Ashfall never sleeps. It just twitches between nightmares.
The storm had passed, but the air still reeked of smoke and static — the aftertaste of violence. I moved across rooftops, my shoulder throbbing where the bullet had grazed me hours ago. The feather I'd found — King Crow's message — was still clenched in my gloved hand. Every time I looked at it, I felt the weight of a noose tightening.
Micah's voice cracked through the earpiece.
> "You need stitches, Raven. That graze isn't just skin-deep."
"I've had worse."
"Yeah, but worse didn't bleed like that."
I didn't argue. He was right — but stopping wasn't an option.
The Flock had a project named Crowborn, and my father's photo was part of it. That meant his death wasn't a coincidence. It was an execution. And if The Flock thought burning the evidence would bury the truth, they hadn't met me yet.
The clinic was buried under three layers of city decay — between a condemned train tunnel and a collapsed maintenance shaft. No one came here unless they wanted to disappear.
When I walked in, the smell of disinfectant clashed with the stench of burnt metal. The hum of generators filled the silence.
Dr. Liora Dane looked up from her operating table, surgical mask stained with dried crimson.
> "You again."
"Missed me?" I said.
She didn't smile. She never did. Liora used to be a trauma surgeon before the system chewed her up and spat her into the underground. Now she patched up ghosts like me.
She peeled my jacket back, whistled softly.
> "You've been shot, slashed, and electrocuted in the last seventy-two hours. You keep this up, I'll start naming my scalpels after you."
"Make sure one's called 'revenge,'" I muttered.
Micah leaned against the wall, tapping a cracked datapad.
> "While you two flirt with blood and sarcasm, I've been digging through what's left of your father's encrypted files."
"And?" I asked.
He projected a hologram from the pad — glowing blue lines filled the room.
> "Project Crowborn wasn't military," Micah said. "At least, not officially. It was a joint operation — The Flock, the Cindraline Corporation, and someone inside the police precinct. Your father stumbled onto it three months before he died."
I stared at the flickering images — files labeled "Bio-Synthetic Reconstruction," "Neural Rebirth," "Subject Viability."
Each one stamped: Property of The Flock / Ashfall Division.
Liora frowned.
> "Synthetic reconstruction? Sounds like cybernetic experimentation."
"It's worse," Micah replied. "They were experimenting on people. Convicts. Homeless. War veterans. Turning them into programmable enforcers — soldiers with no conscience. They called them Crowborns."
The word made my stomach knot.
> "And my father?"
Micah hesitated.
"He got too close. Tried to leak it to internal affairs. Two days later, The Flock burned his car — and his body inside it."
I felt the world narrow to a point.
The noise of the clinic faded until all I heard was my pulse pounding in my ears.
I'd seen the wreck. I'd identified the remains. But hearing why… that was different.
> "They murdered him because he tried to expose them," I whispered.
"Yeah," Micah said quietly. "And now you're finishing what he started."
Liora tightened the last stitch and cut the thread.
> "If The Flock's building soldiers, it's not just about control. It's about ownership. They're trying to own Ashfall."
I slid off the table and pulled my coat on.
> "Then it's time someone reminded them the city doesn't belong to birds."
Micah gave a grim smirk.
> "I pulled another lead from the data — a name: The Aviary. Supposedly a research site under Old District. Off-grid, sealed since the riots."
"That's where we start," I said.
---
The streets of Old District looked like a graveyard with power lines.
Buildings leaned against each other like drunks trying to stay upright. The ground was littered with feathers — not real, but metallic, torn from drones that once patrolled the area.
Micah guided me through the maze from his safehouse feed.
> "Keep left at the junction. You'll see a rusted sign marked 'Haven Rail.' The Aviary's somewhere below it."
I found it — a decayed metro entrance sealed with chain links.
Bolt cutters took care of that. The tunnel beyond smelled like wet stone and oil.
Each step echoed like thunder. Rats scattered through the dark.
When I reached the bottom, I saw the faint glow of light ahead — and machines humming beyond a cracked metal door.
I crouched low, blade drawn.
Inside, I found what was left of humanity's worst experiment.
Bodies. Dozens of them. Floating in glass tubes filled with pale fluid, wires sprouting from their skulls and spines. Their faces were blank — stripped of emotion, eyes open but lifeless.
Some were half-machine. Others were stitched together like patchwork puppets.
I whispered, "Crowborn…"
A console flickered to life beside me, displaying a single recording.
I pressed play.
> "Log Entry 14," a man's voice said — calm, cultured, almost proud. "Subject 23: neural stability achieved. Subject 24 rejected the implant and expired. Continue adjustments. King Crow demands results before the next quarter."
The voice wasn't my father's. But I'd heard it before.
In the precinct. In briefings.
Commissioner Darius Holt.
Micah heard it too through the comms.
> "Selene, that's the police commissioner. He's part of this."
"He's more than part of it," I said. "He's protecting The Flock."
I stepped back from the tubes, bile rising in my throat.
Then I saw something that stopped me cold — a familiar badge hanging from a table.
Ashfall Police — Detective Rowan Vale. My father's.
And next to it, a half-completed body.
His face.
I froze. For a long moment, I couldn't move, couldn't breathe. My father's image floated before me, pale and reconstructed — a twisted mockery of life.
Micah's voice broke through the static.
> "Selene… what is it?"
"They didn't just kill him," I said slowly. "They tried to bring him back."
I reached for the console — but before I could act, alarms shrieked. Red light flooded the chamber.
Gunfire erupted from the entrance.
I dove behind a steel crate as bullets tore through glass.
The fluid-filled tubes shattered, spilling their contents — synthetic bodies collapsing like broken marionettes.
Voices shouted in the dark.
> "Raven's in the nest! Take her alive!"
I moved fast. Tossed a smoke charge, rolled through the haze, and cut down the first two silhouettes that entered. A third rushed from behind — I slammed his face into a console, shattering his visor.
Static sparked. Systems crashed.
I used the distraction to grab the badge — my father's badge — and escape through the rear corridor.
Micah was panicking.
> "They've locked down every exit! You need to—"
"I'll make one."
I fired the grapple, soared up the maintenance shaft, and burst through the old metro roof into the rain-soaked night. The explosion followed — fire chasing me out like breath from hell.
When I hit the rooftop above, I lay there gasping, soaked, bleeding again.
In my hand, I still held the badge. Cold. Heavy. Real.
> "Micah," I said softly, "they were rebuilding him. They were turning my father into one of their soldiers."
"Jesus… They're not building enforcers, Selene. They're building gods."
I looked over the city — smoke rising, lights flickering, sirens echoing through the dark veins of Ashfall.
And somewhere out there, King Crow was watching.
Maybe even smiling.
> "Let him watch," I said. "Because the next body they rebuild… will be his."
The wind carried my words into the night.
Ashfall listened.
And for the first time, I thought it might have believed me.