Vi meets Silco and his crew! ...And it's as hostile, creepy and uncomfortable as expected.
Tw: for animal abuse, animal experimentation, drug use, and threats of sexual assault. While subtle, they are still present. To skip that part, stop reading at "What's up? Vi deadpans," and resume at "The tattooed man glowers" via the search function. If I've missed anything, please drop me a PM!
There's a snake in my boots
There's a rat in my cage
There's a shark at my feet
That's been circling for days.
~ "Rottweiler" - Idles
Inside the warehouse, the air hangs close and chilly.
Vi has already gone from pleasantly cool to numb. She is manacled to a metal chair welded to the floor. Her wrists and ankles are secured by handcuffs. The temperature cramps her muscles. Since Stillwater, she's had nightmares like this. Locked into full-bodied paralysis, all her strength sapped away into the tears welting her cheeks.
She doesn't cry now. But the dread is so visceral that she nearly chokes.
(Powder.)
(I messed up. I'm sorry.)
She struggles in the chair. Her wrists chafe against the cuffs; her clothes stick clammily to her skin. But instinct compels her to keep the blood flowing. She'd fucked up. No point arguing the fact. But no point beating herself up over it, either.
She suspects someone will be doing that job—or worse—pretty soon.
Taking a breath, Vi orients herself. She'd been stripped of her weapons and blindfolded when Sevika brought her in. Now she takes in the lay of the land. The warehouse must be near the Riverside. The putrid wet stink of the Pilt seeps through the air. It blends with the odor of sawdust and bleach. The walls are made of weeping cinderblock, the floors of pigmented concrete. The corrugated roof is scabbed with holes.
Greenish shafts of moonlight pour through the crossbeams, striking off rows of plywood pens. They are densely ensconced in chickenwire. Inside, Vi glimpses shadowy shapes and the glowing red contrails of eyes. Sounds emanate off and on: slobbering growls mixed with deep, plaintive, nearly sexual yips.
Dogs? Or something else?
She doesn't want to find out.
The room grows colder. Vi sits in the half-dark, sore and shivering. But she tries to keep her shit wired tight. It's not about what might happen later, Vander used to say. It's about what you can do now. Six years, and Vi's never forgotten the advice. She'd survived Stillwater thanks to it. She'll survive this too.
For Caitlyn.
For Powder.
The warehouse door creaks open. Humid air swirls into the stale refrigerated interior. A knot of goons troop in: dressed to the nines. Vi counts them on instinct. Four in total, Sevika included. At the entrance, Vi sees a half-dozen more guards passing a flask back and forth. The fishhook of moon glints off the chem-tasers dangling from their belts. Her stomach tightens. She needs to consider every possible variety of escape. But unless she's sprung loose from the chair, she can't see a smart way out.
Sometimes, unless there's an ace up your sleeve, you play low odds.
"Comfortable?" Sevika calls out.
Vi's glare burns through the space. The other woman's insolent smile and heavy-lidded stare answer her.
"Or maybe not, huh?" Sevika says. "You're probably used to swankier digs. Like that little flat at Sapphilite Row, right?"
Vi grits her teeth.
Sevika is baiting her. Making Vi feel like she knows everything about her new life. It's a trick the guards played in Stillwater too. Something to knock the prisoner off-balance, get them to blurt incriminating details. Vi isn't interested in letting Sevika shape the battlefield. Better to turn the tables.
"Not doing shabby yourself," she says. "Is that a real Valdiani watch? Or a knock-off?"
Sevika flexes the gold band on her wrist. "You tell me? Probably see plenty Uppside.'"
Vi does. Enough that she knows a Valdiani watch costs fifty thousand Hexes. A Ferros Sky Moon costs one point two million. A Da Couteu Bleu costs one point five. She's seen them on the arms of guests at Piltover's galas while she's acting as their security escort. She's seen them as she and Caitlyn stroll hand-in-hand through emporiums where wares are laid out on marble counters like precious scrolls.
She's seen enough to know that a Valdiani is a small fry brand. Barely worth an honorable mention. Lower houses in Piltover collect them. Upstarts flaunt them.
Sevika's watch is the real deal. But it says a lot about her. A fifty-thousand-Hex cliché.
Vi says, "Guess you've hit easy street."
Sevika tips a shoulder. "Three hots, a cot, and cash to spare."
"Silco's not worried about his number-two going soft?"
A flicker of malice lights Sevika's eyes. "Wouldn't let anything happen to Silco. Not while I've got Shimmer in my good left arm."
It is a boast, but also a warning. You're in Zaun now, and we understand payback.
Vi holds Sevika's gaze steadily, then aims her stare out over the rest of the warehouse. There is too much unfinished business between them. No sense getting into it here.
Sevika chuffs in agreement. Putting two fingers to her mouth, she cracks a shrill whistle. On cue, the goons spread out. One begins shaking sackfuls of purple pellets into metal tureens. Another puts on a pair of ballistic-nylon gloves, and sets the tureens before the chickenwire. The last waltzes between the pens, bashing a pipe across the chainlink. From inside, the sounds spike into yelps, hoarse and wild.
"Bow-bow-bow!" he giggles spookily, then points the pipe at the ceiling like a gun. "BLAM!"
"Fuck's sake, Dustin," the biggest goon says. "Lay off the sniff before a job."
