The city at night was a breathing beast.
Streetlights buzzed and flickered like dying stars. Stray dogs picked through overflowing dumpsters. A siren howled somewhere distant, soon swallowed by the thrum of unseen traffic.
Damon pressed his forehead to the cold window of the abandoned laundromat they had holed up in. The neon sign outside still sputtered: "OPEN 24 HOURS," even though the doors were locked and dust coated everything inside.
Behind him, Marcus sat cross-legged on the cracked tile floor, thumbing through the stolen file for the hundredth time, eyes red and wild.
Jasmine leaned against a broken dryer, arms folded, jaw tight.
Savannah crouched by the door, her silhouette taut and ready, every muscle wound like a coiled spring.
Nobody spoke for a long time.
The cold seeped into their bones, but none of them dared to complain. It wasn't just the fear of being found — it was the weight of knowing what they had started.
The fire at the school hadn't gone unnoticed.
---
"We need a plan," Marcus finally muttered, voice breaking the heavy silence.
Savannah didn't move from her post by the door. "Plans are for people who have time."
Jasmine's eyes narrowed. "And we don't?"
Savannah glanced over her shoulder, her face half-hidden in shadow. "They'll come harder now. Faster. We took a shot at the king. You think they'll just sit there and bleed?"
Damon peeled himself away from the window. His reflection in the glass was barely recognizable: hollow-eyed, pale, haunted.
But there was something else now too.
Resolve.
"They'll expect us to run scared," he said.
"Good," Jasmine snapped. "Let's disappoint them."
---
Marcus flopped the file open on a battered washing machine.
"These are the names Savannah pulled," he said, stabbing a finger at a crumpled page. "The ones they were watching. Experimenting on. Like us."
Jasmine moved closer, scanning the list.
Some names they recognized immediately — old classmates, kids from their street, the girl who used to sell bracelets outside the 7-Eleven.
Others were strangers.
All of them marked.
All of them ticking time bombs.
"We find them," Damon said, voice low. "We get them out."
Savannah's laugh was a dry, hollow thing.
"You think they're just going to walk away? Half of them don't even know what they are."
"We'll make them know," Jasmine said fiercely.
Savannah shrugged, lighting another cigarette with a match she struck off her belt buckle.
"Your funeral."
---
They spent the next hour making rough plans, drawing on the back of old pizza boxes they found in the trash.
Safehouses.
Escape routes.
Supply runs.
Jasmine sketched messy maps with Marcus offering corrections and Damon pacing like a caged animal.
The cold gnawed at them, but the fire in their bellies burned hotter.
Every second, Damon felt it grow stronger.
Not hope.
Necessity.
---
Around three in the morning, Marcus passed out from exhaustion, curled under a moth-eaten blanket.
Jasmine sat against the dryer, arms wrapped around her knees, head drooping.
Only Savannah and Damon stayed awake, the city noises seeping through the thin walls like whispers.
"You're changing," Savannah said softly, almost like an accusation.
Damon didn't answer.
Because he could feel it too.
The boy who once hesitated — who once doubted — was vanishing inside him.
The longer he stayed awake, the more he saw the world for what it really was: rotten at the core, festering with parasites.
He couldn't be soft anymore.
Soft boys died first.
---
"You think we can win?" he asked eventually, voice almost too low to hear.
Savannah blew out a long stream of smoke, the ember of her cigarette burning like a small dying star.
"Winning's a luxury," she said. "Survival's a duty."
For a while, that was all they said.
---
Dawn clawed its way over the city, pink and angry.
The neon laundromat sign finally flickered and died with a sickly pop.
They didn't bother waking Marcus gently.
"Move," Savannah barked. "We've got work."
Jasmine slapped a protein bar into his hand, already stuffing their few supplies into a stolen duffel bag.
Damon tightened the laces of his battered boots.
Today, they would start finding the others.
Today, they would start waking the sleeping weapons scattered through the city.
Today, the war would creep a little closer to open air.
---
Their first target was a boy named Adrian West.
Seventeen.
Homeless.
Rumored to hear voices that weren't there.
When Damon was younger, he used to cross the street to avoid Adrian's broken, muttering figure outside the pharmacy.
Now, he realized: Adrian had been one of the first.
A prototype.
---
They found him half-dead behind an abandoned gas station.
His hoodie was shredded, soaked with rain and blood. His hands were raw from scratching at the walls. His eyes were wild and hollow.
He didn't even flinch when Damon crouched in front of him.
"Adrian," Damon said quietly.
The boy shivered but didn't respond.
Jasmine passed Damon a water bottle.
He cracked it open and offered it to Adrian.
The boy blinked, slow and confused, but after a moment, he reached out with trembling hands and drank greedily.
Savannah watched from the shadows, sharp-eyed.
"He's barely holding on," she muttered.
Damon ignored her.
He knelt until he was eye-level with Adrian.
"They did this to you," he said gently. "But you're not crazy. You're not broken."
Adrian whimpered, curling into himself.
Marcus shifted nervously behind Damon, his fingers twitching at his sides.
"Come with us," Damon urged. "We can help."
Adrian's cracked lips moved soundlessly, like he was trying to form words he'd forgotten.
Finally, a rasp:
"Is it real?"
Damon nodded, throat tight.
"It's real."
---
It took almost an hour, but eventually, Adrian staggered to his feet.
Jasmine slipped under his arm, steadying him.
Marcus hovered uncertainly, muttering that he wasn't a nurse.
Savannah just watched, lips pressed into a thin, unreadable line.
But Damon felt something hot and hard surge inside him as they half-carried Adrian back toward their hidden safehouse.
The first piece.
The first soldier.
The beginning.
---
That night, they ate cold canned beans and sat in a tight circle on the laundromat floor.
Adrian didn't say much — just stared into space, muttering under his breath sometimes.
But he was there.
Alive.
And that was enough for now.
Marcus scrawled a new name onto their growing map: Adrian West — secured.
Savannah shook her head slowly, like she was warning them without words.
But Damon didn't care.
He felt it deep in his marrow.
This was the start.
This was how it always began — not with grand speeches or clean victories, but with the broken and the bleeding dragging themselves out of the gutter, clawing back what had been stolen.
---
After everyone finally drifted into exhausted sleep, Damon lay awake, staring up at the cracked ceiling.
The city hummed around them — tired, angry, unaware.
He closed his eyes.
He could see it:
Midnight High crumbling.
The labs exposed.
The ones who hurt them dragged into the sunlight, screaming.
It would be messy.
It would be brutal.
It would be necessary.
---
The war hadn't started with armies and banners.
It had started here.
In the ruins.
In the ashes.
In the quiet before the storm.
---