After the chaotic blackout, Jinjahan tried to rebuild itself. The city buzzed back to life, piece by piece, like a damaged circuit reconnected to its lifeblood. Street sweepers hummed along the lower tiers, scraping ash and shattered glass off the marblesteel sidewalks. Neon veins flickered back to their radiant pulse, casting a familiar glow on the chrome facades of highrises. Holo-ads returned—softly at first, then bolder—as if the city wanted to pretend nothing had happened. But the scars lingered.
Atop the Vertica Station, Captain Drein Voss stood overlooking District Nine, cigarette clenched between his teeth, the burnt citrus tang of synth-nicotine blending with the faint scent of ozone. He exhaled slowly, watching two drones hover past in lazy spirals.
"Sir," his adjutant said, handing him a datapad. "Preliminary reports. Riots mostly contained. Power grids stable. Reconstruction at sixty percent capacity."
Drein barely glanced at the data. "And the death toll?"
The adjutant hesitated. "Two thousand five hundred seventy-three. Civilians, mostly. Mutants accounted for thirty-nine percent of casualties."
"Of course they did," Drein muttered, voice dry as gunpowder.
In the heart of the Alben Quarter, a street preacher cried out on a corner, his voice crackling through a cheap megaphone. "This is not a city of equals! The Alben built Jinjahan! The Alben bled for it! Now we bleed again while the Zwarten loot and the Medean burn!"
Across from him, a Zwarten woman clutched her daughter's hand tightly, staring at the preacher with hollow eyes. She whispered, "Come on, baby. Don't listen."
The girl looked back. "Why's he yelling at us?"
"Because he's afraid," the mother said, forcing a tired smile. "And angry men say stupid things when they're afraid."
In a back alley near the fractured tech market of Halz Row, a Medean teen passed out hot noodles to the homeless. His hands shook slightly each time he ladled broth—still fresh from the riot lines. A man with pale Alben skin looked up from his ragged blanket, blinking. "You got nerve coming down here, kid."
The teen shrugged, voice quiet. "We all gotta eat."
Elsewhere, the word "mutant" still stuck to people's throats like a slur. In Jinjahan, mutants weren't a race. They were a warning. After the blackout, after the killings, after the revelation that some of the city's own protectors had turned rogue under the guise of genetic supremacy, trust was bankrupt.
Inside the Citadel's intelligence wing, Commander Helia Rae ran her finger down a holographic dossier. "You're telling me this entire uprising started because a Zwarten mutant—barely level two—was denied access to a health chip renewal?"
"Yes, ma'am," the analyst replied. "That triggered a protest. The protest triggered suppression bots. Suppression bots glitched during the blackout, turned lethal."
"And the Medean Enclave's retaliation?"
"Fueled by decades of structural suppression. They say it was a spark waiting to catch."
Helia leaned back, jaw clenched. "No spark should burn this bright."
Meanwhile, underground channels whispered of the Ardent Fang—a rogue mutant faction growing bolder by the hour. Recruiting not just mutants but radicals of all skin tones tired of Jinjahan's three-tiered society.
In a shadowed corner of a ruined nightclub, a mutant named Kael lit a cigarette with his fingertip flame. His skin was silver-blue, his eyes glowing amber.
"They still think this is about race," he said, voice low but firm. "But it's never been about color. It's about control."
A masked woman beside him, her features obscured but her tone Medean, replied, "Then we burn their control to the ground."
Kael stared through the broken window as a patrol drone passed overhead. "No. We make them watch as we build something better in its place."
Meanwhile, in the austere silence of the CPG High Command Quarter, General Elias Calloway stood before the 0-6 Council—six individuals whose titles alone could silence cities.
The chamber was steel and silence, walls humming faintly from the deep servers buried under twenty floors of encrypted foundation. At the head of the table sat Leader Stroud, arms folded, his expression carved from stone.
To his right, Director Patel adjusted his cufflink, eyes unreadable. Beside him, General Zhang sat rigid, jaw clenched in contempt. Across from them, Admiral Koenig stared at the projection on the table: the blurred footage of Commander Adrian Locke, standing atop a ruined broadcast tower, proclaiming his intent with terrifying clarity.
"I was the CPG," Locke's voice echoed through the chamber, distorted by static. "I trained your assassins, I wrote your code. And now I'll burn your house down. One lie at a time."
General Calloway remained silent, watching the frozen hologram like a ghost that refused to vanish. The shame of it wrapped around him like a cold chain.
"Explain this, Elias," Secretary Vance said sharply, fingers tapping the table. "He was one of yours."
Calloway's voice, when it came, was low. "Locke was our best. He was loyal. Efficient. Controlled."
Dr. Luthra scoffed, voice smooth and venomous. "Controlled? He just knocked out half the city's grid with custom worms buried in our infrastructure. The blackout killed over two thousand people. He admitted it publicly. That isn't a rogue agent, General. That's a declaration of war. And the people now see him as ours."
"They'll see it as betrayal," Admiral Koenig said. "The kind that stains everything. Including the Council."
