Judex: Ceige and Sloane

Judex: Ceige and Sloane – Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

The frost bites.

Teeth in the air, knives on the wind.

Cryosium doesn’t just kill you, Ceige Rivers thinks. It devours you.

She crouches on the edge of a rooftop, perched like a bird of prey. Night stretches below, a frozen labyrinth of jagged ice and shadow. Cryosium—city of the damned, where breath turns to ghost vapor and danger whispers from every corner.

But at this moment? There’s only him.

Viktor Volkov.

Ceige’s eyes narrow as a figure skirts through the alleyway below. Shadows cling to him like frost to glass, but she knows it’s him—she’s seen the mark stitched onto his jacket. That emblem—Syndicate black and silver. A badge for men who believe they own this city.

No one owns Cryosium. Not even Judex like Ceige. They operate above the law but beneath its shadow, a necessary contradiction in a city where justice is bought and sold. When the courts fail and the powerful slip through their grasp, the Judex step in—investigators, executioners, and the last line of consequence. There are no juries, no appeals, just swift judgment.

She’s heard people speak their name in hushed tones, watched them struggle between fear and reverence. But the truth is simple: the Judex don’t uphold justice. They maintain balance, one body at a time.

“Let’s see what you’ve got,” Ceige mutters, her breath curling into the air.

The wind churns as she moves. A single push off the ledge sends her descending into shadows. Her boots hit snow soundlessly—enhanced bones fine-tuning every motion with precision only science could buy. Twisted genetics, they call it. A gift or a curse, depending on who you ask. For Ceige? It’s survival.

Every step resonates—snow crunching sharply beneath her weight, ice glinting treacherously under powder-light covering. She flows through it all with the ease of someone molded by this frozen wasteland; instincts keen as a blade sliding into place. The world feels alive to her—each gust of wind stinging like a lover’s bite, each echo ricocheting down Cryosium’s skeletal streets filling her mapless mind with coordinates of potential death.

A laugh drifts faintly from some distant bar. Ghostly joy in a city that bleeds misery.

“All according to plan,” she murmurs, lips curling bitter-sweet around the cliche.

Her prey emerges from darkness: Viktor “Frostbite” Volkov steps into pale streetlight like an actor hitting his mark, flanked by two hulking shadows masquerading as bodyguards. Arrogance rolls off him—a heat illusion in this frigid nightscape—but it doesn’t thaw him out. Nothing in Cryosium burns long enough to stay warm. He wears his power heavy on his shoulders, oblivious that he’s already been marked for death.

Her gloved fingers delve into her pack without hesitation. Methodical movements; no wasted effort. One item after another emerges under moonlight’s pale gaze: tools honed by necessity and perfected by time. A custom sidearm nestles in her grip like an extension of herself—the barrel gleaming silver-cold under Cryosium’s half-dead sky.

Frost-resistant rounds clink softly as they slide into place one by one. Deadly precision forged for a world where heat is fleeting and failure leaves blood frozen in its tracks.

Perfect fit.

And then: the picks. Twin blades folded sleekly against themselves until her hands coax them open with a soft metallic hiss. They catch what little light exists—razor edges gleaming like fangs carved from winter itself.

Sharp enough to sever flesh and splinter bone.

Good.

Her lips curl—part grin, part snarl—as she slips the weapons back into their sheathes with reverence earned through years of use.

Enough prep work.

The detachment settles over her again without invitation or effort—a shroud worn too long to ever be discarded fully. Emotions are excess weight; judgment cannot afford indulgences like fear or fury here in this frozen labyrinth, where missteps mean death.

She straightens slowly, every movement deliberate as steel cables pulled taut between anchor points.

The frost bit.

Sharp teeth, cold breath.

Ice in the air, ice in her veins.

Ceige watches from cover and lines up her gun—a perfect extension of herself, its weight familiar in her hands like an old lover returned after years apart.

The world shrinks to this moment—the rhythm of her breath matching the pulse of her heart, matching the stillness of winter itself. Time freezes as sharp as Cryosium’s air; even sound seems brittle, ready to break at any moment under pressure.

“Goodbye,” she whispers finally, savoring the icy resolve that settles over her bones.

Her finger tightens on the trigger.

The silenced shot slips through the night like a secret carried on the wind. Viktor staggers forward once—twice—and then collapses into himself: a marionette cut free from its strings.

