The fan creaked above, spinning just enough to shuffle the warm air around the lounge. Light filtered through the old stained glass, painting the tiled floor with dusty hues of crimson and violet. The Band of Sumir slumped on the cracked leather couch near the corner of the room, a faded sign above them reading "Special Operations: Please Don't Explode Anything Without Form B."
Andy Gaze threw a crumpled wrapper at the ceiling and watched it fall right back into his lap. "If one more day passes without action, I'm going to start pretending I'm haunted."
"You already are haunted," Randy Wager said, legs propped on the coffee table. "By your ego."
"Ha-ha. That ego saved your life in Cinderthron, remember?"
"That was your shoe, Andy. You kicked a bomb off a bridge with a boot and screamed 'fashion over fear.' You're not a hero. You're a runway disaster."
Andy shrugged, smirking. "Still lived."
Khloe Lockhart rolled her eyes and tapped her nails on her cup of cold tea. "I could've been anywhere else in the world. But no—I'm stuck in Prada, sitting next to two grown children bickering over shoe-styled bomb defusal."
"You love it," Andy said.
"I do not," she snapped, before sighing. "Okay, maybe a little."
Across the room, Jack Salinger was silently flipping through a file on spatial anomalies, then suddenly chuckled.
"What's so funny?" Khloe asked, leaning over.
"Someone reported a floating dog in Sector 7," Jack muttered, not looking up. "Turns out it was just a balloon… with really aggressive bark recordings strapped to it."
"I want to die," Randy groaned. "We used to fight monsters. Now we solve balloon crimes."
"They say boredom is the first step before chaos," Andy said with a dreamy stare toward the ceiling.
"No, that's indigestion," Randy said. "Don't get philosophical. You're not licensed."
Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, Jeff Hardy sat hunched over a stack of distorted incident reports with Mary Janet beside him. The two were utterly absorbed—red string pinned between photos on the wall behind them, symbols, locations, and fragments of faces connected like a murder web.
"This entire month has been a breadcrumb trail," Mary muttered. "Something is watching, Jeff. These disappearances follow a spiral pattern."
Jeff rubbed his temple. "And none of the teams are taking it seriously…"
Behind them, Andy whispered to the others, "Jeff's been possessed by the files again. That's what happens when you sleep next to a red string board."
"I heard that," Jeff said dryly, not turning around.
The Band of Sumir laughed in sync, even Khloe allowing a small grin to slip.
Then came silence.
The kind of silence that makes the shadows seem to grow.
"…Something's coming," Jack finally said, voice quieter, eyes distant.
"What do you mean?" Randy asked.
"I don't know. Just… a feeling." Jack closed the file and leaned back. "Calm before the storm. You feel it too, right?"
Everyone went still.
Even Jeff stopped writing. Mary looked up.
Khloe whispered, "Maybe boredom really is the final peace before war."
Andy clapped his hands. "Alright! Enough of that. Who wants to bet I can sneak into Salis's office and replace all his pencils with candles?"
Randy smirked. "Fifty crowns says you get stabbed with one."
"Deal."
As Andy stood, dramatic and grinning, the others groaned. But the mood had shifted. Beneath the teasing, laughter, and lounging, something unspoken lingered.
The heavy steel door creaked open.
Major Salis entered with his usual storm-like presence—boots echoing sharply against the tiled floor, long black coat dusted with ash, and an unreadable expression stitched across his battle-worn face. The Band of Sumir sat up straighter, the lazy atmosphere evaporating like mist under fire.
Jeff Hardy was the first to notice her. "Major—"
"Hardy. Janet." Salis didn't raise his voice, but his tone sliced through the air. "Out."
Mary Janet glanced at Jeff, eyebrows furrowed. "But we were—"
"Out. Now." His tone allowed no room for questions.
Without a word, the two nodded and quickly collected their files, the red string map now dangling loose like the last nerves in the room. Mary gave one last glance at the Band—eyes wary—before slipping out with Jeff.