Vi recognizes him. The tattooed hulk from Stillwater. Last she heard, he'd been released after the corruption scandal tied to the late Sherriff Marcus. Silco took advantage of the snafu to spring his vultures out of the cage—each one a card-carrying member of his gangland franchise.
The goon's busted jaw is healed up from French-kissing the tray. His heavyset mastiff's expression seems cast in cement. Vi notes his well-cut gray suit, and the thorny rings encrusting his fingers. Like Sevika, he's evidently moved up in the Lanes. But the pudge girding his waistline says he needs to lay off the greasy food.
The goon's stare passes over Vi. She gives him an upticked eyebrow. "Long time, no see."
His upper lip ripples along his gum to expose teeth. It isn't a smile but a threat. Vi senses he is the vindictive type.
He's worth worrying about.
The other two are worth worrying about too—in different ways. The pale dark-haired girl is solidly built, in a pleated leather jumpsuit. Her demeanor is both feline and laidback. But her sharp eyes radiate a killer's cold vitality. They cut Vi up and down like claws. The guy next to her is a lanky twist of sinew in a rumpled red suit, his blond hair spiked and his eyes holding the empty, feral aspect of a rabid coyote. He sways from foot to foot as if he's dancing to music. Catching Vi looking, he waggles his tongue.
"What's up?" Vi deadpans.
"Real nice," he says, as if in greeting. Then: "She's lookin' reaaal nice. Eh, Ran?"
The dark-haired girl shrugs. "Porking the pork? I'd look nice too."
"Think we can sneak ourselves a taste?"
"I'd spit in the wind before I kiss a Piltie."
"She ain't a Piltie." His grin is a twitchy rictus. "One of ours."
"That's why Bossman wants her in one piece."
"Fuckit."
He hawks messily and spits on the floor.
The tattooed man glowers, "You spit like that in your grandmother's house, Dustin?"
"My Gran never had a house, Lock."
"Don't care if she had a house or a chickencoop. Don't spit on the floor. Himself doesn't appreciate messes. Get me?"
Dustin lets off an unhinged cackle. "Oh maaaan. Forgot. Think he'll be mad?"
"Don't get excited," Ran says boredly. "Paddling your ass was a one-time thing. Now he'll just lop your cock off." To Lock: "Should we taper the mutts off the juice? They're going into rut-mode."
Lock shakes his head. "Himself wants 'em aggressive. Like sticks of TNT on a short fuse."
"Which ones are up for tonight's fight?"
"Stardust and Ziggy."
"Putting on a show for Bilgewater's ambassador?"
"Yeah. He wants a breeding pair."
"Bet you sixty cogs they'll end up cinching the trade deal." She crouches, eyeing the cages. "Bossman could find an angle in a circle."
"Why question the math when it makes magic happen, huh?"
Ran flashes of silver-studded tongue between white teeth. "I heard tell…"
"Yeah?"
"There'll be a Noxian warmason at tonight's event, too. The guy working for Swain."
Lock grunts disdainfully. "A real swinging dick."
"It gets better. Turns out the guy has a reputation as a ladies' man. Big talker, big hands. Likes to sample the whores in every port."
"Poor bastard. Ours'll steal his wallet before he unzips his pants."
"He's only interested in bedding Zaun's finest."
Lock's eyes zip surreptitiously to Sevika, then away. He asks, "So he's at the gala to check out the buffet?"
"Our spies say he's prowling for the Bossgirl."
"Oh shit," Lock breathes in sadistic glee, while Dustin cackles so hard he nearly stumbles backward.
"He'd heard she was a game bitch. Now he's antsy for a trial-run. Even paid one of the tarts at Babette do an impression of her." Ran's voice drops to a conspiratorial purr. "Swear to Janna, when the Bossman found out, you could've heard a pin drop. The whole room froze. Then Bossman smiled. You know. That smile. He said, 'That's a pity.' Tonight, he's gonna sic one of ours into the guy's bed."
"The Pythoness?"
"The Maven."
Dustin laughs. "Lucky, lucky."
"Him—and us. She'll feed us details on his cadre. Right until the Bossman orders her to bite his dick off."
"And keep the Bit of Ghostberry off-limits."
"A safe Bossgirl is a sane Bossman." Ran gives a little shiver. "Don't need a repeat of that night in the Shimmer Pits."
"Or everything after."
"Kaaaa-boooom!" Dustin hollers, the sound echoing through the space.
Lock and Ran glance at him, then turn away. Their jaded chuckles fill the warehouse.
Revulsion corkscrews down Vi's spine. She thinks about how, in Piltover, there are minds of great ingenuity creating wonderful things. Curing cancers, cultivating orchids, crafting machinery. On the flipside, in the Undercity, there are equally ingenious minds. But all they design are new methods of depravity.
Zaun may as well be Silco's private laboratory: a realm where he perfects the highs and lows of human suffering.
The goons carry on talking. Meanwhile, Sevika drags a stool from the corner and settles across Vi. She lights a flared joint, the ember glowing stoplight-red. The scent of hashish perfumes the air.
The Undercity deals in different types of tobacco and herbs. In Piltover, it is rare to see anyone smoking. Belowground, it is practically a sacrament. Most ingredients are smuggled from faraway shores. Others are made locally, using the scarce subterranean plants that bloom in darkness. Different communities favor different blends. Ionians smoke hemp with a touch of peppermint oil. Those from Buhru prefer dried catfish skin. Shurimans grind their own tobacco flakes, cure them with molasses, and smoke them in waterpipes called shisha. And those hailing from Vastaya swear by the sinister power of the opium poppy.
