Rain fell in sheets as Warren and Wren moved through the Yellow Zone, the only place left in the city that could still be called a market. Half-melted signs flickered above canvas stalls, broken drones lay stripped in gutters, and bright tarps fluttered against the skeletal remains of buildings.
It was loud. Crowded. Wet.
Warren hated it.
But they needed supplies, and more importantly, they needed the nano-forge. If rumors were true, one had just surfaced in the trade ring this cycle: portable, pre-collapse tech, the kind that could rip down metal to atoms and rebuild it at will. Extremely rare. Stupidly valuable.
His coat hissed in the rain, the yellow bright against the grey city. Styll peeked from his pocket occasionally, nose twitching at scents Warren couldn't name. Wren walked close, hood up, one hand lightly brushing Warren's side for orientation more than affection. She didn't talk much in crowds.
The market had changed. More Wild caravans than usual. Traders with hardened faces and foreign dialects. Meat carts. Bone charm sellers. Patch-tech engineers with wired goggles and bone-white visors. Everything was available, for the right price or the wrong one.
Warren ignored the chaos and headed straight for the merchant's stall, the same one he'd visited before.
The merchant was impossible to miss. A big man, broad-shouldered, with a voice like rusted steel and a hand lance strapped to his thigh that looked even more polished than the last time Warren had seen it: clean, gleaming, and deadly. The grip bore the unmistakable stamp of Syro-Glass Incorporated, etched deep into the plating like a signature that wouldn't fade.
"If it isn't the little trouble maker, fancy seeing you here again," the merchant said, grinning as he saw Warren. His voice cut through the rain like it had somewhere to be. "I see you made a friend."
Wren stepped closer.
Styll popped her head out of Warren's coat.
"Make that two," the merchant added, surprised but not unkind. "Well it's lovely ta meet ya. Name's Carmine. Me friends call me Car." He grinned, the rain streaking down his cheeks like melted silver. "I don't think I ever caught your name, kid."
Wren smiled, pointing to each in turn. "That's Wasp. I'm Wren. And she's Styll."
"Nice to meet you, Car."
Car nodded. "First time seeing you with company. Let alone The Last Kindness."
Wren tilted her head. Her smile flickered, uncertain. "That's... a lot to live up to."
Warren gave a small nod. Styll ducked further into his coat, wary.
Car leaned forward and offered Styll a bit of dried meat. She sniffed, blinked, and took it.
"She don't trust me."
"She's smart," Warren said jokingly.
Car barked a laugh. "Fair."
They talked gear. Warren asked about the nano-forge. Car confirmed it: fresh in from the eastern caravans. Untouched. Compact. Supposedly pulled from a dead engineer's vault sealed under a half-collapsed silo in wilds. Two teams of scavvers died trying to crack it open.
"I can hold it for a bit, but not long," Car said. "Traders are sniffin' for it already. It'll cost you."
"We'll cover it," Warren said.
As the two of them bartered, more than a few heads turned. They were spending too freely, trading fragments for salvage-grade luxuries that most scavvers only dreamed of. Preserved ration tins with actual meat content, pre-collapse med-foam still active in the vial, a spliced thermal sleeve with working insulation nodes. Even a signal booster patch, a square of old-world silicon barely larger than a fingernail, worth more than most weapons. It didn't take long for that kind of motion to attract attention.
Car noticed too. He leaned closer across the counter, voice low.
"You're burnin' hot," he said quietly. "Too many eyes. A pair like you flashin' around high-value trade? That draws the worst sort."
Warren gave a subtle nod. He already knew. But it meant something that Car had bothered to say it.
A moment later, when Car turned his back to adjust a crate of old-world batteries, Styll slipped quietly down Warren's arm, hopped off the counter, and nudged a small object into one of Car's gear packs: two fragments. A repayment. A secret returned. With interest.
Car never saw it happen.
Warren didn't acknowledge it. But his fingers tapped once against the edge of the counter. Approval.
While Warren bartered with Car, Wren wandered.
She moved quieter than most, drawn into the rhythm of the market without needing to belong to it. Her eyes skimmed everything. Familiar shapes. Unfamiliar edges. Half-evaluating. Half-distracted. The burner medkits made her stomach turn. The sight of the glasssmith's hands, precise and burned from his own tools, caught her longer than she expected. There was a beauty in the repetition. A kind of survival.
She lingered at a bin of micro-lenses, fingers grazing the glass like it might answer her. One of them still carried the faint shimmer of a working retinal scanner chip. She didn't take it. Just pressed her thumb against it gently. Then moved on.
