The tunnels beneath Sterling were no place for the living. The air was heavy, stale with the scent of rust and old water, dripping steadily from cracked stone pipes overhead. Rats scurried across the beams and shadows clung like cobwebs to the brickwork. This labyrinth of forgotten infrastructure had been abandoned by the city decades ago, but for Marcus and Kade, it was the safest place to breathe freely without eyes watching every move.
Their footsteps echoed faintly as they entered the small hideout carved out of an old maintenance chamber. The walls had been patched with scrap metal, the ceiling reinforced with mismatched beams, and a flickering bulb buzzed overhead, casting light that was more suggestion than illumination. A table sat in the center, its surface littered with cards, half-empty bottles, and scraps of paper from their last plans.
Kade kicked the door shut with his heel and tossed a cloth bundle onto the table, the weight of it producing a dull metallic thud. He exhaled deeply, brushing his dark hair back with one hand while slumping into the nearest chair. "Smooth job, huh?" His grin was lopsided, cocky even, but his eyes betrayed exhaustion. "Almost felt too easy."
Marcus didn't answer immediately. He moved with less ease, his body still aching from the encounter with the Umbrae earlier that night. His ribs felt heavy with every breath, his energy drained, his power sealed by the recovery his body demanded. He lowered himself into a chair across from Kade, resting his forearms on the table.
"You think it's safe?" Marcus finally asked, nodding at the bundle.
Kade laughed, pulling a cigarette from a crumpled pack. "Safe? It's tech, not a bomb. They wanted it locked up because it's worth something. And now it's ours." He struck a match, the flame momentarily illuminating the sharp lines of his face before the glow of the cigarette took over.
Marcus leaned back, studying the shadows on the walls. He couldn't shake the unease gnawing at him. The Umbrae he'd seen earlier, the strange pull from within the crater, the aching scar of using soul isolation—it all pressed against him like unseen weight. This chamber should have felt like refuge, but instead, it felt claustrophobic, as though something unseen had followed them here.
Kade exhaled a long plume of smoke and smirked. "Relax, brother. Tonight, we celebrate. Tomorrow, we figure out who'll pay the highest price for it."
But Marcus couldn't relax. His gaze lingered on the bundle between them. Whatever they had taken wasn't just valuable—it radiated something he couldn't name, something that made the shadows in the corners of the hideout feel thicker, closer.
Kade dragged the bundle closer, his cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, the ember glowing faintly in the dim room. He pulled at the cloth, unwrapping it layer by layer until the object beneath gleamed under the flickering lightbulb.
It wasn't large—no bigger than a man's forearm—but its design was nothing like the scrap metal or black-market firearms they were used to running. Smooth plating of matte silver curved seamlessly around its frame, broken only by faint grooves that glowed with a dull bluish pulse, as if the machine itself had a heartbeat. At one end, a lens-like aperture reflected the bulb's weak light, shifting almost imperceptibly, as though adjusting to their presence.
Marcus leaned forward, his unease sharpening into something more tangible. He could feel it—like a ripple brushing against his senses. Energy, faint but undeniable, thrummed inside the device. Not human energy. Not natural. It was… alive.
"What the hell is it?" Marcus whispered, more to himself than Kade.
"Prototype weapon, most likely," Kade answered, though his grin widened as he tapped the casing with his knuckle. "Look at this thing. Sleek, compact, military-grade at least. Whoever was guarding it clearly thought it was important. That means we've hit the jackpot."
Marcus frowned, studying the grooves, their glow steadying as if reacting to the sound of their voices. "It doesn't feel like a weapon." He hesitated. "It feels… wrong."
Kade barked a laugh, blowing smoke over the device. "You've been spooked ever since the crater. You're jumpy, man. It's tech, nothing more. Don't start putting ghosts into machines."
But Marcus couldn't shake it. The faint pulse inside the device matched the rhythm of the lingering ache in his chest, syncing with the wound left behind from soul isolation. Every thrum made his skin prickle, every beat reminding him that he wasn't whole, that his powers were still buried in recovery.
"What if it's more than just tech?" Marcus pressed, his voice low. "What if it's… connected to something else?"