Sevika's clan are from Vekaura. They make their own product: small hand-rolled cigarillos called bidi. They are wrapped in temburni leaf, and tied with bits of colorful strings. They come in a variety of flavors: coconut, lemon, mango.
Sevika's favorite is the nastiest. Hash spiced with cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.
Burns like hellfire, tastes of heaven, she'd liked to boast.
In the background, there are sounds of barely suppressed frenzy from the pen. The goons burst into batshit laughter.
Vi meets Sevika's eyes. "Got some charming company in here."
Sevika shows a sly smile. "Oh yeah. They're really rolling tonight."
"'They' who?"
"Just a bunch of doggies for tonight's gala. Officer."
Vi doesn't let Sevika's tone rile her. She doesn't need to justify herself. Her reasons for joining the Peacekeepers were her own. In another life, she thinks, Sevika might've made a Peacekeeper herself. A good one.
Under Vander, she'd always demonstrated a no-nonsense competence, keeping order in the southwest territories. Vi had respected her fighting prowess. They'd even sparred together now and then. They were well-matched; Vi had raw talent, but Sevika had skill. It was impossible to hem her into a corner. Afterward they'd sit at the Drop, nursing their various bruises, Vi with a cherry soda and Sevika with a belt of bourbon. They'd shoot the bull until it was bloody, then Sevika would clap Vi on the shoulder, before heading off to talk to Vander.
Then she'd about-faced. Taken up Silco's cause. Caused untold damage to their home. And knowing Sevika had done it willingly, without a shred of remorse, makes Vi despise her all the more.
"You really lost the plot," she grits out.
Sevika's brows shoot up. "Me?"
"After turning on Vander, you ought to be in a cage yourself."
"You think so?" Sevika's tone is mellowed by the smoke, but her sarcasm holds a blunt edge. "Personally, I prefer taking my lumps to turning tail and running."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"You were dead-set on fighting Uppside too. Or so I recall. Now look at you. Kicking it with Enforcers. Playing snitch for the Council." She inhales the smoke, holds it, then blows fumes out though her nostrils. "Just remember. A snitch is two rungs below a bitch."
Vi's anger simmers into a boil. "There's no rungs, Sevika. There's Silco. Then there's everyone under his thumb."
"Zaun needs a strong hand to stay stable."
"This ain't the fucking military."
"You're right. It's an enterprise. Which means there's a pecking order."
"So what place does Powder occupy?" Rage sparks a byplay of the skyscraper balcony, and her sister arm-in-arm with Silco. "As his weapon? Or his whore?"
In the periphery, Dustin mummels his lips, as if Powder is an unknown substance. Ran cocks her head, half-cat, half-curiosity. "She mean the Bossgirl?"
Vi's aggression spreads like wildfire. "I mean my sister. The one Silco's got his dirty hooks in!"
The group burst into laughter. The sound sends a staticky chill through Vi's bones. Bottomless hilarity with an undercurrent of disbelief.
Wheezing, Sevika flicks a tear from under her eyelid. "Damn. Out of the mouths of babes…"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Sevika sobers, "Silco's not fucking that pasty little gristle."
"I saw—"
"Don't know what you saw. Especially in plain sight of our network. It ain't happening. Never has been." She leans back, crossing her arms over her chest. "Trust me. If Jinx was Silco's side piece, she wouldn't have lasted long. He'd have snapped her in half before she could say Boom. Just like the rest."
Vi's blood boils. "Don't talk about her that way!"
"Talking about her as I know her." Sevika's eyes narrow. "Girl's no plaster saint. When she's not being a disgusting Daddy's girl, she's a four-alarm psycho."
"Silco did that! He drove her crazy."
"Please." She takes a hit of her spliff. "Jinx was crazy way before she came to us."
"You don't know what you're talking about!"
Nothing about Powder's disturbing new flavors matches Vi's memories of her sister.
In her mind are snapshots of a different girl, the bratty crust belying the sweetest center. The girl whose wild-as-hell whimsies gave birth to wind-up monkeys, and shoeboxes full of scrap metal, and exuberant crayon drawings of fusion-engineered cryptids with names like Poofda and Whumpus and Snickergooble. The girl who'd only drink her cherry soda if it was served in her specially-doodled cup with a straw, and who could outfox kids twice her age at the arcade's shooting games. The girl who would nestle her cheek trustingly into Vi's shoulder at bedtime each night, her hair sticking up in ticklish blue tufts, and whisper, Love you to the moon and back.
Those memories are still inside Vi. All that bottomless mushy-sisterly love. All the hope and heartache.
Then her memory catches fire with a blue flash of phosphorous—and Jinx stands in Powder's place. Dead-eyed and ghost-pale, her body seeming to flow between the liminal spaces of shadow.
Silco did that. Warped Powder's mind and devoured her heart. Made her into Jinx. Made her a monster.
Same way he made the Undercity into Zaun.
Vi says, "Powder—"
Sevika interjects, "You mean Jinx."
"Powder. She was never crazy. Never a bad kid. She was just—"
"What? A little messed up?" Sevika snorts expressively. "Who isn't a mess, down here? But Jinx was different. I still remember her as a tot. Always skulking in corners with her weirdass contraptions."
"She never hurt anyone—"
"Only because she didn't have the right tools. But that menace was always in plain sight. It's like that thing the Doctor talks about." She snaps her fingers, searching for the term. "That biological whatsis?"
