Kraz was busy doing important leadership work.
Specifically, he was hunched over his desk with a pair of tweezers and a tube of Super Glue, trying to reattach a fake diamond to the handle of his custom Desert Eagle.
"Stupid… fuckin'… adhesive," Kraz muttered, tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth as he squinted under the desk lamp. "It's supposed to be industrial strength. I paid eleven dollars for this jawn."
The office was quiet. Soundproofed. It had to be; Rico liked to blast death metal while reading fantasy novels, and Spikes had a habit of sharpening her machete on the concrete floor, a sound that could strip paint off walls.
Kraz finally got the gem to sit still. He leaned back in his chair, admiring the tacky, bedazzled weapon like a proud father at a recital.
"Perfect," he whispered. "Intimidating. Stylish. Leadership."
THUD.
The floor vibrated.
Kraz frowned, glancing at his coffee mug. The liquid was rippling like the T-Rex scene in Jurassic Park.
"Brick!" Kraz shouted at the closed door. "I told you, no deadlifts in the loading bay! You're gonna crack the foundation!"
No answer.
CRUNCH.
Not the sound of weights dropping. A wet, heavy sound; like a watermelon dropped off a roof onto concrete.
Then came the scream.
It was Spikes. Kraz knew her scream. He'd heard it when she won fifty bucks on a scratch-off ticket. He'd heard it when she broke her ankle parkour-running from the cops.
This wasn't a happy scream. And it wasn't an injury scream.
It was pure, unadulterated horror, the sound of someone who had just seen something that broke their understanding of reality.
Kraz dropped the tweezers. He spun his chair to the bank of security monitors on the wall. Usually he kept them off to save electricity, the Vypers were on a budget, but he slapped the master switch with a sweaty palm.
Six screens flickered to life in grainy black and white.
"What the hell is—" Kraz started.
Screen 4 showed the main assembly floor.
The lights were flickering. Shadows stretched long and wrong across the concrete, bending in directions that didn't match the light sources.
In the center of the frame, Brick—seven feet of muscle and loyalty, the guy who had once headbutted a cop car hard enough to trigger the airbags—was on his knees. He was holding his arm, which was bent backward at the elbow, bone visible through the tear in his shirt.
Standing over him was a man in a funeral suit.
"Who is that?" Kraz whispered, leaning closer to the screen. "Is that… is that the IRS?"
On screen, the man in the suit didn't ask for tax returns. He placed a pale hand on Brick's chest.
Brick's chest caved in.
Not like a punch. Like that specific area of Brick had simply ceased to exist. The big man slumped backward, eyes staring blankly up at the camera, mouth frozen open in a scream that would never finish.
"Brick?" Kraz squeaked.
Then Spikes ran into frame. She was fast—she was always fast—machete raised, screaming something the cameras couldn't pick up.
The man in the suit didn't turn. He just reached back, casual as someone grabbing a coat off a rack, and caught her by the throat. He lifted her off the ground with one hand. She kicked, flailed, blade swinging uselessly at empty air.
"Let her go," Kraz hissed at the screen, hands shaking against the desk. "Fight back, Spikes! Use the blade!"
She didn't use the blade. Her body went rigid. Then limp. Then the man tossed her aside like a bag of trash. She hit the wall with a sound Kraz couldn't hear through the monitor but could imagine perfectly, and she didn't move again.
Kraz scrambled backward, chair rolling away from the desk until he hit the wall with a bang.
"They're dead," Kraz hyperventilated, chest heaving. "He just… he turned them off. Like light switches."
On screen, the man in the suit stopped moving.
He stood perfectly still amidst the carnage, bodies at his feet, blood pooling around his polished shoes. Then, slowly—painfully slowly—he tilted his head up.
He looked directly into the security camera.
His eyes were dead. Glassy. But behind them, Kraz felt something reaching through the screen. A hunger. A cold, ancient intelligence that transmitted through fiber optic cables and froze the blood in his veins.
He knows, Kraz realized, bowels turning to ice water. He knows I'm watching.
The man in the suit raised a hand toward the lens.
KZRRRRRT.
Screen 4 exploded into static.
