December 8th, 2016 – Saint Maria Street, outskirts of New Babylon – 2:00 AM

  Saint Maria Street had been forsaken. –

  Its windows were shattered, frames splintered, boarded up. Red tape crisscrossed the doorways like sacred sigils: Do not enter. Trash spilled from dented bins onto the cracked sidewalk – used needles, crushed cans, the detritus of a neighborhood long forgotten.

  Each night, darkness crept back in, wrapping the street like a shroud, like the mists that drifted in from the eastern wastelands. By day, the shadows retreated to the hollow buildings, nesting beneath dusty beds and broken dollhouses, waiting for nightfall to set them loose again.

  The New Babylon Municipality had long since stopped caring. There was no need to maintain streetlamps that would never again shine on a living soul, and the entire block was marked for demolition anyway.

  And yet, at 2 AM, on Saint Maria Street, a motorcycle tore through the silence.

  Its roar cracked the stillness like thunder, its headlight sliced the gloom with a lone beam of pale gold. When it came to a stop in the middle of the road, the shadows closed in around it, swallowing the street once more.

  A woman dismounted.

  She wore black from her helmet to her boots, blending perfectly with the darkness and her surroundings, almost vanishing into the night the moment she stood still. Her gaze lifted toward the hill ahead, where the ruined hulk of Saint Maria's Church still stood.

  Once grand, now crumbling, the old church had been a Gothic relic – a monument to faith.

  Now, no less than a pile of bricks sprouting rusted thorns. At the top of its tallest spire, a great bronze bell once hung. It had once marked every hour, until there was no one left to hear it.

  In better days, the church had been a sanctuary. Its mahogany pews, trimmed in gold and silver, held the faithful, respectable, god-fearing in the way only the comfortable could afford to be. They clutched their New Testaments to their chests and looked upward with shining eyes at Christ on the cross–immortalized in stained glass, aglow with sunlight–watching over them with calm divinity, promising safety, wholeness, grace.

  But now, Saint Maria's Church was a filthy ruin.

  It had been abandoned, sealed shut. Its bronze bell stolen and melted down. Its once-blooming garden was nothing but ash and thorn. Over the years, Saint Maria's Church had sworn its allegiance to entropy – a different kind of god, one that asked for nothing and took everything in return.

  And across stood the woman in black.

  She walked with certainty through the dark, each step deliberate, as if the decay beneath her boots were a welcome mat. A belt of iron swung at her hips, heavy with a pair of small silver pistols – instruments of precision, not spectacle.

  She removed her helmet and set it gently on the motorcycle's seat. Her hair spilled out – long, yellow, luminous – catching the faint light like a torch newly lit. It seemed out of place here, something too vivid for this dead street.

  The silence around her was absolute, and it filled her with a sense of disgust. It wrapped around her like gauze, pressing against her ears until she could hear only her own blood. She hated silence – called it the loudest sound there was. A noise made of absence, filling every crevice with void.

  Still, she remained calm. Soon, Saint Maria Street would be loud again.

  She stepped forward and surveyed the area. The church stood atop a low rise, its foundation cracked like old bone. A flight of crooked stairs led to a rusted iron gate, its bars tangled with dried vines. Beyond it, the ground sloped into a muddy stone path that wound its way to the entrance. The windows were all boarded shut.

  The woman in black smiled.

  That meant there was only one way out.

  And she intended to be the only one who made it.

  A long, sharpened fence surrounded the garden. She didn't bother wondering if she could scale it. She didn't need to. She then turned back to the motorcycle. From the trunk, she retrieved a white medical case – stamped with the logo of PROMETHEUS, of course.

  From it, she withdrew a long syringe, a spool of fishing wire, and a tiny vial of glowing blue liquid that shimmered as it moved.

  A lightning in a bottle.

  She uncorked the vial and drew the liquid into the syringe. Then she looped the wire around her upper arm, clenching her teeth to tighten it. She didn't need to search for a vein – the old scar still marked the spot. A whisper of pain, sharp and bright.

