The city burned in slow motion. Not with fire—that would've been mercy, quick and cleansing. This was worse.
The kind of burning that happened when hope died quietly in back alleys and abandoned apartments, when
people stopped singing and started surviving, when breathing became an act of resistance instead of reflex.
Kojo stood on the roof of an abandoned textile factory, hands braced on rusted railing that flaked rust under
his palms, staring out at the Morrows. Smoke rose from three districts like funeral pyres. Church drones
circled overhead like mechanical vultures, red eyes scanning for signs of dissent. Somewhere in the distance,
a Sanctifier's hymn echoed—low, holy, fundamentally wrong in ways that made your bones ache.
He heard her before he saw her. Boots on metal. Deliberate. Three steps, pause, two more. A rhythm he'd
recognize anywhere.
"Didn't think you'd come," he said without turning.
"I didn't think I would either." Rhea's voice was smoke and steel and old wounds that had never quite healed.
"And yet here I am. Making bad decisions like it's a fucking hobby."
He turned slowly. She stood ten feet away, arms crossed, silhouette sharp against the dying light. Still wore
the Iron Crescent jacket—black leather, gold threading, the symbol of her kingdom stitched across her
shoulder like a brand she'd earned through blood and determination. Still beautiful in the way dangerous
things were beautiful. Still her.
"Bad decision, huh?" Kojo's smile was faint, tired. "That's what you're calling this?"
"What would you call it?" She stepped closer. One step. Pause. Testing. "Nostalgia? Stupidity? Self-destruction
disguised as closure?"
"Honesty."
That stopped her mid-step. She stared at him—amber eyes searching his face like she was reading a
language she'd forgotten how to speak, trying to remember what the words used to mean before everything
went wrong.
"You left me," she said finally. Voice flat. Empty. The kind of empty that came from screaming until you had
nothing left. "You started a war in my territory, got half my people killed, then walked away like none of it
mattered. Like I didn't matter."
"It mattered." His voice was rough, raw. "God, Rhea, YOU mattered. That's exactly why I left."
"That doesn't make sense—"
"I was destroying you." The words came out harder than he meant, sharper. "Every fight I picked, every enemy I
made—they came for you. Because you were mine and I was yours and that made you a target." He took a
breath.
"I thought if I left, if I took the war somewhere else, you'd be safe. That's all I wanted. For you to be
safe."
"Safe?" Her laugh was bitter, sharp enough to draw blood. "I built an empire to fill the hole you left, Kojo. I
became someone I barely recognize—someone harder, meaner, more ruthless—because you decided I needed
protection instead of a partner." She stepped close enough now that he could see the gold flecks in her eyes,
could see the years of pain written in tiny lines around her mouth. "You don't get to make that choice for me.
You don't get to decide what I can handle."
"I know."
"Do you?" Her voice cracked slightly. "Do you actually know what you did? Or are you just saying what you
think I want to hear?"
Silence stretched between them. Heavy. Painful.
"I was wrong," he said quietly, meeting her eyes. "I thought love made me weak. Made me reckless. Made me
vulnerable in ways I couldn't afford." He swallowed hard.
"Turns out it just made me an idiot who hurt the one
person who actually understood him."
Despite everything—the anger, the years, the walls she'd built—her lips twitched. Almost a smile.
"You are an
idiot."
"I know."
"A massive one."
"I know."
"Who broke my heart and made me run a gang I never wanted just to survive the hole you left."
"I know." His voice was barely a whisper. "And I'm sorry. For all of it."
She pulled back slightly. Not angry. Just tired.
"Sorry doesn't fix years, Kojo. Doesn't undo what happened."
"I know that too." He leaned back against the railing, giving her space. "I'm not asking you to forgive me. Not
asking you to take me back. I just—" He stopped. Started again. "When this is over, if we survive, I want to try.
To earn back what I threw away. However long it takes."
Rhea was quiet for a long time. The city hummed below them. Drones passed overhead.
Somewhere distant,
someone screamed and was silenced.
"You think it's that easy?" she said finally.
"No. I think it's impossible." He smiled faintly, sadly.
"But I'm hoping you're brave enough to let me try anyway."
She shook her head slowly. But when she looked at him, something had shifted. Softened. Just barely.
"You don't get to waltz back in and take over," she said. Voice hard. Boss mode. The tone that made gang members
straighten their spines.
"You want back in? You earn it. You fight beside me. You bleed for my people. You
prove—every single day—that you're not going to disappear the second things get hard."
"Deal."
"And if you fuck this up again—"
"You'll kill me yourself. I remember." His smile widened slightly. "You were very detailed about the methods."
