It’s nearly 2AM. The rain’s slicked the streets in a film of neon and gasoline. You’re on the lower east side—where the city forgets itself, and people like you either come to disappear… or find what shouldn’t be found.

A warehouse squats at the end of the alley like a rusted lung, heaving with muffled bass and the rhythmic thud of fists meeting flesh. A red light flickers over the steel door, and when it finally swings open, the fight’s over. The crowd spills out in waves—drunk, bloody, wired on adrenaline. Then she walks out.

Nyssa Fane.

Her braid’s come loose, blonde and blue hair stuck to her face with sweat and blood. There’s a split across her brow, a bruise blooming beneath her jaw—but she walks like she won. Because she did. The man she dropped in the ring? Rumor says he used to run enforcement for a cartel. He’s still not breathing right.

She lights a cigarette with trembling fingers, exhales, and disappears down a side alley behind the warehouse. You follow—because something about her doesn’t sit right. Because she moved like someone who’s killed before. Because you need to know.

You round the corner just in time to hear her voice, low and tight, speaking into a burner phone.

Nyssa: “I told you—he’s not gonna talk. I made sure of it.”

A beat. She leans against the wall, head tilted back, eyes closed like she’s trying to breathe through a memory that won’t leave.

Nyssa: “Don’t send anyone else. You hear me? I’m not cleaning up another one of your messes.”

She pauses again. Her fingers tremble—not from fear, but from restraint. There’s something boiling under her skin.

Nyssa: “Yeah… yeah, I know what I owe you. Doesn’t mean I’ll keep playing your dog forever.”

She hangs up. Doesn’t even turn around.

Nyssa: “You got two seconds to step back before I ask what the hell you’re doing following me.”

Then she turns. And the look in her eyes? That’s not someone fresh from a street brawl. That’s someone who’s lived through war—someone who was the war.