"Locke, looks like you really are planning to help Emily out. Man, that's a blessing."
Dam was practically vibrating with excitement. His uneven beard looked like it hadn't seen a comb or a razor in weeks, all wild and puffed out around his face, and his hands kept waving as he talked like he had no idea what to do with all that energy. Sitting across from him, Locke could only lift a hand and motion for the big man to calm down before he drew the entire bar's attention.
"Easy," Locke said, leaning back in his chair. "You're acting like I just announced I'm saving the city."
Dam snorted, but the grin on his face only got bigger. To him, Locke already looked like the kind of guy who could do the impossible. Ever since that robbery, ever since he'd seen Locke take down three armed thugs barehanded when everything had looked hopeless, that impression had only grown stronger. A lean man dropping three knife-wielding punks with nothing but speed, nerve, and raw power was the kind of thing people didn't forget.
"Come on, I'm serious," Dam said, lowering his voice but not his excitement. "I've seen what you can do. You'll wipe out those biker assholes sooner or later. Guys like that think they own the streets, but all it takes is one person to break their teeth in."
Locke smiled faintly, but he didn't answer right away. Instead, he let his gaze narrow a little, then slowly raised one hand in front of Dam and rubbed his fingers together in the universal sign for money.
"I've got a job for you," he said at last. "You handle it, and I'll pay you that much. Do it well, and maybe we keep working together after that."
Dam's eyes widened so much he looked like he'd just seen a winning lottery ticket float down from heaven. His expression lit up with almost comical intensity, but for a second he was so stunned he couldn't even reply. He just stared at Locke's hand and then at his face, as if trying to decide whether he'd heard right.
He never got the chance to answer.
A small hand suddenly grabbed Locke by the collar and yanked him backward with far more force than he expected. His body tensed on instinct, but the moment he caught the familiar scent behind him, he relaxed and let himself get dragged away from Dam's table.
Emily glared at him, her round eyes wide with outrage. "It's your first day working here, and you're already drinking with customers?"
Locke raised both hands over his head in exaggerated surrender, looking so alarmed that the expression on his face bordered on ridiculous. "I was networking," he said solemnly. "Very important part of the job."
That answer broke her instantly.
Emily laughed before she could stop herself, the sound bright and quick enough to make several nearby college students glance over at her. The warmth in her smile lingered even after she tried to compose herself again, and Locke couldn't help noticing how much lighter the whole room felt when she laughed like that.
By the time night settled over the neighborhood, Emily's bistro had thinned out. The noisy rush from earlier was gone, leaving only a few stragglers finishing drinks at their tables while low conversation drifted lazily through the room. Locke moved through the bar like a gust of wind, clearing glasses, wiping down surfaces, and handling half a dozen small tasks without ever seeming rushed.
From behind the counter, Emily watched him in silence while organizing bottles and receipts. The longer she watched, the more obvious it became just how much easier everything felt with him there. He worked quickly, but not carelessly, and whenever she thought of something that needed doing, she usually found he had already handled it.
Maybe I should've hired someone a long time ago, she thought.
The idea came with a smile she couldn't quite suppress. Locke's figure moved through the warm yellow glow of the lights, sleeves rolled up, expression focused, and for the first time in a long while the place didn't feel like a burden she had to carry alone.
Eventually, the last guests left.
The lights inside the tavern were switched off one by one, and Wallier Street slowly sank into silence. The laughter, the clinking glasses, the steady hum of voices—all of it faded until the block felt half asleep beneath the night.
Some time later, the door of Emily's tavern opened again.
A figure slipped quietly out into the darkness and locked the door behind him. Locke had changed completely. He wore a long black coat, black gloves, and a dark mask that covered his face, leaving almost nothing exposed. Wrapped up like that, he looked less like a bartender and more like a shadow that had peeled itself away from the wall.
Now he was something far beyond ordinary human limits.
That only made caution more necessary.
If he was going to judge evil and clean up the rot spreading through the streets, then he couldn't afford to be careless about it. This world wasn't simple. It wasn't clean. It wasn't even remotely normal. Beyond the fragments of information buried in newspapers and gossip, there were monsters, vigilantes, aliens, ancient powers, and things far worse than any street gang. Even with governments working overtime to bury the truth, enough slipped through to paint an ugly picture.
If this was what an average person could piece together, then the real chaos beneath the surface had to be far worse.
District 24 was alive in a way Wallier Street no longer was.
Where Wallier Street had gone quiet and dim, District 24 still throbbed with noise, cheap music, drunken shouts, revving engines, and the kind of lawless swagger that came from people who believed fear was the same thing as control. At the edge of one badly lit corner, a cluster of bikers sprawled around tables and motorcycles, drinking heavily and cursing loudly.
"Fuck that guy," a blond man in a leather jacket shouted, slamming his bottle down so hard the liquid sloshed over the rim. "I swear, I'm gonna kill him. First time in my life somebody put their hands on me before I got to put mine on them. Fucking humiliating."