Her hand hovered over a cracked stim injector. Then a breath mask missing half its filter. Useless, unless you were desperate. She knew what that looked like. Then a child's night-vision monocle caught her eye. Rewired. Scraped. Scarred. Still stubbornly functional. That, she almost smiled at. It reminded her of something she couldn't name.
At another stall, she found a set of gloves reinforced with surgical grade synthhide. They weren't cheap. She traded a fragment for them. She had overpaid. But the merchant gave her a small jute of real cotton to sweeten the deal. She even picked up a sealed packet of mushroom jerky. Car's recommendation. The trader, grizzled and bunker-born, nodded without smiling. Rain tapped steadily on the tarp above them. The sound hit like a metronome on metal. The trade felt steady. Grounded. Real.
She haggled for a packet of roasted insects from a kid with a stutter and a stitched-up backpack. It cost her a clean bandage roll and a half-charged solar key.
She tucked the packet into her coat, alongside the gloves. Not much. But it felt like preparing for something. Maybe survival. Maybe the road.
It was the most alive she'd looked in days.
But it didn't last.
Someone's voice drifted over to her. "The Last Kindness."
Someone else, farther down the aisle, echoed the name in a hushed whisper. "That's her. The Last Kindness."
Another voice picked it up, barely audible through the rain. "I heard she saved a whole squad once. Didn't let one die. Not a single one."
Wren heard them. The words curled under her coat like the cold. She didn't look back.
Wren froze mid-step. Her hand hovered over a tin of powdered milk. But she wasn't seeing it anymore. That name. The Last Kindness. It stuck. Like it didn't know if it was praise or punishment.
She moved again after that. Quiet. Slower. Not because she was afraid. But because she suddenly didn't know what role she was playing in this world anymore.
The whispers didn't follow her. But they lingered. Thick in the air behind her. Every glance felt heavier now. Like someone had nailed a new name to her back and left her to carry it.
She passed a cart of cracked water filters. A man eating with one hand stared with both. He said nothing. Just nodded. Like he already believed the stories.
She glanced toward Warren. Her eyes searched him like maybe he'd say something to pull it into place.
He didn't.
"That girl yours?" Car asked, nodding in Wren's direction.
Warren said nothing. Just softly smiled.
Car didn't press.
Later, while packing up Warrens purchases into Heavy-duty travel pack, Car leaned in. "Heard some rumors you might want to know. One about some ex-Enforcer turned Warlord roaming the ruins out past the Broken Loop in the Wilds. Real mean bastard with a temper and a taste for kiddies. Say he's been hunting down runaways. Girls mostly. And he's got himself an army of thugs. Not just muscle either. Some of 'em used to be enforcers that followed him out. They say he's sitting on something like an old-world weapons vault."
The rain tapped harder as Wren drifted back, her silhouette blending into the stall's flickering light. She stood silent, eyes sharp, catching the tail of Car's hushed words about an ex-Enforcer.
Arms crossed over her chest. Hood pulled low. She didn't speak. But her eyes sharpened at the word runaways. Her stance shifted just enough to betray the tension under her silence. Warren glanced at her, then back to Car. His own body language adjusted slightly to cover her flank.
Wren flinched. It was small. But Warren caught it. He didn't say anything. Just shifted closer. Let his fingers tighten lightly around her hand. Not comfort. Not pressing. Just presence.
Later, he would ask. But not here.
"One of the Wild clans made a push into Sector K. Tore through a dozen scav squads. Some of 'em had chips that shorted mid-fight. Like somethin' fried 'em," Car added.
"Broken variant?" Warren asked.
Car shook his head. "Could be. But word going around says it's Emp tech."
Warren narrowed his eyes. "Emp tech?"
"Stuff from just before the System existed. Back when the Empire still ruled. Power didn't come from servers back then. Came from command. Conviction.
After the collapse, the Empire tried to rebuild. Tried to make something whole again. They had tech no one had seen before. Mechs. Exosuits. Integrated command rigs. Real power. Not scrap. Not salvage. New.
But the corps found a way to win. Crushed it all.
Still, some of that tech lingers. Buried. Broken. Or stolen. It doesn't flash. Doesn't pulse. Just kills. Real quiet. Real final.
They call it system bleed.
Seen that once before. Ate a guy from the inside."
"You believe it?"
"I believe anything that'll keep me alive," Car said. He tapped the old military insignia stitched into his coat. "That includes tellin' you when things smell wrong."