Salis waited until the door clicked shut.
He turned toward the four operatives. Andy, Randy, Khloe, and Jack. His eyes scanned each of them with that signature cold stare that made grown agents sweat.
"The Prada ruins are compromised," she said. "Someone's tampering with the boundary glyphs. It's not safe anymore."
Randy blinked. "We weren't even—"
"You'll go anyway," Salis cut in. "You're not here to be safe. You're here to finish the job. We lost two agents yesterday inside the eastern trench. No bodies recovered."
Jack sat up straighter. "...Was it the fog again?"
"No," Salis muttered. "It's worse now. The reality seals are thinning. You'll be issued Moltair's Eye—"
All four froze.
"That's not standard issue," Khloe said quietly. "We use that when something sentient starts altering probability."
Salis nodded. "Exactly."
Andy's grin faded for the first time that day. "You want us to wear a god's eyelid on our heads to look at a screaming ruin, and you're just telling us now?"
"You'll wear it," Salis said. "And you'll smile while doing it."
Khloe narrowed her eyes. "You really think this is connected to the Disappearance Trails?"
"I don't think." Salis turned toward the window, where faint smoke curled in the far horizon. "I know. And if I'm right... whatever's awakening beneath Prada isn't just waking up."
He looked over his shoulder.
"It's remembering."
Silence.
He walked out without another word.
Andy exhaled. "Cool. So we're going to die in a ruin haunted by a nostalgic monster."
"Nope," Randy muttered. "We're going to survive. Then die after filing the report."
....
The afternoon sun scorched the rusted rooftops, and the thick air wavered with heat. A patrol of nameless Vanguards moved cautiously through the ruins of District 9, their boots crunching on broken glass and scorched pavement. Drones buzzed overhead, briefly scanning the skeletons of fallen buildings before vanishing behind clouds of smoke from a fire that never stopped burning.
The silence was deceptive—sharp, taut, like something holding its breath.
Then came the noise.
A metallic screech pierced the air like nails dragged across steel. The Vanguards froze, weapons raised. From behind the collapsed facade of an old bus station, ten figures rolled forward—PSC F~31s.
They came like a mechanical storm.
Blades extended from their forearms, glinting under the sun. Their bodies were all steel and black plating, their torsos segmented like insect shells. Where legs should've been, there were wheels—fast, adaptive, spinning with a whir that made the ground vibrate. They accelerated as one, slicing across the plaza like demons on rails.
The Vanguards opened fire.
Bullets sparked uselessly against the armor. One PSC darted sideways, spinning with inhuman grace, and cleaved a Vanguard in half. Another pierced through a defender's gut with both blades, lifted him high, and hurled the body like garbage.
A Vanguard screamed as they were run over—the PSC's wheel-blade tore through their ribs and left nothing but a smear of bone and organs. Another tried to tackle one from behind—only for the machine to twist its torso 180 degrees and impale them mid-air.
The squad scattered, desperate, bleeding.
"We can't win like this—"
"They're learning our fire patterns!"
"Cover right! No, your right!"
One ducked behind a broken delivery truck, clutching their side, blood seeping through the armor. Another crawled across broken pavement, dragging a shattered leg behind them, whispering prayers that no one answered.
But then, something clicked.
A Vanguard hiding beneath a crushed billboard watched closely. The PSCs weren't invincible. When they turned sharply, their wheels sparked red hot—too much friction. And when they stopped, even briefly, their inner rotor hissed with coolant spray.
Overheat. They overheat.
The remaining Vanguards reconvened in the burnt lobby of an abandoned hotel. Short nods. No words. They had a plan now.
They spread out like phantoms.
The trap began with bait—two Vanguards luring the PSCs through a maze of rubble and tight alleyways. The machines followed, wheels screeching, blades slicing walls. But the tighter the space, the sharper they had to turn. Sparks flew. Their movements faltered.
Then came the second wave.
