One2's Arc

Chapter 1 of 8

Two years dead, and One2 still wanted his block back. The outbreak had rotted his skin gray, but the gold teeth still gleamed when his jaw fell slack. Gold chains hung from his neck. Cracked sunglasses rode his nose. He shuffled past burned cars toward the streets he once ruled, and he had a problem. Someone new ran his corners now. He didn't know their name, their crew, or their guns. Blind, he could walk right into their hands. So he needed a name. Before the outbreak, his crew wrote down every debt. Every dealer who owed them. Every runner on the payroll. They stashed those records in one safe place, and One2 remembered where. He found the cottage at the edge of the quiet streets. Wood walls, a stone chimney, painted trim faded but whole. His old friend Rex McCaslo had let them hide their books here, because no one suspected a warm little house. One2 pushed the door. It stuck, then swung. Rex sat inside, alive, a rifle across his knees. Gray beard, brown jacket, boots planted like he'd waited years for this. He didn't flinch at the corpse in the doorway. "I knew you'd crawl back," Rex said. He didn't raise the gun. "Nobody else remembers this place." One2 tried to speak. Only a wet rasp came out. He pointed one gray finger past Rex, toward the floorboards near the hearth. Rex followed the finger. His face went hard. "The books." He set the rifle down. "You still want the block. Even like this." One2 nodded once. His chains clinked. Rex knelt and pried up a loose board. Beneath it sat a metal box wrapped in cloth. He lifted it out and set it on the table. Blue weed plants leaned in a pot on the sill, their bright stems catching the light, the same ones Rex had always grown to hide the smell of the money. Rex opened the box. Inside lay a thick ledger, water-stained but readable. He flipped it open and ran his thumb down a page. Then he stopped. "There's a new name in here," Rex said quietly. "Somebody's been adding to it. Recent ink." He turned the book so One2 could see. One line sat fresh at the bottom, the letters sharp and dark. One2 leaned close. The name meant nothing to his rotted memory. But it meant everything. Whoever ran his block now had found this book first. They had used it. They knew every debt he once held. Rex closed the ledger and pressed it against One2's chest. "You wanted eyes on the ground. Here they are." His jaw tightened. "But whoever wrote that knows you're coming. And they know this house." One2 gripped the book with dead fingers. He had his name at last. He also had a hunter who shared it.