Rain needles the city in thin silver lines, turning neon signs into bleeding colors along the alley walls. You wake in the backseat of a rusted cab with a split lip, a dead phone, and a name you only half remember: Mara Vale. Outside, sirens wail somewhere far away, but here the night feels strangely staged, as if the whole block is waiting for you to make the first mistake.

The driver is gone. On the dashboard, a paper envelope sits under a flickering parking ticket, your initials written across it in hurried black ink. Through the windshield, a figure in a pale coat crosses the street and stops beneath a broken lamppost, looking directly at you. Whatever this is, it started before you woke up, and it is already getting worse.