A crew boss had put a price on Bad Habit's eyes. Not his head. His eyes. Word on the shadow districts of Los Memories said any dealer who spotted the man in black earned a fat purse. So Bad Habit could not walk the corners anymore, and corners were where you burned a boss out. He wanted every crew boss dead. He wanted the throne. But he could not cross a single street without a pointed finger. He crouched in his house, the one shaped like a snarling beast, its fanged door shut behind him. Two lantern windows glowed like watching eyes. Inside, small gremlins scuttled across his floor, chewing on wire and scrap. He fed them stolen batteries. They fed him ideas. One gremlin dragged a burlap sack toward his boots. Bad Habit opened it and found dried honey cakes. He grinned. His golden teeth caught the lantern light. By his window grew a plant with a serpent's face and dripping vines. It loved honey more than blood. He crushed a cake and smeared the sweetness across the cracked sill. The plant's vines uncoiled. Its yellow eyes fixed on the trail of honey he laid out the door and down the path. The bounty worked on sight. So Bad Habit gave the dealers something else to look at. He led the honey trail three blocks, feeding the plant a smear at every corner where a spotter waited. The vine followed, growing bolder, snapping at anyone who came near its meal. Dealers screamed and scattered. They pointed at the plant, not at him. He walked behind it in plain black, red eyes low, just another shadow chasing the monster. The crew boss stood outside a tall, sagging building, barking at his spotters. "Find the man, not the weed!" He was thick-necked, gold rings on every finger, a pistol loose in his fist. His men froze when the vine lunged for their boss's boots. Bad Habit stepped through the panic. "You bought my eyes," he said. "Look at them." The boss turned. Their gazes met. Bad Habit held the stare, and heat bloomed behind his own red eyes. The boss's collar caught first. Then his sleeves. He beat at the flames with ringed hands and only spread them. His spotters ran. He dropped, smoking, on the steps of his own building. The bounty died with him. No boss left to pay it, no purse for a pointed finger. The corners were open again. But a burning man draws a crowd. Bad Habit felt the eyes now, dozens of them, from windows and doorways. They had watched him kill a boss with a look. By morning, every crew in the districts would know his face and his gift. The bounty was gone. In its place he had earned something worse. He was no longer a rumor. He was a target with a name.

The corners were open again, but every crew now knew Bad Habit's face. He needed a target the crowds could not guard. He found one in a low bar full of smoke and card tables. An ogre sat across from him, huge and half-drunk, dealing a sloppy hand. Bad Habit let the ogre win two rounds. Then he let him talk. "Next boss you want is close," the ogre slurred. He tapped the floor with a thick finger. "Down under. Crocodile crew holds the tunnels. Nobody walks in there and walks back out." He laughed, then coughed. Bad Habit folded his cards and stood. He had his goal. The problem was getting below ground without an army of teeth waiting for him. Back home, his little gremlins swarmed his boots, chewing scrap wire. He crushed a honey cake and thought. The gremlins could not fight crocodiles. But they could dig, and they could carry his small tinkering creatures, the clever ones with their gadgets and impish grins. He filled a sack. The gremlins dragged it toward a broken drain that fed the tunnels below. He teleported down the shaft in a blink. Cold water soaked his black boots. The tunnel stank of mud and rot. His red eyes lit the dark. Ahead stood the boss himself, an anthropomorphic crocodile in a battle-worn jacket, chains swinging on his scaled chest. Two rows of teeth split into a grin. "The burning man," the crocodile said. His voice was a low grind. "You came to me. Saves my crew the trouble." Guns clicked in the shadows behind him. A dozen of them. "Look at my eyes," Bad Habit said. It was the line that had worked before. This time the crocodile did not look. He turned his snout aside and snapped his claws. His crew opened fire. Bad Habit blinked sideways. Bullets struck the wall where he had stood. He drew his black pistol and fired melting rounds into two gunmen. They dropped screaming. But the crocodile was already gone, splashing deeper into the flooded dark where Bad Habit's heat could not find a face to catch. He reached into the sack. His tinkering sprites poured out, tools flashing. They scrambled up the tunnel walls and jammed the crew's guns with wire and grit. The gremlins bit ankles. In the chaos Bad Habit teleported behind the last shooter and burned him where he stood. The crew was broken. But the boss had escaped. Water dripped in the silence. Bad Habit stood among smoking bodies, alone, deep under enemy ground. He had won the tunnel and lost the head he came for. Worse, the crocodile now knew his trick. The one boss who would not meet his eyes had slipped away, and he had gone to warn the others.

