The backstreets of District 5 were narrower than those of 12-denser and stitched together like scar tissue. Building walls pressed in claustrophobically close, webbed with rusted signage and laundry lines. The smoke here was thicker, too-cigarette fumes, exhaust, steam from cracked vents, and something that smelled suspiciously like boiling glue.
From the small, grease-stained window of a dingy café tucked into the second floor of an unlicensed printing shop, Kamina and Shmuel sat at a crooked table. The coffee tasted like burnt oil, the tea like a sock, and the waitress looked like she hated both her job and every customer equally. But they weren't here for the beverages.
They were watching.
Across the narrow street, beneath the creaking glow of flickering signage that read "Yamada & Co. Jewel-Cigars", a dozen rough-looking men and women moved like wolves circling a den. Leather jackets, visible augment ports on their arms and necks, mismatched tattoos of nails and broken hourglasses inked across their bodies-the unmistakable signs of a low-tier syndicate with delusions of grandeur.
"The Twenty-First Nail," Shmuel muttered, keeping his voice low as he watched them unload crates from the back of an unregistered truck into the shop's side entrance. "Operating out in the open, but everyone too scared to get close." He opened a worn brown notebook and flipped through the pages of hastily scribbled intel. "They sell jewels and unlicensed cigarettes on the front, and from what I've gathered—harvest organs out the back. Pedestrians just… disappear. It's been going on for weeks."
"Charming bunch," Kamina said with a grin, one hand spinning a toothpick between his fingers like a blade. "Almost makes me nostalgic for the Rats."
Shmuel didn't laugh. He glanced sideways at Kamina, then at the shop below again.
"Information wasn't easy to get," he said. "Cost me more than it should've. That banker hiked the price the moment he realized I wasn't some common scavenger. Bloodsucker."
"Well…" Kamina leaned back, arms folded behind his head, smile big enough to outshine the dim light above their table. "We do love giving. Especially to scumbags."
He stood up suddenly, and the legs of his chair screeched against the floor.
"Said kid," Kamina said, cracking his knuckles with an audible pop, "Isn't this a good time to try out our new augmentation?"
The fire in his eyes almost made the room warmer.
Shmuel shot him a side-glare, still sipping his terrible tea. "You blew up all our funds in one day," he said. "All of it. Every last coin. If we don't solve this case by the end of the week, we'll be broke, hungry, and possibly hunted by three separate loan collectors." He stood, slowly, brushing dust from his long coat. "So no, Kamina. This isn't a good time. But it's the only time."
Kamina laughed. It echoed through the empty café like a lion barking from the wrong jungle. The waitress gave him a murderous look and jabbed her cigarette deeper into the ashtray.
Outside, the crew of the Twenty-First Nail continued to operate like they owned the street-shoulders squared, mouths grinning, knives occasionally flashing out of sleeves to check and test. Anyone who got within ten meters of the storefront was shoved, threatened, or ignored entirely depending on how the gang felt.
But neither Kamina nor Shmuel looked afraid.
They watched.
They waited.
And when the signal came-the last crate disappearing into the back door-they stood in unison.
Kamina cracked his neck.
Shmuel closed his notebook with a snap.
"Let's break the damn door."
Before they could move in-before Kamina could wind his leg back and blow the back door off its hinges with sheer enthusiasm-a voice called out from behind them.
"Wait, Shmuel!"
He turned.
The voice was soft, surprised like the first light of morning after a long blackout. A girl stood there, around his age, with long chestnut hair cascading over her shoulders like strands of autumn dusk. Her skin was fair, her cheeks subtly flushed from the city air, and her eyes… those blue eyes, crystalline and clear, wide with recognition. They looked at him like no time had passed.
"I haven't seen you in years," she said, stepping closer, her hands clutching her coat as though anchoring herself in this sudden, unexpected reunion.
Shmuel blinked.
It was like seeing a dream stumble into reality.
"…Bruno?"
The name left his lips in a hush, as though saying it louder might break the moment.
She smiled, wide and glowing. "You remember me! I haven't found any way to reach you since you dropped out of high school in the Nest of E Corp. One day you were just… gone." There was no accusation in her voice-only wonder. "How have you been?"
"I was just… a bit busy," he said. "Life in the City doesn't exactly let you drift. I'm working in a Fixer office now. Actually—" he gave a small, apologetic smile, "—I'm on a case right this minute, so… maybe we could talk more after?"
Bruno looked like she wanted to say more but she nodded.
And then Kamina moved.
His head snapped toward the alley, sunglasses reflecting something sharp.
Two of the Twenty-First Nail thugs were sprinting down the side path, each grabbing one arm of a small, limp girl. Her feet dragged uselessly behind her-unconscious or worse. They were heading for the back door of the building in a panic, looking over their shoulders like someone or something was chasing them.
