Hong Kong didn’t fall asleep so much as lose interest in being awake. The night pressed in low and heavy, clouds hanging over the city like something unfinished, lit from beneath by traffic glare and tower glow. Color bled upward into them in slow pulses, neon and sodium and corporate white, turning the sky into a stained ceiling that never quite held still. People still glanced upward out of habit, even though there was nothing there anymore. The air smelled of hot circuitry and old rain. Somewhere far above, the city kept building itself, ad by ad, light by light, while down at street level the dark pooled where it was allowed to, waiting patiently for anyone careless enough to step into it. Someone had tied red string to a traffic sign below, frayed and rain-darkened, its knot slipping a little more every time the wind shifted.
A holo ad flickered into existence above the flyover, too close to be tasteful and too expensive to ignore. A smiling couple rotated in slow perfection, their teeth catching the light just so. The image hiccupped. The woman’s face froze mid-laugh, eyes glassy and wrong, then snapped back into motion like nothing had happened. Iris watched it with the tired patience of someone who had learned not to expect better. Somewhere below, an elderly shopkeeper paused mid-sweep and tapped the edge of the screen twice with his broom handle before carrying on.
She reached into her jacket and felt the weight, or rather the lack of it. Pulled the pack out anyway. Two sticks left, as lonely as the couple in the ad.
She stared at them for a moment, then shook her head and slid one free.
“End of an era,” she murmured.
The tip flared violet as she lit it. The first drag scratched just enough to feel earned. A nearby street shrine flickered once and steadied, incense coils inside burning without smoke.Overhead, the ad steadied, colors smoothing out, smiles returning to regulation warmth. Iris exhaled and watched the smoke drift upward, thinning as it climbed, until the city light tore it apart.
Something clattered past at street level. Iris glanced down in time to see a quadrupedal robocourier trot by, its frame a mismatched patchwork of plating that didn’t quite agree on color or age. One leg whined a half beat behind the others. Another had been sleeved in aftermarket polymer, the seams still visible. The cargo pod was original issue though, sealed tight and stamped clean with Guild markings that looked almost embarrassed to be riding on the thing.
It didn’t look at her. It didn’t look at anything. It just kept moving, rebuilt enough times to remember the route and nothing else. It skirted a chalked symbol on the pavement without slowing, sensors blind to it, pathfinding cleanly around a mark no one had bothered to erase.
Iris snorted softly. “Cute.”
Her comm buzzed in her hand before she realized she’d taken it out. Muscle memory. Adam’s name hovered on the screen, stubbornly reassuring. She tapped it. Ring. Ring. Voicemail.
His voice came on, calm, distant, annoyingly intact. Iris waited for the tone, then spoke. “You’re alive, right? Blink twice or something. Call me back.”
She cut the connection and let the screen go dark. For a second, the city noise seemed to lean in, as if curious what she’d say next.
Right after Courier Guild decided to remind her of its importance.
She studied the ping without opening it. Late job. Short notice. Decent pay. The kind of work that pretended not to ask questions and expected the same courtesy in return.
Iris frowned at it, thumb hovering. She could let it expire. Someone else would take it. Someone else always did, this city was full of burners. The thought irritated her more than it should have. She accepted before she could decide why.
Something brushed her boot.
Iris looked down.
Wulong got bigger in past weeks, but maybe it was just lighting, or exaggerated reflections. His black fur caught stray reflections from passing traffic, edges glinting like heat shimmer. He rubbed his head against her foot, insistent, a low rumble vibrating up through the sole. A woman passing on the sidewalk hesitated, glanced down at him, then quickened her pace without knowing why.
She crouched and scratched under his chin. “You too?” she asked quietly. “Up for a long night?”
Wulong chirped hopped onto the bike and settled against the tank, body low and steady. His claws caught on the strip of Velcro padding Iris had slapped there weeks ago and never bothered to remove. It tore faintly as he adjusted, then went quiet once he found the angle he liked.
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She pressed the pad flat with her palm, feeling the vibration of the engine through it, then straightened. “Don’t get ideas,” she told him.
He didn’t move. Moments later she swung onto the bike too. The engine came alive with a sound that still surprised her, deeper than the old one, smoother, less forgiving. It was not just an engine - it was a retired military jetbike tourbine. Pak Sifu delivered on his promise. Her old Ducati Revenant earned his resurrection not just in name.
“Alright,” she murmured. “I hear you, girl.”
