Chapter 85 A Short-Visit

October 10, 2025. Friday. 11:52 a.m.

Markend smelled like old salt and fresh violence. The city had a way of announcing itself before you saw the skyline: a sour, iron tang that rode the wind off the docks and washed over the outer walls. Smuggling made a city breathe easy… where there were piers, there were loopholes, and where there were loopholes, men like me slipped through. I’d learned the map of backdoors long before I learned to read faces.

Getting inside wasn’t art so much as habit. The Council’s walls and patrols were loud on paper, fortifications set up to keep out the wrong kinds of people, but the docks were made for the wrong kinds of people. Crates changed manifests. Men with clean hands looked the other way for the right price. I drove off the road before the pier, tires hissing through salt and gravel, and because the right man at the right checkpoint liked the look of a courier with a name he could sell later, my papers were waved through. Fake plate, fake invoice, a nod from a bored guard who’d learned which boats fed his kids. Easy. Dirty. Very necessary.

The Silverside purred beneath me, the Ionic Core thrumming like a beast that was fond of its rider. I’d taken the rifles off, since it would attract too much attention. The rest of the bike were pretty much intact, especially the three magical buttons I had yet to test.

Onyx materialized behind me as she slid forward, a ghost folding into leather, and breathed against my neck with intimacy. “Getting lunch?” she purred. “You haven’t eaten breakfast yet.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m starving.”

She vanished, and Silver popped up on the other side of the handlebars, bright as cutlery. “This place looks better since you raised hell last time, Nick.”

“We’ll only be here a short time,” I told them both. “Don’t get too excited.”

I propped the kickstand and leaned the Silverside against a rusted railing. The bike looked good in the gutter light, black and hungry. For now I called it the Silverside, because my head liked names that made a small joke in the throat. I’d worry about Onyx’s tantrums later.

“You are definitely going to rename it,” added Onyx as she walked beside me. “But really, hot dogs?”

There was a hotdog truck right in front of me, a rusted metal box that sold charred meat to men with fewer illusions than change. I’d scoped it on the approach. Practicality had a face you could eat; grief often came with mustard and shredded cabbage. The vendor had a battered radio that spat out propaganda between the ads for fortified cough syrup.

I walked over.

“Five,” I said simply. “Make it quick. I’m hungry.”

The vendor’s hand was quick and practiced. He wrapped the sausages in paper as if he’d done it a thousand times, because he probably had. The smell of hot oil and char filled the space between us, a temporary reprieve that I so much required.

Silver huffed, disappointed in my lack of ceremony. “Couldn’t you have asked for more? Splurge a little.”

Onyx laughed, delighted. “Buy the whole cart, Nick. Buy the cart and set it on fire. Make a statement.”

I smiled in a way that had nothing to do with mirth as I paid. “Five will do.”

“Here you go,” said the hotdog store owner. “You can always have more, so come back!”

I minded my business, slipping away from the truck with my tray of hot dogs and finding a table tucked in the corner. No cameras here. The shade of the tarp overhead kept the noon glare from bouncing too harshly off my visor. I set my helm on the table with a muted clunk. The hot dogs steamed in their flimsy wrappers, five little indulgences lined up like soldiers waiting for execution.

Passersby buzzed around me, their voices a low drone.

“Thought it’d be peaceful after… those lunatics got wiped out.”

“Peaceful? Look around you. More gangs now than before. It’s like they sprouted out of the blood.”

“City’s cursed, I’m telling you. New villains, new freaks, same old hell.”

Their complaints tangled together, each voice adding to the chorus of disillusionment. They wanted order, a promise that all the chaos had meant something. What they got was just another kind of madness. Typical Markend.

I switched on my empathic camouflage. It slid over me like a second skin, whispering into the minds around me that I was just another face they didn’t need to remember. Their eyes slid past mine, avoiding what they couldn’t place.

I picked up the first hotdog and bit in. Grease, mustard, salt… It was simple and filling.

Onyx appeared opposite me, slouching in her chair with a smirk. “This is just sad… Don’t you want fries with that? Something with more explosion in your taste buds?”

“They taste fine,” I said, chewing slowly.

Silver manifested beside her, dainty and curious, staring at the hot dog like it was a crime scene. “But it’s hotdogs… they are made of dogs…”

Onyx’s jaw dropped. “No way you think that, Silver…”

Silver blinked, guilty. “Uuuh…”

I sighed, rubbing my forehead, staring at the two of them across the table. Embarrassingly cute, both of them. Imaginary girlfriends or not, they bickered like they had the right to. Maybe they did. I finished the hot dogs one by one, wiping mustard from my gloves with a napkin. Each bite dulled the voices around me until the crowd was just noise again. By the time I crumpled the last wrapper, the ache in my stomach was gone. I slid my helm back on. Rising from the table, I walked back to the Silverside, its black frame exposed faintly under the noon sun.

The engine roared to life with a low growl as I swung my leg over the saddle. The bike carried me toward the public cemetery, thinking of the life I led here in Markend.

Honestly, when I thought of my life in Markend, I always came up empty, except for the slaughter I’d caused. The blood, the screams, the ruin. Those were the only solid things I’d left behind here.

