After leaving the Association Headquarters, Ethan wandered the city aimlessly, eyes constantly moving.
Everything felt… wrong.
The streets were familiar, the buildings mostly unchanged - but the atmosphere had shifted.
Digital screens flashed warnings about unstable gates in the city.
Armed patrols walked openly, rifles slung without a hint of concern.
Posters and billboards of famous Titled covered brick walls like celebrity idols.
It felt like another world layered over the one he'd grown up in.
He grabbed something greasy from a food stall, barely tasting it, then headed for the subway. His hopes of being a Titled had been crushed in minutes, leaving a dull ache lodged deep in his chest.
He jumped the toll gate on instinct and rode back toward Brownsville, Brooklyn.
His hometown.
One of the most violent districts in the city.
Ethan knew these streets - the codes, the looks, the unspoken rules.
He'd learned young when to run, when to stand his ground, and when violence was unavoidable.
You adapted, or you didn't last.
Still, everything felt off.
Seven years in a cell would do that.
This was where he and Mark had grown up.
They were brothers in everything but blood and always getting into trouble together.
The world had moved on while Ethan hadn't.
Back in 2020, he'd been eighteen. A high school dropout who was deep into work that paid fast and ended badly.
It was always him and Mark - fighting, robbing, hustling.
Until one job went wrong.
It was supposed to be their last.
They planned it for weeks: there was a notorious target, a time, an escape plan, and a bunch of money to be scored.
But sirens, unexpected variables, and panic...
Bang!
Someone got shot.
Ethan took the fall.
Despite being an infamous duo, they couldn't tie Mark to the crime, nor could they get Ethan to say his friend's name, even for a reduced sentence.
Mark went legit, opening a bar with clean money.
Ethan went to a maximum-security hellhole.
A few months into his sentence, the gates appeared - 2020 was the year the world changed.
At first, it was whispers between cells and guards talking in hushed tones. Then, the insane footage and wild news on the communal TVs before they were shut off entirely.
Monsters. Burning cities. People with powers.
Then nothing - all prisons around the country were put on lockdown during this crazy period.
No visits. No calls. No news.
Just concrete and steel.
That just made his sentence more gruelling, trapped alongside restless prisoners, many of whom had no hope of getting out.
Ethan spent seven years fighting almost daily.
He wasn't part of any crew and didn't join any for protection either. Sleeping with one eye open became the norm, never sure if tonight was the night his bunkmate decided to test him.
Living was torture.
Mark sent money, wrote letters, and did what he could - be it out of guilt or brotherhood, he did his part.
But for the last couple years of his sentence, Ethan told him to stop.
He didn't want to drag Mark back into that world or burden him.
When Ethan was finally released - sentence reduced due to his young age at the time of the crime and the state of the world - only one man was waiting outside.
Mark.
Somehow bigger than before, he was leaning against his old car like he'd been there all day.
Ethan remembered that moment more clearly than anything.
Free at last.
And completely unprepared.
Everyone else had adapted and found their place beneath the Titled.
Ethan had been locked away while the world rewrote itself.
Now everyone lived in bubbles.
From janitors to office workers to presidents.
None of it mattered.
They were all just ants beneath giants.
A gate could tear open in your living room at any moment, and if it destabilised, that was it.
Game Over!
That thought gnawed at Ethan constantly and made everything he had done feel pointless.
It made him feel pointless.
He'd always chased what he wanted.
Always fought for it.
Be it for money, respect, or just for the thrill of it, he never settled for less and always lived as he pleased.
Yet here he was.
'I'm twenty-five,' he thought bitterly, counting the crumpled bills in his pocket. 'A massive rap sheet with nothing to show for it. No prospects. And a total of one hundred and twenty-seven dollars to my name.'
'I was better off in the can,' he laughed.
He wanted - no, needed - to be Titled.
Crime had been fun when he was young and necessary when he got older.
Now?
He felt insignificant and lost in life.
'I know what fixes this.'
He didn't want to think anymore.
Nothing quieted the mind like the poison he drowned his thoughts out with every night.
As such, he headed back to the Black Howl to put a dent in Mark's profits again.
Getting there should've been uneventful.
But just his luck, it wasn't.
The two idiots from earlier were back, selling right outside Mr Cho's bodega, exactly where Ethan had told them not to.
For them, it was more foot traffic, and as such, faster sales.
"The quicker we move this shit, the quicker we can go get ourselves some bitches."
But now they were about to learn the hard way not to cross Ethan Crowe...