Yellow Jacket

Wren splits off from Warren and Grix to check if the old entrance route she once used to enter the city walls was still open. She moves quickly at first, through streets half-familiar and warped by time, rain, and ruin. The route that had once meant freedom now feels narrower, heavier, like it resents her return.

She finds the crossing, the third corridor slumped between broken towers, the one that should have led her down to the breach path. But it's gone. Fully collapsed. The weight of rusted scaffolds, broken stone, and half a wall sit where the tunnel mouth used to be. Too clean. Too contained. The collapse didn't feel like chaos. It felt placed.

She steps closer, narrowing her eyes. Support beams she remembers seeing upright are now sheared cleanly, like someone weakened the load over time and let the weight do the rest. Not natural. Not random.

She swears under her breath and circles left, trying an old maintenance alley. That path's worse,jammed with debris, fencing, and long-cooled slag. No way through. Another turn, another dead end. The blockade there looks fresher. Like someone wanted to funnel her.

Her stomach knots. Not fear. Instinct. The kind that whispers too late.

Time is slipping. The light is thinning.

She exhales slow and decides to head back to the rendezvous point.

But as she turns, a shape steps into the corridor behind her.

Not fast. Not loud.

Just there.

Watching.

And smiling.

Warren split off without a word, taking the eastern side of the block while Grix veered west. Rain tapped lightly against the exposed steel, slicking the pavement and trailing off rusted pipes in steady rivulets. The sky had already begun to dim, twilight pressed low behind thick cloud cover. He moved quick, efficient, cutting through alleys and ducking beneath old scaffolding, eyes tracing rooftops, corners, and collapse angles. The Scavenger's Eye was quiet, but active,the kind of silence that nudged. His awareness shifted when a wall had too much dust in some places and none where it should've gathered. One beam looked braced but wrong. Welded fast at an angle that suggested patchwork, not decay.

It had become second nature now, parsing what the Eye gave him. Not images. Not alerts. Just dissonance. The wrong kind of ruin. New where it should be old. Settled too cleanly. Someone had touched these places,someone who wanted them to look untouched.

No shelter here. Not for them. Not tonight.

Most of what he found wasn't worth trying to hold. One structure had half a ceiling and no rear wall. Another looked stable until he tapped a crossbeam and the dust that fell told him everything he needed to know. He passed three more that might have worked for people who weren't hunted.

By the time he looped back to the meet-point, Grix was already waiting,leaning against a cracked light post, arms crossed.

"Found something?" he asked.

"Theater," she said. "Looks solid. I didn't go inside, but the frame holds."

They waited. Five minutes. Ten. Wren didn't show.

"She's late," Grix muttered.

Warren didn't answer. He turned and gestured. "Show me."

They moved fast through the side lanes. The theater sat tucked between two stone-faced tenements, its façade cracked but intact. Warren scanned the upper levels, tracking sightlines, assessing points of entry.

Inside, the air was still. Quiet. Grix led him past the front lobby into the main hall, then pointed upward. The box seats,raised, enclosed behind reinforced glass.

"Up there," she said. "Steel door. Real one. Not rusted junk. Room's mostly empty. Good lines of sight. We sleep above, watch below."

Warren nodded. Just once. Then stepped farther inside.

The floor sloped down to the stage. Water damage had warped the lower panels, but the structure itself was clean. Nothing living had nested here. No boot scuffs, a little bit of trash. That was unusual.

He ascended the side stairs quietly. The box level wasn't just fortified,it was intentional. The reinforced glass had no cracks. The steel door's hinges were oiled. Not recent, but not old either. Grix hadn't exaggerated. Someone had maintained this, if only to keep it from falling.

Inside the box room, the space was spare. A few cracked lounge chairs, a coiled extension cable, and what looked like an old thermos still standing on its side. The view down to the stage was wide, clean, excellent cover.

He tapped the walls. Solid. No hollow reverb.

It'd hold.

He looked once more through the glass, not at the room below, but at the rain tapping faintly against the outer panels.

"We should go get Wren."

"She should be back."

Grix's smiled. She didn't argue.

