MAGIC may live in the corpuscles of Zaun's heart.

However, the city's pulse belonged to a secret cabal: a roaming underclass of movers-and-shakers at its nexus. Their names would never be recorded in the newspapers; their deeds would never earn a place in the history books. But they were the silent engines of the Fissures. The ones who, beneath the shellacked glitz, kept the wheels of industry greased and the cogs of commerce whirring.

Their hierarchy could best be summed up as pyramidical. At the apex, there was the ruling oligarchy: the Eye, and his Cabinet. Closely tied to them were the chem-barons: a collection of magnates and tycoons, who had carved out their turf in the city's lawless fringes. Next, came the Guilds: the organizations which held a monopoly over key industries, thus wielding substantial political power. Below them were the Underbosses: small coteries of respected figureheads, from merchants to mercenaries, whose clout was localized by jurisdiction, but undeniably potent. The bottom rungs—the small-time gangs, the backstreet crews, the freelancers—barely warranted mention. They were the grist of the city's meat-grinder: hired by sundown, dead by dawn.

Yet all were connected, through a shadowy web of intermediaries, into a single, cohesive power structure. In a city as competitive as Zaun, survival necessitated cooperation. Thus, there was an uncodified pact between the city's factions: while their interests may clash, their mutual survival was paramount.

This, the cabal ensured. They were the ones who made sure that the gears did not jam. That the machinery of the Fissures stayed functional.

They were called Fixers.

Fixer was, for the uninitiated, a catch-all term. It described any of the numberless players who operated anonymously in Zaun's shadow economy. Fixers could be brothel-keepers, black marketeers, bar-maids, bootblacks. They had no gangs; no formal affiliation with governments. What they shared, however, was the commonality of their enterprise: the art of solving problems without raising undue questions.

Their credo was: No job too big, no job too small.

In Zaun, it was a maxim that paid well. For the right price, Fixers could procure anything from a black-market kidney to an untraceable hitman to an illegal brand of liquor. In their profession, discretion was paramount. They recorded no names in their ledgers, and never reneged on a deal. Their word was their bond, and they expected their terms honored in kind.

And if not?

In Zaun, there were many places to dispose of a body.

In the early days, when the Fissures were an open warzone of gang violence, Fixers had flourished: a motley collection of enterprising souls who could procure everything from a shiv to a coffin. In times of rationing, they could supply a meal or a medkit. In times of strife, they could secure safe passage, or a firearm. As the Undercity began its metamorphosis from a polluted mining rig to into an industrial metropolis, the spectrum of their services expanded from black-market to white-collar.

Now, with Zaun's blossoming glamor in the global spotlight, the Fixer's role had taken on a more cosmopolitan veneer. For the right price, they could connect a wealthy, anonymous client with a high-end prostitute. Or provide the necessary tools for a heist. Or, even, arrange a hit on a rival businessman.

There were rumors that the Fixer collective, in fact, belonged to the Eye of Zaun. That he used them to keep tabs on the crime lords and their respective dealings. That, through them, his reach was beginning to extend to the higher echelons of rival cities: Piltovan politicians, Noxian warlords, Demacian bureaucrats, Shuriman bankers.

Soon, it was whispered, he'd be privy to the innermost weaknesses of the most powerful, and use them to destabilize nations.

Whether this was paranoid conjecture, or hard truth, remained a mystery.

What was undeniable was that, without the Fixers, you would never cross into Zaun's inner-sanctum.

Or meet, rather than the Eye, your maker.

The Fixer's symbol—three concentric circles ringed into a single eye, a slash slanting through it—was inked upon your notepad. Anyone who bore it was granted safe passage through Zaun's backroads.

It was the mark of a neutral party, one that the cartels and cutthroats would not dare touch.

"Are the Fixers," you asked, "the Eye's disciples?"

Ran shrugged. "Kinda. Not really."

"How so?"

"It's a mutually beneficial deal. They give Bossman a leg-up. He gives 'em protection."

"How does he recruit them?"

"He has his ways."

"Does he pay them a wage? How is their loyalty ensured?"

"Dunno. And, again, dunno."

"So he simply appeared in their lives, and they fell in line?"

"Pretty much."

You frowned. "Is it possible... the Eye was once a Fixer himself? Someone who worked in the black markets, and had a network of contacts in the underground?"

Ran blinked, slow. "Dunno."

"Could I ask him during the interview?"

"You can ask him about the color of his skivvies. Up to him if he replies."

This was proving to be a dead end. You tried another angle. "Do the Fixers, then, have any particular traits in common? Do they share the same social background, or upbringing, or education? Do they all hail from the Sumps?"

"No idea."

You were beginning to feel the prickles of irritation. "Ran. I know you don't wish to jeopardize your employment. But I would like a hint as to how he operates."

Ran paused. Then: "Bossman's a people person."

"A people person."

"Yep."

