The cold was the only thing keeping Jin's blood inside him.

  Jin dragged his left boot along the cobblestones, leather scraping until the rain washed the sound away. In Sector 4, rain wasn’t just water. It was refinery runoff, full of chemicals, tasting sharp and metallic.

  The pain lingered, and Jin pressed his hand to his neck. The cut was deep, each heartbeat sending more warmth through his fingers. The cold bit into his skin, but he welcomed it. It meant he was still conscious.

  He didn't look at the wound. He let his imagination decide how bad it might be.

  Thump.

  The vibration hit his boot soles before sound reached his ears. Heavy. Rhythmic.

  Jin slipped into a gap between two tall buildings, shoulder scraping the brick. His vision blurred.

  He leaned against the wall, trying to steady his breathing. The alley smelled of sour fur and ammonia.

  The alley wasn't empty.

  Moonlight cut through the smog, lighting up the dead bodies stacked along the walls. The Discarded. The Council used to call them "economic casualties" before the broadcasts stopped six months ago. The bodies were piled like firewood, left behind by a city that no longer pretended to care. A child’s school badge caught the light on a torn jacket. Nearby, a wedding ring slipped off a thin finger and vanished into the dark.

  Above it all, a luxury advertisement flickered on a cracked screen, showing wealth and happiness only the elite could reach.

  A wet slap echoed nearby.

  A beetle the size of a dinner plate crawled out from a corpse's ribcage, its shell shining like spilled oil.

  It paused, its antennae twitching as it picked its way through the bodies.

  Then the shadow fell.

  It blocked the alley entrance, hiding the neon lights outside. It didn't look human. It looked like scrap metal forced into a human shape.

  A Xenunnaki, Spine-class.

  Mutated bone stuck out through its grey skin, forming armour along its arms. The creature moved like a predator, each step careful, every muscle tense.

  Its four milky eyes swept the alley, tracking heat signatures and the smallest tremor of movement.

  Jin reached for his belt. Nothing. His knife was three blocks away, still stuck in the last creature he'd killed.

  The Xenunnaki stepped forward, crushing a bicycle frame underfoot. The metal shrieked. Then the creature stopped, and all four eyes focused on the gap where Jin crouched.

  The creature didn't roar; it crouched, preparing to spring onto its prey.

  Jin's body barely responded. Blood loss slowed him, making him weak.

  The Xenunnaki knew, looking at him. It had probably killed a hundred desperate, bleeding things in alleys just like this.

  The Xenunnaki lunged.

  Jin tried to throw himself to the side, but his body failed him. The claws slashed across his chest, tearing fabric and skin. He hit the brick wall hard, ribs cracking, the air leaving his lungs in a wheeze.

  The pain arrived like a crushing blow.

  Jin reached for the wall and pushed himself upright. His legs held for a second before his knee gave out, sending him down again, palms scraping against the brick. He had a broken rib, maybe two, and no weapon, no cover, and nothing between him and eighty kilos of armoured muscle that had already decided he was dead. Still, he tried to get up. It was the only thing he could think to do.

  The creature landed, drool sizzling on the pavement. It stalked forward, knowing its prey was finished.

  That’s when the memory hit Jin. It wasn’t pain; he remembered that day.

  He was in the kitchen, the smell of roasted garlic heavy in the air, his mother humming off-key to some song. It was a Sunday morning. Theodore was coming over later, and they were going to—what?

  As he tried to remember, the details slipped away. The plan with Theodore was gone, fading like smoke. But the feeling stayed: safety, home, sunlight on his neck while his mother cooked.

  Then everything went dark. The kitchen was gone. His mother was gone. The boy who woke up that Sunday, waiting for his friend, had died little by little: first when his mother died, then when the ships came.

  The Xenunnaki's claws kept on digging, poised for the killing strike, but Jin refused to die like this, helpless, forgotten in the muck.

  He had been helpless before. At eight, his hands were too small, his phone slipping from blood-slick fingers as his mother's eyes faded. Never again. He made that promise to himself, shaped by pain and loss.

  He knew the choice was simple and terrible. "Take what you need," Jin whispered.

  He opened it.

  The feeling was harsh, like ice water flooding his veins. Black veins spread up his neck, pulsing under pale skin. His vision faded at the edges, colours draining until only heat remained.

  The temperature plummeted.

  Rain froze in the air. The puddle at Jin's feet turned to ice, cracking the stone underneath. Frost spread, freezing everything it touched.

  The Xenunnaki hesitated. Every instinct in it screamed danger.

  Jin inhaled air that burned. When he exhaled, the breath didn't mist; it crystallized, falling as snow. "Come on," he rasped.