Warren gave him a nod. It was the closest thing to thanks he'd give.
They were almost ready to leave when it happened.
A voice rang out from behind them. "Hey! You in the yellow jacket!"
Warren turned. Neutral expression. Inside, his pulse sharpened.
Lucas.
Older. Rougher. Still wearing that smirk like the world owed him tribute. Warren recognized him immediately. The clan leader who used power like it was a badge. Not a responsibility. The man who looked the other way when his brother, Reggie, turned kids into prey.
Warren didn't need to remember. The image of Reggie, begging. Sobbing. Trying to promise change. That had never left him. Neither had the way his own laughter cut through it. How he'd carved Reggie down to meat and silence.
Now Lucas stood in front of him. Older. Rougher. Just as oblivious.
They exchanged words. Small. Sharp. Nothing loud. Nothing obvious. But it was Lucas who pushed.
"After everything I poured into you, kid, this how you pay it back? Thought you could flash around those fragments like they're yours? Every ration you ate. Every breath you took under my roof. Mine. You think you earned any of this on your own? You owe me. You think I didn't see you, running off like a rat the last time we tried to collect? You didn't just bolt. You vanished. Let us rot in your shadow. I kept you breathing when no one else would. Took the heat. Shielded you from every bastard looking to snap your neck for fun or food. And now here you are. Strutting through my market. Pockets heavy. Acting like a prince. You wouldn't have lasted a week if I hadn't kept the dogs off your back. And this. This is how you pay me? Like I'm just another score?
Voices around them started to murmur. Low. Ugly. Suspicious. A few of Lucas's men and women had gathered already. The men followed out of fear and old loyalty. Hardened eyes. Quiet nods. Waiting for orders.
The women weren't soldiers. Not anymore. They were his harem. Draped in scavver silks, layered in threadbare coats trimmed to look elegant, almost regal. But it was a mask. Their eyes held no pity. No hesitation. Some of them smiled as the crowd swelled. Thin, sharp smiles that didn't touch their eyes. They whispered cruelties behind painted lips. Remembered names. Faces. Debts long buried. They weren't passive trophies.
They were power sharpened into glass. Wiser than his brutes. Meaner than the worst of them. They knew how to wound without moving. How to mock with a glance. How to gut with silence. There was no softness left. Only precision. Scarred survival. A hunger to remind the world who made them and what they became in return. They edged in close. Emboldened by Lucas's tone. His posture. The theater of a man claiming what's his.
A couple strangers joined too. Drawn by the rising heat. Some remembered the stories Lucas had peddled. How he'd "rescued" the strays. Led raids. Kept peace. All lies. But legends had their own gravity. He sounded like a man owed something. That was enough for some.
They formed a loose circle. Just enough to trap Warren in narrative and space. One or two spit on the ground. One muttered, "He's been throwing fragments around like they grow on trees. About time someone checked him."
Another added, "Lucas raised him, didn't he? Least he could do is show some respect."
The pressure thickened. Judgment by implication. Justice by crowd. No one touched Warren. Yet. But the air pulsed with invitation.
They wanted spectacle. They wanted payment.
They wanted Warren to kneel.
They wanted him to break.
"You're stealing from me, boy," Lucas growled. Louder now. "Off my generosity. Time to pay your dues."
Warren said nothing.
Car did.
The crack of his lance firing into the air split the pressure like a blade through gut.
The crowd recoiled. Half ducked. Some bolted. Others stayed frozen. Eyes wide. Hands clenched. Breath held like a collective inhale before a storm. And a few looked back with something darker gleaming in their gaze. Greed. Calculation. A glint of hungry ambition.
They eyed Warren not like a person. But like a purse full of glinting coin. A walking bounty in a yellow coat. A prize upright and unaware. The kind of score that turned scavengers into murderers. Their feet shifted toward shadows. One or two drifted back into the crowd, not out of fear, but to circle wider. To watch. To plan. It didn't matter what Car had said. Or what Lucas claimed. If Warren bled today, someone meant to profit from it.
"Get away from my shop," Car barked. His voice cracked through the air with thunder. "You're scaring off my customers."
Lucas snarled. A threat coiled behind his teeth. He tipped his head slightly, trying to play casual. Car didn't budge. Instead, he stepped forward and placed the tip of the lance directly on Lucas's forehead.
He whispered, "They might think this is your market. But you see any guards doing anything? They're not stopping me. They're looking the other way."
"Your market." Car growled.
