Forward, but Never Forget (XOXO)

by Lullabyes

Zaun is free—and must grow into its unfamiliar new dimensions. So must Silco and Jinx. A what-if that diverges midway through the events of episode 8. Found family and fluff, politics and power, smut and slice-of-life, villainy and vengeance.

25. (Act V): Grind) Chimera

I'm a man, I'm a twisted fool
My hands are twisted too
Five fingers, two black hooves

"Toes" ~ Glass Animals

---

When Jinx was twelve, she claimed boys had cooties.

Granted, she also collected spiders in jars and tinkered with their cobwebs to use as parachutes (a sad failure).

But still—cooties.

It was a word Silco never tired of turning over in his mind. What, child, about girls? No, girls made you goopy. Goopy? Right-o. Goopy with a Capital G. Vi liked girls. And they turned her brain to goop. Didn't seem like there'd been much wrong with that part of her sister's anatomy before. Then she hit thirteen and Pbbbbbt! (fingers waggling to mime meltdown). Secrets, and sneaking out, and showing up at random hours with hickeys on her neck and a spaced-out glow in her eye.

Silco nodded sagely: Yes, thirteen is an impressionable age.

After which he did what any father would do: made sure no cooties or goop crossed Jinx's path. Daughters were cut from different cloth than sons. They needed seeing-to. A softer touch; a closer eye. It was an unwritten rule, passed down in all likelihood by some pig-ignorant clod who hadn't the foggiest notion what fatherhood was—much less how to survive in a hellscape like the Undercity.

But pig-ignorance or not, the rule stuck.

The only reason Jinx hadn't ended up raped, maimed or murdered was because Silco knew exactly where to find her every night. Strange girls were kept at an arm's length. Strange boys were kept away altogether. Nobody was allowed into her life unless they got past him first.

And nothing got past him.

The Eye of Zaun wasn't a moniker won by blinking.

He'd never wanted his child to suffer the abuses routine in the Fissures. He never wanted her to know the agony of someone stronger taking advantage of her body, or someone smarter turning it traitor against her mind. He never wanted her to know how it felt to have her boundaries violated; her trust betrayed.

So he trained her. Toughened her up. Made her a terror.

By fourteen, half the Lanes knew better than to mess with Jinx. By seventeen, half the nation. But fierce as she was, Jinx wasn't invulnerable. She might be a figure of fearsome myth across Zaun. But elsewhere, she remained suspectable. To herself. Her own self-doubt. Her own desires.

When Jinx was twelve, she believed in goop and cooties.

Twelve, Silco thinks, was a good age.

The blackguards have locked down headquarters. No alarm has been raised; no press cordoned off. But every one of Silco's network is on tenterhooks.

On the lookout for Jinx.

And the scientist—Viktor? His disappearance is no mystery. More an inevitability: forecasted the moment Silco learned of his ailment. The looming jaws of mortality. The thrashings of desperate men. They take different forms, and yet follow the same path.

To the depths.

Silco rides the elevator toward Singed's lab. There is something disorienting about leaving the banquet hall, dressed in the formalwear he'd arrived in. Exiting the lift in the sub-basement's lobby, he feels as if he's dwelt in a state half-asleep the entire day, from his talk with Jinx in the Aerie to the Treaty's signing at the SS Niobe to his fuck with Sevika in the bathroom to his dance with Medarda in the ballroom. A sense of dislocation, almost depersonalization, as if he's wearing another person's skin. Or as if his own skin is two sizes too tight—and splitting at the seams.

The monster cutting to the surface.

(Where?)

(Where is she?)

His feet move with unnatural silence. The marble floor is too hard after the plush rugs above. Or maybe his senses are just hyper-attuned after hours of dullness. The rage of it draws his face in, thins it down, skin grafting coldly to the bone.

Watch yourself, Sevika had warned.

This is what she'd meant. He can play the master of ceremonies without breaking a sweat. He can pull strings and spin lies with the best. He can make deals and shake hands and wear a dozen different masks, each one a perfect fit. But at his core, he must remain singularly focused. He can't afford his attention forking between power-plays and parenting.

Except that's what Jinx has done.

Her presence in his life was like a jagged blue line racing from the base of his skull to the spot between his brows: his psyche splitting. He can never put the halves back together again. It is like two blocks of wax heated at the edges, and melded together, an imperfect fit, the surface not quite smooth.

(The course of love ne'er ran smooth, did it?)

He hears Jinx before he sees her. Her bright rasp floats from an alcove under a set of stairs.

"Nice stick."

It is her only-for-him voice—half-wry, half-warm. At least Silco had assumed it was only for him. Learning otherwise is a cold shock not unlike discovering your pet kitten has grown wings.

There is a tinny clatter. Gumball-colored nails tapping on a cane's polished crook. Then comes a man's voice: deep, measured, colored by the soft accent of Drakkengate.

Polite on the verge of frigid.

"Give it back."

"Nuh-uh." A silence where Silco can picture Jinx leaning in, a predator in pixy's skin. "That's not how this game works. You go skulking around HQ, you pay the price. And since we both know you've got nothing, you'll just have to settle for bein' nice to me."

The silence twists. Then: "Has he been informed?"

"He?"

"Your... father."

"You mean, does Silco know you've been scurrying 'round near Singed's lab? Nah. Not yet. Although—" a giggle "—maybe that means he wanted you to end up by your lonesome. No exits. No elevators. And I can't see you making it up all those stairs. Not unless you're dragged feet-first."

A beat, in which a riposte is audibly swallowed.

Then—

"You are right," Viktor says. "I should not have left my spot."

Jinx giggles again. "Aw, don't look so glum. Nobody's gonna kill ya. Well—Sevika would. But I'm pretty sure she's gone off to Babette's, so she doesn't count. Besides. I don't even know what your spot is. Up there—" a rustle, like fingertips tracing a shirt placket, "—or down here."

Viktor sighs. His voice takes on a crisper edge: less a lost lamb than a scientist recalculating a taxing equation. "If you are done with the warm welcome—" varm velcome, "—kindly return my cane. The Piltovan party will notice my absence."

"Nooope." The rustling of a gown. Jinx must have sat down. Hopefully on a chair. "Nobody's gonna notice. Didn't ya see? Your Brosky is too busy trying to keep his Princess safe from my old man. Maybe he thinks Silco will waltz her straight into hell." A wicked burble. "Or maybe he wants to dance with Silco. Who knows? For a spooky fella, my old man's real popular. Either way, ain't nobody paying attention to you. Unless you wanna make them pay."

No reply. The air crackles with discomfort.

"Yeah," Jinx purrs. "I thought so." A susurrus of flouncing skirts: a pose struck. "By the way, I'm still waiting."

"Waiting?"

"For my half of the compliment."

"I do not believe you paid me a compliment."

The scathing implication: Unless endangering my life counts.

"'Course you didn't," Jinx singsongs. "You weren't paying attention. Too busy tryna wriggle away. " A tap-tap-tap: the heel of the cane on polished marble. "I said Nice stick, remember? Unless you thought I meant some other stick. In which case, we-e-ell..."

There is a sudden retch. Viktor's throat seems to be working down a reflexive attempt to dislodge a clot of blood. He loses the battle. His cough is wet and painful, like swallowing glass.

Jinx waits until the attack subsides. In a different tone, "Yikes. You allergic or something?"

"...no..."

"Well then. Just sit tight. I'll get ya fixed up! There's a few vials of Shimmer in the lab if—"

"No." It bursts out, sharpened pitch and volume. With effort, Viktor curbs himself. "—No. That is quite unnecessary."

A smug snicker. The sound of someone a hop and a skip ahead.

"Vlčí chlapec—" She cadges Viktor's accent easily. Jinx is an excellent mimic, and passably fluent in Drakkenian. "—I know whatcha want. Why else would you be stalking the halls, spying through windows? Maybe the Topsiders don't notice, but we do. You've got the String Eye. We all know what that means." A conspirator's whisper, "So why don't you just come clean? I won't tell. Pinkie promise."

The silence is no longer a twist but a tangle.

Then:

"Is that what they did to you?"

"Huh?"

"You've been dosed to the gills with Shimmer," Viktor says quietly. "Were you injured? Forced?"

Jinx cracks a piercing laugh. But beneath the bravado, there are raw wounds barely healed. "I'll ask the questions, buddy-boy. If you think I was forced into this—" the whistle of a spinning cane, "—then you really oughta take another look at what Zaun crawled out of. Topside buried us six feet under, and this was our best shot at fighting back. Well, that and Gemmy." A lonely tink; a nail touching gemstone. " Mockrát děkuji for yours and Mister Man's notes! Really helped me turn things around!"

"As a cure?" Viktor's speaks in the level, distinct tone of a professor chiding a misbehaving student. "Or a last resort?"

Silco coalesces out of the framing shadows.

"Should that matter? We lived."

Viktor and Jinx's heads spin, oriented less by his soundless footfalls than the slither of his voice. Jinx straightens from her provocative slouch on the settee with a lungless Eeep!—a child caught rummaging in the larder. Viktor backtracks deeper into the alcove with the appalled reflex of a guilty man eager to prove his innocence—or an innocent man who will be condemned guilty under any circumstance.

The dark. The seclusion. The girl.

None of it bodes well.

The silence was a tangle before. It ripples with a dark territoriality now.

"I was only—" Viktor begins, just as Jinx says, "Speak of the Devil."

Silco is unsure if she means him or Viktor. Then again, outmaneuvering Jinx's verbal minefields is sometimes a very convoluted journey, and other times as simple as cutting through the prattle and into literalism.

"My devil was missed at the gala."

He lays a hand on Jinx's shoulder. Barely a skim of fingertips, there then gone. Yet the possessiveness is hard to deny. His sidelong glance is arch but not unfriendly: What are you up to, child?

It's common for Jinx to go prowling for Firelights to blow up. Less common, but not unheard of, is her penchant for attaching herself to strays. Not out of compassion. Simply because she's transfixed by shiny toys and can't resist tampering. Mania, mutation, mayhem—she has little respect for boundaries. Everyone is fair game; nothing is off-limits.

This is different.

The twinkle in her eyes suggests she's found something new. Something she wants to keep.

Twelve, Silco thinks again.

Twelve was a good age.

Viktor doesn't clear his throat. But his voice comes haltingly, like a badly-tuned instrument. He takes in the two creatures before him with a measured caution, unwilling to risk sudden movement. Or a fall. Jinx still has his cane gripped in her palm. She toys with it in a nimble-fingered way that is at once playful and weirdly suggestive.

"Perhaps," Viktor says, "I could be permitted to return upstairs."

"You could," Silco says, "once you explain why you're downstairs."

Viktor's throat works as if around a mouthful of sawdust. He clears it twice, then says, "I was told this is his new residence."

"The Doctor's?"

The barest nod.

"And did the Doctor inform you of this via correspondence?"

It seems improbable. Singed's missives are closely monitored. To say nothing of the fact that a monster as clinically remote as the Doctor seems unlikely to cultivate pen-pals.

Then again, even monsters have unplumbed depths.

Viktor gives a headshake, almost a twitch, accompanied by a half-shrug. "I visited him before the separation between our cities. He mentioned that the Fissures would be under siege soon. I was advised to steer clear. After the dust settled, he stated his new base of operations would be wherever yours were."

