The rat watched me from the cistern like a landlord “Don’t you dare,” I whispered. It twitched, put both little hands on the porcelain lip, and sneezed. The sneeze tipped it over. The rat slid like a grey comet into the bowl and vanished with the saddest, softest plop. I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Aha… okay. That’s… symbolic.”

  This stall was my whole apartment: cracked tile, a backpack for a pillow, a dying laptop balanced on the paper dispenser, a stolen power line I’d jimmied out of a junction box with a butter knife. I’d been here a week. The bathroom lived one level above the rail tunnels at the heart of The Country, and The City, where the Assassins Association hid its guts. Up there they traded bounties and wine. Down here they flushed.

  I scrolled boards with my head cocked, listening to the room instead of the screen. Men came in and did what men do when they think no one’s listening: complain about pay, about wives, about Silver-Tier odds. Which assassin died last Monday, in a way you’d see on a cheesy horror movie. You can learn a lot with your feet on a toilet lid and your shoes off the wet.

  Tonight, the vibe was different. “…copy that, Sector Eight,” a baritone said by the sinks. “White object over water, blue wake. Might be debris, might be VIP. Hold perimeter.”

  Another voice, flatter: “Keep it in the mesh. I don’t want the island playing astronomer.” You could hear the mass in his vowels. Square, bad news. He was the one with the heavy poop, Baatar the Second.

  The rat resurfaced by my calf and scrabbled. I nudged it back with my heel. “Aha… um, not now, buddy,” I mouthed. The latch rattled I stuffed the laptop into my backpack, zipped with my teeth, and stood on the toilet seat, toes gripping the rim, trying to be smoke.

  There were black shoes and a top hat on the floor of the next stall, I’m sure of it, but when I blinked they weren’t there anymore; I told myself I was just going stir crazy. “Clear,” someone said. “One occupied. Probably maintenance.”

  The latch clicked. My soul left my body, took a lap, and came back with a note: die quietly. The door blew in on a boot the size of a coffin lid. I didn’t fall. Baatar kicked me through the door, and the toilet came too. My heel slipped. I went in butt-first. Cold porcelain, then colder everything, then the bowl introduced me to the last ten people who’d loved it intimately.

  “Guh…! Aha!” I came up choking, slick and stinking, hugging porcelain like a lifebuoy. The rat launched past my ear and made it to freedom with better form than me.

  Baatar filled the doorway, visor an unlit street. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “C-cleaning…,” I said, immediately regretting all words. A hand like a wrench clamped my collar. He hauled me sideways into the sinks. Tile. Metal. Stars. Something popped in my shoulder and spun away. The backpack skittered under the urinals. My laptop gave a small, kicked-dog whump. “I — I’m leaving,” I said to the floor, already scrambling. “Right now, sir. See? Efficient.”

  He didn’t answer me. He listened to his earbud. “Copy. Whitefall confirmed. Blue trail. Impact North Seawall. Dispatch drones.”

  Whitefall. Blue trail. Seawall. If something big was happening, I needed to be there. Anywhere but here. In this disadvantageous, filthy situation.

  Two more men in black slipped past, rifles low, masks blank. Baatar angled his visor back at me. “Rat,” he said, like it was a rank, not an insult. Then kicked. Tile. Air. Corridor. I pinwheeled into a service hall, hit a cart stacked with bleach and prayer, and bounced. The cart rolled away, starting a small chemical war. Alarms didn’t go off. The Association doesn’t alarm for vermin.

  I sprinted. Out of concrete dim into a lobby built to launder murder. Bullet-glass booths. A wall-sized Points Desk ticker flickering exchange rates. The air smelled like bleach and coins. “Tickets, please,” said the woman behind the plexi, not looking up.

  “I… I’m just passing through,” I said, slick with a shame that wasn’t all water.

  To my right, an elderly pair in matching leather jackets argued softly at the Points Desk. “He can’t afford a mediator,” the old man with the cane pleaded. “Please, let him retire.”

