Shattered: Beyond End [RECODED] Arc 1: Echoes Before Fire
Chapter 3 — The Price of Permission
——
"Yo. You're back already? It's been, what—an hour? What, did the job cancel itself?"
Kun squinted at him. "You're not even dirty. Did you fight someone or just give them the death stare special?. What, did the job cancel itself?"
Kun sat on the apartment floor, legs crossed, slurping noodles straight from the pot like a man who'd accepted all five stages of poverty.
"You look like you got mugged by a sewer pipe," he muttered mid-chew, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.
Suho didn't respond.
He walked straight to the table, reached into his jacket— —and dropped a card onto the wood.
Clink. Metal on metal. Silver sigil flashing in the low light.
Kun blinked.
"…What is this—some cursed USB or a murder license?"
He picked it up. The card was surprisingly heavy. Black steel, smooth edges. Faint glowing text pulsed like a heartbeat.
——
COUNTERS ACADEMY Division: Rookie Recruitment
——
"Wait—this is real? Bro, I thought you'd toss it in the trash or feed it to one of those freak alley cats."
Suho's silence stretched long and sharp.
Kun sighed, setting the pot down with a clatter. His voice dropped.
"Look... if you're thinking about doing this—then yeah. I'm in. No questions."
He gestured to the room around them—cracked walls, flickering light, ramen smell that never fully left.
"This place? This life? It's a goddamn graveyard, man. We're working jobs that pay in blood and broken bones—and we still can't afford hot water or decent noodles."
BANG. BANG. BANG.
The door jumped like it got shot.
"OI, LITTLE SHITS!"
The voice outside was a war horn dipped in gravel and alcohol.
"You got two days! If I don't see rent, I'm feeding you both to my Category-3 pet!"
Kun flinched.
"…Damn. Category-3? That's the hound with four legs and zero remorse, right?"
Suho said nothing. But his jaw flexed—once, sharp and tight. He'd heard this same threat a dozen times. It never got easier to ignore.
"I'm not joking, man. This city? It eats you slow. We either change the ending or we rot here like everyone else."
Suho finally spoke, voice quiet.
"He knew everything about us."
Kun paused mid-reach.
"Wait, who the hell are we talking about?"
"The recruiter. He knew our names. Yours too."
Kun's brows furrowed.
"No way. We've been nobodies since birth. Unless someone leaked my mixtape or something. You think I'm trending?"
A long beat passed.
Then Kun leaned back against the wall, tapping the edge of the card on his knee.
"Only one who might have dirt on this is Ray. If anyone's heard whispers, it's him. He used to vet merc contracts before they hit the street—if Admin's sniffing around, he'd smell it first."
Suho nodded once.
"Midnight. Less eyes. Less ears."
——
The city didn't sleep. It just hallucinated louder after midnight.
Smog hung low, mixing with neon haze as Kun and Suho made their way through the underbelly of District 9. Streetlights flickered overhead—half-burnt, half-hacked, all useless. Each corner buzzed with a different flavor of danger.
A half-built android sat slumped on the curb, eyes glowing blue, whispering broken pickup lines to no one. Two kids traded contraband chips beneath a sign that said "FEELINGS SOLD HERE" in cracked holo-font.
Kun kicked a bottle out of the way and pulled his hood higher.
"Man… this place never changes. Still smells like piss, broken dreams, and something fried that shouldn't be."
Suho didn't laugh. Didn't have to.
"You ever feel like this whole city's a loop? Like no matter where we go, we end up in the same damn gutter with different graffiti."
"All the time. That's why I stopped pretending it leads anywhere."
They passed a wall layered in old wanted posters—faces long dead, bounty tags scratched out or faded to nothing. Most of them were nobodies. People the city forgot after they bled.
Kun glanced at them but didn't stop.
"Dead men with a price tag," Kun muttered. "Guess that's one way to get remembered."
They turned a corner.
There it was.
Momoka's. Ray's heavily fortified base of operations.
The building loomed like a neon shrine to chaos—pink light pulsing, holograms glitching across velvet signage. Heavily guarded. Two mercs at the entrance, eyes cold behind reinforced visors. Smart rifles across their chests. One tracked Kun lazily with a motion sensor.
Girls leaned against the rails above—smoking, laughing, watching. Some armored, some half-dressed, all dangerous. You didn't survive here unless you could seduce or shoot.
Kun let out a low whistle.
"Well, shit… Ray went from fixer to nightclub warlord real fast."
Suho's eyes narrowed.
"This isn't a front anymore. It's fortified."
"Not just a fortress. A fortress with high heels and armed sarcasm."
