The city never slept.
It just changed the way it screamed.
Lin stalked through the drizzle-soaked streets, head down, twin blades hidden under his long coat. Neon signs bled color into the puddles at his feet. Somewhere a siren wailed, far and tired. The world was broken. It had been for a long time.
He didn't care anymore.
The old convenience store buzzed weakly in the gloom. Lin pushed the door open, the bell above giving a sickly jingle.
Inside, Nel was leaning on the counter, chewing gum and scrolling through her phone. The Crow perched by the window, feathers ruffled against the cold.
She glanced up, flashing a crooked grin. "Yo, Reaper. Looking like shit today. Extra broody."
Lin didn't answer.
Didn't need to.
Nel's grin faded when she saw the look in his eyes.
Before she could say anything, the back door creaked open.
Mao stepped out of the shadows, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. His bald head gleamed under the buzzing fluorescent light, and his face was a roadmap of wars nobody talked about anymore.
"Come," Mao said simply.
Lin followed.
They sat at the back, the table scarred by knife marks and cigarette burns. Mao slid a worn envelope across to him. Its surface was stained, fingerprinted, old blood seeping into the fibers.
Lin opened it.
A photograph fell out.
A woman—early thirties, black hair in a messy bun, glasses slipping down her nose, standing in front of the North Gate Research Annex. She was laughing, holding up a small black pendrive between two fingers like a trophy.
Hina Matsumoto. Researcher. Ex-Gates Division.
Mao tapped the photo with a thick finger. "She found something during a last patrol around North Gate. Something the Syndicate didn't want found."
"What?" Lin asked, voice low.
Mao shrugged. "Don't know. Don't need to know. Orders are simple: Find the pendrive. Retrieve it. Burn everything else."
Nel leaned in from the side, whispering like a devil on his shoulder. "She quit right after. Ghosted everyone. Now she's missing. And the bastards who want her dead aren't exactly amateurs."
"A1 Caterial," Mao said, spitting the name like poison. "Private army. Gate cleaners. If they're involved, this ain't just research."
Lin absorbed the information in silence.
Mao lit his lighter, even though the cigarette remained unlit. Habit.
Memory.
Pain.
He snapped it shut.
"There's more," Mao said, voice darkening. "An Asseter."
Lin stiffened.
Mao smiled grimly.
"Name's Time."
The room seemed to tilt.
Time.
A ghost from a past Lin had buried.
"He's coming after her too," Mao continued. "And after you."
Nel whistled low. "Y'know, most people stay dead when they lose at South Gate."
Lin said nothing.
Mao leaned forward, voice dropping into a growl. "Time's already killed once. Took out an old man yesterday. Always had a cig between his lips. Never lit it. That was his punishment for being an ex-Asseter. Lost the right to smoke."
Lin remembered the man.
A nameless old soldier who had once taught him how to breathe through the pain.
Lin clenched his fists under the table.
"You owe him," Mao said. "You owe yourself."
Lin stood.
The chair scraped back harshly.
"Where?"
Mao grinned.
"A dive called the Rusted Heart. South Sector. Halfway between hell and nothing."
Lin turned to leave.
"Hey, Reaper," Mao called after him.
Lin paused.
Mao tossed him a battered headset.
"She still might be alive," Mao said. "Don't forget why you fight."
Lin caught the headset.
Didn't answer.
The rain swallowed him again.
---
Later — South Sector: The Rusted Heart
The Rusted Heart wasn't a bar.
It was a graveyard pretending to be one.
The sign flickered overhead, barely hanging onto its frame. Inside, the air was thick with sweat, desperation, and the sour stink of broken dreams.
Lin walked in like death itself.
Heads turned.
Eyes dropped.
They knew him.
The Black Reaper.
He moved to the back, past broken men nursing broken lives.
The bartender—a stitched-up brute missing three fingers—nodded toward a door half-hidden behind the bar.
Lin slipped through without a word.
The hallway beyond was dark, lit only by the flickering pulse of a single neon strip.
At the end—movement.
He drew both swords silently.
A shadow detached itself from the darkness.
Tall.
Lanky.
Wrapped in a tattered coat that might once have been military standard.
And in his hand—a cigarette, unlit.
Time.
He grinned when he saw Lin.
It was not a sane grin.
It was the grin of a man who had died once and decided he liked it.
"Black Reaper," Time drawled. His voice was thin, stretched, barely human. "I wondered how long it would take."
Lin said nothing.
Only lowered into a stance.
Time laughed—a hollow sound.
"You left me to rot in the South Gate," he said, tossing the cigarette aside. "Now it's your turn."
The air twisted.
Without warning, Time moved.
Not teleportation.
Compression.
Space folded and snapped as he reappeared beside Lin, fist hammering toward his face.
Lin blocked with crossed blades, the impact driving him back a step.
Time's grin widened.
"Still fast. Good. I want you at your best."
They clashed.
Steel screamed against bone and psionics.
Time fought like entropy itself—wild, consuming, relentless. His body flickered in and out of existence, vanishing from one side only to strike from another.
Lin countered with precision.
No wasted movement.
Every block, every slash, calculated to maim, to end.
Blood sprayed the walls.
Time took a deep gash across his chest but laughed it off, twisting space again, hurling Lin against the cracked concrete.
"You think you're still the Reaper?" Time hissed, looming over him. "You think you can protect anyone?"
Lin wiped blood from his mouth.
"I don't think," he said coldly.
"I kill."
He surged up, blades flashing.
Their battle shattered the hallway—walls imploding, neon bursting into a storm of sparks.
Time caught Lin's wrist, twisting brutally.
Lin let the blade drop.
With his free hand, he drove a knife straight into Time's side.
The Asseter howled, reeling back.
Lin grabbed his fallen sword mid-spin and slashed Time across the face.
The man staggered, bleeding, laughing.
"You can't stop it," Time gasped, grinning through shattered teeth. "The world... the Gates... it's all falling apart."
Lin leveled the blade at his throat.
"Where's Hina Matsumoto?"
Time spat blood.
"She's already dead."
Lin's blade flicked.
One clean slash.
Time froze.
A single red line blossomed across his throat.
He fell to his knees, coughing blood.
But he smiled even as he died.
"You'll see," he whispered. "Soon enough... Reaper..."
And then he collapsed.
Still.
Silent.
Gone.
Lin stood over the body.
Breathing hard.
Broken lights sputtered overhead.
The world outside kept screaming.
Lin wiped the blood from his sword, sliding it back into its sheath.
Hina Matsumoto wasn't dead.
Not yet.
He could feel it.
He could feel the weight of the pendrive she carried—the last hope against whatever horror waited at the North Gate.
He had a new mission now.
Find her.
Protect her.
Finish what had been started.
Or die trying.
---
[TO BE CONTINUED]