The heavy trap bass rattled the sticky synthetic leather of the corner booth. Will leaned into the absolute center of the scratched table, dropping his voice to a smooth conversational cadence, crowding Zeraya's space and forcing her focus entirely on the massive loading dock boss at the bar.
"He is completely insulated," Will stated.
Zeraya kept her eyes on the bar. "Insulated how?"
"Three Garrow thugs on rotation," Will replied. "Heavy kinetic batons and the kind of aggressive posture that costs fifty chits an hour. Murn never leaves the dock alone. He uses the private freight elevator. Zero angle of approach."
Zeraya watched Murn grab one of the hostesses by the elbow. The massive man pulled the terrified girl roughly into his lap. Zeraya hated seeing the man claim the space.
"So we bleed him on the elevator," Zeraya suggested, her voice completely cold.
"It requires a biometric palm-read," Will pointed out. "Unless you brought a bone saw and a highly optimistic getaway plan, the hand stays attached."
"Stop looking at the concrete, Will," Zeraya shot back. "Look at the fractures."
"I have scouted the dock for three cycles," Will countered. "There is no gap."
Her instincts took over. She leaned forward, viewing the security detail not as a barrier but as a logistical puzzle with a glaring flaw.
"You are thinking like a mule," Zeraya said. "He is arrogant. He thinks he owns the people around him so thoroughly that he does not need to watch them."
"The guards are on his payroll," Will said, keeping his face completely flat.
"The guards are irrelevant," Zeraya stated. "If those girls stop being his assets and start being his exit strategy, he is dead before he even knows he is under attack."
Will let her own the idea entirely. He slid his untouched glass of cheap liquor across the wet wood. A physical handover.
"You think you can get them to talk?" Will asked.
Zeraya caught the glass. She downed the burning liquid in one violent swallow and slammed the heavy base down on the table.
"Watch me."
Will left her to start the work.
He turned his back on the Neon Lounge and headed directly toward the subterranean transit lines beneath Union Station.
The air quality degraded rapidly. These lower tunnels processed raw Glitch runoff from the upper wards. Thick chemical smog hung in the corridors, coating the concrete in a slick toxic film.
He stopped at a rusted metal stall near the final descent. A scavenger with severe acid burns across his neck was arranging a line of heavy filtration masks.
"Upper-level lungs rot down here, suit," the vendor rasped. "The smog will strip your throat to the cartilage in an hour."
"I need a filter," Will said. "Grade-S carbon scrubbers. Give me something that works, not something you pulled off a corpse."
The vendor picked up a stylized chipped black samurai half-mask. "Demon jaw. Painted it myself. Keeps the acid from boiling your blood. Fifty chits."
"I am not paying a markup for your arts and crafts phase," Will said. "Twenty."
The vendor scoffed, pointing a scarred finger down the dark stairwell. "Twenty gets you a wet rag. Look at the air down there. You want to breathe or do you want to die cheap?"
Will tossed a heavy iron token onto the metal counter. "Thirty. And you wipe your memory of this transaction."
The vendor pocketed the token instantly. "I never even saw you."
Will locked the samurai mask over his jaw. The internal filters immediately scrubbed the heavy chemical taste from his tongue.
Khan spoke from the base of his skull.
"You cover your face," the conqueror observed, with genuine displeasure. "A king should be seen when he kills. Let them know who is coming for them."
"A ghost stays alive by having no face to remember," Will muttered into the dark corridor. "We are collecting capital tonight. Nothing else."
"Capital," Khan repeated, the word landing like a verdict. "You fight in a cage for capital. In my day we just took it."
"In your day you had a hundred thousand cavalry," Will said. "I have a samurai mask and thirty chits. Different tools."
Khan made a sound that was not quite agreement and not quite argument and let it go.
The fight pit under Union Station was a raw cage of reinforced iron wire. The space smelled of burning chemical fuel, cheap synthetic sweat, and old dried blood.
Above the cage, a massive man with a glowing neon-blue voicebox graft stood balanced on a rusted shipping crate, screaming into a heavy duct-taped microphone. The blown-out speakers mounted to the cavern ceiling distorted his voice into a violent metallic roar.
"Meat on the floor!" the announcer bellowed, pointing a scarred finger down at the blood-slicked concrete. "That means the cage is hot! Who wants the next payout?"
Pressed hard against the chain-link fence, two rail-thin scavengers screamed rapidly into a scavenged Guild radio headset, broadcasting pirate commentary to the lower wards.
"Forty seconds! The wolf guts him in forty!" the first radio-scout yelled, slapping the wire in manic excitement. "That is three wins tonight! I told you to put your iron on the fur?"
Inside the cage, a man whose skin had erupted into thick matted wolf-fur was standing over a dead Garrow thug. The werewolf spat a mouthful of hot blood onto the floor and howled.
Khan roared in Will's skull.
"He took the spine with his teeth!" the conqueror bellowed, his voice thick with dark delight. "THAT is an execution! That man understands how to end a fight! You leave the body in a state that makes the next man think twice!"
Will watched the menders drag the dead thug out by his boots.
"He left his ribs open for three seconds," Will said quietly, leaning into Khan's enthusiasm with the specific ease of a man who had learned that disagreeing with Khan directly was less effective than redirecting him. "Anyone with a blade could have ended him right there."
"He took the SPINE," Khan repeated, outraged. "With his TEETH. Are you truly going to critique the man's rib positioning?"
"I'm going to fight in that cage," Will said. "I'd like to survive it."
Khan went quiet for exactly one beat. Then, with the shift of a man changing from spectator to advisor:
"Then do not leave your ribs open," Khan said. "Ever."
"That was my point."
"It was a good point," Khan admitted, with the specific reluctance of someone conceding a point they hadn't planned to concede. "I got distracted by the teeth."
The next match was about to begin.