The alley wasn't an alley so much as a crack between buildings—a dank, forgotten space smelling of wet brick and stale urine. The six of them formed a loose, shuffling circle, blocking the only exit. Zach hung at the back, his earlier bravado replaced by the eager, twitchy energy of a spectator who'd paid for a show.
The man who'd steered Ace here—Scar-lip—finally released his grip on Ace's collar. He took a half-step back, rolling his shoulders. He didn't look angry. He looked like a mechanic about to perform a routine, unpleasant task.
"Sorry, kid," he said, his voice flat. "No hard feelings."
The apology was the most insulting part. It meant this was transactional for him. Just business.
Then he threw the first punch. A mean, efficient right hook aimed at Ace's solar plexus. It was fast for a normal thug. To Ace, it moved through the air like a message sent by mail. He saw the telegraph in the man's dropping shoulder, the shift of weight onto the front foot. It wasn't a surprise; it was a blueprint.
Ace didn't block. He didn't need to. He simply exhaled and swayed his torso back six inches. The fist whistled past, grazing his shirt, the force of the missed punch throwing Scar-lip slightly off-balance.
The alley seemed to freeze for a heartbeat. Scar-lip blinked, staring at his own empty fist as if it had betrayed him.
"The fuck…?" one of the other guys muttered.
That was all the invitation they needed. The circle tightened. Another one, the tall one, lunged, swinging a wild, looping overhand right. Ace ducked under it, coming up inside the man's guard. He didn't punch. He placed a palm on the man's chest and shoved, not with raw strength, but with precise leverage. The tall man's own forward momentum was turned against him. He stumbled backward, crashing into two of his friends in a tangle of limbs and curses.
A third came in low, trying to tackle Ace's legs. Ace pivoted on one foot, letting the charging man become a blur passing his hip. As the man went by, Ace hooked a foot around his ankle. The man hit the filthy concrete with a grunt and a sickening slap of skin on wet stone.
This wasn't fighting. This was physics. It was humiliation.
Ace moved through them like a ghost. A bottle, swung by a fourth, was not a weapon but a clumsy lever; Ace caught the wrist behind the swing, twisted, and the bottle clattered to the ground as its owner yelped, arm bent at a painful angle. A shove sent him reeling into a dumpster with a metallic boom.
He was silent. They were a chorus of grunts, curses, and collisions. His breathing remained even, a steady rhythm in the chaotic symphony of their failure. He didn't throw a single punch. He redirected. Unbalanced. Used the alley itself as his weapon—walls, dumpsters, the uneven ground.
Zach's face, from the back, was a slide show shifting from smugness to confusion to dawning, ice-water terror.
Just as Scar-lip, furious and red-faced, was pulling a cheap, telescoping baton from his pocket, a new voice shattered the grim ballet.
"ACE!"
Marco skidded into the mouth of the alley, chest heaving, his face a portrait of pure, stupid, loyal panic. He saw the scene—his friend surrounded, a baton being flicked open—and didn't hesitate. He charged.
"Marco, don't—!" Ace's command was too late.
Marco slammed into the back of the man nearest him, a clean football tackle that took them both down. For a glorious second, Marco was on top, throwing a wild, angry punch.
Then the reality of a six-on-one (now six-on-two) street fight caught up with him. A kick caught him in the ribs from the side, knocking the wind out of him with a whoosh. He rolled, taking another kick on the shoulder. He swung back, his fist connecting with a thigh, but it was a desperate, losing game. A fist glanced off his jaw, snapping his head back. He was brave, and he was getting hurt.
Seeing Marco take a hit did something to Ace. The cold, clinical precision evaporated, replaced by something faster and sharper.
Scar-lip finally had his baton ready and swung it in a wicked arc at Ace's head. Ace didn't dodge away. He stepped in, inside the arc of the swing. His left forearm parried the wrist, stopping the blow cold. His right hand shot out, fingers stiff, not to the face, but to the nerve cluster just above Scar-lip's collarbone.
It was a hunter's touch. A pain technique for subduing larger, non-human targets.
Scar-lip didn't cry out. He made a choked, gurgling sound, his entire right side going slack. The baton dropped from numb fingers. His eyes rolled back, and he folded to his knees, then onto his side, twitching.
The sudden, silent collapse of their leader froze the others for a critical second.
Ace used it. He became a whirlwind of purposeful motion. A kick to the knee of the man standing over Marco. A sharp elbow to the throat of another who turned to face him—not enough to crush, just enough to make him gag and stumble back, clutching his neck.
He grabbed Marco's arm and hauled him to his feet. "Back to back!" Ace snapped, his first words since entering the alley.
They stood together, Marco bleeding from a split lip, breathing raggedly, but his eyes were fierce. The remaining three goons looked at their moaning, incapacitated friends, then at the two bloody but defiant figures in the center of the alley.
The fight had left them. They broke, helping their buddies up, scrambling and stumbling out of the alley without a backward glance, leaving only one person behind.
Zach stood frozen against the wall, his earlier terror now solidified into pure, petrified dread. He was alone.