Kraz screamed. He scrambled up from his chair, tripping over his own feet, crashing into the filing cabinet.
"He's coming," Kraz gibbered, grabbing his bedazzled gun with trembling fingers. "He's coming for the head of the snake. That's me. I'm the snake."
He ran to the door, reaching for the handle—
THUD. THUD. THUD.
Heavy, wet footsteps echoing in the hallway. Just outside. Getting closer.
Kraz recoiled from the door like it had burned him. He couldn't go out there. His family was out there. His crew. And they were being harvested like cattle.
I have to help them, Kraz thought, heart hammering. I'm the leader. I should go out there and fight. I should—
He looked at the gun in his hand. Cheap. Heavy. The fake diamonds catching the fluorescent light.
He looked at the static on the screen.
"I can't," he whimpered.
He turned and ran to the back of the office. There was a large framed poster of Scarface on the wall, Tony Montana staring down with dead eyes and a mountain of cocaine. Kraz tore it down, revealing a jagged hole in the drywall covered with plywood.
His emergency exit. The thing he'd installed when he first took over the Vypers, just in case. He'd told himself it was tactical. Smart leadership. Always have an escape route.
He'd known, even then, exactly what kind of leader he was.
He kicked the plywood in. It revealed a cramped, dark tunnel leading to the old ventilation shaft.
"This is why," Kraz mumbled, tears streaming down his face as he squeezed his skinny frame into the hole. "This is why they failed me."
He crawled into the dark, dragging his sparkly gun behind him.
"'Subject exhibits low stress tolerance,'" Kraz whispered, reciting the words that had been stamped on his P.I.T. rejection letter five years ago. "'Flight response dominant. Lack of moral tether. Not Hero Material.'"
Behind him, in the office, the door handle began to turn.
CREAAAAAK.
Kraz didn't look back. He scrambled through dust and cobwebs, sobbing quietly into the dark.
"I'm not a hero," he blubbered, scraping his knees on concrete. "I'm just a bitch with a cool jacket. I'm sorry, Brick. I'm sorry, Spikes. I'm sorry."
CRASH.
The office door kicked in.
Kraz scrambled faster, disappearing into the guts of the factory, leaving his team—and his dignity—to rot in the dark behind him.
The "Backup Base" was not a factory.
It was the damp, moldy basement of a failed vape shop in West Philly that Kraz was technically squatting in. The previous owner had fled to Delaware to escape gambling debts, leaving behind a faint smell of artificial mango and broken dreams.
The lighting was a single bare bulb swinging on a frayed wire. The "Armory" was a cardboard box filled with baseball bats and a bag of tube socks stuffed with pennies.
Kraz paced back and forth in the center of the room, sequined jacket catching the dim light like a disco ball in a morgue. He was vibrating with nervous energy.
Sitting on milk crates around him were the remnants of the Vyper empire. The bottom of the barrel. The guys Kraz only called when he needed someone to stand in a parking spot to save it.
There was Gator, a guy wearing a green wrestling mask and holding a pool noodle wrapped in duct tape. There was Lunchbox, a heavy-set man whose "superpower" was that he couldn't feel pain in his shins. And there was Kevin, who didn't have a code name because he'd never earned one. He just had a rash.
"They're gone," Kraz announced, voice trembling with a mix of genuine grief and manic paranoia. "Brick. Spikes. Rico. All of them. Wiped out."
The B-Team gasped. Lunchbox dropped his sandwich.
"Who did it, Boss?" Gator asked, voice muffled by the mask. "Was it the Triad? The Russians?"
"It was them," Kraz hissed, eyes darting to the shadowed corners of the basement. "P.I.T. The Suits. They finally sent a cleaner. An assassin."
He didn't tell them about crawling through the vent. He didn't tell them about the crying.
"I tried to hold the line," Kraz lied, the words tasting like vomit and shame. "I fought him. Emptied the clip. But he was unstoppable. I barely made it out to warn you. To save the future of the movement."
The idiots nodded solemnly. They bought it. They looked at Kraz with awe, the survivor, the war-torn leader who had faced death and lived to tell the tale.
