The Rust Veil was bad at night. The orange haze was replaced by neon shadows, and the air was cooler, yet still oppressive.

  Velira Nocturne glided through the sparse late night crowd, past hushed promises of the best synth-wine or most potent stim-shots. People gave her space—a wide berth. She radiated danger, propagated fear. Useful currencies.

  Without Kass “Riot” Vex at her side, it all felt heavier. Like the air itself, choked with hanging smoke, weighed more than normal. She found herself missing the energy of Kass’s presence. Like the feel of electricity right before a lightning strike, walking beside something that could explode at any second.

  Night hid everything in shadow—every stain on the tarps, every crack in the ferrocrete—but it also left her alone. No one approached her in her own element.

  She found Skiv hunched over a steaming bowl of synth-noodles in his old rust-stained corner of the market, the manufactured light catching the twitchy glint of his cybernetic eye. The glitching skull tattoo on his arm seemed stuck on the weird smiley face for the moment.

  He hadn’t noticed her yet, just a dark shadow in a sea of shadows. She didn’t know how to greet him.

  “Skiv.”

  He nearly jumped out of his skin.

  “Holy fuck! Damnit Velira, you scared the shit out of me!” Skiv choked, his cybernetic eye having a seizure. “What the hell are you doing here? Where’s Kass?”

  “Sleeping.” Velira stood perfectly still, unsure whether to sit or remain looming over him. The social mechanics felt foreign. “I had to… feed.”

  “Feed?” Skiv’s cybernetic eye refocused on her. Then understanding dawned. “Oh. Right. The synth…thing.”

  An uncomfortable silence stretched between them. Velira had never had to explain herself to anyone except Kass, and even then, rarely.

  “You painted half the industrial district red,” Skiv said finally. “Red Memory’s completely gone. Wiped off the map gone.”

  “They took her.” The words came out flat.

  “Yeah, I know. And you got her back. I saw some of the security footage.” He shivered a little. “Shit, I’m glad you’re on our side”

  He looked back up. “But something’s still wrong, isn’t it?”

  Velira’s green eyes flicked to his, surprised by his perceptiveness. She’d expected fear, maybe professional curiosity. Not… insight.

  “I’m not good at…” She paused, searching for words. “Human things.”

  “No shit.” But Skiv’s tone held no mockery. “Sit down, you’re making me nervous hovering like that.”

  She settled into the chair across from him. Neither spoke for a moment.

  “You know,” Skiv said, stirring his noodles absently. “People are still talking about what happened. Not just the Red Memory thing. The whole mess. They’re saying stuff about Riot being back.”

  Velira’s attention sharpened. “Riot?”

  “Kass didn’t tell you? That’s what they used to call her. Before…” He gestured vaguely. “Before everything went to shit.”

  “I heard Jeks call her that. Is it a nickname or something?”

  Skiv leaned back, “You really don’t know the story, do you?”

  “She’s never spoken of it.”

  “Figures. Kass doesn’t like talking about those days.” Skiv took a sip of his coffee, seeming to weigh his words. “You want to know why people still whisper that name in the dark? Why half the Undercity still thinks of her as some kind of legend?”

  Velira nodded once, keeping her expression neutral.

  “There’s a lot of different stories out there about where she came from. What I know for sure is that her parents were killed in what the Spires called an uprising,” Skiv settled back in his seat. “Those of us who were there know the truth. It was a peaceful protest, until those Corpo Enforcers opened fire.”

  Skiv shook his head. “Lotta dead. Just to prove a point. Don’t fuck with the Spires.”

  “You were there?”

  “I was there, thought I was doing my part. Letting those Spire assholes know we were sick of it.” He shook his head again. “That’s how I lost my eye. Damned Corpo cracked my face with a shock baton. Never did find it.”

  “I’m sorry, Skiv.” Velira touched his hand lightly for a second. “Did you know her parents?”

  “I didn’t know them personally, but…yeah. They were known in the community. Tried real hard to get everyone to band together. Real good at raising hopes. Didn’t deserve what they got.”

