you didn't want to taste it, just wanted the burn.
He raised the glass in a mock salute to the empty room. "To emotional stability. May it never find me."
His voice cracked slightly on the last word. He drank anyway.
The fridge yielded little, testament to a life lived between missions, between crises, between moments of actual living. He assembled dinner with the mechanical efficiency of someone who'd forgotten why eating mattered: microwave steak (charred at the edges, texture questionable), overwhipped powdered mash that tasted faintly of cardboard and regret, and a reckless drizzle of "wine sauce" that was, in reality, last night's Merlot gone faintly sour.
Marcus would've roasted me for this, he thought, plating everything with the exaggerated care of someone mocking themselves. Would've sent me twelve texts about "culinary crimes against humanity" and probably ordered pizza to my door out of pity.
Twenty-four hours ago, that would've been annoying. Now it was just another thing that would never happen again.
He kicked off his shoes, let the TV flicker on for background noise, anything to fill the silence that kept trying to remind him he was alone, and settled onto the couch with his tragic excuse for a meal.
What came next shattered even the pretense of normal.
22:06 PM | Safehouse Living Room
The news anchor's voice cut through his self-loathing spiral like a blade.
"Breaking news: motorcycle accident on Ironcliff Highway. Victim unidentified at this time..."
Adrian's world contracted to a single point of focus.
The split-screen showed flashing strobes, ambulance, fire trucks, police barriers painting everything in urgent reds and blues. The camera zoomed in on wreckage, and his stomach dropped through the floor.
A Royal Blue Ducati Panigale V4R.
Paintwork luminous even under streetlights, even mangled. White pinstripes curling along the fairing like phantom wings, now twisted and scorched. The camera lingered on the crumpled mass of metal and chrome, and Adrian's heart simply stopped.
He was halfway out of his chair before conscious thought caught up, whiskey glass clattering onto the table, liquid spreading across cheap wood like blood.
No.
No,no,
No.
That's her bike.
He'd memorized every detail the first time he'd seen her on it, the contrast between the machine's elegant brutality and her own sharpened composure. Professional interest, he'd told himself. Tactical awareness.
Liar, his brain supplied helpfully.
You noticed because she's the only interesting thing that's happened since Marcus died.
The guilt of that realization hit like a second impact.
Yesterday. Marcus had been alive yesterday morning. And tonight, Adrian was watching another person's wreckage on screen and his first thought was relief that it might not be someone he'd have to care about losing.
He felt bile rise in his throat.
"...preliminary reports suggest brake failure may have caused the accident," the reporter said, voice quivering with manufactured sympathy that made Adrian want to put his fist through the screen.
His jaw clenched. She'd checked every bolt before leaving the gala. He'd watched her, methodical, precise, paranoid in the way only people who'd survived multiple assassination attempts could be.
She didn't believe in accidents.
Which meant this wasn't one.
One day, his mind whispered. One day since Marcus. Now her. Everyone who gets close to this case dies. Everyone who gets close to you—
He shut that thought down with vicious efficiency and focused on the screen.
The coverage switched to live footage. Smoke curled like a phantom into night sky, swirling blue and red beneath streetlamps. Sirens split the darkness. Crowds kept back by barriers of caution tape and mortality.
For a moment, it was pure chaos, bystanders murmuring, police shouting, a wrecker inching closer to what remained of the Ducati, moving with the careful respect people show coffins.
Then, from the very middle of it, out of the roiling smoke and emergency lights, someone moved.
The camera zoomed, shaky, uncertain, the operator clearly not believing what they were filming.
A figure in a fireproof suit pushed past paramedics with the casual authority of someone who'd just survived their own funeral and found it tedious.
And Adrian's world, already tilted, simply gave up on physics entirely.
Aveline.
Her silhouette stepped through smoke like a protagonist in an action film, slashed by firelight and cop car strobes. The fireproof suit, navy and graphite, custom-fitted, probably cost more than his car, was scorched but intact, pitted from heat and impact but unbreached. Reinforced seams caught the light, glinting orange from residual flames.
The helmet came off. Black visor flipping upward. Her hair spilled out, somehow perfect, untouched beneath the soot.
She looked bored.
Like she'd just stepped out of a tedious meeting instead of an inferno designed to kill her.
