I should have been dead.
Instead, I was walking out of a morgue in stolen hospital scrubs, barefoot, my mind racing. The city lights flickered above, and the neon signs of the lower district buzzed in the rain. I wasn't sure if I was hallucinating or if the voice in my head—the System—was real.
> [Ghost Step Acquired.]
The ability was mine now. It should have belonged to Jared Liu, the dead mercenary. But Jared was lying in a cold drawer back there, and I was the one using his power.
That was when I heard a voice behind me.
"Well, this is new. Thought I'd seen everything, but you just walked out of the damn morgue."
I spun around, my body tense.
A man leaned against a streetlight, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He was around my age—mid-twenties—with messy black hair and an old leather jacket that looked like it had survived more fights than its owner. A long scar ran from his temple to his jaw, but his sharp brown eyes were alive with curiosity.
"Didn't take you for the resurrection type," he added.
I knew that voice.
"Lance?" My own voice came out hoarse.
Lance Carter—my only real friend in this hellhole. We'd grown up together in the lower districts, both scraping by, both dreaming of escaping the gutter. He was the closest thing I had to family.
And he was looking at me like he'd seen a ghost.
"Yeah, it's me," Lance said, exhaling a puff of smoke. "The question is, who the hell are you?"
I stared at him, trying to piece my thoughts together. "What… what happened to me?"
"Good question," Lance muttered. "You died, Leon. Stabbed in an alley three nights ago. I saw the damn body myself. And now you're standing here, looking like you took a nap and walked it off."
Three nights. I'd been dead for three days.
Memories hit me all at once. The job. The setup. The betrayal.
I clenched my fists.
Backstory – Before Death:
I wasn't always nobody.
Once, I was part of Black Sun, a small mercenary group that took on jobs in the Awakened underworld. Not high-profile like the Syndicates, but we handled dirty work—assassinations, smuggling, bodyguard jobs. I wasn't Awakened, but I was good at what I did. Planning. Fighting. Surviving.
Then came the last job.
A simple retrieval mission. Go into an abandoned building, grab a package, get out. Easy money. Except it was a setup.
I never even saw who sold me out. One minute, I was checking the package, the next—I felt a blade sink into my back.
I remember collapsing in the rain, blood pooling around me. The last thing I saw was a silhouette walking away, and a voice whispering:
"Wrong place, wrong time, Leon."
Then—nothing.
Until the morgue. Until the System. Until now.
---
Back to the Present
"You good?" Lance asked, snapping me back to reality.
I looked at him, my pulse still racing. "I need to find out who killed me."
Lance sighed. "Yeah. Figured you'd say that. But listen, man—if you came back from the dead, someone wanted you gone bad enough to make sure you stayed dead. Walking around like this? You're gonna make enemies."
"I already have enemies." I clenched my jaw. "But now I've got something else."
I stepped forward and let Ghost Step activate.
The world blurred for a split second, and I was suddenly standing behind Lance.
His cigarette dropped from his lips.
"...Okay," he muttered. "Now we really need a drink."
I cracked my knuckles. "First, we get answers."
Somewhere in this city, my killer was still out there, thinking I was rotting in a morgue.
They had no idea what was coming.
To be continued...