"Biological imperative," Ran says without missing a beat.
"That's the one. Some shit, people are just hardwired to do. Can't help themselves. It's the plain fact of their existence." She scatters ashes from her joint onto Vi's boots. "It's different from talent. You and me, we've got that with our fists. Fighting's never tickled our nuts, but it's our reliable go-to. Well—yours." Her offhand sneer makes Vi's muscles tighten with the itch to lash out. "You take a swing, and the problems fall down, right? Might be a hundred better ways to get stuff done with your hands, but that's the gift Janna blessed you with." She balances the joint sideways between her teeth. "With Jinx, it goes beyond talent. Burning things to the ground is what she was born to do."
"That's bullshit!"
"Is it?" Sevika whistles. "Lock?"
The behemoth steps closer. "Yeah?"
"Show Big Sis your scars."
Lock angles his head. Skewed across his left cheekbone to his jawline are mottling burn-marks. They are old: faded brownish in color, like something from a spray of embers.
"Jinx gave him those," Sevika says pleasantly. "Firecracker to the face. When was it again? A week after the Boss took her in?"
"Ten days," Lock grunts.
Sevika drags on the joint. Through the hazy funk of smoke, her eyes burn with a feral glee. "Lock's not the only one. Ran's missing a pinkie toe. Battery acid in the boot burns like a bitch. Dustin's no better off. He's got a hairline crack in his left shinbone. Masonry mallets pack a nasty punch."
"Goes with the crack in his skull," Ran says, monotone.
Sevika shrugs: Touché. "Point is, Jinx was no housepet. Not even as a little girl. Maybe she was born sick. Or maybe she was a bloodthirsty child of a bloody time. Whatever the case, Silco didn't create that little hellbeast. He just opened the door." Acrid fumes pour from her pursed lips. "Guess it runs in the family."
Vi isn't sure if the expression on Sevika's face is amusement or pity—but it sears through her.
"I'm. Not. Crazy."
"Wasn't talking about you."
"You think I give a shit what you're talking about?" She can no longer throttle back the hatred burning like fire in her lungs. "All of this started with Silco! Fuck him for perverting Powder! Fuck you for letting him do it!"
There is silence through the warehouse. From the pens, a solitary howl strangles itself. Sevika finishes her joint, then butts it out. Her mechanical hand waves the smoke as if shooing a fly. Without taking her attention off Vi, she says to the goons, "Silco will be here in a few minutes. Get the ramp ready."
The goons exchange glances, but no words. Obediently, they file out of the warehouse. The door creaks shut, and Sevika straightens. Her expression doesn't change, but she makes a short tch of disapproval.
Then she slugs Vi in the face.
Her human fist connects with a flat whack against Vi's temple. It's a rabbit-punch: almost a scold. Vi's head jerks back, water leaping into her eyes. She blinks rapidly to clear them. Sevika's dark stare holds hers without mercy, a brewing storm of cold front against hot.
"You should've stayed Uppside," Sevika says, her voice dangerously low. "Bad enough you nearly blew our operation full of holes last time. But having you closeby turns your loony-tunes sister into a walking hair-trigger. Last time, I was looking forward to the fireworks. This time, we can't afford it."
"Well excuse the fuck out of me—"
"Shut up."
Sevika's cheekbones are patched red with emotion. Rage and something stronger.
"You don't get it, do you?" she says. "We can't compromise this. We've worked six years to reach this stage. We've waited decades. Now everything's in motion. Zaun is real. The Fissurefolk are free. That's a big word we've never heard before. Free. But too much freedom starts a feeding frenzy. Ever seen what happens when rottweilers who've never tasted meat get their first bellyful? They lose their fucking minds. They get so wild they tear each other apart."
"Isn't that what you want? To pick the Undercity clean while it falls into anarchy?"
"You waltzed all the way from the Promenade to Entresol. Saw any anarchy?"
Vi wrestles against her handcuffs. "Like a fancy front proves anything! I know what I saw six months ago! You've got half the Lanes strung out on Shimmer. Now you're obviously going full-scale. You'll let Silco destroy everything. Worse, you'll drape your crimes in a phony nation's flag and call it freedom!"
Sevika shakes her head. "Damn."
"What?"
"Piltie cooch must be powerful Kool-aid."
"The only Kool-aid is Silco!" Vi says savagely. "Can't you see that he'll burn down everything just to say he's saving it? Worse, he'll string you along to light the fires for him. You're his disposables. His goddamn bullet catchers."
"We were Piltover's bullet catchers. In Zaun, we're our own people."
"Ruled by a monster."
Sevika regards Vi with a tickled expression, as if Vi is one of many in a long line of mutts she's skinned alive.
"You think Vander was a saint?"
For a moment, the shock of hearing Vander's name whites out Vi's mind. In the next beat, she lunges against her restraints.
"Vander was good!"
"Vander was good," Sevika mimics. At Vi's expression, her eyes take on a half-lidded ruefulness. "Sweet Janna. You want to believe the lie so bad, it's choking you." She sighs. "I can't rightly blame you. Every girl idolizes her old man. No matter how much of a shithead he is. And everybody idolized Vander. Hound of the Underground. He was larger than life." Her humor fades. "Then he lost control over the streets. He lost the respect of the Lanes. Sooner or later, he'd have lost his head. He failed too many people."
