Day 13 — Morning | Floor 3: Duskrun Hollow, Lower Stalls
Morning in Duskrun did not apologize for the night before. It just put light on the same stone and waited to see who still wanted a stall.
Michael ate on his feet. The sandwich was fine. The city was louder than grief and quieter than a raid, which meant people were trying to live inside the damage. A woman sold fruit like fruit could stabilize a floor. A smith hammered a dent out of a pauldron and swore at the metal as if it had made the lease market.
Flash walked with his scarf down. "Rex wants the lower stalls. Not a banner job. Just find who's still selling blink junk before midnight turns it into scrap."
"That's it?"
"That's it. You look disappointed."
"I'm not." Michael checked the Promise Board as they passed the alley. Micha's name was still there. Harl's too. Dust had already started to settle in the grooves. He did not add another line. The wall did not need a speech.
At the citadel gate, a boy was waiting exactly where Michael had told him to wait.
Senko.
He looked fourteen if you only counted the face. The eyes were older. Same courier bundle as yesterday, held tighter now, like he had learned that putting a thing down was how the world took it.
"I came," Senko said.
Flash glanced at Michael. "This the one?"
"Yeah."
Senko swallowed. "The stall that sold me the night-key is still open. Down by the moss steps. Green tarp. Man with silver pistols. He told me not to come back. I came here instead."
"Name?" Flash asked.
"He didn't give one. He just took the iron and said the charge would last till morning. It didn't last till morning." Senko's mouth tightened. "Harl pushed me. I know. I keep seeing it."
Michael nodded once. "You did what I said. That's enough for today. You point. You don't step in."
Senko looked like he wanted a bigger job than pointing. He kept the want behind his teeth. "Okay."
They took the moss steps.
The green tarp stall sat between a fungus-lamp vendor and a woman selling boiled roots. The dealer had Pulse Caster pistols on both hips, cheap frames with worn grips. He was packing a crate too fast. Midnight was coming and leftover keys did not love daylight.
Senko stopped at the corner and pointed with his chin.
Flash drifted left. Michael took the front.
"We're not here to shop," Michael said.
The dealer's hands froze on the crate. His eyes jumped from the Relic Blade to Michael's face and found the rumor he had already heard.
"I don't have product," he said.
"You sold a night-key to a kid."
"I sell maps. Repair paste. I don't—"
Flash lifted the edge of the tarp with two fingers. A shallow box sat under folded cloth. Three dull chips. One still had a faint shimmer, like a coin that remembered being expensive.
The dealer's throat moved. "Those are dead."
"One of them isn't," Michael said.
The man looked at Senko. Then at the lane. Then at the pistols as if they might vote for him.
Fear made the choice.
He drew.
The first shot was sloppy and too close. Pulse light cracked the stone at Michael's boot and threw chips up his shin. Players shouted. A pot of roots went over. The woman at the next stall dropped behind her counter and stayed there.
"Lane!" Flash snapped, already moving people back.
Michael did not fold space. He stepped in.
The second shot came cleaner. The dealer had remembered he was a Pulse Caster and not just a man with rent due. Blue-white fire snapped toward Michael's shoulder. Michael turned the Relic Blade and caught the burst on the flat. Heat crawled his wrist. The blade sang a thin ugly note and held.
The dealer backpedaled into his own crate. "Stay off—"
Michael closed the distance the long way. No Anchor. No Protocol purr. Feet, blade, breath.
A third shot kissed the side of his coat and left a black bite in the cloth. The fourth he made the man miss by changing height, dropping a knee, then coming up inside the pistol's best line. The dealer tried to switch hands. Pulse Casters loved that trick when they got scared: left gun, right gun, make the target choose.
Michael did not choose the guns.
He hit the inside of the man's elbow with the hilt. The right pistol kicked sideways and spent itself into the tarp. Green cloth jumped. The left gun came around. Michael pinned that wrist to the stall post with his forearm and held it there while the dealer kicked at his knee.
The kick landed. Not well. Enough to make Michael shift.