The camera caught it, that split, cinematic heartbeat where every bystander leaned back in collective shock, oxygen knocked from the crowd as if a ghost had walked out of fire and found the experience disappointing.
Adrian heard himself laugh. It was a broken, slightly hysterical sound. "Of course she did. Of course she wore a fireproof suit. Of course she planned for this."
Meanwhile Marcus didn't even get a chance to plan. Didn't get to prepare. Just died scared and alone and it's only been one day and I'm already watching someone else nearly die and,
He shoved that thought down with physical force, focusing on the screen with manic intensity.
She adjusted her jacket with precise movements, nodded at the crowd with the faintest hint of a smirk, actually smirked at the people who thought she was dead, and shrugged, unscathed, unsinged, unshakeable.
A paramedic stumbled, nearly dropping his medical kit. She waved him off like he was an overenthusiastic waiter.
Adrian perched on the edge of his couch, cold whiskey forgotten in his trembling hand, watching through splayed fingers like a child at a horror movie.
She calls me handsome, survives an explosion, and then looks bored on the evening news. Meanwhile I can barely survive one day without Marcus. Fantastic. Just fantastic.
The unfairness of it, of her walking away when Marcus hadn't, when Marcus couldn't, hit him like a physical blow.
He wasn't sure if he was relieved or furious or just so tired he couldn't tell the difference anymore.
22:37 PM | Adrian's Safehouse
He went digging.
Social media. Police feeds. Underground chatrooms. Hacker forums Marcus had introduced him to back when they were still partners, still alive, still both alive just yesterday,
Not a whisper. Not a candid photo. Not a digital footprint beyond carefully controlled leaks.
All trails led nowhere.
Damned ghosts.
But then, she was C.R.I.M.E Division. Privacy wasn't just policy; it was survival. You didn't leave evidence. You didn't leave traces. You didn't leave anything that could be used to find you, hurt you, kill you.
Like Marcus left evidence, his brain supplied. Left files. Left proof. Left himself exposed and they killed him for it less than twenty-four hours ago.
The blankness of Aveline's records felt personal. She was a black hole around which dead operations and missing files orbited, no birthdate, no family records, only the shape of her absence. The kind of person even shadows didn't trust.
The kind of person who survives, he thought bitterly. The kind who doesn't get themselves killed trying to save the world.
Dinner forgotten, congealing on the plate like a monument to failure, Adrian slumped into the couch, city lights streaking the window in patterns that hurt to look at.
The TV still blared. He didn't hear it anymore.
Somewhere out there, Aveline was probably laughing at the universe's little joke. Probably already planning her next move. Probably not thinking about him at all, or Marcus, or anyone except herself and the mission.
Lucky her, Adrian thought, and hated himself for the jealousy.
07:43 AM | N.P.U. Headquarters
Sleep had come reluctantly, dreams trailing after him like unfinished case files and Marcus's face and smoke and fire and handsome said in a voice that didn't care, couldn't care, would never care,
Adrian shuffled into the elevator, each ding another small defeat. The world beyond the doors was grey. Everything was grey. Had been grey since yesterday. Would probably stay grey forever.
The N.P.U. headquarters was its usual hum of threats, bureaucracy, and burnt coffee that tasted like ashes.
And there she was.
Not in the cream gala dress that had made her look like elegant death. Not in the fireproof suit that had saved her life eight hours ago.
This was something else entirely.
Aveline stood by the operations desk, and Adrian's tired brain took a moment to process what he was seeing, not because it was shocking, but because it was so deliberately calculated. Every piece chosen with purpose.
A dark black shirt, form-fitted, tactical. Over it, a shirt vest in charcoal grey, slightly less dark, providing contrast, with the C.R.I.M.E logo stamped with careful precision across the left chest. The logo itself was striking: C·R·I·M·E with small red dots between each letter like drops of blood, and in the center, a beaver, Canada's national animal, rendered in silver thread, positioned as if standing guard over the acronym.
A black jacket with olive green accents along the shoulders and cuffs hung open, sleeves folded up to her elbows with military precision. A silver chain caught the light near the collar, probably connected to her ID badge. The jacket remained unzipped, casual authority, the material clearly water and heat resistant, tactical, not fashion.
With the sleeves rolled up, Adrian caught glimpses of her forearms: pale scars crisscrossing the skin like a roadmap of violence survived. Knife marks, bullet grazes, old burns, faded but visible, testimony written in scar tissue. Not many burns, just enough to know she'd walked through fire before and would again.
