The memory wasn't recalled. It was relived. Sū Língzhao experienced it all through Brad’s senses, and through the branching threads of his own memories that bled into Butter’s.

  [BRAD'S PERSPECTIVE]

  The rain didn’t fall, it pounded, a relentless siege against the slick cobblestones, turning the alley into a gullet: dark, wet, swallowing. The air reeked of wet garbage and rust, undercut by something sharper. Blood.

  Brad hunched deeper into his thin jacket. It was useless now, soaked straight through like wearing a wet napkin. His sneakers squelched with every step, echoing hollowly against the brick walls like a dying heartbeat.

  He’d just come off a ten hour shift hauling freight at a grocery warehouse, the kind of job where your name didn’t matter, only your hands and your spine. Minimum wage, maximum bruises.

  And still, he couldn't afford a cab. He had to walk about two miles to get back to a rented shoebox that barely had heat.

  He was sixteen, and already his dreams felt like things other people got to have.

  The rain hammered against him like it had a personal vendetta. He wished for an umbrella; he had bruises and debt.

  The alley shortcut shaved off ten minutes. Ten more minutes off his feet, ten more to sleep.

  Brad hunched his shoulders against the downpour, his fingers curled around the crumpled quiz in his jacket pocket.

  B+. Not enough.

  The warehouse supervisor’s voice still rang in his ears: "Overtime’s canceled this week." No extra pay. No chance to close the gap between his shoebox apartment and the community college brochures under his battered mattress.

  He stepped over a cracked syringe. The cold gnawed through his sneakers, but he’d stopped feeling it after the third consecutive night shift. His backpack, stuffed with a dented thermos, a can of sardines, a water-stained engineering textbook and a half-charged calculator, thumped against his spine like a second heartbeat.

  A flicker of neon ahead, the bodega where he bought day-old donuts and checked the scholarship board online when the owner wasn’t looking.

  His stomach growled. The hunger pangs had become familiar, like the ache of his warehouse bruises, proof he was still alive.

  The welding course at Redmont Tech cost $1,200. His mattress hid $317. Tonight’s canceled overtime stole another $86. He sighed. Ramen for the third night in a row meant his community college fund grew a little more.

  For a few moments he was alone with his thoughts, the rhythmic squelch of his sneakers a miserable metronome.

  A whimper, thin and reedy, cut through the rain's white noise.

  He squinted ahead. Huddled in a shallow doorway, partially shielded by a overflowing dumpster, were two kids. They couldn’t have been more than eight or nine, a boy and a girl, shivering violently in soaked, threadbare clothes. The girl was crying silently, her shoulders shaking.

  Brad’s own misery momentarily forgotten, a different kind of cold settled in his gut. What were they doing out here? At this hour? In this part of town? His mind, already calculating survival, ran the numbers: hypothermia risk, probability of parental neglect, the location of the nearest, and woefully underfunded youth shelter miles away.

  His feet moved before his brain finished the equation. It was a detour he couldn’t afford, in time or in energy. But he couldn't just walk past. Not them. Not looking like that.

  "Hey," he called out, his voice softer than he intended, trying not to scare them. "You guys okay? You lost?"

  He was ten steps away, his focus entirely on their small, shivering forms, when the world shifted.

  The two kids looked up. But they weren't scared. They weren't crying.

  They were smiling. Small, cold, knowing smiles.

  The girl’s "tears" were just rain.

  Brad’s blood went from cold to ice. His feet skidded to a halt on the slick cobblestones.

  It was a lure.

  The dumpster lid creaked open behind the children. The shadows at the alley’s mouth congealed. The air, already thick with the stench of garbage, now carried the copper-tang of anticipation.

  “Ain’t it a bit late for a stroll, pretty boy?”

  The voice oozed from the dark, thick with gin and something feral. The two "children" scurried away into the deeper darkness, their role complete. The real predators peeled away from the shadows like stains uncoiling, hulking, faceless beneath hoods. A third slithered in behind him, close enough that Brad could feel his breath. Stale tobacco. Copper.

  His stomach turned. His mind itched with a memory, locker room gossip, whispered stories after shift changes.

  The Harvesters. Urban myths. They didn’t just steal. They used bait. And they were real.

  Brad suddenly recalled his co-worker warning about missing people, some found dead with stolen organs. He had dismissed it then, foolishly, and now he was about to join them.

  The leader’s hand gleamed in the jaundiced streetlight. Not a knife.

  A bone saw. The teeth sparkled like a shark’s grin.