  “Then don’t lose,” the woman said, eyes on the board. “It’s only a hundred points.”

  The PA chimed: “Now serving B-413. Present both parties for arbitration.”

  I slid under a velvet rope. Nobody wanted to look poor in public.

  A blue sign glowed by the turnstiles:

  PUBLIC CONCOURSE — FILMING PERMITTED.

  NO RECORDING BEYOND SECURITY LINES.

  Baatar’s boots entered behind me. The turnstiles clicked to attention. I ducked another rope, took a donation box in the ribs, and kept moving. People clocked me and then, professionally, didn’t.

  Weapon kiosks hummed: Serrated Cleavers — 3 pts. Bolt Pistol 5. Cursed Lots (Sealed). Ask.

  A stall hawked rank boosters beside glittering body-mods, subdermal bone lace, night-iris lenses, a “lucky” phalanx in velvet. “Magical charms! Become like the Gold Tiers!” a seller sang, trying to loop a cord over my neck.

  “S-sorry!” I slid sideways. Straight into a pale mount in a cardigan. A gigantic yellow man blocked my way. He, literally, looked like a sponge. “I… excuse me, very… absorbent man,” I said, and the rider checked a wrist display and steered the creature with two fingers like he was moving a couch.

  “Strength booster. One hundred,” another vendor hissed, waving a vial. “Two if you’re an addict.”

  “I’m not… aha, buying drugs today, sorry,” I said.

  “Hm? They’re just… vitamins. For courage.” A ceiling drone slid past.

  I didn’t know where I was running by this point, only that anywhere without Baatar in it was statistically safer. My shoulder throbbed with every step, backpack slapping against my ribs. I ducked around a corner into a narrow service alley and nearly collapsed over a metal bin Perfect. Home sweet temporary coffin I shoved myself inside, curled like a dying shrimp, and pulled the lid down.

  For a whole three seconds, the association was silent. Then the bin shook.

  “The bin is kickable,” someone declared above me, delighted, like they’d discovered a new sport.

  “Bǎo thinks this is such a cute idea. Bǎo approves. Bǎo says we roll the rat-boy down the hill.”

  Rat-boy? I nearly burst out in protest.

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  A second girl answered mockingly from above, winded from climbing. “Kazadi didn’t forget to set up the stream. Kazadi is very professional, unlike you, Bǎo. You’re welcome.”

  Stream? Why was my misery being streamed?

  I pressed my palms to the cold metal. “H-hey… hey… please don’t…”

  The lid creaked open and Bǎo Lin herself peered down at me like I was mold she found on sushi. I recognized her from Chinese TV. Too perfect to be real.

  “Oh ew,” she said. “Bǎo did not order this one. Why is he damp?”

  “I wasn’t damp before today…”

  She closed the lid with finality. The bin jerked as someone tested the weight. I felt wet noodles wrap around my head like a bandana.

  “Someone tell Bǎo when to kick,” she called. “Bǎo wants a clean roll.”

  “Center of mass,” someone said from above. “Right in the middle for the strongest bounce.”

  “Signal says… now!” a girl shouted.

  “Let’s jam~!” another sang.

  Bǎo’s heel struck the metal with perfect rich-girl form.

  The kick detonated my senses.

  BNGBNGBNGBNGGGBAAAAANNNNNNNNGGGGGGG— The bin became a projectile. I became cargo. We bounced off every uneven tile like we were hitting plot points. I screamed something that wasn’t English. At the bottom, the bin flipped and crashed upright.

  A voice roared beside me:

  “HEY! YOU! OUT OF THE BIN! NOW!”

  The lid flew open. A Black Box officer aimed a sidearm at my face.

  I crawled out, wobbling, soaked, humiliated.

  “H-hhhello… o-officer…”

  She jabbed the gun at me. “THIS IS A RESTRICTED ZONE! IDENTIFY YOURSELF!”

