In the back alleys of Mill Row, a man limped through the shadows.

  The streets were quiet, but nowhere serene. Sure, the emergency announcement had promised everyone safety. Perhaps the younger ones would believe it, those who had never experienced a storm in this rotten city. Perhaps it would even fool some of the older ones, those quick to betray their own memories, those who would throw away their honor and tradition for faux promises.

  But not him. He would not buy President Valtora’s bullshit.

  He had heard that speech before. Lock your doors. Shut your windows. Trust that everything will be fine. He would not trust a single word out of that witch’s mouth, not since she began meddling with the corps.

  He had been serving the Stormrunner Corps way before those sissy bureaucrats rules in the name of “progress”, way before those lab-bred technology and monstrous stabilizer machines, back when real men had wrestled the storms with grit and bare instincts.

  A burning pain.

  Fuck. He must have torn open the wound again.

  He reached down. Warm dampness enveloped his fingers. The makeshift tourniquet — made of a torn cotton shirt — had come loose. Underneath, the entire pant leg had been soaked through.

  His kneecap had been completely shattered. That bitch sure knew how to use a gun. Clenching his teeth, he ripped another strip and tied it around his leg. First aid was one of the first things taught to guardians.

  He turned another corner, taking a dark shortcut through the dumpsters. The stench of trash and unwashed people struck his nose.

  At this rate, he could get home in ten minutes.

  Of course, he would not let himself be trapped like a rat in a collapsing cage. To hell with lockdown orders. When the winds came, these paper houses would shred in no time. While people like him suffered, the rich and powerful, the leeches who had never contributed a single thing to society, would shelter comfortably in their fortified houses and bunkers.

  No. He would seize their place, take their wealth, reclaim what he rightfully deserved. It would become a game of survival for the fittest, just like the old days.

  He had a rifle and a few pistols stashed at home. At least four magazines each. Plus two cryo grenades. That should be more than enough.

  It had been a while since the announcement aired, but the silence still maintained its suffocating hold. Of course, it was not because the troublemakers were gone. In fact, he could feel their eyes watching him, following him to this dumpster alley. They probably saw him changing the tourniquet. Right now, they must be assessing how much of a threat he could be.

  He stared at the streets. They were supposedly locked down, and the police should be patrolling them. Judging by the distance, however, they would not get here in time. He was confident in his estimates. After all, his entire livelihood was carved out in between the first gunshot and the sirens.

  He stopped dead in his tracks. The space here was wider, better for a fight. He braced himself.

  A click. Cold metal pressed against the back of his hand.

  “Don’t move. Empty your wallets.”

  The accent was heavily northern, reaching as far as those Frontier provinces. But from the way the last few syllables were stressed, it sounded even further than Thiab.

  Bastion, probably. A migrant scum who sneaked in the borders.

  Another Fraxian woman emerged from the shadows on the side. She, too, pointed a gun right at his face.

  “Don’t try anything funny. We just want the money.”

  Another northerner, but born and raised in Valeria.

  The man sighed. He stared at his tattered clothes, then at the tourniquet on his leg.

  Of course, it was the fraggers. Had he been uninjured, he would have dropped them already.

  The only good Fragger was a dead Fragger.

  He stayed calm, like his years of Stormrunner experience had taught him. He had been a guardian, one of the best of his times. Sure, one of his knees may be broken, but he had pulled off more daring feats with worse injuries.

  “Why are you out here at this hour?” he stalled, trying to pinpoint the gun behind him. “Didn’t you hear? The storms are coming.”

  “That means the cops ain’t got time to look here,” said the Bastion migrant behind him. A slight shake in the muzzle. The work of a novice.

  He had started out like that, too. It was one thing to point a gun at paper targets. It was something else to point it at a human being, even those that he deeply despised.

  “Aren’t you scared of the winds?” he continued stalling.

  “Either I go out on the streets tonight, or I’ll be living on the streets next month.” Another shake betrayed where the arm hovered.

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  He understood the mugger’s plight.

  Taking desperate jobs, that was how he started his second life after the dishonorable charge. That was also what landed him in this mess.

  Unfortunately, he could not bring himself to communicate with one of those people. He resumed his tactics.

  “Martial law is in place. The cops will shoot you on sight.”

  The voice huffed. “They’d shoot us dead any other day too.”

  He pondered these words for a few seconds, longer than he meant to.

  The Fraxian woman across them grew impatient. She waved her pistol at him. “Look, man, just give us the money, and we all walk home safe and sound, yeah?”

  Sure, he could do that, but he had not been trained to surrender. He had been trained to kill.

  He just needed a few more seconds.

  “Why rob me?” He eyeballed the woman’s pistol. “Why not rob those rich motherfuckers in those mansions?”

  “Why don’t you ask the cops?” The woman’s gaze faltered a bit. She seemed to be seriously considering the question. “Ask them why they only arrest those robbing the rich.”

  He could hear the disdain in her voice, not at him, but at everything around her. The truth was, he shared the same disdain for the filthy streets and those who left them so. Had he wanted, he could have debated her, argued with her, agreed with her.

  Hell, these two behind the triggers might have more in common with him than anyone else in this damn city.

  But it didn’t matter. He would not stoop so low as to care about a Fraxian’s opinion.