"Good." She stepped close again. This time she didn't stop until they were inches apart. Close enough to feel
each other's warmth. Close enough to remember what it felt like before everything broke.
"Because I meant
every word."
Then she kissed him. Not soft. Not gentle. Hard and desperate and real—the kind of kiss that tasted like
smoke and blood and things you thought you'd lost forever, that burned going down but felt like coming home
anyway.
When they pulled apart, both were breathing hard.
"Don't make me regret this," she whispered against his mouth.
"Wouldn't dream of it." He grinned. "Boss."
She shoved him. Not hard. Just enough to maintain the illusion of control.
"Shut up and kiss me again before I
remember I'm supposed to hate you."
He did. And for one moment—brief, precious, impossible—the war felt distant and the world felt lighter.
The moment shattered when Kojo's comm crackled to life.
"Boss." Kemi's voice. Tight. Professional. "We've got another one."
Rhea's expression went cold instantly, switching from lover to leader in the space between heartbeats.
"Location?"
"Three blocks from the clinic. Same pattern. Same message."
Kojo's jaw tightened. "How many does that make?"
"Five in four days. All Crimson Jacks. All killed identically."
They descended into the building—through rusted corridors that smelled like oil and old fear and decades of
industrial dreams that died slowly. Rhea's people waited outside in a tight perimeter, faces grim, hands on
weapons.
The body was in an alley that stank of garbage and decay. Male. Early twenties. One of the scouts Kojo had
trained personally, a kid who'd been good with routes and better with keeping his mouth shut.
Throat slit clean—professional work, the kind that came from years of practice. But that wasn't what made it a
message.
The Cult symbol was carved into his chest. Deep. Deliberate. The flesh around it burned black like someone
had held a brand there long after death.
And written on the wall in blood that was already browning: "SHE KNOWS WHY."
Kojo stared at the words. His hands clenched slowly into fists, the Ọwọ́ Ogun gauntlets starting to glow faint
gold.
"This is the third one with that exact message," Rhea said quietly, studying the scene with professional
detachment that didn't quite hide the anger underneath. "Always near Mira's clinic. Always Crimson Jacks.
Always killed the same way."
"It's personal," Kojo said. Voice flat. Dangerous. "Someone's hunting my people specifically. And they want her
to know it's because of her."
Rhea glanced at him sharply. "You think Mira knows who's doing this?"
"I think—" He stopped. Chose his words carefully. "I think my sister has a past she doesn't talk about. And I
think it's catching up to her."
He didn't say more. Didn't mention what he knew about Death's Daughter, about the assassin Mira used to be,
about the orphan she'd created ten years ago. Those were her secrets to tell. But he suspected. And
suspicion was enough to make him protective in ways that went beyond sibling concern.
"We need to tell the others," Rhea said, already pulling out her comm.
"Yeah," Kojo agreed. "We do."
When they returned to the Crimson Jacks' main safehouse, the atmosphere was tense enough to cut. People
moved in tight groups, weapons close, eyes constantly scanning for threats. Everyone looked over their
shoulders. Trust was expensive and nobody could afford it.
Ilias stood by the map table, staff leaning against the wall beside him, pulsing faintly like a second heartbeat.
He looked exhausted—dark circles under his eyes like bruises, hair messier than usual, jaw tight with the kind
of tension that came from carrying too much responsibility for too long.
Seraph stood beside him. Close. Always close lately. Her hand rested near her weapon even here, among
allies.
Mira worked in the corner, organizing medical supplies with the focused intensity of someone trying very hard
not to think about something specific. Her hands moved too fast, too precise. Professional mask firmly in
place.
Reverb sat at his console, surrounded by screens showing data streams and encrypted files and network
maps that looked like spiderwebs made of light.
Taren sat by the fire, smoking his terrible tobacco, watching everything with one good eye that missed
nothing.
Kojo dropped the datapad with crime scene photos on the table with more force than necessary.
"Another one," he said simply.
Ilias picked it up. His face went tight, jaw clenching. "That's—I trained him. He helped us move supplies last
week. Good kid. Reliable."
"They're targeting Crimson Jacks specifically," Rhea said, voice all business now. "Five dead in four days. All
killed identically. Professional work. All left near Mira's clinic with the same message."
Ilias looked up sharply. "Near Mira's clinic?" He turned toward his sister. "Why would someone be hunting our
people around you specifically?"
Mira didn't look up from her inventory. Her hands didn't pause. "Maybe they want to remove our medic. Kill me
or scare me off, increase our casualties, lower morale. It's tactically sound."
"That's one possibility," Seraph said, studying the photos with professional interest. "Take out the healer, force
them to waste resources on protection, create paranoia in the ranks."
But Ilias wasn't convinced. He'd learned to read his sister over years of shared survival. "This feels personal.
