The sirens did not reach this street. They wailed elsewhere, in districts where the city still believed the law had meaning. Here, the only law was momentum—and Cain was already moving.

He crossed the fractured alley with the same calm he had carried through the fight, boots cutting through puddles that reflected red from scattered warning lights. Behind him, Susan shadowed his pace, her cloak dragging grime and bloodless ichor like a black tide. Hunter was last, silent as breath, his crossbow folded against his spine. Steve's drones flickered overhead, one sputtering smoke where a claw had grazed it.

"Two hostiles down," Steve reported through the comm. "But they weren't the real deal. Scouts. Their comm traffic's dead, but something piggybacked my uplink."

Cain didn't slow. "Meaning?"

"Meaning," Steve hissed, "something else knows where we are. And it's bigger than these toys."

Cain's jaw flexed, but his tone stayed level. "Good. Saves us the trouble of hunting."

They turned a corner. The street ahead opened into a hollowed marketplace, long abandoned after the first quarantines gutted the southern districts. Shattered stalls slouched under torn tarps. Glass crunched underfoot, shards glittering like frost. Rusted signs dangled from chains, swaying in the wind with a sound like muted bells.

Cain stopped in the center of the market and looked up.

Above the ruins, skybridges laced between skeletal towers. Fog crawled through the gaps, veiling the spires like gauze over broken teeth. Beyond that, dawn was a sickly smear of violet and gray, bleeding across the horizon. It should have been quiet. But Cain's ears picked up something beneath the wind—too steady, too measured to belong to the ruins.

"They're not waiting," he murmured. "They're circling."

Susan's fingers tightened around her blade. "Phantoms?"

"No," Cain said, and his eyes narrowed. "Something meaner."

The sound came again, threading through the fog: a rhythm like chains dragged across steel. It had weight. A presence. Even Hunter's stance shifted—slight, but enough for Cain to catch.

Steve cursed under his breath. "Grid's flaring. Something just shut down the west blocks. Hard blackout. They're funneling power."

"For what?" Susan asked.

Steve's response was thin. "Whatever's coming."

Cain didn't answer. He just looked north, toward the towers that loomed like sentinels. He could feel it now—pressure in the air, a tremor underfoot like the city itself had drawn in a breath. And then the fog moved.

It didn't roll. It peeled back, like fingers pulling apart a wound.

Something emerged.

The creature wasn't like the scouts. It was too large for stealth, too heavy for grace, and yet it came with the certainty of something that had killed enough times to know hesitation was a human flaw. Its frame bent and unfolded, limbs jointed wrong, plated in what looked like rusted bone. Lights pulsed beneath its hide—dim, feverish glows, throbbing to the beat of some internal engine.

"Contact," Hunter said, voice calm, even as his hands moved. The crossbow slid forward, locking with a click. Susan drew steel. Steve's drones flared red.

Cain? He just smiled.

"Finally."

The thing did not roar. It didn't need to. The ground did it for him when it landed, cracking stone like brittle glass. Dust geysered up. Shards of metal screamed as supports snapped from the force.

And then it charged.

The first impact shredded a stall into splinters. The second tore through a row of pillars, hurling debris like shrapnel. Cain moved before the third. His body blurred, boots finding purchase where there was none, every muscle tuned to a single instinct: close the gap.

"Hunter!" Cain barked. The sniper's reply was action—a bolt fired, its tip hissing with chemical frost. It struck the creature's flank, cracking against the plate but biting deep enough to draw a shudder.

It didn't slow.

Cain hit the rubble, vaulted, and drove his blade down in an arc that sang through the mist. Sparks screamed as steel met plating. The blow slid, deflected, but the force spun the monster sideways. Susan was already there, her strike carving across an exposed joint. Black ichor sprayed, smoking where it hit stone.

The thing shrieked then—a sound like metal grinding in its own throat—and its arm lashed out. Cain caught the movement too late. The blow slammed his guard, hurling him backward through a stall. Wood exploded around him. He rolled, came up crouched, teeth clenched against the ache in his ribs.

"Cain!" Susan's voice snapped, but he didn't answer. He was already moving, slower this time but colder. Calculating.

Steve's voice cut through the chaos. "EMP's hot—give me two seconds!"

"You have one," Cain growled.

Hunter fired again, a shot meant to blind, but the creature raised its arm. The bolt shattered midair. Cain cursed under his breath. Adaptive. Learning.

It lunged again. Cain feinted left, then drove forward under its guard. His blade punched deep this time, through the pulsing glow in its abdomen. Black fluid poured, slick and burning against his gloves. The creature convulsed, a ripple tearing through its form.

Steve shouted. "Now!"

The drones dropped in a flare of white arcs. Energy crashed through the ruin in a surge that turned the air electric. The blast caught the monster mid-screech. It froze, limbs jerking, lights inside its body strobing in frantic bursts before dying one by one. When it fell, it was less a collapse and more a surrender—like a structure finally giving way to gravity.

The market went still.

Cain stood over it, blade dripping, chest heaving once before he stilled himself again. His gaze traced the creature's remains—not with triumph, but with the quiet weight of a man who knew this was nothing but an opening move.

Steve exhaled ragged through the comm. "That… wasn't standard Phantom design."

"No," Cain said softly, and his voice was almost lost to the wind. "It wasn't."

Hunter scanned the perimeter, eyes narrowing. "Meaning?"

Cain stepped closer to the corpse and knelt, ignoring the stench of scorched ichor. He pressed his fingers to the plating, tracing the patterns etched into its hide—lines too deliberate to be random, symbols half-buried beneath corrosion.

"They've changed the rules," he said. "And they didn't ask permission."

Susan's grip tightened on her weapon. "So what now?"

Cain rose slowly, the weight of his blade like an extension of the thought curling in his mind. He looked past them, past the ruins, to the skyline drowning in fog.

"Now," he said, "we stop playing defense."

The wind carried the stench of burnt metal and bloodless death as Cain turned, his silhouette cutting through the pale wash of dawn. Behind him, the corpse twitched once, like a dying echo—and then stilled.

Far off, in the dark skeleton of the city, something else woke.