"Prudent of him."

At Silco's side, Jinx's face splits into a minxy grin. "Is the Doc your dealer?"

Viktor's look falls short of a glare. But he seems to have a sense of self-preservation. It is perhaps a scant inch thicker than Jinx's own. "He is an... old friend."

Friend—a word so commonplace, and yet so loaded with meaning. Friend: like ally. Friend: like family. Friend: like foe.

Silco has had few friends in his lifetime. And seldom one that wasn't another.

"I can well imagine," Silco says blandly. "Two salamanders."

It's an Undercity turn-of-phrase. It refers to Topsiders who make the Fissures their permanent home. Rarer, Fissurefolk who manage to scrape their way into Piltover.

Few succeed. Fewer survive.

"A curious state," Silco says, "neither here, nor there. Boundaries are permeable."

Viktor is silent. His stoop-shouldered pose is that of a man pushed into a corner.

A place likely not unfamiliar to him.

"With the Peace Treaty, Zaun welcomes Topside-based expatriates back into the fold," Silco goes on, "but skulking in the shadows? That's quite another matter. Trade secrets, intellectual sabotage—that sort of thing. Not to mention the potential threat of spies."

Viktor's jaw sets. "What makes you think I am a spy?"

The sharp points of Silco's teeth catch the lamplight. "Your designated spot at the gala."

Viktor's gaze drops. Silco follows it. They both look at his cane. Jinx fidgets with it in her hands.

"Peace has its price," Silco muses. "So does progress."

Viktor stubbornly holds his ground. His features are stoic, but anger burns under the surface. "You knew I would go prying below."

Silco says nothing.

The master of ceremonies. The string-puller. The masquerader. All these titles mean nothing if one isn't two steps ahead.

Jinx giggles, "Told ya."

Silco's stare disconnects from Viktor. It gentles, but the reproach is plain. "I'd still like to know how you knew."

With a crooked finger, Jinx taps the Hex-gem on her necklace.

"It talks." Softer, "He does too."

Viktor's breathing doesn't alter. But his hands clench reflexively: the longing for an erstwhile cane. One hand is scrupulously gloved. A bandage in plain sight.

Silco murmurs, "Good work, Jinx."

He shifts, but not to leave. Taking Jinx's hand, he tugs her to her feet. "You should return to the gala." At her predictable pout, "Our guest and I will be along."

"But I wanna to talk to—" Changing tacks, "This is politics, right? This is educational."

"I'd rather you not educate our young man too far."

Her chin juts. "Why not?"

"Because he has not earned it."

Jinx's eyes flit between him and Viktor. The latter looks on with grim detachment. He is a man condemned between two beasts. One with sharp claws. The other with sharper teeth.

"It seems," he says, with a scholar's calm, "I've earned little beyond my own grave."

"Oh, we don't do that anymore," Jinx says, sweet as pie. "Much."

She begins to skip toward the elevator, then stops. On impulse—as if Silco needs it—she leaps on tiptoe and drops a kiss to his scarred cheek. It is perfunctory, a habit performed since childhood until it has become reflex.

But the warmth is real. So is Jinx's smile—and the fingers slipping a token into his pocket.

Silco smiles back. There are times he wants nothing more than to wrap her up and squeeze, until both their ribcages crack, the ventricles of their hearts twisting into a blood-red forget-me-knot. He would do it too—if only to show her what it feels like: the seesaw between heartache and heartsease.

A monster's love. A father's fears.

Jinx tips Viktor a wink, halfway between friendly and foreboding. "Moc ráda vás zase uvidím!"

She tosses him the cane. It sails through the air. Viktor snags it on the fly, his gloved palm enfolding the crook. Silco's mind ticks over the details. The boy is like a walking jigsaw beneath a layer of paper mâché skin. Yet his nerves seem reinforced with steel.

The sound of Jinx's heels diminishes down the hallway. The elevator doors slide shut. Her jangling energy dissipates. In the silence, the two men size each other up. Silco's gaze is unblinking. It's an old habit of his: holding his breath and his stare for an inordinately long time.

The gaunt young man is no mirror. But his eyes are. He meets the challenge, assessing Silco in return. Calm. Calculating. Like Singed. Like Jinx at her most remote—a chill blue flame.

The boy's own eyes are pale brown. The hues of old wood not yet succumbed to rot.

"I assume," Viktor says, "you wish to interrogate me."

"Do I have cause?"

"If you do, we can skip straight to torture." Viktor's gloved hand flexes on the cane. "It might spare me the discomfort."

A sense of humor. That's promising.

"We are civilized," Silco says. "I'll settle for a conversation."

"Ah. A formality."

"Not entirely." Silco's smile is a phantom: half-seen. "It takes a brave man to descend into a stranger's den."

"You are no stranger."

"No?"

"The Doctor has been in your employ for years. He does not speak of you. But he does not have to. Your presence holds—" Viktor stops. His words have a precise, careful quality, as if cut by a scalpel. "—an echo."

"In empty hallways, even a whisper becomes thunder."

"The Undercity's hallways are never empty."

Silco's smile deepens. The monster cuts through, teeth glinting in the gloom.

"True," he says. "Nor my threats."

Viktor's stance shifts instinctively. The silence is a liminal space: a threshold into the unknown. Crossing it will take an act of will. It was Viktor's choice to begin the journey. Now retreat is impossible. The only path is forward. Into the dark, and whatever it holds.

The dark, where Silco waits.

"Threats," Viktor says, "are not all you are known for."

"Indeed?"

Viktor's eyes follow the path Jinx took. "Your daughter."

"A singular child."

Something flickers across Viktor's features. Something that makes Silco wonder: Who did you lose? "I have heard… rumors."

"Of what?"

"You changed her." A pause, as if he expects to be mauled. "Made her into a weapon for your war."

"The war was older than her. Jinx was only the tipping-point."

"I do not follow."

"Then I'll adjust my pace."

Silco pulls a metal chair over from the wall—its legs rake the marble, screeeee, the lazy torture of a blade across bone. He sits, one knee crossed over the other, fingers steepled. With his chin, he gestures at the settee Jinx abandoned. Viktor's palm flexes on the cane. Slowly, he sits. His spine remains rigid: an iron axis in an awry assemblage of joints. Yet no matter how carefully Silco watches, he shows no signs of discomfort.

The boy's body is accustomed to pain. So is his face. Always realigning the pieces, even as the foundation shifts. Always recalibrating the equation of his own life.

Silco knows the feeling.

"Jinx," he says, "wasn't changed by choice."

"What then?"

"A life-saving operation. Helmed by the Doctor."

Viktor's look is level. But there's no hiding his surprise. "Was she in an accident?"

"The blast. On the Bridge."

A muscle throbs in Viktor's cheek. He understands. The explosion that kickstarted the war. Changed everything. For Zaun, and its monsters. For Piltover, and its champions. They were all there in some shape. None of them survived unscathed.

Neutrally, Viktor says: "Many were killed."

"Others settled the score." Silco's shoulder tips, deceptively casual. "Survival is a potent brew."

"And Shimmer, a potent poison."

"Depends on the ailment." Silco's fingers slip from their steeple. He leans forwards in his seat, enough that Viktor can make out the discolored scarring around his left eye beneath the powdery film of concealer. "Our city is sick, young man. We've lived in the cracks between Piltover's light. We've eked out a living where nothing should exist. Poison is our way of life."

"That is your excuse? That Zaun has no hope?"

"Zaun is nothing but hope. But hope's no bright spot. It's a crevice we crawl into. Somewhere to keep out the cold." Silco's gaze pass from Viktor's face—hollow cheeks and hooded eyes—to his gloved hand. "Perhaps it's a mercy that you chose the warmer side." His stare drops to Viktor's bad leg. "But that doesn't mean Topside moves at a leisurely pace."

"I am well-acquainted," Viktor retorts, "with Topside's pace."

"Of course. You dictate it. You and Councilor Talis. Your breakthroughs with Hex-tech..." Silco's wrist turns, a magician's sleight-of-hand. The Hex-gem glows in his palm: treasure traded for Jinx's kiss. "...left us all lagging behind."

Viktor's jaw grits. He doesn't fly into a rage like Talis. His anger is quieter. Slower. The glacial creep of a man who will inevitably crack in two. Silco watches the live-wire twitch of tendons beneath his glove. The barest sliver of skin shows between fabric and wrist. It is the shade of a bruise, discolored, not like diseased flesh but an absence of flesh...

Viktor catches his scrutiny. Forcefully, he tugs his sleeve down.

"Your daughter—" His voice is an old lock, rusted shut, "—is a thief."

"I prefer thieves to hoarders. They understand equity."

"Equity does not justify robbery."

"Doesn't it?" Silco's fingers close over the gem, smothering its glow. "Topside's harbors. Topside's streets. Topside's Hex-Gates. The very blueprint of Topside's prosperity." The stone slips back into his pocket. "All stolen from us. What's one gem as recompense?"

"A piece is not the same as the whole."

"True. One holds more value. The other is its sum." Silco uncrosses his legs to lean closer. The motion is casual. But it also puts his foot in the space between Viktor's: right at the cane's heel. A single kick and it'll fall. A second kick and the boy will follow. "The value, you see, is in the semantics."

Viktor's throat works. Proximity is its own provocation. Worse, he's in too precarious a spot to sidestep.

"There was a time," he whispers, "when I would have agreed."

"And now?"

"Now, I am not so sure." His stare gives little away. But tension creeps though his musculature. His flight-or-fight instincts are waging war. "There is always a choice. It is never the easy one. But progress cannot—should not—happen overnight."

"It did for you and Talis."

The ghost of a flinch. "Yes. But our work—has not been without cost."

"Cost?"

"For us. For others."

"So you're here to pay them homage, hm?" Silco smiles thinly. "Tonight, with the Treaty. Tomorrow, with forgetting." A droll hum. "How very Piltovan of you."

"No." Finally: a spark. The ice begins to crack. "I have not forgotten. But I—" He cuts himself short. "I believe in science. Not revenge."

"The two aren't mutually exclusive."

"They are mutually destructive."

"Depends on the scientist." Silco's tenor stays mild. His foot doesn't budge. "You've come from the same city as myself. You understand the cost of survival. But you've been in the sun for a while now. It's a warm glow. Easy to forget how dark it can get."

"No," Viktor repeats. "I did not forget. What Zaun crawled out of—I remember. The Lanes. My childhood."

"As do I. The streets. The slag. The hunger." Silco's smile seeps away. "The helplessness."

"The helplessness," Viktor says, quieter. "Yes."

The alcove is a no-man's-land. Dark and light meeting halfway. They have met. Silco's foot presses in, just enough that Viktor's right leg tenses. His territory has shrunk to a handful of inches. He can neither retreat, nor advance. Only hold his ground.

In his eyes, the struggle is laid bare.

"What now?" he croaks.

"Hm?"

"Zaun is free. Where will you steer the city next?"

"Same place Hex-tech steered Topside." Silco rises smoothly. "Forward."

His shadow bisects Viktor's body. The boy's fingers flex on his cane. He is cornered, and knows it. Trespass has consequences. Especially when a predator finds a stray. They don't just kill it. They toy with it, tooth and nail, until the blood runs cold. Then they crack it open, and devour it whole.

