Luke stood over the body for exactly three seconds.
Then the Bureau agent in him took over.
Not the transmigrator. Not the man who had read a novel and woken up in someone else's skin. The part of him that moved now was older than that — built from years of field training carved into the muscles and nerves of this body.
Instinct that didn't need thought. Procedure that didn't need emotion.
Step one. Assess the scene.
Luke's eyes swept the alley from end to end.
The fight had been short. Violent, but contained. The damage was mostly ice — frost on the walls, frozen ground, a cracked section of brick, and the shattered ice wall near the far exit. Blood had pooled beneath the body and was already beginning to freeze into the snow.
The dropped handgun lay a few feet away where he had tossed it during the fight.
The alley itself was narrow, tucked between two old apartment blocks. No windows faced directly into it from either building — the walls on both sides were solid brick with only a few rusted pipes and a single dead fire escape above.
The overhead light at the far end was dim and flickering. The snow was falling heavily enough to reduce visibility to a few meters in any direction.
No witnesses.
No one had come running at the sound of the gunshot. In weather like this, with walls this thick and wind this loud, a single shot in a narrow space could easily be swallowed by the storm. People in this neighbourhood kept their doors shut and their curtains drawn when the snow came down hard. That was just how things worked in winter.
Good.
But good wasn't enough. He needed clean.
Step two. Clean the scene first.
That was the rule. Always clean first, move second. A body could wait. Evidence could not. Every second that passed was a second where someone might walk through this alley and see ice on the walls, blood on the ground, and claw marks on the brick. The body was hidden by the dark and the snow for now. The scene was not.
Luke started with the ice.
He raised his hand and pulled it back.
All of it.
The frost on the walls answered him immediately. The sheets of ice on the ground responded without resistance. The frozen clamps that had held the assassin's boots cracked and dissolved. The shattered remains of the ice wall near the far exit broke apart into mist. Every piece of ice that his power had created during the fight came apart at his command and returned to nothing — cold mist that rose briefly into the falling snow and vanished, leaving no trace behind.
Within thirty seconds, the alley walls were bare again. Damp in places where the frost had melted against the brick, but damp walls in winter were normal. Nothing unusual. Nothing that would catch a trained eye.
The cracked section of brick was harder to fix.
One of his ice spikes had struck the wall too hard during the fight, splitting the surface and leaving a visible mark. Luke couldn't repair brick with ice power. But he could make it less obvious. He pressed a thin layer of frost into the crack, packed it tight, and let it freeze solid.
Then he scraped loose dust and grit from the ground and pressed it into the frozen surface. From more than a few feet away, the damage now looked like ordinary weather wear — an old crack in an old wall. Not perfect, but good enough to pass a casual look.
The bullet scar on the opposite wall was shallow. The single round he had fired had passed through the assassin's robe and ricocheted off the defensive weave, hitting the wall at a reduced angle. The mark was small — a chip in the brick, nothing more. In an alley this old and this rough, one more chip meant nothing.
Now the blood.
This was the most important part.
Blood was evidence. Blood carried information. In this world, where the Bureau had forensic awakeners on staff who could read residual energy from biological material, even a small bloodstain could tell a story. Leaving even a trace of it behind was not an option.
Luke crouched beside the largest pool of blood — the dark, spreading stain beneath the assassin's body where the ice blade had opened the throat. The blood had already begun to freeze against the cold ground, thickening into a dark red sheet that clung to the snow and the concrete beneath it.
He placed both hands flat on the ground near the edge of the stain.
Then he pushed his power into the surface.
Cold spread outward from his palms. Not the general cold of a frost field, but something focused and precise. He drove the temperature of the ground down sharply — far below freezing, far below what winter alone could produce.
The blood froze completely. Not just the surface. Every drop, every splash, every thin trail that had spread across the concrete and soaked into the cracks between the stones. All of it locked solid in a single, deep freeze.
Then Luke changed the process.
Instead of simply freezing the blood in place, he pulled it upward. The frozen blood responded to the ice power like water responding to a current. It separated from the ground in thin, brittle sheets — dark red ice lifting away from the concrete, peeling free from the cracks and gaps where it had settled, rising in jagged flat pieces that came away cleanly because the deep freeze had prevented any of it from soaking too far into the stone.
Piece by piece, the blood came up.
Every drop.
Every splash.
Every thin line that had sprayed from the wound.
Luke gathered it all into a single compressed mass of frozen red ice, about the size of two fists pressed together. He held it in one hand and looked at the ground where the stain had been.
Clean.
The concrete was damp. Cold. But the colour was gone. No red. No dark patches. No traces that anything living had bled here.