As they approached, a girl peeled off from the wall—black heels clicking, lips curled in a lazy smirk.
"Here to play, pretty boy… or pay respects to the king upstairs?"
"We're not here for games. We want Ray."
"Mmm… shame. Your brother looks like he came here to sin, not talk."
"Let him look. He's not touching anything."
"Didn't say I wasn't interested," Kun muttered.
She smirked. The guards waved them through.
Inside, heat hit them like breath. Perfume, smoke, synthbeats, and something synthetic and sharp. The scent of sweat, sex, and synthetic oil coated the air like a film.
Girls laughed behind walls. Moans curled with synth beats blaring from hidden speakers, pulsing like a heartbeat on drugs. Somewhere, a sultry auto-tuned voice hummed through static:
"Bleed for me slow— Don't beg, just glow— Touch the neon, lose control..."
Lights flickered in broken rhythm—red, blue, red, white, glitch. The floor vibrated faintly with the bass, like the whole building was trying to seduce and swallow them.
A girl passed Kun, brushing his arm with a smile too perfect to be real. Her outfit barely qualified as clothing; her eyes said she'd kill a man before her shift ended.
"This place's changed," Kun muttered, eyes scanning the chaos. "Cleaner floors, dirtier vibes."
"Ray's not running a brothel anymore," Suho said, voice dry. "He's running a network."
They climbed the creaking stairs. Each step carried heat, bass, and the weight of secrets leaking through the walls.
The second floor was quieter—but only just.
The hallway stretched like something out of a fever dream. Doors lined both sides—some cracked open, some sealed tight.
From one room: a soft, rhythmic creaking and breathy moans. From another: a woman's laughter rising over static music, then cut off mid-sound. One door swung open just enough to show a glimpse of tangled limbs and red lighting, then shut again like a mouth closing over a secret.
Behind a half-busted panel, a man coughed violently. A needle clattered on tile.
Everything felt too alive. Too close.
Kun walked like he was stepping through a memory he wasn't sure belonged to him.
Suho kept his eyes forward.
At the end of the hall: a steel-reinforced door. Massive. Battered. Etched in faded silver glyphs—some glowing faintly, others twitching like they remembered pain.
One symbol pulsed so erratically Kun winced just looking at it.
"These things hum like they've seen shit," Kun muttered. "You sure Ray's not summoning demons in there?"
Suho didn't respond. He was already staring at the door like it might open on its own.
KNOCK. KNOCK.
A muffled voice came through.
"Get in."
——
They entered.
Ray's room hit like a wall of heat and perfume—sweet, choking, dangerous.
Two guards flanked the walls like statues. Two girls sprawled across the couch—one idly sharpening a blade, the other smoking something that smelled like sin and citrus.
Ray sat at the center like a king too tired to care—shirt half-open, boots on the table, a cigar in one hand and half a bottle of vodka in the other.
He grinned like they were late to their own funeral.
"Ahhh, look who the sewer dragged in.
My boys, back from the land of ramen and regret."
He raised the bottle in greeting, took a drink.
"So. You here for a drink, a debt, or to stab me?"
Suho didn't blink.
His voice came out quiet, but sharp enough to cut a bottle in half.
"We need answers."
Ray's grin twitched, something unreadable behind it.
"No jokes today, huh?
Alright. Lay it out."
Suho stepped forward.
"A recruiter approached me. He knew our names. Both of us."
Ray's humor dropped like a switch had been flipped.
"...Admin?"
"Yeah."
Ray leaned back slowly, exhaled smoke like it was a curse.
"Then it's no surprise.
"Admin's got eyes in your cereal. If they want you, your blood's already catalogued."
Kun snorted.
"They can have mine. It's 70% caffeine and regret."
A beat.
Suho didn't flinch.
"I heard rumors."
He stared Ray down.
"People said you're working with Administration now."
Ray's smile thinned like cracked glass.
He leaned back deeper into the couch, bottle resting on his chest.
"You really came in here to ask me that?"
"We want the truth," Suho said.
"If we're signing up for something connected to them, we need to know who's already in bed with who."
Ray set the bottle down, quietly this time.
The room didn't breathe.
"Yeah," he said at last.
"I've taken jobs from them."
He looked older in the half-light.
"A lot of us have.
Merc life isn't what it used to be.
No clean gigs anymore. Just scraps.
And those scraps? Come stamped with Admin sigils."
Kun muttered under his breath.
"That bad, huh?"
Ray nodded, cigar burning low.
"Worse.
There's something out there—groups. Not just criminals.
Organized bastards hunting down merc outposts. Wiping them.
Leaving behind nothing but blood and graffiti tags."