Kade gave him a look—half amusement, half irritation. "You mean like those shadow-things you claimed you saw in the streets? Marcus, come on. Spirits, demons, whatever—you're talking myths. This here?" He jabbed a finger at the prototype. "This is real. This is credits in our pockets. I don't care if it shoots fire or slices bread; what matters is who'll pay for it."
The bulb flickered, and for the briefest moment, Marcus thought he saw the grooves shift, the glow pulsing brighter as if aware of their argument. He blinked, and the light steadied, but the impression lingered.
He sat back, unease growing heavier. Kade could call it paranoia all he wanted, but Marcus had felt the touch of unnatural forces, had seen shadows born from fear itself. And the energy thrumming in this device was no different. It wasn't just a machine. It was something else—something waiting.
The hideout felt smaller the longer the prototype sat on the table. Its faint hum, almost imperceptible at first, began to gnaw at Marcus like a mosquito buzzing just out of reach. Every pulse, every flicker of its grooves, reminded him of the whispering shadows that had brushed against him in the streets. The Umbrae. He couldn't prove it, not to Kade, but his instincts screamed that this device wasn't built just for men.
Kade, on the other hand, leaned back in his chair, boot propped against the edge of the table, smoke curling lazily around his head. He looked at home here, as if the stolen tech were nothing more than another trophy on the long list of scores he had proudly accumulated.
"You've got that look again," Kade said, pointing his cigarette toward Marcus. "The one where you're chewing holes in your head. Relax, man. We did good. We're alive. We're rich."
Marcus's jaw tightened. "You don't feel it?"
"Feel what? A paycheck waiting to happen?"
Marcus shook his head. "No. It's… heavy. Like it's watching us. Like it doesn't belong here."
Kade groaned, dragging his hands down his face in mock frustration. "Marcus, you've been talking like this ever since—ever since whatever the hell happened to you at the crater. Look, I didn't press you about it. You came back half-dead, mumbling about shadows and energy and pain, and I figured you'd explain when you were ready. But this? Man, you're starting to sound like one of those lunatics that whisper about monsters in the sewers."
Marcus's hands clenched into fists on the table. He wanted to tell Kade everything—the Umbrae, the voices, the way his power had almost torn him apart when he forced the soul isolation spell. But the words caught in his throat. Kade wasn't like him. He hadn't Awakened. He couldn't feel the thin veil between reality and what lurked behind it. To Kade, the world was simple: survive, hustle, win.
"You don't understand," Marcus muttered, his voice sharp with frustration. "This isn't just some prototype. It's alive, somehow. I can feel it. And if we sell it to the wrong hands, we'll unleash something we can't control."
Kade slammed his boot down from the table, the chair scraping loudly against the floor as he leaned forward, eyes narrowed. "Don't preach to me about control. We've been crawling through this city since we were kids, scrounging scraps while the highborn lived fat and safe. You think we get to be picky now? This—" he jabbed at the prototype, knuckles white, "—is our shot. You want to throw it away because your gut tells you a ghost is inside it? Fine. But don't drag me into your paranoia."
The silence that followed was thick, heavier than the stifling air of the tunnels. The hum of the device filled the gap between them like a heartbeat neither wanted to acknowledge.
Marcus looked away, jaw tight, every instinct telling him to push harder, to make Kade see. But another part of him knew—pressing too hard could fracture something far worse than their partnership.
The lightbulb flickered again, shadows twitching against the walls. Neither spoke. For the first time, Marcus felt the divide between them as something tangible, a crack running silently but dangerously through the foundation of their bond.
The city at night was a beast of iron and smoke, its arteries lit by flickering neon and the dim glow of streetlamps that fought against the ever-creeping dark. Sterling breathed in whispers—trains grinding through underground rails, steam hissing from broken vents, the drunken laughter of workers stumbling home far past curfew. Yet beneath it all, something else stirred. A presence moving with a rhythm too calculated to belong to the ordinary chaos of the city.
The Hunter followed that rhythm.
Perched atop the rusted frame of an old construction site, he scanned the skyline, his cloak rippling with the night wind. His face remained hidden beneath a mask carved from obsidian glass, smooth and expressionless, reflecting only slivers of moonlight. He needed no map, no signal tracer. The stolen prototype pulsed faintly in his senses, its resonance brushing against his perception like a beacon calling home.