His guards turn too late—their confusion hangs heavy in their wide eyes, pale faces caught between disbelief and fear.

“Too slow.” Her voice drips mockery as she slides back into the cold embrace of shadow and snow—the only allies she has ever trusted.

Her heart thuds hard against bone—not fear, but thrill; not survival, but triumph. Somewhere above Cryosium’s endless graveyard streets, another sin is erased by blood and a fee.

She disappears as easily as frost melting under brief sunbeams—but Cryosium doesn’t notice or care.

It never does.

Ceige’s heart drums.

A relentless rhythm in her chest.

The hunt is done, but the game? The game never ends.

Preparation is survival. And survival is everything.

She drops into an alley—narrow, suffocating, its frost-slick walls squeezing inward like ribs closing around a heart—and kneels on the brittle ground.

All according to plan, Ceige, she tells herself. Just another night. The words feel hollow in her head, but she says them anyway because habit has its comforts.

Cryosium is hers tonight—a playground carved from ice and quiet death—and she knows its rules better than anyone else.

Ceige presses her back against the brick wall. It gnaws through her jacket, the rough edges scraping at her skin. Cryosium thuds around her—cars streaking by like silver bullets, a faint burst of laughter fractured by distance, the low hum of a world grinding on without pause. The blood in the snow hasn’t had time to freeze, and yet here they are—oblivious. It never ceases to claw at her. How easily life continues as if death isn’t threading its way through the cracks.

“Time to disappear,” she murmurs, barely louder than the hiss of escaping breath. Her eyes sweep the street, seeking the glint of watchful lenses or curious stares. But no one ever truly sees her. She is a shadow in Cryosium’s frozen veins, a ghost leaving only silence behind.

Tonight isn’t any different.

She exhales once and pushes off the wall. Sliding into the darkness between pools of pale light, she moves like smoke peeling from a dying fire—indistinct, unstoppable. Then she sees it: a flicker of silver cutting through the dark—a camera. Its eye gleams under weak streetlights like polished steel catching moonlight. Ceige drops low without thought, knees skimming frost-slicked pavement as she melts into the shadows.

The camera moves slowly, its glassy gaze sweeping back and forth across the alleyway. Ceige doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. Tension coils tight in her chest like a wound spring ready to snap.

“Away,” she mutters under her breath, fingers twitching against her thigh as impatience gnaws at her resolve. “Look away.”

The lens gives way at last, turning its attention elsewhere. Ceige is already moving before it completes its arc, sliding out from her hiding spot with an ease born of repetition. Her breath pushes out in a cold plume as relief washes over her, sharp-edged and fleeting.

No mistakes tonight.

Turn after turn pulls her deeper into Cryosium’s frozen labyrinth—iron grates crusted with ice; alleys too narrow for light to follow; walls that close tighter with each step until they feel alive, pressing against her ribs like breathless panic given form. Somewhere below this city sprawls the Underground Network—a place where secrets bloom thick as ice crystals on cracked windows—and Ceige flits toward it like wind slicing through brittle branches.

She is untouchable tonight, a specter gliding through Cryosium’s icy skin. Death’s companion cloaked in frost and whispers, leaving nothing but silence behind.

And she loves it.

“Onward,” she murmurs with something close to laughter catching in her throat—a sound swallowed quickly by cold air as it leaves her lips. Onward to whatever comes next. This is hers, this empty existence—sharp-edged and solitary—and there isn’t much left that can challenge that claim.

The alley narrows again beneath jagged rooftops jutting out above like skeletal fingers reaching for stars that aren’t there anymore. Frost clings to every crack and corner; Ceige’s boots crunch against it as she moves forward without hesitation. Her breath curls into thin ribbons that rise only to dissolve into nothingness above her head.

This frozen graveyard is alive in its own way—a dead thing refusing burial—and Ceige revels in it. That hum beneath it all matches hers now: steady, relentless purpose thrumming hard through veins laced with adrenaline and ice-cold clarity.

She turns a corner sharply—and then stops dead at the sound of something breaking its silence:

Ping.

It vibrates against her thigh like an aftershock pulsing up from deep below ground—a burst of noise too sharp for this quiet void to contain comfortably. Ceige reaches down reflexively and pulls out the secure comm device buried beneath layers of thermal camouflage. Its screen glows faintly blue against white-knuckled fingers trembling slightly—not from nerves but anticipation barely held at bay.

