The first thing Aiden learned about fear was that it didn't start in the heart.
It started in the air.
In the way it thickened.
In the way it tasted.
Tonight, it tasted like rain and electricity.
Water lashed the glass sides of Central Ward Tower, turning the city into a smear of neon and shadow. From the rooftop ledge, Aiden watched it all through the curtain of storm: the rigid lines of tower blocks, the sterile glow of office floors, the red blink of patrol drones drifting through the sky like watchful eyes.
On official screens, the city was a triumph. Order. Stability. Control.
From up here, it looked more like a machine cold, tireless, humming over a thing everyone pretended not to see.
Fear.
It seeped into the alleys where the cameras turned away for just a second too long. Into the blind corners between sensor grids. Into the lives of those the State called dangerous.
Deviants.
"You're not supposed to be up here."
The voice cut through the wind from behind him. Aiden didn't turn right away. His gloved fingers tightened around the wet metal rail, knuckles whitening as he focused on the world below.
If he concentrated hard enough, he could almost feel the city's pulse under the rain: the hum of power lines, the steady rhythm of traffic, the faint, invisible threads of magic curling through the dark.
His own magic leaned toward it. Reaching. Wanting.
He pushed it back down where it belonged.
"I have clearance," he said, keeping his tone flat and professional. "Level Three access includes rooftop surveillance checks."
A low chuckle answered him.
"I'm not talking about clearance, Lioren." The man stepped closer, boots scraping on wet concrete. "I'm talking about the storm."
Aiden finally turned his head.
Inspector Varrick stood near the access door, tall coat buttoned to the collar, dark hair plastered to his forehead by the rain. The faint blue glow of an interface chip pulsed at his temple, reflected dimly in his eyes. It made him look almost machine-perfect. Almost.
"The storm doesn't interfere with scanner sensitivity until visibility drops below—"
"Aiden." Varrick's voice sharpened, slicing off the rest of the sentence. "Save the manual for your exams. You've already passed them."
The wind shoved a wave of rain across the rooftop. Aiden turned his face back toward the city, letting cold water run down his cheekbones like fingers.
"How many tonight?" he asked.
Varrick stepped up beside him, pulling a small console from his coat. Numbers glowed against the rain.
"Three flagged anomalies," he said. "Two false positives artifact interference. One unregistered discharge in the South Sector."
Aiden's pulse stuttered.
Unregistered discharge.
"Deviant?" His voice sounded too quick, too eager, even to his own ears.
"Most likely." Varrick's fingers tapped the screen. "High output. Short duration. They flared, panicked, and shut down. Sloppy."
Lightning flashed far away, a white vein across the clouds. For a heartbeat, the whole city froze in stark contrast. Steel. Glass. Water. No people at all.
Then the world moved again.
Aiden had grown up on footage of raids. He had watched Deviants pinned to the ground, wrists bound in suppression cuffs, power dragged out of them like poison. He had listened to his father speak about them:
Unstable.
Selfish.
Threats to the public good.
He had learned those words as if they were commandments.
He had never once let himself wonder what they felt.
"Teams are already in the field," Varrick continued. "You'll be with Captain Cestel's unit. First live hunt. Not bad for your first week out of the academy."
Aiden forced his shoulders to relax. "I'm ready."
"You're prepared," Varrick corrected. "Readiness… we'll see."
A patrol drone slid past the tower, searchlight sweeping across the rain. It illuminated the rooftop for a brief moment, washing Varrick's face in pale white, then moved on, the beam shrinking into the dark.
"You're pale," Varrick added. "You should get inside. Your father is expecting a full report when this is over."
Of course he was.
Director Hadrien Lioren expected a great many things.
"I'll be ready," Aiden repeated, his voice steadier this time.
Varrick studied him for a second longer, then nodded once. "Deployment bay. Fifteen minutes."
The door shut behind him with a metallic thud, leaving Aiden alone with the storm and the city's distant, restless hum.
He stood there, breathing in the smell of wet concrete and ozone.
The wind clawed at his coat. The rain needled his skin. Somewhere far below, sirens wailed, small and sharp against the heavy sound of water.
His right palm tingled.
He lifted his hand, fingers trembling just slightly. A thin shimmer of light flickered over his skin, like ghostly lines of gold ink, barely there. The air around his hand warped, reality bending with the most effortless of thoughts—
Stop.
He swallowed, forced his jaw to unclench, and shut it down. The shimmer vanished. The air stilled. His hand looked ordinary again.
Illusion was in his blood.
So was the danger of letting anyone see it.
Being a Lioren meant papers, permissions, certificates, proper registration.
Being something more than what those papers said?
That meant a cell.
Or worse.
Unregistered discharge. Dangerous. Deviant.
Words that must never, ever belong to him.
Aiden stepped back from the ledge and headed for the door.
------
The deployment bay hummed like a machine on the edge of waking.
Engines warmed. Shield generators thrummed. Technicians moved between armored vehicles, calling out numbers and status codes, the sharp edges of their voices bouncing off cold concrete walls. The bright white light made everything look cleaner than it was, stripping faces of warmth and turning everyone into uniforms and insignias.
