The city didn't sleep.
It just pretended to.
In a windowless basement under a shuttered laundromat in Bushwick, Jack Reyes sat alone on a metal folding chair, watching the same clip on loop.
Preston Caldwell's feet kicking slower… slower… stop.
The video had already been mirrored to every corner of the internet. TikTok, X, Telegram, even the goddamn CNN homepage (blurred, with a trigger warning the size of a billboard). Eleven million people had watched a man die live, and half the country was calling it justice.
Jack hit pause on frame 0:58: the exact second Preston's neck snapped.
He leaned back, rubbed the scar that ran through his left eyebrow (souvenir from Fallujah, 2009), and muttered the same three words he'd said since the stream ended.
"Who the fuck are you?"
NYPD's Emergency Service Unit had breached the penthouse at 11:47 p.m.
Found the body still swaying. Collar on the floor. No prints, no DNA, no cameras the techs could locate. Every smart device in the place factory-reset itself the moment they kicked the door.
The envelope and card had dissolved into black sludge the second a gloved hand touched them. Lab was still trying to figure out what solvent does that.
Jack's phone buzzed on the table.
Unknown number. Manhattan area code.
He stared at it for five rings, then thumbed accept.
"Detective Sergeant Reyes," he said, voice rough from no sleep and too much coffee.
Silence on the line.
Then the same distorted voice that eleven million people now knew by heart.
"Good morning, Detective.
I've been waiting for you to pick up."
Jack's pulse didn't even spike. He'd been expecting this since the body dropped.
"You killed a man on camera," he said flatly. "That tends to get my attention."
"I delivered a man to justice," the voice corrected. "Something your system failed to do eight years ago. Case number 2018-44719. You remember it. You were the first officer on scene when they wheeled Emily Rojas out."
Jack's jaw flexed.
He remembered.
Seventeen-year-old girl, blue lips, pupils blown wide. Father screaming in Spanish in the hallway while Preston Caldwell stood there in a five-thousand-dollar suit, calm as a priest, telling everyone she'd been "partying too hard."
Jack had wanted to put Caldwell in the ground that night.
Instead he'd watched the kid's uncle (Deputy Commissioner McAllister) show up, pat Caldwell on the back, and make the whole file disappear.
Jack closed his eyes.
"Why call me?"
"Because you still believe the badge means something," the Judge said. "Most don't. You do. That makes you either my greatest obstacle… or the only cop in this city I'll ever bother talking to."
Jack laughed once, short and bitter.
"You want a pen pal, write to Sing Sing. You want to keep killing, I'm coming for you."
"I expect nothing less.
But understand this, Detective: every name on my list has already been judged by evidence your courts threw away. I'm simply the executioner of verdicts already passed.
Tonight was only the preview.
The real show starts tomorrow."
Click.
Line dead.
Jack stared at the phone a long moment, then opened the bottom drawer of the desk.
Inside: a single black envelope.
No wax seal this time. Just his full name in silver ink.
He didn't open it. Not yet.
Upstairs, the laundromat's neon OPEN sign flickered once and went dark forever.
Somewhere in the city, a new countdown had already begun.