  Brad’s legs turned to water. Run, his brain screamed. But his limbs stayed rooted. Scream, but his throat locked.

  Instead, he fumbled for his wallet, hands trembling like leaves in wind. “P-please... take it. Just let me go.”

  The leader snatched it, flipped it open like it was cheap gum, then tossed it into a puddle with a sneer. “Pocket change. We deal in heavier currency.”

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  The saw clicked to life. Not with a roar, but a whisper. That was somehow worse.

  A hand wrenched Brad forward. Another gripped his shoulder like it owned him. Fingers pressed beneath his ribs, mapping. Checking which organs to take first.

  "Stop moving so much, kid... wouldn't want to ruin the merchandise, would ya?" He sneered.

  Terror swallowed him whole. He was meat in a slaughterhouse, warm and waiting. The thug holding his shoulder leaned in, his breath a toxic mix of rot and mint. "Hey, don't look so scared. It's for a good cause." He grinned, a broken picket fence of yellow teeth. "My grandma... she's real sick. Needs a new heart. This is for her."

  A flicker of something absurd; stupid hope, touched Brad's mind. Maybe they were desperate? Maybe there was a shred of humanity he could appeal to?

  The leader snorted. The thug behind Brad stared for a beat, then his face split into a wide grin. He burst out laughing, a harsh, braying sound that echoed off the wet bricks.

  "Hah! Oh, gods, your face!" he wheezed, wiping a fake tear. "Nah, kid. Grandma's been dead for years. Worms had a feast." He leaned in again, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial, gleeful whisper. "This is for booze. And the good hookers. The ones that don't look at your face too close. So hold still. You're my party fund."

  The bone saw’s whisper filled the alley like a dentist’s drill humming before the bite. Brad’s body screamed run, but his mind calculated.

  Option 1: Knee to the groin, sprint.

  No. Leader’s too close. Second thug blocks the exit.

  Option 2: Grab the saw.

  Blade’s already spinning. Lose fingers. Still dead.

  Option 3: The rock.

  A jagged piece of pavement near his foot. The one the third guy had kicked aside when circling him.

  Weight: ~5 lbs. Edge: uneven but sharp enough. Distance: 18 inches.

  Brad’s muscles coiled.

  Bend knees slightly (balance for lunge).

  Left hand feints toward saw (distraction).

  Right hand grabs rock (palm sweaty, adjust grip).

  The leader leaned in, breath hot. “Hold still, we'll make this quick.”

  Now.

  Brad’s left hand shot up, not at the saw, but at the leader’s face, a clumsy, desperate feint. As the leader flinched back with a grunt of surprise, Brad’s right hand scooped up the rock. His fingers closed around its gritty, solid weight. A spark of raw, defiant hope ignited in his chest. He pivoted, muscles tensing to drive the jagged stone into the leader’s temple.

  CHK-CHK.

  The sound was small, metallic, and absolute.

  It froze the rain in mid-air. It froze the blood in Brad’s veins.

  The third thug, the one who had slithered behind him, now stood to the side, a heavy-frame pistol aimed directly between Brad’s eyes. The man’s expression was bored, professional. The message was clear: the game was over. The rock in Brad’s hand felt instantly pathetic, a child’s toy against the finality of the barrel.

  The spark of hope didn't just die; it was executed.

  The leader recovered, his eyes blazing with fury at the attempted rebellion. He snarled and shoved Brad hard into the wall, the brick scraping his cheek. The rock clattered uselessly to the ground.

  “Feisty one, ain’t ya?” the leader spat, the bone saw lifting once more, its whisper now a promise of punishment.

  Brad’s eyes darted to the gunman. The man’s posture was confident, his aim steady, but his finger was still outside the trigger guard. Safety? No, overconfidence. He thought the fight was already won. Brad’s mind, a frantic supercomputer, calculated: time for the man to register movement, tense, press the trigger... His own reaction time had always been unnaturally fast, saving him from conveyor belts and falling pallets at the warehouse. He wasn't faster than a bullet. But he only needed to be faster than the man holding it.

  His hands came up in a gesture of surrender. In the same fluid motion, he jerked his head hard to the right, a feint to spoof the aim, and exploded forward. He drove his knee up into the gunman’s groin with every ounce of desperate strength he possessed. The impact connected with a sickening, wet POP. The man’s eyes bulged, a strangled gurgle escaping his lips as he folded.

  That was all the leader needed. Enraged, he swung the whirring bone saw in a wild, horizontal arc straight at Brad’s face.

