The guy behind me doesn't breathe.
That's the first thing I notice as I turn, knuckles tight, Blacklight round still chambered. My arm's burning from where the corrupted swarm chewed through the jacket, but pain's background noise tonight. The alley stinks of wet cardboard and cheap beer from the bar on 3rd. Puddles stretch the streetlamp's orange glow into long streaks.
Normal people walk by outside the alley without a glance. Hunters might as well be wallpaper.
The man blocking my exit doesn't fit any guild description. Too still. Too clean. Boots with zero wear. And he's staring at the glyph fragment in my hand like it's about to explode.
"How much of that mark are you carrying?" he asks.
Voice calm. Controlled. The kind of tone people use when they've already decided what happens next.
"Enough to make me regret taking this shortcut," I say. "Step back."
He doesn't.
The System throws text across my vision:
⚠ ENTITY ANALYSIS FAILEDCATEGORY: UNREGISTEREDDANGER LEVEL: UNKNOWNRECOMMENDED COURSE: AVOID ENGAGEMENT
That's not reassuring. The System's been cold and clinical since it showed up, but this feels like it's sweating.
I drop a Salted Glass Vial with my heel. The crack releases a hiss of white dust around my boots. His shadow reacts instantly— like someone yanked a wire. It pulls back from the salt, writhing for half a second.
The man doesn't even blink.
"You shouldn't have touched that glyph," he says. "You don't understand what's tied to it."
"Join the club," I say. "Now move."
He lifts one hand. The streetlamp above us cuts out. Not flickers—dies. A clean, impossible blackout. The alley darkens like a curtain dropped.
My hand tightens around the knife.
"Alright," I say. "Enough warnings."
Behind him, the ground darkens. His shadow stretches out—longer, longer—until it's not a shadow anymore but a mouth opening in the pavement. Something climbs out. Thin limbs, wrong angles, joints where joints don't belong.
A Corridor Crawler. Shouldn't be here. Shouldn't be outside District 12 at all.
The man steps aside like he's presenting it.
The Crawler's head snaps toward me with a crack of vertebrae.Then it lunges.
I move left, shoulder scraping brick. The thing climbs the wall like it weighs nothing, claws carving shallow grooves through the graffiti. I aim and fire. The Blacklight round punches into its torso, burning a hole through the ribbed shadow-flesh.
It shrieks and collapses sideways, but that doesn't slow it. It leaps again, faster.
I duck under a swipe. The claws miss my face by an inch. I feel the air move. I slam my knife into the hinge under its jaw. Thin bones crack. Viscous black fluid spills, sizzling where it touches the salt around my boots.
The Crawler convulses. I twist the knife, snapping cartilage. Its whole body locks up, then dissolves into thick vapor that rolls across the pavement like sewer steam.
I wipe the blade on my pant leg. "Next?"
The man watches me like he's measuring my spine.
"You're carrying its echo now," he says, nodding to the glyph fragment. "They'll smell you. Every one of them."
"Who's 'they'?"
He almost answers. His jaw tenses. His head shifts a fraction, listening to something I can't hear.
Above us, something scuttles over a rooftop. Fast. Heavy.
His eyes widen—a tiny, human moment.
"No. Not yet."
He steps backward. The shadows behind him swallow his outline until he's more sketch than man.
"Lose the mark, Kade," he says. "Before they find you."
He dissolves into the dark like smoke through a vent.
The streetlamp buzzes back to life with a weak flicker. Wind pushes trash across the alley. Sirens hum three blocks away. The world keeps spinning like nothing happened.
The System intrudes again:
CONTRACT GENERATEDC-RANK (PROVISIONAL): "FOLLOW THE MARKED TRAIL"LOCATION: METRO LINE 7 — SURFACE ACCESSOBJECTIVE: INVESTIGATE SECOND GLYPH SIGHTINGREWARD: UNKNOWNRISK LEVEL: CLASSIFIEDACCEPT / DECLINE?
C-Rank. Above my pay grade. Above my sanity grade too.
I swallow a curse and hit ACCEPT. The phone vibrates like it's struggling to keep the message stable. The interface glitches at the edges—static, distortion. The glyph symbol appears for half a heartbeat, brighter than before.
Then another message slides up:
MULTIPLE HOSTILES APPROACHINGESTIMATED ARRIVAL: 45 SECONDS
I don't stand around waiting to meet the welcoming committee.
I grab my gear, kick off from the alley wall, and sprint toward the street. The burn in my arm spikes, but I've run with worse. Rain starts again. The cold kind that sticks in your coat lining.
Halfway to the intersection, I glance up.
Movement.Five shapes crouched on the nearest rooftop. Their limbs are long. Their eyes glow faint blue, like tiny LEDs reflecting rain. They crawl over the edge and start climbing down the wall headfirst, arms bending backward like jointed wiring.