Warren and Grix waited at the meet-point, back-to-back near the broken frame of a traffic kiosk that offered a sliver of cover from the rain. The sky was bruising darker by the minute, the clouds bleeding into the ruins like oil in water.

At first, they talked, nothing serious. Grix nudged his arm. "You know, that box room? We could use that. Fix up the corner, throw a tarp, maybe even reinforce the lower door. You, me, Wren. Could be a real fallback."

Warren didn't answer right away. Then: "It's quiet. Good sight-lines. Water's manageable. I've slept in worse."

"You've probably slept in a drainpipe."

"Exactly."

She grinned. "Wren's gonna love it. She'll put up curtains. Probably name it."

"'Safe-house Prime.'"

"Too formal. 'The Hidey Hole.'"

That got the corner of his mouth to twitch.

Five minutes passed.

Grix kicked a stone. "Probably just slowed. Older paths take time."

Warren watched the street. Counted puddles. Measured angles. Something gnawed, but he didn't show it.

Ten minutes.

Grix crouched briefly, checked her straps, then stood again. "Bet she found something. Whole mess of shinnies. Lost track of time."

Warren didn't blink, didn't move. "She doesn't lose track."

Fifteen minutes.

The light was gone now. Just smears of gray behind the clouds. Rain softened, but the silence stretched. The levity dried up with the sky. The air changed.

Grix didn't joke again. She turned her head once, just enough to catch Warren's eyes.

He nodded.

They moved without another word, Warren taking point.

They moved in widening arcs at first, circling back to the last place they'd seen Wren. Grix went high, climbing over wrecked balconies and jagged scaffolding with the kind of ease only someone born for chaos could manage. Warren kept low, scanning through shadows and broken crawlspaces, his every step measured.

Styll rode in the crook of his coat, barely stirring, alert and pressed close to Warren's chest. She didn't make noise. He didn't need to. Every time Warren paused, so did Styll, ears pivoting, nose twitching. When they moved again, it was together. Reflexive. Like old partners.

The city felt too quiet.

Grix hopped down from a collapsed beam and landed lightly beside Warren. "Nothing. Not even a footprint."

"She wouldn't leave signs if she didn't want to," Warren said.

"Yeah, but she'd want us to find them."

They pressed deeper into the district. The buildings here leaned against each other like drunks too tired to fall. Every alley was a question. Every echo was wrong.

Warren paused at an intersection and let his eyes sweep the layout. The Scavenger's Eye didn't shout. It murmured in subtle wrongness: a drainpipe sealed with new metal, a rooftop too clean for the season. He filed it all away.

Grix spotted the first hint, something off in the water runoff along the gutter-line. She knelt and traced it. "Too dark for rust. This is blood."

Warren knelt beside her. A smear, no pooling. It had been wiped. Not by time, by movement.

He looked ahead. "There."

They followed a broken trail,drops on broken tile, a scuff across a ledge, the faintest scrape along the wall. Warren moved faster now. Grix followed, quieter.

Styll leapt down and darted ahead. He didn't chirp, didn't glance back. He knew Warren would follow.

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They crossed three more corners, passing through a shell of a collapsed storehouse, then under a low bridge of fused concrete and tangled mesh. The marks were clearer now.

"She's running," Grix said. "Look at this stride break. She hit the wall here and pushed off."

Warren didn't reply. His grip on the truncheon tightened.

They passed a fallen sign, then two stacked crates half-dissolved by rain and age. Something caught Warren's eye, a torn scrap of cloth. Wren's color palette. It looked recent.

Styll stopped.

So did Warren.

Ahead, slumped in the corner of a broken stairwell, was a body.

The armor was obvious. Warlord green. The sigil cracked and faded, but still visible on the pauldron. The man's helmet was gone. His head.....

"Stick," Warren said quietly.

The skull had caved in with a single, clean blow. Not messy. Not wild. Just final.

Grix crouched beside the corpse. "She got him before he could call out. Or he never saw her coming."

Warren didn't move.

"She's close," Grix said.

Warren said nothing, but his jaw was tight.

