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The rain had turned the streets into rivers of black glass. It hissed against the boarded windows of the café, a steady drumbeat that seemed to echo the rhythm of the men inside. The Nightrunners were fewer than they had been in their prime. Once they had filled halls with laughter and firelight. Now barely two dozen souls stood in a room that smelled of mildew and damp plaster, all gathered around a battered table where Frank had spread a map.
Frank’s voice carried over the storm, deep and steady. “This is it. This is the chance we have been waiting for. The VNC Tower still stands, the antenna is still up there. If we climb it, if we bring the broadcast online, we can reach every corner of the city. We give the people hope. We give them proof that we are not finished.”
Murmurs stirred. One man, a younger runner with scars across his cheek, slapped the table. “Finally. People will know we are still here. Not hiding like rats.”
Another, an older woman with tired eyes, shook her head. “It is a nest, Frank. I have seen the lights in its windows at night. Volatiles. Hundreds of them.”
Frank straightened, meeting her gaze. “Yes. It will not be easy. But no one ever looked to the Nightrunners because we chose easy. They looked to us because we did what others could not.”
“We used to have numbers,” muttered a grizzled veteran by the wall. “We used to have equipment. UV lamps, cables, back-up teams. Now we have twenty and a prayer.”
“And that is enough,” said a young man near the door, jaw tight, voice loud to cover the tremor in it. “If we sit here waiting for the world to fix itself, we will rot. I would rather die climbing than live rotting.”
The cheer that followed was ragged, desperate, but it carried weight. Shoulders squared. Faces hardened. The younger ones glowed with eagerness, the older ones stared at the table with hard eyes, trapped between duty and doubt.
Hakon stood at the back of the room, arms crossed, jaw tight. He listened to the cheer and felt bile rise in his throat. He had seen too many briefings like this in his life. He had smelled this same mix of damp fear and forced courage. He had heard commanders dress up a massacre in words like necessity and duty.
When the cheer died, he pushed off the wall. His voice cut the silence. “And when half of you are dead before you reach the roof? When the first stairwell becomes a slaughterhouse? You think hope will stop the claws from tearing through you?”
The younger man sneered. “If you are scared, stay out of our way.”
Hakon’s eyes narrowed. “Scared? I have walked through fire and crawled out of mass graves. This is not fear. This is numbers. This is math. You do not have the bodies for this. You do not have the gear.”
A woman named Sabine spoke up, her tone sharp as glass. “You talk like you know everything, Hakon. Maybe you forgot what it means to fight for something bigger than yourself.”
Another voice, low and bitter, rose from the back. “Or maybe he remembers too well. Men like him see ghosts where the rest of us see purpose.”
Frank’s gaze locked on him. “You have been a soldier, Hakon. You know some risks are worth taking.”
“I also know when command sends people to die for a speech,” Hakon snapped.
The room bristled. A dozen pairs of eyes bore into him. Some hostile, some uncertain. Killian stood near the door, silent, his arms folded. He said nothing, but Hakon could see it in his eyes. Agreement.
Frank slammed his fist onto the table. “Enough. If you cannot stomach the risk, then step aside. Do not stand here and poison the rest of us with your fear.”
Hakon stepped forward, the storm raging behind his eyes. “Fear keeps people alive. Blind faith buries them.”
Frank’s lips thinned into a line. His voice rose, carrying over the storm and the mutters. “Then go. If you are too afraid, then walk away. But do not expect to come back when we succeed.”
The cheer rose again, louder now, drowning out Hakon’s words.
Hakon turned on his heel and left, boots heavy on the tile. The cheer followed him into the rain.
The apartment above the café was half-collapsed, its windows boarded, the plaster cracked and stained. A single lantern sat on the floor, its light flickering across the walls. Hakon’s gear was spread out before him, each piece laid with soldier’s precision. Knives gleamed with fresh edges. His bowstring was taut. His boots were scrubbed clean of mud.
He sat on the floor with his back against the wall, staring at the equipment as though it might answer the storm inside his head. He tried to picture the mission. The climb. The infected swarming in stairwells. He saw the Nightrunners screaming, their bodies torn apart. He saw the antenna never reached, the tower swallowing them whole. And then he saw Lawan. Young, fire in her eyes, too reckless for her own good. Waltz was hunting her for that GRE Key, relentless, and Hakon had sworn he would not let her fall. Not her. Not after everyone else.
If he went to the tower, he would die with the others. If he stayed, if he went after Waltz, he could save at least one.
He stood suddenly, rage clawing at him, and hurled a chair into the wall. It shattered, splinters scattering. He grabbed a knife and flung it after, the blade burying itself in plaster.
“Coward,” he hissed under his breath, fists trembling.
“Survivor,” another part of him whispered back.
He pressed his palms to his face, dragging them down, nails scraping his skin. His chest heaved. He could not breathe past the weight pressing on him.
The night dragged on, the storm outside matching the one inside him. He sharpened his knives until the edges gleamed like white fire. He rewrapped his bowstring again and again until the skin on his fingers tore. He uncoiled rope, coiled it again, uncoiled, coiled, the repetition numbing him. Every time his hands stilled, memory flooded back, so he made sure they never stayed still long.
