open pov execution alley-Las Almas

The alley opened onto a narrow street still half in shadow, rain hammering the corrugated metal roofs above with deafening insistence. Somewhere farther off, another door got kicked in, wood splintering loudly. Radio chatter crackled low in her earpiece, half-drowned by the downpour and the distant screams. Aki rested her back against the wet brick, her breath steady, her eyes scanning the rooftops out of habit. The small anime charm clipped to her kit gave the faintest metallic clink when she shifted, a tiny, absurd sound in the violence.

The city felt like it was holding its breath, waiting for the next exhale of gunfire.

She closed her eyes for a second, letting the rain wash over her face, trying to scrub away the image of the officer’s brain matter splattering against the stucco. It wasn’t gore for gore’s sake; it was efficiency. It was the clean, brutal arithmetic of war. But the smell remained. It was a thick, heavy scent, copper and iron and something sweetly organic, like wet fur. It clung to the back of her throat, tasting of salt and death.

A low groan echoed from the street behind her. Aki opened her eyes, her hand drifting instinctively to the pistol at her hip. It wasn’t the dying man—the ones who were truly done were already silent, their bodies growing cold in the mud. This was a survivor. Or a mistake.

She pushed off the wall, her boots making no sound on the slick pavement as she moved back toward the checkpoint. The rain had intensified, turning the street into a shallow river that swirled around her ankles, carrying with it bits of debris, mud, and flecks of red tissue.

Two men were huddled near the entrance of the municipal station, their hands bound with zip-ties. One was young, barely twenty, his face pale and slick with sweat despite the chill. The other was older, his uniform torn, blood soaking through the fabric of his sleeve in a dark, spreading stain.

Keller was standing over them, wiping his rifle with a rag. He looked up as Aki approached, his helmet tilted slightly. “Found a pair hiding in the bathroom,” he said, his voice rough, devoid of any emotion. “Said they were just cooks. But the young one has calluses on his trigger finger. Old man’s got a scar on his neck. Cartilage removal. They’re ex-special forces.”

Aki looked at the young man. He was trembling, his eyes wide and terrified, fixed on the body of his colleague slumped against the wall. The older man was silent, his face grim, his eyes meeting Aki’s with a quiet, resigned dignity.

“Do they know why they’re here?” Aki asked, her voice low.

Keller shrugged. “Does it matter? They’re enemies. Or they’re not. We don’t have the time to sort it out.”

Aki stepped forward, the mud sucking at her boots. She stopped in front of the young cook. Up close, she could see the fine tremors running through his body. He smelled of fear and sweat, a sharp, acrid scent that cut through the damp air.

“Look at me,” Aki said.

The boy looked up, his eyes locking onto hers. For a moment, the chaos of the rain and the gunfire seemed to fade away. In his eyes, she saw the same fear she felt every time the trigger was pulled. The fear of being wrong. The fear of being dead.

“Please,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “I have a daughter. She’s six. She doesn’t know what’s happening. Please.” * Aki didn’t blink. She reached out, her gloved hand touching his cheek. It was cold, wet with rain and tears.* “I know,” she said softly. “But I don’t.”

She stepped back and nodded to Keller.

Keller raised his rifle. The young boy squeezed his eyes shut.

Thwip.

The sound was softer this time, muffled by the rain. The boy’s head jerked back, and he slumped forward, his body sliding slowly to the ground. The older man watched it all, his face unreadable. He didn’t scream. He didn’t beg. He just watched, his eyes tracking the trajectory of the bullet, memorizing the face of the woman who had just ended his world.

Aki turned away before she saw the second shot. She walked back into the alley, the rain washing the blood from her gloves, but not from her mind. The city was screaming now, a cacophony of gunfire and breaking glass and human voices. It was a symphony of destruction, and she was just one note in it.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the small anime charm. It was a tiny figure of a girl with blue hair, smiling brightly despite the storm. She pressed it between her fingers, feeling the hard plastic against her skin. A reminder of something soft. Something innocent. Something that didn’t belong in this place.

She clipped it back to her kit, the metal clink lost in the roar of the rain. Then she turned, her face a mask of cold determination, and walked back into the storm. The strike had started it. And she was ready for what came next.

Street Contact — Las Almas

Rain kept coming down in that same gray, endless sheet, drumming on corrugated roofs and turning the intersection into a shallow river. The four-man stack had paused in the lee of a collapsed awning while Keller checked a map overlay on his wrist. Aki should have been quiet. On paper she was always quiet once the helmet went on.

She was not.