A bead of sweat rolled slowly down Lucas's face. The one patch of skin the rain hadn't touched. It caught just beneath his eye and traced the line of fear etched into his expression. For all his posture, the truth was there. Quiet. Unmistakable. Lucas was afraid.
That silenced the rest.
Warren stepped forward. Just slightly. Measured. Controlled. His hand rose. Not fast. Not tense. And rested gently on Car's forearm.
The motion said everything.
Car lowered the lance.
No words passed between them.
But the look Warren gave Lucas was pure intent. Not rage. Not threat. Just claim.
This one was his.
Lucas didn't blink. But he backed up.
Warren didn't speak. He didn't need to. He just watched Lucas shrink beneath the weight of a silence that wasn't his. Car had pulled the curtain back, and there was nothing behind it but an old man playing at legend. Warren filed the moment away. Noted the cracks. Power didn't live in stories. It lived in the way the guards looked away. In stalls left untouched. In men like Car, who didn't need to raise their voices to be heard.
Wren watched the way Lucas's posture buckled. Not from the lance. From what it revealed. He wasn't used to being seen through. Not like that. And Car didn't even look angry. Just tired. Dismissive. That was what did it. Wren had seen it before. That moment when someone finally realized they weren't scary anymore. Not respected. Just tolerated. And now? Not even that.
Lucas wouldn't die here. Not yet. But he would.
Wren tugged at Warren's sleeve.
He let her pull him away.
The rain picked up as Warren stepped into the alley, the sound of it dancing on concrete like cymbals in a warped symphony. The world narrowed to glistening walls and pooling water. He could almost hear music: something old, strange, theatrical. Something from another life.
He smiled.
Do, do-do-do Do, do-do-do-do, do-do-do Do-do, do-do-do Do, do-do-do-do, do-do-do Do-do, do-do-do Do, do-do-do-do, do-do-do Do, do-do-do
"I'm singin' in the rain," he sang softly, and his voice, to anyone who could've heard it, was shockingly rich, smooth, warm, unplaceably trained. Too good for this alley. Too beautiful for this world.
His first partner rounded the corner. A crowbar. A sneer. A misstep. "Hey, that's a nice coat, kid," the man said, grinning wide.
Warren didn't respond.
He opened the umbrella like a magician performing a trick. There was a fwip as it flared open.
A pirouette. Crack.
The shaft broke teeth, not stride. Blood misted the alleyway, lingering long moments like crimson fog clinging to the air, unwilling to fall.
"Just singin' in the rain!"
His second lunged. Warren bent, spun, caught her heel. Her body twirled midair, slammed to the pavement. Tap, tap, splash. His boots kept time.
The third rushed. Warren used the curved handle to catch his ankle mid-charge, then wrenched the leg upward with a brutal twist. The man's knee hyperextended. Something tore. He screamed. Warren didn't stop.
And a fourth joined. Warren let the man come close, let him think he had an opening. Then the umbrella jabbed into the gap beneath the ribs, and twisted. His partner dropped in a heap of vomiting blood.
Warren sang:
"What a glorious feeling..."
Another appeared. This one wielded a blade. Warren stepped into the slash, twisted his torso so it just missed, then slammed his elbow into the attacker's temple. A crack of thunder rolled through the sky as bone cracked beneath the force. The man fell twitching.
A fifth. A sixth. He didn't count. They came, and he cut through them. The umbrella tip tore open a face, spun and came down on a clavicle, collapsing it like paper. A scream choked on rain. Warren danced between them. Limbs snapped. Flesh split. Wet noises followed like an orchestra tuning in agony.
He flourished the umbrella over his shoulder and jabbed it backward into another chest.
"I'm happy again!"
Warren waltzed. One hand behind his back. Boots sliding through gore. A broken jaw here. A kneecap turned backward there. Every movement was clean. Efficient. Beautiful.
One attacker pulled a makeshift hand lance. Warren spun behind him, hooked the weapon with the umbrella's ribs, and tore it from the man's grip. Then he slammed it back into his nose with enough force to cave in half his face.
He sang under his breath:
"I'm laughin' at clouds... so dark up above..." And they were: boiling, low, black as bruises. Lightning flickered across the alley's mouth like the blink of something ancient. The storm mirrored the lyric, as if the world had been waiting for the line to give it permission. Every drop, every shadow, every breath of wind became part of his song.
Three more rushed. Warren ducked the first, snapped the second's arm with a rising strike, then drove the third to the ground with a falling umbrella-tip to the throat. Blood sprayed across his face. He blinked it away, smiling.