  “Was she there? Did she see it?”

  “You’d have to ask her.” Skiv looked thoughtful. “After that though, she got real tough. Had to, to survive by yourself down here.”

  Velira couldn’t imagine Kass ever not being tough.

  “Anyway, she grew up fast. Had a thing for gadgets, or so I’ve heard. The Enforcers would come down regular, rough some people up, then leave. Just so we knew our place.” Skiv’s voice carried old anger. “One time, they came down in force. Lots of ’em. All in their shiny helmets with their big-ass guns. Well, Kass had wired up some kind of sonic disruptor. She hacked their comms and blasted it straight into their earholes. Pretty sure a few of them are still deaf—the ones who survived anyway.”

  He grinned at the memory. “While they’re screaming in pain, Kass gets on their comms and just yells ‘Now we fucking RIOT!’ The whole Undercity exploded. The Spires haven’t come down here in force since.“????????????????

  “That does sound like Kass.”

  “Yeah, people started calling her Riot after that. She started building a reputation, and a crew. Misfit kids who had an axe to grind. They got real good at disrupting Spire business both down here and up there. Too good.”

  “The synth, from Red Memory. He said he killed her crew.”

  “I don’t know about that, but I could see those Corpo bastards hiring a synth to do their dirty work.” He spat, then looked up. “Uh, no offense.”

  Velira held his gaze for a moment.

  “I’m not a synth, I’m something different. Older.” She smiled, showing her fangs. “I’m a true vampire.”

  “You’re a fucking what?”

  ———

  The lower sector felt different at night—quieter, but not peaceful. The kind of quiet that came from people keeping their heads down and their business to themselves. Velira moved through the narrow streets between market stalls, following Skiv’s directions to Lita’s apartment above her electronics booth.

  The building was a converted warehouse, chopped up into dozens of small living spaces stacked on top of street-level shops. Faded signs and jury-rigged power cables created a maze of urban decay that somehow felt more honest than the corporate towers above.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  She found the right stairwell, the apartment was on the third floor, tucked behind a door that looked like all the others. Velira paused outside, listening to the voices within. Conversation, quiet murmurs—the sound of people still figuring out how to share the same space.

  She still didn’t know how to announce herself properly.

  Three soft knocks seemed appropriate. Human. Non-threatening.

  The voices inside went quiet.

  “Fuck off!” came Jeks’s voice through the reinforced door.

  Velira paused, realizing she hadn’t considered how to identify herself. In the old days, she would have simply torn the door off its hinges. Now she stood there, stymied by a piece of wood and social convention.

  “It’s Velira,” she said finally.

  Silence. Then the sound of multiple locks disengaging.

  The door opened to reveal Jeks, looking older than his nineteen years, a small pistol held casually at his side. Behind him, Lita peered around the corner from what looked like a tiny kitchen, while Kael sat cross-legged on a salvaged couch, a handheld game paused in his lap.

  “Velira?” Jeks blinked, clearly not expecting her. “Where’s Kass? Is everything—”

  “She’s sleeping. She had a rough day,” Velira said quickly, noting how his first concern was for Kass. “May I come in?”

  “Yeah, yeah of course.” Jeks stepped aside, holstering his weapon. “Sorry about the greeting. We’ve had some… visitors.”

  “Vultures,” Lita said from the kitchen, her voice carrying disgust. “Thinking they could muscle in now that the Vipers are gone.”

  “Not anymore,” Kael added with quiet pride, looking up at his brother.

  Velira stepped into the small apartment, taking in the cramped but clean space. Mismatched furniture salvaged from a dozen different sources, but arranged with care. The smell of actual food—not synth rations—drifted from the kitchen.

  “Coffee? I know you like the whiskey they have at the Socket, but I don’t really have any booze.” Lita offered, emerging with a steaming mug. She looked the same as the only other time Velira met her, wiry and sharp-eyed like her brother, but more at ease in her own space.

  “I don’t—” Velira started, then remembered she was trying to be more human. “Yes. Thank you.”