He saw the canister in the mud again, heard the hiss of poison leaking into the earth, felt the rifle stocks smash into his ribs. He heard the word insubordination branded into his life. The army had called him a traitor once for saving innocents. Now he would be called the same for leaving his brothers behind. Different stage, same sentence.
He punched the wall until plaster cracked, until his knuckles bled and swelled. He sank to the floor, back heaving against the wall, staring up at the ceiling as the rain dripped through and spattered his face. He did not sleep.
Dawn was gray and cold, the rain a fine mist that clung to skin. The Nightrunners gathered in the street, packs strapped, weapons ready. Their faces were grim but set. Determined.
Frank moved among them, clapping shoulders, speaking words of encouragement. His voice carried, steady and strong, even as his hands trembled.
Hakon stood with Killian at the edge of the group. They had spoken little, but both knew they were not going.
Frank’s eyes found him, and his face hardened. “So that is it. You are leaving.”
Hakon’s jaw clenched. He could not find words that would not taste like betrayal.
Frank raised his voice, making sure everyone heard. “You walk away now, you walk away forever. Do not come crawling back when it is done.”
The words cut deeper than a Volatile’s claws, but Hakon turned his back. He and Killian walked away, boots splashing in the puddles, leaving the others to march toward the looming shadow of the tower. He did not look back.
The safehouse was an old flat outside the Central Loop, walls cracked, windows boarded. A lantern guttered on a crate, its flame weak, casting the room in dull orange. Hakon sat at the table, staring at nothing, waiting for word.
Hours passed. Then a day.
No signal. No triumph. Only silence.
When the runner came, his face pale, his voice shaking, Hakon felt the world tilt. “They are gone,” the boy whispered. “The Nightrunners. The tower… it was a slaughter. Only Frank made it out.”
The words sank like stones in his chest. He sat frozen, blood roaring in his ears. Then he exploded. His fist smashed into the table, splintering wood. He grabbed the lantern and hurled it across the room, glass shattering, the flame dying. Darkness swallowed him.
“You knew!” he roared into the shadows, pacing, fists clenched. “You knew they would die and you left them!”
He tore maps from the walls, ripping them to shreds, scattering them like ashes. He grabbed his bow and flung it, the string snapping as it struck the wall. He slammed his fists against the plaster until his knuckles bled. He stumbled back, chest heaving, throat raw from shouting. His legs gave out, dropping him to the floor. He pressed his bloody hands to his face, rocking against the wall. He had been right. The mission was suicide. But being right did not matter. They were dead. And he was alive.
The hours became their own kind of torture.
Hour one was rage. He broke what he could break, tore what he could tear, spat curses until his throat was sand.
Hour two was memory. The Blacklist Mission bled back in full. The village, the canister, the hiss of poison, the way his boot struck the officer’s wrist. He heard the word insubordination again, and laughed until the laugh broke into a sob.
Hour three was guilt. He tried to tell himself he had chosen Lawan, that saving one was better than none. But the words would not stay in his mouth. Every time he formed them, he spat them back out like poison.
Hour four was hallucination. He heard them in the tower. Screams. Boots on stairs. Metal doors slamming. Volatiles tearing flesh. Bombers splattering body parts across walls. He pressed his palms to his ears, but the screams were in his skull. He saw them, each face, each throat torn, each hand reaching for help that was not there. He whispered to himself that this was the part where he would have died too, then whispered crueler still that this was the part where maybe he could have cut a path for two more.
Hour five was prayer. He muttered half-remembered words from childhood, words that tasted like stones. He choked on them. The prayer failed. He replaced it with vows. Waltz. Lawan. Vengeance. Survival.
Hour six was apology. He spoke it out loud to the silence, to Frank, to the ghosts. “I am sorry. I chose life. I chose the wrong life.”
Hour seven was discipline. Soldier’s habit. He swept the glass. He patched his sleeve. He re-strung the bow. He laid his gear out neat as if answering roll call for men who would never come back.
Hour eight was ledger. He tallied names in his head, saved and not saved. He tried to separate could not save from did not save. His mind refused to split them. They slid together until they were the same.
Night came and the spiral did not stop. He sat in the dark and talked to the walls, low and angry, giving his rage a face. Frank, for the speech. The young ones, for wanting to be statues instead of men. The legend of the Nightrunners, for asking for a sacrifice it could not return. Waltz, always Waltz, for warping purpose into obsession. The city itself, for building a tower with a crown on it and then nesting death in its skull.
He laughed at the ceiling, a broken, gasping laugh that sounded like someone choking. He slammed his head into the wall until stars danced behind his eyes. He bit his tongue and tasted iron. He welcomed the hurt.
When dawn came again, he was a ruin. His hands split and swollen, his ribs bruised, his voice gone to gravel. He sat among wreckage and whispered names into the silence. Then he stood.
He cleaned. He rebuilt. He patched. He salted the sill. He boiled water and called it soup though it tasted of rust. He forced discipline back into his body, stitch by stitch. He whispered vows as he worked. He would find Waltz. He would keep Lawan breathing even if she cursed his name. He would carry the tower’s weight until the day it crushed him.
He shouldered his pack. He touched the doorframe, a foolish goodbye. The rain had thinned to a veil, making the world look distant and unreal. He stepped into it, head bowed, boots striking puddles.
He did not look back.