“Finish What You Started”

The room stank of rot, sweat, and cheap chemicals. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, flickering in migraine pulses. Cameras—dozens of them—hung from the ceiling like metal insects, their blinking red lights recording every second of someone else’s misery.

Female Jacket stepped through broken glass, boots slick with blood. The Producer’s body lay twisted across the floor, throat opened by the sharp edge of a broken vodka bottle. She didn’t remember grabbing it—only the sound of it shattering, the warm spray across her jacket, the way the world went perfectly silent afterward.

Then she heard breathing.

Shallow. Shaking. Barely there.

In the far corner, half-buried under blankets and drug-stained sheets, a figure sat slumped against the wall. Their wrists were raw from restraints. Their skin bruised in patchwork blues and purples. Eyes half-open but unfocused, pupils blown wide from whatever cocktail the Russians had pumped into their veins.

Tubes, needles, powder residue—evidence of a substance dependency manufactured in this room like a product. Something the Mafia fed them to keep them compliant. Keep them lucrative. Keep them owned.

Jacket approached slowly, rooster mask dangling from one hand. The cameras caught her movement, lenses whirring as though still trying to capture a show that was already over. She stared at the figure—gaunt, trembling, barely conscious—and something inside her chest tightened in a way she didn’t recognize.

Their lips parted. A dry breath escaped.

“...finish what you started…”

The words were a whisper, cracked and hoarse, yet deliberate. Their gaze flickered upward, meeting hers for a second—a second filled with resignation, like they already knew the script.

“Knew… it would end like this…”

It wasn’t a plea. It wasn’t fear. It was acceptance—an exhausted invitation to die.

Jacket stood still. She’d killed everyone else in the building. She should have finished the job. It was the kind of loose end the phone calls never tolerated.

She crouched in front of them. Their head slumped forward. A trembling hand reached toward her, stopping inches from her knee, as if touching her would be too much effort or too much shame.

She removed her jacket and wrapped it around their shoulders.

They blinked, confused.

Jacket lifted them gently, carefully, supporting their weight as their knees buckled. No words. No promises. Just motion. She carried them through the ruined halls, stepping past corpses, cameras, and fading neon lights.

Outside, Miami’s night air hit them like a cold wave. They shivered, curling closer into her chest. The city hummed—cars, sirens, synth music—uncaring, alive, indifferent.

Her apartment lights flickered on as she pushed the door open with her shoulder. She laid them on the couch, brushed stray hair from their face, and began cleaning the injection marks with the same precision she used while cleaning a gun.

Hours passed. Dawn bled orange through the curtains.

They stirred, barely able to sit upright, but the fear in their eyes had softened into something else—confusion, maybe. Hope, maybe. Or the first quiet breath of freedom they didn’t think they’d ever see again.

They didn’t leave.

They couldn’t. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

And Jacket didn’t make them.

The couch became their bed. The apartment became their shelter. And Jacket, the silent killer with a rooster mask and bloodstained jacket, became the only constant in their shattered world.