The city wore the morning like a battered crown.
Sunlight slashed through the skeletal buildings, bleeding gold onto broken streets. Trash skittered like nervous rats in the wind. Somewhere nearby, church bells tolled — slow, reluctant, mourning something already dead.
In the gutted laundromat, Damon woke first.
For a second, the weight of everything hadn't crushed him yet. Then he turned his head and saw Adrian curled in the corner, shivering under a stained blanket. Saw Jasmine curled up like a fist against the cold dryer. Heard Marcus muttering in his sleep, dreaming twisted things.
Reality hit like a hammer.
He sat up slowly, his back aching, knees protesting. His shoulders sagged under invisible chains.
Across the room, Savannah was already awake, cleaning a switchblade with terrifying calm. The blade whispered against the cloth in her hand, a snake's hiss in the dead air. Her eyes flicked to Damon, unreadable.
"Rise and rot," she muttered without looking up.
Damon forced himself to his feet. Every part of him ached, joints grinding like broken gears. His stomach gnawed at itself.
Today wasn't going to wait for them.
No day ever did.
---
They scavenged breakfast from a half-collapsed gas station two blocks away.
Canned peaches. Stale crackers. Bottled water that tasted faintly of rust and regret.
Damon divided the meager spoils without complaint, the rationing movements so familiar now they might as well have been instinct.
Adrian picked at his peaches with shaking fingers, barely eating.
"You sure he's worth the risk?" Marcus muttered low enough that only Damon heard.
Damon didn't answer.
Because he wasn't sure.
Because this wasn't about surety anymore.
It was about choice.
About what kind of monsters they were willing to become.
He watched Adrian try — and fail — to steady his hands.
Watched Jasmine pretend not to notice.
Watched Savannah tuck her knife into her boot and survey the ruined street like a lioness watching for jackals.
They were all cracked.
Fractured things pretending to be whole.
But still fighting.
That counted for something.
It had to.
---
Their next target was a girl.
Callie Baird.
Sixteen years old.
Vanished two months ago.
Last seen screaming at shadows only she could see.
The file Savannah had stolen said she was "unstable." Dangerous. A failed project. Another human weapon abandoned when the city decided she wasn't sharp enough to keep.
Damon only saw another broken piece they couldn't afford to leave behind.
They had to find her before someone else did.
Because in this city, lost things didn't stay lost.
They got turned into weapons.
Or warnings.
Or worse.
---
The search took the rest of the day.
Sun blazed hot and merciless overhead, turning the cracked pavement into a griddle. Sweat soaked Damon's shirt, plastered his hair to his forehead. The air smelled of burnt rubber and despair.
They checked under bridges where the river stank of rotting things. They asked twitchy dealers on street corners, trading scraps of information for crumpled bills. They slipped through alleys where the graffiti screamed in colors too loud for the silence around them.
Nothing.
Callie was a ghost in a graveyard of ghosts.
The sun dipped lower, painting everything in bleeding oranges and bruised purples. Shadows grew teeth.
Tension curdled the air.
Savannah kicked a rusted-out mailbox hard enough to dent it.
"She's dead," Marcus said flatly. "Or worse."
"No," Damon said.
The others looked at him.
He didn't explain.
He just knew.
Maybe it was hope.
Maybe it was something worse.
---
They found her when the world was slipping into full darkness.
In the skeletal remains of an old motel, half-collapsed under its own weight.
Weeds strangled the chain-link fence. Windows stared out like empty eye sockets.
Inside, in the wreckage of the lobby, she sat cross-legged in a throne of ruin. Surrounded by smashed glass and old newspapers. The ceiling sagged dangerously above her, spiderwebbed with cracks.
And she was singing.
A low, eerie lullaby that made the hairs on Damon's arms stand straight up. The words didn't make sense — a child's nonsense song about stars falling like knives and wolves made of shadow.
Her hair hung in tangled ropes around her face. Her jeans were shredded, her sneakers bloody. Her fingers twitched in strange, spasming patterns in the air, like she was weaving something invisible.
Jasmine sucked in a sharp breath.
Marcus muttered something under his breath about demons.
Savannah just pulled her blade and waited.
Waiting for an excuse.
Waiting for an ending.
---
Damon stepped forward first.
Callie's song didn't falter.
But her eyes — wild, fever-bright — locked onto him.
"You're late," she said, voice cracking.
Damon crouched slowly, hands spread, heart pounding against his ribs like a trapped thing.
"I know," he said softly. "I'm sorry."
She laughed — a broken, splintering sound that seemed too large for her small body.
"They said you wouldn't come. That you'd leave me here."
"We didn't."
He edged a little closer, feeling the air vibrate with invisible strings.
Her hands twitched faster, the invisible weaving turning frantic. The temperature seemed to drop.
Damon caught flashes of it in the corner of his eye — thin threads of light and shadow twisting in the air around her. Fracturing the world into sharp-edged reflections.
Not madness.
Power.
Something the city tried to shatter.
"They hurt you," he said.
Callie flinched, her fingers spasming.
"They broke me," she whispered.
"No," Damon said, voice steady even as his knees wanted to give out. "They tried. But you're still here."
Her mouth trembled.
Tears spilled down her filthy cheeks, cutting through the grime.
Her hands slowed.
Stopped.
The invisible threads winked out like dying stars.
And for a moment, the broken lobby was silent except for her ragged breathing.
---
Jasmine edged closer, offering a battered bottle of water.
Callie stared at it like it was a snake.
"I don't deserve that," she whispered.
"Doesn't matter what you deserve," Jasmine said bluntly, her voice like steel wrapped in velvet. "Drink or die. Your call."
Something flickered in Callie's hollow eyes.
Defiance.
Hope.
Fear.
She snatched the bottle with trembling hands and drank until she choked.
Marcus handed over a protein bar without a word.
Savannah stayed by the door, knife loose in her hand.
Watching.
Waiting.
Not trusting.
Maybe she was right.
But Damon chose to believe a little longer.
---
They got Callie back to the laundromat just before the city's monsters came out to play.
Damon collapsed onto the cracked tile floor, lungs burning, sweat cooling into ice on his skin.
Callie curled up next to Adrian, the two broken pieces fitting together like jagged glass.
The others dropped where they stood, too exhausted for conversation.
Only Savannah remained standing, arms folded, eyes distant.
"We're making ourselves a target," she said.
Damon didn't argue.
Because it was true.
Because they were no longer shadows moving through the wreckage.
They were a flare in the dark.
And everything hungry was going to come running.
---
That night, Damon dreamed of mirrors.
Thousands of them.
All cracked.
All showing a thousand different versions of himself.
In some, he was monstrous.
In some, he was shining.
In some, he was dead.
In some, he was not Damon at all — just a hollow shape wearing his skin.
He stumbled between the mirrors, bleeding from invisible wounds.
Everywhere he turned, the reflections screamed.
They accused.
They begged.
They warned.
"You can't save them," one whispered from a shattered mouth.
"You can't even save yourself," another hissed, twisting into a snake made of his own face.
He woke up gasping, heart hammering.
The laundromat was silent, save for the soft breathing of the broken army gathering around him.
The cracked ceiling above him seemed to lean closer, pressing down.
He pressed his forehead to the cold tile.
Tomorrow, they would find more.
Tomorrow, the world would fracture a little more.
Tomorrow, the broken mirrors would start cutting back.
But tonight...
Tonight, he closed his eyes and held onto the one impossible thing he still had.
Hope.
Tattered. Bloodstained. Barely breathing.
But still alive.
Just like them.
---