Her gaze slides over two words etched across pale light:

Eira Halstead.

For a moment—it is brief but heavy—the name hangs there between bloodless fingers and frostbitten air before slamming into Ceige’s mind like shattering glass scattering across ice sheets slick enough already with danger’s familiar weight pressing down everywhere all at once.

Halstead?

Her stomach twists—not fear exactly but something sharper; curiosity steeped too long until bitter—and unease curls tight alongside it before either can fully settle or explain themselves away entirely.

“Fuck me,” Ceige mutters softly.

The city moans its encouragement.

Cryosium sighs under the weight of its own desires.

The device glows.

A faint, cold light.

It washes over Ceige’s face as she studies the dossier. Eira Halstead—microbiologist, philanthropist, civic leader. A name written on a ledger, now reduced to a target.

Her finger traces the blueprints glowing on the tablet screen. Lines, doors, checkpoints—she maps them like arteries in a body, plotting where to cut.

Surveillance photos flicker into view. The third-shift guards move along their routes, night after night. Predictable patterns, easy to exploit. One guard sneaks out to the loading dock at 2:00 AM for his cigarette—always at 2:00 AM. But something scratches at the back of her mind—an itch she can’t quite reach. The camera angles are too clean, too precise. Recently captured.

Someone else has been watching.

Ceige pinches and zooms on a corner of the blueprint—the maintenance door in the basement lab. There it is. A single charge placed there would do it. The alarms would scream through the building like wounded animals. Security would flood the labs in a panicked wave, leaving the residential wing wide open.

Leaving Eira exposed.

Her finger hovers over “accept.” The money is good—too good. The kind you don’t turn down unless you’re tired of breathing. And just enough to draw out competition like flies to blood. She knows she isn’t the only one with these blueprints burned into her mind, these patterns memorized step by step.

But she’ll be the one to finish it.

Before she can do accept, another ping. This one for Sloane Vale. A rival Judex. But the fee for her death is low, far too low for anyone capable of killing her. Ceige toys with the idea of accepting the job.

“She must’ve pissed someone off,” Ceige mutters to no one, rolling a shoulder stiffened by hours in the cold. Her voice is swallowed by the stillness, but the ghosts hear it anyway—they always do.

Ceige’s grin sharpens—predatory, cold—and a glint of mischief sparks in her icy-blue eyes. This job won’t come easy, but there’s no thrill in easy work. No satisfaction in clean hands.

This will be a glorious mess.

She presses “accept” and watches as the device purges itself, erasing every trace of the contract, as if it had never existed at all. Ceige dismantles the comm methodically, her hands moving without thought or hesitation, while her mind runs ahead to choreograph her ploy:

The blast like thunder tearing through stone. Guards scrambling down corridors in a useless stampede. Seconds stretching thin like thread as Halstead’s apartment lies unguarded and open to her bullet.

One shot.

One exit.

Nothing left behind but silence.

Ceige scatters the pieces of the device in separate trash bins as she walks away from the safety of shadows into something colder and sharper—resolve.

Someone else is hunting Halstead; she knows that now with certainty.

Snow drifts like ash, settling over crooked alleyways and deadened streets. Ceige feels the pulse beneath her boots, the faint thrum of life stirring in its frozen veins. She scans the empty road ahead, but she knows better—Cryosium never sleeps.

It watches.

Eyes linger behind frost-coated windows. Whispers curl around darkened corners. The ghosts here don’t rest, and tonight, they’re laughing at her.

Another single ping breaks the silence—this time her phone—vibrating against her palm. The fee notification slides onto her device, glowing cold as the air around her. A half-smirk tugs at her lips.

She maps it out in her head—threading herself into Eira’s world like a silver needle through silk. Ceige doesn’t mind waiting for cracks to form—patience is another blade in her arsenal, honed alongside a relentless resolve she wears like steel armor.

Her steps crunch soft and steady over the snow-blanketed street. Eyes forward. Thoughts sharper now than ever before.

A pair of drunks slump against a doorway up ahead—unmoving shadows against an uneven wall—but they’re nothing to her. Just echoes of lives forgotten by this city built on chaos and silence, collateral swept aside without a second thought.

She moves past them without hesitation.

Her focus won’t falter—not now—not with Eira fixed so firmly in her sights.

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