"Don't move, you little piece of trash, or I'll paint this floor with your brains," a voice spat.
A cold, heavy barrel pressed right into the base of my skull. I didn't move. I couldn't. My lungs felt like they were filled with wet concrete, and my heart was hammering against ribs that didn't feel like mine.
"I said don't move!" the guy screamed. He was shaking. Amateurs always shake when they're holding a gun for the first time.
I tried to speak, but all that came out was a wet, hacking cough. My throat tasted like copper and old pennies. I looked down. My hands were thin, pale, and shaking—not from fear, but from malnutrition. These weren't the hands of a war-monk. These were the hands of a kid who'd spent more time stealing scraps than swinging a blade.
"Who the hell are you?" the gunman demanded, shoving the muzzle harder into my neck. "Jace doesn't cough like that. Jace doesn't look at me like he's judging my soul. Where's the chip, kid?"
I didn't know what a chip was. I didn't know where I was. All I knew was that the Veil—the Current that had been my breath and my blade for three lifetimes—was screaming inside me, trying to claw its way through this frail, broken vessel of a body.
"I don't... know..." I wheezed.
"Wrong answer!"
He slammed the butt of the gun into my temple. The world tilted. I hit the grime-slicked floor of Bay Six, the smell of ozone and rotting fish filling my nose. Above me, the ceiling of the warehouse leaked a slow, rhythmic drip of oily water.
"Please! Just leave him alone!"
That was a new voice. High. Terrified. A kid.
I shifted my gaze. A few feet away, a boy no older than twelve was huddled against a rusted shipping crate, his eyes wide and brimming with tears. Leo. The name flickered in my mind, a residual memory from the body I was currently inhabiting.
"Shut up, brat!" the gunman roared, stepping away from me to tower over the boy. "Your pathetic brother tried to play us. He thought he could skim off the top of the shipment. Now, since Jace here is too busy dying to talk, maybe you'll be more cooperative."
He reached down and grabbed the boy by the collar, hoisting him up like a stray kitten. The kid let out a sharp, jagged scream.
Something snapped inside me.
It wasn't a conscious choice. It was the monk in me—the part that didn't care about the frail ribs or the shaking hands. I reached out, not with my muscles, but with the Current. I felt it—a surge of silver-white energy, cold as a mountain peak and sharp as a razor, rushing from the core of my soul into the nerves of this alien body.
*Give me strength,* I commanded.
*Give me just one second of power.*
I didn't stand up; I launched. I was a blur of motion, a ghost in a ruined hoodie. Before the gunman could even register that I was off the floor, I was behind him.
I grabbed his wrist. My grip wasn't just strong; it was absolute. I heard the bone groan under the pressure.
"Let. Him. Go," I hissed. My voice sounded different now—deeper, layered with a resonance that didn't belong in a seventeen-year-old's throat.
"What the—"
I didn't let him finish. I twisted. A sickening *pop* echoed through the warehouse as his wrist snapped. The gun clattered to the concrete. In one fluid motion, I drove my elbow into the back of his neck, precisely where the C2 vertebra meets the skull. He went limp instantly, crashing to the ground like a sack of wet laundry.
I stood over him, chest heaving, my vision swimming with red spots. The Current was receding, leaving me hollow and exhausted. This body was a disaster. It was like trying to run a marathon while breathing through a straw.
"Jace?" the boy whispered, staring at me with a mixture of awe and absolute terror. "You... you just... how did you do that?"
I looked at him. Really looked at him. He was shivering, his clothes three sizes too big. He looked like he'd been fighting the world since the day he was born and losing every single round.
"I'm not..." I started, then stopped. *I am Jace now.* Or at least, I was wearing his skin. "I'm here. You're safe."
"You're not Jace," Leo said, his voice trembling. "Jace is scared of everything. Jace cries when the Enforcers look at him. You... you look like you've killed people before."
I didn't deny it. I couldn't. "Come here," I said, reaching out a hand.
He hesitated, then stepped forward, gripping my hand with a strength born of desperation. His palm was small and cold.
"We have to go," I told him, glancing at the fallen gunman. "More will come. This wasn't a solo job."
"Where can we go?" Leo asked, a tear finally escaping and tracking through the dirt on his cheek. "Everyone knows us. The corporate capes... they don't help people like us. They just clear the streets for the cameras."
"Then we find a place where they can't see us," I replied.
I started to lead him toward the exit, but as we stepped out into the oppressive neon gloom of Ashport, the world suddenly shifted.
Every street screen—every holographic billboard and flickering advertisement—glitched at once. The colorful ads for synthetic protein and luxury cloud-apartments vanished. In their place, a single, stark image appeared.
It was a face. A woman. She looked like a goddess carved from ice, her eyes sharp, her expression one of clinical detachment. She wore a high-collared corporate uniform that screamed authority and blood-money.
Below her image, bold red letters pulsed against a black background:
**WANTED: JACE CROSS. STATUS: DECEASED/ROGUE. REWARD: 50,000 CREDITS FOR CONFIRMED TERMINATION.**
"Oh god," Leo whispered, his grip tightening on my hand. "They're calling you a rogue. They're... they're paying people to kill you."
I looked up at the giant screen. The woman's eyes seemed to stare right through me, judging the fraud in the boy's body. I didn't know who she was, but I knew that look. It was the look of a predator who had already won.
Suddenly, a sharp, electronic *beep* sounded from my pocket. I reached in and pulled out a cracked handheld device. A red dot was blinking on a map, centered exactly on my current location.
And then, a voice whispered through the device's speaker—not the loud, booming voice of the woman on the screen, but a low, dangerous murmur that made the hair on my neck stand up.
"Don't run, Jace. It only makes the hunt more interesting."
I looked around. The alleyway was empty, but the feeling of being watched was suffocating. I could smell something—not fish this time, but something metallic. Ozone. The scent of a high-grade power signature.
I pulled Leo behind me, shielding him with my own thin frame.
"Who is that?" Leo whimpered.
"Someone who thinks I'm dead," I muttered, feeling the Current stir again, this time with a warning.
I looked back at the screen. The woman—the Enforcer—was still staring. But as the image flickered, for a split second, her lips moved. She wasn't speaking to the city. She was speaking to me.
I squinted, trying to read her lips.
*Run, you idiot,* she seemed to say.
Before I could process it, a heavy thud landed on the roof above us. The metal groaned under a sudden, immense weight. I looked up just as a figure descended, a blur of chrome and black leather, slamming into the pavement with enough force to crack the concrete.
She landed in a perfect three-point crouch, her eyes glowing with a faint, artificial blue light. She didn't say a word. She just raised a sleek, humming wrist-blade and pointed it directly at my throat.
"Target acquired," she said, her voice a cold, synthesized echo of the woman on the screen. "Prepare for extraction."
I stepped back, my boots sliding on the wet asphalt. I had no weapon, no armor, and a body that felt like it was falling apart.
"I'm not going anywhere with you," I said.
She didn't smile. She just lunged, the blade whistling through the air toward my jugular, and in that moment, the red target on the screen behind me bloomed into a blinding flash of light.