The city didn't sleep. It bled.
Neon signs flickered like dying stars over the Lower Wards, where the air was thick with the stench of burning trash and rotting synth-flesh. The streets pulsed with the footsteps of Revenant patrols, their gunmetal-gray skin glistening under the holographic billboards that screamed:
"OBEY. SERVE. ASCEND."
In the Upper Spires, where the elite lived behind polarized glass, children pressed their palms to the windows, watching the smog-choked sky. They whispered stories about the Deadlands beyond the walls where the Spliced roamed, their twisted bodies stitched together from the Chancellor's failed experiments.
But no one spoke of Facility Gamma-9. No one dared.
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"Hey, old man—what's the deal with those Revenant freaks anyway?"
The rookie enforcer leaned across the bar, his shiny new badge catching the flickering neon light. Around them, the usual crowd of smugglers and synth-junkies had gone suspiciously quiet.
The bartender didn't look up from cleaning his glass. "You new meat from Upper Spire Security? Shouldn't you be getting this briefing from your captain?"
"Captain says they're just enhanced soldiers," the rookie scoffed, rolling his shoulders. "But I heard stories from the Lower Ward patrols—"
A knife suddenly embedded itself in the wood between his fingers. The junkie woman who threw it didn't even look up from her drink. "Shut the fuck up about things you don't understand, badge."
The bartender sighed and poured two fingers of cheap whiskey. "Alright kid, since you're determined to get yourself killed..." The bartender pauses for a moment, "First—they ain't human. Not anymore."
The bartender slid a grainy holopic across the bar. It showed a group of gray-skinned figures standing motionless in the rain, their eyes reflecting camera flashes like animals caught in headlights.
"See these seams?" He pointed to the faint stitch marks visible along one's jawline. "That's where the surgeons opened them up to wire in the necrotic enhancements. They say it hurts so bad most subjects go insane before the transformation finishes."
The rookie swallowed hard. "But... why?"
From the shadows, a raspy voice answered:
"Because dead things don't question orders."
An old war vet emerged from the gloom, his mechanical leg whirring with each step. "I was on the Gamma-9 cleanup detail after the first batch woke up. Found the test chamber... the walls were painted with blood up to fifteen feet high." He tapped his temple. "Whatever they are now, they remember being human. And they hate us for it."
Behind them, the door creaked open. A gust of wind carried in the scent of ozone and something faintly rotten.
Every patron froze.
The bartender carefully set down his glass. "Speaking of..."
In the doorway, a towering figure stood silhouetted against the neon-lit street. His silver hair glowed faintly in the gloom, the long scar across his lips pulling tight as he...
Smiled.
The bartender's hands shook as he poured three fingers of whiskey and slid it down the counter. Pierre caught it without looking, the glass dwarfed in his clawed hand. He took one slow sip, placed it back down precisely where it started, and turned to leave.
The rookie gasped when Pierre paused at the door.
"Breathe again," the Revenant said without turning, "and I'll take your lungs."
No one moved until the echo of his boots faded into the night.