They pressed on. The trail was no longer hidden. Wren had made it visible, because whoever she'd run from already knew.

Because this wasn't a search anymore.

It was a chase.

Before Warren and Grix could follow Wren's trail, the street thickened. Not with fog, not with noise,but with presence. Figures moved from the shadows. They stepped from broken doorways, dropped from ledges, rose from crouches where they'd waited too long in the rain. Their armor marked them,dirty green, warlord standard. The kind worn by men sent to die in someone else's name.

Some were tall, broad. Others jittery, gaunt. All carried weapons, though none looked like they'd used them in real fights. Scars on blades, but not on the men. Chipped plating. Cobbled gear. Bravado.

Grix exhaled through her nose. "Delay squad."

Warren scanned each face, slow. "No strategy. No command. Just mass."

One stepped forward, grinning like he'd just won something. "You two picked the wrong alley."

Another chimed in, "We volunteered for this."

Grix snorted. "Then I guess you idiots volunteered for the short straw."

And then the screaming started.

Grix launched without warning. Her clatterfangs snapped into position as she vaulted over a half-collapsed stall. She landed among three of them, tearing through armor and bone with the grace of something born in chaos. Blood painted the pavement. One reached for a sidearm,she caught his wrist, drove her claw through his throat, and let him choke on the noise.

Warren moved differently. Controlled. Precise. The Stinger Lance let out its first bark, and a body folded at the chest, flechette embedded so deep it didn't exit. Another came at him from the side. Warren sidestepped, snapped his elbow into the merc's jaw, then fired a second shot into the man's knee. He screamed, and Warren silenced him with the truncheon spike.

A third tried to tackle him. Warren twisted, redirected the momentum, slammed the merc into a broken wall, then used the hand lance at point-blank. Blood hit the bricks like rain.

More came. Overconfident. Underequipped.

Grix danced between them. She moved like a story told too fast, all blur and edge. Her rattle lance barked once,close-range scatter, ripping into a chestplate and sending its wearer spinning backwards. She laughed. Not joy. Release.

Another tried to grab her from behind. She dropped low, kicked backward, and drove her clatterfang up under his chin. His body seized, then dropped like discarded meat.

Warren fired again. Hit one in the gut. The man collapsed but twitched, dragging himself forward. Warren didn't wait. The truncheon finished it.

They kept coming, out of pride or desperation. One swung a baton that sparked with charge. Grix caught it on her fang's guard, twisted the man's arm until it snapped, and dropped him with a knee to the temple. Two more came from the left, Warren stepped in, using the truncheon's full arc. One skull cracked loud, the other went low, Warren met him with a boot and a downward spike.

The mercs started to falter.

They weren't a unit. They were noise. And noise couldn't hold ground.

Warren let the Stinger hang from its sling, pulled the hand lance again, fired three times. One fell backwards. One staggered. One ran.

Grix chased. Short distance. No survivors.

It ended in silence and steam.

The street soaked in blood, rain sweeping it into small red rivers.

Grix stood in the middle, chest rising hard, clatterfangs wet and gleaming. "Hope they got hazard pay."

Warren was already checking the bodies. No comms. No flare tags. Just meat in wet metal.

"They weren't here to kill us," he said.

Grix wiped her blades. "Like i said short straw."

Warren nodded once.

Styll slipped between rubble, unharmed, tail flicking, eyes alert.

Warren looked toward the dark beyond the alley. "Let's move."

Grix followed. No questions.

They left behind the bodies and the storm swallowed everything.

Once the skirmish was over, Warren and Grix stood in the stillness left behind. Rain whispered against metal and blood. The corpses didn't matter anymore.

Warren crouched beside the last to fall, fingers closing over the cracked green sigil on the merc's pauldron. He tore it free without ceremony.

"He sent these men to stall us," Warren said. His voice was flat, but underneath it: flint.

"Lucas?" Grix asked.

"Who else would be this stupid?"

Grix tilted her head, water sliding off the edge of her short-cut hair. "Thought the warlord was your big problem."

Warren looked up, eyes sharp. "He can wait."

Grix grinned, humorless. "So Lucas dies first?"