  Jeks settled into a chair across from the couch, studying Velira. “You look… tired. You doing alright?”

  Velira paused, realizing how the last few days must sound. “I was nearly killed two days ago. Then last night I… dismantled an entire crime syndicate.”

  An uncomfortable silence fell over the room.

  “Shit,” Lita breathed. “I’m glad you’re on our side.”

  Jeks shook his head gently. “So what brings you here?”

  Velira found herself in the strange position of having to explain her presence without revealing her real purpose. “I wanted to check on you. All of you. After yesterday…”

  “We’re good,” Kael said simply. “Jeks made sure of that.”

  “Kid’s being modest,” Lita said with a fond smile. “Three different groups tried to ‘offer protection’ to the market vendors today. Your boy here sent them all running.”

  Jeks shifted uncomfortably. “It wasn’t that big a deal.”

  “Tell that to Mrs. Chen,” Lita continued. “Those assholes were demanding double what Tark used to take. Jeks explained the new math to them.”

  Jeks shrugged. “They were just kids. The Iron Vipers are pretty much gone, after Red Memory,” he looked at Velira, “messed with the wrong people. Vipers got caught up in the fallout. Now the rats are scrambling for the crumbs.”

  “Sounds like you’re following in some impressive footsteps,” Velira said, seizing the opening. “Protecting people who can’t protect themselves.”

  Kael looked up from his game. “Just like Riot used to do.”

  Jeks’s expression shifted, “Yeah, well… she set the standard pretty high.”

  “I’ve heard the name,” Velira said carefully, “but I don’t know much about what she actually did.”

  “Are you serious?” Lita set down her coffee, staring at Velira. “You work with her and don’t know about Riot?”

  “Kass doesn’t talk about the past much.”

  “Of course she doesn’t,” Jeks said with a knowing smile. “That’s so her. But man, the stories…” He leaned forward, excitement in his eyes. “She wasn’t much older than me when she took on an entire Spire Enforcer brigade. Just her and some jury-rigged tech.”

  “Single-handedly?” Velira asked, keeping her tone neutral.

  “Well, she had help eventually,” Kael said quietly. “The whole Undercity rose up after she gave the signal.”

  “What signal?”

  Jeks’s expression grew more serious. “She hacked their comms and screamed ‘Now we fucking RIOT!’ Made it so every person down here could hear it through their speakers.”

  “That’s when everything changed,” Lita said softly.

  Jeks nodded, but his voice carried a weight now. “Our parents… they were already dead by then. Enforcers had been picking people off all day. Just… making examples.”

  He looked down at his hands. “But when I heard that voice, when I heard someone fighting back… it gave me something to hold onto. Something to believe in when everything else went to shit.”

  He glanced at Kael, who had gone quiet. “Had to join the Vipers after that. Only way to keep us both alive. But I never forgot that voice. Never forgot that someone had the guts to stand up and scream back at them.”

  Velira absorbed this, seeing the pain and inspiration warring in Jeks’s expression. She was beginning to understand—Riot wasn’t just a legend to her crew. She was hope to people who had nothing left.

  “She meant a lot to a lot of people,” Velira said carefully.

  “Are you kidding?” Jeks looked up. “Half the Undercity has stories about her. She was everywhere—hitting Spire supply convoys, disrupting corpo operations, always making sure the little people got their cut.”

  “I heard she once hijacked an entire food shipment,” Lita added. “Diverted it straight to the lower sectors when people were starving after the quarantine lockdowns.”

  “And the med supplies,” Kael said quietly. “When the plague hit Sector 5, Riot’s crew raided three different Spire medical facilities in one night. Just left the supplies in the streets for people to find.”

  Jeks nodded eagerly. “She never took credit for the good stuff. Only the chaos. Let people think she was just some anti-Corpo crazy, but down here? We knew better.”

  “The Spires painted her as a terrorist,” Lita said with disgust. “But she was saving lives while they were counting profits.”

  That sounded like Kass—she’d built a legend not just on rebellion, but on compassion disguised as chaos.