  The Xenunnaki shrieked and launched itself at Jin again.

  Then it happened. Time didn't slow. Jin simply stopped flinching from it.

  He didn't dodge. He was too hurt to move well. Instead, he let himself fall forward into the attack, using his collapse as momentum.

  Claws ripped across his chest. It should have killed him. But his blood froze as soon as it spilled, turning into red ice. He didn’t feel pain; the cold had numbed his nerves.

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  His hand, trembling, pressed against the creature's chest as they collided.

  He didn't strike; he closed his eyes and said, "Freeze."

  The Xenunnaki didn't freeze like frost on a window. Instead, Jin pulled all the heat from its body at once.

  The energy left so quickly that its body couldn't hold together.

  The Xenunnaki's momentum carried it past Jin into the wall, but it never rebounded.

  It shattered.

  The impact broke the apex predator into steaming fragments. A severed claw skittered across ice, coming to rest at Jin's boot.

  The emptiness faded.

  And something went with it.

  Jin staggered. A moment ago, he'd been remembering something important. A kitchen? Sunlight? The feeling was still there, but the details were—wait.

  He tried to hold onto the memory as it faded. His mother had been cooking. Sunday morning. The smell of... what? Garlic. He remembered the word, but not the smell. Someone was coming over. A friend? He could picture them, but not the name— "Theodore."

  Jin could barely remember his friend's name. Theodore. His best friend. He'd been coming over that Sunday. But for what? What had they planned? Jin was sure there was something, but the details slipped away.

  This was different from the first time.

  The first time he used it was a few days after the invasion, six years ago, and he'd lost three days of memory. Just gone. People had mentioned conversations he couldn't remember having, and the absence had felt like a smooth gap, something he could identify but not touch.

  He knew this time was worse. Jin felt his memory crumble as he tried to hold on to it. It was like watching someone walk into fog: their face fading, then just a shadow, then nothing.

  The kitchen dissolved completely. The warmth on his neck. His mother's off-key humming. The specific quality of that Sunday morning light.

  It was gone.

  And there was something else missing, something from further back, but he couldn't identify what because the gap was so smooth he couldn't feel its edges.

  Fear gripped him. What else had disappeared? How many other memories were gone, and he'd never even know?

  Pain came screaming back. Every nerve burned. "Too much," he croaked.

  It hit him like a punch. Something deep in his chest seized up; it was not muscle or bone, but something deeper.

  His lungs spasmed. For three endless seconds, he couldn't breathe.

  When he finally breathed, it tasted like blood. His left hand wouldn't close. The fingers twitched, numb, frost creeping up the tendons.

  His legs gave way. He collapsed onto the pavement, staring at debris where the creature had been.

  He’d survived. He was alive. "God, it hurts."

  He tried to crawl. He knew he had to move. The smell of death was a signal, and he'd just made it strong enough to— Thwip.

  Sharp sting in his neck.

  Jin's hand fumbled upward. He tore the object free. A dart. Machined aluminum, etched with a stylized eye inside a broken circle.

  He'd seen that symbol before: on posters, on uniforms of soldiers who dragged people from homes in the dead of night.

  The paralytic hit him hard. It started in his fingers and spread quickly. His legs felt heavy, and he fell onto his side, his cheek pressed into the cold mud.

  Boots splashed toward him. Two figures loomed. Matte black armour, gas masks with red lenses, rifles held with casual readiness.

  The Jenmaq Liberation Army. JLA. They didn't liberate anything, just filled the vacuum after the invasion. Every city had one now, a different name, same game. Claim order, serve corporations, keep the refineries churning. The stolen off-world ore came up through the ground, and the profits kept the war going. City against city, soldiers against the things that came from above.

  One soldier crouched, pressing a rifle barrel against Jin's temple. The metal felt cold. "Target down," the soldier grunted. "Vitals weak but stable. Kid's tougher than he looks."

  The second soldier examined the destruction. He crouched beside a fragment of frozen skull, watching it crumble under his gloved finger. "Shit. Look at this mess." He prodded crystallized muscle. "What the hell did he do to it?" "Doesn't matter. Just load him up." The first soldier unspooled a black containment bag. "Command wants him breathing. That's all I care about." "Third retrieval this week. I'm getting real tired of hunting these freaks." "Wait."

  A third set of footsteps approached. Light. Deliberate. They didn't splash.

  A man appeared at the edge of Jin's fading vision. He didn't wear heavy armour. His charcoal trench coat hung open over a neat uniform, rain sliding off the treated fabric. Silver streaked his hair at the temples.