Bad Habit climbed out of the drain with wet boots and no head to show for it. The crocodile boss had slipped into water too deep to follow. Every minute the reptile swam free, he swam toward the other bosses with news of Bad Habit's tricks. Bad Habit could not chase him blind through the tunnels. He needed someone who knew the low places. He pulled out his phone and called the one person who owned them. "Bingo," he said. "I need your ground." The east end trenches were cut deep and lined with cold mud. Bad Habit had played in these ditches as a boy. Bingo waited for him there, hands in his hoodie pockets, small and still, red-black hair over dark eyes. To strangers he looked like a bored kid. Bad Habit knew better. The air around Bingo shimmered with heat, and a low growl slid under his human voice. He was a fire-breathing dragon who ruled these trenches, and he only wore the boy's shape for people he trusted. "You come back after all this time asking for favors," Bingo said. He kicked a stone into the water. Then he grinned, and smoke curled from his lip. "Good. I was getting bored. Who's running?" "A crocodile boss. He took the flooded tunnels. He's warning the crews I'm coming." Bingo's grin dropped. "The water lines all drain out through my trenches. Everything down there flows to me." He tilted his head, listening to something Bad Habit could not hear. "Something big is swimming this way right now." Bad Habit sent his gremlins ahead. They scuttled to the mouths of the drain pipes and clung to the edges, watching. Bingo went invisible. The air just bent where he had stood, a wall of heat sliding down toward the largest pipe. Bad Habit crouched behind a mud bank and waited. The crocodile burst from the pipe in a rush of black water. He was fast, already turning to bolt down the trench. Then the water in front of him boiled. Bingo breathed fire across the surface, and steam walled the reptile in. The crocodile roared and thrashed, cut off from the deeper channels. "He won't look at your eyes," Bingo called from the steam. "So don't give him a choice." Bad Habit teleported onto the crocodile's back. He grabbed the scaled snout with both hands and wrenched it up. For one second the red eyes met the yellow ones. The crocodile went stiff, then still. Smoke rose from his jacket. Bad Habit let the body slide into the water. He stood in the steam, breathing hard. The warning would never reach the other bosses. Bingo shimmered back into his boy shape beside him, arms crossed. "One down," Bingo said. "But that thing came here to talk. Somebody was waiting to hear him." He looked up the trench. "And now they'll wonder why he never showed."