He stepped forward and slammed his slipper into the back door with such force it cracked the hinges. The thugs flinched hard as the door exploded open, bouncing off the wall with a metal shriek.
Kamina stepped into the dim interior of the building, adjusting his red, oddly angular sunglasses with one hand.
With the other, he unsheathed his katana, the steel flashing like lightning in the sickly hallway light.
He grinned wide.
"You bastards ready for the worst ass-kicking of your goddamn lives?"
His voice echoed down the corridor.
Shmuel followed right behind Kamina, the air thick with the smell of rust, damp concrete, and something fouler-blood, maybe, or the rot of unwashed desperation. The dim corridor stretched ahead like the throat of some beast, its flickering lights casting long, twitching shadows.
Kamina was already in motion. Three of the Twenty-First Nail thugs-armed with cheap blades and jagged confidence-rushed him all at once. Kamina didn't flinch.
He moved like he had something to prove and nothing to fear.
The first thug's strike came low-Kamina sidestepped it and brought his blade down in an arc, severing muscle and spirit in a single stroke. Blood hit the wall. The second and third barely had time to react before Kamina spun, using the momentum of the cut to drive the reinforced sheath of his Nodachi into the gut of one and across the skull of the other. The dull clang of bone on enhanced alloy rang out. One slumped instantly. The other staggered, then dropped like dead weight.
Kamina exhaled sharply through his nose, then rolled his right shoulder with satisfaction.
"Those synthetic muscle fibers are enhancing my right arm strength real good," he grinned, gripping his blade tightly. "Glad we swung by that workshop to give my Nodachi some love-and reinforced this bad girl." He tapped the scabbard against his palm with a hollow thunk.
From behind, Shmuel added dryly, "And it also ate every single Ahn we had left after installing the augmentations to our bodies."
He stripped off his gloves, and for a brief moment, the flickering hallway light revealed the metal gleam of his mechanical hands-elegantly built, but engineered for brutality. At the base of each palm, a circular chamber clicked softly-a housing for compressed ballistic charges. He only had two bullets per hand, and the cost of each shot would burn holes in their wallets and possibly their future. But even without them…
Shmuel moved like a coil unspooling. He slipped past Kamina, stepped low, and threw a brutal punch straight into the lung of one charging thug. There was a wet crunch-cartilage folding in on itself-as the man buckled. Shmuel didn't stop. He hammered down again and again, fists crashing like wrecking balls until the thug hit the floor and didn't rise.
The last thug in the corridor tried to scramble back-only to be met with the broadside of Kamina's scabbard smashing into his face, sending him spinning unconscious into the wall.
The girl, being unconscious, was now lying just a few feet away, breathing shallowly. Her dress was torn, one shoe missing. Bruises lined her arms.
Shmuel looked at her, then at Kamina. "We should leave her here for now. Still got twenty-eight of those bastards left."
Kamina wiped a bit of blood off his cheek, then nodded. "We'll come back once this place is clear."
Shmuel flexed his mechanical fingers. The augments were beginning to hum in rhythm with his heartbeat. He wasn't used to the weight yet.
"I don't want to use a bullet though," he said, half to Kamina, half to himself.
Kamina gave him a wild grin, bloodstained and bright behind those jagged sunglasses.
"Then save it for something that really needs breaking."
They stepped deeper into the corridor.
The concrete beneath their feet trembled.
Footsteps.
Dozens of them, heavy and fast-boots slamming against the stairs above, growing louder and more frantic with every second.
The other thugs had heard.
The racket from the back corridor was impossible to miss, and now the rest of the Twenty-First Nail were coming, shouting curses and barking orders in a disorganized surge of desperation and violence.
Shmuel stepped forward, his mechanical fingers twitching with calculation. His eyes scanned the upper stairwell-and the moment he saw the first cluster of bodies charging down, he clenched his jaw.
"Kamina, move!"
Kamina didn't need to be told twice. He darted to the side, blade at the ready.
Shmuel raised his right arm, turned his palm toward the horde, and clicked the firing pin hidden in the base of his wrist.
BOOM.
The bullet ignited with a deafening crack, and his fist shot forward with impossible acceleration-a thunderous shockwave erupted from the point of impact as his punch collided with the lead thug's chest.
The man's torso caved in. His ribcage splintered audibly. The force didn't just stop there-it carried into the two behind him, sending them flying like ragdolls against the stair rail. Bones broke on impact. One hit the wall, neck at the wrong angle. All three dropped like sacks of meat.
"Down to twenty-five!" Shmuel shouted.
Kamina let out a bark of laughter, already in motion.
"Just warming up!"
He lunged into the hallway where the stairs met the landing, meeting the incoming tide with zero hesitation.