  “What happened to her crew?” she asked quietly.

  The room went still.

  Jeks’s face darkened. “Official story? They were planning to bomb a civilian target. Spire security ‘neutralized the terrorist cell’ before they could carry out their attack.”

  “Bullshit,” Lita spat. “Pure corpo propaganda.”

  “Their names were all over the feeds for weeks,” Jeks continued, his voice tight. “Phoenix, Torch, Zara, Nico, Juno. They plastered their faces everywhere, called them enemies of the city.”

  Kael looked up from his game. “But people down here knew better.”

  “Yeah,” Jeks nodded. “Word was they’d been set up. Lured into some kind of trap. The timing was too convenient—right after they’d hit three major Spire operations in a month.”

  “My cousin worked sanitation near where it happened,” Lita said quietly. “Said there were no bomb materials. No civilian targets nearby. Just… bodies. Like they’d walked into an execution.”

  “The Spires made sure everyone knew Riot wasn’t with them that night,” Jeks’s voice carried bitter understanding. “Made a big deal about how the ‘terrorist leader’ had abandoned her own people. Tried to make it look like she’d saved herself and left them to die.”

  “But people didn’t believe that?”

  “Fuck no,” Jeks said fiercely. “We knew Riot would never abandon family. Something went wrong. Something they couldn’t control.”

  “After that, she just… disappeared, like the fight went out of her. I didn’t even know Kass was Riot until Jeks told me,” Lita said, shaking her head. “I mean, I could tell she was dangerous, but she seemed so… quiet. Tired.”

  “That’s what losing everything does to you,” Jeks said softly. “Changes you. And she lost everything twice. First her parents, then her crew…”

  Velira felt pieces clicking into place—understanding why Kass had built those walls, why she kept everyone at arm’s length. Why she’d reacted so badly to almost losing Velira…

  “She saved my life,” Kael said suddenly, his voice cutting through the heavy atmosphere. “When that synth had us in his compound. She could have just went on with her life, but she came for all of us.”

  “That’s still her,” Jeks agreed. “Still Riot underneath. Just… careful now. Doesn’t let people get close.”

  “Except you,” Lita observed, looking at Velira. “She trusts you.”

  Before Velira could respond, her communicator buzzed. Skiv’s contact flashed on the screen.

  “Excuse me,” she said, stepping toward the window. “Velira here.”

  “We need to talk,” Skiv’s voice was tight with urgency. “I found something. About what they shot you with, about Red Memory’s research. You and Kass need to get moving. Tonight.”

  The room had gone quiet, all three watching her with growing concern.

  “Where?” Velira asked.

  “Old medical facility, Sector 18. And Velira—they have more of that silver shit. A lot more.”

  ———

  Velira took a deep breath, despite not actually needing to breathe, just to steady herself. Then, she slowly pushed open the door to the safe house.

  Kass sat on the edge of the bed, exactly where Velira had left her hours ago. Still wearing the same clothes from yesterday. The bandages on her shoulder dark with old blood that should have been changed twice by now. Her eyes, usually electric—now sunken, hollow, haunted, refusing to turn Velira’s way.

  “Kass?” Velira approached carefully, the takeout container from Lita’s warm in her hands. Real food, not synth rations. The kind of gesture she’d learned from watching Lita take care of her makeshift family. “I brought food.”

  No response. Kass’s gaze remained fixed on some invisible point in the distance.

  “You should eat something,” Velira tried again, setting the container on the small table. “And those bandages need changing.”

  “I’m fine.” Kass’s voice was flat, empty.

  Velira felt her heart sink. This was worse than when she’d left. All the stories about Riot, about family and never abandoning people—and here was Kass, drowning in her own mind, pushing away the one person who would tear through the Undercity for her.

  “Kass, look at me.”

  “I said I’m fine.” Still no eye contact. “You should go.”

  “Go?” This was one problem violence couldn’t solve. Velira could feel her slipping away…

  “I just… need some space.” Kass’s hands were loosely curled in her lap, perfectly still. Too still. “Go away, Velira.”