BLOODCAPE

The tower had no name anymore.

Not even on the grid.

Just a shell — thirty-two stories of scorched concrete, shattered helix glass, and hollowed-out signal spines that once carried the digital pulse of the entire city quadrant. Before the Zodiac Re-org. Before the firelines carved every neighborhood into color-coded allegiances. Before the killbox net laced itself into the bones of the skyline.

Now it was a dead nerve in the system.

And Hernan stood on its crown, alone in the wind, watching the ghost walk into the trap.

The rooftop had been sheared open in the war — one half exposed to the air like a broken jawbone, the other still half-intact, windows warped and framing the clouds like the teeth of something starving. The cold bit deep here, high above District 10. Hernan didn’t flinch. The wind played with the edges of his coat, pulled against the straps on his back like invisible fingers searching for weakness.

The HUD on his wristplate pulsed a steady green every four seconds. Sync confirmed. Drone feed alive.

Nico’s voice crackled into his earpiece, low and crisp:"Subject has entered the killbox. Floor twelve. Movement pattern steady. No deviation. Nothing aggressive."

Hernan’s eyes narrowed."No hesitation?"

"None. Centered. Predictable. Like he’s done this before."

The recon drone tracked Renz’s heat signature from above — gliding across open slabs and debris piles like a hunting hawk. Below, Renz moved through the ruin like he belonged there. No tension in the spine. No wasted motion. Not the walk of a man on the edge of betrayal.