  “I… I’m identifying as someone who wants to leave!”

  She didn’t care. She dragged me upright by the collar and shook me hard enough to rattle teeth.

  “I SAW THAT BIN FLYING… WHO LAUNCHED YOU?”

  “I DIDN’T… I WAS INSIDE…”

  But the rookies were already sprinting away, using me as the world’s saddest decoy.

  Bǎo’s voice echoed distantly: “Good idea! Bǎo is so clever, hahahaha!”

  The woman in the black suit snarled. “BACKUP, now!”

  Then… heavy footsteps pounded the pavement behind him.

  My blood iced. Baatar. The woman in black turned. “Baatar! I have a suspe…”

  Baatar did not slow. “There you are,” he said, calmly.

  I bolted past the stunned officer, past the rolling bin, past everything sane in my life. I barely heard the officer screaming behind me. I burst into the open concourse, lungs burning, dripping trash juice, looking like someone had modelled a criminal out of wet laundry.

  “Okayokayokayokay… aha… still alive…” I gasped. I scrolled desperately, trying to find the GO LIVE button on my phone with shaking fingers as I staggered through the turnstiles. Because if someone killed me now, at least the internet would know who did it. I was already far away. I yanked my phone out with my good hand. The screen was cracked and damp. In the bathroom I’d been a ghost; here the rules would protect me. Sort of.

  Go LIVE.

  “A-aha… h-hi. We’re live,” I panted, clipping the phone to my collar. “Unemployed Man reporting in, or so they called me on the news… kinda embarrassing name, b-but it stuck, uh, I’m in the public concourse of The City. Which is definitely fine and definitely legal.”

  [myst] he’s BACK did you get a job :joy:

  [shibushu] where r u??

  [modmail] no stunts keep it clean

  “If anything, uh… bad happens, if anybody kills me, you’ll, you’ll see it. And for the record, I’m not suicidal,” I said, taping on a smile. “Public safety. Democracy. Aha.”

  I pushed into the admin spine, glass boxes of lawyers and handlers like aquariums. Printer ozone and coffee bit the air. In one office, three suits watched a bloody fight in the underground. They looked wealthy. I hated that.

  A vertical ad glitched: Diamond Doll in neon. Lipstick, wink, then a jewelled greatsword flashed between frames, then back to lipstick. A handler muttered into his headset as we passed, “Yes, we have Bǎo Lin here. She’s caused a lot of trouble. You’ll need to make this up to us, President Zhang.”

  “Stop,” Baatar said, not loud, just eventual.

  I slipped right into the trophy gallery. A room full of proof: broken shields, a snowfield of teeth, a framed bounty for a name centuries ago. Two ceiling panels sighed. Drones slid out. I bolted for a maintenance door stencilled in red:

  NO RECORDING BEYOND SECURITY LINES.

  At the threshold I killed the live mid-breath. The screen flipped to a local overlay:

  Record — Deadman Buffer ON (auto-upload if device disabled).

  “O-okay… recording,” I whispered. “If I don’t cancel this in twenty-four hours… it posts.”

  A net-round cracked the wall where my head had been. The giant sponge-man waddled into the line of fire, cardigan askew, soaking the shot like a gentle miracle. “Th-thank you,” I told the cardigan, shouldered into the service hall, and ran.

  The corridor narrowed, lights thinning to one exhausted strip. My lungs burned. My shoulder wobbled. The tunnel forked: left toward Arbitration Bays, right toward Maintenance. Left smelled like sterilised regret. I chose right. A grate waited at the dead end. I stumbled through.

  “Okay...” I shoved my backpack through, then my phone, then me. The camera briefly filmed my butt. I wriggled into the maintenance crawl, dragged the grate back with my heel, and held it as Baatar’s shadow filled the space I’d just evacuated.