Viktor is a scientist. He is also a sumpsnipe. He knows the truth.

In the Undercity, monsters are everywhere.

The air between them throbs with agitated molecules. Bloodlust, half-seen and wholly felt. Viktor's body is coiled taut. Silco has seen the pose before, in the men he's tortured, in the men he's fucked. His eyes hold the glazed aspect of a body that has begun filtering out the world, one sense at a time, to make room for what it's about to experience. Pain, or death, or worse.

Equations on the same page. All equally probable. All equally terrifying.

Silco proffers a hand.

"Come."

Viktor jolts out of his stupor. "What...?"

"You wished to see the Doctor. Regrettably, he is absent. But his lab is accessible."

"His lab?"

Silco smile shifts: a trick of light that subdues his shark's eye The radioactive aura of psychic sadism evaporates into a scarred gravity of countenance. Viktor is a pragmatist. He will not trust in mirages. But he will trust in the tangible. In a hand clasped to help him stand. In a labyrinth demystified into a bridge.

In choices, and where they lead.

"We are civilized," Silco says again. "The Doctor is my ally, and I have a vested interest in his work. You may ask me questions. I will answer. And, as a gesture of goodwill, I'll give you a tour."

"A tour," Viktor echoes, as if it's a foreign term.

"A taste of Zaun's potential."

His palm stays open. Beckoning.

Viktor's gloved fingers flex on the cane. He eyes Silco's proffered hand like it's a viper. The equations are still there: the probabilities of pain, death, or worse. And yet. In Silco's eye, a focal-point of singularity. The place where all equations meet.

With a bracing inhale, Viktor nods. His bare hand takes Silco's. It is an unbalanced fit. Silco's fingers enfold his like teeth on parchment. The young man's bones are delicate; his flesh is cool. But his pulse beats with the tenacity of a body that's never known the easy way.

With a firm pull, Silco brings the young man to his feet.

Viktor sways. His cane nearly tips. He catches it, a quick snap of his gloved hand. The movement is seamless. But the rest of his body is misaligned, each joint figuring out how to tackle the task of upright locomotion. His hand, in Silco's, spasms.

Silco has the impression of a creature unused to touch. A quicksilver mind; a clockwork heart. But his body, the vessel of his soul, has become a cage.

His grip says: I wish I did not need this.

Silco's grip says: I can show you a better way.

"Steady," he says, "We're in for a climb."

Viktor takes a breath. "I expected so."

Silco's shadow cuts in a smooth slash on the marble. His footfalls barely echo. Viktor follows, a half-sunken silhouette. His cane's tap-tap is the knock on a tomb. Each step asks: What's on the other side? The silence, thick as grave-dirt, gives no answer.

The laboratory gate is wood inlaid in titanium. Its varnish is the color of clotted blood. A keypad is fitted above the knob. Silco enters a passcode. The lock disengages. With a pneumatic hiss, supercooled air puffs through the widening crack. The scent of iron lingers like a vein, freshly cut.

An olfactory cue at its most primal: life.

Viktor's nostrils twitch. "What is that?"

Silco says nothing. The anticipation holds a nearly feral thrill. Labs are seldom places of sanctum. Often, the world's darkest urges are found in here. Same as in the hearts of men.

Small wonder both birth abominations.

"I've suggested deodorizer," Silco drawls, "but the Doctor has a penchant for honesty." His notched lip quirks. "Among other things."

The door swings wide. Currents of chilled air swirl. Silco hits a switch. The chamber is lit by a series of halogen lamps: polar white. In their wake, everything is exposed. Secrets have nowhere to run. The body is an open book. Even Nature is reduced to a grid to be sterilized and dissected.

Only Singed's scalpel is sacrosanct.

"Gods," Viktor breathes.

The halogen lights do unkindness to his face. His skin is washed chalk-white. The bones beneath push through in jagged peaks. It's an emaciated pallor that would make Sevika scoff in disgust. Jinx, Silco suspects, would call it pretty.

And she'd be right. There's a beauty to the boy. A delicate, elusive quality best suited to the purgatory.

Twilit zones where neither dark nor light is absolute.

"No gods," Silco says. "Only men."

He crosses the threshold. Viktor, faltering, follows. The laboratory's new dimensions are same footprint as Silco's headquarters. Rows of work-benches. Steel countertops. Scalpels and surgical implements. Jars line the shelves: a macabre array of pickled organs, from eyeballs to entrails. Each is a hybrid: morbid enigmas of flesh and fur. In terrarium cages, two-headed rats race in a frenzy. Cat-snakes watch their antics, a pantheon of bored predators. Monkey-birds chitter among themselves, their feathered bodies darting from perch to perch.

The wall-length aquarium holds deep-sea exotica. Their silhouettes glide past the glass with a languid grace. Eels with velvet bodies. Fish with no fins. Jellyfish with luminous eyes. Silco knows their names by heart, but a few have no names at all.

These are Singed's brain-children. His prototypes, unbound by the laws of nature.

"The Doctor," Silco says, "does not believe in limits. I wager that's what got him into so much trouble Topside. He sees biological processes as a simple obstacle to be overcome. The chains that order them, and how each must be broken." He turns to Viktor. "Chaos as the paradigm for progress."

Viktor stares. His pupils are dilated. His expression holds a raw edge of vertigo.

"This," he rasps, "it's like nothing I've seen."

"The Doctor has certainly made a home for himself here. A home, and a menagerie. He's currently off on private research, but he seldom travels far. Rather, the world travels to him." A smile, brief. "Some bring him gifts." The smile fades. "Others are the gifts."

Viktor can't speak. He is transfixed.

The centerpiece catches his attention. The vivarium. Its dimensions stretch from the floor to the ceiling. Inside, a hum fills the air. It holds the subcurrent of an artificial pulse. Steam fogs the glass. The silhouettes inside are distorted. A forest of delirium; the sort of space a lost child might wander into—and never return.

With an elbow, Silco wipes off the condensation—pwoot, pwoot. The interior clears. It is a greenhouse of hydrochambers. In each, a different manifestation of flora is suspended in nutrient-rich fluid. Their colors belong, not in a botanist's atlas, but a jeweler's bazaar. Fungal hybrids with faceted ruby mushrooms twinkle wetly in the mist. Bioluminescent blooms with translucent crystal petals sprout in clusters with a slow-motion grace. Cacti brandish spines tipped in onyx, swaying like the stingers of scorpions. Emerald tangles of ferns drip down from the ceiling, opalescent spores clinging in clusters from the fronds. A mass of golden fruit lolls with a voluptuary's heaviness from dense branches, nectar beading their skins.

The space holds a pulsing phosphorescence. A living, breathing kaleidoscope. Each chamber is a different genus, a different species. Each one is unique.

All are born from Shimmer.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Silco says.

By his side, Viktor stands rooted. His palm traces the glass. The touch is nearly reverent.

"It is," he says. "Beautiful."

His stare is drawn to the largest chamber. It holds a tree. A real tree. Its black roots are gnarled, like feet cruelly curled into talons. The bark is smooth as obsidian, as if the tree was born in fire, heated to such extreme temperatures that all texture melted away. A thicket of boughs, their canopy blotting out the ceiling, unfurl branches shaped like arrowheads. But the leaves are the crowning glory. The color of opal, their surface holds a dull rainbow nacre. Their shape is a tessellation: overlapping hexagons, the tips wickedly barbed, as if each leaf is a tiny star. As they stir in the filtered air, they shift with the radiance of a constellation. The canopy spreads in a shadow over the smaller trees: a midnight sky in motion.

"I have never seen such a thing," Viktor breathes.

Silco nods. "It's an extinct species."

"Extinct? From the Fissures?"

"Before." At Viktor's blank look, Silco explains, "This tree is a remnant. Before the Cataclysm submerged our city."

"A fossil."

"Of sorts. The seeds were excavated during an oil-rig's collapse in the Deadlands. When sown, they failed to germinate in the toxic soil." Silco's finger trails the glass. Warmth radiates like a furnace. "The Doctor is no botanist. But his genius lies in crossbreeding. He took the seed-pod and spliced it with a Shimmer-rich variant. Then he grafted it. It grew faster than anything we'd seen. Within a month, it had grown into a sapling. Within six, into a tree."

"Shimmer did this?"

"Yes." Silco's finger taps the glass, a mordant drumbeat. "In this lab, dead seed has the potential take root. Corpses, reborn as chimeras. The same biological process that proved their undoing: now, their means of resurrection. Progress.

Viktor's attention remains on the tree. His eyes hold the distant sheen of a time-traveler. A man, lost. A boy, found.

"Zaun is a world of shadows," Silco says. "But there is beauty here, too."

"Hidden in the dark."

"Hope is a darkness worth seeing."

Viktor's head swivels. Their eyes meet, and Silco sees the understanding creep in. This lab isn't simply an alchemist's den. It's a revolt against a natural order that fails to make room for the anomalies that defy it. Life in the raw; death inverted.

An evolution, and a revolution, all its own.

"You've been kissed," Silco says, a soft curl of syllables, "by Janna."

An Undercity euphemism. You have Gray Lung.

Viktor's features tighten. No denial; just grim acceptance. Only a fool would try to outrun his death. Only the weak would stop running. Viktor is neither. But the battleground of bitter struggle is not without its marks.

Viktor's eyes are prematurely old. His features, worn down, are a study of ravaged youth. Too much stolen, too young.

Silco knows that feeling, too.

"You must've been struck early," he says.

A slow nod. "I was thirteen. There was an outbreak—"

"The Ash Plague."

Viktor stills.

"I remember," Silco says. "It wasn't our first epidemic. But it was the ugliest. The Council shut the Bridge to keep the sickness contained. Our city was sealed for months like a petri-dish. It ended up breeding a worse strain. The immigrant enclave was hit hardest. Hundreds of refugees pouring in after the Void Wars. Most were from Drakkengate and the Freljords. They'd never encountered a disease like this. They had no defense." His voice roughens, not entirely by choice. "I remember the Skylight's dome was filled with corpses. Children's faces, bloated black. Swarms of flies everywhere. The smell..." He shakes his head. "...Unbearable."

Viktor nods again. His stare is faraway. "My parents lived on the outskirts of the Skylight Commercia. They were chemists. The sick sought their aid. I helped. Then I caught it, too." A vein ticks in his temple. "My parents succumbed not long after. The sickness ravaged our lungs. Left us bleeding from the nose, the mouth. They wanted to send me Uppside, where my chance for recovery was better. But the quarantine persisted. We were trapped." He drags in a labored breath. "One night, my father went into a seizure. He died within the hour. Then my mother. By the end, I could hardly breathe. I am not sure if it was suffocation or grief." The vein ticks harder: memories beneath the skin. "The apprenta Priestess at Janna's Temple took me in. She tended my cough, fed me salves, let me sleep on her floor. A sweet lady. Deaf, but she could read my lips. I will never forget her kindness."

Silco feels a coldness pierce his ribcage. Not déjà vu, but dredged-up memory.

"I know that apprenta."

"You do?"

"An old friend."

Viktor measures him warily. "You hardly seem the type to befriend a priestess."