Not Crawlers. Faster. Something mixed with static in their movements—like a frame skipped every half-second.
The System tries to identify them:
ANALYSIS FAILEDSOURCE: GLYPH TRAILADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR DETECTED
Perfect. The System doesn't know what they are. That's becoming a pattern.
I bolt across the crosswalk, ignoring a honk from a taxi. A driver leans out the window to yell something, then freezes when one of the creatures skitters down the building and lands on the asphalt behind me.
Its feet click like metal tapping concrete.Its head swivels sideways—full ninety degrees—with a wet pop.
I don't look back again. Not yet.
I cut left between a shuttered vape shop and a laundromat. The alley behind them is narrower than I like, but I need distance before they fully drop to street level. My boots splash through puddles, and my lungs burn cold from the rain.
One of the things lands on a dumpster behind me with a hollow bang. Its claws scrape metal. Another lands on an AC unit above, shaking loose rust.
They're spreading out.
System text stutters into view:
SUGGESTED ACTION: CREATE SEPARATIONNEAREST SAFE ZONE: NONE DETECTED
Fantastic.
I hit the next intersection and duck into a stairwell leading down to the surface-access hatch for Line 7. The door's supposed to be locked. It isn't tonight. Either someone forced it, or the city's giving me another nudge.
I wrench it open and slam it behind me.
Dark. Stale. Old concrete. Smells like mildew and wet dust.
I take two steps before something hums—low, electrical, vibrating through the handrail.
Not good.
The System pings again:
WARNINGGLYPH RESONANCE INCREASINGSOURCE: BELOW
Yeah. No surprise.
I descend fast, boots thudding on metal stairs. The creatures hit the door above. Metal bows inward with the impact. Another hit. Dent forms. Third hit cracks the lock.
I reach the bottom landing and turn. Rusted gate. Padlock. Easy enough. I take the butt of the knife and crack it once, twice—on the third strike it breaks. I pull the gate open and slip inside the maintenance corridor.
The door above blows outward.Metal screams.
Their clicks echo down the stairwell. They're coming in hot.
I run down the corridor, passing old breaker boxes and faded safety posters no one bothered to remove. The hum in the walls intensifies. Something's alive down here, but not in the biological sense—more like the infrastructure's breathing with each glyph I collect.
A new notification blinks:
SIDE OBJECTIVE UPDATED"MARKED LINES" — PART 2COLLECT GLYPH FRAGMENT (0/1)
So there is a second piece.And the System wants it badly.
The corridor ends at another hatch. This one welded half shut. Air coming through the seam smells cold, old, and wrong—like freezer burn mixed with rust.
Behind me, the first creature slips into the hallway. Its fingers scrape the floor as it leans forward, sensing the air. Blue eyes brighten.
Three more pile in behind it. One crawls along the ceiling, limbs bending backward like it doesn't have bones.
The last one stands perfectly still and just watches me.
The System chimes:
HOSTILES FORMING PACK BEHAVIORRECOMMENDED: DO NOT ALLOW ENCIRCLEMENT
"No kidding," I whisper.
I dig out the Blacklight Cartridge magazine, slam it into the pistol, and take a step back. The creatures tense. One hisses, a sound like static in an old radio.
I fire at the ceiling-crawler first. The round hits, burning straight through its skull. It drops like a dead server tower. The blue light fades.
The others jolt back from the flash—sensitive to Blacklight. Good. Something I can use.
One leaps anyway, claws out.
I sidestep, grab its arm, and slam its head against the hatch. Bone cracks. I shove it aside as the third charges, mouth opening into a wide mesh of needle teeth.
I fire point-blank. The Blacklight burns through its lower jaw. It shrieks and convulses.
The last one—the watcher—finally moves. Faster than the others. It blurs, and suddenly it's on me, weight driving me into the hatch. Claws dig into my jacket, missing skin by a hair.
Its face inches from mine. Mechanical clicking rattles from inside its throat.
Then its head jerks sharply. Not from the cartridge. Something else.
It hisses and recoils, backing away from me like I just turned into a crime scene.
It looks down at my pocket.
The glyph fragment is glowing.
The creature lets out a harsh, broken noise and tears back toward the stairwell, retreating like it's suddenly terrified.
The others follow, dragging their wounded, clicking wildly as they flee. Feet scrape concrete, claws slam metal, and within seconds, they're gone—back up toward the night.
The corridor finally goes quiet.
Only the hum remains, pulsing through the walls.
I look down.The glyph fragment's light fades.
Another System message appears:
THREAT AVERTEDPRIMARY OBJECTIVE REMAINS: FOLLOW THE MARKED TRAIL
Rainwater drips somewhere deeper in the tunnel.The hatch in front of me groans.
Whatever scared those creatures off?It's on the other side.
And it's waiting.