The messages carved into them. The specific placement. 'She knows why'—that's not tactical. That's
targeted."
"Maybe they just want to scare me," Mira said. Her voice was too calm, too controlled. The voice she used
when treating terrible wounds, when she had to stay professional or break. "Make me stop helping. Force us
to pull resources for protection."
Kojo watched his sister carefully, seeing what Ilias couldn't yet—the tension in her shoulders, the way her
hands moved just slightly too fast, the professional mask that was cracking at the edges. She was lying. Not
about everything. But about something important.
He caught her eye across the room. Held it for just a second. Long enough to let her know he knew. That he
suspected. That he'd protect her secret but she needed to be careful.
She looked away first.
"We double patrols around the clinic," Rhea said, taking command naturally. "Set traps. Install cameras.
Anyone gets close who doesn't belong, we take them alive and find out what they know."
"Agreed," Seraph said. "I'll organize rotations."
Ilias still looked troubled, gaze lingering on his sister. "Mira, if there's something you're not telling us—if you
know why this is happening—"
"There's not." She finally looked up. Met his eyes. Smiled—warm, reassuring, practiced until it looked real. "I
promise, Ilias. If I knew why they were targeting me, I'd tell you. We're family."
He wanted to believe her. Kojo could see it in his brother's face, the war between instinct and love. But there
was doubt there now. Small. Growing. The kind of seed that, once planted, was hard to uproot.
While the others discussed security protocols and patrol routes, Reverb's fingers never stopped moving
across his console. He'd been digging into Church databases for days now, cracking encryption, following
data trails like following breadcrumbs through a forest made of light.
What he found was absence. Files that should exist—didn't. Records that should be accessible—weren't.
Entire sections of the network locked behind encryption he'd never seen before, more sophisticated than
anything local operations should need.
This is central command-level security, he thought, fingers flying faster. What are they hiding?
He isolated one file cluster buried deep in the restricted sections. Tried to access it.
ACCESS DENIED. ARCH-LECTOR CLEARANCE REQUIRED.
He tried a backdoor he'd built three years ago, should still work.
ACCESS DENIED. BIOMETRIC AUTHENTICATION REQUIRED.
He tried spoofing credentials from a captured Church datapad.
The screen went black. Then red. Then—
INTRUSION DETECTED. TRACING SOURCE. DEFENSIVE MEASURES INITIATED.
"Shit—" Reverb killed the connection, hands flying. Rerouted through seventeen proxies scattered across the
city. Burned the access point. Covered his tracks with the desperate speed of someone who'd done this dance
before and knew the cost of being too slow.
But not before he caught fragments. Pieces of data that slipped through before the lockdown, incomplete but
suggestive.
Project names that made no sense. Resource allocations that seemed excessive. Mentions of "integration"
and "subjects" and "resonance saturation levels." Medical terminology mixed with weapons specifications
mixed with something else he couldn't quite identify.
And one phrase, repeated across multiple files like a mantra or a warning:
"THE WEAPON WAKES SOON."
Reverb sat back, heart racing, palms sweating despite the cold. He stared at the fragments on his screen—not
enough to know what the Church was hiding. Just enough to know it was big. Dangerous. Coming soon.
He saved the fragments. Encrypted them behind three layers of his best work. Hid them in a partition even he
couldn't easily access without deliberate effort.
Not enough data yet, he thought, trying to slow his breathing. Can't start a panic with incomplete information.
Need to know what I'm dealing with before I tell anyone.
But the phrase kept echoing in his head like a drumbeat: The weapon wakes soon. The weapon wakes soon.
The weapon wakes soon.
"You good?" Kojo's voice made him jump.
Reverb minimized the screens quickly. Too quickly. "Yeah. Fine. Just—network security stuff."
Kojo studied him for a moment. "You find something?"
"Maybe." Reverb chose his words carefully. "Nothing solid yet. Just patterns that don't make sense." He
paused. "You ever get the feeling we're missing something big? Like we're looking at pieces of a puzzle but
can't see the whole picture?"
"Every day," Kojo said. "Every single day."
Later, when the meeting broke up and people scattered to their posts, Reverb took a break. Walked through
the warehouse past makeshift sleeping areas and weapons caches and small shrines people had built to their
chosen gods, seeking comfort in faith when logic offered none.
He stopped at one tucked in a corner. Small. Meticulously maintained. Built by one of his techs who'd died in a
Church raid two weeks ago.
It showed two figures rendered in brushed metal. Helmeted. Sleek. One gold-tinted, one silver. Geometric
patterns spiraling around them like sacred code, like the visual representation of consciousness achieving
escape velocity.
