Devin sat on the edge of the mattress, the phantom scent of citrus and ozone slowly fading from his senses. He rubbed his face with both hands, trying to physically scrub away the lingering ghost of Zain Ricky's love for the mechanic.
The quiet of the Reignn slums was heavy, broken only by the distant, rhythmic clatter of an industrial steam vent. Devin stared at the blank wall, his mind a chaotic battlefield. He was a resurrected prince harboring a divine anomaly, trapped in the lethal body of a Cyprian sleeper agent, and completely haunted by the memories of the boy he had replaced.
He just wanted an hour of absolute silence to think. To strategize. To figure out how to navigate the terrifying bureaucracy of Dr. Langstrum and the Venom Research Department without getting himself executed.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
Heavy boots hit the creaking wooden stairs of the apartment building.
Devin's head snapped toward his locked door. The footsteps weren't trying to be stealthy. They were loud, arrogant, and entirely deliberate. There were at least three of them, judging by the uneven cadence of the footfalls.
The heavy steps stopped directly in the hallway outside.
Devin stood up, moving silently across the dark room. He pressed his back against the wall beside his door frame, holding his breath, waiting to see if the brass knob would turn. The Cyprian venom in his blood instantly flared to life, a dark, anticipatory heat spreading through his muscles. If it was Dunkan coming to test him again, or the city guard coming for Emerald, he was ready to kill his way out of the slums.
But the footsteps didn't stop at his door. They stopped across the narrow hall.
CRASH!
The sound of splintering wood echoed like a cannon shot. Devin flinched as the door to Kevin and his mother's apartment was violently kicked off its hinges.
"Wake up, drunkard," a gruff, gravelly voice barked.
A sharp gasp, followed by the sound of breaking glass, filtered through the thin walls.
"No, please!" the landlady sobbed, her voice slurred but thick with sudden, absolute terror. "We just need a little more time. I swear it!"
Devin slowly leaned forward, peering through a small, jagged crack in his own warped wooden door.
The hallway was dimly lit by a flickering oil lantern. Three massive men stood in the ruins of the doorway across the hall. They weren't wearing the polished armor of the city guard, nor the refined civilian clothes of the UEI elite. They wore heavy, studded leather aprons over thick canvas shirts. Their arms were thick and corded with muscle, bearing crude, jagged tattoos of a snarling hound's head on their necks.
"Time is gold, Martha," the lead thug said, stepping into the room. He casually kicked a broken bottle out of his way. "And you are completely out of both. The Pale Hounds gave you three full cycles to pay off your dead husband's debt. We are done waiting."
"I have the coin! I almost have it!" she cried out. Devin could hear the pathetic sound of her scrambling backward across her floorboards.
"You drank the coin, Martha," the thug sneered. "We can smell it on your breath from the bottom of the stairs. The boss sent us to collect in trade."
"Get away from her!"
Kevin's voice cracked with adolescent fury. A loud scuffle broke out inside the room. Devin watched through the crack as the young man threw himself at the lead thug, wildly swinging a small wooden stool.
The thug didn't even flinch. He casually swatted the stool aside with a heavily armored forearm and delivered a brutal, backhanded strike across Kevin's face.
SMACK.
Kevin crumpled to the floor, groaning, a fresh stream of blood pouring from his nose.
"Kevin!" Martha shrieked, crawling toward her son.
"Spirited," the lead thug chuckled, stepping over the mother to look down at the bleeding boy. He reached down and grabbed Kevin by the collar of his shirt, hauling him roughly to his feet. "I like that. The heart pumps much faster when they struggle. It yields a lot more product."
"Product?" Kevin gasped, struggling fruitlessly against the massive grip. "What are you talking about?"
The second thug, a tall, gaunt man with a heavily scarred face, stepped forward. He pulled a thick, leather-bound satchel from his shoulder. It clinked with the sickening sound of empty glass vials.
"The Alchemists down in the Undercity are paying top gold for the anomaly, kid," the scarred man explained with a hollow laugh. "Sub-human blood. The Holy Gene makes a perfect, highly volatile catalyst for high-tier alchemy. We drain you mutts, bottle the blood, and sell it to the highest bidder."
