Netoshka walked through the wreckage like a ghost drifting between bodies that hadn't realized they were dead yet. Fires crackled in alleyways. Buildings leaned inward, broken ribs of concrete and steel jutting like exposed bone. The air tasted of rust, blood, and burnt polymer—gang colors dispersed into the pavement.
No sirens.
No patrols.
Even the Secret Police stayed away or some died.
They had felt her pass through this district like a stormfront.
And storms were not to be challenged.
Her boots splashed through shallow pools of red as she moved forward, coat torn, armor scorched, knuckles split and still steaming faintly from residual glitch-heat. The Wire beneath her skin hadn't receded yet. It crawled, restless, whispering suggestions she refused to name.
The last gang boss lay behind her—what remained of him nailed to twisted rebar and signage, body contorted in a way that made an example without needing words.
She hadn't enjoyed it.
That was the worst part.
Netoshka slowed near the center of the district. The place where everything had finally broken. Where the gangs had realized too late that this wasn't retaliation.
It was extermination.
She exhaled slowly.
Her hands were shaking.
Not from fear.
From restraint.
Images kept intruding—unwanted, invasive, even if she wasn't there, she felt their pain.
Zev screaming.
Chains creaking.
Two small bodies on a factory floor that would never be cleaned properly.
Those kids... Eli. Mara.
Names she had learned too late.
Her jaw tightened.
"I should've been faster," she muttered to no one.
The city lights above flickered, struggling to stabilize after the damage she'd done to local infrastructure. Surveillance nodes lay crushed or glitch-burned, their lenses shattered like blind eyes. She had erased herself from this sector so thoroughly that even the city's memory would hesitate.
Netoshka stopped walking.
Silence pressed in, heavy and unnatural.
Then—
Footsteps.
Small.
Careful.
She turned instantly, glitch-energy flaring along her spine before she consciously reined it in.
A child stood at the edge of the ruined street.
A little girl.
Too clean, probably an orphan. Too thin to be fed properly. Dirt streaked her face, but her eyes were sharp—observant in the way only children who grow up surrounded by violence ever were.
Netoshka didn't move.
Didn't kneel.
Didn't soften.
She simply waited.
The girl swallowed and stepped closer, holding something small in her hand.
Silver.
A pendant.
Netoshka's eyes flicked down.
Her pendant.
She hadn't realized she'd dropped it during the fight—the chain must've snapped when she tore through the last barricade.
The girl extended it with both hands.
"Miss...You dropped this," she said quietly.
Netoshka stared at the pendant.
That pendant had crossed continents with her. Wars. Executions. Betrayals. The graves of people who trusted her and paid the price. It was dented now, smeared faintly with blood that wasn't hers.
Her throat tightened.
"Huh?…Why didn't you run kid?" Netoshka asked.
The girl shrugged, small shoulders lifting.
"They're gone," she said.
"The bad guys."
A pause.
"You stopped them right?."
Not accusation.
Statement.
Netoshka slowly crouched, muscles protesting as the adrenaline finally began to fade. Up close, she saw the girl's hands were shaking too.
She took the pendant.
Their fingers brushed.
Something broke inside her chest—not violently, not loudly. Just a quiet fracture, like stress finally giving way.
"…I'm sorry," Netoshka said before she could stop herself.
The girl frowned.
"For what?"
"For the Slums, i caused a wreckage here." she almost said.
In her head she thought of them..
For Zev.
For those kids, Eli and Mara.
For herself.
Instead, she answered,..
"For making you see this."
The girl thought for a moment, then shook her head.
"Well I've seen worse," she said.
That hurt more than any blade.
Netoshka stood and slipped the pendant back around her neck. The metal felt heavier than before.
"What's your name?" she asked.
The girl hesitated.
"Darcy."
Netoshka nodded.
"Stay away from this place tonight, Darcy. Go somewhere high. Somewhere Safe... please"
Darcy nodded once, then turned and ran, disappearing between broken structures like a wisp of smoke.
Netoshka watched until she was gone.
Only then did she let her mask crack.
She turned away from the devastation and continued walking, boots carrying her toward the edge of the slums, toward the rendezvous point where Inferius waited.
Her thoughts spiraled inward, no longer anchored by violence.
Yevgeny…
Her adoptive father's face surfaced unbidden—stern, tired, proud in a way he never voiced.
Am I doing the right thing?
Her pace slowed.
Krovka Squad… S … Jeremy…
Ghosts marching beside her, silent, judging, understanding all at once.
"I'm sorry, papa, sorry... Everyone.." she whispered into the smoke-choked air.
"I tried."
The Wire stirred again, eager, sensing weakness.
She crushed it down.
Not now.
Not yet.
Ahead, the city's western skyline rose like a jagged crown—the Main Building, the heart of authority and rot that still believed it controlled this district.
Inferius would be waiting for her.
Zev would be sedated, alive, but shattered.
And whatever came next would be worse.
Netoshka straightened her posture.
Her eyes hardened.
Bloodlust drained—not replaced by mercy, but by something colder.
Purpose.
She vanished into the shadowed streets, leaving the slums behind—quiet, broken, and forever changed by the night a Walking Catastrophe that skirmed through them and chose, just once, to spare a smile for a child.