The rain in Harrow City was unrelenting—needle-thin and constant, soaking into bone and soul alike. It masked movement. Footsteps. Murders.
Perfect weather for ghosts.
At 2:14 a.m., a train pulled into the underground commuter platform beneath the central hub. No security detail. No manifest. One man stepped off.
Tall. Lithe. Wearing a charcoal-gray coat and gloves stitched from lambskin. He walked like a man who didn't know fear—because he had nothing left to lose. Not even his name.
He went by Marrow now.
And he had come to kill the only woman who ever mattered.
Elsewhere in the city, Selene stood in the middle of the abandoned theater on Kingsley Avenue. It was her chosen battleground. Once the site of velvet-draped performances and black-tie galas, it was now a hollow shell of broken chandeliers and rotting curtains.
Perfect for remembering.
Perfect for war.
Calder stood nearby, checking sensor traps and infrared tripwires. "You're sure this is where you want to face him?"
"He's a dramatist. He'll appreciate the irony," Selene replied.
Calder scoffed. "He's a killer."
"So am I."
Selene stared at the stage where she had performed as a child—before the Orchid Program. Before Lina. Before she became a silhouette in someone else's play.
Downtown, Marrow entered an art gallery that doubled as a front for Harrow's information brokers. Inside, behind a wall-sized abstract painting of a burning field, a woman waited.
"Hello, Marrow," she purred. Her name was Bellatrix Dane—a former Orchid, now Harrow's highest-paid mercenary liaison.
Marrow didn't shake her hand.
"I need her location," he said simply.
Bellatrix handed him a slip of old-fashioned paper.
"Selene always was theatrical."
He read the address. A smile almost touched his lips.
"She's inviting me to a memory."
Bellatrix leaned back, folding her arms. "You still care."
Marrow glanced at her, and for a moment, his mask cracked.
"I don't remember how to care. But I remember what she took."
He turned away.
"And I've come to take it back."
Back in the theater, Selene stood at center stage. She imagined the curtains rising, imagined an audience of ghosts clapping, holding their breath.
She whispered under her breath:
"Come find me."
As if answering the call, somewhere far above, on a rooftop across the street, a silhouette paused in the rain.
Marrow.
Watching.
Waiting.
The game had begun.