The city never slept just flickered. Skyscrapers stabbed the sky like rusted needles, neon veins pulsing blue and pink through a dying metropolis. Rain fell sideways, thick and humming, like the world itself was short-circuiting.

He stood over the man, the last name on his list, the one who’d ordered the job that left her body cold beneath an overpass in Sector 12.

The killer gurgled at his feet, synth-blood mixing with puddles lit by advertisements for perfume and pills.

"You remember her?" he asked, voice low, shaking. "Of course you don't."

No one remembered anything here. Faces were blurs. Lives were data.

But he remembered her, her laughter in analog, her warmth in a world too cold. Now, vengeance soaked his gloves, but it wasn’t fire in his chest. It was ice.

The screens above played silent soap operas as he knelt beside the dying man. The neon rain hit his face, glowing tears he didn't have the strength to cry.

He whispered, "I did it for her."

But the city didn’t care. The city never cared.

And as the killer’s breath faded, so did the only thing keeping him standing.

He was alone. Again.

And even revenge… was just another ghost in the static.