Neo Lyon never slept, but it had its moments of quiet. This was one of them.

  The early morning air was cold, carrying the lingering scent of rain and old stone. I pulled my hood lower over my face, exhaling a slow breath that curled into mist. My new apartment still felt foreign, too sterile, too hollow. Staying inside all day wasn’t an option—I’d been stuck in my own head too much lately.

  So I ran.

  It wasn’t for survival this time. No desperate chase through dark alleys, no adrenaline-fueled escape from some would-be predator. Just a steady, rhythmic pace, my shoes hitting the cracked pavement of the riverside paths. My breath came easily, my muscles didn’t ache the way they should have. My body—metahuman as it now was—didn’t suffer the way it used to. I wasn’t invincible, but the fatigue never fully caught up with me anymore.

  Still, I forced myself to push further. To sweat, to burn, to feel something real and physical, not just the hollow ache in my chest that never quite left.

  The city moved around me in fragments—street vendors setting up stalls, workers on their morning commute, the occasional runner or cyclist passing by. Some nodded in silent acknowledgment. Others just kept moving.

  It was too early for the streets to be crowded, but the world was waking up.

  I slowed near a public workout station—one of those scattered across the city in an effort to encourage people to be “healthy citizens.” Pull-up bars, parallel bars, resistance equipment. The kind of thing people mostly ignored unless they were desperate or too cheap for a gym.

  I wasn’t desperate, but I needed the distraction.

  I dropped my jacket onto the nearest bench and stretched out my arms, feeling the cold bite into my skin through my sports shirt before jumping to the pull-up bar. My muscles responded effortlessly, too easily. I wasn’t normal anymore, hadn’t been since that night. My body didn’t fatigue at the same rate. My strength had surpassed what it used to be, even without training.

  I did a few reps, but it didn’t feel like work. Not really. I pushed harder, gripping the bar until my knuckles whitened. I forced my muscles to strain, to feel something close to effort. I shifted my grip, trying a different variation.

  A man on the next bar over glanced at me, his brow lifting slightly in surprise. Maybe it was the ease with which I moved, or maybe he was just being competitive. Either way, he started pushing himself harder, matching my pace.

  Fine.

  I went faster, lifting my chin over the bar with smooth, controlled motions, keeping my breathing steady. My body still wasn’t protesting. It was like trying to get sore from walking. I dropped down, rolling my shoulders, and moved to the parallel bars.

  I tried to recall what proper form looked like, but it was mostly trial and error. My movements were instinctive, picked up from observation rather than training. My body adapted quickly, correcting itself when something felt off, but the lack of true exertion frustrated me.

  By the time I finished, the chill had faded from my skin. I pulled my jacket back on, rolling my shoulders as I glanced around. A small group had gathered in the park nearby—workers on break, old men playing chess under the pavilion, and a few people watching a newsfeed projected onto the side of a café.

  I caught fragments of the broadcast as I walked past.

  “…Munich is still reeling from the devastating attack by the League of Chaos just days ago. The city’s emergency response teams are overwhelmed, and relief efforts are ongoing. Authorities confirm that the League has since vanished without a trace…”

  I stopped, mid-step.

  “Weren’t they in Vienna weeks ago?” The words left my lips before I could stop them.

  A woman near the screen glanced at me, then turned back to the news. The feed cut to drone footage of the wreckage—buildings reduced to rubble, smoke still rising from the wreckage. Scorched earth, broken roads, bodies pulled from the debris.

  Even through the muted audio, I could hear the screaming.

  Krakow. Vienna. And now Munich. One city at a time, leaving nothing but destruction in their wake before vanishing into the shadows. They didn’t hold territory, didn’t make demands. They just appeared, sowed chaos and left to whatever place they pleased.

  Sometimes they barely did anything, like Krakow or Vienna—fifty-some dead, a hundred-some homes destroyed. Just enough to remind the world they existed. The reports talked about civilians torn apart, bodies disassembled like some twisted artist’s project. There were always a few altered victims, twisted into mockeries of humanity by Pretty’s modifications—some left alive, some not.

  But Munich…

  The camera panned over the destruction. Entire districts leveled. Hundreds dead. Entire families crushed under collapsed buildings. Hospitals overrun.

  I clenched my jaw.

  None of the so-called heroes had been able to stop them. The League of Chaos was like a force of nature, a storm that couldn’t be reasoned with, couldn’t be fought in any traditional sense. People like Gravitas or the Guild couldn’t just punch a hurricane into submission.

  And now, they had disappeared again.

  I turned away from the screen. I’d seen enough.

  Without thinking, I started walking.