"Vander didn't fail—"
"Yeah?" Sevika stalks closer. "Enforcers having a field day in our city? Business at a standstill? Everything falling apart? You have no idea how bad it would've gotten. No idea the things I've seen Uppside do to us."
"So you betrayed Vander for revenge?"
"Betrayed him? We weren't besties. It was strictly business."
Vi shakes her head. "Keep it real, Sevika. If business is business, then you made some promises."
"Promises aren't set in stone, sweetie. Everything has an expiration date."
"It's Vi. Not sweetie. Vi. Call me by my name."
"Same way I call Powder Jinx?"
"You're not funny."
"Thought we were keeping it honest."
"Try this for honesty." Vi grits her teeth. "You were supposed to have Vander's back. After everything he did for you—for the Lanes—you were supposed to protect his legacy. Not help Silco destroy it. You owed him."
"I didn't owe Vander jack-shit!" Sevika's outrage flares equal to Vi's own. "Vander owed us—as a leader owes his followers. As a general owes his soldiers! Under Vander, I patrolled the Lanes night after night, and went to bed as hungry as I'd ever been. Under Silco, I sit at the XO's desk and have whatever I want at my fingertips. More than that. Whatever I need—plans I couldn't make, hopes I never dared. Hell, this warehouse is my bonus. A little something to indulge my hobbies."
Vi's disgust is tinged with incredulity. "You're with Silco for the fucking hobbies?"
"I am with Silco because he has given us more than we ever had," Sevika says. "Not just business for the Undercity. Silco remembers what we'd forgotten under Uppside. What Vander never bothered to remind us. That we deserve better. We weren't born to live like animals. We're not fucking hardwired to fight over scraps. We do it because it's the only way we survive. But that doesn't mean we don't deserve to have more—or be more!"
Vi stares at Sevika in astonishment. The other woman's face is stripped of its brazen surface, showing something battered on the inside. The face of a woman who has been through hell, and won't hesitate to cut you a hundred ways to heaven if you screw her over.
It hits a sore spot behind Vi's own ribs. Reminds her that her own resume is just as ugly. But she can't fold so easily into empathy.
Her anger goes too deep. So does her loss.
Raggedly, Vi says, "How can you be more with a monster leading you?"
Sevika's irate expression resolidifies into stone. "You've got serious growing up to do."
"What—?"
"Good deeds get nothing done. Not when Piltover's got the game rigged. Good people—or those who believe they're good, like Vander—try to keep everyone happy. But they're just scared to choose a side. Except in a war, there only two sides. Suffering or survival." She lifts her chin, a hard glint in her eyes. "I'm on the survivor's side. So is Silco. Vander had the strength but not the staying power. No vision for the future. No strategy for success. Silco does. He understands war. He understands what victory costs, and how to inspire others to seize it."
Vi barks an empty laugh at her. "He inspires the worst in everyone."
"Or shows them how to use their worst to achieve their best." Her smile is no smile at all—but a dragon flashing fangs. "And Zaun is free, isn't it? I walked the road with him. And he led us here."
"He'll lead you to your graves."
Sevika's sigh is that of a worn-out babysitter. She crosses to the door without a backward glance.
"He's the wrong man to get tangled up with," she says. "You'll learn that soon enough."
In the distance, Vi hears thunder. A storm? No—the sounds of a chopper.
She tips her head back. A huge black shape blots out the patches of sky showing through the warehouse's broken ceiling. The air ripples with heavy rotor wash and gas fumes. From this angle, Vi can only see the chopper's gleaming belly. She can't discern the occupants.
But she can make an educated guess.
Sevika and the goons stand by the half-open entrance, their bodies held stiff against the howling blade-wind. The chopper banks westward at a distant hub. It's a private airbus, Vi realizes. State-of-the-art: its shape as sleek as a bullet. She's only ever seen them in downtown Piltover, where rich tourists rent them for a bird's-eye view of the skyline.
The rotors dwindle from a deafening blur into a staggered whump-whump. The doors slide open. A row of blackguards march out, decked to the nines in tacsuits, chem-tasers resting on their hips. They stand in a semi-circle. A ramp unrolls down the tarmac. Vi sees the bodies of well-dressed men and women emerge. Chem-barons and baronesses. Next, a group of men who reek pure Bilgewater make their swaggering exit.
Finally, a lone silhouette coalesces from the darkened interior.
Vi knows who it is by his walk: half-snake, half-slut. Even with the partial eclipse of the blackguards, she can see Silco's pale features, the ruin of one cheekbone, the shark-eye shining like an orb of blood. His coat swirls around the tailored length of his suit, and he moves with the smooth stride of someone who is right where he belongs.
A deathless devil in his playground.
He's just a man, Vi reminds herself. A knife will cut him.
Same way he cut Vander.
Sevika and the goons step forward to greet Silco. They converse in low tones. At the distant sound of Silco's voice, the creatures in the pens tear against the chickenwire, fangs biting at the metal and trailing runners of saliva. Their fierce howls rip through the warehouse. Each sound bristles the hairs on Vi's neck. A helpless nausea swells through her, the sense that she's been lulled and gulled, her own nature turned against her the moment she'd set foot in Zaun.
She feels the way an animal in a snare must feel as the hunter's footsteps echo closer.
Then Sevika elbows the warehouse's gate wide open. Hinges creak and dust swirls. The eerie greenness of the moonlight throws the interior into stark relief. The howls intensify in the pens—a cacophony of foghorns sounding off.