"I wasn't always thus." It comes in as bland a tone as possible, and yet— "I was once a young man. No different from you." His lips twitch. "Perhaps a touch more belligerent. The Priestess had a way of soothing people. And I had a bad habits and a worse attitude. That's how our friendship began. She kept my ugliest instincts in check." The smile recedes. "Back when they were worth keeping."

Viktor is silent. He scrutinizes Silco's eyes as if they are illuminated microscopic slides. Looking for something—anything—to disprove the claim of friendship between a hoodlum and a holy woman. A relationship built on something beyond the knife's edge.

Silco lets him search. He'll find nothing except the truth.

"Her name was Nandi," he says. "A lovely woman. Inside and out. She always had a smile for me."

A smile Silco would've killed for. A smile he's now cut up and kept locked away, in a jar of retrospect.

"Had?" Viktor repeats. "Is she—?"

"Killed on Bloody Sunday."

Viktor's lips part. His distress is palpable. "I—did not know." His head dips. "I am sorry. I was at the Academy when I heard of the massacre in Janna's Temple. They said there were no survivors. All the worshipers were wiped out."

"Not all. But most." Silco's good eye blinks, a hard reflex. The bad one stares straight ahead, a red nadir in a web of scar tissue. "The attack was the Wardens' warning: Piltover is untouchable. The Undercity is not. They did it to prove that they could." His voice blisters through the quiet. "And they did. "Their lesson was not forgotten. It kickstarted the Day of Ash. And everything that followed."

Viktor stops short. He seems to be trying to navigate his way safely through the bridge that has opened between them. One misstep, and it will wobble on its tenuous struts. A second, and there will be no bridge at all. He and Silco are strangers. And yet every available cubic millimeter of empty space between them is hardening with bricks of intimate history:

I'm an orphan—Are you? and I want better for our city—Do you?

"I am sorry," Viktor says at last. "For someone so kind... it is a sad end."

"Sad endings are Topside's specialty."

Viktor traces the cane's crook with a thumb. He is no coward, and yet the words catch. "If you allow... I would like to visit her tomb. To pay my respects." He stops, expecting a refusal. It doesn't come. "I am not one for prayer. But the Temple was the first place I found hope. If not for her—Nandi—I would not have survived."

"It's a marvel, isn't it? How a life can turn on a single point. She gave you a choice, when you had none. You took it, and here you stand."

"Here I stand," Viktor says, bitterness seeping through his monotone. "Sometimes, I wonder if it was a choice. I needed to live. Death had already cheated my parents. I wanted to make sure they did not die for nothing. Make life—life again." His gaze lifts to the tree, the inky boughs unfurling in an arabesque. "I left the Fissures soon after. Once in Piltover, I set to work. Odd jobs. Any job. My books were scrounged from recycling bins. My inventions were pieced together with spare parts. I spent hours in the engineers' workshops. Days, nights. There was no time for sleep." His jaw grinds. "Only progress."

"Your dreams were bigger than your means."

"Until Heimerdinger noticed my work. He sponsored my application to the Academy. It was my first break. My chance to climb into the sun—and help others who had not yet reached." Behind the glass, a leaf drifts down, black as a raven's quill. Viktor's hand flattens, as if trying to catch it. "I promised myself that one day, there would be trees like this. Here, in Zaun. Not just trees, but fresh air. Clean water. A city that thrives. Not because of its resources, but its people."

The boy looks so old, exposed to the brilliant halogen glow: some wizened, ancient oracle.

Silco's mouth shapes a small smile. "Now that's a vision."

"Is it?" The cane's tip digs into the tile. "Mine and Jayce's research, our work in Hex-tech, it has changed the face of Piltover. Made it stronger than ever. And yet—" His throat works against the scratchiness stuck there. "—here in the Undercity, the same problems persist. The epidemics. The poverty. The pollution. My promises—" A short dry hack "—they remain empty."

"You still have time," Silco says. "With the Treaty, Zaun is free. You may yet defy the odds."

"Or the odds will defy me." A bleak smile. "They have a way of doing that."

"Your illness has relapsed." At Viktor's nod: "How much longer?"

"A year. Maybe less." His affect flatlines, as if reciting the terms of a will. Or an engineer's spec-sheet. "My lung capacity is compromised. My bones are brittle. Every movement is painful. I tire quickly. I can barely walk. Most days, I cannot breathe." He shakes his head, as if dispelling the miasma of his own suffocation. "I used to deplore being locked down as Heimerdinger's assistant. Unable to progress except through the power of others. Now... some days I cannot even move. It is like I am drowning. Not in water, but the air itself."

Like I am drowning.

The words catch on something in Silco's interior, drawing a tiny bead of blood. So far, he'd listened with the abstracted interest of a man eyeing a chess-board. Viktor's pieces, the pawns, are a familiar lot. Useful in their desperation, expedient in their nullity. He'd ring the changes on each one's unique role, and bank on their common failings. Once they were bled dry, he'd toss them aside. They were never meant to last.

That's the price for the game they played. The language of chess is mathematic notation. The currency of power, flesh.

A fair deal, if you know the rules.

Now the whole timbre of their give and take, which until now has all been aiming in one direction, shifts. In the absence of the old rules, Silco is startled to discover the delineations of something else. Curiosity. The boy knows what it is like to feel the weight of a world pressing down. To live inside a body that can never be made whole—only surmounted with the kind of brute willpower that transforms the unthinkable into the inevitable.

And he has done it. He has broken through the surface. Broken into Piltover's upper echelons. Carved his niche, and changed the landscape of the City of Progress. The summation of every promise fulfilled.

At a price.

"It wouldn't matter how high you climbed," Silco says. "Topside would never trust you with real power. Your origins are a stain."

Viktor props his weight on the cane. He's borne the brunt of prejudice all his life. Only purpose has a way of numbing the pain.

"I never cared what they thought," he says. "Only what I could do."

"And now you can do nothing."

"Nothing." The defiance is gone; his shoulders slump. "I was the only child of the Skylight's outbreak to survive. Now, I think it is fitting. Janna's Kiss was never a kiss. More a punishment for daring to leave the dark."

"Would you like it to be a real kiss?"

Viktor's eyes cut sideways. Silco holds them. His words are shorn of seduction. It is a plain question. The man is a broken clock, watching his gears tick to their last. A man who believes there are always choices, but was born with next-to-none.

A man, Silco thinks, who can be coaxed into making the right one.

For Zaun.

"I am no pessimist," Silco goes on. "I believe frailty has its uses. It hones a man's instinct for survival. The only time we are truly alive is when we are closest to death. Don't you agree?"

Viktor's eyes return to the vivarium. His palm rests on the glass, fingertips spread. "Yes."

"Good. I've no interest in coddling a man with a death-wish." Silco's hand reaches out, mirroring Viktor's. Warmth beats under his fingertips. "The Doctor and I share an unorthodox vision. We believe in life beyond the boundaries of the flesh. Shimmer is a means to prolonging it. That's how I saved Jinx." Unspoken: And myself. "These plants before us are another means. They have healing properties. Even the smallest spore, in the right Shimmer strain, could ease your affliction."

Viktor struggles for composure. But the hope is a fever. It burns through his pores. Sweat beads his hairline.

"I have heard rumors of your Shimmer research. But I—" He cuts himself off. "I have seen the effects."

"Seen? Or experienced?"

Viktor's silence is its own confession.

"Your glove," Silco says. "A protective measure?"

Viktor swallows. "No."

"A deformity, then." Silco's tone holds no censure. "I'm familiar with the feeling."

He reaches out. The young man recoils. But Silco doesn't touch him. At a table near the vivarium, there are vials full of phosphorescent liquid. They are labeled with numbers: 1, 2, 3. Silco's fingertip ghosts over the glass. The low chime cuts through the halogen buzz.

"Flesh," Silco says, "is not fruit. Once marked, it does not wither. All the scars ever worn by humanity signify triumph. Triumph against the odds. Against time. Against nature itself." His thumb traces the number: 3. He turns to Viktor, vial in hand. "The body isn't always a curse."

Viktor's breath drags behind his ribs. "Shimmer is."

"Not this. It's a stabilized variant. A curative that targets the respiratory system." He nods at the tree. "The plants, and their medicinal properties, are crucial to the formula. Without them, the cure is incomplete. It can't reverse the damage. But it can slow the affliction. Enough for a few months' reprieve."

"And the side-effects?"

"A temporary high. Muscular regeneration. Enhanced stamina. A few physical changes to the skin and eyes. Nothing irreversible." The vial glows between Silco's fingers. "You've gambled on outliers before. What's another roll of the dice?"

"Hex-tech is not Shimmer," Viktor argues. "One has the power to save lives. The other—"

"—has the power to transform them." He offers the vial. "Which would you choose?"

Viktor's stare falls on the vial. In its secondhand glow, a bloodshot network of capillaries shows in his eyes. The vein in his temple pulsates. His gloved hand rises—then halts. Like a beggar, reluctant to risk a blow.

Silco doesn't push. He simply waits.

"Why?" Viktor whispers. "Why offer this?"

"Why not?"

"You—" Viktor's stare flickers, then holds firm, "— expect something in return."

"I expect you will be enough."

Viktor's hand trembles. A hand that has crafted miracles, and yet hangs, mid-motion, at such an awkward angle it calls to mind a jammed gear. Like the boy has held nothing and no-one his entire life. Silco has a piercing flash of insight: one of the many honed by a lifetime of playing with knives. This man—co-founder of Hex-tech, the mind of tomorrow, the striving prodigy—is a virgin.

A virgin, and a sacrifice.

Viktor's gloved fingers seize the vial. Silco watches it disappear into his breast pocket. His eyes follow with a proprietary gleam. Resistance is the hardest hurdle. Once crossed, everything else comes easy. The young man's silence, he already has. Next, he will have his trust.

By breaking it.

Quietly, Viktor says, "Thank you."

"No need. You are one of our own. You'll always have a place here."

"And a use?" A dry note. "Zaun is no charity."

Silco's smile returns. "Zaun has no need of charity. Only champions. The difference is whether they stand in light, or shadow." His gaze shifts to the aquarium, a slow pan. In the depths, a mermaid's silhouette. Her hair is a floating tangle of kelp. Her eyes are luminous red. "Zaun has long been an outlaw zone. A shadowy pocket where everything is permissible. I believe a healthy society needs those as much as it needs brightness. Not for its citizens alone. It needs them for certain elements to evolve unseen. For ideas to thrive."

Viktor follows Silco's stare. "Like hybrids."

"Like hope."

Silence again. Silco lets the young man drink it in. Lets it fill his body like seed. The seeds of Zaun, growing strong in the dark. Strong enough, with care, to flower into something even the sunlight cannot kill.

"You…" Viktor hesitates. "You are not as Jayce—Councilor Talis described."

It is a slip. But Silco will not let it slip. Far sweeter to see the young man unspool on his own strings.

"Jayce, is it?" he says. "You must be close."

Viktor nods.

"I can well imagine how I was described. The same way Topside describes the Undercity." His voice shifts: a mixture of droll insolence and dour disparagement. "Corrupt. Barbaric. Monstrous."

Viktor's lips purse. "Jayce did not—"

"No," Silco says easily. "Never in those words. But I know what is said behind my back. Behind all our backs." He lets the word settle with the heaviness of epithet. Our. "Talis is a man of principle. But his principles are those of his home. His terms were no different."