A woman tried to flee. He caught her by the collar, swung her around, and let her skid face-first into a rusted pipe. Her skull made a sound like wet wood splitting. She twitched once, then went still. Warren didn't break stride.
He sauntered after the next one, graceful as rain.
Another blow, this time an upward strike to the jaw, sent a man airborne. He flipped, spasmed, and hit the ground with the crack of thunder. A puppet with its strings cut. Warren's feet never stopped moving. His breath never changed pace.
He wasn't killing them fast.
He was savoring it.
The alley was a stage now. Steam rose from warm blood pooling in the cold rain. Warren was the eye of the storm, untouched, drenched in red.
He moved like something unearthly. Like the stories whispered by firelight. Like death rewritten as art. One of his partners tried to crawl away. Warren caught him by the ankle, dragged him back through the blood, and hummed as he shattered both shoulders one after the other with short, surgical strikes.
"The sun's in my heart!"
He stomped a face into the concrete with the force of a falling tower. Another man reached for a weapon. Warren caught his hand mid-motion and shattered it with a single twist before driving the umbrella into his ear until something gave way inside.
He twirled. Not fast. Grand. The way emperors turned to show their profile.
"And I'm ready for love!"
A woman tried to plead. He cut her off with the umbrella to the throat, her words garbled as she collapsed. He kept singing.
Another screamed and bolted. He didn't chase. Just lowered the umbrella, let its handle cradle a broken shard of jawbone from the street, then flicked it with a practiced snap of the wrist. The shard flew true, striking her just above the temple. She stumbled mid-stride, body twisting, then collapsed in a graceless heap.
A ballet of violence.
Tap. Slide. Snap. Water churning. Blood spraying. Bones shattering. The choir of collapse.
"Let the stormy clouds chase... everyone from the place!" He was the storm now, every step a thunderclap, every breath charged with the static weight of something inevitable.
Warren struck a pose. Umbrella out. Face tilted to the storm. More partners hesitated now. They looked at him not as a man, but as a story made flesh. A legend mid-step, framed in stormlight and song, too graceful to be real and too brutal to forget.
He beckoned. One answered the call. Warren didn't move. Just shifted his weight and let the man impale himself trying to land a hit.
He followed the last crawler, boots dragging trails of crimson.
"Come on with the rain... I've a smile on my face." His expression matched the lyric: bright, unbothered, impossibly serene. Blood dripped from his cheek in delicate lines, but his eyes shone like a man in love. Not with a person. With the act. With the art. The smile was genuine, radiant, haunting. It was the kind of smile that didn't belong on a battlefield, and yet it bloomed there anyway, bright as a sunrise over ruin.
He drove the umbrella down. Through spine. Through stomach. Through the earth. Crushed bones cracked beneath his boots. Smashed teeth scattered like confetti in the mud. The screams would not echo. They would haunt this place instead, a phantom chorus tethered to blood-soaked walls and shattered cartilage, singing only of the silence he left behind. The memory of his wake would stain the alley like a fable, half-beauty, half-nightmare.
The alley was silent.
Except for his voice. Echoing. Clear. Beautiful.
He straightened. Rain washed the blood from his coat in sheets, but it couldn't touch his eyes. They burned.
And somewhere far beyond them, stories were already starting. People would talk about this night in hushed tones: a boy in a yellow jacket, singing a symphony of death. Outnumbered, yes. But numbers had meant nothing. A million ants meant nothing to a hurricane.
Predators watched from the alley's mouth. The Broken. Scavengers. Killers.
They saw him.
They fled.
The alley was just tonight's catch, other predators had fallen to his bait, their screams now part of his song
Wren dropped beside him, expression unreadable. Rain hung off her hood like beads on a funeral veil.
"You done?"
He bowed. Umbrella steady and tucked under his arm. Blood dripped in slow applause.
"I'll walk down the lane... with a happy refrain..."
They gathered what they needed. Touched nothing else.
Then Warren started to hum again, soft and clear, like a lullaby hummed by a god in the aftermath of judgment. His tone floated above the blood and silence, absurd in its beauty, incongruous with the carnage. It wasn't forgiveness. It was memory: etched in melody, carved in blood and bone . And then, beneath his breath, almost too soft for the world to hold, he sang it: "I'm dancin' and singin' in the rain." A single pure note in a city too broken to know whether it should weep or cry for an encore.
Arm in arm, they walked into the night, the rain washing away everything but the footprints they didn't care to hide.