Terrence Brooks Jr stood seven feet tall in a dead man's alley, and he still felt small. Back in Milwaukee, crowds screamed his name when he dunked. He drove past defenders smooth, like the ball owed him a favor. Then something dragged him here, to this broken block in the shadow of Sunspire City. He didn't belong. He wasn't even from Earth, though he didn't know that yet. He only knew one thing: a voice inside him said the answers to who he really was were buried under these streets. He needed a man who remembered. The old-timers whispered about a friend of the block boss who kept every secret. Rex McCaslo. Terrence found his cottage past a cluster of bright blue weed plants, their leaves shivering in the wind. Rex opened the door six inches. His hand shook on the frame. He was thin, gray, with eyes that kept darting past Terrence's shoulder. "You the ballplayer," Rex said. "You need to leave. Now." "I need to know what's under this block," Terrence said. "They say you know everything." "I know enough to stay quiet." Rex started to shut the door. Terrence caught it with one huge hand. "Please. I got nowhere else." Rex looked at Terrence's size, his desperation, and something cracked. He pulled him inside and locked three bolts. "There's tunnels," Rex whispered. "Old service tunnels, running under everything. Whoever put you here, they used them. That's where your answers are." He pointed a shaking finger at the floor. "But you can't go down there. He rules those streets now." "Who?" "One2." Rex's voice dropped to nothing. "A dead man. He walks. He killed Vane. He killed Beno, Ladybug, all thirty of her women. Ripped the souls right out of them. Now every runner on this block kneels to him." Terrence didn't blink. "A zombie." "Don't say it out loud. He hears things." Rex grabbed a scrap of paper and drew fast, sweat on his lip. Lines, turns, a way in. "This gets you into the tunnels without crossing his men. It's the only map that survived." He pressed it into Terrence's palm. Then his eyes went wide, staring past him at the window. Outside, gold teeth flashed under a streetlight. Sunglasses at night. One2 stood in the weeds, unmoving, watching the cottage. Rex made a small, broken sound. "He followed you." Terrence looked at the map, then at the old man's terror. He had what he came for. But he had led death straight to the only friend this block had left. "Go," Rex whispered. "Out the back. Take it and don't come back here." Terrence folded the map and slipped through the rear door into the dark. Behind him, he heard the front lock splinter. He didn't turn around. He had his way into the tunnels now. He just had to reach them before the dead man reached him.

Terrence ran through the weeds with the map crushed in his fist. Ahead, the towers of Sunspire City glowed cold and far away. Behind him, footsteps came slow and sure. Too sure. No living man walked like that. He cut between two dead buildings and stopped. The dead end trapped him. He turned, and One2 stepped into the moonlight. The zombie was small. That surprised Terrence. Gold teeth caught the light. Sunglasses hid dead eyes. Torn white shirt, gold chain, sneakers red at the toes. He looked like a kid from any block back home. Then he smiled, and Terrence felt his own soul pull toward those teeth, like a hook behind his ribs. "You took something from the old man," One2 said. His voice scraped. "Everything on this block is mine now. That includes you." He raised one small hand. Terrence felt his chest tug harder. His knees buckled. Something inside him was coming loose. Back in Milwaukee he had never thrown a punch. He was a ballplayer, not a fighter. He had nothing to fight a dead man with. But then the pull touched something buried deep. A warmth spread up his spine. His skin tingled. He looked at One2's raised hand, and he understood the move without being taught it. His body copied it. He raised his own hand and pulled back. One2 froze. His grin dropped. "What—" Terrence felt the zombie's own power flowing through him now, mirrored, matched. The tug reversed. One2 stumbled forward, dragged toward Terrence. Two forces locked between them, straining. The gold chain rattled. The weeds bent flat. "You ain't from here," One2 hissed. He knew something. Terrence saw it in the way the dead face twisted. "You one of them. From up there." "One of who?" Terrence shouted. One2 didn't answer. He ripped his hand free. The pull snapped. Both of them staggered back. Terrence's copied power flickered and died. His arms shook. He didn't know how to hold it yet. One2 backed toward the shadows. He wanted the tunnels safe, and now something stronger than him walked above them. "You go down there," he said, "you never come back up. That's a promise, tall boy." Then he was gone, fast, into the dark between the buildings. Terrence dropped to his knees in the weeds. His heart slammed. He looked at his own hands. They had done something impossible. He could copy anything. The dead man's power had lived in him for one breath. That was how he had survived. And One2 had known him. One of them. From up there. The words burned. The zombie hadn't just fought him. The zombie had recognized what he was. Terrence smoothed out the map against the dirt. The way into the tunnels waited. But now he wasn't only chasing answers about his home. He was chasing the one creature on this block who already knew where he came from.

