He slipped into the alley like a blade drawn from shadow, swift enough that none of them registered the shift in the air. The metal rod came down hard on the first man’s forearm—bone cracked, a sharp, ugly sound swallowed by the narrow walls. The second barely turned before the rod slammed into his ribs, knocking the breath clean out of him. The third took it across the back of the knee and went down with a curse, scrambling uselessly on the grime-slick ground.

  It was over in seconds.

  Askai moved with the precision his reputation had once been built on—economical, merciless and swift. The kind of speed one earned only by surviving too many nights like this.

  But no one knew that now.

  The remaining men didn’t try to be brave. They scattered, retreating into the dark, dragging their wounded with them. One of them paused at the mouth of the alley, just long enough to look back.

  Their eyes met.

  Recognition didn’t spark—only something colder. A will to retaliate.

  Askai let him go.

  He turned to the man in uniform instead. The boy was shaking, shock locking his limbs in place. Up close, he looked even younger, maybe Jordan’s age—barely hardened, barely trained, thrown into something far larger than himself.

  “Up,” Askai said quietly.

  He hauled him to his feet and half-carried, half-dragged him toward the brighter end of the alley, where patrol lights flickered faintly in the distance. He set him down there, steadying him only long enough to be sure he wouldn’t collapse.

  “My colleagues—” the boy started, breath hitching. “They’ll keep you safe. As a favor. I swear—”

  Askai was already turning away.

  The boy was too young to understand what kind of favors were being traded tonight. Too young to see that protection always came with invisible hooks. He lacked the experience, his colleagues did not.

  As Askai melted back into the dark, a familiar bitterness settled in his chest. He wondered why the East had flooded Middle Nolan with numbers like this—raw, inexperienced bodies mixed in with seasoned units. They had always saved their battle-hardened ones for the West. Men who didn’t hesitate. Men who didn’t know how to stop.

  Not long after, Askai found a motel that didn’t ask questions. He paid in cash, kept his head down, and locked the door behind him with a sense of finality that felt heavier than it should have.

  The first thing he did was turn on the news.

  Things were bad. Worse than Brendon had let on.

  He placed the metal rod by the side of the bed, within easy reach. Meagre, but solid. Something was better than nothing. He hadn’t even had time to steal a gun from Brendon’s place.

  Luck, it seemed, wasn’t interested in him anymore.

  The days blurred.

  A month passed without him stepping outside.

  The television stayed on, its low murmur filling the room as footage rolled endlessly—burning vehicles, shuttered streets, bodies blurred out just enough to pretend at mercy. At first, the gangs hadn’t fractured the way everyone expected. There was no blind chaos, no random violence.

  Instead, it was coordinated.

  Too coordinated.

  Authorities began to whisper about infiltration—about unseen hands guiding movements, turning gangs into pieces on a board. What was meant to be a swift operation stretched into something slow and ugly.

  Then, sometime around the third week, it began to unravel.

  Alliances cracked. Orders contradicted each other. Gangs turned inward, suspicion eating them alive. Askai watched it happen with a hollow sense of déjà vu.

  He’d seen this before.

  The docks. Years ago. Different names. Same pattern.

  By the end of the month, the authorities finally gained the upper hand.

  Middle Nolan was quieter—but not at all safer.

  Askai sat on the edge of the bed, the metal rod resting across his palm as his eyes stayed fixed on the muted newsfeed flickering across the screen.

  This wasn’t over. Not even close.

  But he couldn’t stay holed up forever either. Brendon had been checking on him every day, hovering like Askai was a sitting duck in a pond full of crocodiles—well-meaning, anxious, and utterly unable to help from across the divide.

  Apparently, Vance and Brendon were suffering from the same delusion.

  The thought tugged a reluctant smile out of him, brief and unwelcome - a moment of weakness. He shook his head as if to dislodge it, then stood and went looking for his wallet and the room keys.

  There were supplies he needed—basic things—and more importantly, he needed to hear what the streets were saying. News channels told only one side of the story. The alleys always told the rest.

  The moment he stepped outside, the smile vanished and he immediately regretted his decision.

  Uniforms were everywhere.

  Every corner. Every signal. Every stretch of road. Their eyes tracked passersby with practiced suspicion, hands never far from weapons. Middle Nolan had become a pressure cooker, and the lid was being screwed on tight.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  It was like Askai was missing something- a key piece to the whole puzzle. This is not how East conducted their raids. Stationing these many cops at every intersection hinted at their intention to avoid collateral damage but that was something they never bothered about West of their own frontiers.

  He needed to be more cautious, at least until he had figured out whatever in the bloody hell had been going down.

  Askai veered toward the back of the motel and slipped into a narrow alley, barely wide enough for a single person to pass through without brushing brick on both sides. He kept his head down, shoulders drawn in, becoming just another shadow trying not to be seen.

  The first store he found was small and poorly lit, shelves crowded with mismatched goods. He stepped inside without lifting his gaze. In times like these, anonymity was currency. No one looked clean. No one looked safe. Everyone was hiding—from the gangs, from the authorities, from each other.

  He had just started picking up what he needed when the air in the room shifted. He suddenly felt several eyes on him.

  Askai froze.

  He didn’t have to look up to know.

  Slowly, he did anyway.

  Familiar faces stared back at him. Unwanted ones.

  They were the men from the alley—the ones he had laid out to save that cop. Only this time, they weren’t alone.

  “Well, look who we found,” one of them said, grinning wide.