  He didn’t try the grate. He just stood there, head tilted slightly, as if listening to the island breathe. I crawled, face full of dust and antique lint. The crawl was a ribcage of metal. The rail below thrummed — nnnn — until my teeth matched the note.

  The crawl emptied into a service bay with a ladder leading to a hatch. I clipped the phone back on, wiped my hands on my already-ruined trousers, and climbed.

  The hatch opened onto the North Seawall Terraces, where concrete steps stacked to punch the ocean. Crane rails. Floodlight masts. A desal plant humming like a giant’s kettle. A gull gave a cry. Wind carried a salt-spray slap that stung my eyes. Brine and diesel had a permanent marriage here.

  But something was off. The slabs were crushed; debris was scattered around like a bomb had gone off.

  I hugged the parapet and thumbed Go LIVE.

  “A-aha… h-hi again. This is public ground. If anything happens…?”

  My phone let out a bubble-popping sound, followed by an unnerving notification. The screen warped, overlayed by a system banner:

  CAP: Anomaly in restricted proximity. Live masking active. VOD will resume from last public zone (the bazaar).

  “Okay… okay,” I told three hundred strangers who would only ever hear my voice. “Dangerous.”

  I went anyway.

  “Not normal,” I laughed nervously, walking toward the wreckage.

  [chat] audio only? [modmail] masking triggered. [streetlamp77] bro point the cam…?

  Footsteps clanged on a lower terrace. Drones hummed like wasps in the distance. If I fainted now, I was a body bag.

  I reached the pile. It wasn't just rocks; it was a tomb of shattered concrete. I felt compelled to dig, though I didn't know why. Maybe it was Baatar closing in behind me. Maybe it was the strange, low hum vibrating through the soles of my shoes.

  I grabbed a slab and pulled. It didn't budge.

  “Weak,” I muttered, breathless. “Should’ve gone to the gym. Or ever.”

  I dug through the smaller piles, prying out jagged stones. Suddenly, pain speared my palm.

  “AUGH… what!?”

  A shard of violet glass jutted from my hand. There was no blood, just light.

  “This isn’t…”

  The glow sharpened. It didn't just sit in the wound; it moved. The glass sank into my skin, pulling itself inward, melting into a round sphere buried beneath the surface of my palm. A copper seed flickered at its core like an acorn trapped in amber.

  Heat flooded me. It wasn't warm; it was boiling. My skin paled, the hairs on my arms tinting green, my nails flushing mossy. My jacket groaned as it tightened across new, unnatural muscle.

  My breath caught. I stared at my hand, terrified.

  “The sphere…” I wheezed, a delirious laugh bubbling up. “It gave me gains.”

  Power fizzed through my legs, electric and demanding. I didn't think; I just grabbed the massive slab that had defeated me seconds ago. I lifted it.

  It came up light as Styrofoam.

  “Still fake?” I whispered to the chat.

  I hurled the stone into the dark. It smashed against a crane mast like a cannon shot.

  The light faded where the rock had been. Something gleamed under the rubble. Dented, gold, bruised with red and purple. Scales. Massive, leaf-veined plates that didn't belong on Earth.

  I pressed my fingers to a seam. I felt the rise and fall of breath.

  “What are these… golden… scales?”

  The ground dropped out. An invisible force tore me upward. Wind shredded the fog. For a heartbeat I was weightless over the terraces, the sea a sheet of hammered lead below me.

  I hit into pine and mud, not concrete. The Seawall was a grey ribbon far off now. A crater steamed around me.

  A ribbon of gold uncoiled between the trees. Eyes like molten jade opened, and color bent around them.

  “Humans are fragile,” the voice said, precise and tired. “Your time runs thin.”

  I rose again, gentler this time, held by nothing. The sphere buried in my palm burned. The dragon’s gaze didn’t blink.

  The last thing I felt was the seed opening like an eye, and my grasp on reality dimmed.

  Everything let go of me.

  Black.

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