By the time Gravesend started dying, Kade Mercer was already on the road.
Rain hammered across the windshield of his beat-up transport van hard enough to blur the city into streaks of red taillights and dirty neon reflections. Wipers snapped back and forth, barely keeping up. The clock on the dash read 2:38 a.m.
He should have been home an hour ago.
Instead, he was cutting through the east freight corridor after a last-minute favor for a former dispatcher contact—delivering locked trauma crates to a private intake depot near the docks because half the night crews in Gravesend had stopped answering radios.
Typical city chaos.
At least, that was what he told himself.
The back of the van rattled as he took a corner too fast. Kade's hood was down for once, dark hair falling in damp strands near his eyes, jaw tight, one hand on the wheel, the other tapping against a dead phone screen. No signal. Again.
The whole city felt off.
Too many sirens. Too few cars. Traffic lights stalling half a beat too long before changing. A helicopter moving somewhere overhead through the storm without any visible search beam.
Then his radio cracked alive.
"—all units, reroute from Dock Sector Nine—"
Static swallowed the rest.
Kade frowned and reached for the volume. A burst of panicked shouting hit next, then a woman's voice speaking too fast to make out. The transmission ended with a sound that made his stomach tighten.
A scream.
Not frightened.
Dying.
He killed the radio.
Two blocks later, he hit the first roadblock.
Three police cruisers sat sideways across Harbor Avenue, lights bleeding blue and red through the rain. Officers were shoving soaked civilians backward from the barricade while a city bus idled abandoned near the curb with both doors open. People were yelling over each other. Somebody in scrubs had blood down the front of their coat. A man with one shoe was pounding on a patrol car window, screaming that his wife was still inside Saint Mercy.
Kade slowed the van, scanned the mess once, and instantly knew one thing:
This wasn't traffic control.
This was containment pretending to be crowd management.
His eyes caught movement farther beyond the cruisers—black vehicles, unmarked, turning off toward the freight lanes.
He felt that old South Hollow cold creep up his spine.
One of the officers waved him off. "Turn around! Area's closed!"
Kade didn't argue. He backed the van into a side street, killed the headlights, and watched.
Across the barricade, a paramedic stumbled out of the rain from the direction of the hospital access road. He was alone. No stretcher. No partner. Just one man weaving on his feet with blood coating both sleeves.
An officer ran toward him.
The paramedic looked up.
His face was wrong.
Pale. Wet. Empty.
Then he lunged.
Everything broke at once.
The officer hit the pavement under him. Another cop shouted, drew his sidearm, and fired twice. Civilians scattered in all directions. Someone slipped under the barricade. Another figure came running from the dark behind the paramedic—then another.
Not running.
Charging.
Kade slammed the van into reverse before the first body hit the hood.
A woman smashed against the front grille hard enough to crack glass, fingers clawing for purchase over the windshield before she slid off into the street. Kade jerked the wheel, shot down the alley beside a liquor store, and nearly clipped a dumpster as gunshots erupted behind him.
His breathing stayed steady.
His pulse did not.
At the far end of the alley, he braked hard.
A shape stood under the flickering security light by the service exit. Hoodie. Bare feet. Head hanging too low.
Fresh blood ran down its chin.
Kade reached into the passenger-side compartment and pulled out the short emergency pry bar he kept from his transport days.
The figure lifted its face.
Teenage boy. Maybe seventeen.
Eyes dead.
Then it sprinted the instant it saw him move.
Kade threw his door open at the last second. Metal slammed into the boy's jaw and sent him crashing sideways into wet concrete. Before it could rise, Kade was out in the rain, boots splashing through filthy runoff, both hands on the pry bar.
"Stay down," he muttered.
The boy didn't even seem to register pain. It twisted, snarling, trying to drag itself upright on one elbow with its neck bent at a sick angle.
Kade brought the bar down once.
Hard.
Then again.
He stepped back breathing through his teeth, rain dripping off his hair, staring at the body like it might rise a third time.
Behind him, somewhere across Gravesend, the power grid failed.
Whole blocks dropped into darkness.
A second later, phones across the street, inside parked cars, in dead hands on sidewalks, all lit at once with the same emergency bulletin:
PUBLIC HEALTH ADVISORY. CHEMICAL CONTAMINATION INCIDENT. REMAIN INDOORS. EVACUATION PENDING.
Kade looked at the screen.
Then up at the city.
Sirens everywhere now. Distant fires beginning to color the low clouds. Helicopters. Screams carried strangely by the rain. And beneath all of it, something larger spreading through Gravesend fast enough to make every official message feel like a joke.
His phone buzzed again.
One new message.
Nico: KADE WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU? THEY'RE SAYING DON'T GO NEAR ASHDOWN. SERA'S STUCK AT SAINT MERCY.
Kade went still.
Saint Mercy.
For half a second, seven years collapsed into the present.
Then his expression hardened.
He tossed the phone onto the passenger seat, yanked his hood up, and got back behind the wheel.
The van roared to life.
If the city was falling, then the only thing left to decide was who he could still pull out before it buried them all.
And somewhere in the dark, unseen behind sealed glass and black armor, someone was already watching him move.