Lucas scrambled up the wall, his muscles burning. He flopped onto the terrace beside his grandmother. Below them, the police were breaching the alley.

Lucas hesitated. The moral line in Jacarezinho was blurry; it was a gradient of grey. He took the money. "Thank you."

He looked back down at the sprawl of Jacarezinho. Smoke was rising from three different points. The sound of sirens wailed, a dissonant symphony. It was a place of contradictions—a favela where a drug dealer played the hero and the police brought the terror.