He crouched low, palm brushing the steel beam beneath him. The metal vibrated with Sterling's heartbeat, and he focused—narrowing down the pulse until he could almost see its echo spreading across the district. There. Subtle, faint, but undeniable. Two figures had dragged the prototype into the undercity. Rats carrying fire back to their nest.
His lips curled beneath the mask, though no one was present to see.
The Hunter's movements were liquid—silent leaps from rooftop to rooftop, steps finding places no eye would guess. Even when his boots landed against brittle tiles or loose gravel, the sound was swallowed by the night. He carried no lantern, no torch; his presence was shadow and silence, a predator trailing prey.
When he reached the edge of the district, the city shifted. The wide avenues narrowed into alleys that reeked of smoke and damp rot. Pipes rattled overhead, dripping condensation onto cracked pavement. A flickering sign buzzed above a shuttered pawnshop, its letters half-dead, spelling nothing coherent. Here, the underbelly of Sterling ruled. Here, no one would question a stranger moving through the dark.
He stopped at the mouth of a tunnel entrance, the air inside hot and stale, heavy with the scent of rust and mildew. Faint trails of bootprints disturbed the dust at its edges. He knelt, running his gloved fingers along the impressions. Two sets, one heavier than the other. Fresh.
"They don't even know they're being hunted," he murmured, voice low, distorted by the mask into something mechanical.
The prototype pulsed stronger here, like a drumbeat growing louder the deeper he leaned into the earth. With a final glance at the city lights vanishing behind him, the Hunter slipped into the shadows of the tunnel, movements deliberate and predatory.
Far below, Marcus and Kade sat in uneasy silence, their friendship straining under the weight of distrust and the prototype's ominous presence. They argued about its purpose, about its worth, unaware that their time to decide was dwindling.
For already, the Hunter was near.
The hideout's silence stretched, broken only by the low hum of the prototype sitting between Marcus and Kade. It was small, no larger than a handheld radio, its casing scratched and dented from years of testing. Yet its faint pulse of blue light drew the eye, steady and unnatural, like a heart that didn't belong to this world.
Marcus leaned forward, elbows on his knees, staring at it as though it might suddenly leap alive. "This thing… it doesn't just run. It breathes. Can't you feel it?
Kade shrugged, though his eyes betrayed unease. "All I feel is money. Black-market buyers will pay more for this than we've ever dreamed. That's what matters."
Marcus shook his head, frustration edging into his tone. "No. You're not listening. This isn't just tech—it's… wrong. The air around it shifts, like it's feeding off something. What if it's not meant for people like us to even touch?"
The tension in the room thickened, their words bouncing off cracked concrete walls. Kade opened his mouth to argue when a sound cut through the air—so faint it could've been mistaken for a trick of the tunnels. A scrape. A whisper of boot against stone.
Marcus froze. His instincts, sharpened by his half-healed Awakening, flared like sparks in dry grass. His skin prickled. Someone was there.
Kade caught it too. His hand dropped to the knife at his belt, jaw tightening. "You hear that?"
Marcus nodded slowly, eyes narrowing. "We're not alone."
The shadows in the tunnel mouth yawned wide, swallowing every trace of light. Neither of them could see movement, but the weight of a gaze pressed against their backs. It wasn't the idle stare of a passing drunk. It was deliberate. Measured. Predatory.
Marcus stood, chain faintly shimmering at his chest, though the energy refused to obey him fully. His body remembered the pain of forcing power too early. He clenched his fist, forcing calm. "Who's there?"
Silence answered.
Only the low hum of the prototype.
Kade stepped closer to Marcus, whispering under his breath. "We move. Now. Whoever it is, they've been listening long enough."
Marcus didn't argue. He grabbed the prototype, the device buzzing faintly in his grip, and together they slipped into the narrow corridor at the back of the hideout. Their boots struck stone too loudly, their breaths came too quickly, but neither slowed.
Behind them, in the place where they had sat only moments before, the shadows shifted. A figure stepped forward into the faint blue glow the prototype had left behind. Obsidian mask. Cloak that seemed to drink in the darkness.
The Hunter had found his prey.