"Yes."

They moved without another word, slipping through the drenched streets like phantoms. Half a block down, more movement. Another squad, smaller this time, emerged from the edge of a collapsed storefront. Four mercs, soaked, armor mismatched and stained, stood with hands up and weapons lowered to the floor.

"Wait, just listen," one said, voice pitched high with panic. "We don't want to fight you."

"We're done," another added quickly. "We're not with Lucas. Not anymore."

Warren slowed, eyes narrowing. Grix stepped to the side, circling slightly, clatterfangs drawn but not raised.

"You're wearing his colors," Warren said.

"We didn't have a choice," the first one said. "We got pressed in. Lucas doesn't let people leave. You know that."

"Been looking for a way out," the third added, his voice lower. "We were supposed to stall you. But that was it. Not kill. Just slow. But we've seen what he does. We want out."

Grix looked them over. "So what, you picked this alley for your big defection?"

"Look, we didn't think we'd get the chance," the first one said. "But seeing what you did back there… Look, maybe if we help you, you let us walk?"

"Or we help you kill him," the second said. "We know where his relay camps are. Know who takes his orders directly. We can name them."

The fourth merc, quiet until now, nodded quickly. "We'll talk. We just want to live."

Warren watched them. Still.

Grix tilted her head. "You know what's funny?"

All four looked at her.

"You're either telling the truth and you're still cowards…" she grinned, all teeth, "…or you think we're stupid."

The fourth merc broke. His fingers twitched toward the knife at his belt.

"Don't," Warren warned.

"I wasn't,"

"You were."

The moment shattered. The twitch turned into movement. Two went for weapons. One bolted. One dropped flat and rolled for position.

They never got a second chance.

Grix blurred forward. Her clatterfangs found the first merc's throat as he lunged. Blood sprayed sideways.

The second rose, hand lance half-drawn, and Warren shot him in the face before he could clear it.

The third rolled upright, knife drawn. Grix's rattle lance roared. He collapsed backward, armor shredded.

The fourth turned to run.

Warren didn't shoot. He walked him down. Slow. Cold. Then spiked him to the ground.

The alley fell quiet again.

Messier than the last. Sloppier. Because they talked. Because they lied.

Because these ones had lied.

Grix stepped over the first, shaking her head. "They really thought we'd hesitate."

Warren didn't answer. He looked to the north, to the corridor Wren had vanished into.

"No more delays."

Warren and Grix vanished back into the ruins, following the trail. The world around them had grown darker, quieter, heavier. Every step felt like time slipping away. Wren's fate remained unknown. But something,some deep instinct,told them they were already too late.

Then the Broken came.

At first, it had been just one,a skittering figure in malformed armor, soaked and barely holding together. Wires replaced its fingers, and its jaw twitched like it was trying to speak in code. Warren dropped it with a spike to the throat.

Then came another. Then four. Then twenty.

Crawlers slid out of the walls, dragging half-missing legs, flinging themselves in erratic frenzies. Runners streaked in from the flanks, teeth bared, bones clicking as their limbs jolted unnaturally. A distant Howler shrieked, sending a ripple through the swarm that made them more chaotic, not less.

They came without formation. Without hesitation. Without soul.

Warren fought like a butcher. His truncheon shattered joints and silenced motion. The spike tore out jaws. The corpses piled around him, but the space never cleared. Each time one fell, another crashed over it. His coat clung to him, soaked in more blood than water. He stopped counting the kills after the first hundred. It didn't matter.

Grix moved like a blur. Her clatterfangs snapped wide, metal teeth grinding through flesh. She rolled through the wave like water, then bared her own fangs. She howled,not in pain, but rage. Her shoulder bled freely, but she never stopped. Her rattle lance fired until the barrel glowed, and when it overheated, she buried it in a corpse to cool.

Brutes appeared next. Not fast, just relentless. Their arms hung too long, dragging broken rebar like weapons. Warren slammed into one and barely staggered it. It lifted him off the ground. Grix leapt onto its back and tore open its throat. It toppled, and Warren hit the ground like a dropped blade.