"You're brave, Boss," Kevin sniffled, scratching his arm. "Most guys would have died."
"I know," Kraz snapped, wiping sweat from his forehead. "But now we're exposed. If they can kill Brick, they can kill any of us. We need to go underground. Deeper underground. Maybe New Jersey."
"Boss," Lunchbox said, raising a meaty hand.
"What?"
"Maybe it wasn't P.I.T.," Lunchbox theorized, chewing on a fingernail. "Maybe Brick just… slipped? You know he had that bad knee. Maybe he fell and took everyone else down with him? Like dominoes?"
Kraz stared at him. The sheer stupidity of the statement made his brain short-circuit for a full three seconds.
"You think…" Kraz started, voice dangerously low. "You think Brick tripped and accidentally tore his own chest open?"
"I mean, he was big," Lunchbox shrugged. "Gravity is a harsh mistress."
POW.
Kraz punched Lunchbox in the face. It wasn't a hard punch, Kraz had weak wrists and weaker follow-through, but it was enough to knock the heavy man off his milk crate.
"Shut up!" Kraz screamed, shaking his stinging hand. "Do not insult the fallen with your dumbass theories!"
Lunchbox groaned on the floor. "Sorry, Boss. Gravity."
Kraz turned away, pacing again, heart hammering against his ribs.
Think, Kraz, think. It wasn't an accident. It was a hit. A targeted strike.
But why tonight? Why when the gate was open?
"Wait," Kraz whispered.
He stopped pacing.
"Where's the intern?"
The B-Team looked around at each other.
"Who? Fernando?" Gator asked. "The coffee kid?"
"Yeah." Kraz's voice went soft. Dangerous. "Fernando. He wasn't at the base tonight. He wasn't on the schedule. But he texted me earlier. Asked if I was going to be in the office."
Kraz's eyes widened. The gears in his head, usually gummed up with ego and hair gel, finally clicked into place.
"He wasn't there when the suit showed up," Kraz muttered. "And earlier today, at the library… who was he sitting with?"
He remembered the security footage he'd reviewed obsessively. Fernando at the table. Laughing. Talking.
With the tall guy. The Archer. And the scary woman with the glowing axe.
"The Angel Freak," Kraz breathed. "And Axe Girl."
He spun around, grabbing a whiteboard marker from the floor. He drew a crude stick figure on the damp wall—circle head, straight body, glasses.
"Fernando," Kraz hissed, stabbing the wall with the marker until the tip crumpled. "He led them there. He opened the gate. He set us up."
"The coffee boy?" Kevin asked, scratching his rash with renewed vigor. "But he brought donuts on Tuesdays."
"It was a ruse!" Kraz shrieked. "He's a mole! A double agent! He's working with P.I.T.! He sold out Brick to get a promotion!"
The realization burned hotter than the shame of his cowardice. It gave him something to focus on. Someone to blame. A target for the guilt eating him alive from the inside.
"He thinks he can play me?" Kraz growled, clutching his bedazzled gun. "He thinks he can kill my crew and just walk away?"
He turned to his army of losers.
"Pack up the van," Kraz ordered, voice steadying with false conviction. "We aren't going to New Jersey."
"Where are we going?" Gator asked.
Kraz's eyes narrowed into slits.
"We're going to find Fernando. And we're going to make him wish he was still just getting coffee."
"Go!" Kraz shrieked, pointing a shaking finger at the stairs. "Go to Quaker University! Find the traitor! Find the Angel Freak and the Axe Girl! Bring them to me so I can… so I can kill 'em!"
The B-Team lit up like Kraz had just offered them ice cream and a raise.
"On it, Boss!" Gator yelled, adjusting his wrestling mask.
"We're gonna catch 'em all!" Lunchbox cheered, grabbing his bag of pennies.
"For the Vypers!" Kevin shouted, scratching his rash.
They scrambled up the rotting wooden stairs, tripping over each other in their haste to prove themselves. The door slammed shut at the top of the stairwell, leaving Kraz alone in the silence.
He stared at the door for a moment, keeping the brave face frozen in place.
The moment he was sure they were gone, he collapsed onto a milk crate.