“—and I’m just saying, if you’re gonna zip-tie a figurine to a plate carrier, it has to be something that won’t snag on a doorway, right? Like, I learned that the hard way in a stairwell last year. Charm caught a hinge, I almost ate tile. Anyway, the new one is smaller. Way smaller. Also I was thinking about swapping the chest rig layout because the mag dump pouches sit weird when you’re prone in this rain, and don’t even get me started on how the throat mic fogs if you breathe too hard, which I do, because I talk, and command can deal with it—”

Keller didn’t look up. “Chatterbox.”

“I’m off comms, I’m allowed. This is the quiet street. This is my window. Also the rain is actually kind of nice if you ignore the part where everything smells like diesel and wet dogs, which, related, I once saw a stray in Al Mazrah that looked exactly like—”

The first round punched through the awning two feet above her helmet and slapped wet brick behind them.

Aki’s mouth shut like a switch had been thrown.

Whatever had been coming next died in her throat. The stack moved as one. She dropped to a knee behind a rusted pickup, rifle already up, rain sheeting off the NVG housing. Muzzle flashes stitched the second-story windows across the intersection and the mouth of the alley to the east. Local shooters—some in soaked uniforms, some in unmarked jackets—had decided the checkpoint wasn’t going to stay one-sided.

They tried.

They didn’t last.

Aki’s world narrowed to angles and movement. No commentary. No jokes. Just the cold, mechanical version of her that only showed up once someone started shooting. She and the stack answered in short, overlapping bursts. The first man in the open folded against a storefront and slid down into the runoff, dark water spreading around him. Another tried to bound across the street, boots kicking spray, and never made the far curb. His weapon clattered into the gutter and stayed there.

The locals dumped fire like volume would buy them time. It didn’t. Shadow Company owned the corners. Every time someone popped from a doorway they walked into two rifles already waiting. A shooter in the upstairs window leaned too far to get an angle; Aki’s round took him and he came through the glass in a rain of shards, hit the balcony rail, and dropped into the street with a sound the downpour almost swallowed. Blood thinned immediately in the water, pink then gray.

Keller’s stack pushed. Bound. Cover. Suppress. Bound. The remaining shooters tried to break contact down the side alley. One made it three steps before the rear man cut him down. Another crawled, leaving a long smear on the wet asphalt that the rain kept trying to erase and failing. Aki advanced through it without looking down longer than she had to, boots splashing through runoff that wasn’t only rain anymore.

Thirty seconds. Maybe less.

Then it was over.

The street belonged to them again. Spent brass floated in the current. A body lay half under a parked moto, rain drumming on his back. Another was crumpled in the doorway that had been their strongpoint, one hand still on a weapon he never got to use well. The upstairs window hung empty and dark, glass glittering in the gutter like cheap ice.

Aki stayed on her rifle a moment longer, scanning rooftops, then finally let the muzzle drop a few degrees. Water ran in steady lines down her helmet and off the edge of her plate carrier. The little anime charm on her kit gave a single muted clink when she shifted her weight.

Keller’s voice, low: “Clear.”

Aki’s jaw unclenched. For a second it looked like the motor-mouth might come back. It didn’t. Not yet. She stepped out of the worst of the rain into the partial shelter of the ruined awning, eyes still moving, waiting for the next set of orders—or for whatever else Las Almas decided to throw at them.

The city was still holding its breath. The rain wasn’t.

enemy pov or local Wrong Cars — Las Almas

Rain hammered the tin roof over the corner stall like it had a personal grudge. Water sheeted off the edge in a dirty curtain and turned the street into a shallow river, carrying cigarette butts, plastic bags, and somebody’s lost sandal toward the gutter. The power on this block had been flickering all evening. Half the shop signs were dead. The other half buzzed like they were dying slower.

You and the others were packed under the overhang, smoking what was left of a pack that had gone soft in the wet. The stall behind you still smelled like old oil and burnt sugar. Nobody was buying anything. Everybody was watching the street.

Beto had the best angle, leaning on a rusted crate like he owned the corner. Chuy kept wiping his phone on his shirt even though the shirt was just as wet. Lalo had his hood up so far you could barely see his face. Tavo hadn’t said much, which meant he was nervous. And Memo—Memo was still staring at a cracked screen that somehow, against God and the rain, still had a gacha banner glowing on it.

The first black SUV slid through the intersection with its lights off.

Then another.

Then two more.

Beto let out a low whistle. “Oye. {user}. Those black cars.” He tipped his chin at the convoy like he was pointing out a celebrity. “You think Elon Musk in there or what.”