"Terms?"

"He didn't mention? The details of our parley?" Off Viktor's silence: "Relations between our cities were at a tipping point. He had to send a message. A show of force from him—followed by a mea culpa from me." He clasps his hands in mock-petition. "He was afraid, you see. Afraid of what war would bode. My people, he warned me, wouldn't stand a chance."

My people.

A pithy summation of everything Topside touts as principle: hauteur, hubris, hatred. The Fissurefolk are not Talis' people. The Fissurefolk are no people at all. They are vermin, and worse. Their labor used up; their lives discarded. Talis had stormed the factory, and seen the potential brewing in Shimmer's currents. A wave of irrationality rising towards his city, to wipe them clean from the shore. He'd tried to quash it. Turn the tide, so Zaun would sink back, defeated, into the deep. The Pilt already carried so much debris of crushed dreams: a thousand broken bodies.

What was one more?

"He offered his hand," Silco says. "In exchange for Zaun's disarmament."

"Peace," Viktor rejoins. "And shared progress."

"Progress." Silco's rage sluices in. "With my daughter as the price."

There is no need for Viktor to feign shock. His eyes speak volumes. Talis did not share this detail. The man he built a legacy with, shoulder-to-shoulder. Yet he did not share, and that, too, is a choice.

"Perhaps," Viktor says, a little shakily, "he meant it as a compromise."

"Symbolic atonement?"

"Jinx took lives—"

"And the lives Talis took? Do they weigh nothing?"

"What do you mean?"

No slip this time. Only a stumble into a blind spot.

Silco will drag him six feet under. With a smile.

"I see. He didn't share that either." He steps closer. "He came belowground—" him and Vander's bitch "—Enforcers in tow. Destroyed my factory. Injured a number of my workers. Spilled Shimmer. Blood too. A boy in my employ."

"A boy?"

"Son of a chem-baroness. He wanted to learn the ropes. So I took him in." The prerogative of the Eye is to take, and Silco's empire has taken thousands. Some have become informants. Others, assassins. A few have risen higher: Dustin. Ran. Jinx. But this boy— "A month into his apprenticeship, Talis killed him."

"That—" Viktor's face contorts. "That's not possible."

"I saw his body."

"Jayce would never—"

"Wouldn't he? To kill the rot before it spreads?" He's close enough to see the pulse throbbing in the young man's throat. To see his own reflection in the glass: the monster, rising. "Why not ask him? He used Hex-tech to deal the killing-blow."

"What?"

"His hammer." Silco's lip curls. "Your prototype, I believe."

"That is not—Hex-tech was never intended for—"

"Intention is irrelevant once the bodies pile up." Silco looms closer. "Ask him. See if he denies it." The threat seeps like blood. "See if he lies."

Viktor's eyes flare. The fear is back. But it's not Silco he's fighting. It's himself.

"No," he breathes. "That's impossible."

"Then why listen to me?" Silco's hand covers Viktor's gloved one. The boy's fingers twitch, caged in bone. "Why seek out liars and cheats and killers? Your place is Topside. With the boy you built a golden dream with." His grip tightens. "Or is there something about us, in the dark, that Talis can't give you?"

"Jayce," Viktor grits, "is a good man."

"As are we all, when the world's on our side." Silco's knuckles sharpen on Viktor's wrist. "When our back's to the wall, we become something else."

Viktor's twitch deepens into a tremor. "Let me go."

"I can. Or I can show you the truth."

"The truth…?"

"You came below because you sought something. You knew that Topside, Talis—they would not give it. You needed a place where your questions wouldn't be met with silence." Silco's palm slips off, and up: to Viktor's bare wrist. His flesh is a shock. Cold sweat on colder steel. "Here, there is no silence. No walls." A whisper. "No limits."

"Wait—"

Too late. Silco's fingers curl into the heel of Viktor's glove. With a tug, the fabric slithers off.

And the chimera, in his full glory, emerges.

"See?" Silco murmurs. "Nothing to fear."

Viktor's right hand is augmented. Steel from the palm to the wrist. Sleek and tapered, the surface etched with indigo striations resembling filigree. The tendons stand out, a webbing of wires welded to the bone. Each digit is capped in a metal claw, piercingly sharp. There are no sores; no signs of scar tissue. The transition from meat to metal is seamless.

Viktor is no longer bound to the flesh. He has transcended. And yet...here he is, clinging to the wreckage.

"You're ashamed," Silco says. "You shouldn't be."

"How could I not be?" Viktor's eyes are haunted. "What I have become...what I have done..."

"You have survived."

"She did not." His fist clenches. A spasm runs through his arm, a jagged ripple. "Sky—she's gone. I failed her. I failed everyone. The only thing I can do now is make it right. Somehow. If I am still a man worthy of doing so." He looks at his hand. The cabled tendons appear to thrum, pushing through the unnatural varnish of alloy. "If I am still a man at all, and not—"

Silco sets his fingertips on Viktor's bare knuckles. The steel radiates a smooth chill.

"A monster?"

Viktor's chest rises and falls.

"Monsters are not always monsters," Silco says. "Sometimes they're simply men. Men, doing whatever is necessary to survive." His touch exerts the barest pressure. "Our city is the same. It seeks to survive. To rise anew. You can make it happen."

"You mean," Viktor says, "with my research."

Silco's bad eye catches the halogen's glow: a firebrand. "Talis and I have our differences. But I appreciate a man who can make an impact. You're his equal. His better, in many ways. You've borne what he never could. Now you can pay the lessons forward." The steel warms under his fingertips. "Come home, Viktor."

"Home." Viktor's voice cracks. "I have no home."

"Yet here you are."

"Because—" His strangled breath is half-cough, half-sob, "—because I want the truth."

"The truth is that you will always be one of us. Always."

Silco releases his grip. Viktor sways as if half-drunk. But he doesn't fall. Silco knows men like him. Men who are born to endure. The Undercity is full of them. Sons and daughters who refuse to yield an inch. The only place for their fears is beneath the earth, where the dark will bury them.

"Consider my offer," Silco says. "But consider well. The Doctor's serum won't last."

Viktor nods, barely. He's in a daze. And yet, his instincts are ravening. Survival is like that. If the body is starved, the soul turns cannibal.

Even on itself.

"It's nearly dinnertime." Silco extends his hand, the perfect host once more. "Shall we return?"

Again, the barest nod. Viktor is still clutching the glove in his clawed fist. But Silco's shadow has fallen on him, and with it, the seed. It will burrow deep; take root. The boy has no choice but to let it grow. Let himself be reborn, in a darker light.

All things, given space, can bloom.

Slowly, Viktor puts on his glove. His fingers flex, the chimera tucked away. His cane taps the marble, a single step forward. He is ready to depart. The garden is not for all eyes. The darkness is its own, and cannot be tamed.

Viktor knows that.

He belongs there, too.

---

Dinnertime in Zaun differs wildly from its Topside counterpart.

Fissurefolk navigate by a schedule decadently suited to night-living. Most eat when they please, and how they please. They can't afford to live by a clock as moody as the Old Hungry. Others set their timetables depending on their profession. Miners wake at dawn to a breakfast of cold gruel and bitter coffee. Factory-hands break for lunch by the whistle, bolting down a greasy fare of meat pies and cheap beer. The chem-barons favor a sweet repast of honey-glazed breads and imported fruits by twilight, followed by a more robust banquet of roast fowl by dark. The street folk have no concept of regular mealtimes at all: they subsist on a diet of grubs, pickles, and the odd stolen crust.

The exception is the Equinox.

Daylight is a rarity belowground. During the winter, the sky is a slate of ash and iron. A gloomy miasma hangs over the cityscape. The sun is a phantom. But come the Equinox, the sky morphs into pastel hues of rose and gilt. The smog is thinner; the air tastes sweeter. And the sun, warmer, has a way of kissing the skin.

Fissurefolk are an industrious lot. But even they are not insensate to the spell of springtime.

On the Equinox, the city basks. Work-hours are inverted. From daybreak to midday, the streets are busy with trade. The chem-labs, the factories, the mines—everything grinds at full tilt. By noon, the march of commerce ebbs. The sun crests, and so does the afternoon languor.

Fissurefolk throw their windows open to the slanting pink sunrays. The streets fill with bodies: shopgirls taking their ease, laborers unwinding after a shift, children at play. Some, like Silco retire for a rare siesta under the striped luminosity of the Laguna Lounge's shuttered windows, savoring brandy from a cut-glass beaker. Others, like Sevika, favor a different sort of savoring: the heady rush of a good smoke after a hard fuck as the dust-motes swirl gold through the slats of a brothel's backroom. Still others, like Jinx, prefer a less traditional mode of unwinding: a dance of daredevilry off the gables of sunbaked rooftops with fistfuls of paint-bombs. By dusk, they each sleep, sprawled, in the lap of sunshine.

The rest of Zaun does the same: a honeyed hive, drunk on warm nectar.

Supper is served an hour after sundown. It's the city's way of drawing out the day. Or turning back the clock, just for a heartbeat, to the idyllic era before the Cataclysm. A time when the sky was an edgeless blue, and the air held a scent of leaves. A time when the rains were pure and the riverwater sweet.

The spread at supper is traditionally sweet too: sugared rhubarb and poached cavernfruit, roasted nuts and spiced ciders. It's the perfect pick-me-up for the night-shifts that resume by moonrise. And as the darkness deepens over Zaun, so does the city's appetite.

Dinner is served at midnight. The zenith of the Equinox, when the street-life is brightest. Hot and savory and spiced, it is a rousing tonic to the nocturnal chill. Families gather at tables laden with stewed mushrooms, skewered squab, and steaming loaves of chaff bread. Jars of fermented cavernfruit wine are passed around. Bottoms are raised to the gods. The old gods: the ones that Topside pretends have no teeth.

And then, the feast begins.

On the Equinox, everyone revels. Even the monsters.

By eleven o' clock, the banquet hall is ready. From the dark ceiling, a single chandelier burns. Its glassy pendants glint in time to each slow-motion swivel, a mass of winking eyes. The ambiguous glow plays over the silverware spread on black linen: pronged forks and serrated knives. Waitstaff glide like ghosts, filling goblets with the hushed severity of precision instruments. Not a word is spoken.

There is only the Old Hungry, ticking inexorably towards culmination.

At eleven thirty, sharp, the Councilors are shown to their seats. They've had time, in elegant private quarters, to void the bladders, mop up the sweat, rinse the mouths. A few have already vomited or had diarrhea, their nerves shot from the anticipation of what's to come.

They've heard wild rumors of the Fissures' cuisine: braised babies, boiled brains, roasted hearts. Some say the Eye is a vampire. Blood is his sustenance. Others say he's a corpse. Bone marrow is his fare of choice. The stories grow more outlandish by the year.

So does Silco's appetite for feeding them.

One by one, the Councilors walk self-consciously into the room. There are blind nods of fellowship traded as they take their place. No one speaks, apart from murmurs of permission as chairs are scraped back, and bodies squeezed past. The table is round, a symbol of unity. Its circumference is ringed by fourteen high-backed chairs. There are no titles affixed to gold plaques: no chance for preeminence. Only a number: 1, 2, 3.

It's an act of subliminal provocation. Here, titles are irrelevant.