Lock slung a massive arm around your shoulders. "Don't sweat it, kid. You'll see for yourself. Then, maybe, you'll understand." He flashed a metal-studded grin. "Or maybe not? Maybe your brain'll melt out your ears, and we'll have to mop it off the floor."

You weren't certain how to interpret that statement. But you suspected a threat was not the intent. So you decided to let the matter slide. Whatever the arrangement between the Eye and the Fixers, they had cleared the way for you to enter Zaun's deepest recesses.

Now, all that was left was to make good on the journey.

Over the next few hours, you would be privy to secrets by the dozen: places and people heretofore unknown. Never before had you ascended the jumble of rooftops above Drop Street to observe the Solari's secret midnight ritual known as the Midsommar Farewell: colorful kites looping through the smoggy night sky as groups of giddy sumpsnipes raced across the firmament, tugging on strings in symbolic mimicry of the sun's eternal rise and fall. Or mingled, in the glassed-in gem of a cultivair's hot-house, with a languidly supercilious chem-baroness whose botany was the pinnacle of Zaun's genetic engineering: a profusion of ferns, vines, blossoms in a palette of chromatic vibrance that exquisitely perfumed the humid air. Or perched, cross-legged, in the suffocating walk-up of a tailor's shop, where an angel-faced girl labored over the stitches of a tycoon's suit: her fortieth for the night, but with no shred of self-pity in her smile, because her talent had made her a princess in the only kingdom that mattered. Or chorusing, blotchy-cheeked, with a crowd of laborers in a dimly-lit ale-house, their foam-topped tankards overspilling cheap beer as freely as their dirty tavern ditties, while others lounged in the quieter pockets, smoking cigarillos between hushed debates on everything from politics to poetry.

Zaunites, you observed, were as prone to waxing lyrically as they were to swearing. Their passions were strong; their fuses short. Their love of the absurd was matched only by their defiant optimism.

Self-determinism was, to them, an article of faith.

It was a quality rarely glimpsed in their complacent counterparts across the river. The Undercity was once plagued by shootings, drug epidemics, floods, fires and bombings. Yet in barely two years, it had begun snapping into shape. There were offices and emporiums. New schools. Maternity clinics and rehabilitation centers. The ports had been rebuilt, and each day, a rich tide of tourists, merchants and migrants poured across its docks.

Zaun's cosmopolitan ethos welcomed newcomers. In Piltover, many districts remained honeycombed by bloodline. In Zaun, different creeds, classes and clans thrived side by side—albeit tempestuously. A cheap standard of living paired with easy access to food and medicine in an unregulated market meant that up-and-coming professionals, aspiring artists and rebels could flourish here. You spoke to a pretty Reiki masseuse who had rented an apartment at Entresol without, as happens in Demacia, being evicted on grounds of witchcraft. At a crowded tavern, you chatted up a cloaked Shuriman refugee exiled for worshiping the Great Weaver, a figure shunned abroad but tolerated in Zaun. Refilling your chem-filter mask at a breather station, you listened as the heavyset owner boasted of starting his own business from scratch after fleeing penniless from the war-torn trenches in Ionia.

Here, aristocratic antecedents counted for little. Wealth was the true determinant of success.

Or as Lock put it, "Money doesn't just talk in Zaun. It never shuts up."

INDEED, there seemed no end to Zaun's potential as a towering Technopolis. No matter how far you ventured through different zones, you never came away empty-handed. There was virtue and vice in every corner. Zaunites seemed the externalization of escape velocity: everyone was constantly pushing themselves toward the stars, even as their origins were grounded in the gutter.

It was a city of extremes: in ambition, in style, in attitude. What united them was not their origins. Rather, it was a sense of belonging to the city, as if each had claimed a square inch for their own.

"Oh, I've had plenty of chances to leave the Undercity forever," said a bright-eyed woman named Iris, thumbing a smudge of paint off her cheek. "But I could never. It's still my home, you know."

She was sitting at an age-worn wooden table spread out with jars and brushes, having interrupted her work to chat. The walls of her modest studio apartment were plastered with canvases of all sizes, their vibrant colors leaping against the drab surroundings. A clutch of young children played nearby, stacking up blocks only to knock them over, squealing each time.

"Besides, dumpster diving builds character." Iris snorted ironically at her own joke, then backtracked. "I'm kidding. Janna, please don't publish that. Whenever my Piltie clients say that crap, it pisses me off so much. Let's see how much character they can build while almost starving to death… hey, is this going to be anonymous? Well, either way, that part is off the record. Please." A nervous laugh, followed by a more businesslike tone. "And even if I moved to Piltover, the Topsiders would never let me forget where I come from. Not that I'd want to. Growing up here was hard, probably the hardest thing I've ever done. But I'm here now, so I can take anything else that life throws at me. You know, when Enforcers call us 'sumpsnipes' they mean it as an insult, but it isn't. What it really means is that we're survivors. And I wouldn't be here if it weren't for my friends. A lot of them aren't… around, now. But that's how you get through life here. The people you know and the friends you make."

