The city didn't sleep. It just changed masks.
By night, the streets coughed smoke and neon by morning, they reeked of rot and rust. Fóntas moved like a shadow through the alleys, her boots avoiding the puddles of oil and regret. The golden rope necklace around her throat weighed heavier than usual. Not because it was made of bolts and salvaged cord, but because someone had bled beneath it.
She slipped through a rusted drainage pipe, climbed up a half-collapsed fire escape, and squeezed into her place that was barely a room, more of a forgotten utility closet built into the rooftop of an abandoned textile factory. One cracked window. One mattress. A wall of parts and scraps neatly stacked by purpose. And a bucket for when the weather turned mean.
She locked the door behind her, breathing in the stillness.
He won't forget that hit…
The bolt had connected with the joint of his fingers. She saw his face change not just from pain, but from realization. This one's not afraid. And that made her dangerous. Not a strong awakened. But unpredictable.
She let the rope coil around her fingers before hanging it carefully on the wall, next to a half-built contraption shaped like a slingshot and something that resembled a taser taped to a wrench.
If they're already sniffing, I'll have to move. Maybe by the end of the week.
She showed up late the next morning.
The salvaging yard buzzed with dull steel and louder mouths. Welders. Pickers. Gutter rats working under towers that reached into smog-choked skies. Fóntas stepped in with her hood low and eyes sharp.
No one greeted her.
Well… almost no one.
A wiry man with a sunburnt neck and metal fingers gave her a sidelong glance. "You're late, junkrat."
She didn't break stride. "Didn't know we were on first-name basis now." she responded sarcastically.
That earned a half-snorted laugh from someone in the back.
But then came the quieter comment.
"Some thug came sniffing around," another crew member muttered. "Said he was looking for a girl with a gold rope. You do something, Fóntas?"
She paused, just for a second. A flicker of her eyes. Then she crouched beside a pile of circuit boards and began sorting them by value. "You see any gold rope on me?"
"Maybe he got the wrong junkrat."
"Maybe."
She didn't look up, and they didn't press. But the air shifted.
Her name was now on someone else's lips.
Later that day, as the sun bled out behind the towers, Fóntas sat with grease on her fingers and sweat behind her ears, staring at the same ropes that hung around her neck yesterday like an ornament and swung today like judgment.
Next time… he won't be alone.
Next time… I need more than just one rope.