The earth turned slick. Not just we, coated in black fluid, half-melted skin, and shattered chips. Warren lost his footing twice. Grix went down once and didn't rise until Warren hauled her up. One of her fangs had broken. One eye was swelling shut. Still, she kept fighting.

They climbed because there was nowhere else to go. Corpses pressed upward, and the only high ground was dead flesh. The rubble had disappeared. Only bodies remained.

Warren's hand lance had vanished into the heap. He didn't bother searching. He switched to short, brutal jabs with the truncheon and spike. He struck necks, knees, sockets. Over and over. Again. Again.

Grix began muttering to herself. "Left. Low. Hook. Step. Hook. Pull." It wasn't a strategy. It was survival math—the rhythm between breathing and bleeding out.

A Runner slashed across her back. Warren saw it too late. She dropped to one knee, snarling, and jammed her last fang backward into its chest without looking. It convulsed. Died. She pulled herself upright using Warren's coat.

The System pinged. Then pinged again.

Level up.
Level up.

Two levels at once without him having unlocked his Skill. Unheard of. Warren barely notices.

A Howler's scream rippled through the pile. The Broken reacted like a hive convulsing. Warren crushed the Howler's throat underfoot and moved on. There was no time to regroup. Grix was coughing blood now. She spat it out, reloaded the rattle lance, and kept firing.

They moved through Broken who still twitched. Hands clawed at their ankles. Teeth snapped at shadows.

By the time the sky began to lighten, they weren't fighting anymore. They were just walking through it, striking down anything that grabbed at them. The pile shifted beneath their feet. Corpses rose to mid-thigh. Then waist. Then chest.

Still, they didn't stop.

The last Broken was silent. It lunged with nothing in its hands. Grix crushed its jaw with a backswing. It fell with the rest.

And then, it ended.

Not like a battle. Just silence after a scream.

The sun climbed over the ruin. Pale, gray, indifferent.

They stood on a mountain of the dead. Thirty feet high. Wider than the block. Broken piled in layers, smashed, crushed, shattered. Some still twitched, but none rose. Just meat and metal in a hill that stank of heat and rot.

Grix stared down at her boots. There was nothing left but red.

"This," she panted, "was just to slow us."

Warren didn't answer. He ripped fragments from the bodies and tossed them aside.

He looked toward where Wren might be.

Then started walking.

Grix followed, limping. Her cracked fang dragged like a dead limb. Her breath was wet.

The mountain of Broken didn't shift.

They didn't speak right away. Just breathing. Heavy. The kind that sank deeper when everything else stopped. Behind them, the ground was wrong, warped by bodies and violence, something massive built from blood and endurance alone.

The light hit them low. No warmth in it. Just enough to make the blood on Warren's coat look darker. Grix leaned on her lance because her legs were about to give out.

Warren turned to her. Slowly. "There was a point in there," he said, voice raw, "where I thought that was the end of us... Then I heard you laugh."

Grix let out something more like a real laugh this time, broken but bright. "I laughed," she said, "because I'm alive. And I figured if this was it, I'd go out with a grin."

She straightened slightly, just enough to show she still had fight left. "But then you roared. And the tide turned. We didn't break. We held. And now look at us."

Warren nodded, jaw clenched. "We fought for hours. No retreat. No fear. That's not just a record. That's a warning."

Grix wiped her chin, smearing more blood across her cheek than she cleared. "Yeah. One they're gonna remember."

They stood there a little longer. Not just tired, fierce. Bloody. Glorious. Not beaten. Not done.

There was a quiet in it. Not peace, not forgiveness, just stillness. The kind that only came after surviving something that should have killed you. No more rushing. No more screaming. Just the faint sound of the wind, and their breathing. And for a moment, it felt like the world had stopped with them.

But not for long.

Then Warren looked forward again.

He started walked.

But there was something different now. His steps didn't drag. His shoulders didn't sag. His hands clenched like weapons.

Grix followed. Her Broken fang trailed behind her, but her eyes burned bright.

They might already be too late.

But if Lucas, his clan, or anyone else stood in the way now?

They were dead already.