  I didn’t have a destination in mind, but my feet carried me through the winding streets of Neo Lyon on their own. Past the market stalls, past the café terraces, through familiar alleys.

  And then I stopped.

  I was in my old street. However, what greeted me wasn’t my apartment. It was a new one, in the middle of construction.

  It was a skeleton of construction beams and scaffolding, stripped down to its framework, its walls replaced with fresh concrete slabs. A new foundation, erasing everything that had been there before.

  I didn’t remember walking here. My body had taken me on its own.

  Something inside my chest twisted, sharp and sudden.

  I shouldn’t be here.

  I shouldn’t be looking.

  But my eyes traced over the space where our apartment had once been—the walls where our posters had hung, the window where Mel used to lean out to smoke, the tiny kitchen where we used to fight over who got the last of the tea.

  There was nothing left of it.

  Nothing left of her.

  My fingers clenched into fists, nails digging into my palms.

  It should have been our anniversary in ten days.

  I turned away, my vision blurring. The construction site was a raw wound, a constant, gaping reminder of what was gone. I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t breathe.

  I started walking again, faster this time, my steps heavy against the pavement. I didn’t know where I was going, but I needed to put distance between myself and that place.

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  The streets blurred around me, the sounds of the city fading into a dull hum. I was lost in my own thoughts, replaying memories of Mel, of our life together, of the future we had planned.

  It was so sweet, how we could just laugh so freely. The late nights planning out the next gig at some background punk scene until she’d make it into the spotlights.

  The way we could just go on for hours talking about which would have been better off never starting music between Rockman or Jackaroo and should have stayed in hero work.

  It’s weird how we saw heroes as just some famous people that had nothing to do with our lives.

  I wandered without thinking, letting my feet carry me through old, familiar paths—places that had once been ours. My body knew them even if my mind tried to pretend otherwise.

  I found myself near the café we used to haunt, a little hole-in-the-wall place tucked between a secondhand bookstore and a shop that sold antique watches. The name had changed, the awning was new, and the inside had been remodeled, but the bones were still the same. The same scratched-up wooden chairs, the same smell of coffee mixed with cigarette smoke from people loitering outside.

  Mel had loved this place. Not because of the coffee—it was awful, and she never let the barista forget it—but because of the people. The musicians who would bring their battered guitars and play for tips, the old men who sat in the corner debating philosophy like the fate of the world hinged on whether Nietzsche was full of shit. She thrived on the noise, the movement, the stories floating through the air like cigarette smoke.

  We had spent entire afternoons here, curled up in the corner booth, pretending the world outside didn’t exist. She would scribble song lyrics on napkins, her brow furrowed in concentration, occasionally chewing on the end of her pen.

  “You know, if you actually bought a notebook, you wouldn’t lose half your ideas.”

  “And where’s the fun in that?” she’d shot back with a grin, twirling the pen between her fingers like a drumstick. “It’s about the moment, babe. You gotta write things down where they happen.”

  I still had one of those napkins, buried in the bottom of my bag.

  I didn’t go inside. Couldn’t. Instead, I turned away and kept walking.

  The next stop was unintentional. My body had a cruel sense of humor.

  It was the bar.

  Mel’s church.

  The windows were still plastered with posters—band flyers, gig announcements.

  Mel’s band wasn’t on there.

  It was the kind of thing I should have expected, but it still hit like a punch to the ribs. Crashing Melodies—gone. Like she had never been here at all. The world had kept moving without her, erasing her presence one missing poster at a time.

  A hollow, bitter laugh escaped me before I could stop it.

  Of course, the world didn’t stop. Of course, people moved on. The bar still stood, the music still played, and I was the only one who seemed stuck in place.

  I wanted to walk away. I should have. But my feet had other ideas.

  I pushed the door open.

  The inside smelled the same—cheap beer, sweat, that ever-present haze of cigarette smoke hanging just under the ceiling lights. The stage in the back was empty, a drum set half-assembled, waiting for the next band to stumble in and start their set.

  It was quieter than usual, too early for the real crowds. Just a few regulars at the bar, hunched over their drinks, and the bartender wiping down the counter with the practiced ease of someone who had done this a thousand times over.

  He looked up as I approached, blinking in recognition.

  “Liz?”

  I hesitated. It had been months since I’d been here. Maybe longer.

  "Hey, Daz," I said, my voice rougher than I intended.

  Daz was older than most of the regulars, pushing fifty, with a permanent five o’clock shadow and a faded band tee that had seen better decades. He had been behind this counter for as long as I’d known the place, and for as long as Mel had played here.

  He set his rag down and leaned on the bar. “Didn’t think I’d see you again.”

  I shrugged, sliding onto one of the stools. “Didn’t think I’d come back.”

