The night was thick with rain, a relentless downpour that drowned the neon lights in a sea of gray. The city was alive, a sprawling, pulsating beast of steel and concrete, its veins clogged with the lifeblood of millions who never saw the sky. Below, in the depths where the light barely touched, a man moved with purpose. His steps were measured, deliberate, the echo of his boots lost in the cacophony of distant sirens and the hum of machinery. Cole "Vex" Harrington was no stranger to the darkness. It had been his home for longer than he cared to remember.

He reached the rendezvous point—a forgotten alleyway buried in the bowels of the city. The air here was stale, thick with the stench of decay, but it was safe, hidden from the prying eyes of the surveillance drones that scoured the upper levels. Cole waited, his hand resting lightly on the grip of his sidearm, a relic from a past life. He could feel the weight of the mission pressing down on him, a familiar burden that had become as much a part of him as the scars that marred his face.

The status window flickered into existence before his eyes, translucent and hovering just within his field of vision. It was a reminder, a digital echo of the thing he had become. His heartbeat thrummed in sync with the numbers that danced across the screen—pulse, adrenaline levels, weapon status—all of it monitored, calculated. He was a machine now, in all but name.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

But tonight, something was different. The status window flashed red, a sharp, insistent warning. Cole tensed, his instincts screaming at him to move, to fight, to survive. But there was no threat, no enemy in sight. Just the rain, the alley, and the darkness.

Then it hit him—a searing pain that tore through his skull, splitting his vision in two. He staggered, clutching at his head, his breath ragged. The status window was going haywire, numbers and symbols blurring into a chaotic mess. He tried to focus, to make sense of it, but his mind was a battlefield, fractured and broken. Memories surged, unbidden and disjointed—faces, places, fragments of a life he thought he'd forgotten.

And then, just as quickly as it had come, the pain was gone. The status window stabilized, its readouts clear and cold once more. But something had changed. Cole could feel it, deep in his bones. The fracture was there, a fault line running through the core of his being, threatening to tear him apart.

He had a mission to complete, a life to reclaim, but first, he needed to understand. To remember. Because if there was one thing Cole knew for certain, it was this: the past never stayed buried. It always found a way back, no matter how deep you tried to hide it.

The rain continued to fall, a relentless drumbeat against the metal and stone, as Cole Harrington took his first step toward the truth.