All Chapters of Shadows and First Blood: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

 Three weeks.That’s all it took for the silence in Matrix’s apartment to learn her name. At first, it was easy to pretend this was what she’d wanted—warm light, full cupboards, someone else’s heartbeat to fall asleep to. He cooked, he laughed, he looked at her like she was something rare. She let herself believe in the normalcy because normal was a luxury she hadn’t tasted in years. Then the edges started to change. It was small things:the way he double-checked the locks after she’d already done it,the way her phone began to “lose signal” every time he walked into the room,how

The rain thinned to a mist that felt like breath on my face. I kept moving because stopping would mean thinking, and thinking would mean panic, and panic was a luxury people who wanted to live couldn’t afford.Neon ran in the gutters like melted saints. Tires hissed past, taxis and trucks and the city’s constant arterial rush. I didn’t look back. Looking back is how you turn into a story other people tell.Left at the deli with the cracked yellow awning. Right at the mural of the woman whose eyes always followed you to the bus stop. Two blocks under the train, where the pigeons ruled like old gods. I counted steps to keep my mind from shaking loose: thirty-seven, seventy-two, one hundred and ten, breath, again.By the time I hit the river wind, my shirt clung to me, the canvas bag cutting a hard line int

The knock came again—soft, patient, polite. That was always how hunters started: manners as camouflage.Jay mouthed back door.Maeve was already moving, her fingers a blur over the thread and stones, whispering a language that scraped at the inside of my skull.The air thickened. The porch light outside flickered once and went dead. The witch didn’t look up. “They’re masking their signatures,” she said. “Professionals. Finch sent field captains.”“Then we give them a field,” Sammi muttered.The next knock was followed by a boot. Wood cracked. Splinters shot like shrapnel across the hallway.Jay swung the

We folded into the night like a bad secret—soft, practiced, half-people because that’s how ghosts move when they want to live. Maeve’s breath steadied the air around us, thread and river-stone humming in a pocket only she could hear. The witch’s screen blurred the hunters’ eyes, made their radio static look like waves — it bought us a margin measured in minutes. Forty at best, maybe less.The warehouse lay like a throat: dark, tight, full of places for sound to snag. My hands were steady, which is the cruelest thing a body can do when everything else trembles. Sammi was beside me with a rifle that fitted her like a promise. Jay’s bike idled in the truck like a concubine ready to run. Gideon’s eyes were fossils that had learned not to be surprised anymore. Ewan and Fionn were off like the dark was their business.

The ship heaved like a lung pulling in its first clean breath. Chains clattered. Dockhands shouted half-words that were swallowed by fog. I stood at the rail and felt the city retreat, one sodium light at a time.The water below was slick and black—like a mirror that knew too much. Every sound was too loud: gulls, engines, boots, the pulse in my ears that refused to steady. I didn’t dare look back, but the muscles between my shoulder blades were sure he was there. Watching.Matrix.He didn’t need orders anymore. Didn’t need Finch, or family, or reason. What he needed was the correction of a predator who’d been denied his kill. That kind of need doesn’t fade. It festers.The ship cut away from the dock with a long groan. Someone shouted for the r