  Then came the rush – dizzying, electric, pure.

  She closed her eyes and let it hit.

  If only they'd given her more.

  She felt the power surge through her veins and the satisfaction it brought with it. The woman in black returned the case to the trunk, the lid closing with a decisive snap, and turned toward the gate, her footsteps pounding like war drums on hollow ground.

  The serum hit fast. Within thirty seconds, the sticky haze of darkness peeled away. She could see, feel, and sense everything around her.

  And suddenly, the street didn't feel so empty.

  She felt them – clinging to rooftops, crouched in alleys, burrowed in trash heaps like parasites. Watching her.

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  And there were many.

  But the woman in black had no interest in the vermin of the night. She was hunting bigger prey – the pack hiding inside Saint Maria's Church.

  Behind its walls, seven figures glowed in violet colors against her vision. Five crouched near the entrance, laid out like a trap. Two more upstairs: one posted outside a locked room, and within it, curled tight in itself – her target.

  "Bingo," she muttered, lips curving into something not unlike a smile.

  Her eyes dropped again to the rusted metal lock. She pulled her hand free from the riding glove, fingers pale in the dark, and pressed a single fingertip to the cold iron. A burn – sharp and bright – sparked in her skin. Then the power surged, lashing outward in a crackling halo of sparks.

  The lock hissed. A soft electric hum curled around her like static breath. Moments later, a satisfying click rang out. The lock dropped to the ground, blackened and steaming. The gate groaned open.

  She stepped forward, her entire body humming with anticipation – that familiar flutter that started in her stomach and bloomed outward like fire licking through her limbs. Wrath had always been her vice.

  The church doors were quite gorgeous, she had to admit: massive, double-panelled, carved by a master's hand. Gold leaf still clung to the crevices. Twin iron crosses crowned each side, dulled by time. She hadn't seen those symbols in years. And ridiculous as it was, she missed them. Just a little.

  She drew both pistols from their holsters and held them steady in her hands. The grips were cold as bone. Adrenaline surged. Her breath steadied. Saint Maria Street held its breath.

  With a single kick, she ended the silence.

  The great doors exploded inward. She caught them completely off guard. Two of them sat on the dais at the center of the hall. They barely had time to blink. Her bullets punched through their skulls. The back wall caught the aftermath – a splash of crimson across faded marble.

  The other three scattered, diving for cover behind the endless rows of prayer benches that stretched like ribs toward the altar. She dropped low and rolled behind a wide marble column, the air splitting with return fire. Wood shattered above her. Sparks burst where bullets struck stone.

  The church was larger than she'd anticipated – cavernous, crowded with pews packed so tight they felt like coffins. The raised stage loomed like a throne. She was glad she'd eliminated the vantage first. A voice shrieked at her from behind one of the benches – ragged, hoarse, half a curse, half a prayer. She could hear it – the fear in his throat. She could smell it.

  He rose to fire – but she was faster. She stepped from cover and aimed her hand directly at him. He wore a priest's robes. Not of this same faith, of course.

  A vastly worse one.

  She felt the electric current surge through her body and explode from her fingertips in a spray of crackling sparks. Her hand twisted with the force of it, and the bolt launched from her skin like luminous spears, striking multiple points at once – one of them squarely in the priest's face.

  He flew backward like a scorched rag doll, his robes catching fire as he hit the marble floor, smoke curling from the blackened edges of his skin.

  She dropped behind a pew just as the gunfire answered – sharp, panicked bursts snapping against wood and stone.

  But then… silence. The return fire slowed, then stopped.

  They were running low.

  "Please..." a man's voice – broken, exhausted, and above all, terrified.

  "I'm begging you... Just let us go. Please, I'm begging you..."

