Heavy violet neon cut relentlessly through the ambient chemical haze.
Will leaned back against the cracked leather upholstery of his usual semicircular booth. The morning logistics of the Neon Lounge flowed around him in a comfortable, thrumming rhythm of clinking glassware and low synth-bass. Catching a sliding tumbler from a passing tray without looking, he handed it smoothly to a rushing hostess with a familiar, easy nod. He belonged to this noise.
Across the table, Sia sat with one leg folded under herself, tracking the room's traffic with a sharp, proprietary gaze.
At the adjacent table, a heavily armored Vanguard leaned entirely too close to a hostess named Lexi. He was loudly exaggerating a recent fight against a D-Tier Sludge-Hound. His hands moved in wide, sweeping arcs as he boasted about a spinning back-slash he claimed severed the monster's jaw.
Khan's voice echoed directly into Will's skull. The ancient warlord was not offended by the bragging. He was deeply, viscerally offended by the terrible footwork.
He gives up his footing to strike at dirt! Khan roared, vibrating with aristocratic disgust. Cross the room and break his jaw before his stupidity infects the rest of the camp!
Will took a calm sip of his drink, letting the burn of the rotgut center him while he ignored the screaming Mongol king entirely.
Sia did not ignore the Vanguard. Without looking away from the Lounge entrance, she spoke loud enough to carry over the synth-bass.
"You spin on a Sludge-Hound, it snaps your ankle before you finish the turn," Sia said. "You tripped over a pipe and got lucky. Leave Lexi alone and pay your tab."
The Vanguard flushed dark red, shut his mouth abruptly, and threw his Glitch chits onto the table.
Ha! Khan grunted in immense, surprised approval.
Ruby materialized from the bustling bar. She didn't carry a medical scanner or ask for a pain scale. Taking one look at the rigid, unnatural way Will held his left shoulder to protect the snapped collarbone, her eyes tracked the ugly, dark purple bruising creeping up his neck.
She dropped a rough cloth packet onto the sticky table directly in front of him.
"Two-day hangover minimum," Ruby noted dryly. "And a cracked left rib from before you started drinking. You've been leaning away from it since you walked in."
Will did not touch the packet yet. "What is it?"
Ruby pointed a stern finger at the cloth. "Heavy painkillers to stop you breathing sideways. Don't ask what they are. Just swallow them."
She turned and walked back toward the bar without waiting for a thank you.
Will looked at Sia. "Does she hand out stock to everyone?"
"Only the ones she wants to keep breathing," Sia replied, taking a slow sip of her drink. "She doesn't pick many."
Khan hummed with deep strategic appreciation. The women in this court are the true power. They know everything and they keep the soldiers alive. A general ignores them at his own peril.
A fierce, instinctual surge of protectiveness flared in Will's chest. He spoke internally to the warlord, burying the ego defense under the practical logic of the PATH. I am not building a spy network.
Khan laughed, a dark, rich sound in the void. Of course not. But the one with the medical kit knows six supply chain managers you don't. That is not spying, boy. That is inventory.
How do you know that?
She told me while you were distracted by your own hangover, Khan noted smugly. I was paying attention.
Will settled deeper into the cracked leather, letting the heavy bass rhythm wash over him. He pulled his comm-radio from his pocket and tapped the plastic shell, seamlessly adopting the irritated, loud voice of a street hustler getting screwed on a deal to blend into the noise of the room.
"The numbers are garbage," Will barked at the empty air. "I don't care what the guild charges. You eat the transport fee or the contract is dead."
The camouflage worked flawlessly. Sia immediately lost interest in the administrative complaining, her eyes drifting back to the morning crowd.
It worked far too well.
A heavily intoxicated patron stumbled past the booth, overhearing the aggressive jargon. The man stopped dead in his tracks. His lower lip quivered. Without warning, the drunk man burst into loud, wracking sobs and threw his arms around Will in a suffocating hug.
"I miss quarterly reviews!" the drunk patron wailed, burying his face in Will's shoulder. "I just want a dental plan!"
Will froze. Trapped in a sweaty embrace with a weeping ex-SaaS accountant, he desperately tried to maintain his street-cred while awkwardly patting the man's shaking back.
Khan completely lost his mind.
The ancient warlord laughed so hard in the void that he could barely form words, roaring at the sheer absurdity of Will's conquered subjects.
Peeling the weeping accountant off his jacket, Will handed the man a fresh drink to send him on his way. He used the internal channel to give the recovering warlord a rapid, brutal breakdown of the PATH's survival hierarchy.
He outlined Boss Garrow. The dying brute ran the eastern tunnels with pure cruelty and a mandatory Glitch quota. Next came Calvin Osei, the Alderman of the Ward, who enforced strict political loyalty through suffocating math and food algorithms. Finally, he mapped Vesper, the commander of this Lounge and the sole gatekeeper of the hidden harbor routes.
