CHAPTER 1042: CHURNING PROGRESS.

Steve’s voice faded with a hiss of static, leaving only the distant hum of awakening streets. Somewhere far above this broken alley, City Z exhaled into morning—glass towers flashing pale gold, drones sweeping clean skies, sirens whining faintly like ghosts caught between shifts.

Down here, in the marrow of the city, the stink of ichor clung like guilt.

Cain wiped his blade with the rag hanging from his belt, slow and deliberate, as if stripping away the memory of what he’d cut. His ribs burned where the spear had grazed him; blood had dried in black clots beneath torn leather. It didn’t matter. He straightened, eyes scanning the alley as Hunter and Susan closed in.

"Three minutes?" Susan muttered, shoving her blades into their sheaths. Her breathing was steady, too steady for someone who’d just danced on the edge of death. That was Susan—ice in human shape. She adjusted the strap of her jacket and glanced at the steaming pit where the creature had bled out. "Won’t take that long before the drones sniff this."

Hunter didn’t answer. He crouched by the ichor, dragging two fingers through the black smear before lifting it to the low light. The stuff writhed like oil stirred by breath, refusing to hold form.

"Alive," he murmured. "Still reacting."

Cain joined him, eyes narrowing. "Residual anima."

"More than residual." Hunter flicked his fingers clean, ichor snapping like burned silk. "That thing wasn’t here on instinct. It was here on orders."

Steve’s voice crackled again, sharper this time. "Cain. I’ve got something on the feeds you’ll want to see."

Cain tapped the bead in his ear. "Talk."

"Not over this channel. Grid’s crawling. You’ve got ninety seconds to vanish before the sweepers lock this block."

Cain looked at Susan. She already had the bag slung over her shoulder, blades hidden, jacket zipped. Ready to ghost. Hunter melted into the shadows like a man born of them.

"Coordinates?" Cain asked.

"Sending now. And Cain—" A pause. Static thickened. "They know."

The line died.

Cain exhaled, slow. "Move."

---

They slipped through the skeleton of City Z like blood through veins, silent, fast, folding into traffic and tunnels until the stink of ichor faded beneath the scent of ozone and iron. By the time the grid swept the alley, all that remained was ruin and residue.

The meeting point was a rusted freight lift buried beneath the old tramline. Cain pressed his palm to the cracked panel, and the door juddered open with a groan that echoed like a dying throat. Inside, dim amber lights crawled across metal walls scarred by decades of abandonment.

Steve was waiting below, hunched over a console patched together from obsolete servers and stolen city tech. The glow from his screens painted him in sick colors—green and violet bleeding across a face too tired for his years.

"You look like shit," Susan said, stepping out of the lift.

Steve didn’t glance up. "Been babysitting your mess all night. Sit. Watch."

Cain leaned over the bank of screens. Lines of data streamed like rain—grid sweeps, pulse readings, comm logs. Steve jabbed a finger at the central display, where a still frame blinked in grainy monochrome: the alley, just minutes after they’d left.

Six figures stood there. Not drones. Not sweepers.

Human.

Each one draped in black from head to heel, masks stitched with crimson thread across the mouth. Symbols crawled down their coats like brands burned into fabric.

"City enforcement?" Susan asked.

Steve snorted. "No badge runs those sigils. And look here—" He hit a key. The feed jumped, glitching as static shredded the image. For a heartbeat, something flared behind the masked figures: a shape too big, too wrong for the frame. A curve like a spine of glass. Limbs bent in a geometry that hurt to follow. Then it was gone.

Cain stared at the frozen frame. "Same signature as the alley creature?"

Steve nodded. "Energy bleed matches. Whatever you fought wasn’t rogue. It was a scout."

Hunter’s voice drifted from the dark corner, flat as steel on stone. "Scouts mean armies."

Silence spread like smoke.

Cain broke it first. "Who’s moving pieces this big without the grid twitching?"

Steve tapped a final key. The screens went black except for one line of red text pulsing at the center:

BLACK SIGNAL DETECTED. ORIGIN: UNKNOWN.

Cain read it twice, jaw tightening. He hadn’t seen that phrase in years—not since the first Fall. Not since the day the old cities burned under skies that screamed.

Susan’s eyes caught his. "You think it’s them."

Cain didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

Because deep down, in the pit where instinct lived, he knew what the signal meant.

The war wasn’t coming.

It had already started.

Hunter moved closer to the screens, eyes flicking over the last red pulse like a predator scenting fresh blood. "This isn’t a signal," he said slowly. "It’s a beacon. Whoever sent this... they want someone to answer."

Steve nodded grimly. "Or something."

Cain stayed silent, gaze locked on the crimson letters. He could almost feel the echo of it vibrating through the metal beneath his boots—a frequency too deep for human hearing, thrumming at the edges of thought. Like a hand knocking from the other side of a sealed door.

Susan crouched beside the console, tracing a finger along the power cables like they were veins feeding a monster. "You traced the origin?"

Steve’s laugh was sharp, humorless. "Tried. Signal loops through six dead towers, bounces off two weather grids, and vanishes into the old net like smoke. Whoever’s on the other end knows this city better than we do."

Hunter’s jaw flexed. "No one knows the city better than Cain."

Cain finally looked up, shadows cutting hard across his face. His voice was quiet, but it carried like a blade. "Whoever they are, they’ve walked this ground longer than any of us. And they’ve just told every monster with ears that City Z is open for war."

Susan’s eyes flicked toward him, searching for the answer he wasn’t giving. The one question hanging in the stale air between them: What do we do now?

Cain pulled his coat tighter and turned toward the lift. "We find where it started. And we cut it out before it grows teeth."

Hunter rose without a word, falling into step. Susan followed, her silence sharper than any argument. Behind them, the screen still pulsed red, steady as a heartbeat.

And somewhere in the endless dark of the old net, something pulsed back.