  But the woman in black didn't respond. Her eyes drifted upward to the chandelier at the center of the vaulted ceiling. It was vast. Stunning. Cut glass and curled iron, spiraling with baroque detail, still intact despite the rot around it. Cobwebs and dust clung to its arms like mourning veils, but its design remained pristine, defiant against time. It was a thing of beauty.

  She respected beauty. And she respected even more the devastation beauty could bring.

  Its placement was perfect, directly above the center of the room.

  A slit opened in the seam beneath her palm – where the fabric of the suit ended and skin began. From it, a sleek metal spike snapped forward, tethered to a thin wire. It launched with a sharp hiss, embedding itself cleanly into the iron chain above.

  She flexed her hand.

  Electricity surged through her veins and into the cable. The chain lit up with a violent shimmer – then detonated.

  The chandelier dropped like judgment.

  The impact was apocalyptic – an explosion of glass, shrieking metal, and pulverized air. She ducked behind the pew, arms shielding her head as jagged shards rained down. The wire snapped back into her suit with a mechanical hiss.

  She rose. Slowly. One hand on the pew, the other already lifting the pistol.

  Amidst the wreckage, one body twitched. The last survivor – no longer hidden, no longer screaming. Just crawling through blood, half-buried under the shattered weight of another body.

  The woman in black stepped forward, boots crunching over glass. She approached in quiet, deliberate steps. She looked into the survivor's eyes – wide, wet, wild with fear – and saw the final flicker of hope trying to light itself.

  Then, gently – almost kindly – she placed one hand beneath the man's chin. With the other, she tilted her head. The snap was soft. Final.

  "You're welcome," she whispered.

  She swept her gaze across the ruined chapel, then moved toward the staircase. Only two targets remained, glowing faintly behind the second-story wall. One of them – the final guard – held her gun tight, muscles tensed, trained on the hallway beyond.

  She climbed slowly, stepping lightly over the glass, the shattered wood, the fallen brave soldiers. Each creak beneath her foot felt amplified in the hush that followed the massacre.

  At the top of the stairs, she found herself in a long corridor. The floor was carpeted in frayed red runners. The walls were lined with portraits – holy figures, saints and martyrs, Mary holding the crucified son. Their colors had faded to ochre and dust. Their eyes were gone.

  She stepped into the hallway, lifted her pistol, and fired without pause.

  The bullet punched through the last guard before she even finished turning. Surprise froze her expression as she toppled backward, the wall behind her suddenly painted in bright arterial red.

  The woman in black watched the guard die. Just long enough to see the question in her eyes turn into nothing: 'Have I failed in my duty?'

  From the other side of the door, she heard it – soft, trembling, human. Crying.

  She opened the door.

  Inside was a bathroom – startlingly clean compared to the decay outside. A cracked mirror, a sink with a drip, and cracked white tile. And in the far corner, curled up like in a grave, was a young girl.

  Eleven, maybe. Her face streaked with tears, clothes nothing but rags, knees clutched to her chest. A necklace with an embedded eye dangled from her neck.

  She sat on a dusty mattress shoved into the corner, her body folded into itself. She wasn't just afraid – she was undone, reduced to pure, primal terror.

  The girl whimpered, a noise that didn't sound human. The woman in black let out a breath. Then stepped forward. The girl lowered her head, shivering. Submissive. Surrendered.

  The woman knelt beside her. She brushed the hair from the girl's face, damp and clinging, and gently wiped her tears away with the back of her hand.

  "God... God..." the girl stammered through cracked lips.

  The woman smiled – not with joy. With sadness. Weariness. Something long-dead flickered in her gaze.

  "I didn't mean to run," the girl sobbed. "I didn't want to. I'm sorry. Please. Please tell them I'll be good now. Tell them I'll do whatever they want..."

  She kept begging. But the woman in black had no mercy to spare.

  She stood. She reloaded the pistol.

  "I'm sorry," she said softly. "I really am. But we have to. It's for the greater good."

  She pulled the trigger.