Ashfall's east end hums with the wet hiss of rain on rusted iron. Old shipping cranes loom like gallows over the Dockside Industrial Park — a sprawl of fenced labs, locked warehouses, and broken machines that once moved honest cargo. Now they move secrets.
---
Micah Torres sits hunched in the back of a gutted laundromat three blocks from the perimeter fence. His hoodie's pulled up, eyes flickering in the glow of four screens balanced on plastic milk crates. His fingers dance over a half-dead keyboard patched with duct tape.
Each monitor spits live feeds:
— Umbra security drones sweeping the chain-link fences.
— A thermal cam catching a guard scratching his nose.
— An old city grid map, overlay blinking with red nodes — fake alarm pings he's feeding Umbra's system.
He mutters through cracked lips, coffee breath sour: "Come on, pretty bird. Dance while I paint the dark for you."
He flicks a slider. A drone pivots left instead of right — exactly where he wants it not to look. On another feed, a single blip — Selene's signal — hovers near a loading dock, waiting for the window.
Micah taps his headset twice: "Window's good. Thirty seconds."
He cracks his neck. Another drone goes blind. The chain rattles.
---
Selene Kain perches like a gargoyle on a rusted freight crane above Umbra's Dockside Lab. Wind claws at her wing-cloak — black fabric stitched with carbon filaments that catch the drizzle and make her vanish if she keeps still.
Below her, four guards in black body armor stand bored under the awning by the main freight door. They sip cheap coffee, trade cigarettes, don't see the shadow watching from above.
She breathes through her nose — counts their steps, their nods, the flick of a lighter — a pattern more predictable than any heartbeat. She shifts her weight. The crane's rust groans under her boot.
One guard looks up.
Too late.
She drops silent as the rain — lands behind him, gloved hand cupping his mouth as the talon slips under the helmet lip. He's dead before his legs know it. She slides him behind stacked pallets. Three left.
---
Inside the lab, behind steel doors that never should have opened again, Moloch Horn strains against the reinforced shackles that hold his wrists overhead. His shoulders ripple with stitched muscle — each breath a rumble that echoes through the concrete floor.
In the observation room, King Crow's men stand clustered behind the glass — sleek Umbra contractors in suits that cost more than the block they stand on. One whispers, "He's responding to the hormone flush. But the neural tether isn't syncing. If it breaks—"
Crow cuts him off with a raised palm. His gloved finger taps the glass. He wants the beast angry, not obedient.
"He's meant to break things," Crow says softly. "The chain's just the starting line."
---
Two blocks out, Iris Calder and Eli Navarro sit in a battered unmarked cruiser under a flickering street lamp. Navarro drums the dash with his pen, half-listening to dispatch hiss about a silent alarm ping.
"What's Umbra doing out here anyway?" Navarro asks. "You think they're moving drugs? Organ smuggling? They got all these labs and nobody ever—"
Iris doesn't answer. Her eyes stay locked on the perimeter fence ahead — just visible through the windshield's rain smear. She flicks through her phone — old case notes, shipment logs, the pattern Navarro's too green to see.
"It's not drugs," she murmurs. "They're building something. Or someone."
Navarro laughs softly. *"Jesus. That 'Raven' crap got to you too? C'mon, Calder — we need real charges, not ghost stories."
Iris's fingers trace the line on her notebook where she wrote Project MINOTAUR — a rumor Micah once fed her under a fake name. She didn't believe it then. She does now.
She kills the headlights. "Stay here. Radio backup if I'm not back in ten."
Navarro opens his mouth — "Wait—"
Too late. Iris is out the door, coat pulled tight, badge hidden in her pocket. The street swallows her up.
---
In the lab's security hallway, Selene glides past a flickering keypad, leaving two more guards stacked behind a mop closet door. Her breathing stays calm — one beat, two, no panic. Her visor pings softly — Micah feeding her camera loops so the corridor stays clear.