Taking a breath, she smiled determinedly. "And I love Zaun because I love them; I wouldn't give them up for anything."

"I can't imagine living anywhere else," said a young mage of Demacian origins, who identified as Kayla. She perched, crosslegged, in the window seat of a pub at Entresol, a steaming cup of tea cradled between her palms. The secondhand neon lights played across a pale, shadow-eyed face that would've looked at home on a gothic doll. Between idle sips, she elaborated, "I've been through a lot of different places. But Zaun? It's honest with itself. Demacians love to be all honor and morality but enslave folks like me. Did, in fact, enslave me. Noxians love power and strength but beat on hapless farmers and people who can't fight back. And Piltover loves its progress, but who makes that possible? We do. We're the reason they have that wealth and can live such easy lives. But what we get out of it is their literal shit falling on us."

The idleness was a façade. You sensed a blistering anger behind the words. She took a deep gulp of tea, and went on, "But Zaun? It's honest with itself. It's wild and messy and insane, but shows it freely. And that's what I love. There's no hypocrisy. That, and someone like me can really make it. Everywhere else talks about rising if you prove yourself. But it's only Zaun that lives up to that idea." Her features softened; a half-smile tugged her lips. "I guess... I love this place, warts and all, because it's truly free. Sure, there's grime. But beneath it all, it shines like gold. Everywhere else is just gilding covering rust and rot."

"Where to start?" drawled a refined young man in a dark leather greatcoat. Identifying simply as Hugo, he sat at the terrace of a posh little townhouse where he resided with his wife and infant son. The evening mist rolled around his silhouette, lending the ambience a spectral glamor of a piece with his rarefied appearance. "Everyone wants you to believe that their homeland is the best. The most civilized. The most daring. The most innovative. But I'll tell you a secret, my friend: we are all that, and more."

He interlaced his pale fingers together, chin resting on them. His eyes, like ice chips, fixed on a point beyond the horizon. "I'll admit I was quite the fish out of water when I first arrived. Surviving off of what little coin I had enough sense to take with me, and my own cunning. But as it turns out, my niche talents where enough to tip the scales in my favor." A coy tilt of the head. "And in Zaun, there's a niche for everyone. So long as you're willing to put in the work."

You had to ask: "And what, precisely, is your niche?"

The pale lips curled into a smile. "Wouldn't you like to know?" His finger traced, almost absently, down his lapel, which was lined with a series of small, cleverly-stitched pockets. You thought, against your will, of old Shuriman tales where poisoners concealed their wares in the seams of their robes. "There's a great many things I know how to do. But what I'm best at is finding the right solution to a problem. For the right price." An elegant shrug. "Currently, I'm partnered with Glasc industries. But I had much more fun—" the word stretched out, almost teasing, "—working for the Vyx. That's the charm of Zaun, isn't it? Plenty of money to be made, no matter who you decide to work for." A beat. "If, that is, you don't mind getting your hands dirty."

"I was born here," said a young pilot known simply as Avi, her fingers toying deftly with a wrench. The sleek superstructure of an aircraft loomed in the hangar behind her, the air was thickly perfumed with jet fuel. "I grew up fighting to survive, same as most. But I was lucky. My father…was an Enforcer. Dunno if my conception was consensual or not; my mama said it was love but a lot of people tell lies to spare painful truth." The wrench slapped a slow rhythm against her open palm. "Anyway, for the first twelve years of my life I was allowed occasional field trips up Top. Dad was an Air Patrol officer, so when I visited I saw them."

"Them?"

"The airships. Planes, zeppelins, blimps, copters. Anything that flies. I loved 'em all." She quirked a little grin. "Daddy figured I'd just look at the pretty machines, then forget about 'em like most Topsider girls. But he forgot where I come from." The grin sharpened. "I learned it. All of it. Spent my free time scavenging in the scrapyards, stealing blueprints, teaching myself how to build. Dad stopped letting me visit when I turned thirteen—never saw him again—but it didn't matter by then. I had what I needed. Then one day I built something new. Something mine. And I flew. First time in my life I didn't feel caged, didn't feel trapped. I felt...free."

"And in Zaun? Do you still feel trapped?"

The question hung between you, and the answering smile was chiding: an adult humoring a child.

"Look, I'm not saying I got everything figured out or some shit like that," she said. "I'm not saying there aren't days I get mad at my dad for fucking us over, or Topside for making us live in filth. I'm not saying there aren't days that the past still makes me feel so trapped it hurts. I'm just saying...that's what flying is for."

The smile softened.

"It's the place where the sky and the ground meet. Where all the pain and the noise and the fear is just a memory. Up there, it's just you and the horizon. Nothing can touch you. And... for me... that is Zaun."