The cemetery gates groaned when I pushed them. I carried the tumbler with me, the ashes inside rattling like a soft whisper of what used to be a man. Bunny deserved more than this, but all I had to give was silence and a grave.

The public cemetery looked worse than I remembered, with cracked pavement, weeds sprouting through marble, and crosses tilting like drunkards at closing time. It didn’t take long to find my mother’s grave. Her tombstone was desecrated, spray-painted with words and symbols across her name. Of course, it would be vandalized. With my identity exposed, it hadn’t been hard for the rats of Markend to find out what to ruin.

But I’d planned ahead. Before I left months ago, I’d dragged her coffin away from here, crossing her over into a place where vandals wouldn’t dare. I’d made arrangements.

I phased through the crumbling wall into Highmark Cemetery… the posh cemetery, a mausoleum dressed like a cathedral, for the kind of rich who paid extra to make the dead look more dignified. The air was colder here, quieter, and fewer people.

I searched the rows until I found it. Her tomb. Little detail, nothing ornate. Just the name: Nicole. And beneath it: “From your son who wished he had shown you more love.”

The words dug at me every time I saw them. They were true, and truth always cut deepest.

I phased the tumbler into the tomb, letting Bunny rest where he’d been born, beside someone I’d loved too late. My voice broke softer than I’d like when I said, “I’m sorry, Bunny. This is all I could do for you…”

Onyx appeared first, leaning on the polished marble, smirking. “You could’ve gone with more flair, Nick. Scatter him over the ocean. Toss him from a mountain with a view. But did you really have to stuff him with your mom?”

Silver winced. “Wording, Onyx.”

I rested my hand on the cold stone. “I’m just being selfish, putting him here.”

Onyx grinned, sharp and knowing. “Wow. Big confession. So why are we here, really? You want to see the other… us? The one with amnesia? Thought you decided to leave her behind.”

Silver shot her a look. “Hey, that’s mean.”

“No, that’s not the reason,” I said, shaking my head. “I… I’m just grateful to Bunny. No matter how small. If it weren’t for him, I’d never have known how deep Crow had been messing with me. Maybe it was just a coincidence, luck, that I met him when I did. But I’m thankful all the same.”

The words sounded weak, even to me. Lame. Like the kind of thing a man says when he’s scraping the bottom of the barrel for meaning. Honestly, I wished I had more people to cherish. More names I could say without tasting ash.

Onyx tilted her head, her smile fading. “So… you really aren’t going to meet the other us? The one with amnesia?”

“No,” I said simply.

Silver crossed her arms, frowning at Onyx. “We should respect each split. It’s still us, it’s still part of the whole, even if it’s broken.”

Onyx rolled her eyes, her voice dripping venom. “That amnesiac version isn’t even a split personality, Silver. She’s dead weight. A ghost of a ghost. Respect? Please. We’re better off without her… Nick already had plenty of emotional baggage…”

Silver crossed her arms, pouting. “What the? You make it sound like meeting her was such a bad idea…”

Onyx scoffed, hair shimmering like a dark flame as she leaned against the tomb. “It is a bad idea! And no, I am definitely not saying that just because I’m jealous. Not at all. Imagine if they magically hit it off. Then we’d be stuck playing catch-up in the race to be best girl. We’re borderline imaginary girlfriends, Silver. Literally willed into existence by empathic powers. That’s all we are. Now picture this—if he ‘reconnects’ with the so-called original version of us? Game over.”

Her grin widened, smug and shameless. “If I could blow Nick off, I’d do it every day, just so I’d stay ahead.”

Silver flared red, stamping her foot like a scolded child. “Hey! I’m the original!”

Onyx snorted. “Not after Crow killed you.”

Silver snapped back, “But you died too!”

Their voices rose, overlapping like a storm of bickering banshees. I pressed my hand to my helm’s visor, dragging my palm down, exhaling through gritted teeth. It was like watching two mirrors argue over who reflected me better.

But then a trembling voice, real and fragile, cut through their noise.

“Nick?”

I froze. The name cracked against me like a whip. Slowly, I turned.

She stood there… a woman in a black coat, white blouse, and fitted skirt, looking like she’d stepped out of some corporate office into my nightmare. She wasn’t Silver. She wasn’t Onyx. She wasn’t the illusions born of my fractured empathy. She was something else, eyes wide, alive, and burning with recognition that neither of them carried.

How?

Panic clawed through me, but I forced my body still, my face blank. I decided to play it off, voice cold. “I think you’re mistaken… Excuse me.”

I tried to brush past, but her hand clamped onto my arm. Warm. Too real. Her eyes bore into mine behind the visor, full of a life that neither hallucination could fake.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, “but… can you remove your helm?”

For a heartbeat, I hesitated. Then I did, peeling it off, but kept my empathic camouflage thrumming, making her not see what she wanted. I twisted my face into anger instead, masking the fear. “Can you please let go now? You’re bothering me.”

She flinched, releasing my arm, shame breaking across her expression. She looked past me, toward the tombstone. Her voice shook, softer this time.

“Do you know… my name’s Nicole, too.”

I stared at her, my mother’s name hanging between us like poison.

“I don’t care,” I muttered flatly, sliding my helm back on. And without looking back, I left her at the grave. “Mind your own business, woman… and fuck off!”