The crocodile was dead, but the trail died with him. Somebody had waited to hear that reptile talk. Now that voice knew trouble was coming and had vanished. Bad Habit stood in the cooling steam and understood the problem. He could not burn a boss he could not find. Bingo scraped mud off his shoe and read his face. "You're chasing smoke," Bingo said. "The one who waited won't come to you. He'll hide." His dark eyes flicked to the dead crocodile in the water. "But he had a brother. Big snake. Wears a black turtleneck and thinks he's a gentleman. King Slither." Smoke leaked from Bingo's lip. "Slither loved that crocodile. Blood pulls him out where fear keeps him down." Bad Habit understood at once. He could not track King Slither. So he would make King Slither come to the body. He dragged the crocodile from the water and propped it against a mud bank, deep in shadow. From the dark, the shape looked whole. Alive. Waiting. Bingo sent word through the low channels that the crocodile had surfaced here. Then the two of them climbed the trench wall and hid behind a slope of wet earth. Bad Habit sent his gremlins down first. The little scouts scattered along the drain mouths, wiry bodies clinging to the pipes, watching every angle. They waited. An hour passed. Then a gremlin chittered a warning. A wall of vines shivered near the trench floor. Bad Habit had not seen the hole hidden behind them. The green curtain pulled back, and King Slither poured out. He was huge, longer than a man is tall, coiled muscle under a black turtleneck. His yellow eyes swept the shadows and found the crocodile's silhouette. "Brother," King Slither said. His voice was smooth, almost kind. He glided closer. "They told me you were dead." Bad Habit felt Bingo tense beside him. "He's out," Bingo whispered. "That's your window." Bad Habit watched the snake reach the body. King Slither touched the cold snout and went still. The kindness drained from his face. He knew. "You're not sleeping," King Slither hissed. His head snapped up, scanning the walls. "Who did this? Show yourself!" Bad Habit did not answer. He would not kill Slither blind, not yet. He wanted the snake to lead him to the rest. He signaled the gremlins. They swarmed the drain pipes and screeched, driving King Slither back from the hole. The snake reared, furious, then bolted into a channel Bad Habit had not known existed. Bad Habit teleported to the mouth of that channel and marked it in his mind. He had lost the boss's hiding place before. Now he had found the door to the snake gang itself. "You wanted a trail," Bingo said, climbing down. "You just made one." Bad Habit stared into the dark tunnel where King Slither had fled. The dead crocodile had one more use. It had pulled a living boss out of the ground. Now Bad Habit knew exactly where to burn next.

Bad Habit chased King Slither into the tunnel and felt the floor drop under him. Behind, the snake struck a valve on the wall. Water burst from the ceiling in a black wall. It slammed the passage shut. Bad Habit spun. The way back was gone, sealed by a wall of rushing water. Ahead, the tunnel narrowed and sloped down. The flood was rising fast around his boots. King Slither's laugh slid back through the dark. "Swim, then. Or drown. My brother drowned better men than you." His tail flicked once and he poured deeper into the tunnel, gone. Bad Habit tried to teleport past the sealed wall. He blinked forward and hit stone. He could not jump to a place he could not see. The water reached his knees. His red eyes could burn a man, but they could not boil a flood. He needed a way through, not a fight. He pulled the little creatures from his coat pockets. His habit sprites. Tiny things, quick and clever, each strapped with tools and gauges. They rode with him for jobs like this. One clutched a small jar of glowing honey against its chest. Bad Habit had used honey before to feed the vampire vine that guarded the snake's hole. The sprite understood. "Find air," Bad Habit said. "Find a crack." The sprites scattered into the drain pipes lining the tunnel. Water climbed to his chest. Cold pressed his ribs. He counted his breaths and waited. Then a sprite screeched from a low pipe near the floor. It waved a bent wrench and pointed. The sprites had jammed the pipe grate open. Behind it, the honey jar sat wedged in a seam. The vampire vine had smelled the honey and forced its head through the wall, cracking the stone wide. Its serpent eyes glowed. Its jaws dripped and snapped at the sweet jar. The plant tore at the seam, hungry, widening the gap with every pull. Bad