It smoldered.
Even at night, the Eastern slums glowed like an open wound — refineries coughing smoke, rusted furnaces exhaling heat, pipelines running like veins through concrete arteries. The air tasted metallic, thick with ash and fuel vapor. People here didn't fear fire.
They served it.
Netoshka moved through the district like a shadow cast by something much worse.
Her boots left no sound. Her coat rippled unnaturally, glitching at the edges as if reality couldn't decide where she ended. Blood still clung to her gloves from the last kill, half-dried, half-phased out of existence. She hadn't wiped it away.
She wanted them to smell it.
Her HUD flickered with corrupted overlays — threat markers bleeding into one another, timestamps looping, kill-confirmation pings repeating when they shouldn't. She ignored all of it. Her breathing was steady, but something inside her wasn't.
Images kept intruding.
Chains.
Screaming.
Two small bodies on cold concrete.
Those kids...
She crushed the memory down hard enough that it hurt.
Not yet.
The city was already reacting to her.
Gang lookouts abandoned rooftops the moment her signal distortion washed over their scanners. Street cams stuttered and died. Even the secret police patrols rerouted without orders, corrupted officers pretending not to notice alarms they definitely heard.
Everyone knew what happened to the first boss.
No one wanted to be next.
Except him.
Vask.
Fire-lord. Arson broker. One of the Five.
He didn't deal in drugs or trafficking like the others. Vask dealt in erasure. Entire blocks vanished under his contracts — "industrial accidents," "pressure failures," "unfortunate chain reactions." He sold terror disguised as infrastructure failure.
Children burned quietly in his district.
Netoshka had read the reports.
She had memorized the numbers.
She followed the heat.
The refinery complex rose ahead like a mechanical cathedral, steel towers leaning inward, pipes looping overhead like nooses. Flames danced inside reinforced glass columns, casting everything in hellish orange light.
She didn't infiltrate.
She walked in.
The front gate guards barely had time to raise their weapons before gravity twisted sideways. One slammed into the ceiling hard enough to crack bone. Another folded inward, screaming as pressure crushed his chest without touching his skin.
Netoshka passed them without looking.
Inside, alarms wailed — then cut out as her presence corrupted the system. Emergency bulkheads slammed down too late. Sprinklers burst, spraying vaporized coolant that instantly turned to steam.
Footsteps echoed.
Men shouting.
Someone fired blindly down a corridor.
She blinked.
Reality skipped.
She was already there.
Her blade punched through a man's throat so fast his body didn't realize it was dead. She ripped it free, pivoted, and kicked another into an active furnace intake. The scream cut off as the machine swallowed him whole.
The smell didn't even faze her.
She reached the central control tower as panic peaked.
Inside, Vask was already trying to flee.
He was smaller than she expected. Not physically weak — just… fragile. His suit was fire-resistant, his hands shaking as he slammed access codes into a console that refused to respond.
"Override! OVERRIDE!" he screamed.
The door behind him opened.
He turned.
Netoshka stood framed in flame and smoke, eyes reflecting the furnace light like cold glass.
For a moment, he didn't recognize her.
Then his knees buckled.
"No—no, listen—listen—" Vask stammered, backing away.
"S-Stop.. I didn't kill the kids—I swear—I just supplied fuel—I don't choose targets—"
Netoshka tilted her head.
The movement was slow. Curious. Almost… disappointed.
"You signed the transport manifests," she said quietly.
Her voice was flat. No rage. No tremor.
"I—I don't read names—just quantities—"
She crossed the room in a single distorted step and grabbed him by the collar.
The world shuddered.
She slammed him against the ignition ring surrounding the primary furnace pit. Heat blasted upward, washing over both of them. His skin blistered instantly where the suit failed.
He screamed.
She locked the ring.
"did you care when those kids were screaming?," she said.
He sobbed.
"I just did what i was told..."
He begged.
"I watched them die."
That broke him.
Vask thrashed, voice cracking into hysterical pleas — money, information, routes, names of the other bosses, anything. He promised everything.
Netoshka didn't respond.
She stepped back.
The furnace began to rise.
Fire climbed slowly — deliberate, patient. It kissed his boots, crawled up his legs, wrapped around his torso like a lover.
He screamed until his voice failed.
Netoshka stood perfectly still.
Her vision fractured — not from the heat, but from the pressure inside her skull. Numbers screamed. The Wire stirred. Something ancient pressed against the inside of her thoughts, urging her to let go.
She didn't.
She forced herself to watch.
When the screaming finally stopped, she turned away.
As she exited the tower, structural alarms howled back to life — too late. Pressure spiked. Containment failed.
The refinery went critical.
A column of fire punched into the sky, lighting the slums like a second sun.
Netoshka walked through falling ash, her coat smoldering, her expression hollow.
Two of the Five were dead.
Her hands were shaking now.
Not from fear.
From restraint.
She didn't look back.
Somewhere in the city, the remaining gang bosses were running.
She welcomed it.