Neon Shadows: A Nightclub Mystery
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The city pulsed quietly below, a thousand bars of light sliding between dark alleyways and empty lots. Laura Kinney crouched on the edge of the ramshackle roof, legs drawn in tight, gaze sharp as wire. Rain threatened somewhere in the lurid neon sky, painting old billboards pink and electric blue. She could still smell the blood under her fingernails from earlier—faint now, after a hard scrub in the cracked tiles of her hideout’s shower.
Behind her, the window to the small apartment hung open, the sounds of Gambit’s snoring almost drowned by the air conditioning unit’s rattling whine. She’d carried him home through the back alleys that night, his Cajun charm battered into muttered curses by a broken rib and dart-stabbed thigh. The extraction had been messy, even for someone with her talents. But he was safe now, and she had time to think—almost too much.
Laura flexed her fingers, feeling the itch inside her hands. Her healing factor had already closed the bruises she’d taken to shield Gambit, the slashes the clubs’ guards had left on her shoulders fading now to ghostly red marks. She let out her breath, watching it swirl in the early summer chill, before turning her eyes back down to the street.
Among the battered pages she'd spread out on the paint-stained floor, one headline still tugged at her mind, insistent as a heartbeat.
CLUB NOX UNDER INVESTIGATION: NIGHTLIFE HAVEN OR HAVEN FOR TRAFFICKERS?
Laura had grown good at sensing the blood in the water, and tonight she’d found its scent in newsprint and column inches. It wasn’t her problem—at least not yet. She had promised herself she’d see Gambit through his recovery. But Laura Kinney had always been made for broken promises and splintered oaths.
She stood, adjusting the waistband of the oversized combat pants she’d found in the back of the closet, the faint scent of mothballs clinging to the thick fabric. Wrapped in the gray top—anonymous, unremarkable—she felt almost invisible. Her previous boots, their crimson laces and patched leather, were gone; now, silent tactical shoes let her slip from rooftop to rooftop with the ease of a cat.
She watched the nightclub from her vantage point. CLUB NOX squatted like a fat beast in the center of the block, cold blue light rolling off its flat black walls. Down below, bouncers muscled through lines of would-be clubbers. Two men in aftermarket suits loitered by a delivery entrance, exchanging quick glances. Laura noted the earpieces, the revolving pattern of their gaze, the subtle tilt of their hands toward their jackets. Bodyguards, then—or something darker.
A car rolled by slow on the curb, lights off, windows dark. Laura stilled, a metallic tang rising in her mouth; a primal sense that had never failed her. Someone was following the girl with the electric green wig who stood by the gutter, phone clutched in trembling hands. The shadow inside the sedan watched her with predatory interest—and, more telling, with practiced calm.
Laura pressed two fingers to her temple. Her claws itched beneath her skin, but this was not yet a moment for violence. She slipped her phone from her back pocket and snapped quick photos—license plate, the slow turn of the driver’s face, the sharp-eyed bouncer as he scanned the crowd. Data. Evidence. The trail that led from one lost girl outside a club to the cold rooms beneath it.
The car pulled away, the girl forgotten in the thin flow of club-goers.
Laura’s lips pressed into a hard line. Some instincts were too old to ignore, and if the data pointed to a ring, then the ring would fall—quietly or brutally, as the Xavier School had taught her.
A window slid open behind her. Laura turned, claws held in check but ready.
“Couldn’t settle, eh, petite?” Gambit’s voice rasped, low and drowsy, from the apartment’s shadows. His form was little more than a silhouette, but his red eyes glowed faintly in the night.
“Didn’t mean to wake you,” she murmured.
He shrugged, shifting on the sill, wincing as the wound in his leg reminded him of its existence. “Was dreaming of cards. Lost a full house to a girl with knife-hands.” He grinned, weak but defiant. “You gonna chase ghosts ‘r let me in on your secret?”
Laura hesitated, thumb feathering the edge of her palm. “You need rest, Remy.”
He only grinned wider. “Rest don’t keep the world from rotting, chérie. You want backup?”
