The city at night was a monster with neon teeth, chewing up the broken and the bold alike.
Damon led them through it — no map, no plan, just instinct and raw defiance.
Their shoes tore open against shattered sidewalks.
Their clothes clung wet and heavy from the city's mist.
Their lungs still burned from smoke, from betrayal, from the knowledge that survival had gotten narrower, meaner.
But they kept moving.
Because standing still was death.
---
A gutted department store became their next refuge.
Racks of scorched clothing twisted into metal skeletons.
Mannequins stood with their arms broken off, faces melted into blank horror.
Glass crunched underfoot with every step.
Damon hated the way the place smelled — stale rot layered with old perfume.
But it had four walls. A roof. A back entrance that could be boarded shut.
Right now, it was paradise.
Marcus nodded approval the moment they found the stockroom. "Better than the last dump."
Savannah muttered something about "less rats, at least."
Callie immediately began stringing her invisible traps across doorways and vents.
Adrian curled up in a corner without a word.
Jasmine sank down next to him, shoulder brushing his, offering comfort without speaking.
Damon stood in the center, fists clenching and unclenching, feeling the pulse of the city press against him through the walls.
The fight wasn't over.
It hadn't even begun yet.
---
Days blurred into one another.
They scavenged by daylight, stole by moonlight.
Food became a cruel joke — moldy crackers, dented cans of beans, the occasional miracle of something fresh snatched from a delivery truck.
Every meal was a celebration and a mourning.
Every hour spent not being hunted was a victory.
Every sunrise was a shock.
Damon kept count of how many times he saw the dawn.
It felt important.
Like a ledger of defiance against a world determined to erase them.
The others counted in different ways.
Callie tied a new thread onto her jacket for every day survived.
Marcus scratched a tally into the stockroom wall.
Savannah collected broken knives, naming each after someone who had crossed her.
Jasmine sang.
Soft and cracked, lullabies Damon half-remembered from a time before the city swallowed them all.
Adrian stopped speaking altogether.
But his hands stayed busy — repairing, patching, fixing broken things, like if he worked fast enough, hard enough, he could fix them too.
---
It was on the sixth night that they almost lost everything again.
The patrols found them.
Not Redd's scraps this time.
These were clean-shaven, uniformed, wearing body armor too expensive to bleed on.
The suits' enforcers.
Corporate law in polished boots.
They came with batons and tasers and the soft click of safeties being turned off.
No warning.
No mercy.
---
The first crash of boots against the front door was enough to send adrenaline flooding through Damon's veins.
"Move!" he barked, grabbing Callie first, pushing her toward the back exit. "Go! Go!"
Savannah was already dragging Adrian to his feet.
Marcus swung a steel pipe with brutal efficiency, knocking a taser out of an attacker's hand before it could spark.
Jasmine threw a broken mannequin down the stairs as a crude barricade.
For a moment — just a moment — it looked like they might escape.
Then Damon turned at the wrong second and saw Callie falter, tripping over her own traps in the chaos.
The enforcers were too close.
Too fast.
A stun baton cracked against her ribs, sending her sprawling.
A second one swung down —
— and Damon was moving without thinking.
He intercepted it with his forearm, pain blossoming bright and nauseating.
He grunted, grabbed the attacker's wrist, and twisted until something snapped.
The man screamed.
Damon didn't stop to watch him fall.
He scooped Callie up in his arms — she was light, too light — and sprinted through the shattered back entrance.
The others followed, panting, bleeding, half-limping.
Shots rang out behind them.
Shouts filled the air.
But they didn't stop running.
Couldn't.
---
They collapsed in an alleyway five blocks down, pressed between dumpsters and broken fences.
Callie whimpered quietly against Damon's chest, clutching his jacket.
Savannah ripped a strip off her shirt and tied it around Adrian's bleeding hand.
Marcus swore viciously under his breath, pacing like a caged animal.
Jasmine pressed her forehead to the wall, eyes squeezed shut.
Damon lowered Callie gently to the ground, checking her breathing, her pulse.
Alive.
Battered.
But alive.
For now.
---
"We can't keep doing this," Jasmine whispered eventually.
Her voice wasn't accusing.
It was tired.
Soaked in grief so heavy it bent her spine.
Damon looked around at them — his broken army.
His family.
And for the first time, he saw it:
They weren't going to survive much longer this way.
Not scavenging.
Not running.
Not hiding.
The city was too big.
Too hungry.
And they were too small.
They needed something more.
Something bigger than desperation.
Something worth bleeding for.
---
That night, under a rusting fire escape with rats scuttling nearby, Damon made a decision.
"We take a piece of it," he said.
The others looked at him, hollow and silent.
"The city," he clarified. "We carve out a piece. Make it ours."
Marcus tilted his head, considering. "A territory?"
Savannah grinned, slow and savage. "An empire."
Callie blinked at him with wide, bruised eyes.
Adrian didn't speak, but for the first time in days, something sparked behind his gaze.
Jasmine whispered, "How?"
Damon shrugged.
"We fight."
He didn't mean with knives or fists or rage.
He meant all of it.
Cunning.
Fire.
Terror.
Hope.
Whatever it took.
If the world wouldn't give them a place to live —
They would build it on bones if they had to.
---
Their first move was small.
Almost laughably so.
A back alley warehouse used by the suits for illegal storage.
Unprotected.
Unwatched.
Too arrogant to think anyone from the slums would dare touch it.
Perfect.
---
They hit it on a Thursday.
Under a sky clogged with rain and smoke.
Adrian cut the locks with stolen bolt cutters.
Marcus kept watch, pipe in hand.
Jasmine and Savannah moved inside, swift and silent.
Callie rigged the entrance to collapse if needed.
Damon led them like a shadow.
Inside, the warehouse was a treasure trove.
Generators.
Crates of bottled water.
First-aid supplies.
Guns.
Real guns, not the cracked revolvers scavenged from gutters.
Savannah let out a low whistle.
"We just got very dangerous," she murmured.
---
They didn't take everything.
They couldn't carry it.
But they took enough.
Enough to last a month without scavenging.
Enough to arm themselves properly.
Enough to make a statement.
They spray-painted the walls before they left:
A single word, slashed across the concrete in dripping red.
STAY.
---
By dawn, the suits were howling.
The enforcers combed the district.
But they never found the culprits.
Damon and his family watched from the rooftops, hidden by tarps and rain and the sheer blindness of arrogance.
The city roared beneath them.
Alive.
Angry.
Theirs.
A little piece, anyway.
But it was enough.
For now.
---
Later, when the others slept in exhausted heaps, Damon sat alone, knees drawn up to his chest, staring at the distant glitter of skyscrapers stabbing the sky.
He thought about the boy he had been.
Hungry.
Lost.
Afraid.
And he thought about the boy he was becoming.
Harder.
Sharper.
Unforgiving.
There were scars on his soul now — ugly, jagged things — but he didn't hide from them.
He wore them.
Because there was no light without scars.
No love without war.
No future without a fight.
And Damon was done running.
---
In the shadows behind him, Savannah stirred and murmured in her sleep.
"King of the broken," she whispered, half-dreaming.
Damon smiled without humor.
No kings.
No crowns.
Just a promise:
They would not be forgotten.
Not while he still breathed.
Not while he still bled.
Not while the city still dared to pretend they didn't matter.
---