The pull hit Terrence like a hook behind the ribs. He raised his own hand and mirrored it, and the air locked between them. Behind him, boots scraped stone. One2's guards filled the tunnel mouth, dead-eyed, and sealed it. The only way back to the ship in the weeds was gone. Terrence stood trapped in the blue-lit chamber with the dead man who killed his father. He needed the gold chain around One2's neck. It held the key to the ship. He would not leave without it. One2 strained against the mirrored pull. His gold teeth flashed. His hand shook, greedy, starving. "You copy me," he said, flat. "But you don't feel it. The hunger. I feel it for both of us." "I don't want your hunger," Terrence said. "I want the chain." One2 laughed, dry as gravel. "My cousin used to want what I had too." His voice dropped, quieter, direct. "Then the turn scattered him. Now I can't feel a dap. Can't feel nothing." His eyes went to the guards at the wall. "You think they love me? They just kneel." Terrence saw it then. The pull cost One2 everything he had. The dead man poured his want into the reach and left nothing to hold his own body steady. Terrence stopped fighting the pull head-on. He stepped sideways instead, still mirroring, and let One2 lean into empty air. One2 stumbled forward. Terrence caught the gold chain with his free hand and yanked. Links snapped. The black-and-gold key swung loose, cold and heavy in his palm. One2 roared and swiped. His gold teeth cracked the stone where Terrence's head had been. Terrence dropped the mirror. The tight air broke. He bolted for the sealed tunnel mouth, key clenched tight. The guards closed shoulder to shoulder. No gap. Then a growl rolled through the chamber, low and wrong for any dog. The black hound limped from a side crack in the wall. Gold marks flickered along its ribs. Half its side was torn. It should have been dead. It threw back its head and barked, sharp and ringing. The guards turned toward the sound, drawn like water tipping. The wall of dead men broke open. "Go," the hound growled. "I don't die easy." Terrence ran through the gap. He didn't look back. The barking pulled the guards left. He went right, up the dark path, key biting into his hand. Behind him One2 screamed one word. "Mine!" Then the tunnel bent, and the scream fell away. Terrence climbed toward the blue glow of the weeds above. He had the key. He'd taken it clean. But the hound had stayed below to buy the way out, and One2 knew the ship existed now. The dead man would come for it. Terrence broke into the open air and gripped the key tight. The ship waited in the weeds. His father's ship. And for the first time, he held the way to reach it.