They slid into traffic. The bike moved like it had always belonged there, threading between lanes, skimming past bumpers close enough that Iris could see her own reflection ripple across wet. The city adjusted around her, signals flickering, cars braking a fraction too late, systems arguing quietly in the background about right of way. A thin blue overlay traced traffic lanes a half-second ahead of her, tagged faintly as APEX OS 2.0.
Wulong stayed low, pressed against the tank. He lifted his head, squirmed at airflow, and lowered his head below her windshield. Every now and then his claws rasped softly against the velcro as the bike leaned, a sound almost lost beneath the turbine’s hum.
The night swallowed her and spat her out block by block, until the towers thinned and the streets narrowed into something older and meaner.
The pick up point was a damp alley that smelled like rust and stagnant water. A single metal door waited at the end, its surface pitted and scarred, paint flaking like dead skin. Old ward paint clung to the frame in places, half-scrubbed, half-faded, lines breaking where newer repairs had ignored them. Someone had tried to repaint over them in municipal gray and given up halfway through, the brush strokes still visible where the pattern stopped making sense.
She rolled to a stop a few meters short and killed the engine. The sudden quiet felt wrong, like the city had missed a step. Somewhere above, water dripped with deliberate patience. Somewhere farther away, something mechanical whined and then went silent.
Iris swung off the bike and let it rest on its stand. The alley didn’t react. No lights flared. No doors slammed. It just sat there, narrow and damp and pretending not to care.
“Stay,” she murmured.
Wulong did. He tucked himself lower, eyes tracking the dark with an attention that made her skin prickle. Iris stepped around him and approached the door.
She knocked. Just once, as instruction said.
Nothing. A paper charm peeled loose from the inside frame and slid down the metal.
She knocked again, harder. The sound rang out and died quickly, swallowed by brick and grime. For a moment she wondered if this was another mistake, another ghost errand sent to keep her moving while someone else did the real work.
Then the door creaked inward.
A man filled the gap. Big. Square. His jacket sat wrong on him, too stiff, too deliberate. Army posture, even now. Especially now. His eyes flicked past her shoulder, slid across an empty alley.
Before he could speak, a woman shoved him aside.
She was shorter, leaner, all sharp angles and contained motion. Her hair was cropped close, revealing a pale scar that cut across her scalp like someone had signed their work and moved on.
Iris’s gaze snagged on the scar. Something tugged at the back of her mind, a memory that refused to resolve. The thought slipped away, leaving only the certainty that she had seen that scar before, somewhere that mattered.She stared half a second too long.
“Oi,” the woman said. “You lost?”
Iris blinked and straightened. “Burner,” she said.”Got the call for your package.”
The woman frowned and glanced back at the man. He shook his head once, slow. They shared a look that Iris recognized instantly. Surprise, followed by irritation, followed by calculation.
“That’s not possible,” the woman said. “It was picked up already.”
Iris felt her shoulders sag. “When?”
“Minutes ago.”
The Guild confirmation blinked onto her screen before she could ask. Delivery en route, timestamped three minutes before she even arrived.
The woman studied her for a beat longer, eyes narrowing slightly. Iris nodded like that settled it. It didn’t.
”Well, shit.” Iris sighed, turning away. “What a waste of time.”
Noone stopped her. Iris felt the gaze for a minute more, as she returned to her bike and leaned on it. Thought about what just happened. Took out the smokes one more time and stared for a moment at the lonely stick inside.
She pushed it between her teeth and absent-mindedly tossed an empty pack into the stream of rainwater as she was looking for a lighter, carrying stray garbage, leaves and debris with it down the gutter. It slid across wet concrete, tipped, and vanished through the drain grate with a soft, final clatter. For a split second it looked like it fell into nothing at all, swallowed by a darkness that went deeper than it should have. The gutter smelled briefly of incense before the rain washed it clean.Wulong looked at her, and chirped.
”Yeah, sounds like a plan,” Iris replied, and stopped looking for a lighter. The rain had soaked her gloves, her sleeves, the inside of her jacket. It wasn’t going to work.
Iris slid the stick behind her ear instead and pulled her comm out, wiping the screen against her thigh until the map bled through. Streets layered over streets. Traffic crawling like something tired but stubborn.
Man Mo sat off to the side of it all, exactly where it had always been. Not on the way. Never on the way.
Iris checked the distance, clicked her tongue once, and shut the map down.
She swung onto the bike and let her weight settle, boots finding the pegs by habit. The engine answered her thumb with a low, even growl, like it had been waiting for a decision she finally made.
Rain slid off the visor as she eased out into lazy night traffic. Headlights parted. Signals hesitated. Somewhere behind her, the alley went back to being just another gap the city didn’t bother filling.