All that matters is meat.

Presiding at the table, Silco eyes the spread. They are in their proper places: the Piltovan contingent to his right, the Zaunites to his left. Jinx already sits by his elbow, chin on her fist, Magnus at her feet.

Her dinnertime outfit is demure by Zaun's standards: a simple silk slip, strapless and snug-fitting, her thighs shrouded in chiffon, her tiny feet ending in a pair of ballet-slippers. The colors—hot pink and fuchsia—are a sensuous riot against the affectedly somber palettes the Council are accustomed to.

Silco enjoys the look of her. Not simply because she is—undeniably—the loveliest creature in the room. But her sartorial choice is a callback to her nature. The pinks are eye-popping: they seize attention like a flashbang. They're also a warning: to look too close is to be blinded. The pale bareness of her face and shoulders speaks of inviolate innocence, the kind only the young possess. But the chiffon's diaphanous quality gives lie to her modesty.

This is no vestal virgin, but a wild-child. A force of nature.

And she is all his.

The guests, settling, are unsettled. This is their first taste of Zaun after dark. The air is a sensory assault of the unknown: tobacco, ambergris, incense. A sharp reek of sweat permeates; the fanciest perfumes are no match for the tropical heat of anticipation. The Council's overdressed bodies are sticky with it.

By the dinner's end, they'll be drenched.

Silco lifts his glass. Candleflame curves off its polished surface. The guests hold their breaths.

"Zaun," he says softly, "is a city that never sleeps. Nor does its appetite."

The sibilance of his voice pours across the table, sinking into the spaces between bodies. A thrill passes through the guests; the involuntary shudder of a spider's skitter. The candlelight is a web of golden filaments. Inside, they are captive.

"The Equinox is traditionally a time of feasting. But the best meals are the ones you share." Silco's eye takes in the Councilors. "Tonight, we celebrate the end of hostilities with our sister-city. As we mark a new beginning, so do we mark an old. The most sacred custom of all: breaking bread." His glass lifts. "With this meal, let us seal our pact."

There is a collective clatter of cutlery. The chem-barons raise their glasses. The Councilors, stiff, follow suit. All except Viktor, who stares at his own. His eyes hold a dull glaze. The day has been a trial; the evening a whirl. He is tired.

Youth, Silco thinks. It burns out so fast.

His eyes meet Viktor's over the rim. Viktor flinches. After a beat, he raises his own glass.

Jinx crows, "Let's chow!"

The doors swing open. There is an exotic waft of heat. The Councilors shift in their seats. Their good sense tells them to bolt. Their curiosity, insatiable, holds them paralyzed.

"Our fare," Silco says, "is a simple one. It comes from the dark, same as our riches. Some say you can taste the salt in every bite. Others say you can taste the earth itself." He leans forward, as if confiding a secret. "Both are true. If you lie at the bottom, you have two choices. Gnaw on the roots, until you waste away," his voice drops a full octave, "or dig your teeth in, and get to the bones."

The atmosphere is hazed with the sultry ascendance of spices. An intake of breath passes through the guests. Silco looks over their faces, queasy with rapture. This is the consummation they've resisted, and must now surrender themselves.

Hunger is its own tyrant. To sate it, all is permissible.

"Dig in," Silco says. "But pace yourselves." The barest smile. "We have all night."

His knuckles rap, once, on the tabletop. The servers set to work.

The hors d'oeuvres arrive: saffron-steamed squid diced to tender morsels, tossed in a chili marinade, and served on a green bed of basil. They are followed by smoked eel drizzled with cave-honey sauce, and a generous ladling of brined oyster bisque. For the salad: pickled kelp, crunchy as the sea-glass that washes upon the shore, paired with a spicy-sweet vinaigrette of mustard oil and lime. For the soup: a broth of sump-vole bone stirred in golden turmeric. Afterward come plates piled high with roasted meats: riverbird, marinated to velvety tenderness, and braised vole-tongue, pink as a sea-anemone. As a palate cleanser, medallions of steamed scallops are served with savory blackflower pudding, and garnished with slivers of dill. The second course is roasted squab, its skin crisped to a toasty glaze, its insides stuffed with wild mushrooms and soused shallots. It is followed by braised isopods glistening in their bowls, their shells pried open and bristling with diced chilies. A medley of chutneys on chaff bread are offered as chasers: cave-pear, persimmon, and plum.

The dishes are rustic, and yet, the presentation is immaculate. The plates are gold; the goblets flecked with pearlescent abalone. Symbols of Zaun's subterranean wealth. The waitstaff circulate, refilling the guests' cups with local brew: a cavernberry cider, delicately spiced, and devilfruit wine, a vintage of blood-red opulence that goes straight to the head.

The Councilors sample the fare cautiously. For them, anything with more than a pinch of salt is an aberration. They dread the prospect of a scalded tongue. But the flavors prove irresistible, a gentle tease to the senses. It is a far cry from the prudish fare of Piltovan cookery. Before long, their appetites awaken, and with it, their courage. Soon, the table throbs with sighs for seconds and thirds. Some discoveries—like the riverbird—are an instant hit. Others—like the turmeric stew—spark hue and cry of a different nature.

Fanning herself, Kiramman gasps, "The stew is flaming!"

"And the color," Hoskel says, squinting into the bowl. "Most peculiar."

"It's Fissure turmeric," Silco says. "We've a fondness."

"I can see that." Salo snatches up a glass of water. His eyes are streaming. "Most—singular." He blots his forehead with his sleeve. "My, er, compliments." His stare falls on the server behind him. "Where's my wine, boy?!"

"I'll get it!"

Jinx is already rising. Daddy's little helper—and a thief in plain sight. If Silco isn't careful, she'll abscond with the whole carafe, and leave their party dead-sober.

Nothing bores like a sober Piltie. At least the dead ones don't talk.

Much.

Silco stills Jinx with two fingertips on her wrist.

"Sit," he says. "Finish your soup."

Jinx stops short, and sits demurely. But Silco doesn't miss the quick-draw of her finger across her throat. Not a stay of execution, but a playful shorthand: My good manners are killing me. Silco hides a smile. He's always enjoyed their private language of give-and-take. Father and daughter, united in a common cause: stirring the pot.

The pot, tonight, is the Councilors' heads.

Sweetly, Jinx says, "How's your pudding, Councilor Salo?"

"Mnf," Salo nods, mouth full. "Delicious. What is the flavor?"

"Blackflower."

"A flower?" He swallows. "What kind?"

"It grows in caves," Jinx chirps. "In the Solstice, it's dormant, and all purple and glowy. But every Equinox, it blooms, with shiny black spines that look like teeth." She makes a hypnotic hand gesture, unfurling her tiny fingers in imitation of a spiked maw. "Their sap's lethal. But the cave-wasps use it to feed their larvae. The larvae digest it, then poop out a sweet secretion the color of blood."

"S-Secretion?"

"Yep!" Jinx beams. "It's super versatile. Boil it down and it's a sticky glaze. Ice it and it's sherbet. Add flour and it's cake." She taps her nose with a wink. "Here in Zaun, nothing's a-wasted. We recycle!"

Salo puts down his spoon. "You are joking."

"Nah. There's a whole industry. Blackflower honey. Blackflower liqueur. Blackflower gelato. Although the last bit's more entomophagy than scatology, if you catch my drift?"

"No-o..."

"Larvae, Councilor. Sweet, sweet larvae! We whip 'em into a froth, then drizzle 'em with cave-honey, like so—" She mimics a spiral with her finger, before the gesture morphs into a gun. "—blam!" Salo jerks. "The smoothest scoop of sinfulness in Zaun. Your pudding's made from the same ingredients. So's the stew. Even the vole's stuffed with 'em. That's what we call a circle of life. Am I right?"

"I see," Salo says weakly. "Most, ah, educational." He pushes the dish away. "If you'll excuse me..."

His exodus is swift. A lord ready to pledge allegiance to the porcelain god. The rest of the table marinates in silence.

"Yikes." Jinx pouts her lower-lip and blows a puff of air. Blue strands flutter off her forehead. Her eyes, unveiled, are luminous with mock-contrition. "Guess bugs are a bugbear for this crowd. You were right, Silco. Grilled scorpion would've been a bust for the entrée."

Silco smiles. A smile only Jinx can read. "Some topics, child, are better confined to cookbooks."

"And here I thought I was sharing the knowledge. Whetting the appetite. All that jazz." Her lip protrudes cheerlessly. "Boo."

Hoskel, in his cups, guffaws with crude appreciation. "Boo, indeed. You're a pip, girl. A regular firecracker." He swigs from the wine, smacking his lips. "I say it's a feckless man who can't stomach a spot of danger. As for myself—" He slams the empty glass. "—I've a mighty appetite. You Trench-folk have queer dishes, but a man can't help his cravings, eh? Speaking of—" He turns to the server, his jowls quivering. "You, there! Fill my cup!"

The server, a slip of a boy, obeys. HIs face is empty save for a tightlipped smile.

The Councilors are used to being served aboveground. They expect the same deference below. Except Silco's staff are not servants. Their fealty is to Zaun. The Eye's aegis holds a complex balance. A soft tone; a steady hand. Too much force, and his grip will crumble. Too little, and the same.

Zaun is a city of extremes. But equality is no tenuous construct. It's the heart of Silco's revolution.

Medarda, sensing the distemper, salves it with a smile.

"It's the little things in your home I find most impressive, Chancellor. Everything runs like a well-oiled machine." She lays her fork and knife neatly across her emptied plate. A server whisks it away. "Your staff, for instance. Such impeccable deportment. What's your secret?"

"No secret," Silco says. "Just an old adage. Never raise your voice. Raise your floor. My staff do more than serve. They are trusted with our city's future." He dips his chin at the boy. He appears by Silco's elbow. A tow-headed urchin, barely into adolescence: all gap-toothed grin and spindly limbs. He seems young enough to be Silco's grandson—if the Eye was the type to spawn. "Take Posky, for example. Our household's errand-boy."

Posky bows, blond hair flopping forward. The Councilors murmur among themselves. The boy's vaguely canine features—dopey blue eyes, snub nose, and jug ears—hold a quaint charm. Stamped on a tin, his countenance would sell for a pretty penny. If he were a girl, he'd fetch twice the price. Zaun has a market for such commodities: children, pretty as toys.

And, like all toys, fated to be broken.

"Posky lived by the oil-rigs as a tot. His mother was a chief engineer. One of our best." Silco's stare, darkly knowing, cuts across the table. "The rig blew up. Faulty equipment. Posky was one of the few survivors. An orphanage—one of your fine establishments, Councilor Hoskel—took him in. For a while, at least. Then a flesh-monger came sniffing. You know the sort. A buyer with a penchant for pale skin, and a taste for youth." He looks the boy askance. "They don't grow 'em much paler than Posky."

Posky grins, gap-toothed. His expression is guileless; a sweet puppydog's. And yet, there is something canny behind his eyes. Something that sees, and knows, and does not flinch.

"He was taken. Sold to a brothel in the Sumps. The sort that makes sport with anything on two legs." There is a bland smile on Silco's face. But his eyes are like two chips of black ice. "In Piltover, I believe such a tale would be unfit for polite company. And its byproducts—like Posky—unfit to grace a respectable table. In Zaun, we are not so fastidious." He turns to the boy. "Show them, Posky."