Devin's breath hitched. A cold, absolute horror washed over him. He had known the North was deeply prejudiced against sub-humans, restricting their rights and pushing them to the fringes of society. But this? A black-market syndicate systematically harvesting them for their blood? It was a level of localized depravity that rivaled Count Sapien's venom experiments.
"No! Take me!" Martha screamed, grabbing the lead thug's heavy leather boot. "Take my blood! Leave my son alone!"
The thug kicked her off with a disgusted sneer. "Your blood is poisoned with cheap rotgut, old bird. The alchemists would reject the batch. But the boy? Look at the veins on his neck. Young. Undiluted. The extractors will easily pull a good dozen vials out of him before his heart gives out."
"Let me go!" Kevin thrashed violently, kicking at the thug's shins.
"Gag him," the leader ordered.
The third man stepped forward, shoving a filthy rag into Kevin's mouth and binding his hands behind his back with a thick length of coarse rope. Kevin's muffled, terrified screams echoed in the cramped hallway.
They dragged the boy out of the apartment. As they passed Devin's door, Kevin's wide, panicked eyes locked onto the small crack in the wood. He was looking directly at the spot where Devin stood hidden in the dark. It was a silent, desperate plea for help.
Devin stood perfectly still. He didn't move a single muscle. He watched, entirely paralyzed, as the Pale Hounds dragged the thrashing boy down the creaking wooden stairs, leaving Martha weeping uncontrollably on the floor of her ruined home.
The heavy front door of the building slammed shut, and the slum district returned to its heavy, oppressive silence.
Devin stepped back from the door, his heart hammering against his ribs.
It is not my problem, he told himself fiercely. I am on a highly sensitive mission. I am a Cyprian sleeper agent infiltrating the UEI. If I engage a local syndicate, I risk drawing the attention of the city guard. I risk exposing my cover to Dunkan. I cannot afford to care about a slum rat.
He walked over to the washbasin, gripping the ceramic edges. He stared at Zain Ricky's dark eyes in the dim moonlight.
But as he stood there, the frantic, terrified look in Kevin's eyes refused to fade from his mind. It overlapped violently with another memory. A memory of Queen Eleanor, battered and bound in iron chains, being dragged away by towering Cyprian beasts while Devin lay bleeding on the courtyard stones, entirely powerless to stop them.
Devin closed his eyes, his knuckles turning white.
Deep within his hijacked veins, the Cyprian venom began to boil. It didn't offer comfort. It didn't offer a strategic, royal rationale for intervention. It offered a pure, primal, biological imperative to slaughter. It recognized the aggression of the Pale Hounds, and it wanted to assert its dominance. It wanted to hunt.
Devin Trangdar, the noble prince, rationalized it as his royal duty. A true king protects his subjects, even the ones bleeding in the slums.
But as Devin opened his eyes, feeling the venomous heat radiating off his skin, he realized a terrifying truth. He wasn't doing this purely out of nobility. He was actively craving the violence. He wanted an excuse to let the monster off the leash.
Devin turned away from the basin. He pulled Zain's dark, heavy coat from the hook by the door and shrugged it over his broad shoulders.
He unlatched his door and stepped out into the hallway.
Martha was still curled into a tight ball on the floor of her apartment, sobbing hysterically amidst the shattered glass and broken wood.
Devin stepped into the doorway, casting a long, dark shadow over the ruined room.
"Where did they take him?" Devin asked, his voice dropping to a low, unnatural rasp that completely hid the prince and fully embraced the sleeper agent.
Martha looked up, her face streaked with tears and dirt. She blinked, seemingly terrified by the cold, lethal intensity radiating from the quiet barista she thought she knew.
"The... the old Ironworks," she stammered, pointing a trembling finger toward the grimy window. "By the river. Near the soot stacks. It's where the Pale Hounds run their extraction dens. Please, Zain. They're going to bleed him dry."
Devin looked down at his empty hands, curling them into tight, bone-crushing fists.
"Lock your door, Martha," Devin said quietly.
He didn't wait for her to respond. He turned on his heel and walked rapidly down the creaking stairs. He pushed open the heavy front door and stepped out into the freezing Reignn night.
The city was vast, dark, and filled with monsters. But tonight, Devin decided, the Pale Hounds were going to learn that there was a much, much worse predator prowling the streets of their slums.