Habit took a breath and dove. He swam for the broken seam. The vine's jaws snapped past his shoulder, chasing the honey, not him. He grabbed the cracked edge and hauled himself through into a dry side channel. Water gushed after him, then slowed as the tunnel behind filled and settled. He lay on cold stone, coughing. The sprites climbed onto his chest, chittering, pleased with themselves. He counted them. All there. The one who carried the honey had left it behind for the vine. Bad Habit stood in the dry channel. Fresh air moved against his face. It came from ahead, from the direction Slither had fled. The snake had tried to bury him and only shown him the shape of his home. Bad Habit followed the moving air toward the snake gang's base. But first we fish where is my fishing pole little creatures the catfish are biting and I’m hungry Woot woot

Bad Habit followed the moving air deeper into the dark. The tunnel forked. Two mouths yawned ahead, both black, both breathing. He crouched and licked his thumb. The air pulled left, faint. Then it shifted right. He could not tell which passage carried Slither's scent. Pick wrong and the snake would reach his gang. Pick wrong and Bad Habit would face a whole crew alone. He let the sprites loose. They scattered into both forks, wrenches raised. One squealed from the left. Bad Habit ran that way and lost the trail in a third branch. He stopped, chest heaving. The tunnels were a maze built to break a hunter. He was losing. Then a red glow rose from the stone floor. A fruit sat wedged in a crack, and it lifted on its own. Its skin burned like a coal wrapped in gold lines. Marks he could not read crawled across it. Bad Habit froze. His phone buzzed. Bingo, his childhood friend, the only one who saw the dragon under his boy's face. "You still breathing down there?" Bingo's voice was tight. "I felt something wake up in the tunnels. Something old." "I'm looking at it," Bad Habit said. The fruit drifted toward him, slow, like it had chosen him. "A fruit. It's glowing." Bingo went quiet. Then: "Don't just stare at it, fool. Some of those grant power. Some kill you." The fruit touched Bad Habit's palm and sank warmth into his arm. His whole body hummed. Pictures flooded his head. He saw himself as a rat, as a stone, as a snake with yellow eyes. The knowing settled in his bones. He could become anything now. "I felt that," Bingo breathed. "What did it give you?" Bad Habit smiled. His golden teeth caught the fruit's last light. "A new door." He shut his eyes and pictured King Slither. His skin cooled and slid. His arms shrank to a green body. His black clothes hung loose, then reshaped. When he opened his eyes, they sat lower to the ground. A tail swept the stone behind him. He tasted the air with a forked tongue. Now every scent was clear. Slither's trail glowed in his mind like a bright thread through the maze. It ran down the right fork, past the third branch, deep toward the base. "I've got him," Bad Habit hissed. His own voice came out wrong, a snake's rasp. He gathered the sprites into his coat and poured himself into the right tunnel, fast and low. He reached a wide chamber. Snake gang guards lined the walls. They saw one of their own slide in and did not raise a weapon. Bad Habit passed between them, unseen for what he was. King Slither stood at the far end, hissing orders, his gang whole around him. The air current had lied to him. The fruit had not. Bad Habit was inside now, wearing his enemy's face, standing in the heart of the snake's home. Bad Habit laughs to himself

Bad Habit held the snake shape and slid closer to King Slither. The plan had been simple. Get near, drop the disguise, burn him with one look. But the chamber was worse than he thought. Fifty snake soldiers packed the walls. Slither's tail swept the floor as he barked orders. If Bad Habit turned back to himself now, the whole crew would swarm him before his eyes could lock on their boss. He was stuck. A snake in a room of snakes, with no clear shot. Slither raised his head. His yellow eyes narrowed at the crowd. "Someone smells wrong in here," he hissed. He wore his black turtleneck like he ran a bank, not a gang. "Find the stranger." Bad Habit's snake heart hammered. Soldiers began sniffing the floor. In minutes they would reach him. He pressed against the cold stone and thought of his gremlins tucked in his shrunken coat. Not enough. Fifty against a handful. Then the floor cracked open near the wall. A small wooden house pushed up through the stone. It had crooked shutters, a grinning door, and eyes painted on the