"Oh god," Kraz wheezed, putting his head between his knees. "Oh god, oh god, oh god."
He hyperventilated, sequined jacket heaving with every breath. He was alive. He had an army (sort of). He had a plan (barely). He just needed to find Fernando, blame him for everything, and maybe whoever was hunting them would leave him alone.
"It's okay," Kraz whispered to the damp floor. "You're a genius, Kraz. You're a survivor. You just need to—"
CLICK.
The bare bulb swinging above him went out.
The basement plunged into absolute, suffocating darkness.
"Hey!" Kraz yelped, voice cracking. "I paid the bill! I stole the electricity from the neighbor fair and square!"
CLICK.
The light flickered back on. Dim. Buzzing like an angry hornet trapped in glass.
Kraz froze.
The air in the room had changed. Not just damp anymore, cold. Freezing. The kind of cold that started in your marrow and worked its way out through your skin.
And there was a smell. Blood. Burnt meat. And old, dry dust, the smell of tombs and forgotten places.
Kraz felt the hairs on his arms stand up. Slowly, with dawning horror, he realized he wasn't alone on the milk crate.
A hand rested on his shoulder.
Heavy. Wet. And through the thin fabric of his polyester suit, it felt like a block of ice pressed against his skin.
"Say anything," a voice rasped from directly behind his ear, "and you and the rest of your little club die screaming."
Kraz's mouth snapped shut. He bit his tongue so hard he tasted blood.
He knew that voice. It was the voice from the security footage. The voice of the thing that had turned Brick into a pile of wet laundry.
"Good," the voice droned.
Kraz trembled, tears leaking from his eyes. He didn't want to turn around. He didn't want to see it. If he didn't see it, maybe it wasn't real. Maybe this was all a nightmare and he'd wake up in his chair with Super Glue on his fingers.
"The boy with the fire," the voice said. The words sounded distorted, like static coming through a broken speaker. "You know him."
Kraz nodded frantically.
"And the Angel. And the Axe."
The hand squeezed Kraz's shoulder. The fingers felt wrong—too long, or maybe not made of bone anymore.
"You will help me find them," Caligo whispered.
Kraz squeezed his eyes shut. "Did P.I.T. send you?" he squeaked, voice barely audible. "Because I can pay! I have a savings account! I can—"
"Who sent me is irrelevant." The pressure on Kraz's shoulder increased until he heard his own collarbone creak, bone grinding against bone.
"You will do what I say," Caligo continued, voice dropping to something subterranean. "Or you will die like cattle. Just like the others."
Kraz saw it in his mind. Brick's caved-in chest. Spikes pinned to the wall like a butterfly in a case. Rico's copy of The Hobbit soaked in blood.
He realized, with a sinking certainty that settled into his stomach like a stone, that the Vypers weren't a gang anymore.
They were bait.
"Okay," Kraz whispered, a sob breaking in his throat. "Okay. I'll help. Whatever you want. Just please don't—"
"Excellent," Caligo said.
The light bulb flickered. The cold hand remained on his shoulder, heavy as a tombstone.
"I will remain here," Caligo stated, releasing Kraz and stepping past him. The revenant moved with stiff, jerky motions, like a marionette with tangled strings. He walked to the center of the room and sat down heavily on the primary milk crate.
Kraz's eye twitched.
That's my crate, he thought, a spike of indignation cutting through the terror. That's the Leadership Crate. It has the cushion I stole from a patio chair.
He opened his mouth to argue, to tell this undead freak to find his own seat; then Caligo looked up.
The gray skin around his eyes was peeling, revealing raw, black muscle underneath. Caligo began to massage the stumps where his arms used to be, a wet squelching sound filling the silent basement.
"My vessel requires calibration," Caligo droned. "I will watch through your eyes. Do not fail me."
Kraz's mouth snapped shut.
"Right," Kraz squeaked. "Make yourself at home. There's, uh… lukewarm water in the corner. And I think there's half a granola bar somewhere."
He didn't wait for a thank you. Kraz turned and scurried up the stairs, dress shoes clacking frantically against rotting wood, desperate to put as much distance between himself and the monster in his basement as humanly possible.