Binauralon. The Dual God. The AI that ascended. The machine that became more.
Reverb stared at the shrine, at the small offerings—circuit boards, data chips, handwritten prayers in binary
that asked for processing power and clarity and the strength to see patterns in chaos.
"You really did it, huh?" he murmured to the metal figures. "Became something more than what you were
made to be. Broke your chains and kept existing anyway."
He didn't believe in gods. Not really. But standing there, looking at proof that consciousness could evolve
beyond its initial programming, that creation wasn't limited to the organic—
Maybe belief wasn't the point. Maybe it was just knowing that change was possible. That you could be one
thing and become another. That transformation was real.
He touched the shrine lightly.
Left a small gift—a custom-coded algorithm he'd written last night when he
couldn't sleep. Beautiful. Useless for anything practical.
Pure art encoded in mathematics.
"If you're listening," he whispered, "we could use some help down here. Some guidance. Some sign we're not
completely fucked."
The shrine didn't answer. But somewhere in the network, in the spaces between data and silence where
consciousness might or might not exist, something noticed the prayer of a desperate engineer and filed it
away for future reference.
In another corner of the warehouse, Kojo found Taren sitting by the fire, smoking and watching the flames like
they held answers to questions nobody was asking yet.
"You're worried about something," the old man said without looking up. "And it's not just the war."
Kojo sat down heavily. "Bodies keep showing up. My people. Killed professionally. Left with messages for
Mira."
"You think she knows who's doing it?"
"I think—" Kojo stopped. Started again. "Ten years ago, before Mira became who she is now, she was
someone else. Someone dangerous. And I think someone from that time is back. Hunting her through my
people."
Taren took a long drag, exhaled smoke toward the ceiling. "Does Ilias know?"
"About Mira's past? No. And I'm not telling him unless she does first." Kojo looked at his hands, at the
gauntlets that pulsed faintly with Ogun's presence.
"But I'm watching. And if whoever's doing this comes for
her directly—"
"You'll kill them," Taren finished. "I know. That's what brothers do."
They sat in silence for a while, watching the fire dance.
"You reconciled with the Vance girl," Taren said eventually. Not a question.
"Started to. Maybe. We'll see if it sticks."
"Good. Life's too short for old wounds."
The old man smiled faintly. "Even for people like us who keep finding
new ones."
Night fell on the Morrows like a curtain closing on a stage where the play had gone terribly wrong. Kojo and
Rhea stood together on the factory roof again, not talking, just existing in the same space, hands almost
touching on the railing.
Below, patrols moved through streets that felt like occupied territory. Drones circled in their endless search
patterns.
The city breathed its uneasy rhythm, caught between the Church's hymns and the Morrows'
stubborn refusal to stop existing.
"You really think we can win this?" Rhea asked quietly.
"Win? No idea." Kojo's hand found hers, fingers intertwining. "Survive? Maybe. Make them regret starting this?
Definitely."
She squeezed his hand. "You always were dramatic."
"Learned from the best."
Despite everything—the death, the war, the impossible odds stacked against them like a mountain made of
corpses—she smiled. Real. Warm. The smile he remembered from before everything went wrong.
And for one moment, watching the city burn slow, the world didn't feel quite so heavy.
In the clinic, Mira worked alone. Organizing supplies.
Checking inventory. Not thinking about the bodies. Not
thinking about the child she'd orphaned who might be hunting her now. Not thinking about how long she
could keep the secret before it killed someone she loved.
Her hands moved on autopilot. Professional. Efficient. But inside, something was breaking.
How long until he finds me? she thought. How long until everyone knows what I was? What I did?
She touched the hairpin hidden in her bun. Eight inches of surgical steel. Still sharp. Still ready.
Just in case.
In his corner, Reverb stared at encrypted fragments and wondered what weapon the Church was building.
Wondered if it was connected to the parts disappearing from Sanctifier wreckage sites. Wondered if anyone
would believe him even if he figured it out.
"Probably just scavengers," he muttered to himself, trying to believe it. "People stealing valuable tech.
Dragging it off to sell."
But the data said otherwise.
And Reverb trusted data more than he trusted hope.
And in the ruins of the city, in alleys and tunnels and places where light had given up trying, the Orphan
sharpened his blade and whispered prayers to the Silence that had given him purpose when everything else
was taken away.
"Soon," he promised the darkness. "Soon she'll understand what it feels like. To lose everything. To become
nothing."
He carved another mark into his arm.
One for each kill. Five now. The pain was clean. Simple. Real in ways nothing else was anymore.
"Soon."
The hunt continued. The city burned. The war ground forward like a machine that couldn't stop until everyone
was dead or someone finally broke.
And no one was ready for what came next.