Terrence walked up the ramp first. The others followed. Inside, the ship was warm and clean. Blue lights ran along the walls. In the center sat a round seat and a wide panel of controls. Terrence stared at the panel. He had the key. He had the ship. But he did not know how to make it move. The war hound climbed in last. The ramp sealed behind it. Gold marks glowed on its black coat. "I know this ship," the hound said. "Your father flew it. I rode with him. Sit, and I will show you the way home." Terrence sat. The hound pressed its paw to a dark stone on the panel. The stone lit purple. The whole ship woke. Screens filled with symbols Terrence could not read but somehow felt. The ground under them dropped away. "Yo, we moving," Demo said. He grabbed a rail with one diamond-ringed hand. "We actually moving, bro." His grin flashed under the blue light. Then the ship broke through the ground and shot into the dark sky above the dead city. Beno held the seat back and said nothing. His jersey glowed pale in the cabin light. He watched the stars come up outside the glass and kept his mouth shut, the way he did when a thing was too big to talk over. Ladybug leaned close to the front glass. Her red boots left mud on the clean floor. "How far?" she asked. The hound did not turn. "Far. Weeks of flying. His world is not close." It looked at Terrence. "You will sleep. You will wake. And you will still be flying. But at the end waits the place you came from." Terrence gripped the seat. Weeks. He had wanted answers today. Now the truth sat weeks away across black space. He thought about leaving. He thought about the notebooks at home, three of them, full of things he could not explain. This ship held the last answer. He would not turn back for time. "Then set the course," Terrence said. "All the way." The hound pressed the stone twice. The engines pulled hard. Everyone rocked back. The dead city shrank below until it was a gray smudge, then gone. Only stars remained. Hours passed. Terrence sat with the purple stone glowing under his hand. Then the front glass changed. Far ahead, small at first, a shape rose out of the dark. Towers stacked on towers. Purple and green and yellow light burned along their edges. A whole city, floating in the black, far beyond anything Earth had built. Demo stopped talking. Ladybug went still. Beno stepped up to the glass. "That's it," the hound said. "Shubhamvo. Where they took you from." Terrence stood. The sky behind those towers was deep purple, with light inside it. The exact sky from his memory. Age three. Laughing. He had drawn it once and torn the page out. "It's real," he said. "It was always real." The ship flew on toward the purple sky.

The floating city grew until it filled the front glass. Towers rose in purple, green, and yellow light. A landing ledge opened along its lower edge, wide enough for the ship. The hound guided them down. "They see us," it said. "They always see. The question is what they do next." Terrence gripped the seat. He came from this place. But he did not know if these people wanted him back or wanted him gone. "We don't know these folks," Beno said. His hand rested near his pistol. "We walk out blind, we could walk into a wall of guns." He said it flat, then went quiet. Demo pressed his face to the glass. "Bro, look. No welcome party. No nothing." He tapped his diamond ring on the panel, fast, the way he did when he was nervous. "Maybe they cool. Maybe they ain't." Ladybug studied the empty ledge. "You send a scout first," she said. "You don't hand them the whole team. If they take one, the rest still have a choice." Her voice stayed soft. Terrence had learned not to trust the softness. The ramp lowered. Cool air came in. One figure stood on the ledge. It was tall and thin, wrapped in a white uniform. Its head was a smooth white dome with two blue lights for eyes. It did not carry a weapon. Terrence went down the ramp alone. The others waited at the top, watching. The figure raised one hand. Then, a second later, it smiled the exact smile Terrence had not yet made. It was copying him, but slow, always a beat behind. "I am Gideon," it said. "I catalogue arrivals. State your kind." "I don't know my kind," Terrence said. "That's why I came. I was taken from here. As a child." Gideon tilted its dome. The blue eyes flickered. "Scan complete." A pause. "Your bones. Your build. Your soul-mark." Another pause. "You are Aivrûn. City-born. Blood of the raisers." Then, one second late, Gideon's face fell into the shock Terrence felt spread across his own face. "So they know me," Terrence said. "Do they want me?" "The raisers are honored here," Gideon said. "But you have been gone many years. And you did not come alone." The blue eyes turned up the ramp, to Beno's pistol, to Demo's chains, to Ladybug's red boots. "Outsiders. That will be tested. The city fears what it does not know." Terrence looked back at his team. Then he faced Gideon. "They come with me. All of them. Or none of us comes in." Gideon was silent. Then it copied Terrence's hard stare, late, and stepped aside. "Then walk. But know this. The council will decide if you are son or threat. And they have killed both." Terrence walked into the city of his birth. He was welcome. And he was on trial.