Impassive, Posky extends his wrist. The sleeve rides up. His forearm is a mottled patchwork of old cigarette burns, needle tracks and bite scars.

"When I took control of the territory, I had the brothel razed. Those who'd worked there were offered recourse—or retribution. Some chose the latter. Posky—" Silco's knuckles rap, once, against the table. The boy's grin fades. His countenance hardens, the way a watch-dog's does when a stranger passes by. "—chose the former. My crew cautioned me against the decision. Damaged goods, isn't that what they say?" Another rap, and the boy's lip bridles, a soundless growl. "I disagreed. In Zaun, nothing is damaged that cannot be salvaged. Or remade." A third rap, and the boy's features transform: no canine charm, only the rabid hunger of the mad dog. "Posky started out barely coherent. He bit and snarled, as all wounded things do. But with time, and patience, he learned. By the one-month mark, he was walking and talking. By the third, he could run and carry. And by the sixth, he could even smile."

Softly, his fingers snap.

The boy's demeanor morphs: a storybook child again, so wholesomely winsome it'd be easy to forget the pages are stained with blood.

"After a year, Posky was a specimen of good health. No howling at the moon. No fits of temper. A few odd mannerisms, to be sure. But nothing that cannot be excused as boyish eccentricity." His glass lifts, a request. The boy obliges, filling. The promptness earns him a proprietary pat on the head. Posky's eyes glow, puppyish. "Recently, I asked Posky if he'd prefer to strike out on his own. Work a real job. Have a shot at a normal life. He turned me down. What were your words, Posky?"

Posky's smile is hard, but not without humor. A little lisp sneaks through his words.

"I'll stick witchu, sir, till I'm all growed up."

"And he's not only grown, but excelled. Posky runs my kitchens like a military campaign. Everyone on staff answers to him. Evenings, he learns the trade at an industrial school. Next year, he'll be apprenticed as a clerk at my steel mill. And then, who knows? Zaun's future is as bright as its minds." He tips his glass. "May both flourish."

Posky's smile holds a little truer. "Cheers, sir."

He clinks his carafe to Silco's glass. The crystal rings: a high pure note. The Council's shocked stares speak for themselves. They know Zaun as a den of vice: its monsters and morsels equally faceless. This is their first glimpse into the world beyond the pit.

If Silco has his way, they'll fall straight in.

His eyes flick to Posky: It's time.

Posky obeys. The servers, having cleared the main dishes, follow suit. They glide into formation. The last course is ready. A delicacy waiting to be unveiled all night.

"May I present," Silco says, "Zaun's pièce de résistance."

The servers wheel a trolley to the table. It bears a magnificent specimen: a silver-plated tureen, embossed with a serpentine filigree. The top is sealed by a cut-crystal cloche. The shape beneath is shrouded in haze, humid with the succulent density of cooked flesh.

"We call this the Last Supper," Silco says. "It's a favorite among the Fissurefolk." He turns to Hoskel. "Councilor. Care to do the honors?"

Hoskel rises hastily. "Ye-es. Of course."

He grips the handle, and pulls. Fragrant steam plumes. The cloche, lifted, reveals a roast, golden as sunrise. A whole boar, sizzling in its own fat. The belly is slashed and stuffed. Roasted mushrooms, crisped tubers, and diced onions spill out like jewels. Verdant sprigs of marjoram stud the meat. A ruby-red sauce is pooled at the base. Red as blood, its aroma decadently sweet.

"Sump-boar," Silco says. "An hour-long roast, done to a turn." His lips curl at the corners. "We're a frugal folk. Hence the dish's name. A last chance to gorge before the lean months." His good eye lingers on the boar's slit belly. "Who knows? By winter's end, we may never do so again."

The Councilors are silent. A good silence. The silence of gluttony. The Fissureside cuisine was a taunt. The Last Supper is a temptation. And, beneath the scandalous display of bared flesh, a reminder.

In Zaun, the only things that last are the teeth.

"Showtime!" Jinx crows.

One by one, the plates are piled high. The carving technique is meticulous: not a sliver goes to waste. The meat twinkles with fragrant juices. The sauce is a rich garnet-red. The herbs are a vivid green, fresh as the earth. It's a tableau of life: a taste of what Zaun once was, and can be again.

The guests pick up their cutlery. The air grows heavy with anticipation. The Equinox has come full-circle. The chem-barons, the Councilors—all are caught in the spell. Their forks, poised over the meat. A breath, held.

Then, in concert, the forks descend. Tines pierce flesh. Juices ooze out.

The Old Hungry strikes twelve.

The servers, a split-second later, draw their blades. Steel flashes in the firelight: a dozen daggers raised high. The Councilors freeze, forks halfway to their mouths. They stare at the servers. At the blades. And then, slowly, at the man at the head of the table.

"My apologies, Councilors," Silco says. "I have forgotten one minor detail." His teeth are a sinister gleam of canines. "On the Equinox, we set aside our best bite for the goddess."

"To Janna!" Jinx's voice rings, a clarion cry.

"To Janna!" the servers echo.

The blades fall.

The boar's chest splits with a silky sigh. A teardrop of blood spills. The muscle-fisted heart, weeping its final drops. With delicate precision, it is removed, the arteries sliced and knotted into ribbons. The Priestess at Janna's Temple, a humble woman who keeps to the shadows, will receive it as a gift. She will bless the heart, and share the rest of the meat among the mendicants: gizzards, offal and extremities. The boar's bones will be burnt, the ashes cast in the sea. The ritual, in turn, will appease the goddess.

Janna is a fickle mistress. No one has the right to disrespect her.

Even the Eye.

The daggers are wiped and sheathed. The heart is whisked away. The servers, nodding dutifully, depart.

"Please," Silco says. "Begin."

The Councilors, visibly shaken, comply. Their forks lift to their mouths. The first taste is a cautious nibble. Then: a collective swoon. The meat, tender and savory, is exquisite. The herbs, crisp and aromatic, are a divine counterpoint. Before long, the Councilors are wolfing down their shares.

"It's—" Medarda, the golden-tongued beauty, is at a rare loss. "—delicious." Her plate is a carnal mess. A single drop of sauce glistens at the corner of her mouth. "Noxus, I daresay, could not do better. For my countrymen, a roast boar marks the start of war. A cause worthy of celebration."

"And a dead foe," Silco agrees, "the finest feast."

"Sweeter still is armistice." Delicately, Medarda dabs her mouth with a napkin. "I'm grateful ours is the latter. I've no taste for the former."

"Your refined palate is well-known." Silco spears a piece of meat. The fork's tines, stained red, disappear between his curving lips. "I'd be honored to hear your verdict on tonight's pap."

"Pap? You are much too modest." She reaches for a heel of chaff bread. Her family ring catches the candlelight with the dainty movements of her hands. "Tonight's fare has been a revelation. I'll be sure to recommend it to Piltover's nobility. Many a lord and lady could stand to have their palates broadened."

"Or burnt," Silco counters wryly. "Our spice is not to everyone's taste." He glances at Salo, who has resumed his seat. The man is dissecting his meal as if expecting it to bite. "Our sweets for that matter."

"Acclimatization is an art." With a deft twist of her wrist, Medarda breaks a piece of bread in half. "In time, your cuisine may go from novelty to necessity. It's simply a matter—" the bread, dipped in red, is slowly sampled, "—of cultivating an appetite."

"It seems the boar's heart has won yours."

"The whole beast, rather."

Beneath the mellowing candlelight, her words hold a suggestive tenor. In fact, she is steering their banter into business. It's a calibrated dance: hard profit coaxed, with soft smiles, through the backroom door. If there's one thing Topside detests, it's a full belly and empty hands. Here's Medarda's chance to fill both.

But Silco's no novice. He'll play for higher stakes.

"Man can't live on appetite alone," he says. "I'd never survive on word-of-mouth."

Translation: Make the price worth my while.

"Nor I," Medarda demurs. "But if I did, I'd trade your boar for a dozen more." Her eyes pass around the table. There are murmurs of agreement. Most of the Councilors' mouths are too full to speak. So much the better. "What's a Treaty, after all, but a meal shared at the same table?"

Translation: Show me the goods, and we'll cut a deal.

"You honor us," Silco says. "But Zaun is more than its cuisine. Our forgers, for one, can fabricate any alloy, no matter the metal. Our enamelers can render glass in a thousand shapes. Our gemcutters cut infuse a crystal with the colors of the rainbow. All of that, and more, you've seen tonight. If the Council is interested, we're open to sharing."

Translation: Show me the color of your coin.

"I believe you'll find us receptive," Medarda says. "Perhaps I could be given the tour—" the syllables linger "—by a gracious host."

Translation: Charm it out of me.

"Gracious," Silco echoes, "is not a word we use in Zaun. Generous?" A sip of wine paired with a half-smile. "That, you'll find, is our métier."

A toast within a toast: Done.

"Your largesse makes the evening, Chancellor." Medarda's flirting eyes are a fox's lure. "I daresay, I could become accustomed to it."

"My dear Councilor." Silco's grin, wolfish beneath its genteel façade, plays back, "That would be the idea."

No business now. Just the game. The music of transaction comes in different keys: major, minor. But there are few pleasures rarer than a partner who can match the beat.

Medarda is as adept as they come.

Talis, chewing with robotic intent, nearly chokes. His eyes fasten on Silco. No aggression, but the challenge is plain. He's watching a sweetheart deal blossom in real-time. Except it's becoming difficult to distinguish the sweetheart from the deal.

"You're an accomplished host, Chancellor," he says brusquely. "But a poor one, to neglect your own plate."

"Am I?" Silco eyes take their time disentangling from Medarda. "Apologies, Councilor Talis. Sometimes the mind wanders."

"Or the food's a poor fit." Talis pushes away his half-finished plate. It's a gauntlet thrown. His turf is under threat, and he will protect it. "Perhaps a less refined dish would suit."

Translation: Back the hell off.

Silco, unfazed, lets his hand fall to his knife. "Perhaps so. The best recipes, I find, are the simplest." A slice, precise. Juice runs darkly. "Meat, no matter the seasoning, is still meat."

Translation: Keep trying.

Talis' eyes, narrowing, slide to Jinx. She's busy chasing the squab across her plate, stabbing it with vicious glee. She seems oblivious to their conversation. Silco knows better. Beneath dipped lashes, her eyes twinkle: Should I stick a fork in him, too?

"Funny," Talis says. "That seems to be Zaun's ethos. Eat your own. And damn the limits."

Silco's smile stays fixed. He can always count on the Golden Boy to raise the stakes. But he's prepared for the gamble.

"You've a strange way of framing things, Councilor Talis. To my mind, there are two kinds of limits: those of the mind—" He lifts the fork to his mouth, and bites. "—and those of the flesh." His teeth are faintly delineated in red. His tongue traces them with an idle relish. "In Zaun, we keep both honed."

"Into an axe to grind?"

"What makes an axe an axe? If it swings, it swings. The question is: what is the target?" Reflexively, Silco puts a hand out to save Jinx's cherry soda—no alcohol need apply—before it has a chance to spill. "In times of war, an axe is a weapon. In times of peace, it's a tool. A city can't do without both."