The interview ended with a bang—quite literally—as a bucketful of rivets nearly dropped on your head. There was a mad scramble to collect notes, pens and dignity before the next round of rivet gunfire began. Avi laughed and sauntered off, whistling a tune strangely reminiscent of Ride of the Valkyries.

It sounded, to your ears, like a call-to-arms.

ANOTHER unifier, of course, was the Eye of Zaun.

As the city's patriarch, he was ubiquitous. His name was invoked everywhere: the common refrain, "The Eye is watching," as a warning to keep one's misdeeds in check; or the coded blessing, "May the Eye be upon you," as a guarantor of success; or, simply, the boast, "The Eye and I go way back," as an assurance of the speaker's credentials.

It was a mantra bound the disparate factions into a commonality, much in the way the Freljordian tribes bound their spirits by worshiping the same gods.

To be Zaunite was to recognize the Eye as a looming presence. He was the enigmatic totem, the wrathful deity, the silent arbiter. His memory, as the adage went, was longer than the Sump's deepest mine: he kept score of every tribute, every transgression.

And, if crossed, his reckoning was absolute.

But there was no denying the disconnect. In Zaun's streets, the Eye was an entity larger than life. But in the flesh, he was nowhere. Few, if any, had laid eyes on the man himself. He was notoriously private; photographs were a rarity, and even portraits were sketchy—to pardon the pun. The most widely-circulated image, a grainy black-and-white, showed a dark-haired figure slouched behind a desk, his hands folded, his features obscured in shadow. No discernable tattoos, no distinguishing marks. It could've been anyone. A blurry figure in the background of an aerial shot. A ghostly outline on a surveillance film. A half-hidden specter at a steamy window.

It was like spotting a silhouette in murky waters: the moment you plunged a hand in, it dissolved into nothing.

His presence, rather, seemed effaced from the collective memory and into the city's very guts: a corpus of iron and glass. Those closest to him were kept at arm's length, and rarely divulged details beyond the bare minimum. His personality, his peccadillos, his ponderings—all were the subject of speculation. Rumors ranged from the mundane ("He likes his cigars with a whiskey chaser,") to the bizarre ("He collects severed heads."). Some even whispered that he was dead, and a proxy was filling his seat. Others swore that he was an ageless demigod, and the city itself his vessel.

What was unmistakable, however, was his voice.

Every month, by radio broadcast, he addressed the city. The voice was pure sorcery: slow, succinct, slithering. The accent was as cultured as any high-born pearl in Piltover's sanctum. But the timbre was like deepwater; roughened with grit. The voice of a man who belonged in the nooks and crannies of the city, as surely as the smoke that stained its skyline.

His addresses were terse, and, by design, cryptic. Sometimes they were exhortations to a new civic policy. Other times, warnings against internal threats to the city's stability. On rare occasions, he offered congratulations to a particular guild, or eulogized a fallen champion. Most of the time, they were oracular pronouncements: the rumblings of a distant storm, or a glimpse into the mists of time. Each was, invariably, prescient. In a matter of days, the event he prophesied would materialize: the fall of a cartel, the outbreak of a deadly disease, a fire in the chemical refineries.

These forecasts were always followed by changes in the city's political landscape. Some said the Eye was a Seer: an oracle who had foreseen the future and could, therefore, manipulate it. Others speculated that his knowledge was merely a symptom of a broader conspiracy: one of which he was the chief architect.

Whatever the case, the city held its collective breath whenever the enigmatic voice filled the airwaves. His pronouncements were akin to divine revelation. They were also undeniable in their effect at rallying the hoi-polloi. Whenever he spoke, the city seemed to swell with an indomitable will: a collective fist that rose like the tide. And whenever he stopped, it receded—leaving in its wake a silence, pregnant with the promise of things to come.

This, arguably, was the real magic: not in his addresses, but in his ability to stir a city to action. In Piltover, a council's edicts were carried out with the alacrity of a marching band. In Zaun, they were carried out with the speed of an avalanche. There was a sense, belowground, that the future was not an inert block of clay, waiting to be molded: it was an energy in flux, capable of burning bright or going dark.

To your mind, there was something unnerving about a city with a faceless avatar. But, for the Eye to sway a populace that was notoriously distrustful of authority, was a testament of their faith in his final word. His power was not a given, as was the case in the Council. Rather, it was earned: by a combination of populist reforms, ruthless violence, and an irresistible charisma.

Even the most hardened skeptics acknowledged that, without his machinations, the Fissures would still be a warzone.

"For a man with no face, he's certainly smashed the old status quo," gruffed a broad-shouldered miner. He sat in a crowded dive called the Hound's Bite. Its walls were decorated with dog-themed paraphernalia: mugs, plates, posters, toys. A neon sign, above the counter, flashed a lurid green: BEWARE OF DOG OR DRUNKEN MAN. "It's as if the Undercity has come out of a depression. We've lost much. Now there seems so much more to gain. It's whipped the masses into a frenzy. Everyone's on fast-forward. And I'm not talking about the chem-tech. The old guard doesn't like it, but there's nothing they can do. We're the ones running the show now." He shrugged, flashing a gold-toothed grin. "That's the power of a vision. The Eye may be the voice of the city. But the will? That's the people's."