front that seemed to move. The door swung wide. Out stepped a toddler with locs that dragged the ground, gold teeth, and gold eyes that glowed. "Daddy," Koul Habits said, "you in a little bind." Bad Habit froze in his snake skin. His son. Here. Underground, in the deepest nest, somehow following him this whole time. Pride and fear hit him at once. Koul was a baby. Koul did not play about his father. Slither spun toward the child. "Kill it!" he screamed. The soldiers rushed Koul. The boy just tilted his head. In an instant the snakes closest to him stopped. Their bodies stiffened and dropped. Koul waved one small hand and a wall of soldiers flew back into the stone. He did not blink. He did not hurry. He walked toward his father, and the crew scattered from his path like water. "Go get him, Daddy," Koul said. "I got the rest." That was all Bad Habit needed. He let the snake shape fall away. His body stretched tall. Black clothes, red eyes, golden teeth returned. The soldiers turned toward him, but Koul was already tossing them like toys, his little house behind him spitting out mini gremlins that swarmed the fallen crew. King Slither tried to flee. Bad Habit locked eyes with him. Heat poured from his red gaze. Slither's turtleneck caught first. Then the snake boss shrieked, curled, and went still. The crew broke. Some ran. Most did not rise. Bad Habit stood over the dead boss, breathing hard, his son at his side. "You followed me," Bad Habit said. Koul grinned with gold teeth. "Always." Slither was gone. But Slither had lieutenants who had fled the chamber alive, and they knew now that a child fought beside Bad Habit. His enemy had become his family's enemy too. We gotta go get your sister Bad Habits say to Koul

Bad Habit stood in the dead chamber with his son. Slither's body lay burned at his feet. But Slither's lieutenants had run, and they knew now that Bad Habit had children. He grabbed Koul's small hand. "We gotta find your sister. They'll go for her first." He didn't know where she was. His enemies had a head start, and the tunnels twisted in every direction. Koul tugged loose and grinned. His gold eyes glowed. "I know where Emmy is." He crossed the chamber to his little pop-up house, still standing crooked in the broken stone. Its painted eyes rolled. Koul knocked twice on the grinning door. "She's close. She's always close." Bad Habit called Bingo on the run. His childhood friend answered fast. Bingo could breathe fire that trapped a snake in a trench. He was the boss of the east end and the one ally Bad Habit trusted underground. "Two lieutenants slipped out the north drain," Bingo said. "Headed up top. They're hunting a girl. Your girl?" "My girl," Bad Habit said. "Cut them off." They climbed toward daylight. Koul's mini gremlins spilled from the house and scouted the passage ahead, chittering back what they saw. Near the tunnel mouth, the gremlins froze. Two snake lieutenants had a teenage girl backed against the wall. Brown locs. Red eyes. Gold teeth. Emmy Habits. Bad Habit's heart dropped. Then he saw her face. She wasn't scared. She was bored. One lieutenant lunged. Emmy blurred sideways, faster than a cheetah. She was behind him before he finished the strike. She lifted him off his feet with one hand and threw him into the stone. He didn't get up. The second one drew a blade. Emmy's feet left the ground. She flew straight at him, caught his wrist, and squeezed until the blade dropped. "You came for my little brother," she said. "That was your mistake." Koul burst from the tunnel laughing. "Emmy!" He flung out one hand and pinned the last lieutenant to the wall without touching him. Emmy landed beside him and ruffled his dragging locs. "You following Daddy into snake nests now?" she said. "He needed help," Koul said. "You needed help too." "I had it handled." She smiled at him with gold teeth. Bad Habit reached them and pulled both children close. Bingo landed at the tunnel mouth, unseen, only his breath warming the air. The lieutenant pinned to the wall stared at all of them. A father with killing eyes. A toddler who moved men without a touch. A girl who flew and hit like an ape. "Let him look," Bad Habit said. "Then let him run." Koul dropped his hand. The lieutenant fled up the drain. Bad Habit watched him go. Emmy was safe. His family stood together, whole, in one place for the first time. But the runner would tell every boss left in Los Memories what he'd seen. His children weren't a secret anymore. They were a legend. And the throne wasn't going to burn itself. Bad Habits chuckles “ready for some fun kids?”