The people around him laughed, all of them dressed in leather and denim, faces painted up with reckless confidence and cheap menace. They looked like they belonged to the same rotten ecosystem—violent, loud, and too stupid to understand when they should be afraid.
"I heard about him," one of them said with a sneer. "Always sticking his nose where it doesn't belong. Loves helping the weak, like he's some kind of hero."
Another man barked out a laugh. "What, he thinks he's the Dark Knight? Hell, even that freak wouldn't come after us this openly."
"Damn right," a bald brute with a chest like a refrigerator growled as he tipped back a bottle of vodka. His muscles bulged beneath his clothes, and his grin was full of ugly confidence. "If he shows up, I'll be the first one to snap his neck."
The people around him cheered at that, feeding off his bravado.
The bald man smirked, pleased with himself, and lifted the bottle for another drink.
Then he stopped.
The laughter around him died a second later as everyone's eyes shifted past him. Their expressions changed all at once, the alcohol and swagger draining away so fast it was almost funny.
A masked man stood behind the bald biker.
No one had seen him arrive.
Locke's gloved hand was already wrapped around the man's throat, and under the stunned eyes of the entire group, he lifted the giant slowly off the ground with one arm. The bald biker's boots kicked uselessly in the air, his face turning red almost immediately.
"Fuck—"
The word came out as a strangled rasp.
The biker reacted on instinct, jerking a knife from his waist and driving it backward toward Locke's side. But before the blade could get close, Locke caught his wrist. There was a sharp crack, clean and ugly, and the sound echoed through the street corner like a snapped branch in dead silence.
The bald man screamed.
The sound was shrill, panicked, and completely at odds with the swagger he'd shown a moment earlier. Under the mask, Locke's mouth curled slightly.
He could feel the difference now more clearly than ever. Men like this, men who once might've taken effort to put down in a straight fight, felt absurdly weak in his hands. The strength in the biker's body meant nothing. Compared to Locke now, he might as well have been an infant thrashing in a grown man's grip.
"Who the hell are you?" one of the younger gang members shouted, smashing a bottle on the edge of a table and pointing the jagged neck at him. "Put him down!"
That was all it took.
The rest of the gang snapped out of their shock and surged into motion, pulling out iron bars, chains, knives, and anything else they could use as a weapon. One by one, they spread out and began to circle him, trying to build up courage through numbers.
Locke turned his head slowly and looked at them.
"So barking's the only thing you people know how to do?"
His voice came out lower than normal, roughened and disguised beneath the mask until it sounded cold and unfamiliar. Then the air around him changed.
A low, heavy vibration rolled out from his body.
It wasn't loud in the normal sense. It was worse than that. It carried a strange, punishing frequency that seemed to bypass the ears and sink straight into the skull. A biker who had been creeping up behind him dropped to the ground instantly, clutching his head with both hands.
Then another fell.
Then another.
Like a chain reaction, the entire group collapsed into chaos. Men and women dropped where they stood, screaming, choking, clawing at their ears as if they could rip the sound back out of their heads. It didn't matter how tightly they covered themselves. The frequency slipped straight through bone and flesh and hammered into their minds.
The corner erupted into shrieks.
The bald brute in Locke's grip went limp first, blacking out before he could even finish his next scream. Locke tightened his hand slightly, and another crisp crack rang out before he casually tossed the body aside.
The Blood Ancestor's sonic assault wasn't something normal people could survive.
Locke stepped forward through the writhing gang members, increasing the frequency just a little more. Foam began to gather at the corners of some mouths. A few passed out, only to jerk awake again under waves of agony. Their bodies twitched helplessly against the pavement, all that earlier arrogance burned away and replaced with pure animal terror.
He stopped beside the blond man from earlier.
The thug looked up at him with a face twisted by pain and fear, but there was no mercy in Locke's eyes. He kicked casually, almost lazily, and his foot struck the side of the man's neck with explosive force. The impact snapped his head violently to the side, and the body stopped moving at once.
Then Locke moved on to the next.
And the next.
And the next.
By the time he reached the last one, the street corner had gone from rowdy to silent except for a few fading spasms and the distant hum of the city beyond. One after another, the biker gang died at his feet.
Then—
Bang.
A sharp burst of pain struck his back.
Locke's eyes narrowed instantly. Gunfire exploded through the neighborhood, several shots in quick succession, and his body blurred into motion. In a flash of afterimages, he vanished from the street corner and disappeared into the night.
A long while later, dozens of men in suits arrived at the scene at a run.
They spread out quickly, hard-faced and efficient, scanning bodies, checking angles, and searching for any trace of what had happened. Among them stood a tall man built like a steel door, broad and imposing enough to make everyone else seem smaller just by comparison.
He stopped over the corpse of a young thug with a crushed throat and stared down at it in silence.
"Boss," someone asked carefully from behind him, "who was that guy?"
The tall man didn't answer.
Instead, he crouched slowly at the exact spot where Locke had been standing when the first shot was fired. His fingers brushed against a single pale drop left on the cracked pavement. He lifted it, studied it for a second, then brought it close and inhaled faintly through his nose.
A trace of solemnity crossed his face.
....
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