He meant it—but Laura remembered the gunshot wound, the sluggish tilt of his head as he swayed in the shower, muscles still weak with blood loss. She shook her head. “Just watching. Big club. Too many unknowns.” She trusted Remy Lebeau, but she would not put another friend in that kind of crossfire if she didn’t have to.
He gazed at the club below, whistling low. “Those kinds of places—they eat people, Laura. Be careful you don’t get eaten too.”
She nodded once, then leaped from the edge of the roof, a shadow carving through thicker shadows as she landed on a neighboring building. Gambit watched her go, then turned inside to the battered deck of cards on the coffee table. He would wait, and when Laura returned, bleeding or silent or triumphant, he would be there if she needed a hand. For now, the city and the night were hers.
***
Laura moved across rooftops and alleyways, never noticed, never challenged. CLUB NOX was a fortress from the front, but like all fortresses it had blind spots. She hung for a minute from a rusting fire escape, listening to the kitchen staff curse and smoke below. Slipping inside was a simple matter—two breaths, a flash of claws to slice an old window lock, a quiet landing in a store room thick with industrial detergent and spoiled citrus.
Inside, the club was a throb of bass and sweat, lights strobing over bodies writhing in shared ecstasy. But beneath the music, Laura heard the code—the rhythm of nervous men, the click of surveillance earpieces, the murmur of cash and threat exchanged in corners where the DJ’s music didn’t reach.
She moved through the crowd, just another girl in drab gray and borrowed pants, ignored in favor of rainbows and sequins. Down the back hallway, two doors: one to the public bathrooms, one—unguarded but fitted with a keypad—straight to somewhere private.
She ducked into the bathroom, pressing a hidden knife between her palm and the stall wall as she listened. Footsteps—dancers, hook-ups, one woman unsteadily redoing her lipstick. No guards.
She waited several minutes, measured in heartbeats and snatches of laughter, before sliding back into the corridor. The keypad glowed faintly in the dark, running on the old 4-digit code system she’d cracked in her teens. Smears of grease and sweat tipped off the four numbers most worn. 1, 3, 5, 9.
A permutation, twenty-four possible combinations. Laura tapped in 1-3-5-9. Nothing. She worked backwards, 1-3-9-5, then 1-5-3-9.
The third attempt clicked open.
Inside, the air was even colder, buzzing with electricity. She crept down a concrete ramp, the bass of the club fading to a distant memory. Voices grew clearer; quick, angry, speaking Russian and English in sharp sibilants.
“…shipment is too late. They want another batch for the weekend—”
“—don’t care, price goes up, tell them—”
Laura’s heart hammered in her chest. She pressed herself to the wall, peering around the corner. Seven men, clustered around a battered folding table, heavy cash in hand, blueprints scattered between pistols and cellphones. One man—a thin, nervous figure in a white suit—gestured toward a nearby steel door.
She caught a glimpse inside—girls sitting on cots, eyes wide and blank, two burly men with sidearms standing guard.
Laura's claws whispered free, three inches of living metal gleaming in the pale light. She could hear their heartbeats: fast, drugged, terrified. Her mouth went dry. These girls were being sold. Moved like cattle.
She moved like a ghost, slipping through shadows until she was behind the two guards. A heartbeat, a silent breath in, a flash of steel. The first man crumpled with a gasp, a sharp jab at his throat. The second raised his pistol—too slow. Laura’s hand closed around his wrist, claws slipping between bones, and he sagged without a sound.
"Stay quiet," she whispered to the girls, voice low. "I’m here to help."
The girls stared at her, disbelief and hope warring on their faces. Laura knelt, pulling a set of keys from the guard’s belt. She unlocked their cuffs, then placed her finger to her lips.
“Out the back. Don’t run until I say. No noise.”
She turned back to the main chamber. The men at the table had heard something. One of them shouted, drawing a pistol. Laura blurred forward—training, rage, and something colder in her blood. She slammed the man’s wrist against the table, gun clattering loose. The others turned, but she was already among them, claws flashing, metal shrieking as she broke bones and nerves with clinical precision.
Within seconds, only the man in the white suit remained—cornered, desperate. Laura approached, eyes dark, claws dripping.