The fighting was done, so Bad Habit took his kids home. His house sat at the edge of the water, all fangs and spikes, its yellow window-eyes watching the road. It looked like a monster, and that was the point. Inside, it kept them safe. "We rest here," he told them. "Nobody moves fast on us out here. We fish. We breathe." Koul carried his little pop-up house under one arm. Emmy carried nothing but her boredom. Morning came quiet. They sat on the dock with lines in the water. NIKO, the family's black puppy, paced the boards, gold teeth bared at every ripple. Koul's line went tight first. He braced his small feet and pulled. Whatever he'd hooked was big. It dragged him a foot across the wood before Bad Habit grabbed his son's belt. "Hold it, boy." Koul laughed. His gold eyes glowed. He reeled, all his focus on the water. NIKO stopped pacing. The puppy faced the trees behind them and growled low. Bad Habit turned. He'd been watching the fish. They all had. That was the trick. A figure stood at the tree line. Half man, half shark, with flat black eyes and a jacket of skull patches. Tricky Dayz ran the north side. He liked his food to run first, and he counted while it did. He had come alone, smiling with rows of razor teeth. "Big fish," Tricky said. He nodded at Koul's straining line. "You're all looking the wrong way." His black eyes moved over the children. "Word says these two are gold. I came to see the bait for myself." Bad Habit stepped between Tricky and his kids. "You came to my door." "I came to play." Tricky spread his hands. "Run. I'll count. Nobody makes it far." "No games." Bad Habit's eyes went red. Emmy was already moving. She left the dock feet-first and hit Tricky in the chest before he finished his grin. He flew back into a tree. He came up fast, jaws snapping, and lunged for her. Koul dropped his fishing pole. He flung one hand out. Tricky froze in the air, held by nothing, feet kicking. "You wanted to see us," Emmy said. Flat. She landed beside her brother. "Now you see us." Bad Habit walked up to the pinned shark. Heat rose off his stare. Tricky's black eyes went wide for the first time. "Wait," Tricky said. "Count for me. Let me run." "You never let anybody run," Bad Habit said. His gaze burned into Tricky's face. The north side boss dropped, smoking, and did not move. Koul picked his pole back up. The big fish was gone. "It got away," he said. "Let it," Bad Habit said. He looked at his children on the dock, whole and unafraid. Tricky Dayz had thought his family was bait. Now the north side had no boss. One more throne stood empty, and one more crew would soon know his name.

Tricky Dayz still smoked on the ground when Bad Habit turned back to the water. Three thrones stood empty now. He had burned out the crew boss, the crocodile, King Slither, and now the north side shark. But one boss still ruled somewhere in the shadow districts, unchallenged, and Bad Habit did not know his name. He looked down at the dead shark by the trees. Sharks knew sharks. He had a way to ask. "I'm going to find out who this one knew," Bad Habit told his children. "There's a boss left. I need his name." He nodded at the smoking body. "His kind talk to each other. So I'll wear his face." Koul looked up from his fishing pole. His gold eyes moved over his father, then over the trees, catching something no one else saw. "Take me," he said. Flat. No begging. "You stay," Bad Habit said. "Watch your sister. Watch NIKO." Emmy folded her arms. "He does what he wants. You know that." Bad Habit knew it. But he needed to move quiet, and quiet was not a thing you brought a toddler along for. "I'll be back," he said. He crouched over Tricky Dayz. He fixed the flat black eyes, the rows of teeth, the skull-patch jacket in his mind. The fruit's power rose in him. His skin darkened to gray. His teeth grew sharp. His eyes went black as nothing. When he stood, he wore the shark's shape, and only his family knew the truth. Then he was gone toward the deep channel where sharks kept their business. Back on the dock, Koul stared at the spot his father left. He did not follow. His locs dragged behind him across the wet boards, and something old pulled up from the wood. He stopped. His gold eyes fixed on the water at the dock's edge. Something floated there. A fruit. Red, with lines of gold and violet crawling over its skin, glowing faint under the ripples. It bobbed against the pilings as if it had come looking. Not the shapeshift fruit his father ate deep in the tunnels. Another one. Whole. Waiting. Emmy came to his side. "What is it?" Koul reached down and lifted it out of the water. It was warm in his small hand. The gold lines pulsed once, matching his eyes. NIKO stopped pacing and sat, quiet, watching the boy hold it. "For me," Koul said. He did not explain. He closed his fingers around it and said nothing more. Bad Habit swam out wearing a dead man's face, hunting the last name in the shadow districts. He did not know his son now held a blessing pulled straight from the water. The throne count was three down, one to go. And on the dock behind him, something had chosen Koul, and Koul had chosen back.