  His gaze flickered, just for a second, toward the stage. He didn’t say her name. Neither did I.

  “Still drinking the same?”

  I almost laughed. Still drinking? I hadn’t had a real drink since that night. Since the hospital. Since my body decided it could process trauma better than alcohol.

  “Just water,” I said.

  Daz didn’t comment, just grabbed a glass and filled it from the tap. He slid it across the counter, watching me like I might vanish if he looked away.

  “Some of the guys were asking about you,” he said eventually. “Paul. Some of the old crowd. They weren’t sure if you were…”

  Dead.

  I wasn’t sure either.

  “I’m still here,” I said, sipping the water.

  Daz nodded slowly. He reached under the counter, pulling out a bottle of whiskey, pouring himself a shot. Not offering me one.

  “To the ones who ain’t.”

  I clenched my jaw but lifted my glass anyway. The water was cold. Tasteless.

  For a moment, I let myself sit there, let myself pretend this was any other night. That I’d come here after a long shift, that Mel was going to walk through that door with her guitar case slung over her shoulder, grinning like she had just figured out the last piece of a song.

  I let the memory live. Then I crushed it and stood.

  “Thanks, Daz,” I muttered, pushing the glass back toward him.

  He nodded. “You ever need a place to sit, it’s still here.”

  I wasn’t sure I’d take him up on that.

  By the time I stepped outside, the sun was long past its zenith. The city was awake as ever—cars honking, people moving, life carrying on as if nothing had changed.

  As if I hadn’t just walked through a graveyard of my past.

  I took a deep breath, shaking off the weight settling in my chest, and turned away from the bar. The streets of Neo Lyon were never truly empty, but I kept to the quieter paths, letting the morning crowds fill the distance between me and my thoughts.

  I needed to clear my head.

  I didn’t get the chance.

  Movement in the corner of my vision made me stop. Two figures, walking side by side down the opposite street. Not just any figures.

  Heroes.

  The first one I recognized immediately—White Flag. The so-called pacifist hero, draped in his signature white-and-gold jacket, the stylized dove emblem on his back marking him like a brand. His posture was casual, but his eyes were always moving, scanning the street with the kind of awareness that said he was always looking for trouble before it started.

  The second one wasn’t as familiar.

  He was shorter than White Flag, leaner, his frame built more for speed than power. His costume was a muted navy with silver trim, lacking the ostentatious flair of most heroes. A half-mask covered the upper portion of his face, leaving his sharp jawline visible. The way he moved was deliberate, calculated, but not quite paranoid. Someone used to working in the background rather than standing in the spotlight.

  New Moon heroes patrolling.

  I froze for half a second, then forced myself to keep walking. Too long a pause, too sudden a movement—they’d notice. Heroes weren’t omniscient, but they were trained to pick up on oddities, on the way people moved when they saw them. It was instinct at this point, something drilled into them by experience or whatever training MetaPol threw their way before their accreditation.

  I kept my pace steady, head down, hood up. Just another citizen, another face in the crowd.

  But my heart was hammering, and I wasn’t sure why.

  White Flag was one thing. He was a well-known name in Neo Lyon, one of those heroes who prided themselves on being diplomatic first, action second. He didn’t chase down every petty criminal, didn’t start fights without reason. He was exactly what his name implied—a negotiator, a hero who believed in finding a middle ground before throwing a punch.

  The other one, though… I didn’t know him. That was the problem.

  He should follow White Flag’s order, normally. But I did hear that even among MetaPol some outliers charge headfirst without listening to their leaders.

  But my pulse was quickening, my instincts whispering at me.

  Get out of here.

  I turned down a side street, not rushing but not hesitating either. The buildings here were older, the kind that had survived Neo Lyon’s many disasters, standing strong through the years. The air felt heavier, quieter.

  I glanced back.

  White Flag and his companion had stopped at the intersection. Talking. Their heads tilted slightly, scanning.

  I didn’t like that.

  I kept walking, my pace steady. Just a few more turns, and I’d be out of their range.

  But I could feel it, that crawling sensation on my skin.

  They were watching.

  And then, the moment passed.

  They turned, continuing down the main road, their conversation carrying on as if nothing had happened.

  I exhaled slowly, forcing my shoulders to relax.

  Paranoia. It was getting worse.

  I needed to be more careful.

  Neo Lyon was changing, shifting under my feet. The pieces weren’t connecting the way they used to. And if New Moon was patrolling more actively, if their heroes were pushing further into the streets, it meant something was coming.

  Something bigger.

  I didn’t know what.

  But I had the sinking feeling that I was going to find out.

  And I wasn’t going to like it.