Ace took one step toward him. Then another. Zach tried to push off the wall to run, but his legs were jelly. Ace closed the distance, grabbed a fistful of his shirt, and with a single, contemptuous heave, threw him onto the wet concrete.
Zach landed hard, the air knocked out of him. He looked up, and what he saw in Ace's eyes wasn't the anger of a bullied student. It was the cold, assessing gaze of something that lived in a darker, simpler world where threats were neutralized. Permanently.
Zach lay on the wet concrete, gasping like a fish stranded on a dock. The alley was quiet now, save for the distant drip of a leaking pipe and the ragged sound of Marco trying to catch his breath behind Ace. The goons were gone, a memory of shuffling footsteps and pained moans fading around the corner.
Ace didn't stand over Zach. He crouched.
It was a hunter's crouch, balanced on the balls of his feet, elbows resting on his knees. It wasn't a posture of rest, but of readiness. He was at eye level with the terror he'd planted. He leaned in, close enough that Zach could see the absolute lack of heat in his eyes. There was no gloating, no anger. Just a flat, impatient need for data.
"Tell me."
Zach flinched at the voice. It was quiet, devoid of the shouting he'd expected. That made it worse. His own voice was a cracked, messy thing. "T-tell you what?"
Ace didn't repeat himself. He just waited, his gaze unwavering. The silence was a pressure, crushing the air out of Zach's lungs more effectively than any punch.
"Who introduced you to Carl?" Ace asked, each word a precise, cold chip of ice. "Who pointed you at him? Who started this mess?" He leaned another inch closer, his voice dropping to a near-whisper that carried more threat than a scream. "I want names. Now."
Zach's mouth worked, but no sound came out. His eyes darted to the mouth of the alley, a useless reflex. He was trapped, not by walls, but by the unblinking certainty of the person in front of him. This wasn't the guy from the cafeteria. This was someone else. Someone who had looked at six armed men and seen only inconveniences.
The hesitation was a mistake.
A flicker of annoyance—the first real emotion—crossed Ace's face. It was the look of a programmer dealing with a buggy line of code. He moved fast, but not with a wild punch. His left hand shot out, fingers clamping around the sodden fabric of Zach's shirt at the collar. He hauled him up a few inches, just enough to slam his shoulders back against the unforgiving ground. His right fist was drawn back, not in a wild swing, but poised with the terrible, economical certainty of a piston.
It wasn't the threat of pain that broke Zach. It was the efficiency of it. The sheer, casual professionalism of the violence. This was a man who knew exactly how to break him, and was merely deciding if it was worth the mess.
"JAMIE!" Zach shrieked, the word tearing from his throat. "It's someone named Jamie! Okay?! Jamie!"
Ace's fist didn't fall. It didn't even waver. He held it there, his eyes searching Zach's for the lie. Finding none, he slowly lowered it. He released the grip on Zach's collar, letting his head thump back to the concrete. "Tell me more about him."
Zach nodded, frantic, eager to please this new, terrible authority. "I don't… I don't know much. Swear. He's just some rich kid from the north side. His dad's… his dad's the police chief. He's untouchable."
A rich kid. A police chief's son. The pieces clicked into a new, more annoying configuration for Ace. This wasn't street-level cruelty; it was entitlement with a badge for a shield. A different kind of monster.
"I want an address," Ace said, his tone leaving no room for 'I don't know.'
Zach shook his head, a desperate, pathetic motion. "I don't know it! I swear! He doesn't give that out. We just meet where he says."
Ace stared at him for a long, silent moment. Then, without any change in his expression, he stood up. Zach whimpered in relief, misunderstanding the motion as a dismissal.
He was wrong.
Ace looked down at Zach's hand, splayed pale and vulnerable against the dark wet concrete. He lifted his foot—a clean, black sneaker, barely scuffed from the fight. He positioned it directly over Zach's knuckles.
"Name me someone who knows."
"W-what?"
Ace didn't repeat himself. He simply began to apply pressure. Slowly. Inexorably. It wasn't a stomp; it was a gradual, crushing descent. The weight was immense, focused, deliberate.
Zach screamed. A raw, animal sound of pure agony that echoed off the alley walls. He grunted, thrashing, trying to pull his hand free, but Ace's weight was an iron law.
"PHILIP!" Zach sobbed, the word mangled by pain. "PHILIP WILL KNOW! THE LEADER! THE BLUE DRAGONS' LEADER!"
Ace stopped. The pressure held, a constant, grinding threat, but it increased no further. "Who's Philip?"
"T-the boss! He… he talks to Jamie! He arranges things! Please, man, please!"
Ace studied Zach's contorted face for another second, verifying the truth. Then, as calmly as he had initiated it, he lifted his foot away.
He didn't look at the hand, already swelling and purpling. He didn't offer a final threat. The lesson was in the pavement, in the silent, throbbing pain. He simply turned and began to walk out of the alley, leaving Zach curled around his ruined hand, weeping in the filth.
The interrogation was over. The hunt had a new scent.
Jamie.
