Riyan's POV
Nine years.
That's how long I carried the image of my mother's throat.
The grief had burned itself out by the orphanage's second month. What replaced it was worse—a cold, precise need to find the man who'd done it and make him understand exactly what he'd taken.
Furia appeared most nights. Her shadow-wrapped form would sit at the foot of my bed or lean against the wall, watching me with eyes that were mine but darker.
"You could let go," she said once. Her voice had no warmth in it. Just fact. "People do. They move on."
"I'm not people," I replied.
She smiled. "No. You're not."
By the time I was twelve, I'd made the decision concrete. Seventeen. Eighteen at the latest. Old enough to move independently. Old enough that I could disappear for weeks without the system caring. Old enough that I could carry out what needed doing and actually complete it.
Until then: preparation.
I started with the library. New Creek's public library was staffed by three women who worked rotating shifts. The head librarian was named Mrs. Chen. She noticed when I started checking out books on criminal psychology.
"Heavy reading for a kid," she said, stamping the book without judgment.
"I want to understand how people break," I told her.
She didn't ask what I meant.
The books piled up. Criminal Profiling 101. The Anatomy of Murder. Serial Killers and Their Patterns. Forensic Pathology. I read them at night when the orphanage lights went out, using a flashlight under the blanket like every other orphan, except I wasn't reading fantasy novels. I was cataloguing how people killed, how they got caught, how they stayed ahead of the law.
By fourteen, I'd filled two notebooks with handwritten observations about killer profiles. Not academic—tactical. How to avoid detection. How to plan. How to ensure your target couldn't reach help or law enforcement.
The black market contact came through a kid named Marcus, who worked at the grocery store where I'd started picking up jobs at fifteen. Marcus knew people. He could get you things. Information, mostly. Connections.
"What kind of information?" I asked him, stocking shelves next to him at midnight when the store was empty except for the night manager sleeping in the back office.
"Any kind. You got money?"
"I will."
"Then we can talk."
By seventeen, I'd saved enough. Worked every odd job available—restocking shelves, cleaning, washing cars, hauling trash. Every dollar went into a envelope hidden in the orphanage's basement, behind the old boiler where nobody looked.
Marcus made the introduction at a coffee shop in the seedier part of New Creek. The broker was a woman in her fifties with a scarred face and gray eyes that had seen every kind of human transaction.
"You're looking for someone specific," she said. Not a question.
"Yes."
"Name?"
I described him. Age, approximate height, distinguishing marks. The details I'd memorized so thoroughly they'd become part of how I thought.
"That's going to be expensive," she said, stirring her coffee. "Not because he's hard to find. Because you want him found bad enough that you'll pay."
I slid an envelope across the table. Nearly everything I'd saved. "This is what I have now. More when you have him."
She picked up the envelope, didn't count it. "If he exists, we'll find him. If he's alive, we'll track him. If you want him alive when you get to him, you need to be specific about that. Some people prefer their targets permanently unavailable."
"Alive," I said. "He needs to be alive."
She nodded. "Then we understand each other."
The waiting was the hardest part, which was ironic considering I'd been waiting for years.
Eighteen. Nineteen. Nineteen and a half.
Furia would sit with me during the nights when the obsession got bad enough that I couldn't sleep. She never said much. Just presence. Solid despite being made of shadow.
"Do you regret it?" I asked her once. "Having me anchored to this?"
"No," she said. "You're the only thing worth having."
Then the call came.
A blocked number. I was working the late shift at a convenience store when my burner phone buzzed. Message, not voice. Cinber City. Confirmed location. Window: 48 hours. Contact when ready.
My hands didn't shake. Good. They shouldn't have.
I called my supervisor—told him I was sick. Used three days of accumulated sick leave. Packed a backpack with a change of clothes, the sedative I'd purchased through careful channels, cash, and a burner phone with pre-programmed numbers.
The bus station was crowded. Anonymous. Perfect.
Furia materialized in the empty seat beside me as the bus pulled out. Nobody else could see her. I'd stopped being surprised by that years ago.
"Nine years," she said.
"Nine years," I confirmed.
"You could still walk away."
"We both know I can't."
She didn't respond. Just sat there, her shadow-form occasionally catching the light filtering through the window.
Cinber City wasn't what I expected. Bigger, yes. Grittier. But not evil in some grand way. Just a place where people operated on survival logic. Do the job, don't ask questions, don't care about consequences that didn't affect you.
I checked into a motel on Fifth Street. Paid cash for a week, gave a fake name. The room smelled like stale cigarettes and industrial cleaner. The bed frame had rust stains. Water damage discolored the ceiling in the corner.
It was perfect.
I spent the evening on the bed, going through the information packet the broker had provided. Address. Workplace. Known associates. Patterns. He worked construction—legitimate job, decent money, easy to move between sites without raising suspicion. Perfect cover for someone who didn't want to be found.
But he'd been sloppy. Stayed in the same boarding house for three weeks. Went to the same diner for breakfast. Developed a routine.
Routines were how you got caught.
The sedative was pharmaceutical grade, measured precisely to incapacitate without causing permanent damage. The syringe was already loaded. One dose in the back of the neck. Forty-five seconds for it to take effect. Then move him to the vehicle—hired from the black market, untraceable, would be torched after.
The location was ready. Had been ready for two years. A warehouse in the industrial district, structurally unsound enough that nobody went near it, far enough from residential areas that sound didn't carry. I'd scouted it a dozen times through proxy browsers, researched the building permits, confirmed it was scheduled for demolition next spring.
Everything was in place.
I lay on the cheap motel bed, staring at the water stain on the ceiling, and felt something like peace settle over me.
Tomorrow morning. Six AM. He'd be walking to work. The alley behind the boarding house. Two minutes of vulnerability.
Nine years of waiting came down to ninety seconds.
"You're ready?" Furia asked. She was sitting in the chair by the window, silhouetted against the neon glow of the city outside.
"I've been ready since I was nine."
"Then sleep. You'll need it."
I didn't sleep. But I rested. And that was enough.
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