  It was the same one who had sneaked a look at his face that day. He crushed the packet of cigarettes in his fist, knuckles whitening, as if imagining Askai’s skull instead. The sound was soft, deliberate.

  Askai’s gaze flicked to the man behind the counter. For a brief, foolish second, he hoped the man would reach for a phone, call the authorities. With their numbers, the uniforms would be here before the receiver even hit the hook.

  But the shopkeeper only leaned back, a toothpick dangling from his lips, eyes gleaming with interest as he watched the scene unfold.

  Enjoying it.

  Of course.

  The man with the cigarettes stepped closer. “Didn’t think we’d run into you again so soon.”

  Askai didn’t answer. His fingers tightened slightly around the items in his hand. The exits were already being blocked—but he had his eyes trained on one anyway.

  That’s when it clicked.

  This wasn’t just a store.

  It was a front.

  A place tucked between dark, damp alleys that led God knew where—places no uniform ever patrolled unless they were invited. The walls seemed to close in as Askai took it in, the quiet hum of danger settling into his bones.

  The shop was crawling with them.

  And this time, there seemed to be no easy way out.

  Askai moved the instant the tension snapped, the first blow came from the side—a bottle shattering against the shelf where his head had been a second earlier. Glass exploded, groceries clattering to the floor. He drove his elbow back into the nearest body, felt ribs give, then grabbed a metal rack and swung it low. Knees buckled. Someone swore.

  “Get him!” one of them yelled.

  Askai didn’t stay to see who it was. He lunged for the back exit.

  A gunshot cracked through the store—too loud and too close. The sound punched through his skull like thunder and for half a heartbeat he expected pain, heat, the wet collapse of muscle.

  Nothing.

  The bullet tore into the wall beside the door instead.

  Askai was already moving.

  He burst out into the alley, feet slamming into wet concrete, breath tearing out of his lungs as he ran. Another shot rang out behind him—wild, rushed. He ducked instinctively, shoulder clipping a stack of crates, but kept going.

  Someone followed.

  He could hear it now—boots, uneven, desperate. Men. Stupid enough to chase him on foot.

  Neither of them dared take the main lanes. Uniforms lined the streets like steel statues, rifles slung, eyes sharp. Every time Askai glimpsed blue or black ahead, all of them veered off at the last second, slipping into side alleys, service corridors, half-collapsed walkways that smelled of rot and piss.

  Authorities or gangs.

  Pick your poison.

  Askai’s chest burned. His vision tunneled. He vaulted a low fence and landed hard, pain shooting up his leg. Somewhere behind him, a man cursed, laughed—a sharp, ugly sound.

  “You run good,” the voice called. “Won’t save you.”

  Askai cut left—

  —and something slammed into the back of his head.

  Stars burst across his vision. He stumbled, caught himself against a wall slick with grime, teeth rattling. Whatever had hit him had weight to it. Pipe, brick, baton—he didn’t know. Blood trickled warm down his neck.

  He pushed off anyway.

  He couldn’t stop. Couldn’t slow.

  If he fell here, the gangs would finish him. If the cops caught him bleeding and running, they’d ask questions he couldn’t answer.

  His options narrowed with every turn.

  Then the alley ahead erupted.

  Figures dropped from shadows, fast and silent. Tattooed men—arms, necks, faces inked black and blue, moving with terrifying intentions.

  Intention to kill.

  One of Askai’s pursuers barely had time to register them before a blade flashed.

  Throat opened.

  Another man rounded the corner behind him—gun halfway raised—only to have his head snapped back, a shot fired point-blank into his face. The sound echoed once, then died.

  Bodies fell. Quick and Ruthlessly.

  Askai skidded to a halt, chest heaving, blood pounding in his ears. There were five corpses lying around him, weapons still drawn out and he had a bad feeling that he was soon going to join them.

  One of the tattooed men stepped toward him, weapon lifting.

  “Wait.”

  The voice cut through the chaos like a blade sliding home.

  “He’s not one of Greg’s fools.”

  The man hesitated.

  Askai looked up.

  Recognition hit him like a second blow to the head.

  Leonard.

  Still the same but leaner. Harder. But unmistakable. Moraine’s man. One of the loyalists who had once bled beside him in the West.

  Leonard stared at him like he’d seen a ghost.

  In a way, he had.

  Askai said nothing.

  Around them, the tattooed men finished their work, dragging bodies into shadow, wiping blades clean with practiced indifference. This wasn’t random violence. This was quite structured.

  So this was what the news had meant by coordinated response.

  Moraine’s people were everywhere.

  Undercover and embedded into these stray gangs, steering the chaos.

  The new crime lords of Middle Nolan had no idea whose territory they were really standing on—or whose demons they’d inherited.

  Askai’s mind flickered, sharp despite the pain. A thought clawed its way up, unwanted but persistent.

  Everyone who had ever been close to him had been… moved. Reassigned and Distanced.

  Leonard. Ramsay. Maybe others like them. Pieces shifted quietly off the board.

  Brendon, of course, had been the exception. Moraine couldn’t afford to lose him.

  The bald man at the front—head carved with swirling tattoos—snickered, unimpressed.

  “Who cares?” he said lazily. “We get paid for the heads we take off.”

  Leonard turned slowly.

  “And he’ll take off yours,” Leonard said flatly, “if you touch one of his men. There are plenty of his handlers roaming these streets.”

  Silence fell.

  The color drained from the bald man’s face.

  Askai watched it happen, pulse still roaring in his ears. He had a faint feeling that the reason behind the terror in the man’s eye wasn’t Moraine.