Luke looked further down the alley. During the fight, the assassin had stumbled and bled in a few other places — the shoulder wound, the leg wound, smaller drops scattered along the path of their movement. He found each one. Some were tiny — just a few frozen drops on the snow. Others were smeared streaks where the assassin had dragged a wounded limb.
He cleaned them all.
Same method. Deep freeze. Separate. Lift. Compress. Add to the mass.
By the time he finished, the frozen blood in his hand was slightly larger — a dense, dark ball of red ice, heavy and cold. He wrapped it inside a torn piece of plastic he found near a drainpipe and tucked it into one of his grocery bags.
He would dispose of it later. Somewhere far from here. Somewhere that had no connection to this alley, this neighbourhood, or him.
Luke stood up and looked at the alley one more time.
The ice was gone. The blood was gone. The visible damage was hidden or minor enough to ignore. The snow was already filling in the spaces where the fight had disturbed the ground, covering footprints and scuff marks with fresh white layers. The overhead light still flickered weakly, casting the same dim yellow glow it had been casting before the fight started.
The alley looked like what it was supposed to look like.
An empty, narrow space between two old buildings where no one walked on a snowy winter night.
Clean.
Now the body.
Luke picked up the handgun first. He checked the chamber, wiped it down with his sleeve, and slid it back into his coat. Leaving a corporate-issued weapon at a scene — even a cleaned scene — was not an option.
Then he crouched beside the body.
Remove the mask.
Ordinary features. No tattoos. No scars that looked intentional. No piercings, no brands, no visible markings of any kind. The skin was pale — not from death, but naturally. Short dark hair. Thin build beneath the robe. Late twenties, maybe early thirties. The kind of person who could walk through a crowd without being noticed once.
Luke searched the body methodically.
Every pocket. Every seam. Every fold of the robe. The inside lining of the mask. The straps of the claw weapon. The soles of the boots.
Nothing.
Clean.
Professionally clean.
That told him two things. First, the assassin had been trained to carry nothing that could lead back to whoever sent him. Second, whoever planned this operation had expected either total success or total failure — with no middle ground and no recovery.
Luke paused and looked at the three artifacts.
The robe. The claws. The mask.
Three high-quality items on a single operative. That was expensive. Very expensive. Whoever funded this assassination had deep pockets and access to serious equipment. This wasn't a street gang or a desperate rival. This was money and planning.
Luke made his decision quickly.
He was taking everything.
Leaving the artifacts behind was not an option. If anyone found this alley and somehow noticed something wrong — a trace he had missed, a detail the snow didn't cover — the artifacts would be the most dangerous evidence of all. They could be examined, traced, and studied. Any trail that led from this place back toward Luke was a trail he could not afford.
He stripped the robe off the body first. It was heavier than it looked. The inner lining had a faint metallic sheen — the defensive weave that had stopped his bullet. He folded it tightly. The claws detached from the glove mechanism with a firm twist. The mask came off last. It was lighter than expected, with a smooth inner surface that felt slightly warm despite the cold.
Luke looked at the mask carefully, and he knew, according to the marking on it, it have ability to hide energy signature. He dealt with these kinds of artifacts before. They are a must-have for criminals.
Luke stacked the artifacts together and wrapped them inside the robe to form a single bundle.
Now he needed to move.
The body and the artifacts needed to go somewhere safe. Somewhere hidden. Somewhere that nobody would think to search.
The original Luke had lived in this neighbourhood for years. And before the divorce, before the corporation, before everything fell apart, he had been a Bureau field agent. Field agents kept safe spots. Hidden caches. Quiet places where things could be stored, stashed, or hidden when normal channels weren't available or weren't safe.
The original had one.
A small, forgotten maintenance room in the basement of an abandoned service building two blocks from his apartment. The building had been condemned years ago after structural damage from a minor awakener incident. It was fenced off, locked, and scheduled for demolition that never seemed to come.
The kind of place that existed in every city — forgotten by the system, ignored by the public, useful only to people who needed somewhere that nobody watched.
The original had kept a few things there. Emergency supplies. A backup bag. Some cash. Nothing dramatic. Just the quiet preparations of a man who had spent enough years in dangerous work to know that having a hole to crawl into was never a waste of time.
Luke knew the location from the original's memories. He knew the entrance. He knew the lock. He knew the layout.
It would work.
He lifted the body over his shoulder. The assassin was light — lighter than expected, which fit the profile of a speed-type user. Their bodies tended to be lean and compact, built for velocity rather than endurance. He tucked the artifact bundle under his other arm and adjusted his grip.
One last look at the alley.
Clean.
Empty.
Nothing but fresh snow falling on bare ground.