The casino firestorm painted the sky in funeral colours.
Smoke coiled into the night like black silk, rising above the Strip's twisted skeleton of neon and glass
The alarms wailed and the sirens screamed but by then I was long gone.
I landed hard on the pavement with neon lights glinting off my boots and Silk and Steel crossed over my chest like a burial shroud. My body ached from the explosion, ribs bruised and lungs gasping for air laced with burning velvet but none of that mattered.
The crime lord's limousine was already vanishing into the smoke. Tail lights flickering like red eyes disappearing into the mist.
But he had left his calling card.
My brother's pocket watch.
It should not have survived the blast. Nothing else had. The vault had been reduced to ash but there it sat in the wreckage, untouched, waiting for me like a relic of a life I'd buried long ago.
I knelt down with my heart pounding then i reached for it. The metal felt too cold for fire. I lifted it slowly, and as I turned it in my hand, the shattered face caught the light. The glass bit into my glove, slicing it clean.
2:15 AM.
The same time he died.
Then I heard it.
Tick.
Not the steady rhythm of timekeeping. Not the measured march of seconds. It was slower and broken. The wet stuttering sound of a dying man's last heartbeat.
Tick. Tick.
I flinched, breath caught in my throat.
Then the hologram flickered to life.
My brother's face. Pale, sweating with his eyes wild.
"little brother, you shouldn't have"
His voice fractured by static. It cut off before I could speak. The image dissolved like breath on glass. The pocket watch's hands began to spin. Not forward but backward.
The system flared across my vision.
"CONTRACT ACCEPTED [REDACTED]"
"REWARD: [TRUTH]"
And just like that, the street was no longer empty.
Across the avenue, a man stood in the shadow of a broken billboard. Eyes locked on mine. Not a security, not even a security.
No badge. No hesitation.
A courier.
He cleared his throat.
No words. Just a subtle bow, one hand resting lightly on the hilt of a blade I knew too well.
He attacked with my brother's signature move "the Dawn's First Light thrust". The motion was flawless and beautiful in the way violence can be when it carries memory.
I countered with Twilight Parry, our blades clashing in a spark of ghostlight, steel singing the same duet we had practiced as kids beneath the cherry trees of our father's dojo.
The courier's grin split wide.
"He said you'd do that," he laughed.
And his voice warped mid-syllable into his timbre.
My brother's.
System flare again.
"ELEGY MODE ACTIVATING"
"SYNCHRONIZATION: 12%"
My muscles locked.
Then moved.
Not mine anymore. My body shifted like it remembered him better than I did. Every strike mirrored lessons from the past. The Viper's Kiss came unbidden, elbow high and wrist tilted at exactly seventeen degrees.
The courier's face rippled.
His jawline blurred.
His nose reshaped.
His eyes narrowed and then widened, and suddenly I was staring into my own face.
Not him.
Never him.
Steel bit into flesh. My blade pierced his side. The courier stumbled, but in my vision it wasn't just blood that poured out.
It was a memory.
Summer rain drumming gently on the dojo's roof. My brother's hand adjusting my grip from behind.
"Stop hesitating on the backswing, little brother."
The courier's knife found my ribs. The pain snapped me back to the present like a slap. Warmth spread under my suit, but I didn't fall.
SYSTEM OVERRIDE: GHOSTWALK FORCED"
Time shifted.
I blinked and phased. The courier's second blade passed through an afterimage of me. My body half there and lungs burning from the strain of the forced maneuver.
I landed behind him.
But the watch in my pocket screamed.
Not a sound, not exactly.
A vibration. A grinding, like tiny teeth chewing bone. The gears inside it spun out of sync, faster than logic. The courier turned his head sharply.
His eyes.
His eyes were clockwork now, bronze gears turning behind paper-thin pupils. His body jerked like a marionette held by fraying threads.
He lunged.
I ducked low. Steel slashed upward. Silk cut across the back of his knees. He fell hard, spasming, and coughing blood between laughter.
He died laughing.
And as his corpse hit the pavement, the pocket watch clicked softly.
Once.
Twice.
Then the hands aligned.
2:15.
A burst of static.
And the hologram returned.
My brother, standing over me in a bloodstained suit.
Raising my dagger.
"WARNING: CONTRACT [REDACTED] IS YOUR OWN"
My throat dried.
My eyes locked on the projection, then on the body cooling beside me.
The courier's wrist tattoo pulsed once.
2:14
I took a step back. My heart pounding like it wanted to leave my chest.
One minute.
One minute until the cursed hour.
One minute until the system decided whether what I saw was the past,
Or the future.
The corpse twitched.
Its mouth moved.
But it wasn't the courier's voice anymore.
It was his.
"You always were the better killer."
Behind me was a soft sound.
Boots on pavement.
I turned.
A dozen more couriers stepped from the shadows.
Each one wearing my face.