The first thug swung with a lead pipe- Kamina stepped under it, and in the same breath, sliced upward. His nodachi caught the man from hip to shoulder in a perfect diagonal-blood sprayed in a crimson fan.
He spun to the left.
A second thug tried to grapple him from behind-Kamina drove his elbow into the man's nose, then jammed the scabbard into his ribs with a vicious back-thrust. The man howled and crumpled.
The third came in screaming, swinging twin knives.
Clang!
Kamina raised his scabbard to parry-then headbutted the attacker mid-slash, shattering his nose. Before the man could recover, Kamina slammed his boot into the thug's knee, snapping it sideways, then brought the edge of his sheath down onto his temple. A dull crack. Out cold.
Two more came from the stairwell.
Kamina rushed them instead-a blur of motion.
He kicked off the wall, spinning horizontally, his nodachi arcing in a wide circle that severed the tip of one thug's weapon and buried the blade deep into his collarbone. The other thug panicked, swung wide. Kamina ducked beneath it, twisted his grip, and with both hands plunged the blade forward through the man's gut, twisting once before yanking it out.
Behind him, Shmuel moved in step-watching his partner's back like a second heartbeat.
A thug tried to flank them.
Shmuel raised his left arm this time, locked his sights, and triggered the second bullet.
BOOM.
The metallic palm exploded forward with devastating velocity, connecting with the side of the thug's skull. The head whipped sideways, neck bending violently before the entire body spun into a pile of crates and didn't move.
Two more surged in behind-Shmuel gripped one by the throat, lifted him effortlessly with mechanical strength, and slammed him to the floor. The tiles cracked. He stomped on the chest-ribs crushed.
The second swung a machete-Shmuel caught it with his bare metal hand, the blade shrieking against the alloy-and ripped it from the attacker's grasp, elbowed him in the temple, then bashed the machete's handle into the back of the man's neck.
Kamina spun, scabbard and blade both drawn.
Two more came in fast-Kamina grabbed one by the shoulder, kicked his knee out from behind, then used him as a human shield against the other's incoming punch.
Then, in one smooth motion, stabbed through the shield's chest and into the one behind him. Both collapsed.
Ten more lay dead or unconscious at Kamina's feet.
His red sunglasses were streaked with blood now. His breathing was steady, exhilarated.
He cracked his neck. "Fifteen to go. You keeping up, kid?"
Shmuel stood amid the wreckage of splintered furniture, busted bones, and leaking pipes.
He flexed his aching fists-one bullet left in each chamber, both expended now.
"Just don't get cocky. These were the stupid ones."
Somewhere in the building, alarms began to ring.
From deeper inside, new footsteps stirred-heavier.
Kamina grinned.
"Oh? Then maybe the smart ones'll be more fun."
They reloaded their stance.
The floor was slick with blood. The last of the goons collapsed with a wet crunch, and the hallway fell into a tense silence-just the hum of flickering overhead lights and the slow, synchronized breathing of Kamina and Shmuel.
"That's the last of them," Kamina muttered, wiping his blade off on the shirt of a corpse. He stepped over the broken remains of a table, nodding toward the main office at the end of the hall. "One more room. Boss is probably holed up in there."
Shmuel cracked his knuckles, the hydraulics in his arms hissing softly. "Still got two rounds left."
"Good." Kamina rotated his shoulder, stretching out a bruise from earlier. "The smart ones you mentioned weren't that impressive, y'know." He gave Shmuel a cocky grin. "The dumb ones at least tried harder."
Shmuel chuckled under his breath.
Kamina stepped up to the last reinforced steel door-its frame warped from rust and boot marks. He cracked his neck and drew back a foot to kick it open.
But before his heel even connected-
BOOM!
The entire door exploded outward.
Steel crashed into Kamina's chest like a freight train, flinging him back into the hallway. He hit the wall with a grunt, the breath knocked from his lungs. Sparks rained down from the ripped-out wiring.
From the smoke and splinters stepped a mountain of muscle.
Over two meters tall, shoulders wide as a freight loader. His skin was grey and veiny, like something fermented underground, and in each hand he gripped a massive iron nail, longer than a man's forearm and twice as thick.
The boss.
His eyes were bloodshot, jaw clenched with barely-contained fury.
Kamina groaned and pushed himself upright, clutching his ribs where the door had smashed into him. He looked up at the behemoth of a man and flashed a weak grin.
"So you're the big boss, huh?" He adjusted his cracked sunglasses. "Syndicate's called the Twenty-First Nail, and I'm only counting two of 'em. So-where the hell's the other nineteen?"
The joke landed like a rock.
The boss roared and surged forward, swinging both nails down like warhammers.
Shmuel was already in motion-he leapt between the two, raising his mechanical arms. The nails slammed into his palms, stopping with a sharp metallic clang that echoed through the whole building.