  Moritz. One of Reed's Collectors. The JLA called them Procurement Officers. The streets of Jenmaq called them Vultures. "Sir," the first soldier said, snapping to attention. The rifle lowered. "Target secured. Prepping for extraction."

  The officer didn't answer. He knelt beside Jin, brushed away the dirt with a gloved hand, then pulled off the glove with his teeth to reveal burn-scarred skin. He pressed two fingers to Jin's neck.

  The world felt softer. Jin's thoughts slowed, becoming thick and heavy. "Remarkable," Moritz whispered, his cultured voice utterly incongruous with the filth of the alley. He pressed two fingers more firmly against Jin's neck, checking the pulse. "His heart's barely beating.

  Twenty, maybe twenty-five per minute. The body's shutting down everything non-essential, compensating for the damage." He looked down at Jin's unconscious face. "He's entering some kind of hibernation state."

  Jin tried to focus on the man's face. Tried to understand. But his thoughts kept sliding away.

  Moritz stood up, watching Jin with cold curiosity.

  The first soldier shifted. "Orders were to bag him and..." "You've done well, Corporal." Moritz's voice was smooth. "Exemplary work."

  The Corporal hesitated.

  Then Moritz's hand moved.

  Reed had been explicit in the encrypted briefing: secure the entropy-class asset personally. No records through standard channels. No witnesses who could report capabilities to the broader procurement network. The science division needed this one uncontaminated by protocol, and that meant eliminating anyone who'd seen what the boy could do.

  These men had watched Jin stop molecular motion. They'd seen too much.

  A thin monofilament blade slid from Moritz's sleeve, appearing against the Corporal's throat.

  The soldier's eyes widened.

  A hairline red smile opened beneath his jaw.

  He collapsed into frozen muck without a sound.

  The second soldier was reaching for his rifle when Moritz's hand flashed across his throat. The same precise, surgical motion. Two bodies. Two witnesses eliminated.

  Moritz wiped the blood from his blade with a silk handkerchief, looking at Jin's unconscious body.

  The boy had shown real entropy manipulation; he could stop heat itself, not just make things cold. No one had seen that before. Reed would want him alive.

  He crouched again, gripping Jin by the collar.

  Something fell from the second soldier's pocket as he collapsed. A photograph, protected in a waterproof sleeve. Moritz glanced at it.

  A young woman holding an infant. The back inscription was visible through the plastic: "Love you, daddy. Come home safe. - Your girls"

  Moritz glanced at the dead soldier's face, then at the photo. For a moment, something changed in his expression, a brief pause, as if he envied the simple love shown in the picture.

  He took out a lighter, burned the photograph, and dragged Jin toward the alley mouth, where his personal transport waited.

  Moritz had dragged Jin three metres toward the alley mouth when the first shot cracked through the rain.

  The bullet caught him in the shoulder, spinning him sideways. He dropped Jin immediately, rolling behind a rusted dumpster as his hand clamped over the wound. Blood welled between his fingers, hot against the cold rain.

  A figure emerged from the darkness behind them; an older man, maybe fifty, wearing a faded combat jacket. He advanced with his rifle raised, the barrel trained on Moritz's cover. "Let him go," the man said, his voice carrying the rough authority of someone who'd given orders in worse situations than this.

  Moritz pressed against the dumpster, thinking. The other man had the high ground and a clear shot.

  The gunfire would soon bring JLA patrols. Jin was valuable, but not worth dying in a shootout for.

  He made his decision.

  His hand went to his belt and triggered a smoke canister. Grey-white fog erupted between them, obscuring the alley. Above, barely audible over the rain, came the whine of turbines. His personal extraction drone descended through the downpour, its mounted guns strobing suppression fire across the alley.

  The older man dove behind cover as rounds punched through brick and pinged off metal. When he looked up again, rifle ready, the smoke was already dissipating.

  Moritz was gone. The drone's winch line hung empty in the rain, and the sound of its turbines faded above the rooftops.

  The man lowered his rifle and approached Jin's unconscious form cautiously, scanning the shadows for additional threats. When he was satisfied they were alone, he knelt beside the boy and checked for a pulse.

  Still alive. Barely.

  He glanced at the two dead JLA soldiers nearby, their throats cut with surgical precision, then at the shattered remains of the Xenunnaki scattered across the frozen alley. "What the hell did you do, kid?" he muttered.

  He slung his rifle and lifted Jin over his shoulder, shifting the weight. Then he moved on, boots crunching broken glass, heading deeper into Sector 4's maze of factories, where patrols never went, and the tunnels ran deep.

  Behind them, sirens wailed in the distance, drawing closer.

  The night didn’t end. It only grew darker.