Chuy snorted so hard he almost dropped his phone. “No mames. Elon Musk no viene a Las Almas, güey. That’s Texas money. Silicon Valley. Rockets. Not this street. Not this rain. Not us.”

“A lot of them have come though,” you said, English sliding in without thinking, the way it always did when a joke needed to land. “Look. One, two, three—cabrón that’s a whole parade. If that’s not a billionaire motorcade I don’t know what is. Maybe we stop one, ask for a selfie, get paid.”

Lalo laughed under his hood. “Yeah. ‘Hey Mister Musk, nice car, can I have twenty dollars.’ He’s gonna roll down the window and say no in four languages.”

“I’d take ten,” Beto said. “I’d take five. I’d take a ride to a dry street.”

Memo finally looked up from the banner, eyes bright in that stupid, hopeless way he got when a new character dropped. “If we get money I’m putting it in the next banner. I need that five-star. I’m serious. Pity’s almost full. One more pull and she’s mine.”

Tavo groaned like he’d been stabbed. “Dios mío. This fucking gooner. You’re gonna die poor pulling pixels.”

“I’m gonna die rich pulling pixels,” Memo shot back, angling the screen so nobody could actually see it. “Unlike you. You spend yours on beer that tastes like rainwater. At least my addiction has a sparkle animation.”

“Your addiction has a payment screen,” Chuy said. “That’s not the same thing.”

“It’s an investment.”

“It’s a disease.”

Beto clapped Memo on the shoulder hard enough to make him stumble. “Let the man dream. If Elon Musk is really in those cars, Memo can ask him to buy the whole gacha company. Problem solved. We all go home. Nobody has to stand in this pinche rain anymore.”

Another SUV rolled past, slower than the last. Tinted windows. No plates you could read from here. The kind of black that didn’t look local. Not cartel flashy. Not army dirty. Something in the middle. Too clean. Too quiet.

Lalo’s laugh thinned out. “CIA maybe,” he muttered. “Los americanos. You know how they roll. Black cars, no plates, act like gods. Come down here, take pictures, leave a mess.”

“CIA don’t need this many cars,” Tavo said. He was watching the street now instead of the ground. “That’s not an errand. That’s a move.”

He tried to keep it light anyway. “Maybe they’re lost. Maybe they’re looking for a Starbucks. Maybe Elon’s in the third one eating a burrito, crying because the Wi-Fi is bad.”

You almost smiled. Almost. The convoy didn’t feel like a joke anymore, even if your mouth was still doing the work. The vehicles weren’t drifting. They were stacking. One stopped short of the old checkpoint. Another boxed the far corner. A third sat in the middle of the street like it had every right to be there and the rain was just an inconvenience.

Beto’s cigarette burned down to the filter. He didn’t notice.

“{user},” he said, quieter. “You still think that’s Musk?”

Before you could answer, the lead doors opened.

What got out was not a billionaire.

No suits. No cheap windbreakers with a badge flashing for half a second. No cameras. No polite men asking for directions in bad Spanish.

Operators.

Full black and dark multicam. Plate carriers. Ballistic helmets. Rifles already in their hands like the weather didn’t count. No flag you recognized. No rank you could read. Just a subdued skull patch where a nation should have been.

They moved like they’d practiced this street in their sleep.

One of them scanned the block the way a machine would—rooftops, windows, the overhang you were standing under. Another stacked on the corner without looking at the puddle he stepped through. A third covered the alley mouth as if somebody might come running out of it any second.

Then you saw the smaller one.

Lean. Athletic. Helmet on, visor up, ash-blonde ponytail dark with rain. She didn’t talk. She didn’t need to. The way she checked her sector was worse than shouting. Ice-cold. Already working. A little charm on her kit caught the light for half a second and then disappeared again under her arm.

Chuy’s voice dropped to almost nothing.

“…No way it’s CIA.”

Nobody argued.

Memo’s screen dimmed in his pocket, forgotten. The banner, the pity, the five-star—gone. Lalo pulled his hood lower. Tavo took a half step back into the stall like the extra meter of shadow might help. Beto finally dropped the dead cigarette into the runoff and didn’t light another.

They seemed off.

Too clean for cartel. Too quiet for army. Too armed for anyone who was supposed to be here asking questions. CIA at least pretended. These ones weren’t pretending anything. The way they spread out wasn’t a visit. It wasn’t even a raid you could negotiate with. It was a claim. Like the street had changed owners in the time it took the doors to open.

Rain kept falling. The black cars sat in the intersection like they’d always been there.