"He's a shrewd businessman," remarked an androgynously svelte beauty with a black-on-gold business card and a matching custom-tailored suit. They referred to themselves as Myste, and had a habit of biting the ends, in a manner that wasn't jittery so much as coquettish. "The Eye is a brand. Zaun is a product. His marketing strategy is a simple one: build a reputation, and it does the selling for you. He's built himself a mystique, and it's pulling customers in droves. You've seen the crowds at the Expo. And this is only the beginning. Once Zaun gets down to business, there'll be no stopping the stampede." A smirk, as a talon-like nail touched their plush lower-lip. "Mark my words. Soon, there won't be a corner in the world where you can't buy a bottle of Zaunite brew. Or a pair of Zaunite boots. Or a Zaunite gun. And Piltover? They can either get on board or get out of the way."

"I say it's what gives the city a little spice," husked a dancer at the high-end cabaret known as the Midnight Room. She was clad in a black body-suit that glistened like an oil-slick. Hooking an elegant leg around the pole, she executed a flawless pirouette. Over her shoulder, she flashed a grin: the light fractured off her glossy white teeth. "It's like having a masked lover. Or a voyeur in the shadows. That feeling when you're being watched. That someone, somewhere, might tip you the big one." She winked. "Sometimes, I like to imagine he's watching me. Then I give the best damn performance of my life. Because the show's not just for the crowd, baby. It's for us, too."

"Don't let him fool ya," shrugged the madam of a popular brothel, a pipe-smoking Yordle with a heavily painted face. She was lounged, queen-like, on a cushioned armchair. Two young women, clad in wispy lingerie, flanked her: their hands, like delicate birds, preened her hair, adjusted her jewelry, refilled her wine. The air was lush with opiate-infused incense, and the soft music of a dulcimer. "In my line of work, you get to know what makes a man tick. His wants, his vices. Most of 'em like simple things. A good cut of meat. A pretty thing on the arm. A bit of fun between the sheets." A wistful puff of smoke. "The Eye's more complicated. His tastes are hard to satisfy. And men like that, they're always chasing the thrill. You have to be on guard. Because sometimes, the one who pays the price for his fun... is you."

"I'm not convinced," said a gadgeteer named Giz, a grizzled veteran with an acid-blue prosthetic eye and golden grills on his teeth. He was the owner of the Meltdown, a repair shop at the fringes of the Sumps. You had ducked in for a breather mask recharge and spent the last half hour in a rambling discussion about the Eye. The conversation was interrupted by the occasional crashing and curses as his apprentas attempted to fix a malfunctioning hoverboard. "The Eye talks a big game. But what's he done besides throw a couple of parties and build some roads? When the old guard ran things, at least you knew they'd shoot you in the face. With the Eye, you never know when the axe is gonna fall." His mouth twisted; he spat a glob of tobacco into a spittoon. "A lotta folks have gone missing since the Eye started calling the shots. And no one's seen 'em again. Maybe I'm just a paranoid old sod. But if he's the father of a nation, then I'm not feelin' a whole lotta love."

"You don't believe his vision has longevity?" you asked.

"A father's worth is measured by his backbone, not his words." He jerked a thumb towards the slipstream of traffic. "Take a look outside. What do you see? A bunch of hellions and harlots, making a racket. Sure, his rule has brought a galvanizing effect. But what about after? A father's duty isn't just to shelter his children. He's gotta feed and clothe them. He's gotta make sure they are safe. Otherwise, all his talk is worth jack-shit." He spat another glob of tobacco. It landed dead-center. "Zaun's got no shortage of workaholic fathers. They're never short of ambition. But never around to wipe a kid's ass, neither. That's a father's job, too. And if the Eye can't manage that? Then I call him no different."

A WORKAHOLIC father?

Perhaps.

In some ways, the Eye's role in Zaun's transformation was analogous to a patriarch. A father was, after all, the foundation upon which a child could found their own path. It was his duty to impart values; to impart a legacy.

Without his guiding hand, a child could easily wander off-course, or lose their way entirely.

Likewise, a city needed a moral compass. An anchor of civic virtue to ground its growth. Otherwise, its trajectory could stray too far from the principles that underpinned its inception. And, soon enough, it could lose sight of its spirit. Or become its antithesis. That, to a degree, had been the fate of its counterpart, Piltover: a city so consumed by progress, it had forgotten the very reason for its existence.

You were no expert in childrearing or urban planning. But, eyeing the sprawl of rooftops and neon lights, you wondered if Zaun's patriarch was, if not a merciful father, at least a loving one. Certainly, he'd taken an interest in his people, unlike the apathy across the Bridge. But was the interest born of empathy? Or a calculated investment, to crown himself king of a bustling metropolis?

