Barry didn't notice the rat until he almost stepped on its head.
Spraypainted across the concrete outside Jay's workshop door: a crude white rat in a crosshair.
Underneath, in sloppy red:
FRIENDLY :)
He stopped. The audio band fed him the slow drip from a busted pipe, a kid laughing two floors up, a distant drone hum.
Jay opened the door, followed his gaze, and sighed.
"Well," Jay said. "That answers that."
"Subtle," Barry muttered.
Jay scraped the mark with his cane, smearing the paint. It just made the grin look worse.
"Inside," Jay said. "We don't decorate for assholes."
They had a plan that morning: small resupply, no gate yet.
Barry headed for one of his usual ammo stalls, a narrow nook under a broken stair where a tired woman with half a jaw of chrome sold scavenged rounds and mags.
"Need two sleeves of nine, same as last time," Barry said, sliding his chip.
She didn't take it.
"Already squared," she said.
He frowned. "What?"
"Guy came through an hour back," she said. "Said he was you. Dropped your name, your dad's shop, your sister's tower. Paid over price for all your regular stock. Told me if you came by, to give you these."
She reached under the counter, dropped a rattling box on top.
Barry opened it.
All duds. All obviously shit if you looked twice: corroded brass, mismatched heads.
He didn't touch them.
"What'd he look like?" Barry asked, already knowing.
"Tall, shaved, bad teeth, worse attitude," she said. "Called himself Riggs. Thought I hadn't heard of him."
"Why'd you play along?" Barry asked.
"Because his friends had real guns, and I like my lungs unsprayed," she snapped. "I pull trash for him, mark it 'for the rat.' He pays stupid good and walks. And now I tell you it's trash."
Barry let out a slow breath. "Fair."
He pushed the dud box back.
"I'm not taking these," he said.
"I wasn't going to let you," she said. "We keep this quiet, yeah? I don't need his boys back here."
He nodded. Fished a small strip of crate med out of his pocket, slid it over.
"For warning me," he said.
Her eyes flicked to it. "You can't—"
"Already did," he said. "Sell it, use it, whatever."
He walked away light on ammo and heavy on confirmation.
Riggs wasn't just pissed.
Riggs was working.
Riggs' shadow showed up other places once Barry started looking.
At a corridor junction near Gate 3, someone had spray-stenciled a mask with a cartoon smile and big letters:
FRIENDLY CAMPING ZONE
Underneath, in smaller hand:DON'T QUEUE HERE IF YOU LIKE LIVING.
On a public screen playing Field kill-summaries, a grainy clip looped briefly before NEXUS auto-cut it:
Runners sprinting for an extract.
A voice yelling "Friendly! Friendly on extract!"
Then one of the runners dropping, back of their head gone.
Both times Barry heard the voice, his stomach twisted.
He knew that drawl.
The system scrubbed the clip. The echo stayed.
Back at the workshop, Jay listened without interrupting: the rat tag, the ammo stunt, the signs.
"Mhm," he said finally. "So Riggs is branding."
"That's one word," Barry said.
"He's trying to make you look like prey," Jay said. "Or like his joke. Either way: escalation."
"He's buying people," Barry said. "He's got enough credit to waste."
"People like him always do," Jay said. "They live off the churn. Campers eat new blood, sell gear back into the loop."
Barry propped himself on his usual crate.
"So what's our move?" he asked.
"Short term?" Jay said. "You keep using different vendors. Never touch ammo labeled for you. Don't queue where his marks are. You see that rat, you walk away."
"Long term?" Barry asked.
"Long term, eventually, you put him down," Jay said. "But not when he's choosing time and place."
Barry bristled. "I'm not scared of him."
"Good," Jay said. "Then this will sting less: right now he's better armed, more connected, and not flagged as a glitch in a god's spreadsheet. You pick a straight fight today, you make him a martyr and yourself a corpse. That doesn't pay Lissa."
Barry looked at the rat smear on the floorboards where their boots had dragged it in.