Gideon led them through the city to a stone hall with tall columns and a great clock on its face. Inside, the council sat behind a long table. They watched Terrence and his team file in. Beno kept his hand near his pistol. Ladybug scanned the exits. Demo tapped his ring against his leg. Terrence knew what Gideon had warned him. The council would decide: son or threat. And he had no proof he was raiser blood except the power itself. One council member stood. "You claim the raisers' blood," she said. "Show us. But know that raw power without control is what we fear most. One wrong act, and you are put down." A blue-skinned man stepped from a side door. Red hair, gray uniform, a badge clipped to his chest. He carried a thin stack of records. "Killbo Hells," he said. "City records." He set the papers down and looked at Terrence. "Your name was in our files. Then it was pulled. Same as mine." He said it flat. "Someone here doesn't want you proven. That should tell you something." Terrence understood. If he raised the dead here, in this hall, and lost control, they would kill him. But it was the only proof he had. He turned to his team. "If I do this and it goes wrong, they take me down. I need you to catch it if I slip." Beno nodded once. "We got you." Ladybug moved to Terrence's left. "Aim at the soul," she said. "Not the body. Like I taught you." Demo stepped to his right and pressed a hand to Terrence's shoulder. "Together, bro. We're the same blood." Killbo pointed to a sealed alcove. "There's a body in there. A council servant, died this week." He looked at the members. "Let him try. If he's a raiser, you'll know." The council opened the alcove. A still form lay on a slab. Terrence closed his eyes. He felt for the living energy the way Ladybug had shown him. He found it, faint, above the body. He reached for the soul, not the flesh. Demo's hand tightened on his shoulder. Their power ran together, one current. The body drew breath. It sat up slow, eyes clear, calm. Not a mindless thing. A clean raising. The servant stood and bowed to the council. The hall went silent. Then the council member who had stood spoke. "Only raiser blood raises a soul whole. You are Aivrûn. You are a son of this city." Terrence had his proof. But Killbo stepped close and lowered his voice. "They believe you now. But someone erased your name on purpose. That person is on the council. And now they know you're strong enough to raise the dead clean." He held Terrence's eyes. "You didn't win a friend today. You woke an enemy."

The council let Terrence go, but the hall did not feel safe. Someone on the council had erased his name. That person now knew Terrence could raise the dead clean. Beno, Demo, and Ladybug stood with him, but none of them knew this city. They knew nothing about Terrence's father, or why he had hidden a ship on a dead world. Terrence had proof of his blood now. What he did not have was one person inside these walls who could point him at the truth. He found Killbo alone in the records room. The blue-skinned clerk sat bent over a wide table, sorting thin sheets by hand. His stolen badge caught the light. Killbo did not look up. "You should be gone," he said. "They watch the halls now." "You said your name got pulled too," Terrence said. "Same as mine. Three years ago." He set his hands flat on the table. "That's not a coincidence. Whoever hid me hid you." Killbo went still. He set down the sheet. "I've been hunting that person since I took this job." He tapped the table twice. "I sit at the source and read the files they scrubbed. I know which drawers stay locked." "Then we want the same thing," Terrence said. "You want the name. I want my father. Same file." Beno stepped closer, one hand near his pistol. "He clean?" he asked Terrence, low. Terrence watched Killbo's face. In the council hall, Killbo had told him hard truths without dressing them up. He had warned Terrence when it cost him nothing to stay quiet. "He warned me when nobody else would," Terrence said. "That's enough." Killbo pulled a locked drawer open with a key from his own pocket. Inside sat one sheet, edges burned. "Your father's flight record," he said. "Half of it's ash. But the name that signed the erase order is on the bottom." He turned it over. The signature line was scraped down to bare fibers. Someone had gouged it out. Demo leaned in. "So we got nothing, bro?" "Not nothing," Killbo said. "Only one council member has clearance to scrape a signature after the fact. One office." He looked at Terrence. "I can get you to that office. Tonight. But once we go in, they'll know I moved. I've spent three years staying invisible. I spend that tonight." Ladybug studied him. "Why burn it for us?" "Because I can't reach that office alone," Killbo said. "You can raise a dead servant in front of the whole council. I can't do that." He folded the burned sheet into his jacket. "I need you as much as you need me." Terrence held out his hand. Killbo took it. The lost man in a strange city now had one ally who knew its locks and its lies. But the deal had a price. To find his father, Terrence had to break into the office of the very person who had erased them both. And that person would know by morning.