A belt sat at her waist, practical leather with a gun holstered on each hip, symmetrical, balanced, ready. Black leggings tucked into black platform boots that added another two inches to her already imposing height, making her tower even more. There was something odd about the boots, though, a thin gap around the heel that caught his attention.
Strange.
Gloves covered her hands, black tactical fabric, and matching wrist bands secured them with silver clips that attached to create a seamless bracelet-glove combination. Functional. Stylish. Unmistakably her.
An ID badge hung beneath the vest, barely visible. He couldn't read it from this distance, but knowing C.R.I.M.E Division, it probably said something ominous and highly classified.
Small gold earrings caught the light when she turned her head, simple, elegant, the kind you'd barely notice. Just jewelry. Nothing unusual.
Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, messy but somehow also neat, like she'd put it up efficiently without caring about perfection, a few strands escaping to frame her face.
She looked like she'd stepped out of a tactical operations manual and decided to make it a fashion statement.
Coffee in hand. Browsing mission files with effortless calm, like she hadn't been on fire eight hours ago. Like the world hadn't tried to kill her and failed. Like none of it mattered.
An earpiece sat discreetly in her left ear, nearly invisible, always listening.
"You..." Adrian's voice cracked. He cleared his throat, tried again. "You're here."
She glanced up, expression politely curious, taking in his wrinkled clothes and obvious exhaustion with clinical assessment. Her ID photo, visible now as she shifted, showed a face with completely dead eyes, no smile, no warmth, no humanity. Just blank professional assessment. The kind of photo that made you instinctively step back.
The text beneath read: AVELINE - ACE OPERATIVE - C.R.I.M.E DIVISION - CLEARANCE: ALPHA-1
Top operative. Best agent they had.
Of course she was.
"Good morning."
One day. One day of Marcus being dead. And she just stood there, alive, unbothered, fine, dressed like she was ready for war or a photoshoot or possibly both.
"You got blown up," he said flatly.
She looked at him over her coffee mug, those dead-photo eyes now showing faint amusement in person. "Minor accident. I've had worse Mondays."
Adrian nearly laughed, a sound caught somewhere between disbelief and the edge of something that might have been hysteria if he let it loose. She labels infernos as inconvenience. Marcus has been dead for one day and she's talking about Mondays.
If she's had worse Mondays, how's her Tuesdays?
His gaze drifted back to her vest, specifically the logo. The beaver. Canada's national animal. On a badge for what was essentially a psychological operations and tactical enforcement division.
A snort escaped him before he could stop it.
She raised an eyebrow. "Something funny?"
"The beaver," he said, fighting a grin despite everything, despite the grief sitting in his chest like broken glass. "C.R.I.M.E Division's logo is a beaver."
Her expression remained neutral, but something flickered in her eyes, maybe amusement, maybe annoyance, hard to tell with her. "Canada's national animal. Symbol of industriousness, engineering capability, and territorial defense." She said it completely deadpan, like she was reading from a manual. "Also, nobody expects the beaver. That's tactically advantageous."
Adrian lost it. A genuine laugh burst out of him, short, sharp, the first real one since Marcus died. It felt wrong and right simultaneously, like betraying grief but also remembering he was still alive. "Nobody expects the beaver. That's, that's actually kind of brilliant in a deeply absurd way."
"Absurd works," she said simply, taking another sip of coffee with perfect composure. "People underestimate it. Then they're dead."
The laughter died in his throat, but a faint smile remained. Leave it to Aveline to make a beaver sound threatening.
His gaze dropped, still cataloging details with detective instinct he couldn't turn off even when exhausted, and caught on her boots again. That gap around the heel. It was too precise to be damage, too deliberate to be design flaw.
"Your boot," he said, pointing. "There's a gap. Around the heel."
Aveline glanced down, then back up at him. Something in her expression shifted, not quite approval, but acknowledgment that he'd noticed something most people missed.
"Good eye," she said, setting down her coffee on the desk. She lifted one foot, balancing with easy grace that shouldn't be possible in platform boots but somehow was. Her gloved fingers found the gap, twisted with practiced precision, and the heel detached with a soft click.
A blade slid free, thin, sharp, about four inches long. Perfectly balanced for throwing.