When The Fog Burns

November 6th, 1962

1:14 AM

Furnace Alley, Stonebridge South

The night stank of gasoline, piss, and burnt matchsticks. Thick fog rolled between the broken bricks like breath from something too big to name. A slow jazz number—Sinatra, maybe—floated down from a third-floor window, scratchy and warped, as if the air itself had grown tired of music. Nobody paid it any mind.

Two long-bodied black sedans angled at either end of the alley, engines off but headlights burning through the fog like twin spears of heatless fire. The doors hung open. Steam curled off hoods still warm.

Behind the cars, crouched low and breathing heavy, were men in mismatched suits—baggy trousers, untucked dress shirts, fedoras soaked through with sweat. Fingers worked clips into empty guns. Palms slapped shotgun barrels. Shouts flew fast, hot, half in English, half in something else—something old and bitter.

“Motherfucker owes me three grand and a pound of respect!” someone screamed.

“You shot Louie first, asshole!” someone else bellowed back. “You broke the truce!”

The first reply was a shotgun blast that punched a hole clean through the back window of the nearer sedan. Glass rained. Metal howled.

It had started, as these things always did, over a debt. Someone shorted someone. Someone owed protection. Someone crossed a line. Nobody remembered the details now. Only the heat.

“You f*ckin’ rat—come out and face me like a man!”

“Eat shit and choke!”

Muzzle flashes burst against rusted walls. Sparks shot from dumpsters. Bullets punched into brick. Somewhere, a man dropped with a grunt and didn’t get up, blood dark and fast beneath his ribs.

Another ducked behind a trash can, reloading one-handed while muttering fast in Polish. The curses came out cracked and wet. He was bleeding from the scalp.

They looked like gangsters from an old movie—pinstripes, suspenders, cigars clenched between teeth—but the faces were real. Twisted. Feral. No makeup. No rehearsals. Just rage and survival layered thick over fear.

Someone shouted in Russian. Another answered in Sicilian. Nobody translated.

Then the sky went white.

No sound. No warning. Just a pulse—brilliant, searing, white as magnesium—that dropped over the alley like the hand of God.

For a heartbeat, everything froze.

Guns stopped barking. Mouths stopped cursing. The world blinked to silence.

Then came the ringing.

Sharp, high-pitched, screaming through their skulls like metal tearing through bone.

A heavy thump landed somewhere near the front sedan. Metal groaned. A hood crumpled inward. One headlight blew with a soft pop.

Someone blinked away the blindness just in time to see it—black coat snapping in the wind, boots planted hard in the steel, and a face.

Or what passed for a face.

Smooth. White. Featureless. Oval-shaped. No eyes. No mouth. Just a blank reflection that caught the light in ripples, like water trapped behind glass.

A scream tried to escape from one of the men. Didn’t make it.

The figure moved. Fast.

A hand snapped down and caught a gunman by the wrist—crack. Bone shattered. The pistol clattered to the ground. The man dropped with it, howling, his voice sharp and high like a child’s.

Another raised a sawed-off. Got one shot off—wild, into the wall. The blade hit him first. A throwing knife, silver-gray, buried deep in the meat of his shoulder. He spun, dropped, screamed into the pavement.

Someone turned to run—big mistake. A cord whipped down from above, looped his ankles mid-stride, yanked tight. He pitched forward like a sack of wet laundry and hit the ground hard. Didn't get back up.

Inside the car, the impact had jolted the old radio back to life. A tinny voice crooned above the chaos, low and sweet, as if the alley hadn’t become a warzone.

“Night and day… you are the one…”

Nomad didn’t flinch. He ducked under a punch, caught a man’s coat with one hand, yanked him off balance, and slammed him headfirst into the rearview mirror. Glass cracked. Blood followed.

Another man tried to plead—hands raised, mouth open, “Wait, wait, don’t—”

Too late.

Nomad grabbed the front of his coat, spun him sideways, and drove him into the trunk with the full force of his shoulder. The taillight cracked beneath the impact. The man slid down in a heap.

Three remained.

Two bolted for the far end of the alley. One never made it—tripped on a broken crate and went face-first into the pavement. The other vanished into fog.

Nomad didn’t chase him.

He turned back.

Methodical. Silent. Efficient.

One by one, he drew thin restraints from his coat—simple metal cuffs, no keys, no clicks—just a tight loop and a quiet twist. One man groaned when he felt cold steel bite his wrist. The others didn’t even stir.

When he was done, six bodies lined the brick wall. None dead. All breathing. All broken in their own ways.

Nomad straightened, coat still rippling with wind, and turned toward the rooftop. A shadow moved up there. Briefly. Then gone.

He didn’t speak. Never did.

He just stepped off the curb, boots thudding against the cracked stone, and disappeared into the fog like he’d never been there at all.

The radio kept playing.

“Whether near to me, or far…”

By the time the cops arrived—sirens slicing through the silence like razors through silk—it was over.

The alley was quiet again.

No witnesses. No shell casings.

Just a row of unconscious men. A broken car. And a song echoing out into the dark.

And in Northcrest, a new name joined the old stories.

A name not shouted, not spoken.