"Drop it," Michael said.
The dealer fired anyway. At that range the shot should have taken a piece of him. Michael turned his shoulder and let the burst spend on armor instead of throat. The smell of cooked ozone filled the stall. The man's eyes were wide now, not cruel. He had wanted a clean escape and gotten a fight he could not finish.
Flash's katana tapped the back of the dealer's knee. Not a cut. A reminder.
The dealer's legs folded. Michael took the left pistol out of his hand and set it on the crate like it was just another thing that had run out of time.
Silence came back in pieces. A player cursed. Someone laughed too high. Senko had not moved from the corner. His bundle was crushed to his chest.
Michael breathed once. The Protocol had leaned forward during the third shot and found no door. He let that be a win small enough to keep.
"Name," Flash said.
The dealer spat blood and looked at the moss. "Pell."
"Who sold you the chips?"
"I don't know his name." Pell's voice had no swagger left. "Drop box. North rib tunnel. After last bell. They take iron and leave keys. If you miss the window, you don't get a refund. That's the whole church."
"Mark?"
Pell hesitated. Fear of the buyers was still bigger than fear of two swords in a stall. Then he looked at Senko and at the burned tarp and gave up a piece.
"Hook scratched on the box. Little one. They don't say it out loud."
Flash glanced at Michael. Michael did not say the name behind the hook. He did not need to. A mark was enough shadow for one morning.
They bagged the chips. Kite arrived late, drone already sniffing the scorch. He crouched, scanned, and made a small sound like a man agreeing with bad news.
"Midnight scrap," Kite said. "One of these still thinks it's important. It isn't. Not after the revoke."
He looked at Michael. The look lasted one second too long.
"You sleep?" Kite asked.
"Enough."
"Good." Kite stood, visor still in his coat, joke still missing. "Don't let the kid carry product. He's got a face people remember."
Senko flinched and then squared up, like being remembered could be a job if you held it right.
Michael tipped his head toward the gate. "You did the pointing. That's the work. You want more later, you eat first and you stay off night-keys."
Senko nodded. "I can run messages. I'm fast."
"I know," Michael said. "That's why you wait until we ask."
They left Pell zip-looped for citadel pickup. The stall looked smaller without the rumor inside it.
By late light the lower streets had gone back to their ordinary noise. Rex took the report without turning it into a speech. A drop box. After last bell. A hook. No name. He liked that better than a legend.
Michael found the parapet above the fungal garden because his feet knew the way now.
Asura was already there, jacket half-zipped, watching the garden talk to itself.
"You kept it on the ground," she said.
"It was a stall."
"That's why I said it." She glanced at the black bite in his coat. "He get a piece?"
"Shoulder."
"Juno see it?"
"Not yet."
Asura made a face that was almost a smile. "Then she will. She hates being last."
They stood with the garden between them and the city's heat. Michael rested his hands on the stone.
"The boy's name is Senko," he said.
"I heard." Asura's voice stayed even. "He looked at you like you were a door."
"I'm not."
"I know. Doors don't bleed through a coat." She watched him a second longer. "You could have ended it in one step. You didn't. That was the part I liked."
Michael's mouth tightened. "Harl still died yesterday."
"Yes," Asura said. "And today a scared man with two pistols is breathing in a cell instead of becoming another story on that wall. Both things can be true."
He let that sit. It did not fix Harl. It did not need to.
"Rex has a tunnel after last bell," he said.
"I know that too." Asura pushed off the wall. "Eat. Let Juno see the shoulder. If you go to a drop box hungry, you'll start listening to the wrong kind of quiet."
"You coming?"
"Overwatch," she said. Then, smaller, "I'm glad you asked the boy his name."
Michael looked at the garden. "He already had one. We were just late."
Asura's mouth moved like she wanted to say more and chose the better thing. "Don't be late next time."
She left him the parapet and the smell of cooked ozone still clinging to his sleeve.
Below, Duskrun counted hours toward last bell. Some keys would die at midnight. Until then, a scratched hook on a box was the only name the city needed.