"He's poking on purpose," Barry said.
"Let him," Jay said. "Poking is noise. We work in signal."
He flipped the slate around. Field schedule, maintenance alerts, a deeper system notice rolling by.
UPCOMING: PARAMETER ADJUSTMENT // FIELD NETWORK LOAD TEST (UNSCHEDULED)
"See that?" Jay tapped it. "That's NEXUS talk for 'we're going to make everything weird for a while and call it a test.' Riggs is smoke. This is fire."
Barry read it again.
"Load test," he said. "Purges?"
"Could be harder bots. Could be more red-eyes," Jay said. "Could be a full wipe on any sector that fails their pretty graphs. And you, my anomalous son, are right in the middle of their case study."
"So we hide?" Barry asked.
"We choose," Jay corrected. "We run what we have to, not what they dangle."
There was a knock at the frame.
Lena leaned in.
"You have rats," she said, nodding at the smear by the door.
"Riggs art," Barry said.
"Yeah, I've seen his gallery," Lena said, stepping inside. She looked between them. "He's telling people you stole his crate, by the way."
"His crate?" Barry repeated.
"Men like him think everything they don't touch yet is theirs," she said. "He's also asking for your routes."
Jay's tone went flat. "And you said…?"
"That if they're dumb enough to stand where he tells them, they deserve the crossfire," Lena said. "I'm not his intel girl."
Barry felt something unclench.
"Thanks," he said.
"Don't turn it into a feeling," she said. "Riggs' sort is bad for my clients. If he keeps camping med events, my income dies."
"Overlapping selfish interests," Jay remarked.
"Exactly," Lena said. "He's sloppy. Sloppy gets people I charge killed."
She studied Barry.
"You look wired," she said. "Door did something?"
"Door liked him," Jay said. "Drone ignored him. NEXUS wrote 'observe' next to his ID."
"Cute," Lena said dryly. "You tell him to stop peacocking in event Rounds?"
"Working on it," Jay said.
Lena turned to Barry. "If Riggs pushes you in a Field, he's not gonna monologue next time. You know that, right?"
"I know," Barry said.
"Then tattoo it behind your eyes," she said. "I can't keep shooting his gun hand every cycle."
"I didn't ask you to the first time," Barry said.
"You didn't not need it either," she said.
He couldn't argue.
"Load test notice," Jay said, nodding at the slate. "You seen it?"
Lena's jaw tightened. "Yeah. Rumors say better payouts, 'adaptive challenges'… garbage like that."
"You running it?" Barry asked.
"If numbers make sense," Lena said. "With a plan. Not with Riggs."
She hesitated. "If we do something stupid like that, we plan it here, not at the gate. Understand?"
Barry met her gaze. "Yeah."
"Good," she said. "Don't die on low-yield days. Save it for something worthwhile."
She left as abruptly as she came.
Jay watched the door swing.
"People keep coming here before big mistakes," he said.
"You love it," Barry said.
Jay didn't deny it.
Later, in the narrow corridor outside the workshop, Barry spotted one more mark: a fresh rat, smaller, arrow pointing down the stairwell.
He followed it—slow, hand near his pistol.
On the landing, scratched into the wall:
SEE YOU INSIDE, LIMPER— F
No smiley this time.
Barry stood there, pulse slow and mean.
He thumbed the noise pebble in his pocket, then let it drop back.
"Yeah," he said under his breath. "You will."
The audio band caught distant gate sirens, the buzz of collars arming up for some other Round.
Not today.
Today, the math said: wait. Stack favors the patient rat.
Riggs was making himself loud. NEXUS was tuning its guns.
Barry stepped back into the workshop, closed the door on the marks.
After they lost, enemies announced themselves with graffiti and emojis. The really dangerous ones didn't have to.
Riggs was loud. NEXUS was quiet.
Barry knew which one scared him more.
But when the load test came and both lined up?
That would be the day they stopped letting other people pick the fight.