08:00 AM - NPU Headquarters, North Metro, Rooftop
Adrian took the stairs, one floor at a time. Concrete walls were damp, streaked with water stains. The kind of place that reeked of bleach in the morning but still carried the sour breath of mold.
His boots echoed, his shoulders brushing peeling paint, the climb long enough for his pulse to settle into something cold, mechanical.
At the final landing, he shoved the rooftop door open. Wind slammed into him, cutting sharp against his skin.
The city stretched below in shades of steel and smoke, the early light a bruised gray that looked less like sunrise and more like a dying bulb flickering over Metro's carcass.
The helicopter waited. Its rotors slashed the air in violent rhythm, gusts whipping grit into his face. The smell was all oil, exhaust, and metal fatigue.
Garrick leaned half out of the cockpit, headset askew, black hair shredded into a windblown mess. His blue eyes caught the light in a way that was less friendly and more taunting, like he lived to annoy.
"Rise and shine, Agent. Didn't think I'd be your alarm clock."
Adrian pulled his coat tighter, stepping into the roar. He strapped in, jaw set.
"An alarm clock's useful. You just make noise."
Garrick barked a laugh that cut through the engine.
"Cute. Try not to redecorate my seats again."
"Fly straight," Adrian shot back, buckling down, "and I won't have to."
The rotors thundered. The rooftop, the agency, the city itself shrank beneath them as Garrick pulled the bird into the sky.
09:15 AM - South Metro, Outskirts
The skyline decayed as they pushed south. Towers of glass and chrome bled into fractured brick, smoke stacks, and cranes left to rust in place. The streets twisted tighter, the air heavier. Adrian could almost smell the rot through the cockpit glass.
Markets below sagged under their own filth. Meat strung on hooks, gray at the edges, crawling with flies. Water in the gutters shimmered with a rainbow sheen, chemical runoff eating its way through the pavement. This wasn't just poverty. It was corrosion given form.
Garrick tapped the dash in rhythm with the blades, smirk tugging at his mouth.
"Welcome to paradise. Don't say I never take you anywhere nice."
Adrian didn't look away from the skyline.
"I've seen dumps with better real estate."
"Guess you'll fit right in, then."
"Guess you'll keep circling while the adults work."
The smirk slipped. Just for a moment. Garrick's eyes flicked back to the controls, grin stitched back in place, but tighter.
10:00 AM - Nexo Pharmaceutical Perimeter, South Metro
Adrian melted into the sprawl. Crowds pressed close, too close, the stench of sweat and fried grease clinging to his coat. Children with hollow eyes darted through stalls, hands quick on pockets. Vendors shouted over one another, but beneath the noise, whispers festered.
His recorder hummed steady at his belt, capturing everything: broken talk of missing neighbors, of jobs at Nexo that never returned, of screams swallowed by the night.
Adrian's boots crunched glass as he climbed a scaffold, rising above the crowd. From there, he had a view of the compound's gate-guards pacing with rifles cradled like extensions of their arms. Their radios hissed, static breaking into sharp bursts, like the city itself was trying to chew through the frequency.

"Report." Elias crackled in his ear, voice dry, unhurried.
"Gate rotations are tight." Adrian muttered, eyes narrowing.
"No obvious blind spots. You'll need an inside angle. Someone on the payroll."
"You think employees are lining up to rat?"
"Better them than me bleeding for intel." Adrian retorted
A pause. Elias exhaled like gravel rolling. "I'll see who I can shake loose. Don't get sentimental if it costs extra."
"Never do."
04:30 PM - Nexo Main Entry Gate
He pushed too far.
One guard's gaze cut sharp across the crowd, locking onto him. Adrian's throat went dry before the man even shouted. Boots hammered pavement.
Adrian ran.
The crowd split around him. Rusted fencing caught his palms as he vaulted, scraping skin raw. Glass crunched under his boots. A bullet sparked off steel inches from his shoulder. Too close. Too loud.
"Elias," he hissed into the mic, breath ragged, "You hearing this?"
"Oh, I hear it," Elias said, bone-dry. "Sounds like cardio. Didn't peg you for the running type."
"Less commentary-" Adrian ducked behind a wall, concrete exploding under gunfire "-more solutions."
"Solution is: don't get caught."
Adrian sprinted harder, heart jackhammering, blood slicking his grip where rust had torn skin. Another corner, another breath-and the boots behind him cut off. Silence.
The alley was too still.
Adrian pressed against a wall, breath shallow. Somewhere, faint, a guard's radio kept hissing, broken whispers bleeding through static.
He tightened his grip on the wall, forcing focus. But smoke in the air twisted into another memory-flames licking a corridor, voices shrieking as the ceiling caved. His chest clenched.
He shook it off. Present. Always the present.
06:30 PM - South Metro Rooftop, Extraction Point
The helicopter dropped low, rotors churning the rooftop into a storm of grit and trash. Garrick leaned out, grinning like he'd been waiting for the show. In the dusk, the grin looked wrong-too sharp, too bright in the dark.
"Hell of a stroll, Agent. Trip over anything good?"
Adrian hauled himself into the cabin, palms bleeding, breath steady but cold.
"Only your sense of humor. Still waiting to recover."
"Man, one day you'll laugh at my jokes."
Adrian closed his eyes, voice flat. "Unlikely. Miracles are Elias's department."
The helicopter rose, city falling away beneath them. But the weight of South Metro clung to him-stench of blood and chemicals, whispers buried in static, the silence of footsteps that had stopped but never gone.
The city hadn't let him go. Not yet.