Chapter 1: The Ghost of Tin Alley

The rain fell like broken glass on the cracked pavement of Delrick's Sump District, each drop catching the sickly glow of neon signs advertising everything from synthetic meat to synthetic dreams. Deon Varr pulled his reinforced coat tighter as he navigated the maze of rusted fire escapes and jury-rigged power lines that crisscrossed the narrow alley like metallic spiderwebs. Twenty-eight years in this cesspit had taught him that nothing good happened after midnight in the Sump—except for business.

His business.

The woman waiting in the shadows of Marko's All-Night Diner looked exactly like every desperate client he'd ever taken on: hollow-eyed, clutching a worn photograph, and radiating the kind of desperation that paid well. She'd given her name as Elena Vasquez when she'd left the message with his usual contact, but names were cheap currency in Delrick. What mattered was whether she could afford his rates.

"You came," she said, relief evident in her voice as Deon slid into the cracked vinyl booth across from her. The diner's fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting everything in a harsh, unforgiving glare.

"You said you had five hundred credits up front." Deon's eyes swept the diner's interior—two exits, three other patrons who looked like they were minding their own business, and a cook who'd probably seen enough blood to know when to look the other way. Old habits. "I'm here for the money, not the sob story."

Elena flinched but reached into her jacket, pulling out a credstick. She placed it on the table between them, her fingers trembling slightly. "It's all there. And there's another five hundred when you find him."

Deon pocketed the credstick without checking the balance. He'd developed a sense for people who tried to cheat him—this woman wasn't one of them. She was too broken for deception. "Him?"

"My son. Leo." She slid the photograph across the table. "He's sixteen. He's been missing for three days."

The boy in the picture had his mother's dark eyes and the kind of soft features that wouldn't last long in the Sump. Clean clothes, genuine smile—definitely not from around here. "Where'd he disappear from?"

"The University District. He was walking home from his part-time job at the archives." Elena's voice cracked. "The peacekeepers said he probably ran away, but Leo wouldn't... he wouldn't just leave."

Deon studied the photograph again. University District meant money, or at least the appearance of it. It also meant the peacekeepers had better things to do than look for missing teenagers, especially ones who might embarrass the city's carefully maintained facade of prosperity.

"Kids run away all the time," Deon said, testing her resolve. "Especially when they get tired of mommy's rules."

Elena's eyes flashed with anger. "You don't understand. Leo isn't just any teenager. He's... special. He sees things other people don't. Patterns, connections. That's why he got the job at the archives so young." She leaned forward, her voice dropping to a whisper. "I think someone took him because of what he can do."

Interesting. Deon had heard whispers in the underground about people with unusual talents disappearing, but he'd always written it off as paranoid street talk. In a city like Delrick, paranoia was as common as the rain. Still, it was worth investigating.

"I'll need his schedule, his friends, anyone he might have talked to in the days before he vanished," Deon said. "And I'll need access to where he was last seen."

Elena nodded eagerly, pulling out a data pad. "I have everything here. Security footage, his work schedule, even his school records. I've been trying to find him myself, but..." She gestured helplessly at her civilian clothes. "I don't know how to navigate your world."

My world. Deon almost smiled. The woman thought there was a clear line between the respectable parts of Delrick and the Sump, between law-abiding citizens and fixers like him. She'd learn differently if she stayed in the city long enough.

Three hours later, Deon was beginning to understand why the peacekeepers had written off Leo Vasquez as a runaway. The kid's trail went cold at the intersection of Tin Alley and Progress Boulevard, right where the University District's polished facade gave way to the industrial sprawl of the Mid-Tier. Security cameras in the area had convenient blind spots, and none of the few witnesses Deon managed to track down remembered seeing anything unusual.

Tin Alley itself was a narrow passage between two condemned tenement buildings, the kind of place people used as a shortcut during the day and avoided entirely after dark. Broken glass crunched under Deon's boots as he played his flashlight across the graffiti-covered walls, looking for anything the peacekeepers might have missed.

That's when he saw it.

Etched into the brick wall about six feet up was a symbol that made his skin crawl. It wasn't graffiti—the lines were too precise, too deliberate. They seemed to pulse with a faint, sickly light that hurt to look at directly. Deon had seen a lot of strange things in his years as a fixer, but this was different. This felt wrong in a way that bypassed rational thought and went straight to the primitive part of his brain that still remembered how to fear the dark.

He pulled out his phone to take a picture, but the moment the camera focused on the symbol, the screen flickered and went black. When it came back online, the image was corrupted, showing nothing but static where the symbol should have been.

"What the hell?" Deon muttered, trying again with the same result.

He was reaching for a sketch pad when the temperature in the alley plummeted. His breath came out in visible puffs, and frost began forming on the walls around the symbol. The sickly light grew brighter, and suddenly Deon wasn't alone in the alley anymore.

The vision hit him like a sledgehammer to the skull.

Chains. Massive, rusted chains wrapped around arms thick as tree trunks. Glowing runes carved into flesh and metal, pulsing with malevolent energy. A helmeted head turns toward him, and where a face should be, there's only darkness and a single, burning red eye. The thing speaks without words, its voice a rumble that seems to come from the earth itself.

"You should not have come here."

The creature takes a step forward, and Deon can see the colossal blade it carries, wreathed in the same corrupt light as the symbol on the wall. This isn't just a monster—it's something that was once human, twisted into a weapon of pure destruction.

"Turn back, little fixer. Or join the others who thought they could defy the city's will."

Deon crashed back to reality, his body slamming against the alley wall as if he'd been physically thrown. Blood trickled from his nose, and his hands shook as he wiped it away. The temperature had returned to normal, but the symbol on the wall continued to pulse with that nauseating light.

He didn't need to be a genius to connect the dots. Leo Vasquez hadn't run away. He'd been taken, and whatever had taken him was connected to that symbol—and to the nightmare creature from his vision.

The Warden. That's what the street legends called it. A bogeyman used to keep criminals in line, a monster that served the city's hidden masters. Deon had always assumed it was just another urban myth, a story told to scare small-time crooks into compliance.

Now he knew better.

As he made his way back to the main street, Deon's mind raced. This wasn't just a missing person case anymore. Elena Vasquez's son had stumbled onto something big—something that the powers running Delrick would kill to keep secret. And now Deon was involved whether he wanted to be or not.

The smart thing would be to return Elena's money and walk away. Tell her the trail had gone cold, that her son was probably dead, and hope that whatever was behind the disappearances would be satisfied with one more victim.

But as Deon reached the mouth of Tin Alley and looked back at the symbol still glowing in the darkness, he felt something he hadn't experienced in years: genuine anger. Not the cold, calculated fury that helped him survive in the Sump, but the hot, righteous rage of someone who'd seen too much injustice and finally reached his breaking point.

No one deserved to be forgotten. Not Leo Vasquez, not the other missing people the rumors spoke of, and not whoever that monster had been before the city's masters turned him into their attack dog.

Deon pulled out his phone and sent a message to his few remaining contacts in the information trade. If there were more symbols like the one in Tin Alley, he needed to know about it. If there were other disappearances following the same pattern, he needed names and locations.

The case had just become personal.

As he walked back toward the Sump, the rain began to fall harder, washing the blood from his face but doing nothing to cleanse the memory of burning red eyes and the promise of violence they contained. Somewhere in the labyrinth of tunnels and forgotten spaces beneath Delrick, Leo Vasquez was waiting to be found.

Deon just hoped the boy would still be alive when he got there.