Argus stepped into the alley behind the diner, coat flaring with the wind, rain tracking the line of his jaw. Patrol units had just pulled up. Chen was still inside, answering a flood of questions from the uniforms. No one noticed him slip away.
He moved fast, head low, eyes scanning the street. Dagger hadn't been bleeding. No limp. But the man had dropped everything phone, coat, name and bolted like someone with a clock ticking in his chest.
Argus took the alley east, past overflowing dumpsters and rusted gates. The wet pavement shimmered under a sickly yellow security light overhead.
Half a block down, he caught it. A broken chain link. Fresh. Ripped in haste.
He ducked through and stepped into an old storage yard. Row after row of stacked containers stretched into the dark. Fence coiled in on itself like rusted wire guts. No cameras. No workers.
Just him and the city's silence.
Argus slowed. His shoes sloshed in puddles between shipping crates. He scanned for movement. Nothing. No fresh footprints, but a faint scuff trail ran across the mud someone had slipped here. He followed it.
Fifteen feet in, he found the jacket. Dark brown, soaked. Folded messily over a milk crate. Inside, stuffed in the lining like a drug wrap, was a phone. A burner. Cracked screen, no SIM.
Argus turned it over. Water dripped off the back.
He held the power button.
To his surprise, it buzzed.
One flicker of life.
A text message still glowed on the screen, half-typed in the draft folder.
TO: K
"He's alive. I saw"
That was all.
No name. No full message.
Just a thumbprint left in panic, a truth someone had been trying to pass up the chain.
Argus slipped the phone into his pocket.
He turned and headlights flared.
A black SUV idled across the yard entrance. No movement. No engine sound. Just the lights. Watching him.
He ducked between crates, knees low, breath shallow.
The driver door opened with a groan.
A boot splashed down.
Through the gap in the containers, Argus saw the shape of a man in a black overcoat. Built thick in the shoulders. Bald. Phone pressed to his ear.
The voice carried in the stillness.
"I told you not to contact him."
A second voice, quieter, answered from inside the car.
"You think he's figured it out?"
Pause.
"He's got Cutter's instincts. So yeah. He'll figure it out fast."
Argus crouched lower.
Another voice now third one, clipped. "You want me to clean it up tonight?"
"No," said the bald man. "Let Barnes do it. It's his mess."
Argus felt the heat rise up his neck.
Barnes. The precinct's captain. The same man who'd looked him in the eye this morning and told him to "take it easy."
A click. SUV lights cut off.
Argus backed away, slow and silent. The moment his heel touched wet gravel; his boot slipped.
Stone skidded.
One of the men cursed. "You hear that?"
A door slammed. Footsteps. Two now.
Argus bolted.
He cleared the corner of the container stack and sprinted toward the back fence. Chain link. Loose at the bottom.
They were shouting now. "He's running!"
He dove through the fence gap, tearing fabric and skin on rusted metal. Landed hard. Rolled.
Came up running.
His breath came sharp and raw, coat heavy with water. A horn blared as he darted across a narrow side street, barely dodging a delivery truck.
He didn't stop until he reached the diner lot again.
Chen spotted him first. She was leaned against the hood of her sedan, arms crossed, talking into her phone. Her eyes met his. She tossed the phone aside and walked over fast.
"What the hell was that?" she asked, voice low. "You just ghosted mid-scene."
Argus didn't answer. He was still catching his breath.
She reached into her coat and tossed him a new burner. "That's mine. Barnes just called. Wants to see you."
Argus stared at it.
She crossed her arms again. "Alone."
He didn't move.
Chen looked past him, toward the street, the alley, then back to his face.
"He said it's about Argus Cutter."
Argus closed his fist around the burner phone.
Chen was already unlocking the car again, fingers drumming the fob like she couldn't wait to drive him into a wall.
"He sounded calm," she said as she slid behind the wheel. "Not surprised. Not worried."
Argus got in beside her, door thudding shut behind him. "That's because Barnes already knows what this is."
"He said he just wants to talk."
"They always do."
She looked over. "You sure you don't want backup?"
"No," he said. "If I walk in with backup, I'll never walk out."
Chen didn't push it.
The drive from Hillcrest to the precinct didn't take long, but it felt stretched. The silence between them wasn't comfortable, and neither of them tried to fix it. Rain tapped the roof. Tires hummed across wet asphalt.
Argus stared out the window, watching the city flicker past. All the old corners. The neon-lit convenience store with the boarded-up second floor. The chain-link gate where a fifteen-year-old once tried to gut him. The bench across from the precinct where he used to sit at midnight, watching the squad cars roll in, laughing at them from the shadows.
Now he was inside the glass.
Wearing a dead man's coat.
They pulled into the precinct lot. Chen parked under the floodlight near the back entrance.
"You want me to come in?" she asked again, this time quieter.
Argus shook his head. "If I don't come out in ten, find out who the hell owns that SUV from the yard. The one without plates."
Her brow twitched. "What SUV?"
"Exactly."
He stepped out into the rain.
The precinct hadn't changed since that morning. Same flickering entrance light. Same gum-stained steps.
He walked up, badge clipped to his chest like he belonged here. Pushed through the doors. Nodded at the front desk without slowing down.
They didn't stop him.
That meant Barnes told them not to.
He took the stairs two at a time. No elevators. Elevators trapped you. He'd learned that in the old life, the hard way.
Barnes's office sat at the end of the hall.
Door closed.
Lights off.
But someone was in there. He could see the faintest shadow shifting behind the frosted glass.
He knocked once.
Silence.
Then a low voice: "Come in."
He did.
Barnes sat at his desk, sleeves rolled, a tumbler of something amber in his hand. The blinds were half-closed. The overhead light flickered like it had better things to do.
Argus stepped in. Closed the door behind him.
Barnes gestured to the chair across from him. "Sit."
He didn't.
"You wanted to talk," Argus said.
Barnes sipped his drink. Didn't look surprised that Lawson Argus was standing instead of sitting.
"You look better than you should," he said finally.
"Bullet missed," Argus said. "So did the blast."
Barnes nodded. Like that was good news.
Then: "You really don't remember?"
Argus let that hang.
Barnes stared at him for a long beat, then leaned back in his chair. "You were digging into Argus Cutter. Obsessively. You kept it off the books, but I saw it. Off-hours surveillance. Burned contacts. You even interviewed one of Cutter's old smugglers three days before your last shift."
Argus stayed still.
Barnes set the glass down. "Then suddenly, boom. A corpse with half a face and a body too burnt to ID shows up in a car explosion. A week later, you wake up with no memory, and you're back on your feet like nothing happened."
He folded his hands.
"So, I have one question," Barnes said, voice dropping. "Who the hell are you?"
Argus met his stare. Held it.
Barnes didn't blink.
Behind the captain's desk, a small red light blinked on the base of the wall-mounted camera.
Recording.
Argus stepped forward, just enough to block the camera's line of sight.
"You called me here about Cutter," he said.
Barnes smiled. But it wasn't kind.
"No," he said. "I called you here to make sure Cutter stays dead."
He reached into the top drawer.
Argus moved.
But not fast enough.
The barrel of a pistol was already rising from under the desk.
The office door burst open behind them. Chen.
Gun drawn.
"Step away from him now."
Barnes froze.
Argus didn't.
He kicked the desk forward with all his weight.
Wood crashed.
The pistol fired.
Glass shattered.
And the whole precinct heard it.