She drops to one knee beside a heavy rolling door. A lab logo half scratched off: UMBRA — MINOTAUR DIVISION.
Her gloved finger traces the faded letters. A soft static hums in her ear — Micah again: "Big boy's in there. Chain's wearing thin. You want him awake?"
Selene flips open her wrist blade, its edge humming faint in the dark.
"Let him wake," she whispers. "Just not yet."
She hacks the panel — a spark, a soft click — and the door slides open enough for her to slip inside.
---
Inside the cage, Moloch Horn lifts his head as the metal door cracks open. His nostrils flare — scent of oil, blood, ozone. New scent: feathers. Steel. The ghost who kills his keepers in the dark.
He shifts. The cuff chain creaks like old ship rope about to snap.
Selene stops ten feet from the containment glass. She can see the stitches across his shoulders — thick staples holding muscle like wet rope. His eyes flick to hers — black, animal, but behind them: something that knows hunger in words too.
She lifts her blade. She could slice the feed. Could free him. Or gut him in his chains.
Micah's static voice flickers: "Iris is close. Gotta go, pretty bird. This is your window."
But Selene doesn't move. She studies the beast's wrists, the strain in his breathing. She knows the look — prey made into a weapon. A monster that didn't choose its teeth.
"I'm sorry," she whispers through the glass. It's not mercy — it's a funeral promise.
---
Outside, Iris slips past a rusted chain-link gap, boots wet with mud. Her breath fogs in the cold. She sees the loading bay — fresh blood on the steps, a dropped guard helmet.
She draws her sidearm — thumb off the safety. Navarro's voice crackles in her ear: "Calder, you copy? There's chatter — Umbra wants us off this block—"
Iris cuts him off. "Stay put, Navarro. If you see movement — call it in. Do not play hero."
She creeps up the side wall — and catches a flicker of shadow slipping inside the lab door. A shape she half-knows: black, fast, gone in an eye blink.
She whispers to herself: "Raven…"
---
Micah's screen flickers — a second blip pops on his grid: IRIS CALDER. Too close. He swears, hits a kill switch — cameras fuzz to static. Alarms start to re-arm. His fingers jam keys so hard his nail splits.
"Come on, come on…"
---
Selene watches the chain. Moloch Horn breathes deep, the shackles screech. Sparks dance down the links. King Crow's voice booms through an overhead speaker: "Time to wake up, Bull King. Let her see what she's hunting."
She hears the pop — steel links giving way like bones under a hammer.
She turns. The containment door locks behind her with a hiss — a trap. She smiles under her mask. Good.
---
Outside, Iris presses her back to the wall as an echo rolls out — metal shrieking, a deep roar that makes her ribs vibrate. She clicks her radio: "Navarro — call it in. Now. We've got something alive in there."
A shape moves behind her — a guard stumbling from the shadows. Iris pivots, gun out — too slow. The man swings a baton — catches her wrist. The gun skitters. They crash into the mud.
---
Inside the cage, Moloch Horn snaps the last shackle. He rises — seven feet of stitched rage, horns scraping the overhead beam. His eyes lock on Selene. He snarls — a sound like a train tearing steel tracks.
Selene flicks her talons open, steps sideways, blades up.
---
Outside, Navarro stares at the lab gates as they blast open — a security truck swerves out, crashing through puddles, alarms howling. He sees a flicker of someone in black inside — Iris? No — someone else.
He grabs the radio, voice shaking: "Dispatch — officer down! We need backup at Dockside Industrial now! Umbra lab breach — repeat, lab breach—"
---
Micah watches the feeds die one by one. He leans back in the laundromat's dark, wipes blood from his split fingernail. His grin is hollow, tired, but sharp.
"Run, pretty bird. Run and break it all."
---
Inside, Selene lunges. Talons catch metal. The Bull King charges — a wall of stitched muscle and horns that learned how to hate its cage.
Ashfall shudders as the chain finally breaks.
---
END OF CHAPTER FIVE