“No. Just us.”
I lean closer. “If that is another lie, I come back.”
He shakes his head hard enough to scrape his cheek on the wet pavement. “No lie. No lie.”
I stand. “Run.”
He runs badly, half-crawling at first, then staggering through the gate with his friend groaning behind him. I do not watch them leave.
The path toward the old primate house winds through overgrown exhibits where animals once lived inside artificial forests and climate-controlled caves. The enclosures are empty now, the exotic creatures sold off when the city cut funding, leaving behind fake trees, peeling educational signs, and rusted climbing structures like skeletons of a kinder world. Gang graffiti covers everything. Names. Threats. Purple skull-blooms. A crude drawing of a horned alien being hanged from a tree. Under it, someone has written MONSTER BAIT in dripping paint.
My hands flex.
No killing.
I keep walking.
A group of four waits near the concession stand, alerted now, trying to form a line like they have seen in holovids but never trained properly. One holds a shock baton. One has a chain. One has a broken bottle. One has nothing but fists, which makes him either brave, stupid, or too slow to acquire tools.
“Back up!” the chain carrier shouts. “Back the hell up!”
“No.”
They look at one another.
Then they come at me together.
The shock baton bites into my left side with a crackle of electricity. Pain flashes hot along my ribs, aggravating old nerve damage. I catch the wielder’s wrist and squeeze until the baton drops. The bottle slashes across my shoulder, cutting through the coat and scoring scales beneath. A human blade would have gone deeper into human flesh. Against Vakutan hide, it burns more than it wounds.
I turn into them.
The chain wraps around my forearm. I yank. The man holding it flies forward, eyes wide, and meets my knee on the way down. His nose breaks. His body folds. I catch him by the collar before his skull hits the pavement and toss him into a table instead. The bottle wielder stabs again. I slap his hand aside, palm his face, and drive the back of his head into the concession shutter. Once. He drops.
Fists hits me in the jaw.
I look at him.
His courage evaporates. “Man, I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
I punch him in the stomach with measured force. He collapses to his knees, retching into a puddle.
Shock Baton tries to crawl away. I pick up the baton, crush it until sparks spit between my fingers, and drop the ruined pieces beside him.
“Tell Ron I am coming,” I say.
He coughs. “He knows.”
Good.
By the time I reach the central plaza, alarms have begun going off somewhere deeper in the park. Not official alarms. Cheap proximity shriekers set up by gang mechanics, warbling through busted speakers and emergency lights scavenged from old maintenance bots. Red pulses smear across puddles and broken glass. Rain turns the neon reflections liquid beneath my boots, and every flash paints my hands darker.
The primate house squats at the far end of the plaza behind a rusted sculpture of three climbing animals whose species I do not recognize. Half its roof has caved in. The old holo-sign still works in fragments, projecting cheerful animated vines that flicker over gang symbols, bullet holes, and boarded windows. Music thuds from inside, bass-heavy and distorted, as if the gang has mistaken noise for morale.
I stop beneath the sign.
A dozen men pour from the entrance.
