Page 6 of The Monster You Made
A door creaks open above us. The girl from the bus. She peers down from a balcony, eyes wide, a piece of broken brick clutched in her hand. I want to scream at her to go, torun, but she acts first. The brick sails down, clattering off the cobblestones between us.
The woman flinches. Just enough. I lunge, pepper spray hissing. She recoils, cursing, clawing at her eyes. I slam the satchel into her shoulder and run. My legs pump fire, lungs tearing as I sprint back through the narrow lane, into the chaos of the market. Behind me, shouts rise, a gunshot cracks, and the crowd scatters like startled birds.
I don’t stop. I can’t. My life is no longer just mine to lose. It belongs to every name inked in the ledger, every ghost still waiting for justice. And maybe, though I won’t admit it aloud, it still belongs to him too, the man who loved me with violence in his veins. Lucian.
The rain swallows me whole as I vanish into the night.
***
I don’t know how long I run. The city blurs, with shops and alleys, the glare of traffic lights smeared into streaks of color by rain and panic. Every turn feels like both salvation and a trap. My lungs burn, and my legs ache as if each step might be the last. But I keep going. Stopping means chains. Stopping means silence.
By the time I stumble into the outskirts, the rain has softened into a mist, heavy as breath. Warehouses loom around me, brick hulks with broken windows, rusted doors hanging on one hinge. No crowds here. No witnesses. Perfect ground for an execution. I force myself forward anyway, past puddles and stacks of rotting crates. My body begs for rest, but fear keeps me moving.
Finally, I duck into a warehouse with its door cracked open, darkness spilling like ink. The air inside smells of oil and dust, of years left abandoned. My footsteps echo across concrete as I press into the shadows between rusted machinery. I crouch, hugging the satchel to my chest, and try to steady my breathing.
For a moment, there is only silence. A silence thick enough that I start to believe I lost her, the woman with the pistol, the eyes like steel. My pulse slows. My body sags against the wall. Relief tempts me. Dangerous, poisonous relief.
Then I hear it. A creak of wood. The scrape of a shoe against grit. She’s here.
I grip the pepper spray again, fingers trembling. It feels pitiful, a toy against a gun. But it’s all I have. I shift deeper into the shadows, moving slow, counting every inhale, every exhale.
Her silhouette appears in the doorway, outlined by streetlight. She doesn’t rush. She enters with the patience of a predator who knows the prey has nowhere left to go. The click of her heels on the floor is steady, deliberate. Each step reverberates through the warehouse until it feels like she’s walking on my spine.
“I admire your resilience,” her voice cuts through the dark. Calm. Certain. “But resilience doesn’t change the ending. Give me the satchel, Vera. It will be kinder than what comes after.”
My back presses harder against the wall. The satchel digs into me like a brand. I think of the faces behind the files. The men and women who vanished without justice. The girl from the bus, who had no reason to help but did anyway. Lucian, who iseither ashes or a storm by now. If I hand over the satchel, they all die a second time.
I stand. My legs tremble, but I stand. “You’ll have to kill me,” I say. My voice doesn’t shake. I don’t let it.
A pause. Then the sound of metal sliding free, a pistol raised, a safety clicked off. The air thickens. My heartbeat is a drum.
And then, shouts outside. A crash of glass. Heavy boots pounding pavement. The woman curses under her breath and glances toward the door. Not her reinforcements. Someone else. More hunters. More knives.
She doesn’t waste time. The pistol snaps back toward me, but I’ve already moved. I hurl a rusted pipe from the floor. It clangs against a machine, the sound splitting the dark. Her shot cracks, deafening, ricocheting off steel. I dive behind a crate, breath tearing through my chest. Dust rains down.
Boots thunder closer from outside. Different cadence. Not hers. Not mine. Someone new. A third player.
The woman spits another curse, backing toward the rear exit. “Another day, Vera,” she says, voice taut with frustration. Then she vanishes into the rain, her footsteps swallowed by the night.
I stay crouched, muscles coiled, until the warehouse door creaks again. A shadow fills it, broad shoulders, purposeful stride. Not the woman. Not a Crown soldier either. For a heartbeat, my chest forgets how to breathe. The figure doesn’t step inside, only lingers at the threshold as if to test me.
I clutch the satchel tighter, half-ready to run, half-ready to collapse. Whoever they are, whatever they want, they can’t have this. Not the story. Not the proof.
The shadow disappears as quickly as it had come, the boots fading into the night. The warehouse falls silent again, the dark thick and suffocating. I don’t know if it was Cadmus, the Crown, or a ghost of my own exhaustion. But I know one thing: the hunt has widened. I’m not being chased by a single set of hands. I’m caught in a war of predators.
I stagger back into the rain, legs weak, body numb. The city hums around me, unaware, indifferent. Somewhere out there, men and women in coats and uniforms are drawing maps of my movements, whispering my name into radios. Somewhere, Lucian may be fighting his own ghosts, or carving new ones. I can’t count on him. I can’t count on anyone.
But the satchel is still mine. The story is still alive. And as long as I breathe, I’ll carry it.
I melt into the alleys, another shadow swallowed by the city.
Chapter 3 - Lucian
Dawn breaks dirty, a smear of pale light across the horizon that makes the city look like it’s been painted in ash. I watch it from the rooftop, boots balanced on the lip of cracked concrete, rifle slung across my back. The bunker is gone, folded into its own grave, but its smoke still lingers in my lungs. Every breath tastes of fire and endings.
I haven’t slept. Not really. My body went still for an hour in the shell of an abandoned flat, but sleep requires safety, and there is none of that left in my world. Instead, I sifted through the drive I salvaged, watching Declan St. Croix’s name burn across the screen like a curse. His smile taunted me even in memory. Declan thinks he can move me like a pawn, but he has forgotten that I was built to be the knife no one sees coming.
The streets below stir with early movement. Street vendors dragging carts, delivery men unloading boxes, children clutching their mothers’ hands as they hurry toward schools that teach obedience better than arithmetic. Ordinary life. The kind I’ve never been allowed to touch. I envy them for a breath, then I remember envy is a weakness. I was made for war, not for peace.
