Chapter 1
The Oracle’s Jazz
A city of secrets. A truth too dangerous to know. In New Babylon, even the dead see you coming.
Name’s Carson Vale. I bury secrets.
The night split open like a gut wound, black and bleeding fog down the narrow alleys of New Babylon. I moved through it slow, trench coat dragging like the past I couldn’t shake. Each step echoed off wet brick and steel, a dull heartbeat in a city that should’ve flatlined long ago.
The stench hit first—offal from the meatworks two streets over, sour and thick in my throat. This city layered its rot. Garbage, piss, broken dreams—New Babylon wore them all like a second skin. You didn’t outlast a place like this. You just hoped to stand longer than the guy next to you.
I don’t trust this woman—everything about her says walk away. Forget her beauty, forget my code, leave her hanging. But you know as I do. I’m not built that way. God, I wish I wasn’t. This situation feels like bad juju times ten.
I pulled my fedora low against the jaundiced glare of a busted streetlamp, the light flickering like a dying oracle trying to spill the future before it choked on its last breath. Maybe it already had. Maybe that’s why I was here, chasing shadows and whispers, thinking I could still find answers in a city that only dealt in questions.
She was waiting, of course. They always are in stories like this.
Back against the bricks, smoke curling from crimson lips. She didn’t move when I approached, just let her eyes do the work. Cold and sharp, like a scalpel. Like she already knew how this would end.
Her eyes—hell, those eyes. Green laced with gold, pupils tight as nooses. They didn’t just look at you; they stripped you down, tore through the lies you hadn’t even told yet. Skin like fine sandpaper, a trace of freckles brushed across her nose. Strands of jet-black hair curled wild against a face the world had no business dirtying, but it would try anyway.
She was war and peace locked in a single frame.
“Vale,” she said, voice silk over broken glass. “You’re late.”
“Had to be sure I wasn’t followed.”
She flicked ash into the puddles, a silver halo around her fingers. “Everyone’s followed, Carson. The trick is not caring.”
I didn’t answer. I just watched her. Every move coiled tight like a snake that knew it didn’t need to strike unless it was bored. But there was something else too—a tremor in the hand that held the cigarette, a pause too long before her next drag. She wasn’t just playing a part. She needed me to take it.
“You got the package?” I asked.
She smiled then, the kind of smile that told you the game was already over.
“You’re looking at it.”
In her hand was a manila envelope, edges soft from too many passes. It could’ve been anything—a hit list, blackmail, a signed confession. In New Babylon, the difference was academic.
“What’s inside?”
Her smile widened just enough to make me uneasy.
“The truth, Vale.”
“Got a name?” I asked.
“Selene,” she said. “But names don’t mean much here.”
Selene. It fit her—dark, distant, untouchable. A name pulled out of old myths, from a time when gods still walked the earth and men like me hadn’t yet learned to crawl.
I reached out. She didn’t resist. The envelope was warm, like it had a pulse—or a bomb waiting to be triggered. As my fingers brushed hers, I caught a flicker in her eyes—regret, maybe, or warning. It was gone before I could be sure.
This wasn’t just a job. It was personal. The kind of truth that didn’t just burn bridges—it turned whole cities to ash.
I wasn’t supposed to open it.
Not yet.
But I would. I always did. In a city of oracles, even the dead can see you coming.