“X-23,” he stammered. “You—you're not supposed to—”
She drew close, pressing him against the cinderblock wall. “You run girls. You traffic people. How many clubs, how many cities?”
He cowered, breath shuddering. “Just here! Just—this is just a drop point—please, you can—”
She pressed harder, claws touching his chin. “You’ll talk to the police.”
He nodded wordlessly, tears streaming down his face.
She dragged him to the surface, keeping his phone and one of the cash bundles. The girls followed, silent and broken but determined. She left a trail of bodies in the basement, but none were dead. They would wake with broken fingers, bruised ribs—and memories they would not easily shake.
Outside, street lights flickered as dawn approached. Laura pressed the girls into the arms of the approaching police, slipping the cash bundle and phone to the first officer on scene. She held the white-suited man until the cuffs closed around his wrists.
She left before anyone could ask her name.
***
The sun was just rising as Laura slipped back through her window, the city quiet for a brief, golden hour. Gambit blinked up from the couch, where he’d set out cards for solitaire and lost to himself three times running.
“Got the ghosts?” he mumbled, raising a brow.
“Some of them.” Laura stripped off the gray shirt, washing blood from her arms. “We’ll need to find another place to stay soon. And you owe me a favor."
He grinned, weak but unbowed. “Any time, mon amie. Just let me heal first.”
Laura smiled—a tiny, returning thing. Below them, the city’s clubs lay quiet, their secrets unearthed by claw and shadow. Above, the day began, streaked gold and pink with hope. For Laura Kinney, X-23, the hunt would always go on. But for now, there was the peace of an old friend’s company, and the satisfaction of a night well spent, in a city that might—for one day—be a little less dark.
This story was generated by user ziggo.zane with assistance by one of OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation model; prompts used to help generate the story are shown below.
Images were generated with OpenAI's AI system, DALL·E 2, or uploaded by the user.
AI Prompts
Prompt: Write a long story about mutant Laura Kinney, who was hidden in her hideout with her friend Gambit. Gambit fell asleep and she went back to looking through the newspapers she found in her closet. She came across a few articles about human trafficking in one of the nightclubs and that interested her, she decided to look into it later, after dealing with Gambit's problem. She put the newspapers back in the closet and searched through the clothes in the closet, looking for something less colorful. Finally she found combat pants, a little too big for her, a gray top. It was definitely better than the colorful clothes she was wearing. She went to the shower and washed off the dirt from Gambit's rescue operation. When she got out of the shower Gambit was still asleep. She put on the clothes she had prepared earlier and turned off the light, then went out through the window and jumped onto the roof of the building, watching the nightlife of the city.
Response: The city pulsed quietly below, a thousand bars of light sliding between dark alleyways and empty lots. Laura Kinney crouched on the edge of the ramshackle roof, legs drawn in tight, gaze sharp as wire. Rain threatened somewhere in the lurid neon sky, painting old billboards pink and electric blue. She could still smell the blood under her fingernails from earlier—faint now, after a hard scrub in the cracked tiles of her hideout’s shower. Behind her, the window to the small apartment hung open, the sounds of Gambit’s snoring almost drowned by the air conditioning unit’s rattling whine. She’d carried him home through the back alleys that night, his Cajun charm battered into muttered curses by a broken rib and dart-stabbed thigh. The extraction had been messy, even for someone with her talents. But he was safe now, and she had time to think—almost too much. Laura flexed her fingers, feeling the itch inside her hands. Her healing factor had already closed the bruises she’d taken to shield Gambit, the slashes the clubs’ guards had left on her shoulders fading now to ghostly red marks. She let out her breath, watching it swirl in the early summer chill, before turning her eyes back down to the street. Among the battered pages she'd spread out on the paint-stained floor, one headline still tugged at her mind, insistent as a heartbeat. CLUB NOX UNDER INVESTIGATION: NIGHTLIFE HAVEN OR HAVEN FOR TRAFFICKERS? Laura had grown good at sensing the blood in the water, and tonight she’d found its scent in newsprint and column inches. It