Beneath the city's endless ceiling of smog-stained glass and humming neon, Xander Croft moved like a shadow among shadows.
He wasn't running, exactly. More like drifting. Another night, another delivery through the outer levels of the Sub-Grid. Crowded, sweating alleys full of flickering ad boards and half-dead terminals. Every wall screamed color, but the world still felt gray to him. That was the thing about this place—Undercen, they called it. The city beneath the real city. You either learned to live in the noise, or you drowned in it.
Xander adjusted the strap on his courier bag and ducked under a rusted pipeline, pausing as static bled through the digital map on his wrist. It glitched—again—and buzzed out of existence.
"Cheap corp junk," he muttered.
At sixteen, Xander was already on his fifth fake ID and third employer. Not that it mattered. He didn't plan on staying in this circuit longer than he had to. One more job, maybe two, and he'd have enough creds to start tracking down his brother again. Real info this time—not rumors traded in stim dens and black-glow chatrooms.
His brother had disappeared two years ago. No body, no trace. Just… vanished.
Xander stepped into the glow of an auto-vendor. It offered steaming synth-noodles and radioactive blue soda. He ignored both and scanned the side alley for his drop point.
Just another shift. Just another quiet job.
So why did his spine feel cold?
A soft clink behind him.
Xander spun around.
Nothing.
The alley was empty. Lights flickered overhead, casting twitching shadows on the far wall. A vent released a sigh of steam, and a distant tremor rumbled through the floor. Probably the mag-trains above.
He turned back—and froze.
There was a symbol on the wall now. Graffiti? Maybe. But the paint was still wet. Deep red. Not ink. Not paint.
Blood?
It pulsed.
The moment stretched.
Then a voice broke the silence. "Croft."
Xander's heart jerked. A familiar shape emerged from deeper in the alley. Nuel James—his best friend since childhood, sharp-jawed and always smirking. Tonight, he looked tense.
"You okay?" Nuel asked.
Xander blinked, trying to steady his breath. "Yeah. Just… I thought I saw something."
Nuel followed his gaze to the red symbol. "Weird. Probably some cult trash again. People get bored, start drawing creepy stuff for attention. Let's go. You've got the chip?"
Xander handed over a thin metal rectangle—encrypted data. Low-end smuggling job. Probably corporate blackmail, probably not legal. But not explosive.
"Client's in Grid 4. Let's not make them wait," Nuel said, pocketing the chip.
They walked together through the skeletal remains of Undercen's lower towers, past neon cult shrines and half-functional droids slumped like drunks.
"Did you hear what happened last night?" Nuel asked.
"What?"
"Couple blocks west. Whole family disappeared. No signs of break-in. No screams. Just… gone."
Xander frowned. "That's not unusual here."
"Yeah, but the weird part is…" Nuel paused. "They found a flower in the middle of the room. White, glowing. Like someone left it there on purpose."
Xander stopped walking.
A flower.
He'd seen something like that. Once. A long time ago, the night his brother vanished. He remembered it glowing in the dark, soft and silent. He thought he'd dreamed it.
"Croft?" Nuel nudged his shoulder. "You okay?"
"Yeah. Just a weird coincidence."
Nuel grinned. "That's Undercen, man. Built on weird. Come on."
As they reached the checkpoint, Xander couldn't stop thinking about the symbol. The way it pulsed. The way it watched.
He didn't know it yet, but tonight was the last night he'd ever feel normal again.
Somewhere, far beneath the city—deeper than the trains, deeper than the servers, deeper than the silence itself—a man in a black cloak finished carving the same symbol into the chest of a still-living victim.
Ralph Thorne's hands were steady. The sacrifice twitched beneath him.
With each drop of blood, with each drawn breath, he came one step closer to waking her.
His voice was quiet, reverent. "Soon."
And far above him, Xander Croft walked blindly toward the edge of everything.