  With an explosive kick from his good leg, he pivoted around. The gun behind him blasted. Shit, the wound slowed him down. Pain flared up from the side. Although his elbows had knocked the muzzle away, the bullet still grazed him.

  Clenching his teeth, he went for the pistol. He had to take a few punches, but he wrenched the gun free. With a one-arm chokehold on the migrant’s neck, he pulled him in front as a human shield. His other hand pointed the pistol straight at the female mugger across from him.

  With terror in her eyes, she raised her pistol in his general direction. Her arm was shaking so violently that she could not hold a proper aim. In contrast, his gun was tracking every movement of her body.

  After a few seconds of standoff, the woman gave up. She slowly lowered her pistol onto the ground and raised her palms. Her mouth opened, as if to plead for mercy.

  He hesitated for a second.

  It was one thing to shoot a Fragger. It was another to shoot someone who shared his disdain for the establishment, who walked in the same shoes as him a few years ago. To kill someone with his anger and his desperation, it would be like killing a part of himself.

  But he pushed those thoughts away.

  She was a Fraxian, after all. She dared to point a gun at a Valerian, at someone better than her in every way. He had executed people for less. How could he let her walk away unscathed?

  Bang.

  The woman fell. A gaping hole in her chest. As the light in her eyes began dimming, the ripples in his thoughts calmed. He silently watched the smoke wafting out of his pistol barrel.

  Another fragger on his list. They had always been like this, giving that teary, pleading look when they knew their time was up.

  The first time he had done it, that recruit had cried like a little girl. At the sight of his gun, that Fraxian boy had pleaded and wept, saying he was not deserting the frontline, that he just needed some air. Sure, as a guardian, he could have taken him in to court martial. But why bother? A coward deserved to be executed.

  That had been his first kill. Back then, his heart had been too soft. He had put up with the gibberish a little too long, and his hands had even been shaking.

  But now it was different.

  Seeing the mugger writhing on the ground, he fired a few more rounds. With each shot, the woman screamed in pain. He avoided the vital parts, for precise marksmanship would give away his past training.

  He had learned that the hard way. The second life he had taken was in the middle of a storm. That Stormrunner had gotten so wind shocked that she began talking to herself and cried for her mother. To him, that was not only a deserter, but an aggravated threat, so he took matters into his own hands.

  To his dismay, the court martial had not liked that. In the end, he had received his share of punishment.

  That was why, after that, he always tried to put bullets throughout the body. It would look like storm debris or the work of an amateur, nothing that would trace back to him.

  A shrill whistle brought his attention back to the present.

  That Fraxian mugger had let off a flare.

  Ironic, a mugger calling the law enforcement. He watched her let out her last breath under the blue glimmer in the sky.

  This was Mill Row. There was still time.

  He turned his gun to the mugger in his chokehold, the migrant scum.

  His fingers went for the trigger, but they hesitated for a second.

  He had killed a few Stormrunners this way. After his court martial sentence, he had learned that it was much better to kill stormpsychos than deserters. Less controversy. More fun.

  Those stormpsychos were rabid dogs. They had always loved to put up a fight, but maniacal strength was no match for technique. Of course, the nicer guardians would try to bring them in for treatment, but he believed in none of that bullshit.

  He believed in a show of force. Every time, he would lock them in this chokehold, and…

  Bang.

  The body in his arm went limp. He fired a bullet straight through the temple. The best way to execute rabid animals.

  He glanced at his masterpiece, at the abstract shapes of blood sprayed on the pavement.

  Had it not been for that Fraxian billionaire pressing for an investigation, and had it not been for that Fragger lover president actually entertaining him, he could have continued his legacy in the corps.

  He strapped the gun onto his belt and limped on.

  Suddenly, sirens approached, closing in at a dozen feet per second, taking him by surprise.

  Martial law was different indeed. It was perhaps the only time they cared to clean up this rotten street.

  Palms up, he stepped out of the shadows, making sure that the blue of his eyes was glinting under the streetlight. In a few seconds, he fabricated a story, like he had many times before.

  A few officers, masked and dressed in full tactical gear, descended from the automobile. They glanced at the two bodies on the ground and the bloodied flare tube. Then they spotted the pistol strapped on his belt. They did not speak, but they seemed to be piecing together everything in their heads.

  “These two Fraxians threatened to kill me, officers. I had to shoot them in self-defense.”

  No response. Suddenly, all of them trained their assault rifles on his body.

  For the first time, he was afraid. Even with his pistol, he could not take on all of them at once.

  “Please, officers, take me in and let me explain my case.”

  No response. Their fingers reached for the trigger.

  “No! I’m an upstanding citizen! I served in the Stormrunner Corps —”

  A salvo of shots went off. He saw the muzzle flashes before he felt his body torn into a hundred pieces. Pain erupted everywhere at once, too intense to be captured in words.

  The world spun. The sky collapsed. His back hit the pavement.

  As warm blood seeped out around him, he heard the officers shuffle back onto the vehicle. From the spreading puddle on the pavement, he watched the red and blue lights recede into the streets.

  A clatter. Something slipped out of his coat pocket and hit the pavement.

  With much struggle, he turned his head.

  The hollow eyes of the skull mask stared at him, as if bidding him farewell, until everything faded to black.