wasn’t her problem—at least not yet. She had promised herself she’d see Gambit through his recovery. But Laura Kinney had always been made for broken promises and splintered oaths. She stood, adjusting the waistband of the oversized combat pants she’d found in the back of the closet, the faint scent of mothballs clinging to the thick fabric. Wrapped in the gray top—anonymous, unremarkable—she felt almost invisible. Her previous boots, their crimson laces and patched leather, were gone; now, silent tactical shoes let her slip from rooftop to rooftop with the ease of a cat. She watched the nightclub from her vantage point. CLUB NOX squatted like a fat beast in the center of the block, cold blue light rolling off its flat black walls. Down below, bouncers muscled through lines of would-be clubbers. Two men in aftermarket suits loitered by a delivery entrance, exchanging quick glances. Laura noted the earpieces, the revolving pattern of their gaze, the subtle tilt of their hands toward their jackets. Bodyguards, then—or something darker. A car rolled by slow on the curb, lights off, windows dark. Laura stilled, a metallic tang rising in her mouth; a primal sense that had never failed her. Someone was following the girl with the electric green wig who stood by the gutter, phone clutched in trembling hands. The shadow inside the sedan watched her with predatory interest—and, more telling, with practiced calm. Laura pressed two fingers to her temple. Her claws itched beneath her skin, but this was not yet a moment for violence. She slipped her phone from her back pocket and snapped quick photos—license plate, the slow turn of the driver’s face, the sharp-eyed bouncer as he scanned the crowd. Data. Evidence. The trail that led from one lost girl outside a club to the cold rooms beneath it. The car pulled away, the girl forgotten in the thin flow of club-goers. Laura’s lips pressed into a hard line. Some instincts were too old to ignore, and if the data pointed to a ring, then the ring would fall—quietly or brutally, as the Xavier School had taught her. A window slid open behind her. Laura turned, claws held in check but ready. “Couldn’t settle, eh, petite?” Gambit’s voice rasped, low and drowsy, from the apartment’s shadows. His form was little more than a silhouette, but his red eyes glowed faintly in the night. “Didn’t mean to wake you,” she murmured. He shrugged, shifting on the sill, wincing as the wound in his leg reminded him of its existence. “Was dreaming of cards. Lost a full house to a girl with knife-hands.” He grinned, weak but defiant. “You gonna chase ghosts ‘r let me in on your secret?” Laura hesitated, thumb feathering the edge of her palm. “You need rest, Remy.” He only grinned wider. “Rest don’t keep the world from rotting, chérie. You want backup?” He meant it—but Laura remembered the gunshot wound, the sluggish tilt of his head as he swayed in the shower, muscles still weak with blood loss. She shook her head. “Just watching. Big club. Too many unknowns.” She trusted Remy Lebeau, but she would not put another friend in that kind of crossfire if she didn’t have to. He gazed at the club below, whistling low. “Those kinds of places—they eat people, Laura. Be careful you don’t get eaten too.” She nodded once, then leaped from the edge of the roof, a shadow carving through thicker shadows as she landed on a neighboring building. Gambit watched her go, then turned inside to the battered deck of cards on the coffee table. He would wait, and when Laura returned, bleeding or silent or triumphant, he would be there if she needed a hand. For now, the city and the night were hers. *** Laura moved across rooftops and alleyways, never noticed, never challenged. CLUB NOX was a fortress from the front, but like all fortresses it had blind spots. She hung for a minute from a rusting fire escape, listening to the kitchen staff curse and smoke below. Slipping inside was a simple matter—two breaths, a flash of claws to slice an old window lock, a quiet landing in a store room thick with industrial detergent and spoiled citrus. Inside, the club was a throb of bass and sweat, lights strobing over bodies writhing in shared ecstasy. But beneath the music, Laura heard the code—the rhythm of nervous men, the click of surveillance earpieces, the murmur of cash and threat exchanged in corners where the DJ’s music didn’t reach. She moved through the crowd, just another girl in drab gray and borrowed pants, ignored in favor of rainbows and sequins. Down the back hallway, two doors: one to the public bathrooms, one—unguarded but fitted with a keypad—straight to somewhere private. She ducked into the bathroom, pressing