The answers, as with much in this city, were complex.

"If Mister S is our Daddy," Dustin said, "then Uppside was our landlord." He jabbed a forefinger upward. "Bastard was always breathing down our necks. Always telling us to pay up." The forefinger was replaced by the middle. "Now Daddy's blown a hole through his roof. And we're in the yard, helping him bury the bodies. The place is a mess. It's all dirt and blood. And we're thinking: What next?" His middle finger was joined by its brother. "But that's what Zaun's about. Figuring it out. Taking back our lives. Making ourselves a home. Because, finally, this is home!"

The analogy, though crude, was apt.

Fatherhood was contingent on more than values and legacy. It was the society's moral glue that kept a family together. And the glue in the Undercity had always been threadbare. A neglectful landlord—Piltover—had long allowed his tenants to be exploited. He'd done nothing to repair the city's crumbling infrastructure. Nothing to ease the strain of the working class. Nothing, indeed, but sit in his ivory tower and sneer at the squalor below.

In this light, it was no shock the Eye—distant as he was—seemed preferable. He gave Zaun a vision; Zaun gave him her heart.

Better a workaholic father, after all, than a deadbeat.

But Zaunites, whatever else, held a bone-deep irreverence for authority. As the Eye's children, they were a rebellious lot: unruly, insolent, and prone to tantrums. Most were, in Lock's words, a bunch of "screwups, scoundrels and scammers." The rest were byproducts of a failed system. They had little patience with planning for the far-flung future.

What mattered was the moment: a chance to fill their bellies, or their pockets.

Or, for the less fortunate, to keep living.

Traversing through the Sumps, you were confronted with the ugliest byproducts of Zaun's post-liberation—and Piltover's callous neglect. The streets were a jumbled jigsaw of dilapidated tenemens. The streets were clogged with garbage. A noxious soup of waste, smog and steam choked the air. Disease and hunger stalked every crevice.

Along the Pilt's shores, you saw tin-roofed barges packed with Grey Lung sufferers—floating slums literally cut adrift. Ran said they were volunteers. The boats were testing grounds for a risky vaccine: one that could eradicate the disease. Medicks, according to Lock, would sail out to the barges thrice a day to drop off food and medicine. Soon, the sufferers might be well enough to return home.

In the meantime, they floated in convalescent limbo.

And suffered.

It was a sound that would haunt you for the rest of your life. The gut-stabbed echoes of coughs drifting across the dark waters. Each one a plea for salvation: from the gods, from the city, from anyone. Your escorts had the grace to keep silent, as you stood by the quay, a shamefaced voyeur.

Finally, you spoke. "There's no cure?"

"Not yet," Lock said, grimly. "Himself's got a team of medicks working on it. Brightest minds in the city. They're closing in. But...it'll take time."

"How long?" You heard the hoarseness of your voice. "How many will die?"

"Enough." Quieter: "You know what causes Grey Lung, right?"

You bit back a retort. It would be churlish to say something as ignorant as "chem-smoke." You knew the cause: the runoff from Piltover's refineries that had polluted the waters, and leeched into the air, and infected the lungs of the slum-dwellers. A disease, born from the Council's arrogance, and its refusal to acknowledge its culpability.

The truth sat like a lead weight in your gut.

But the Eye of Zaun had his own truths to account for.

Hand-in-hand with Zaun's festering sickness were strains of subterranean disorder. Driving past the watercourse, you noticed blankets and food being distributed to residents in a darkened city block. Lock explained that the Firelights, a separatist rebel group demanding independence from Zaun, had sabotaged the gas pipeline belonging to a chem-baron, and had plunged the neighborhood into clammy cold.

Within Zaun, the Firelights cause attracted little publicity from the national press. Yet deeper fault lines ran beneath—both sectarian and humanitarian.

Deriving their name from a small species of Lampyridae that thrived in the city's darkest depths, the Firelights were a loose coalition of paramilitary vigilantes. They advocated—through sabotage and subterfuge—for an independent Undercity. However, their cause was radically divergent from the Eye of Zaun's.

To them, he was a catalyst of corruption: a disease vector who'd allowed the worst cancers of the Undercity to metastasize—cartels, chem-barons, cutthroats. Their movement was a call to arms against his autocratic reign. Indeed, the Firelights believed, in the strongest terms, that Zaun was better off without the Eye.

In their vision, Zaun was a haven for all. A place where no child would go hungry, and no parent would labor without a fair wage. A place where no citizen would be exploited by gangsters, and no community would suffer under the heels of an unjust elite. A place where the city's wealth would be redistributed, fairly and equitably, and where the Fissurefolk would be free, in mind and body, to live the lives they deserved.

"They're rabble rousers," Lock grunted, with the contempt of a jaded adult for the dopey pretensions of idealistic youth. "Bunch of kids playing war-games. They want their utopia, fine. But there's no utopia without a price."