"Counter hunters?" Suho asked.
Ray's voice dropped.
"Yeah. Some twisted ideology.
'Burn both sides,' they say.
'Mercs and Counters feed the corruption.'"
His eyes were darker now.
"Argo's camp got hit two nights ago.
Found his men in bags.
Literal bags."
Kun clenched his jaw.
"That's fucked."
"Yeah."
Ray didn't look at them.
"That's why I sided with Admin.
Not because I like 'em.
But because standing alone out here?
That's a death sentence now."
A long pause.
Suho:
"You think the Academy's any safer?"
Ray scoffed without a smile.
"Safer than here.
At least there, you get a shot before you bleed."
Kun took a step forward.
"We want in. But we came to you first."
Ray stared at them a long moment.
The room went quiet—except for the low hum of synth music through the floorboards. One of the girls on the couch cracked her neck and watched silently.
Finally, Ray said:
"You're grown. I don't own you.
You wanna go? Go."
But he didn't smile.
"But don't take that as approval."
He looked away.
"I'm not giving you a blessing—I'm just not stopping you."
He picked the bottle up again, swirling the last drops of vodka.
"You think I trust that place? I don't.
But I trust you two more than I fear it.
That's all I've got."
He leaned forward again, that grin returning, but worn thin.
"Hell—if you make it to graduation,
I'll show up with a fresh girl for each of you. Deal?"
One of the girls on the couch rolled her eyes.
"You said that to the last crew too."
The other one laughed softly, blowing smoke toward the ceiling.
"Ray's idea of a graduation gift is a hangover and a guilt complex."
Ray waved them off like flies.
"Don't listen to 'em.
You two make it out of that Academy,
I'll throw the biggest damn party this city's ever hated."
Kun muttered:
"You're impossible."
Ray pointed the cigar at him.
"And you're mine."
Then softer:
"Keep it together.
Kun, watch your brother.
Suho, protect your idiot."
Suho gave a quiet nod.
Ray leaned back one last time.
"Now get the hell out before I change my mind."
——
As they left the throne room, the door clicked shut behind them like a final verdict.
The hallway buzzed faintly with neon and muffled moans.
Kun muttered under his breath:
"Huh.
That was… easier than I thought.
Honestly expected him to tie us up and scream for answers."
Suho, quiet:
"He's playing the game now.
Doesn't have time to test loyalty."
They passed through the main floor again—chaotic, warm, the air thick with perfume and synth.
A girl from earlier blocked Kun's path again, fingers trailing over his shoulder.
"Sure you won't stay? It's still early.
And you look tense..."
Kun smirked, but his eyes were tired.
"Tempting. But we've got somewhere worse to be."
She leaned closer, lips curved.
"Mmh. Always the good boy... until you're not."
The door clicked behind them.
Silence followed.
The city outside was quiet.
Not safe—just quiet. Like it was holding its breath.
——
They walked in silence.
The city outside was quiet. Not safe—just quiet. Like it was waiting for someone to scream first.
Steam hissed from broken vents. Neon signs buzzed faintly in the mist.
Above them, the sky looked like static—dark clouds smeared with artificial light, like someone had tried to erase the stars with a dying screen.
Kun kicked a loose stone across the sidewalk, watching it skitter into a gutter.
"You think Ray's really working for Admin,
or just selling scraps to whoever pays?"
Suho didn't answer right away.
Just walked—hands buried deep in his jacket pockets, eyes forward.
"Both," he said finally.
"Ray's a survivor.
Loyalty comes second."
Kun let out a soft breath.
"Yeah…
Still weird seeing him sober."
They turned onto their block.
Their apartment building leaned like a crooked tooth—wedged between a rusted noodle stand and a scrapyard that smelled like hot oil and forgotten things.
A flickering stairwell light buzzed above the entrance, struggling to stay alive.
Inside the apartment, Kun dropped onto the couch and buried himself under a blanket of static and broken dreams.
"Bed's yours," he muttered.
"I've made peace with the couch and the mold war happening under it."
Suho nodded.
"Thanks."
He stood by the window for a long time.
Rain skated down the glass like ghosts trying to get in.
Neon from the street painted his reflection in flickering red and blue—like he was already caught between danger and decision.
His reflection looked like someone he didn't recognize.
Not because he'd changed—
But because for the first time, he was choosing to.
Behind him, Kun was half-asleep in a tangle of ramen breath and fading tension.
Outside, the city breathed like a dying god.
Inside, the air was still.
And Suho didn't move.
He wasn't afraid of dying. Just afraid of becoming someone who didn't care.
And whatever waited at the Academy… it had to be better than fading here.