10-13

Chicago doesn’t sleep — it prowls.

Under the steel shadows of its skyline, the streets stretch like veins, pulsing with secrets. Neon bleeds into puddles. Steam curls up from grates like ghosts that never left. Somewhere, a saxophone plays to no one. Somewhere else, someone’s last breath is being stolen.

Detective Sophia Blake has walked this city long enough to know the difference between noise and danger. Most nights, the noise wins. But every so often, the danger steps out of the shadows and says your name.

That night, it started with a missing girl. It ended with a body bag. And between those two points was a single sound she will never forget — the crack of a shotgun through a cheap apartment door, and her partner falling like someone cut the strings.

The radio was in her hand before she knew it.

Her voice was steel and panic all at once:

“10-13, 10-13 — officer down! Request immediate assistance!”

It was the kind of call that rips through the air, that pulls every cop in earshot into the same nightmare. But even with the cavalry coming, Sophia knew one thing: she was already in a fight that wouldn’t end until one of them was in the ground.