Chapter Thirty-Six — The Poison City Riots
Chapter Twenty-Eight — The Poison City Riots
By dawn, Poison City was on fire.
Not metaphorically.
Entire districts burned beneath black smoke and acid rain while emergency broadcasts
looped endlessly across giant skyline screens:
BIOHAZARD CONTAINMENT FAILURE.
STAY INSIDE.
REPORT CONTAMINATED INDIVIDUALS.
Nobody listened anymore.
Because the city had finally seen the children.
The first leaked images spread through underground networks less than an hour after the
station battle — hospital beds beneath the city, Black Vein files, oxygen-starved children
with black veins beneath fragile skin.
And standing among them—
Avery.
The Poison Girl.
Not killing.
Not destroying.
Protecting.
The city fractured instantly afterward.
Riots exploded near Breath distribution centers.
House Moretti checkpoints were overrun.
Black Vein operatives disappeared from tactical lines and never returned.
Choice spread faster than fear now.
And Luciano Moretti finally looked afraid.
Something else had changed that nobody had a name for yet.
Black ivy had appeared overnight on the eastern filtration towers in Lower Vein — not the
cultivated poison garden variety, not the underground graveyard growth. Something new.
Growing through infrastructure, threading up through ventilation pipes, blooming in
fractured concrete three districts from anywhere Avery had physically been.
People were photographing it.
Sending it through the underground networks.
Nobody understood what it was yet.
Avery understood.
She could feel the edges of it from across the city like peripheral vision — not sight exactly,
more like the awareness of something that was part of you that you hadn’t known was
there.
It was growing toward people.
Not to harm them.
She didn’t know how she knew that.
She just did.
The air tasted different too.
Cleaner.
Not perfect — Poison City would probably never become perfect — but something in the
filtration chemistry had shifted overnight.
Avery watched the city unravel from the roof of an abandoned cathedral safehouse while
dawn bled poisonous pink across the skyline.
The children slept below them.
Safe.
For now.
Blaine stood beside her near the broken rooftop railing, one arm wrapped tightly in fresh
bandages hiding the slowing black serum beneath his skin.
He looked exhausted.
More than exhausted.
Like years were finally catching up to him all at once.
“You should rest,” Avery whispered.
“I’m fine.”
Lie.
She was learning his lies now.
This one meant: I don’t know how to stop moving.
Acid rain hissed softly against the cathedral stone around them while distant sirens
screamed through Poison City below.
“The Theater hasn’t moved,” Blaine said quietly.
Silas glanced toward him.
“No.”
“Why?”
Silas looked back toward the burning city. Something moved briefly behind his expression
that wasn’t amusement.
“The Theater survives by attaching itself to whoever holds power.” He watched a serpent
banner catch fire below. “When the power structure is actively collapsing, they go quiet.
They wait to see what’s worth attaching to next.”
“And if nothing is?”
Silas smiled faintly.
“Then they have a very bad year.”
Silas appeared through the rooftop doorway carrying stolen medical packs and two bottles
of expensive liquor.
“Well,” he announced lightly, “the good news is the city’s collapsing beautifully.”
Avery glanced toward him tiredly.
“And the bad news?”
“The Houses officially declared you both domestic terrorists.”
Silas handed Blaine a bottle.
“Congratulations.”
Blaine looked unimpressed.
“I’ve had worse titles.”
“You’ve had weirder ones too,” Silas muttered.
Black Vein Angel.
The memory still hurt Avery.
Because now she understood the tragedy of it fully — they turned a frightened boy into a
bedtime story to scare children into obedience.
And he still came back to save them anyway.
Silas leaned beside the rooftop ledge looking unusually serious for once.
“The underground networks are spreading the registry names.”
Avery’s pulse sharpened.
“The real registry?”
“Enough of it.” His amber eyes darkened slightly. “People are finding missing family
members.”
Silence settled heavily across the rooftop.
Thousands of names.
Thousands of buried lives.
Poison City couldn’t hide its graves anymore.
Below them crowds surged through the streets carrying stolen Black Vein files and burning
serpent banners.
Revolution.
Actual revolution.
Avery should’ve felt victorious.
Instead she only felt tired.
Vinny should’ve seen this.
God.
He would’ve laughed seeing the Moretti’s lose control of their own city.
The grief still lived inside her.
But now it walked beside purpose instead of drowning beneath it.
Blaine noticed her expression immediately.
Always.
“You’re thinking about him.”
“Yes.”
The answer came easily now.
Not shameful anymore.
Blaine looked toward the burning skyline quietly.
“He would’ve loved this chaos.”
A broken laugh escaped her.
“Yes.”
Silas watched both of them carefully over the neck of his liquor bottle.
Then softly:
“You know he’d hate the guilt thing you’re both doing.”
Avery frowned slightly.
“What guilt thing?”
“The one where neither of you admits you’re alive because of each other.”
Silence.
Blaine looked exhausted instantly.
Avery looked away toward the riots below.
Wonderful.
Silas smiled faintly.
“There it is again.”
“You enjoy making people uncomfortable.”
“No,” he corrected lazily. “I enjoy honesty. Discomfort is just a side effect.”
Another explosion thundered somewhere across Cathedral District.
The city lights flickered.
Then suddenly every giant screen across the skyline changed at once.
Emergency broadcasts vanished.
A black serpent insignia appeared instead.
Luciano.
The rooftop fell silent immediately.
The patriarch’s face appeared across Poison City enormous and calm despite the riots
burning around him.
“My city,” Luciano said smoothly.
Crowds below stopped moving.
Listening.
Avery’s stomach twisted.
Luciano’s dark eyes lifted toward the camera slowly.
“Tonight, terrorists released unstable Black Vein subjects into the population.”
Liar.
“Among them is Subject Avery Quinnly Nimh.”
The skyline screens shifted instantly.
Avery’s face appeared across every district.
Then Blaine’s beside hers.
Subject Morana — compromised Black Vein asset.
The city stared upward.
Luciano’s voice softened almost sympathetically.
“These individuals are not victims.”
Rage burned hot through Avery instantly.
“They are contagions.”
The poison stirred sharply beneath her skin.
The skyline screens shifted again.
This time revealing security footage.
The station battle.
The black ivy.
The poison spreading through the platform.
Avery’s blood ran cold.
Luciano smiled faintly from every screen in the city.
“If Poison City will not fear contamination willingly…” His gaze sharpened. “Then perhaps it
must witness evolution.”
Silence crashed across the rooftop.
Then the footage changed one final time.
Blaine froze instantly beside her.
Avery’s stomach dropped.
Old Black Vein recordings filled the skyline screens.
Children crying.
Medical restraints.
Training chambers.
And at the center of it a teenage Blaine.
Thin.
Bleeding.
Terrified.
Luciano’s voice echoed softly across the city:
“Meet your Black Vein Angel.”