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/-\
The sky screen above District Seven dimmed by two degrees sometime past evening. No official announcement. No sirens. Just a slight darkening subtle enough to be missed unless you'd grown up under it. Aiden noticed.
He stood at the edge of a food stall alley, one hand tucked in his jacket pocket, the other holding a skewer of grilled mushroom-pork analog less meat than memory, but still warm. He chewed slowly, eyes moving between storefronts, neon halos, faces.
Kiera was late.
Not unusual, but she had a tendency to draw heat when she thought she was being clever. The plan had been simple: get in good with the Hydra defectors, see what they knew about the old StarkTech vaults, then bounce before anyone got trigger-happy. But two hours had passed, and she'd stopped responding to pings.
He didn't worry. Not in the traditional sense. He didn't like using that word anyway. Worry was what people did when they didn't trust someone to handle themselves.
But Kiera could be reckless.
So he waited, halfway between patience and motion, watching the crowd like a low-burning lantern. People filtered past augmented, human, in-betweens. A pair of operatives in SHIELD-blue walked by speaking into low-frequency comms. A cloaked man dragging a box of salvaged tech argued with a merchant over encryption keys. No one saw him unless they tried.
His chakra was low today not drained, but resting. Dormant. Like a still lake before the wind. There was power in stillness. Sasuke had known that. So had Itachi.
Aiden licked the skewer clean, dropped the stick into the recycler, and turned down a side alley.
The bar was called Marauder's Pulse. It was the kind of place where nobody asked names, and everyone knew yours anyway. Industrial beams framed the ceiling like a ribcage, pulsing orange with reactor heat. Music played from somewhere behind the walls old Earth stuff, probably 2100s grunge.
He walked in past a doorman who was clearly an android but tried hard not to be. No one stopped him.
Inside, the air smelled like battery acid and overripe fruit. A group of Atlantean hybrids were drinking something bioluminescent in the corner. A man with cybernetic horns was playing five-dimensional chess against himself. Behind the bar, a tall woman with green skin and four mechanical arms was cleaning glasses one-handed, tapping holo-orders with the others.
Aiden scanned the room and found her.
Kiera was perched on a back sofa, legs up, sipping something from a blue-glass flask and laughing too loudly. Next to her sat a tall, wiry man with silver dreadlocks and dark glasses, even in the dim light. He had that slippery kind of charisma too confident for a low-level fixer, too clean for a runner.
Aiden approached slowly.
Kiera spotted him and waved a lazy hand. "Hey. Took you long enough. This is Elix. Elix, this is my friend Aiden. He doesn't talk much, so don't take it personally if he stares at you like you're a bug."
Elix grinned. His teeth were unnaturally white.
"I've heard of you," he said to Aiden. "Or someone like you. Quiet one. Hangs around the net scrapers and ghost runners. You got a name that sticks?"
Aiden didn't answer. He pulled a stool and sat beside Kiera.
Elix chuckled, unfazed. "Alright. No names. I respect that. Keeps things...cleaner."
Kiera leaned in, nudging Aiden's shoulder. "So. Good news. Our guy here knows where the shell vault is."
"Elix," he corrected. "Knows a guy who knows. Let's not get ahead of ourselves."
"You said he'd trade access for a favor."
Elix sipped his drink. "More or less."
Aiden finally spoke. His voice was calm, steady. "What kind of favor."
Elix's smile twisted slightly. "There's a compound. Unregistered. Middle of the dead grid, about six blocks into Zone Null. Something buried under the concrete. My guy wants it mapped."
"Mapped how?" Aiden asked.
"Subsurface scan. Energy trace. Anything weird. No digging, no stealing just eyes-on. Should be easy for a guy like you."
Kiera frowned. "Zone Null's half collapsed."
Elix spread his hands. "That's why I'm not doing it myself."
Later, outside the bar, Aiden and Kiera walked in silence under the neon buzz.
"You trust him?" he asked.
She snorted. "No. But I don't trust you either, so that evens things out."
He didn't smile, but there was something in his eyes that softened.
"Think Drey'll come with us?"
"He's allergic to fresh air."
"Can't say I blame him."
They passed an alley where a kid was drawing with chalk that glowed faintly in the dark. Strange patterns. Circles within circles. Aiden paused for a moment, watching, but said nothing.
Two hours later, Aiden stood in the lower levels of Zone Null.
The district had been abandoned after a reactor fire twenty years ago, left to rot while newer cities were built over its bones. Now, it was a graveyard of twisted metal, melted signs, and graffiti-scarred bunkers. Air here tasted like copper. Streetlights flickered with no rhythm. The silence wasn't silence it was suppression. Like sound had been told not to exist here anymore.
He moved quietly, footsteps soft. Kiera followed, a flashlight in one hand, plasma knife in the other.
"You feel that?" she murmured.
He nodded. The chakra flow was off erratic. Like being underwater, but the water was sideways. Static crept up his spine in slow pulses. Not danger exactly. But wrongness.
They reached the compound Elix had marked. It was half-sunken, the roof slanted and covered in vines that didn't seem natural. No door. Just a breach in the wall, like something had punched its way in from the inside.
Kiera crouched, scanning with a handheld device. "This is definitely not government-standard architecture."
"Private sector?"
She shook her head. "Older."
Aiden stepped inside.
The air changed. Colder. Not temperature tone. The walls were covered in symbols. Not language. Not runes. Just scratches. Spirals. Claw marks?
He walked slowly, eyes shifting to red. The Sharingan activated in a slow, ghostly burn. His vision sharpened.
There, in the far corner a pulse.
Chakra. Not his.
Old. Buried.
He stepped closer.
Beneath the dust, a small metal sphere glowed faintly. No wires. No seams.
And then
He heard a voice.
Not aloud.
Inside.
Just one word.
"Brother."
He staggered back.
Kiera looked up. "What what is it?"
Aiden didn't answer.
He deactivated the Sharingan, clenched his jaw, and picked up the sphere. It was warm.
No markings. No explanation.
But it wasn't from this world.
He slipped it into his pocket.
"We're done here," he said.
Back on the surface, the city lights had shifted. Police drones circled higher than usual. Emergency alerts blinked across public terminals localized containment breach near the east wall. Nothing confirmed. Citizens urged to avoid nonessential travel.
Aiden didn't care. His eyes were on the rooftops.
Because he'd seen something up there.
Just for a moment.
A flicker.
A black cloak.
A red cloud pattern.
Gone.
He blinked once. Then again.
Kiera was talking, asking him something about dinner. He nodded vaguely. She didn't press.
But something had changed. Not the world. Him.
He didn't know it yet, but the sphere in his pocket had no known material. No atomic signature.
And somewhere, deep beneath the planet's crust, a forgotten relic stirred something ancient, something hungry.
But for now, Aiden walked the streets like any other ghost, quiet as breath, unseen as shadow.
And the city went on, not knowing what it had already lost.
/-\
If you wish to read more or simply support me than check out my Patreon at
"https://www.patreon.com/Its_Zack/"
You can Get Access to 3 More Chapters OR 7 More Chapters if you want.