"So their cause is what, exactly?" you asked. "A political one? A humanitarian one?"

"Both. Neither. Depends on who they're beating up."

"Are they violent, then?"

"They're Fissure kids, Mx. Goode. Most of 'em are angry and desperate. So yeah: sometimes they get a little rowdy."

"And the Eye... tolerates them?"

"He's got bigger morsels on his plate."

The morsels, in fact, were the other faction of Zaun's fractious social milieu: the chem-barons. A cadre of ruthless money-men who'd risen out of the Fissures during its implosion into a crime-torn wasteland, they had staked their claim in Zaun's nascent economic landscape. Their fortunes were forged from the city's industrial growth: the factories, the mines, the refineries. However, their methods to maintain dominance were uniform: by force of fist or firepower.

Under the Eye's leadership, they'd formed a loose network of trade alliances. However, the symbiotic relationship between the Eye and the chem-barons remained volatile. His tendency to curb their excesses by cracking down had earned him their hidden enmity. In turn, his iron-fisted grip on the city kept the chem-barons dependent on his protection. Each was, to the other's chagrin, a necessary evil: each one the other's bane.

Their only commonality, in truth, was a desire to keep Zaun's coffers flush and their businesses in the black.

"For now, Himself's success is their success. They know not to bite the hand that feeds." Lock shrugged. "But they won't play nice forever. Greed's a nasty bitch. They'll keep biting until there's nothing left to feed on."

"Do you believe they'll attempt a coup?" you asked. "Overthrow him, and take power?"

A metal-studded grin. "They tried this week. Didn't go so well."

"You're saying... it's a regular occurrence?"

"I'm saying, in Zaun, you gotta look out for yourself." His grin turned sly. "Himself doesn't mind the occasional assassination attempt. Hell, he enjoys them. Keeps him on his toes, he says. But if they start testing his patience..." He clicked his teeth, a metallic snap. "Well. He's a busy man. Gotta draw the line somewhere, right?"

You considered that. "With a warning, or... a demonstration?"

Lock's chuckle was darkly amused. "Oh, Mx. Goode. If we start listing all of Himself's motivational tactics, you'd never get a wink of sleep."

This was Zaun's reality. A pendulum of vertiginous détente: an ever-shifting power balance between the Eye and his adversaries. For now, the oligarchy was holding fast. But as the city's fortunes rose, and more factions joined the fray, the pendulum's swing could become erratic. Or fatal. If the Eye lost his footing, his foes would pounce. If he fell, Zaun would collapse.

There was no room for error; no margin for forgiveness.

Only a man, and his iron will, holding the fragile equilibrium of a city's fate.

A workaholic father, indeed.

TO BE SURE, Zaun's fabric was as rich as Demacian poetry and as blunt as Noxian prose. Art lurked at every corner, and the best material was embodied in the everyman. But Zaunites did not write solely with ink. They were scribes of violence, as of beauty. Beneath the nation's veneer of noirish decadence, there were unmistakable streaks of blood.

Most were leftovers from Piltover's mismanagement. As much as the city's rebirth had inspired the masses, the wounds still festered. Many pockets of Zaun resented the Peace Treaty; some openly loathed it. They saw the current attempts at shared progress as patronization; they saw the Cabinet's reforms as an attempt to whitewash their history; to pretend the sins of Piltover had not been paid in full.

On occasion, the hostility flared into violence.

During your voyage, a few passersby recognized the Piltovan cut of your suit. Some shouted insults as they passed. Others, bolder, attempted to rough you up. Most, at the presence of your escorts, gave you respectful berth. Connections counted for much in Zaun. The Fixer's seal was a formidable deterrent.

However, not even a seal could stop a bullet.

For you, the reminder came not in an alleyside—but in one of Zaun's most upscale clubs.

YOU WERE SITTING AT THE BANQUETTE in Blue Note, a jazz club near Entresol.

It was rumored to belong to the Eye. Access was members-only. Even among Zaun's crème de la crème, the guest list was vetted. No press was ever allowed.

Yet when Lock pulled up the motorcar at the elegant horseshoe-shaped drive, the Captain greeted you cordially. The mahogany double-doors slid open with a sultry rush of purified air. The concierges, two lovely girls in purple striped uniforms, led your group to the prime table like royalty. The décor was neo-classical, very sleek, with polished black marble and colored neon lights—green, purple, and hot pink.

Dustin winked at a passing waitress. She took your orders and fluttered off, giggling.

Soon you and your escorts were drinking the finest champagne from the orchards of Trevale, and tearing into rare cuts of a premium-grade Sump-vole while barely five feet away on the parquet stage an androgynous beauty in an iridescent black gown crooned a haunting rendition of Summertime that touched every fiber of your body.