Leader Stroud leaned forward. "Your failure is not only tactical, General. It's symbolic. You recruited him. You cleared his promotions. You silenced the tribunal when he slaughtered five mutant children during Operation Sicklepoint."
"I had no proof of that," Calloway said, jaw tightening.
"No. But you had doubt," Director Patel murmured. "And you buried it."
Silence stretched until it threatened to crack. Then General Zhang spoke, voice hard as armor. "You must act. Now. With absolute force. Or the world sees CPG as broken from within."
Calloway looked at them each in turn. "If we move on Locke too openly, we feed the narrative. That CPG is falling apart. That our own turn against us. That we create monsters."
"Then do it quietly," Patel said. "Make it look like the people rose up. Or the mutants retaliated. Collapse him under his own momentum. But you will clean this up."
Leader Stroud narrowed his eyes. "Bring me Locke's head, General. Or resign with what little dignity you have left."
Calloway didn't flinch. "Understood."
Later that night, General Elias Calloway didn't waste a second. The command center of the CPG buzzed under midnight's tension, a fortress of strategy veiled in darkness. Orders were issued in encrypted bursts, biometric locks disengaged, and names long buried in classified files were summoned from the archives.
He handpicked each one—soldiers not just deadly, but invisible. Veterans, ghosts from black ops too ugly for daylight, silent killers who never asked why. They were called Peacekeepers—ironic, precise, and terrifying.
Uniforms were matte-black with no insignia. Their helmets lacked visors—only a narrow, glowing slit across the eyes like a wolf tracking its prey. No faces. No names. Only directives. In less than six hours, they were mobilized. Then the speech came.
Across Jinjahan, every holo-screen flickered—cafés, apartment walls, taxi windshields, even public skywalks. Broadcasts paused. Advertisements blinked off. And in their place appeared General Calloway, standing behind the CPG insignia, flanked by two shadowy Peacekeepers.
The feed crackled for a beat before he spoke. "Citizens of Jinjahan," he began, his voice measured and solemn. "You have suffered. You have lost power, homes, family. You've watched your city—our city—descend into chaos, fractured by fear, lies, and betrayal."
He let silence hang. "But chaos has a name. Commander Adrian Locke. Once ours, now your enemy. He has declared war, not just on CPG, but on our entire society. On order. On truth. On peace. On Edenia. On King himself."
A shift in tone. Colder. "Today, I introduce a new initiative. A unit that answers only to the highest authority. Trained to silence those who threaten our fragile recovery. These men and women are not here to occupy. They are not here to debate. They are here to protect. Quietly. Efficiently."
He glanced at the camera—direct, unwavering. "They are Peacekeepers."
The screen faded to black. Reaction was instant. In the towers of the Alben Quarter, corporate elites applauded quietly, seeing order restored. "About time," one man muttered in his private penthouse. "This city needs a scalpel, not another hammer."
On the streets of the Zwarten district, suspicion spread like mold. Mothers pulled their children indoors. "Peacekeepers," one man spat. "More like assassins with better PR."
In the Medean wards, students rallied, tagging walls with fresh neon graffiti: KEEP THE PEACEKEEPERS OUT. Underground forums lit up with warnings and theories—some believed the Peacekeepers were mutants themselves, others said they were programmed hybrids, stripped of emotion. Everyone knew what "quiet protection" really meant.
And somewhere, in a low-lit bunker beyond the city's edge, Adrian Locke watched the broadcast replay on loop. He smiled, just barely, eyes gleaming. "They finally made their move," he whispered.
Then, she leaned against him, her breath warm on his neck, her voice a murmur beneath the flickering lights of the hideout.
"Do you hate them?" she asked, eyes fixed on the holo-feed playing Calloway's speech on loop. "Everyone that isn't Alben? Is that why you set the whole stage? Just to watch it all burn?"
Locke didn't respond immediately. He looked down at her, brushing a lock of her dark copper hair behind her ear.
"Iris," he said softly, calling her by name. "Darling, it's not about hate." He tilted her chin so she met his gaze. "It's about inevitability."
He turned back to the screen, voice deepening. "The Zwarten are angry, they've always had reason to be. The Medean are tired of bending the knee. And the mutants? They're powder kegs. I didn't have to invent the fire, Iris—I just set the match close enough."
Iris narrowed her eyes. "You knew what would happen the moment you took down the grid. You wanted them to riot."
Locke nodded. "Of course I did. I need them to rage. To tear apart the illusion of unity Edenia worships. I need chaos so loud that the Capitol Patrol Guard has no choice but to act. Martial law. Purges. Clean-up."
He leaned forward, voice cold with certainty. "And when Edenia razes the districts—when they show their true face to the world—it won't matter how many people die. Because the only ones left standing will be the ones who never doubted themselves."
Iris studied him for a long moment, the flicker of neon reds and blues from the screen dancing over her face. "You're playing with lives, Adrian."
He smiled wider, kissed her forehead. "No. I'm writing history."