Send the Dispatch (Dispatch x fem!reader)

Chapter 11: Revenant

SURPRISE EARLY CHAPTER! Today's Fanart is of Evan! By discord member @Rdd1089
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Warning: Mentions of death, human trafficking, gore, blood, and just a lot of violence

The hoodie rests over your frame in soft folds, fabric muted and matte, absorbing the dim light rather than reflecting it. Your boots are worn, scuffed from countless city streets, heavy but silent, each step absorbed by the rubble-strewn ground. A hood casts your face in shadow, a black disposable mask conceals your expression, leaving only the faint glint of eyes tracking the world.

The briefcase at your side swings lightly with each step. Its weight is familiar, grounding, a tether to purpose in a place that has none.

You leave the busy street behind, stepping off the cracked sidewalk into the narrow alley that winds between buildings, slowly falling into disrepair. The city behind you dims into a distant hum of traffic, punctuated by the occasional scrape of tyres over uneven asphalt, the flickering glow of streetlights sputtering and throwing fractured beams of light into the dark.

This is not the first time you have made this journey; the broken sidewalks, the narrowing walls, the scent of rain-soaked asphalt mingling with the tang of burned timber. Weeds push stubbornly through fractured concrete, their bright green a defiant contrast to the blackened ruins looming ahead. Broken bottles catch the pale light, sparkling like fragments of stars beneath your boots, each shard crunching softly with careful weight.

As you progress, the area grows more secluded, and the alley begins to feel like a corridor into a forgotten world. Graffiti scrawled across decaying walls seems older than the city itself, its marks layered with the passage of time.

This part of the city lies abandoned, surrendering to decay. Only the desperate or the foolish pass through now, and even they tread lightly. With every step, the streets grow emptier, the buildings sagging underage, windows hollow, roofs caved in, walls scarred by fire and grime.

Eventually, the burned building comes into view, like a corpse, skeletal and still.

The jagged fragments, a warped edge of roofline, a twisted beam clawing at the sky, a window frame hanging at a strange angle like a missing eye. Up close, its ruin becomes undeniable: scorched brick, crumbling concrete, colours of graffiti stark against blackened scars. A strip of brittle, sun-bleached police tape flutters weakly from a post, making one last futile attempt to warn trespassers away.

No one comes here anymore.

The smell of soot intensifies, mingling with the damp earth and decay, a pungent, lingering reminder of a blaze that claimed everything inside.

You pause before the hollow where the doors once hung, studying the distorted metal sheet clinging to a single hinge. It groans faintly as the breeze stirs it, resisting collapse with the stubbornness of the building itself.

Pushing it aside, the building exhales decades of neglect, and you step into the darkness. The interior swallows you immediately. Faint moonlight slips through shattered windows, scattering across hanging insulation, twisted wires, and the charred residues of a collapsed ceiling. The walls, blackened and warped by fire, curl like frozen flames, while the floor is strewn with splintered wood, broken tiles, bent metal, and shards of glass catching the pale light.

You move deeper with deliberate care.

Collapsed staircases, tilted hallways, and half-melted wreckage greet you as if expecting you, a space that has grown accustomed to your presence. The air hangs heavy, thick with the acrid perfume of charred timber and mildew, a persistent reminder of the fire that once claimed this place. Each step forward feels like revisiting a memory you have lived many times, a place that knows you and your purpose here.