I thought you said I was going to go first to find the killer?"** asked Violet, her voice slicing through the stale air of Vex's cluttered room. Slowly windows appears from the dark oak wood. Outside, the city sprawled like a living beast beneath them—skyscrapers clawing at a smog-choked sky, neon signs flickering in arrhythmic pulses, and the perpetual growl of traffic rising from streets bathed in the oily glow of streetlamps.
**"You *were* until I saw something,"** said Vix, shuffling through a mountain of clothes strewn across a moth-eaten rug. The room smelled of gun oil and jasmine incense, its walls papered with yellowed maps and newspaper clippings. She finally unearthed a dented suitcase and two pistols, their sparkly barrels gleaming faintly in the light of a flickering desk lamp. She tosse
**"d one to Violet.
**"Okay, well, what did you see?"** pressed Violet, turning the weapon over in her hands. The grip was etched with strange, angular symbols that seemed to shift under her gaze, as if alive.
Vex leaned against a peeling wardrobe, her silhouette sharp against the grimy window. Beyond her, the city's skyline bristled with glass and steel, District 14's hospital tower glowing like a skeletal finger in the distance. **"The next victim dies at the hospital in District 14. Another man's corpse will turn up thirty miles north of there. Same hour."**
**"*Victims*?"** Violet thumbed the safety off, then on again, her eyes narrowing at the cryptic engravings. **"Plural?"**
**"The cut up man's body match's the other victims. But the man miles out didn't. Two killers. Maybe partners, maybe rivals."** Vex pulled brass knuckles from a drawer—one stamped **LOVE**, the other **HATE**—and slid them into her coat pocket, that was in graves *Metallica.* The knuckles caught the light, their edges serrated like broken teeth.
**"So now we finna have to hunt both down?"** Violet hitched up her dress—black velvet, frayed at the hem—and slid the pistol into a leather holster strapped to her thigh.
**"Exactly. Splitting up's suicide,"** said Vex, yanking a scarf from a hook. **"These bastards gut people like fish. You see the photos."**
**"Why not tell Jade you suspected two killers?"**
**"He knows. Man's got a sixth sense for carnage."** Vex tugged a wooden key from her collar, its surface carved with runes that pulsed faintly. **"Grab your coat. We're clocking miles tonight."**
The alley outside Vex's room stank of wet concrete and rotting takeout. Steam billowed from a nearby grate, curling around graffiti-tagged dumpsters and flickering fluorescent lights. Violet craned her neck upward, where fire escapes laddered up brick walls, and rooftops jutted like uneven teeth against the bruised sky.
Vex pressed the key into the knob of a rusted door. The wood *twisted*, metal groaning as the key melted into the lock. A blue glow seeped from the mechanism before the key vanished, leaving a tattoo on Vex's forehead—a skeletal key, its bow shaped like a crescent moon.
**"When's the hit?"** asked Violet, eyeing the tattoo.
**"2:30 a.m. Sharp,"** said Vex, checking her phone. Its screen cast a sickly pallor over her face. **"Body's en route to the hospital by then. We intercept the ambulance, we intercept the killer."**
Violet's phone read 1:20. Without warning, she hooked an arm around Vex's waist and *leaped*. The ground fell away in a blur of graffiti and trash, wind whipping through their hair as they landed silently on a rooftop. Tar crackled underfoot, littered with cigarette butts and shattered glass. The city stretched before them—a labyrinth of shadows and light, skyscrapers bleeding into cramped tenements and neon-drenched markets.
**"Show-off,"** Vex muttered, brushing grit from her coat. She tossed Violet a police radio, its antenna bent. **"Scan channels. Ambulance routes cluster near the bridge. Find the signal, we find our killer."**
Violet smirked, rolling her shoulders. **"Try to keep up."**
She took off, boots scraping concrete as she bounded across the rooftop's edge. The city became a living map beneath her: she vaulted over satellite dishes, slid down sloping shingles, and soared across gaps where alleys yawned like black veins below. Her coat flapped behind her, a shadow against the glow of billboards hawking synth-whisky and neural implants.
Rooftops here were a patchwork of neglect and defiance. Some sagged under the weight of illegal hydroponic gardens, their neon-lit lettuce leaves trembling in the wind. Others bristled with makeshift shrines to dead saints, candles guttering in soup cans. Violet's muscles burned as she pushed harder, each leap a calculated risk—over a six-foot gap, then ten, her landings precise as a cat's.
---
Vex watched her vanish into the night, then lit a cigarette, its tip flaring crimson. Below, the city thrived in its chaos: vendors hawking fried scorpions on sticks, synth-music throbbing from basement clubs, and the occasional gunshot cracking the din. She scrolled through crime-scene photos on her phone—a man mauled beyond recognition, another split stem to stern.
**"2005,"** she muttered. **"Same MO. 'Gator attack,' my ass."**
The oldest photo showed a swamp long paved over, now buried under District 14's concrete. The killers hadn't changed. Only the city had—swallowing its history, its secrets festering in the dark.
Her phone buzzed. A message from Jade: **
**"Fun night indeed,"** she said, flicking the cigarette into the dark. Somewhere ahead, Violet was a shadow in flight, and the city waited—breath held—for blood.
Dark black smoke loomed around her as in her head she starts reciting the digit of pie in her head as if she was chanting it. The smoke growing more as to then rushes into her mouth. With a run start she started leaping the rooftops in the direction of the hospital.