Page 36 of Infamous
Ghost. A hunter. A killer. Her curse. And curses don’t fade. They cling like a fucking brand.
21
LUCIAN
The city feels colder now.
Or maybe it’s me - this new version of myself doesn’t hold warmth the way the old one did.
Dusk slides across the skyline as I step onto the street, hood low, collar zipped to my throat. The Gattis gave me everything a man needs to disappear: clean papers, untraceable cash, a name that can never be traced back to the man I once was. But no one teaches you how to move through the world after it’s buried you.
The world shifted while I was gone.
Ten years caged, and when the doors finally opened, everything I stepped into felt… altered.
Colder. Sharper. Less forgiving.
The streets look the same, but the people don’t. There’s a different kind of hardness in them now - a tightness around their mouths, a rush in their steps, a permanent layer of exhaustion threading through their movements. Everyone looks like they’re surviving something, like life has been chewing at them in small, relentless bites.
Even the air feels different. The city doesn’t hum anymore - it growls. It breathes in sirens and exhales smoke. It moves fasterthan memory, dragging me behind it like a dog with a damaged leash.
Ten years locked away, and I blinked. When I opened my eyes again, the world had shifted left.
Familiar places don’t sit right. Streets I used to know like the back of my hand feel foreign. Landmarks look smaller. People look meaner.
Or maybe it’s just me - this raw, rebuilt version of myself stepping into a world that doesn’t recognize the man I used to be.
I’ve changed. The world has too. And now we’re strangers meeting again for the first time.
Headlights smear across wet asphalt. Sirens cry somewhere in the distance. The air smells of rain and exhaust. Strangers drift past in silence, faces blank, unaware that a ghost is walking among them.
That’s the point.
Until she looks up.
She’s across the street, standing outside the same café I used to take her to - the one with her favourite apple crumble and too-strong coffee, where we spent so many afternoons.
She’s still as beautiful as I remember her.
She’s wearing a long coat and her dark hair is tucked beneath her collar. A paper cup is in one hand, her phone pressed to her ear. Her mouth is open, caught mid-sentence, frozen like she’s just heard something that stopped her heart.
Or maybe she feels me watching… because then she turns. And for one terrible, breathless second, her eyes meet mine.
Violet. Shattered. Searching.
Recognition flickers there - fragile, uncertain. Her lips part, but the words die before they leave her mouth. The city noise fades; it’s just the two of us, suspended in the space between what was and what’s left.
I can’t move. All I can do is stare. And stare some more.
She tilts her head, like she’s listening for a sound she can’t quite place. The phone’s still pressed to her ear, but she’s not listening anymore. She’slooking- and my chest tightens because she shouldn’t be able to recognise the ghost of me.
She doesn’t know this face. She can’t.
I’m not the man who used to trace circles on her thigh under café tables, who kissed her until the world went quiet. I’m not the man she planned to spend the rest of her life with; the same man that ultimately ended up breaking her heart and soul.
And when the handcuffs closed and the news named me a monster, I told her to give up the fight. I sent her away and wouldn’t accept her visits or calls. Hell, I even sent her letters back.
I shoved the memory of us deep the moment that cell door slammed shut. Buried it. Starved it. Pretended it died. But love has a sick way of surviving the grave, and mine never stopped breathing her name.
