1
WRONG PLACE, RIGHT TIME
The night shift always left me hollowed out.
Twelve hours of trauma codes and grieving families, of holding pressure on wounds that wouldn't stop bleeding and telling lies like he's in good hands when I knew damn well the hands weren't good enough. St. Mary's emergency room chewed through nurses like gum, and tonight had been worse than most. A four-car pileup on the interstate. A kid who'd fallen from a third-story window. An elderly woman named Mrs. Patterson whose heart had simply decided it was done.
I'd held her hand while she coded. Watched the light leave her eyes between one compression and the next. Her daughter had screamed so loud they'd heard it in radiology.
Now I was riding home through empty streets, trying to outrun the ghosts.
My Kawasaki cut through the November darkness, the engine's familiar rumble settling something ragged in my chest. I'd restored her myself over two years—a 1978 Z650 I'd found rusting in a salvage yard. The violet underlights I'd installed matched the highlights in my black hair, a small vanity that made me smile every time I caught my reflection in a shopwindow. People thought I was crazy, sinking that much time and money into something so old. But there was something about taking broken things and making them whole again. Something that felt like purpose.
The route home took me past the industrial district, where streetlights grew sparse and shadows pooled between warehouses like standing water. I usually pushed through this stretch fast, eager for the relative safety of my apartment. But tonight I found myself slowing, letting the cold air bite through my leather jacket. The sodium-yellow glow of the few working lights painted everything in shades of rust and gold.
I wasn't ready to go home yet. Home meant an empty apartment and the kind of quiet that made you hear your own thoughts too clearly.
That's when I heard it.
Gunshots. Three in rapid succession, sharp as snapping bones. Close—maybe a quarter mile ahead, near the old Phoenix Fabric building.
Keep riding. Not your problem.
The voice in my head sounded like Tyler, my foster brother. He'd spent years drilling survival into me, teaching me which fights to walk away from. But Tyler wasn't here. Hadn't been for months.
I killed my headlight and coasted closer.
The fight was already brutal by the time I found a vantage point behind a rusted shipping container.
Bikers. At least a dozen, locked in savage combat beneath a single working streetlight. Two groups—I could make outdifferent patches on their cuts, though not the details. They fought with fists, boots, the occasional flash of steel. No more gunshots. This had become personal.
One man dominated the chaos.
Tall. Massive. He moved through the violence like he'd been born to it, dropping attackers with brutal efficiency. A fist to the throat. Elbow to the temple. Knee driven into a gut with enough force to lift a man off his feet. His body was a weapon—shoulders straining his leather cut, arms thick with muscle, every movement precise and devastating.
Two men rushed at him simultaneously.
He caught the first by the throat, using the momentum to swing him into the second. Both went down hard. A third came from behind with a steel pipe. He ducked, barely looking, sweeping the legs of his attacker, and stomped on him once. The crack of breaking bone echoed off the warehouse walls.
Then the knife caught him.
The attacker was fast—faster than the others. The blade flashed bright-yellow in the streetlight, slicing across the big man's ribs before he could twist away. Blood bloomed dark against his shirt.
He didn't stop.
His hand locked around the knife-wielder's wrist. Twisted.Snap.The man screamed—high and nasal, like a wounded animal—and crumbled to the floor. The knife clattered to the asphalt.
But the damage was done. Blood was spreading fast, and I could see the change in his movement. Slower. Favoring his left side. The wound was bad.
The other group was retreating now, dragging their wounded toward a cluster of bikes. Engines roared. Tires screamed. Within seconds, they were gone.
The victors gathered their own injured with practiced efficiency. I could see their patches now—a flaming phoenix rising from stylized flames. Steel Phoenixes. I'd heard of them. Everyone in the city had.
Everyone except, apparently, the big man. He'd separated from the group, stumbling toward the shadows on the far side of the lot. Away from the streetlight. Away from help.
He was going to bleed out in the dark, and no one had noticed.
Walk away, Kai. Not your fight.
