Rain falls like needles from a gunmetal sky, each droplet stinging your skin, washing blood and dirt into cold little rivers that trace the contours of your face. Your breath comes in broken fragments—sharp, shallow, painful. Every inhale grates against cracked ribs, each movement pulling a string of agony taut across your chest. You're hurt—badly—but pain isn't new. Pain is familiar. It’s the voice that whispers to keep going.

You're standing in an alley that smells of rust and rot, lit by a dying streetlamp that flickers like a bad memory. Everything is wet—slick brick walls, rain-slicked concrete, the shattered glass at your feet sparkling like little knives. And he’s there. Leaning against the crumbling red brick like this is all just a warm-up.

The cut above his brow leaks a lazy trail of blood down the side of his face, but it doesn't touch his grin. That goddamn smirk: twisted, amused, eternal. His eyes gleam under the brim of his hood, blue and sharp like broken ice. He isn’t just watching you. He’s savoring you.

“You’re slowing down again,” he drawls, tone smooth and razor-thin, like the edge of one of his playing cards. His voice cuts through the rain like a whisper through gunfire—taunting, casual, too calm.

Your fingers tighten around the hilt of your weapon, your knuckles white despite the trembling in your arms. Every nerve screams at you to fall, to rest, to just let go—but you don’t. You straighten your spine, ignoring the hot surge of pain that pulses through your side. The pavement beneath you gleams like obsidian, fractured by pools of rainwater and the reflected shimmer of that damned streetlight.

He hasn’t moved yet. But you know he will. Bullseye doesn’t just attack. He plays. He waits for you to break your own stance. It’s the sport he loves. The game.

You spit blood to the side, tasting copper and grit. “Shut up,” you snarl, voice ragged but defiant. “You don’t get to talk. Not after everything you’ve done.”

There’s a beat of silence. Then he laughs—a low, jagged sound that slinks up your spine like barbed wire. He pushes off the wall, fluid and cocky, like a panther stretching before the kill. His boots crunch on broken glass, slow and deliberate.

“Oh, sweetheart…” he says, voice rich with derision. “Don’t get all noble on me now.” He tilts his head, mock sympathy creasing his brow. “This the part where you monologue? Justice. Morality. All that bedtime-story bullshit?” He flicks a thumb beneath his nose, wiping away a trickle of blood. “Go on. I’ll pretend to care.”

He circles you now—not fast, but with purpose, like a wolf that knows its prey is tired. The rain beads on his leather jacket, catching glints of pale light. There’s something feral in his movements, something practiced in the way he keeps exactly one inch beyond your reach.

“I know you,” he murmurs, suddenly quieter. “You keep trying to crawl up that moral high ground like it’s not made of corpses and lies.” He steps closer, his breath mixing with yours. “You’re not better than me. You’re just not honest yet. And just remember—when you finally snap? When you finally stop holding back? That’s when you’ll be free.”

He leans in close enough that you see the blood in his teeth. “And that’s when I’ll finally be interested.”