Shmuel's arms trembled, servos groaning under the pressure-but he held.
"Now, Kamina!"
Kamina spun to his feet and dashed in. His blade flashed-a clean arc that slashed across the boss's back, leaving a red gash.
But the giant didn't even flinch.
Shmuel saw his chance. He shifted his stance, pivoted, and drove a fist into the boss's jaw—a clean, centerline punch.
The boss's head snapped to the side…
And then turned right back, lips peeling back into a sneer.
No damage.
Kamina landed next to Shmuel, eyes narrowing.
"He's tougher than the rest."
"Maybe. Definitely mad." Shmuel's voice was tight. "We killed his crew."
The boss lunged again, this time bringing both nails around in a brutal horizontal sweep.
Kamina ducked beneath the swing, stabbing upward, his nodachi scraped along the ribs, but again, the skin felt like punching alloy. The man barely reacted.
Shmuel went for the knees, a heavy kick, but the giant caught his leg mid-swing and threw him against the wall like a rag doll.
"Shmuel!"
"I'm okay," he coughed, sliding down the wall.
Then Kamina's eyes flicked past the boss, into the room he'd just come from. What he saw stopped him cold.
Inside the office were dozens of women, some sprawled on the floor, some barely conscious, all naked, pale, and gaunt. The air reeked of chemicals and blood. IV bags hung from rusted hooks. In one corner, there was a table with surgical tools, organs were still laid out on metal trays. One girl blinked up at him, lips moving, but no sound came out.
Kamina's hands clenched so tight his knuckles turned white.
"...You son of a bitch."
His grip on the blade tightened as his stance shifted from brash to lethal.
The boss charged again, both nails overhead, but this time, Shmuel slid under the swing, popping up just behind Kamina, eyes locked and full of fury.
"I'm done playing around."
He took a deep breath, lifted both fists and clicked both firing mechanisms at once.
BANG. BANG.
The sound shook the hallway.
He launched forward in a blur of motion, both fists arcing straight toward the boss's face. The moment they made contact.
BOOM.
The force was titanic.
Both fists struck the boss square in the skull with such violent kinetic energy that the man's head jerked backward like a struck tree, and a shockwave rippled through the room. His neck snapped with an audible crack, his entire body lifted an inch off the ground before it slammed into the wall behind him, denting the steel paneling.
He slid down, leaving a smear of blood behind.
Dead.
Shmuel stood panting, hands smoking from the recoil, arms trembling.
He staggered slightly, catching himself on the wall. "I'm… out of rounds."
Kamina sheathed his blade slowly, eyes still dark.
"You used them well."
He stepped past the corpse and into the room. A wave of rot and antiseptic hit him full in the face. He walked over to the operating table, gazed down at the butchered remains.
Some of them had still been alive during harvest.
He knelt beside one girl, who was barely conscious. He covered her with a coat from a dead thug nearby.
"It's over," Kamina said, his voice quiet and shaking with rage. "You're safe now."
Then he stood.
Shmuel flexed his mechanical fingers once more, thin trails of steam still venting from the overworked joints, before quietly sliding his gloves back on. The fabric hissed as it stretched over the chrome, sealing away the gleam of metal beneath dark leather. The thrum of power in his hands dulled to a quiet hum.
"We're done here."
He pulled a small communicator from his belt and flicked it open, tuning to a secure frequency. A few static-filled clicks passed before a voice crackled on the other end-nervous, cautious.
"...Hello?"
"This is Shmuel. The Twenty-First Nail has been uprooted."
A pause.
Then disbelief.
Then a single, relieved exhale.
"All of them?"
Shmuel glanced back at the hall, where blood still dripped from ceiling to floor. The bodies of the thugs lay scattered like trash. He nodded, though the person on the other end couldn't see.
"Every last one."
He closed the communicator and turned to Kamina, who was crouched near the front steps, tying a scrap of fabric around his gashed shoulder.
"Leave the rest to the locals," Shmuel said firmly. "They'll know what to do with the girls, with the corpses, with this goddamn building."
Kamina stood up, giving the hallway behind him one last look.
"Fine by me. I'm done staring at this rot."
They stepped outside.
The night air hit them like a slap—cool, sharp, and untainted. It was only then they noticed how foul the air inside had been. They took deep breaths, letting the weight of what just happened settle into their bones.
As they crossed the ruined threshold of the building, Kamina grabbed a stained cloth from his belt and wiped the blood from his cheek. Dried crimson flakes flaked off in the wind.
Shmuel followed suit, wiping a long red smear off the side of his jaw, then flicking the rag into a trash fire they passed. The flames briefly turned a brighter shade of orange.
"This city's still rotting. But that was one less maggot's nest."
Shmuel nodded.
"On to the next one."