The Sanctum wasn't supposed to have an audience.
It was a hole, a gap in the rotting teeth of Sector Four's architecture, but it was his gap. Now, the narrow mouth of the alley was choked with silhouettes. They didn't look like men; in the flickering, dying amber of a nearby sodium lamp, they looked like jagged inkblots stretching against the damp brick. Ten of them. Maybe more, leaking out of the shadows like oil.
Kael's pulse hammered against his ribs—a frantic, rhythmic drumming that mocked his earlier confidence.
'Bad. This is very, very bad. I didn't just steal their credits; I stole their dignity. And in a place where people have nothing else, they'll kill you twice over just to get that back.'
"Looks like the rat's trapped," a voice rasped. Thin, wet, lungs half-ruined by the smog.
The speaker stepped forward, dragging a lead pipe along the cracked pavement with a screech that set Kael's teeth on edge.
"You've caused us quite a few problems recently, little collector. How about you give back our property before we beat you to death?"
Kael forced a smirk, dry lips cracking.
"I'll consider it," he said, voice trembling, then sharpened with spite. "If you replace the 'death' option with, say… a light scolding and a firm handshake? No? Tough crowd."
The thug didn't flinch, just shifted his grip on the pipe.
"I don't think you have a choice."
Kael's mind whirred. Angles, distances, the weight of air—he calculated it all while glancing at the heavy metal plate at his feet. The plate had shifted three inches to the left. Someone was already inside. They hadn't come to talk—they'd come to harvest.
Option to let me live? Never real.
"Maybe I can make this easy," Kael said, voice low and trembling, projecting submission. "I'll return what I took… along with everything else I've managed to scrape together. Under the plate. Just… let me get it."
The lead thug tilted his head, predatory glint in his eyes.
"We'll see."
Kael crouched, brushing the cold, slimy rim of the plate with his fingers. But he didn't reach for a coin-chit. His hand closed around the grip of the rusted, heavy-gauge copper tube wedged there weeks ago for a day he hoped would never come.
He didn't hesitate. No speech, no hesitation. Just action.
Kael pivoted on his heel, swinging the tube in a brutal, horizontal arc.
CRACK.
The sound was sickeningly wet. The pipe collided with the thug's temple, impact vibrating up Kael's arm. Blood sprayed, dark and coppery, across Kael's cheek. The thug collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut, hitting the grime with a dull thud.
Silence—ten men realizing the "rat" had teeth.
"Fools…" Kael hissed, cursed under his breath.
He lunged through the gap in their formation, boots skidding over oily puddles. One distracted thug's shoulder clipped him, but for a heartbeat, he saw the exit. Freedom.
He poured every ounce of desperation into his legs.
THUMP.
No wall. Something worse. Solid, warm meat and cold iron.
The impact sent shockwaves through his skull, throwing him backward onto his haunches. Vision blurred, static dancing across his sight. He looked up. Boots the size of small crates. A torso wrapped in scarred leather. A face carved out of a mountain with a dull chisel.
Two meters of muscle and malice blocked the sun. The man's shadow swallowed Kael whole.
"I heard you made a joke about my teeth last time," the giant rumbled, voice vibrating the alley and Kael's lungs. He smiled, jagged chrome-capped incisors glinting.
"You mangy rat."
Kael froze. Every calculation, every escape route ran through his mind at once. This wasn't just a thug—this was a predator of a scale he'd only glimpsed in nightmares.