Flamethrowers roared.
The alley ignited in waves of fire and smoke. Trapped between ruined stone and searing heat, the PSCs slowed—just a second—but enough. One stumbled and fell, its wheel cracking. The moment it twitched, a Vanguard leapt onto it and drove a serrated knife into its coolant port. It screamed in a high-pitched electronic howl before erupting in a burst of steam and gore.
The rest didn't back down.
They launched themselves out of the flames, some half-melted, some dragging broken wheels. One Vanguard was torn apart in seconds, but the machines were slowing. Overheating. Their movements staggered, rhythm failing.
Another was taken down by an electric trap—makeshift wire net, hooked to a downed power line. As it screamed and twitched, a Vanguard smashed a sledgehammer into its face until the steel caved.
They turned the ruins into weapons. Oil slicks. Gas leaks. Heat zones.
One PSC lost control mid-turn, skidded across a wire mesh covered in nails and glass, and was met with three blades at once—one to the neck, another to the chest, and a third straight through the back of its head.
Another tried to escape but was tackled into a pool of burning fuel. The flames clung to its frame, cooking it alive. It thrashed, smashing its blade into the ground again and again, slicing its own limbs off in madness before collapsing, twitching, headless.
The final one refused to die.
It clung to life with one blade, one wheel, and an exposed inner core. It didn't run—it charged. Impaled one last Vanguard before getting pinned. The remaining squad swarmed it, screaming, slashing, shooting until its body was nothing but twisted metal and splattered human blood.
When it finally stopped moving, no one celebrated.
One Vanguard stood in place, hats off, eyes wide and empty. Another vomited behind a shattered desk. One sat cradling a corpse shaking, whispering nonsense. Their hands were raw. Their suits soaked red and black.
A child's tricycle rolled out from a nearby alley, pushed by the wind.
Nobody moved.
The sun dipped low, shadows growing longer. The plaza was quiet now. Steel, ash, blood. Ten machines destroyed. Six Vanguards dead. Four left breathing.
Barely.
....
Ken Chagol trudged through the thick, glutinous mud, each step slow, each breath heavy with the stink of rot and gunpowder. The sky above was overcast, a mass of dull gray bleeding amber light as the sun began to fall. The only sound was the squelch of his boots and the distant cawing of birds circling over something dead.
He walked without direction. No mission, no comrades, no command.
Just him.
And the mud.
A shattered helmet half-submerged caught his eye—dented, cracked down the middle. He stooped to pick it up, turning it over in his hands. There was a faint engraving on the inside rim, "L. VERDIN."
Ken stared at it.
"Another name. Another ghost."
He let it drop.
Mud splashed.
He moved on, reaching a half-collapsed fence, skeletal and twisted. Beyond it lay burnt-out ruins of what was once a barn. Crows gathered atop the ash-covered beams, watching him like silent judges.
He sat down on a dry patch near the fence, letting the mud cling to his knees, staring out into the vast emptiness.
"Why does identity even matter?"
He didn't speak it aloud. Just thought it—over and over.
Was a name enough to make someone real?
When the war began, he was Ken Chagol—ranked, categorized, known. His files had weight. His face was on lists. People saluted him. People cursed him.
Now… no rank. No tags. Not even a unit.
If he died here, in this anonymous patch of mud, what would change? Who would even know?
A low wind rolled in, fluttering a torn sleeve on his coat. It reminded him of a flag surrendered, forgotten.
He picked up a stick and etched a line into the mud in front of him. Then another. Then a crude circle.
A face?
No. Just symbols.
Maybe identity was just… noise. A structure people clung to, so they didn't drown in chaos.
But even so…
"If I disappear," he thought, "without a name, without a mark, was I ever here at all?"
Something stirred in his gut. Not fear. Not sorrow.
Emptiness.
He stood, slowly wiping his mud-streaked hands on his coat. The wind blew harder now. The horizon darkened.
He didn't have an answer.
But he kept wandering.