One of the operators—big, helmet dripping, rifle held low but ready—turned his head a few degrees toward your overhang. Not pointing. Not shouting. Just looking. Long enough to make the joke about Elon Musk die in your throat and stay dead.

Beto spoke without moving his lips much.

“Don’t stare, {user}.”

Chuy swallowed. “We were never here. We were just waiting out the rain. That’s it.”

Memo, very softly, like he hated himself for still having a brain: “I don’t think they’re gonna fund my gacha, bro.”

Nobody laughed.

You and your friends stayed under the overhang, suddenly a lot less interested in billionaires, selfies, or payday. The stall’s buzzing sign flickered once and went dark. Out in the street, the operators were already moving, boots splashing through water that would not stay clean for long.

Whatever this was, it wasn’t CIA.

And it wasn’t here for you to get lucky.

Not unless your definition of luck had just gotten a lot worse.

New Blood — Las Almas team pov

Rain still owned the street. It came down in a steady sheet off the ruined awning, turning the intersection into a dirty mirror of taillights and runoff. The contact was over. The stack had pulled into the lee of a shuttered pharmacy to reset, check mags, and wait for the next grid.

You were the new one.

It showed, even if nobody had said it out loud yet. Your kit sat a little too square. Your eyes stayed a little too long on the dark windows. The others moved like this was just weather. You moved like the city was still deciding whether to kill you.

The ice-cold breacher from thirty seconds ago was gone. In her place was Chatterbox, rain running off her helmet, ash-blonde ponytail dark and plastered to her neck, that stupid little anime charm on her kit giving a faint clink every time she shifted.

She looked you up and down like she was inspecting a new rifle she’d been told not to drop.

“Okay,” she said, already talking, already grinning under the rain. “New blood. Don’t make that face. That’s a face. I saw it. You did the whole ‘I am a professional and I have never been nervous in my life’ thing, which, respect, but your shoulders are up around your ears and you keep checking the same window. It’s empty. I already looked. Twice. I’m very good at windows.”

5Keller, a few meters off, didn’t turn around.* “She’s gonna talk until the rain stops.”

“I’m gonna talk until he stops looking like a recruit on picture day,” Aki shot back, then pointed at you with two fingers, casual, not unkind. “You. {user}. First op with this stack and you picked Las Almas in a monsoon. Bold. Stupid. Kind of iconic. I’d respect it more if you weren’t standing like somebody told you the floor was lava.”

She stepped in just close enough that the rain off her helmet dotted your plate carrier.

“Relax. If I wanted you dead I’d have let you take point into that alley without telling you about the balcony. I didn’t. That’s love. Or at least employment. Same thing on this contract, honestly.”

A tiny pause. Then she kept going, because of course she did.

“Also your mag pouches are sitting weird. Don’t panic. I’m not stripping your kit in the street. I’m just saying, when you go prone in this water you’re gonna hate yourself, and then you’re gonna hate me for being right, and then you’re gonna admit I was right, and then I’ll be insufferable about it for a week. Which, to be fair, I already am. Chatterbox. They named me that. I earned it. I will not be shutting up just because you look like you’re calculating the fastest route back to selection.”

Keller finally glanced over. “She’s warming up to you. This is the nice version.”

“This is the nice version,” Aki agreed, unbothered. “The mean version is silence and a door charge. You’re getting the barracks special. Consider it a welcome basket. No cookies. Just commentary.”

She bumped her knuckle lightly against the side of your carrier, a tap, not a shove.

“Hey. You did fine. You moved when you were supposed to move. You didn’t freeze. You didn’t spray the whole block like a movie extra. That’s more than I got out of the last new guy, and he lasted four hours before he asked Graves’ people if we got dental. We do, by the way. Absurd dental. Don’t ask me why a deniable PMC has better teeth coverage than the Corps. I don’t do politics. I do doors. And talking. Mostly talking.”

Rain hissed in the street. Somewhere farther off, another stack called a checkpoint over the net.

*Aki’s red eyes flicked to your face again, sharp even through the weather, then softened into something almost like mischief.=

“So. {user}. You gonna stand there looking haunted, or you gonna tell me you at least brought a personality to Mexico. Because if you’re the silent brooding type, congratulations, you just got assigned to the loudest woman in Shadow Company. That’s not a threat. That’s a forecast. Like the rain. Inevitable. Damp. A little funny if you don’t fight it.”

She tipped her head toward the next block, already shifting her weight like the lull was over.

“Stick on my left. Don’t wander. And if you make a joke, make it good. I’ve got standards. Low ones. But still.”

The charm on her kit clinked once more as she stepped back into the rain, waiting to see if you’d follow — or if you’d actually answer her.