It matches the cadence of Vi's pulse.
"Ah, the prodigal daughter."
Silco looms at the entrance. His face is bisected by the shadows of the crossbeams. His good eye is banded in moonlight: blue with an uncanny undernote of green. The reflective shark-eye ignites red in the darkness. The skin around it is caked in make-up thick as wax. But Vi knows what it hides.
It's one of the ghastliest facial disfigurements she has seen—and growing up in the Lanes, she's seen plenty. Rumors in Stillwater were that Silco's flesh was scarred as part of a demonic bargain for an all-seeing eye. That he could read minds and unseal secrets. That he could stare through walls, and into the vaults of strangers' hearts.
There were other rumors too. Namely that Vander had done that to Silco. Stolen his eye, savaged his looks.
Vi can't imagine how it happened, or what Silco must've done to deserve it.
Scratch that.
She can.
From her first glimpse, she'd sensed something inside Silco. A distilled evil, draped in fancy suits and snake-oiled savoir-faire. She boggles at his success as the Undercity's drug kingpin; the only thing she'd ever buy from him would be a sack, so she could slip it over his head and spare herself the sight of that cored-out peeper.
Except Silco isn't looking at her. His stare idles over the cages—and what's inside.
Doggies, Sevika said.
But what Vi sees in the glow is altogether more feral. Rottweilers with vein-throbbing musculatures that can only be the consequence of Shimmer. Forelegs thick as bullwhips and shovel-edged jaws full of teeth that gleam like wrought-iron. They throw themselves against the chainlink with a lunatic savagery, the pens rattling. Their interiors are spit-polished and glossy. To the left, Vi glimpses a large metal rack hung with expensive leather leashes.
Kneeling, Silco admires the biggest specimens. They seem composed purely of muscle. He reaches a hand to stroke their boxlike heads. They lick his fingers with large pink tongues. Others bellow in an untamed ruckus. The sound feeds on itself, a massing volume, a throbbing pressure.
Silco snaps his fingers.
The click passes through the warehouse. The animals fall deathly silent.
"Good," Silco says. "Good dogs."
Then Silco's focus slices to her. For a moment Vi feels reduced under his raptorial stare, just another dog in the pen.
Then she scowls. Fuck this asshole.
"So," she says. "How's the Chancellorship?"
"It has its high points."
"Which ones? The drug trade? Or the assassinations?"
Silco's laugh barely qualifies as a laugh: just bared teeth with the hiss of air. He rises smoothly. Balancing on one leg, he bends forward to pinch his trousers at the inseam, shaking the fur off the fabric. Vi notices that he doesn't touch the wall or otherwise support himself for the maneuver. Spry, given how ancient he is. Forty-two if anything at all.
She stares at the skin drawn tight over his cheekbones. Reminds herself, if she breaks loose, to aim for that spot.
"You're in some trouble yourself," Silco says pleasantly. "Though this time you took it too far."
"Not far enough," Vi says coldly.
"Oh?"
"You're still breathing, aren't you?"
The grooved geometry of his face sharpens. "Careful, girl. We're on thin ice as it is."
"And we left on such friendly terms."
"I was referring to Zaun and Piltover." His tone is all patience, a promise to go slowly for her sake. "You were under surveillance the moment you set foot in our territory. I have resources that can lock down this place like my closet door. You must know that. You're hardly so naïve."
"Good for you."
"Yet instead of contacting our envoy, you deviated off-course. Worse, you smuggled illegal gear within our borders. Now Zaun's and Piltover's Peace Treaty is in jeopardy. But not for the reasons Piltover hoped. As we speak, the Council is scrambling to organize a press blackout. They're dreading my announcement of the murder their Peacekeeper has committed in Zaunite territory."
Vi goes absolutely still. "Murder?"
Silco scrutinizes her with that creepy mismatched stare. His shark-eye is dark and huge; it reaches through the space, swallowing the softest crumbs kept secret inside Vi. The blue eye is the opposite. It ticks clockwise, calculating the odds toted in Vi's favor—and coming up with zero.
His mouth stretches into a grin.
"Yes," he says. "Murder."
Nausea pulses through Vi. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Oh? You don't remember?" His arms lace behind his back. "Let me refresh your memory. This evening at Entresol. In the shadow of Janna's Temple. Eyewitnesses saw you skulking about in an alleyway. They saw two blackguards take off in pursuit of you. Five minutes later, you walked out. Leaving one blackguard dead to the world. The other? Plain dead."
Vi's jaw unhinges. "No—"
"You have a different story to share?"
"He—he was alive!"
"So you admit to the altercation?" He sidles closer, his polished boots gritting on the concrete. "Duly noted."
"I—"
She can't speak. Her mind is seething. Shock, denial, dismay. In that instant, all her hard-won lessons in Stillwater and her training with Peacekeepers flees. She only wants to break loose and launch herself at him. And yet she can't move. Beneath her rage, there is the familiar crawl of déjà vu.
The night at the cannery. The night at the Bridge. Once again, she's a pawn on the chessboard of a man who'd hurt her family. Hurt Powder.
It has never stopped.
"You know," Silco muses, "it's not often I have a conversation where I say, 'The murder wasn't even the point.' Yet here we are." He twists the steel toe of his boot like he is crushing out a cigarette. "Your next stunt was to head to lower Entresol. Infiltrate the building adjacent my headquarters. And look Jinx down a sniper's scope."
