It was too early to be loud. The city hadn't found its voice yet, just coughed and wheezed between alleyways. But inside Reef's hideout, even the rats seemed to keep quiet.
Jack sat on a busted wooden crate in the far corner of the room, legs tucked in, hoodie sleeves swallowed past his hands. His stomach ached. He hadn't eaten anything warm in days.
Spitz walked by and dropped a piece of dry bread near his feet without looking at him. He kept walking, lighting a cigarette he wasn't allowed to smoke inside. Jack picked up the bread, brushed something off it, and chewed slowly.
The girl was sitting near the window, one leg dangling from the ledge, the other tucked close. She didn't blink. Just stared at him, calm and sharp like a blade that didn't care what it cut.
No one had said anything to him for two days. Not even Spitz, who usually cracked a joke when things were quiet. Not that Jack cared. Silence was safer. No one could tell you to die if no one said your name.
He was still chewing when Reef came in.
No one announced him. The door creaked open, he walked in like the floor was his, and everyone shifted. Spitz stubbed his cigarette out. The girl looked away from the window. Reef didn't stop walking until he reached the center of the room.
He looked at no one in particular. Still, everyone waited.
"On your feet," Reef said.
Jack stood.
Reef looked at Spitz. Spitz nodded once, left through the side hallway. He returned seconds later with a folded gray hoodie.
Reef took it from him and tossed it toward Jack.
"Put it on."
Jack slid it over his own hoodie. It was loose. Smelled like smoke and cold soap.
Reef turned and walked toward the door. Jack followed. Spitz followed too.
They walked through three blocks in silence. The early morning air tasted like rust. Somewhere behind them, someone was yelling at a locked car. A dog barked once and stopped. The city stretched but didn't wake.
Reef finally spoke when they neared an abandoned vape shop tagged wall-to-wall in red.
"You're Kenny," he said.
Jack looked at him confused.
Reef didn't look back. He kept walking.
"There's a rusted sedan at the back of the pawnshop. Go there, say you're Kenny and collect whatever they give you and bring it back to HQ."
Jack looked at Spitz. Spitz just stared at the road.
"That's it?"
Reef didn't respond.
Jack adjusted the hoodie. It hung past his waist. He turned the corner as Reef and Spitz left. He wondered why they left when he was just fetching something across the street.
There was the pawnshop. Behind it, half-hidden in the lot, sat a rusted sedan.
An old man leaned on it, arms crossed, cigarette burning. A woman stood beside him. Short coat. Big earrings. One heel tapping the pavement.
Jack walked up slow. They watched him.
He stopped two feet from them.
"You Kenny?" the old man asked.
Jack nodded.
The woman narrowed her eyes. The man didn't wait. He opened the trunk and pulled out a black cloth pouch, tied shut with something silver.
He handed it to Jack.
"Tell Rosco he doesn't raise my pay, this'll be the last time I deliver for him"
Jack took it. Turned.
He was five steps away when the woman called out—she didn't trust his identity.
"Wait, Kenny… you heal fast or something?"
Jack froze. She sounded casual.
"Last week you had that cast on your hand," she added.
Jack didn't answer. Just kept walking.
The woman said nothing more. But behind him, footsteps started.
Jack didn't run, he didn't want to act suspiciously.
Then he heard it.
"Drop him."
Now he ran.
The man shot but he missed.
He moved fast across cracked sidewalks and past flickering shop signs. His breath caught in his throat too quickly. The pouch was pressed against his side under the hoodie. He turned down a narrower alley, then another.
Garbage bins. Broken fences. The stink of piss and boiled meat.
Still running.
No shouting behind him. Just quiet movement. That was worse.
He ducked into the edge of a broken park. Half the benches were snapped. The old swing set had been stripped for metal. A dog growled somewhere deep in the bushes.
Jack dropped behind a tilted stone bench. He pulled the pouch out.
Untied it.
Diamonds. He had only seen them once but he was sure it was diamonds.
Not polished. Not shaped. Raw and bright, like teeth cut from frost.
He zipped it back up and shoved it deep under his hoodie.
Then he moved again.
Down the back edge of the park, past a line of leaning poles and shattered glass, he spotted a door. Half-open. No light inside.
He slipped in.
A woman approached him slowly. She looked him over once.
"You running from someone?"
He slipped the pouch into his pocket.
"No. Just need to rest."
She hesitated, then stepped aside. Jack entered. The room smelled like iron and cabbage.
She shut the door behind him.
Jack stood near the wall, watching her.
She moved to the window, pulled the curtain slightly.
He heard her. She was whispering over the phone.
"...yeah. Someone just came in. Hoodie. Kid. Think he's running from a gang"
Jack was already moving. He ran out the back and rhrough the broken gate.
His side ached. His lungs burned. But he didn't stop.
The alley smelled like burnt plastic and old soup. Jack turned left, then ducked behind a trash bin as someone yelled from the corner. His hoodie stuck to his back.
He peeked out and saw the coast was clear.
Jack sprinted across the street, nearly hit by a truck, and vanished into another alley.
A window opened above. Someone shouted.
"He went that way!"
Now came the real chase.
Multiple footsteps came his way.
He kept turning corners. Twice he slipped. Once he knocked over a vendor's bucket of fish and the man screamed, but Jack didn't stop. He couldn't.
A shot rang out. Loud this time.
He felt it graze his side. Hot, sharp. He hissed through his teeth and pushed harder.
One of the men chasing him slipped on the fish water and cursed. That gave Jack an edge.
He darted into an old building through a broken glass panel, climbed over junk, kicked out a loose door and spilled into an open street.
The building across the street was familiar.
The HQ.
He didn't know how he got there. Just that his legs carried him before his brain caught up.
He staggered through the rusted door.
The girl was already standing there.
She didn't say a word. Just walked up and held out her hand.
Jack pulled the pouch from under his hoodie and gave it to her.
She turned and walked away.
Spitz stood near a crate, arms crossed. He watched the blood dripping from Jack's side.
"Didn't die, nice," Spitz muttered.
Jack said nothing.
He sat down by the door and pulled off the hoodies to reveil where he was grazed. The pain was too much but he couldn't scream.
Few minutes later, the girl came back with a small bottle, a piece of cloth and bandage.
"Clean shot," she looked at him like an injured dog. "You were lucky."
She crouched and examined the wound. Cleaned the blood off his arm and poured the bottle's content on his wound.
He clenched his teeth hard but didn't cry though it had a burning sensation.
"You're something kid."
She wrapped the bandage around his arm and left.
A T-shirt was tossed at him. He looked up to see Spitz.
"Don't think she's being nice, she's just the only one here that knows abit about paramedics."
Jack was too lost in his thoughts.
"What the hell just happened?."