  Brad jerked back, the teeth whispering past his cheek, close enough to feel the wind of their passage. He was going to be gruesomely injured by the time this was over, his mind screamed. But he wasn't going to die here. Never.

  “L-let him go.”

  It was barely more than a whisper. Almost lost under the rain and Brad’s ragged breath.

  But it cut through the moment like broken glass underfoot.

  All heads turned. At the alley’s mouth stood a girl haloed in neon flicker and mist.

  Small. Still. Off.

  No footstep. No warning. Just sudden existence, like she'd always been standing there and the universe had only now remembered to render her.

  A crimson beanie swallowed her curls, tight, snowy white ringlets clinging to her cheeks like frost. Haloed in neon, her pink eyes glowed like embers in a face too pale, too unblemished for the city’s grime.

  Her cream hoodie swallowed her frame, sleeves hanging past slender fingers. Her left leg ended in a sleek, matte-black prosthetic, its joints pulsing with a faint, almost imperceptible blue glow, like a machine trying to hide it was alive.

  The leader barked a laugh. “What the hell is this? The crippled fairy wants to play hero?”

  The gunman was still hunched over, one hand clamped to his groin, his face a mask of agony and fury. He sucked in a wet, ragged breath, his voice a strained, venomous hiss. "You're dead, you little bitch! I'll melt that leg down and shove it down your throat!"

  The girl didn’t flinch. She tilted her head like she was studying a puzzle. Pink eyes flicked from Brad’s wide stare to the saw, to the hands rooting under his ribs.

  “Leave him alone,” she repeated, voice softer this time. Like she didn’t want to bother anyone.

  But something in it... pressed. Like a whisper in your ear that makes you flinch.

  The leader snarled and shoved Brad into the wall. The saw lifted.

  “She dies first!”

  The gunman fired. Brad’s eyes slammed shut.

  No scream followed. He opened them. She was gone. Until she wasn't.

  She was between him and the shooter, hand raised like she’d tapped his shoulder.

  The thug looked down at his arm. Blinked. Then screamed.

  His wrist bent wrong. Bone jutted like a snapped tree limb. The gun hit the ground.

  The saw came next, shrieking in a vicious arc.

  She slid under it, graceful and unnatural, rising behind him.

  Her fingers grazed his elbow. Pop. Tendons unraveled; his arm hung limp.

  He dropped, howling.

  That second hit felt harder somehow, impossibly so, as if power had been summoned from somewhere else, because her body hadn't moved to generate it.

  The last thug turned to run. She stepped forward. One step.

  She pressed her thumb to his kneecap. It dimpled his skin like dough before the bone gave way. A wet crunch. His leg folded inward, bone splintering like rotten wood. He hit the concrete, shrieking and convulsing.

  Brad stared. Three touches. Three men unmade. This wasn’t fighting. This was... unraveling.

  ///

  Brad's breath came in jagged gasps. The alley tilted. The Harvesters’ moans blurred into white noise.

  His brain, desperate for anything solid to grip in the freefall of his terror, latched onto the only language it knew: numbers.

  First strike: dislocated wrist (400 lbs of force).

  Second strike: shattered elbow (800 lbs).

  Third strike: pulverized kneecap (1600 lbs).

  The numbers slithered behind his eyes, unbidden. A human hand couldn’t generate that force. Shouldn’t. Yet her fingers had moved like a blade through wet paper, and now...

  Now she stood there, pink-eyed and trembling, staring at her own hands like she was the one who’d been gutted.

  Brad's ribs ached. Not from injury, from the sheer wrongness of it. His body knew before his brain did:

  Predator. And he was prey.

  His fingers twitched at his sides, numb. He should run. He should scream. But his body refused to move, locked in the primal freeze of prey watching a wolf cheat physics.

  And she stood there silently, rain-slicked and pale, breath shallow like she might fall over any second. Her prosthetic leg shimmered faintly in the dark, casting blue halos against the puddles.

  Then she blinked.

  “Oh. Um...” She scratched her neck, suddenly unsure of what to do with her hands. “That was... dramatic. Sorry.”

  Brad could only gawk.

  She turned pink. Fumbled in her hoodie pocket and pulled out a crumpled bag of sour gummy worms.

  “Do... do you want one? Helps with stress. I think. Good for the... um. Brain.”

  Brad stared at the candy, then at his own trembling hands. She just turned a man’s arm into a limp noodle. And now she’s... sharing snacks?

  His voice came out hoarse. “You-You how?”

  "I pressed?" She wiggled her fingers. "Not too hard. Maybe a little hard. His arm’s probably... bendy now."