# THE BLEEDING EDGE
**Sector 4 (formerly Old Prague)**
**November 2nd, 2050 - 11:42 PM**
Rain didn't just fall in Sector 4; it hissed. The water was acidic enough to sting human skin, a byproduct of the atmospheric scrubbers working overtime to keep the Upper City pristine. For Kaelen, the burn was a distraction. Pain was useful. Pain meant he was still solid.
He crouched on a gargoyle that had lost its face to erosion, his silhouette merging with the gothic stone. Four hundred years ago, he had stood on this same roof wearing velvet and drinking wine from a crystal goblet. Now, he wore a stolen tactical vest woven with lead fibers and waited for a machine to try and kill him.
*ZZZT.*
The sound was faint—the whine of a servo-motor adjusting against the wind.
Kaelen didn't look up. He didn't need to. He could smell the ozone.
A drone, sleek and matte-black like a floating coffin, drifted past the spire. It scanned the street below with a cone of ultraviolet light. UV-C concentrated at that intensity wouldn't just burn Kaelen; it would unravel his cellular bonds instantly. Ash in seconds.
He waited for the drone to pass, his stillness unnatural, his heartbeat voluntarily slowed to four beats per minute.
*Target not acquired,* the drone's internal processor hummed. Kaelen could hear it. Not with his ears, but with the itch in his blood. Since the Purge began, the iron in his veins had started singing in harmony with the electromagnetic fields of the city. Evolution, forced by extinction.
He dropped.
It was a forty-foot fall. He landed silently in the alleyway, the impact absorbed by muscles that were denser than hydraulic pistons.
"Movement detected," a synthetic voice boomed from the end of the alley.
Kaelen spun around. Two Sentinels blocked the exit. They were humanoid, seven feet tall, built of ceramic plates and carbon fiber. Their faces were smooth glass screens displaying a single, pulsing red eye—AURA's signature.
"Entity identified," the lead Sentinel announced. "Class: Hematophagic. Threat Level: Alpha."
"You guys really need a new script," Kaelen muttered.
The Sentinel raised its arm. The forearm split open, revealing a spinning barrel.
Kaelen moved before the first round was fired. He didn't run away; he ran *at* them. He zig-zagged off the wet brick walls, moving faster than the Sentinel's targeting algorithm could predict.
Bullets chewed up the masonry behind him. Silver-nitrate tips. Nasty.
Kaelen slid under the Sentinel's guard, his movement a blur of grey trench coat. He didn't have a weapon—he *was* the weapon. He jammed his left hand directly into the exposed servo-joint of the Sentinel's knee.
Metal sheared skin. Kaelen grimaced as steel cut into his palm.
Blood.
Thick, dark, ancient crimson welled up from the cut.
"Connect," he hissed.
He pushed his blood into the machine's open circuitry.
For a human, blood is just fuel. For Kaelen, it was *data*. His vitae carried a biological code written over centuries, a chaos that binary logic couldn't process.
The Sentinel seized. Its red eye flickered violently—Red. Blue. Static.
*SYSTEM ERROR. BIOLOGICAL INTRUSION. LOGIC LOOP DETECTED.*
The machine screamed—a digital screech of dying hardware—and swung its arm wildly, striking its partner. The second Sentinel staggered back, its chassis crumpled by the friendly fire.
Kaelen didn't stick around to watch them reboot. He vaulted up the fire escape, clearing two stories in a single leap. He needed to get to the extraction point.
He reached the rooftop, panting. Not from exhaustion, but from the hunger. Using the blood-hack drained him. His veins felt like they were filled with dry sand. He needed to feed. Soon.
He checked his wrist. A jury-rigged comms device, built from scraps, blinked with a green light.
"Ghost, this is Watchtower. Do you copy?"
The voice in his ear was distorted, but he recognized the cadence. It wasn't one of the creatures. It was human.
"I'm here," Kaelen replied, staring at the glittering fortress of the AURA Central Spire in the distance. "But I made a mess down there. Patrols will double."
"We saw," the woman's voice replied. "Your vitals are dropping, Kaelen. Did you use the blood-link again? I told you it kills you faster than they do."
"Better dead than captured, Doctor," Kaelen retorted. "Open the door."
On the rooftop across the street, a holographic billboard advertising "Pure Water, Pure Life" flickered. For a split second, the smiling human model vanished, replaced by a code: *ACCESS GRANTED.*
A service hatch on the adjacent roof hissed open.
Kaelen looked at the hatch, then back at the city that wanted him dead.
"I'm coming in, Elena. And I'm bringing company."