Khan recovered from his laughing fit, absorbing the political landscape instantly.
Garrow is a blunt instrument, Khan assessed. A dying dog. He will break himself if you hand him a heavy enough hammer.
Will nodded gently, pretending to listen to a supplier on the comm-mic. And Osei?
You do not fight a man who controls the grain silos, Khan answered, his voice sharpening with predatory interest. You burn the silos and offer him a seat at a smaller table.
A beat of silence hung in Will's mind.
The woman who runs this tavern, however, Khan continued quietly. The queen of the port. You must never let her know you are armed until the blade is already at her throat.
Will took a slow sip of his drink, letting the burn of the rotgut center him.
The club's violet lights shifted to a deeper amber. Sia slid a glass of pale liquid across the table. Will hadn't ordered it, but he took it anyway.
Lifting her chin, she nodded toward the far end of the Lounge near the heavy steel exit doors.
Murn, the massive loading dock boss, was aggressively crowding a smaller man. Will recognized the victim instantly. It was the Lounge's resident mascot—a completely harmless, delusional hustler who routinely tried to sell garbage pre-apocalypse artifacts to the hostesses. Currently, the hustler was trying to peddle a stale, five-year-old strawberry Pop-Tart in a faded foil wrapper.
Murn sneered. Snatching the foil wrapper out of the smaller man's hands, the heavy boss crushed it entirely in his massive fist. He let the crumbled pastry fall into the dirty puddles on the concrete floor just to prove he could.
The hustler dropped to his knees, frantically trying to scrape the pink crumbs together.
Will felt a cold, absolute disgust pool in his gut. A phantom tightness gripped his throat—an ancient, deeply buried muscle memory from a time when he couldn't speak while larger boys shoved him into lockers. He despised men who punched down.
He crushes your jester's food, Khan noted, feeling the spike of anger in Will's blood. Cross the room. Break his jaw. Take his men.
Will set his glass down. No. That makes me Garrow. I don't want his men. I want him ruined.
How?
Operating on pure instinct, Will formulated the trap. I am going to put him in a situation where he is going to die. And then I am going to save his life. I want his gratitude.
Khan remained quiet for three seconds. They called men who did this work poisoners. They were not respected. But they were extremely useful.
Will shifted his focus away from Murn and back to the bar, letting the heavy synth-bass rattle the ice in his glass.
Then, the heavy steel doors to the Lounge banged open.
A three-person dive team staggered inside. The point man was drunk, bleeding heavily from a superficial shoulder wound, and completely unhinged. Stumbling violently into Will's booth, his hip checked the table hard enough to knock Will's drink over. The glass shattered on the floor.
The survivor didn't apologize. He lunged forward and grabbed the lapels of Will's heavy coat. The man shook violently. It wasn't battle fatigue. He vibrated with a deep, existential terror that had absolutely nothing to do with standard Gate monsters.
"The new Gate in sub-level four," the survivor slurred, his eyes wide and unblinking. "It's bad, man. Not monsters. Just wrong."
Will gripped the man's wrists, prying them off his coat. "What do you mean, wrong?"
Shuddering, the survivor dropped his voice to a hoarse whisper. "The walls. I put my hand on the stone and it was warm. It was breathing, man. The whole place was breathing."
Will waited for Khan's sarcastic commentary. He expected the warlord to insult the cowardice of modern men.
Nothing happened.
Khan went completely, terrifyingly silent. It was a massive, alarming tell from an entity that never shut up.
Prying the man's hands completely off his coat, Will watched him stumble toward the bar to demand rotgut.
The rhythmic pulsing of the club's sound system suddenly felt distant. The ambient noise of the Lounge dropped in Will's immediate vicinity.
A massive shadow fell entirely over the leather booth, blocking out the violet neon signs from the bar.
Will looked up. A giant bouncer stood at the edge of the table.
The man's right arm was a brutal, necrotic fusion of human flesh and System-metal. It was a jagged mess of heavy, rusted iron grafted directly into the shoulder socket. Weeping, oily synthetic fluid stained his sleeve around the integration sites. The skin bordering the metal remained permanently bruised and blackening.
Will looked at the man's face. He didn't search for a skill read. He just saw the heavy, rotting weight of the graft, a parasite methodically dragging the man's nervous system down into the dark.
The bouncer did not ask for permission to interrupt. He did not greet Sia.
Looking down at Will, his voice rumbled with a low, mechanical grating sound. "Vesper wants you upstairs. Now."
Will's blood ran instantly cold. His cover as a harmless, invisible pack mule might be entirely blown.
Khan's voice finally returned, vibrating with sudden, thrilled violence. The queen summons the rat. Let us see if she has a guillotine.
Will slid out of the booth and stood up.