The slums didn't sleep.
They twitched.
Netoshka moved through them like a disease.
No banners. No speeches. No warnings.
Just bodies.
The first gang never saw her—only the absence where their lookout had been, the sudden wet sound behind them, the collapse. She didn't linger. Didn't need to. Knives flashed once, twice. Neck. Spine. Throat.
She stepped over them as if they were debris.
By the time the second group realized something was wrong, the alley was already red.
One tried to run.
Reality skipped.
Netoshka reappeared in front of him, grabbed his face, and slammed him into the wall hard enough to crater concrete.
"Names," she said calmly.
He gurgled.
Her fingers tightened.
"Wrong answer."
She tore the information out of him—not gently. Memories bled through his screams as her perception pierced straight past skin and bone into fear itself. Routes. Payments. Protection deals. Secret Police bribes.
And above it all—
Five names.
The Gang of Five.
She dropped what was left of him.
Further in, gunfire erupted—wild, panicked. Thugs fired into shadows, into steam, into nothing. Netoshka flickered between frames, each reappearance marked by another body hitting the ground in pieces.
One begged.
She ignored him.
Another tried to bargain.
She broke his jaw.
Minutes later, the sector was quiet again.
Too quiet.
Netoshka stood in the center of an open courtyard littered with corpses, blood flowing into cracked drains like runoff after rain. Her breathing hadn't changed.
She knelt beside the last living man.
He was young. Barely older than the kids.
That made it worse.
"Tell me where they are," she said.
"I—I don't know—"
She pressed two fingers against his temple.
His scream echoed across the slums.
Images flooded out of him: a hierarchy. Five bosses controlling different sectors—trafficking, labor camps, body markets. They never met. Never stayed in one place.
But tonight—
Netoshka's eyes narrowed.
Tonight was different.
"They're consolidating," she murmured.
The man sobbed.
"T-They're scared! Someone's killing their people—"
She leaned closer.
"They should be."
She stood.
"Where is the first one."
The man pointed with a shaking hand toward the industrial ridge.
"Old transit hub," he gasped.
"Underground. He calls himself Kreel."
Netoshka memorized the location.
Then she glitched.
The slums blurred—streets folding, distance collapsing—as she tore through the sector at inhuman speed. Rooftops vanished beneath her feet. Walls ceased to exist. Sensors lagged seconds behind her afterimages.
Somewhere behind her, alarms finally began to howl.
Too late.
She stopped atop a rusted structure overlooking the transit hub.
Below, lights burned.
Guards.
Heavy.
Netoshka watched them for exactly three seconds.
Her eyes glitched.
"Kreel," she whispered.
And then she jumped.
Far away, in the city's underbelly, one of the five gang bosses felt an inexplicable chill crawl up his spine.
The hunt had found its first target.