a hidden knife between her palm and the stall wall as she listened. Footsteps—dancers, hook-ups, one woman unsteadily redoing her lipstick. No guards. She waited several minutes, measured in heartbeats and snatches of laughter, before sliding back into the corridor. The keypad glowed faintly in the dark, running on the old 4-digit code system she’d cracked in her teens. Smears of grease and sweat tipped off the four numbers most worn. 1, 3, 5, 9. A permutation, twenty-four possible combinations. Laura tapped in 1-3-5-9. Nothing. She worked backwards, 1-3-9-5, then 1-5-3-9. The third attempt clicked open. Inside, the air was even colder, buzzing with electricity. She crept down a concrete ramp, the bass of the club fading to a distant memory. Voices grew clearer; quick, angry, speaking Russian and English in sharp sibilants. “…shipment is too late. They want another batch for the weekend—” “—don’t care, price goes up, tell them—” Laura’s heart hammered in her chest. She pressed herself to the wall, peering around the corner. Seven men, clustered around a battered folding table, heavy cash in hand, blueprints scattered between pistols and cellphones. One man—a thin, nervous figure in a white suit—gestured toward a nearby steel door. She caught a glimpse inside—girls sitting on cots, eyes wide and blank, two burly men with sidearms standing guard. Laura's claws whispered free, three inches of living metal gleaming in the pale light. She could hear their heartbeats: fast, drugged, terrified. Her mouth went dry. These girls were being sold. Moved like cattle. She moved like a ghost, slipping through shadows until she was behind the two guards. A heartbeat, a silent breath in, a flash of steel. The first man crumpled with a gasp, a sharp jab at his throat. The second raised his pistol—too slow. Laura’s hand closed around his wrist, claws slipping between bones, and he sagged without a sound. "Stay quiet," she whispered to the girls, voice low. "I’m here to help." The girls stared at her, disbelief and hope warring on their faces. Laura knelt, pulling a set of keys from the guard’s belt. She unlocked their cuffs, then placed her finger to her lips. “Out the back. Don’t run until I say. No noise.” She turned back to the main chamber. The men at the table had heard something. One of them shouted, drawing a pistol. Laura blurred forward—training, rage, and something colder in her blood. She slammed the man’s wrist against the table, gun clattering loose. The others turned, but she was already among them, claws flashing, metal shrieking as she broke bones and nerves with clinical precision. Within seconds, only the man in the white suit remained—cornered, desperate. Laura approached, eyes dark, claws dripping. “X-23,” he stammered. “You—you're not supposed to—” She drew close, pressing him against the cinderblock wall. “You run girls. You traffic people. How many clubs, how many cities?” He cowered, breath shuddering. “Just here! Just—this is just a drop point—please, you can—” She pressed harder, claws touching his chin. “You’ll talk to the police.” He nodded wordlessly, tears streaming down his face. She dragged him to the surface, keeping his phone and one of the cash bundles. The girls followed, silent and broken but determined. She left a trail of bodies in the basement, but none were dead. They would wake with broken fingers, bruised ribs—and memories they would not easily shake. Outside, street lights flickered as dawn approached. Laura pressed the girls into the arms of the approaching police, slipping the cash bundle and phone to the first officer on scene. She held the white-suited man until the cuffs closed around his wrists. She left before anyone could ask her name. *** The sun was just rising as Laura slipped back through her window, the city quiet for a brief, golden hour. Gambit blinked up from the couch, where he’d set out cards for solitaire and lost to himself three times running. “Got the ghosts?” he mumbled, raising a brow. “Some of them.” Laura stripped off the gray shirt, washing blood from her arms. “We’ll need to find another place to stay soon. And you owe me a favor." He grinned, weak but unbowed. “Any time, mon amie. Just let me heal first.” Laura smiled—a tiny, returning thing. Below them, the city’s clubs lay quiet, their secrets unearthed by claw and shadow. Above, the day began, streaked gold and pink with hope. For Laura Kinney, X-23, the hunt would always go on. But for now, there was the peace of an old friend’s company, and the satisfaction of a night well spent, in a city that might—for one day—be a little less dark.
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