"I didn't—"
"We have surveillance photographs. We've seized a contraband drone. Not to mention intercepted messages between yourself and the Kirraman girl."
For a moment Vi can't breathe. It's all too much. In the next beat, a choking-hot fury pours through her veins. She thrashes in her chair.
"This is a fucking setup!" she snarls. "All of it. You planned it from the get-go!"
Silco's smile fades. Something dark and loathsome passes over his features.
"Setup?" he echoes. "Planned? Did I hold a gun to your head and order you to attack the blackguards? Or turn Jinx into a target?"
"Her name is Powder—and I'd never target her. I just needed to know she was all right!"
"My sole purpose for permitting your visit."
"And you expected me to trust you?!" The needle inside her jumps into red. "Letting me into the Undercity was just an excuse to fix me in time and place!"
Silco gives her a head-tilted once-over.
"Did I con you? Or mislead you? All you had to do was follow the rules."
"You'd never have played by Piltover's rules! You'd never have let me see Powder!"
"Well, now we'll never know." His mildness hides a glint of bloodstained steel. "Truth told, I can't blame you. In your shoes, I'd think it was a setup too. In my shoes, I always think it's a setup. Usually, it is."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying this was a setup. Not yours or mine. Topside's." He strolls slowly around her chair. She cranes her head, trying to keep him in sightline. "Tell me. Are you familiar with the concept of parsimony?"
Vi blinks at the non-sequitur. "What?"
"It's a principle that suggests events are connected in the simplest way. Everything flows down the path of least resistance."
"What's that got to do with anything?"
"For our present predicament? Everything." He stops behind her. Not touching, but talking to the back of her head. In the chilly warehouse, his body gives off a smokeless heat. "Parsimony suggests both our actions are no more than what they seem: you being reckless, myself being ruthless. But when politics come into play, parsimony has its limitations. We no longer enter the realm of nature, but of men. With all their inherent manipulations."
Vi swallows hard. She can smell him where he stands behind her. A cologney waft of citrus, undercut with smoke. She can smell herself. Rank, the stink of old adrenalized sweat.
She whispers, "You're saying—what? Piltover's pulling a fast one on us?"
"Absolutely." He sidles back into view. "As per Topside's plan, you were supposed to arrive here—and bungle the operation. Nothing bloodthirsty of course. Just enough for bad optics. You'd return either in a stretcher, or with your hair on fire. Proof-positive that diplomacy with Zaun was not the solution. A reminder that the Council were wrong to take me at my word."
"That's because they can't!"
With the moonlight slanting behind him, Silco's face is shadow. But she sees the faint gleam of a smile.
"Did the Council say that?"
"No! They—" She takes a breath, hating the quaver in her voice. "They said nothing. They only ordered me to make contact with your envoy." She slits her eyes at him. "And to watch myself."
"Why didn't they double-check once you were inside?" He tips his head. "If I'm so untrustworthy, why not maintain contact with you throughout your journey?"
"Because I'm a Trencher! I know the territory!"
"I'm afraid it's not that simple. You're one of theirs now. Piltover is responsible for your conduct. Especially on foreign soil. Instead, they let you off your leash." He taps his chin with one finger. "Imagine if I let these rottweilers loose on the streets? Who would do that, unless they hoped to harbor a bloody outcome? It's not parsimony, so much wielding its effects in one's favor."
"I'm not a fucking rottweiler!" Vi snaps. "I didn't come to Zaun to start a bloodbath!"
"So the drone, the contraband blades, the transmitters... all of that was a sensible precaution?"
"I had to! You've never needed a reason for taking me out!"
Silco's tone is calm. Preternaturally calm. "You have given me a reason. Several."
"So what's stopping you?"
"Hm?"
"You owe yourself a crack at me. Same way I owe a crack at you." She tosses her head. "Why hold back?"
Silco stops his slow pacing to regard her. His expression is blank. But in his good eye, half-lidded and dark-encircled, she sees—something. It makes gooseflesh crawl down her arms in a way that has nothing to do with the high air-conditioning.
His words roll in a slow, almost hypnotic cadence.
"Because your usefulness," he whispers, "overrules my gratification."
Vi glowers with undisguised hatred. "Don't expect a slobbery thank you."
"Far from it, I expect you to be smart." His face loses its urbane gloss, and becomes strangely human. "You're a Trencher. Same as me. You know when someone is spinning a circle dance."
Conning you, he means.
"This whole meeting was the Council's attempt at an off-the-books sabotage," Silco goes on. "You'd go off on your own. Your emotions would get the better of you. You'd stir trouble and be the first one to get picked off by my blackguards. A casualty of my tyrannical regime. Piltover would have its excuse to turn the Peace Treaty into an edged sword—one they'd dangle over Zaun's sovereignty. They'd introduce new clauses. Expect us to make compromises. Bend our necks. Or break them." His expression shades into contempt. "This is bigger than you or myself. This is Piltover. They get what they want, and they always want everything. Even what's ours."
The stich of nausea in Vi's gut is a full-bodied throb. Uncertainty. Self-doubt.
The problem is, Silco's words make sense—if she can even call it sense. She'd stepped into Zaun with only one goal. Powder. No plans on playing ball, but with the readiness to break bones. She'd expected Silco to do the same. Piltover didn't figure into the equation.
The Council would see it differently.