Undeniably, the scene was a bubble of privilege. A world inhabited by well-heeled chem-royalty, self-made yet insolently elitist. But the other Zaun—to your mind, the real Zaun, with its strutting gangs and subversive wiles—was never far. It was there in the guests: the un-Piltovan cut of their suits, the gleam of gold in their teeth, the scars on their skins. It was there in the conversation, punctuated by arms trades and bloodbaths. It was there in the conventions flouted with a rough-edged relish: tobacco spat into cuspadors, F-bombs indifferently dropped and dancers gyrating to lascivious styles that were once banned on Piltover's dancefloors, but had now begin trickling their way even into the banquets of aristos.

In some ways, defiance to Piltover was an indelible pathology for Zaun. Your nations were two sovereign powers, and yet you were also remnants of one broken map. Although Zaun was created in a convulsion of violence, the violence was one half of the collective psyche. The remainder was negation of its estranged sister. Everything Piltover was, Zaun did not care to be.

If Piltover said white, in Zaun it had therefore to be black.

After dinner, Lock, Ran and Dustin played Sumpside Snapdragon. A deadly twist to Piltover's parlor game: a bowl filled with brandy and sprinkled with salt, then set alight. But instead of cogs and candied fruit tossed into the blue blaze, there were tiny daggers. The goal was to snap as many as possible without getting cut or singed. In the same blink, the daggers were flung at a target across the room.

Victory was conferred on whomever hit the bullseye. According to urban legend, they'd meet their true love by midnight.

To call your escorts enthusiastic was an understatement. They flicked the blades at the corner wall with a skillful panache. Keeping up proved a challenge. Between the sumptuous dinner and the fading body-stone, you were dizzied with sensory stimuli.

Pride refused to let you admit defeat.

Your group played shot-for-shot. The champagne made your antics rowdier. At one point you mistimed the fling. The blade streaked past a crossing waitstaff. He batted it out of the air casually, his manner suggesting it happened all the time. The blade pinged off the wall and whistled at a neighboring table.

It belonged to a chem-baron. His lavishly-tailored suit suggested a man of means—even as the ensemble failed to conceal a physique the approximate dimensions of a pumpkin. An entourage of guards surrounded him. The baron himself sat cozily ensconced between two dazzling beauties, their hands playing over his shoulders as if he were the adonic Malcolm Graves himself.

The dagger sliced past his cheek. Blood spilled. His scream rang louder than the music.

"Great," Ran muttered. "Eramis the Crybaby."

In a trice, the baron was on his feet, cursing and shouting. Most of it was Targonian—a small mercy, as his bulging eyes suggested nothing complimentary. His entourage encircled your table. Nearby diners whispered and stared.

Lock rose, dwarfing the baron. "Mind your manners, Eramis."

"That [expletive] Piltie!" The baron brandished a finger. "I'll teach them respect!"

"Mx. Goode is Himself's guest."

"Silco allows this? A Piltie in our club?!"

"A clause of the Peace Treaty. So sit your ass down."

"Soon as I take their [expletive] eye!"

"Do that, I'll take yours."

Lock was serious. His suit coat was open, his gun on display but holstered.

In Piltover, exclusive sanctums are governed by a formal etiquette. Gentlemen never raise their voices. Arguments are always taken outside. You had always chafed at the regulations, and found in Zaun a sense of joyful liberation. Now you were confronted with the flipside: gunfire looming at the horizon, and no laws on your side.

Cringing, you shrank back.

The argument grew heated. The chem-baron threw the first fist. Lock caught it easily in his larger hand, spun the baron around, and sent him flying. Eramis collapsed straight on his rump in a puddle of tailcoats. Then he erupted into a shriek so loud it made the hairs on your neck stand.

"Shooooot!"

His bodyguards swiveled, weapons riding their hips.

Your escorts had already leapt into action.

Survival in Zaun is contingent on the Shuriman credo: Semper Paratus.

Or, as already mentioned: "Look out for yourself."

Lock, Ran and Dustin moved like clockwork. Dustin springboarded the table, dagger drawn. In a flashing arc, he'd cut two throats. Ran unsnapped a chem-taser secured under an armpit. In a feline swoop, they'd slammed it into the closest bodyguard's forehead. Electricity crackled. Soundlessly, the man folded. Lock bulldozed through the remaining bodyguards, knocking them flat with fists the size of shovel-blades. They scattered like toy soldiers, weapons forgotten.

Around them, clubbers cheered like spectators in a coliseum.

In the melee, you ducked below the table. You came face-to-face with an injured bodyguard on the carpet. Snarling, he raised his pantleg and grabbed a snub-nosed pistol from an ankle holster. The hammer was cocked and a bead drawn before you could scream:

"Help!"

CRACK went the pistol.

A bullet winged inches past your ear. Ran had already pounced. Down came the chem-taser. The device kicked solidly as it discharged volts of electricity into the bodyguard's convulsing body. Smoke surged from his skull in a steam-whistling shriek. His eyeballs rolled back. He fell in a puddle of his own urine.

The close call proved much for this humble scribe. Your head swam and a blackness poured in.

You passed out.