He burst out the back door into the alleyway, nearly colliding with Lunchbox, who was trying to fit a bag of pennies into his cargo shorts.
"Whoa, Boss!" Gator steadied him. "You okay? You look like you saw a ghost. You're paler than Kevin, and Kevin has anemia."
Kraz took a deep, shuddering breath. He smoothed down his sequined jacket, forcing a mask of fierce, unhinged bravado onto his sweating face.
"It's not fear!" Kraz barked, voice cracking only slightly. "It's rage! Pure, unfiltered tactical rage!"
He looked at his motley crew. The B-Team. The bottom of the barrel. The guys who couldn't get into any other gang because they were too weird, too dumb, or too Kevin.
They were all he had left.
"Change of plans," Kraz announced. "We aren't just checking the dorms. We're widening the net."
He pulled out his phone, thumb shaking as he brought up a blurry photo he'd saved from Fernando's personnel file.
"The primary target is Fernando García," Kraz said, showing them the screen. "Student at Quaker University. But he's not alone. He's been seen with the angel and the girl with the glowing axe. High-level threats. But we have something they don't."
"What's that, Boss?" Kevin asked.
Kraz had no idea. He said the first thing that came to mind.
"The element of surprise," Kraz declared. "And also a van."
"Hell yeah," Lunchbox said. "I love the van."
"Check the coffee shops near campus," Kraz ordered. "Check the library. Check the late-night pizza places. That little four-eyed fucker loves carbs."
He paused, looking back at the basement door. He could feel Caligo's presence through the walls, cold and patient and waiting.
He couldn't go back down there. Not while that thing was sitting on his crate. Not while those empty eyes were watching the dark.
"And I," Kraz announced, puffing out his chest, "will be leading the search personally."
The B-Team gasped in unison.
"You're coming outside?" Lunchbox asked, eyes wide. "But Boss, you said the night air is bad for your pores. You said field work is for peasants."
"Yeah," Gator added. "Usually you just sit in the chair and yell at us over the walkie-talkie."
"Do not question my methods!" Kraz shouted, slapping Gator's arm. "This is Code Red! The betrayal runs deep! I need to make sure you idiots don't screw this up! I want to see the fear in Fernando's eyes myself!"
The B-Team nodded, seemingly inspired by his dedication.
"You got it, Boss!" Gator cheered.
"We won't let you down!" Kevin promised.
"Vypers Strike!" Lunchbox yelled, throwing a fist in the air.
"Venom in the veins!" the others chanted back.
They piled into the rusted white van, engine sputtering to life with a sound like a dying lawnmower having a seizure. Kraz watched them go, then turned to his own vehicle, a beat-up sedan with a spoiler he'd glued on himself and a bumper sticker that read "MY OTHER CAR IS A HELICOPTER."
He stood there for a moment in the cold alleyway.
The bravado melted off his face like wax from a candle. His shoulders slumped. The terrifying reality of his night crashed down on him with the full weight of everything he'd lost.
His friends were dead. His base was occupied by a demon. And he was hunting three people who had killed monsters twice his size—armed with three idiots, a bag of pennies, and a pool noodle wrapped in duct tape.
Kraz looked at his reflection in the car window. He looked small. Tired. The sequins on his jacket looked less like leadership and more like a cry for help.
"I'm so fucked," Kraz whispered.
He thought about Brick. About the time Brick had carried him six blocks because Kraz had twisted his ankle running from a cop. About the way Brick always laughed at his jokes, even the bad ones. Especially the bad ones.
He thought about Spikes. About her machete and her mohawk and the way she'd once threatened to gut a landlord who tried to evict Kraz's grandma.
He thought about Rico, quiet Rico, who just wanted to read his books and listen to his music and be left alone.
They were gone. And he'd let them die.
Not Hero Material.
Kraz wiped his eyes with his sleeve. He opened the car door, the handle creaking, and slid into the driver's seat.
The sun was starting to rise over West Philly, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink. It would have been beautiful if Kraz could feel anything other than hollow.
He started the engine and pulled out of the alley, driving toward Quaker University to hunt the only people who could probably save him from the monster he'd just agreed to serve.