Aiden walked in and straightened instinctively. Here, he couldn't be the boy alone on the rooftop with rain in his hair and doubt in his chest.
Here, he was Agent Lioren.
"Agent Lioren."
Captain Mara Cestel approached with a tablet under one arm. Her hair was pulled back so tight it seemed to hold up her posture. Dark eyes, unreadable. No wasted movement.
"First night in the field." She looked him over like he was equipment that might fail. "Bad sector to start with."
"Because of the Deviant?" he asked.
"Because of the people who hide them," she corrected. "Sympathizers. Underground networks. You've read the reports."
He had read more than reports. He had read the blank spaces between lines, the redacted sections, the missing names.
"The anomaly?" he asked.
Mara tapped her tablet. "Detected at 21:43. High-voltage spike. Enough to short out half a block if it lasted longer than a few seconds. Amateur. Emotional. Dangerous."
High-voltage.
Electricity.
The word crawled under his skin, scraping against something he couldn't name.
"And our objective?" Aiden asked, though he already knew the answer.
"Locate. Neutralize. Contain." She recited it like a prayer. "Alive, preferably. Dead, if necessary. Either way, they're data."
The far door hissed open.
Conversation tightened around the edges without fully stopping. People shifted, straightened, made space.
Director Hadrien Lioren walked in with his usual quiet precision, the weight of command settling over the room like an extra layer of gravity. His presence wasn't loud; it didn't need to be. The insignia on his chest, the clean lines of his uniform, the way people's eyes followed him that spoke enough.
"Aiden," he said. Not "son." Not here. "Walk with me."
Mara stepped aside without a word. Aiden fell into step at his father's side, matching his measured pace between vehicles and equipment. Every pair of eyes in the bay seemed to follow them.
"You have reviewed the anomaly file?" his father asked.
"Yes."
"Summarize."
Aiden didn't hesitate.
"Unregistered high-voltage discharge in the South Sector. Brief but intense. Likely an Electromancer Deviant under stress. Emotional trigger. High risk of collateral damage if not contained."
His father gave the smallest of nods. Approval. It loosened a knot Aiden hadn't realized he was holding.
"Emotion," the Director said, "is the enemy of control. Deviants indulge in it. That makes them unpredictable. That makes them a threat. You understand this."
It was not a question, but Aiden replied anyway.
"Yes, sir."
The Director's gaze lingered on him, weighing something unseen. "Tonight is significant," he continued. "For the Department. For the city. For you. The new protocols need proof. Success. Stability. You will not… introduce complications."
Complications.
Like hesitation.
Like doubt.
Like a flicker of power he couldn't explain.
"I won't," Aiden said.
His father placed a hand briefly on his shoulder, the gesture precise and distant, then withdrew.
"Captain Cestel," he called. "You may deploy."
The bay exploded into motion.
Doors slammed. Engines roared to life. Red interior lights blinked on inside the vehicles as units climbed in, voices crackling over comms. Aiden slid into the rear seat of the lead transport, fastening his harness as the doors sealed shut with a heavy clunk.
The world outside became a narrow slice of rain-streaked glass.
The convoy rolled out into the storm.
Sirens wailed, clean and sharp over the roaring rain. The city blurred by in streaks of light—white from corporate towers, pink and violet from old neon signs, red from traffic signals drowned in water. They left the clean lines of Central Ward behind and dropped into narrower streets, where the buildings leaned in close and the lights burned more desperate.
South Sector.
The city's pulse changed here. Faster. Rougher.
Aiden watched it through the small window, his reflection ghosting over the glass. His face looked almost like a stranger's in the red glow.
You belong up there, that reflection seemed to say. In the towers. Not down here.
But his chest tightened when he thought of the Deviant they were hunting.
Someone out there with lightning in their veins and fear or fury driving their power.
"Focus," Mara's voice snapped over the comms. "We are entering the anomaly radius. Scanners active. Be ready for ground engagement on my mark."
The storm thickened. Rain became a wall of noise.
Then it happened.
For the briefest of moments, the entire world blinked.
Every streetlamp. Every sign. Every window.
Off.
Dark swallowed the road, the buildings, the faces outside.
In that heartbeat of total black, Aiden felt it.
Something alive.
A crackle through the air, sharp and hot, sliding over his skin like a breath too close to his ear. The hairs on his arms stood upright under his sleeves. His illusion magic vibrated in response, as if recognizing another kind of wild current.
Then the lights snapped back on.
People on the sidewalks shouted, looking around, confused. The dashboard display fizzed with static before stabilizing. The driver cursed under his breath.
"That's our Deviant," Mara said coolly into the comm. "We're on top of them. Prepare to disembark."
Aiden exhaled slowly, fingers tight around the strap above his head.
Somewhere just beyond the armored walls of the vehicle, the source of that electricity was running. Breathing. Thinking. Maybe terrified. Maybe furious.
He had spent his entire life being trained to lock that kind of power down.
He was not ready for the moment it would look back at him.
He didn't know yet that when he finally found the Deviant's eyes in the chaos of the rain, fear would be the last thing he saw there.
And that the electricity in the air would never, ever feel the same again.