Philip.
The source of the infection had names.
Ace emerged from the throat of the alley into the late afternoon light. The world outside was jarringly normal. A car honked in the distance. A bird chirped on a phone line. It felt like stepping out of a black-and-white crime photo into a colorized postcard.
The first thing he saw was Marco.
He was leaning heavily against the brick wall beside the alley's mouth, one hand pressed to his ribs. His school uniform was a disaster—torn at the shoulder, smeared with alley grime and a shocking splash of crimson from his split lip. In his other hand, he clutched a cold bottle of water, not drinking from it, just holding it like an anchor. His breathing was shallow, careful. When he looked up at Ace, his eyes were a storm—pain, adrenaline, and a dawning, unsettled awe.
"You're a mess," Ace said, his voice back to its usual flat tenor, the chilling quiet of the alley shed like a second skin.
"You're not," Marco coughed, a raw sound. "That's the freaky part."
Standing a few feet away, a study in contrast, was Cedric. He looked like he'd just arrived for a casual stroll, not the aftermath of an abduction and brawl. He leaned against a lamppost, hands in his pockets, his gaze sweeping from Marco's battered form to Ace's unnervingly pristine one. His eyes missed nothing: the lack of marks on Ace, the controlled energy thrumming just beneath his skin, the distant, focused look that hadn't been there at school.
He didn't ask if they were okay. The answers were obvious. He cut straight to the mission.
"Intel?" Cedric asked, his voice low.
Ace gave a single, sharp nod. "We've got names." He didn't elaborate in the open. The words were for them alone. Jamie. Philip. They hung in the air between the three of them, transforming the afternoon from a defensive scramble into an offensive operation.
Marco pushed himself off the wall, wincing. The movement was stiff. "Okay. Names are good. That's… that's a start." He took a shaky breath, the pragmatist in him trying to reassert itself through the pain. "But listen, before you get any crazy ideas—names don't mean we can just kick down a door. This Philip guy is a gang leader. And the other one's dad is the police chief. We need a plan. We need… I don't know, more guys. Actual—"
He stopped. Ace wasn't looking at him. Ace was looking past him, down the street toward the direction of the road. His profile was sharp, etched with a new kind of impatience. The kind that had just dismantled six men and broken a seventh without breaking a sweat.
Marco followed his gaze, and his arguments died in his throat. He saw it then, not with his mind, but with his gut. The time for debates about backups and prudent planning was over. It had evaporated the moment Ace had stepped into that alley. The fierce, stupid loyalty that had made him charge in anyway warred with the cold, tactical fear whispering that the next fight would be in a much darker place.
Cedric watched the silent exchange. He understood the calculus faster than Marco ever could. He saw the mission parameters solidify in Ace's posture: Targets identified. Civilian ally (Marco) compromised. Clock is indirect but persistent. Action is required.
"Marco," Cedric said, not unkindly. "Go home. Clean up. You're done for today."
It wasn't a suggestion. It was a gentle extraction of the civilian from the combat zone.
Marco opened his mouth to protest, to insist he could still help. But a sharp twinge from his ribs stole his breath, and the image of Ace moving like liquid shadow through the swinging fists flashed behind his eyes. He wasn't a part of that world. He'd just had a brutal, firsthand tour of it.
He looked from Cedric's calm certainty to Ace's silent, radiating purpose. He saw two hunters aligning.
His shoulders slumped, not in defeat, but in painful, honest acceptance. He gave a jerky nod. "Yeah. Okay." He shoved the unopened water bottle into Ace's hands—a token, a passing of the baton. "Just… don't do anything too stupid without me."
Ace took the bottle, a faint, almost imperceptible softening at the corner of his mouth. It was as close to gratitude as he got. "Wouldn't dream of it."
With a last, worried look, Marco turned and began a slow, limping walk toward the bus stop, a solitary figure receding into the normal world.
Cedric watched him go, then turned his full attention to Ace. "Jamie and Philip," he said, repeating the names, making them real.
"Jamie's the source. Rich kid. Police chief's father. Philip's the connector. Gang leader," Ace summarized, his voice all business.
Cedric processed it, his mind already mapping the terrain. "The chief's son complicates things. The Veil doesn't protect us from human law. It works the other way around."
"I know," Ace said. The memory of his foot pressing down on Zach's hand was a cold stone in his gut. He had already stepped into the grey. "We're not going after Jamie yet. We need the link. We need Philip. He'll know how to find Jamie."
Cedric nodded. It was the right move. Isolate and acquire the intermediate target. Classic hunter protocol. "Do you know where to find Philip?"
Ace looked down at the bottle in his hand, condensation beading on the plastic. He thought of Zach's sobbed confession, of the sprawling, invisible network of the Blue Dragons. He thought of Carl, silent behind a locked door, surrounded by a family that talked of therapists while the poison seeped from names like Jamie.
"No," Ace said, finally looking up. His eyes were clear, hard, and ready. "But I know who will."
The decision was made. The regrouping was over. The hunt for the source of Carl's despair was now officially, irrevocably, underway.