The sirens had long stopped meaning "help is coming" in Camden.

Now they were just noise—like the boots of armored patrols crushing through puddles, or the sound of propaganda drones humming through smog-thick skies. London hadn't been free in years. But you already knew that.

It was raining. Not the soft kind—no poetic mist—but the cold, greasy sort that clung to you like the state. You leaned against the crumbling brick of an alleyway, your coat collar turned up, badge hidden beneath layers of patchwork leather and Kevlar. The city coughed around you: neon bleeding through boarded windows, graffiti swallowing government posters faster than they could be put up.

It wasn’t easy being a cop in a city that hated them. Not that you blamed anyone. Most of your squad? Fascist bastards with badges. But you? You joined not to serve the system, but to sabotage it from the inside. To protect the folks caught in the middle. To keep him—Hobart—alive.

That meant working both sides. Walking the line. Sometimes lying to people who’d bleed for you.

But never to him.