By letting Vi loose in the city, were they planning a political disaster? A gridlock of the Peace Treaty?
Vi isn't sure. That's the problem. Piltover isn't her home. Her biggest tie—her anchor—is Caitlyn. Beyond that, she's doesn't trust the Council's motivations.
She can't trust Silco, either.
She glowers. "I don't believe a word out of your scummy mouth."
"You'd rather believe Topside?"
"I can make my own mind up. But thanks for the tip."
He shakes his head. "Stubborn to the end."
He withdraws a silver cigar case from his coat. Regards it with a look halfway between temptation and tiredness, then taps one cigarette into his mouth in a practiced motion. He lights up, and the smell of brightleaf tobacco warms the air like the candle of memory blossoming in Vi's chest. She gasps, "That's—"
"What?"
"That's Vander's!"
Silco scoffs, "Dead men claim no trinkets."
"I mean the tobacco!"
"Brightleaf? It's common among miners."
"You're not a miner."
"You don't know what I am."
She bristles. "A backstabber. A killer. A monster. What else is there to know?"
"Right. You have me sussed out. Now do shut up. There's a good girl."
The cigarette cherry glows, and his shark-eye does too. In the gloom, his skin seems too hard and white, like a skullbone. The scarring on the left side is alarmingly tight-stretched, like it will tear open. Vi remembers Vander telling her in childhood that scar tissue was actually more durable than ordinary skin. Like replacing parchment with cardboard.
A survivor's skin, he'd called it.
For a moment, Vi's eyes blur. She'd been doing so well, not thinking about Vander—with a specific, gut-deep sadness. Then Silco started smoking Vander's brand of pipe tobacco, so now all she can see are Vander's hands, large and squarish, gripping his pipe. With them come a jumble of bittersweet recollections: Vander teaching her how to tape bandages around her fists before a fight, the clean whiteness folding around and around her fingers: Gotta take care of your mitts. Vander teaching her to swing with foam-packed bracers on his dense forearms, alternately pursuing and retreating as Vi uncorked left and right hooks. Keep moving. Remember your footwork. Vander teaching her how to burn off knuckle push-ups on the worn-out mat, timing Vi's whooshing breaths with each lift: No lollipops. Just bottled lightning. There's a good girl.
There's a good girl.
Silco's voice for a moment had sounded, in pitch and accent, so much like Vander's. Except he is not Vander. He is Vander's murderer. The usurper of his legacy. She thinks of his silhouette at the cannery's burning walkway, Vander's blood flying off his knife. His stare unrepentant, lips curved at the edges as if he relished his own deceit.
Heat burns through Vi's bones. But her voice cuts cold.
"Even dead," she says, "Vander's a greater man than you'll ever be."
Silco stares at her, through the living twist of smoke at his cigarette's end. Then he makes a sound, less a chuckle than a rasp of sandpaper across Vi's abraded nerves.
"I know."
She blinks.
"That's why I keep Zaun alive. In Vander's memory." His mocking tone is as gentle as a brother's. "Funny, isn't it?"
Silence descends like a spell in the green moonlight. Vi sits and breathes. She pictures how his head would look bashed in by her boot. She's never hated—full-bloodedly hated—anyone before. But she's beyond certain she hates him. He makes it so easy. He's probably repulsed scores of people in his lifetime. Robbed them, like he's robbed Vi.
He's taken everything.
"My sister," she grits out.
"What of her?"
"I want to see her."
"So you can snipe her?"
"I told you—I didn't—"
He exhales a jet of smoke into the frigid air, then flicks away the cigarette to fix her with those snake-handler's eyes. "Did or didn't. You're a danger to her. You have been since stepping foot in Zaun. Not content to leave her dead at the Bridge, you even conspired with the Council to have her sent to Stillwater."
Her stomach roils; the words spew out like bile. "I'd never let them put her in Stillwater! I was trying to get her away from you!"
"And once she was in Topside's custody—how would you have stopped it?" His voice is no longer liquid; it is knotted into a whipcord wrath that Vi finds herself struggling against. "Did you even stop to think what would happen to her? If Marcus could lock you up without an inkling of habeas corpus, an infamous bomber like Jinx would never see daylight again. Can you imagine what they'd do to her in that hellhole? Worse than anything you or I endured. She'd wake up and fall asleep screaming more nights than not. And they'd even deny her the mercy of death. Piltover's wardens take their time. What they believe she owes, they'd make her pay tenfold."
The words—you or I, Stillwater, pay—zing off Vi's overheated brain. The message is enormous, and she can't. She just can't. It's too much. Like his intensity, his unadulterated rage. It is almost genuine. Like Powder matters to him. But she shakes her head. Reminds herself of all the dead boys and broken girls who've been duped by him, despoiled by him.
Like Zaun.
Like Jinx.
She whispers, "If Powder's with you, her life's already hell."
Silco's expression reminds Vi of the sea's surface over a shiver of sharks: seemingly tranquil, but with something sharp-scaled and instinctively predacious twisting beneath.
"You'll learn something," he says.
"What?"
Silco snaps his fingers. The rottweilers have been sitting in their cages, with an obedience verging on narcotized. At the small click, they begin howling as if an irradiant gas is being pumped to whip them into a frenzy. They thrash against the chainlink, teeth and claws flashing. The sight—the sound—shoots pure coldness up Vi's spine.
But it is nothing to the deadwater chill of Silco's stare.
"There is hell," he says, "and there is hell."