"But never forget," Jinx singsongs. "A whack is a whack is a whack."

"Indeed," Silco says. "A whack." Then: "But please, Councilor Talis. This is hardly fit discussion for dinner. My city has no intention of grinding axes. Only keeping them sharp. Same as our appetite for progress." A beat. "Both demand their share of fresh meat."

Talis sits stone-faced. His default stance is to anchor himself to the moral high-ground. But the high-ground, in Zaun, is treacherous terrain. A boy's corpse lays half-buried between them. And no matter what sophistry Silco spins, Talis is the one who felled him.

In the end, a hammer is still a hammer.

Viktor, at an angle from Talis, is motionless. His eyes keep passing to his partner. They are both scholars of science. They thrive in details; they detest lies. And Talis is lying. Viktor can sense it now. He's being kept in the light, out of the dark.

The dark, where the body is buried.

Taking both fritzing ends of the conversation, Medarda loops them delicately around her little finger.

"I quite disagree, Chancellor," she says. "Progress is more than a brute machine that grinds others to its will. I like to think of it in terms of agency. A chance to make a difference." Her eyes, honey-gold, slide to Talis. Public overtures sweeten to private cadences. "For the better of all."

Silco can't entirely read her smile. But he catches the warning at split frequencies.

To Talis: Play nice.

To Silco: Or the game's over.

"Of course." Silco rolls the stem of his wineglass, idly, between his fingertips. "Progress cannot be measured by profit alone. It trades in many things. Talent. Grit. Skill. In fact, Zaun will soon be hosting an Expo in three months. A gathering of our best and brightest. I invite you both to attend." His eyes pass between them: a leisurely appraisal. "We've a few surprises in store."

"Thank you, Chancellor," Talis says woodenly, "but I'm not a fan of surprises."

"No? We'd be sure to keep the lights dim."

Talis is halfway to a rebuttal. Medarda's hand settles on his arm. He downshifts to different gears. Silco can well imagine what goes on between them behind closed doors. No vying for the upper-hand. Just two people, nakedly entangled. A man, striving for success, finding solace. A woman, fleeing war's worst, finding peace. They balance each other out.

But even the best scales can be tipped.

"The Expo sounds delightful," Medarda says. "Let us put our heads together—Cabinet and Council—and make the best of the occasion."

"Agreed," Silco says. "Happy endings, too, are a measure of progress."

Medarda's stare is inscrutable. But Silco reads a tiniest curl to her lips. She is, despite herself, amused.

The score is even.

"I believe," she says, "a toast is in order."

"A man should only toast to his table once," Silco demurs. "Perhaps you two could lead?"

Medarda's lashes flutter. "Of course. Councilor Talis?"

Talis has no patience for theatrics. But he's smart enough to know a peacekeeping play when he hears it. One he'll take, grudgingly.

The optics will serve as a symbol: no bad blood.

"Of course," he repeats. "As you say."

Silco crooks a finger. The servers refill everyone's glass. The goblets brim, a dark red tide under a halo of muted fire. Talis and Medarda, rising, lift their own. The rest follow suit. Side-by-side, their movements synch seamlessly: echoes of a shared bed. The scene calls to mind a wedding: the brief, blushing moment of togetherness before the matrimony falls to the mercy of the collective share—bitter relations, jealous loves, the march of time and the pull of temptations, until the marital sheets go cold and the vows become a stranglehold.

A treaty is no different. Except the sheets are paper-thin.

"To Zaun," Medarda says. "May it stand tall. As will we, together." She lifts her glass. "To our cities, a lasting truce."

The glasses, one-by-one, rise to the call.

"To the future," Talis says, flatly. "May the gods spare us." His glass stays at half-mast. "For Zaun's sake, and ours."

The dissonance saturates the space. Echoes, here, too. A shared war, and its aftermath.

"To dessert!" Jinx crows, a piercing sonority that shatters the hush. "It better get here soon!" She tips her glass to Magnus, then downs it in a gulp. "'Cause I've got a reaaaal cranky puppy!"

Laughter bursts: involuntary. Her timing is impeccable.

"To dessert," Silco concurs. "Always the sweetest bite." His glass hovers: a signal to the staff. "Shall we?"

The servers obey. The boar, its ribs a hollow cage, is wheeled away. The cart returns laden. Dessert: an assortment of chilled fruits and frothy confections. Cavernberries, sherry-sweetened. Candy-caps, their peels sparkling with molasses. Spiced pears, the pale skin dusted with ground ginger. And a centerpiece of caramelized zephyr-blossoms: the sugar-spun petals bronze as a burnished crown.

The table glitters with the bounty. The Councilors' eyes glitter too. With every bite savored, they've learned of delicacies beyond imagining, delicacies they'd thought beyond their grasp. Zaun's customs are no longer an alien curiosity, but a treasure chest. A new frontier, ripe for exploration.

And investment.

Two o' clock. Passion spent, the Councilors lay dazed. Their faces are flushed; eyes glassy. All have shed their dignity. Kiramman's hair is unraveling from its severe bun. Hoskel's collar is half-open. Salo has rolled up his shirtsleeves. Even Shoola and Bolbok's customary stiffness has melted away. The dishabille, unthinkable at dawn, is natural now.

In Zaun's liminal space, all lapses of decorum are permissible.

The chem-barons, primed for pillow-talk, pounce.

Salo, already three sheets to the wind, is spirited into talks with Crimson. Their laughter is a loose crackle. The pair swap filthy jokes from their schoolyard days. Beneath the table, their knees kiss. A promising sign. Weak men can always be counted on to stay loyal to their basest instincts.

The offshoot: Salo's coin is as good as spent in Silco's pockets.

Likewise, Hoskel and Margot are conversing in titillated whispers. A shade more circumspect, they lean across the table, heads bent. The topic is a private one. Their glances are not. The older man is clearly infatuated. His hands work on a puzzle of geometric cubes—a child's toy?—with coarse fondlings. Margot's lashes flutter in answer, a Morse code of coquetry. By the night's end, he'll receive an invitation to visit the Vyx's premier establishment. It will not be refused.

In time, his indulgence for good wine and soft flesh will loosen his tongue. And his purse strings.

Shoola and Bolbok are neck-deep in discussion with Chross. He's a hard-driving operator beneath his genial façade. Already, he is offering them a chance to invest in a commercial district at Zaun's Riverside Harbor at bargain-basement prices. The zone has thirteen different investment projects, mostly in real estate and construction; they are well-chosen, naturally afford tax benefits, and rake in a voluptuous profit—all aboveboard. What's not in the contract is the back-door deal: an exclusive arrangement with the Hush Company to expand its footprint while Silco pockets the profits.

More coin in the coffers. A virtuous circle, feeding the Eye.

Kiramman is slower to the draw, her reservations not yet overcome. But seduction comes in different shapes. So do knives. Petrock's offer is the former: a chance to invest in a satellite network of Zaunite munitions. His bottom-line is the latter: cutting through the pretense by spelling out the payoff. A simple balance, and one even the prudent Kiramman will find hard to resist. And if a few payments slip under the radar and into Silco's stockpile? Well, a bit of pilferage under the sheets never hurt a honeymoon.

Coin, coin, and more coin. Enough for Zaun to rebuild, brick-by-brick.

Only Viktor remains apart. His fork has hardly touched his plate. His glass is dry as a bone.

Pity, Silco thinks. The boy could use a stiff drink. He's waxen as a candle.

Jinx has the same idea. Her plate is licked clean, but she heaps her last spoonful of cavernberries onto Viktor's own

"C'mon, Vlček," she wheedles. "Treat yourself."

Viktor tries, and fails, to muster enthusiasm. "I am fine. Truly."

"Puh-lease! Your face is falling off." She grabs the fork from his limp grip, spears a bite. "Say ahhh!"

Viktor shakes her off, but not angrily. "Please. Enough."

"Fine! But here." She proffers a pink sprig. "Try this."

Viktor eyes the herb warily. "What is that?"

"Rosemary! We grow it by the ton. Thyme and lavender too."

"You...grow it." Viktor is bemused. "In Zaun?"

"Sure do! Our hot-houses are top-notch." Her fingers twirl the sprig. "The Promenade has 'em at every corner lately. All kinds of veggies, too. Potatoes, carrots, turnips, parsnips. Plus some weirder stuff. Cave-cucumbers. Sump-sprouts. But these are my faves." She pops the rosemary into her mouth. "Try 'em. They're so sweet they'll rot your teeth!"

Talis, watching the exchange, cuts in.

"Sweet," he says, a little sourly. "And full of chemicals, no doubt."

"Nope. We grow 'em with Dreamlight."

"Dreamlight?"

"It's our way of sayin' artificial light. Not real sunshine. Our veggies used to be grown under high-pressure sodium bulbs. But that was back in the old days, before Topside booted us off the power grid." She spoons leftover sauce into her smiling mouth. "Our engineers switched to LEDs by the year's end. Way more efficient than HPS lamps. It's why everything Down-Low packs an extra zing. The booze, the smokes, the puss—" Her teeth clack, barely catching herself. "Everything."

"Clever trick." Talis' tone holds no praise. "But I imagine the yield is low."

"You'd be surprised. The LEDs use lesser watts for the same output. Not to mention they kick off the highest photosynthetically active radiation. Our harvests are half Topside's size, but our plants have bigger biomass." Her grin widens. "Basically, they're supercharged. All without nasty monocycloparaffins that bung up the system." She shrugs. "Our bodies ain't temples, Mister Man, but our guts don't deserve to be sewers either. One drop of Shimmer, and we'll all spruce up."

Talis's jaw drops. Maybe it's at the all the polysyllabic jargon tripping off Jinx's tongue. Or maybe it's the mention of Shimmer with such casual audacity.

In front of Piltovan ears, no less.

"You're saying—" Talis stutters. "You've fed us Shimmer-grown food?"

"Well, duh." Jinx swirls the leftover cherry soda in its glass like wine. "Shimmer's the perfect fertilizer."

"That drug's poison!" Talis's fist thumps the table. A spoon jolts; a few glasses clink. "You can't grow anything with it."

The other guests glance up. There are whispers. Only Viktor seems immune. He is staring at his plate, a man recalibrating an equation.

Jinx's lip curls. It's a look Silco is well-acquainted with: the look of the enlightened, meeting the benighted.

Zaun, a world apart.

"Pffft. Shows what you know. Shimmer isn't poison. It's a catalyst. And like any catalyst, it kickstarts the process." She tips a knowing wink. "You've got your biocatalysts, your metabolic catalysts, and your inorganic catalysts. Shimmer's a fusion of all three." Leaning across, she plucks a cavernberry off Viktor's plate. The young man doesn't even blink. "What we've got here is the ultimate enzyme. A growth stimulator." She waves the morsel daintily in the air. "In microcosm, we're talkin' about a tiny bioreactor. In macrocosm, the whole ecosystem." She pops the berry between her teeth. Juice trickles down her chin. She licks it off, coy as a kitten. "The Shimmer gets metabolized by the plant. It boosts the nutrient uptake. The chloroplasts throw a party. And voila! You've got yourself a superfruit."

Jayce is a man of science. He is also a man of high passions. Both are provoked now.

"I'm no botanist," he argues. "But I've worked on biochemical engineering texts. There are compounds that have the same effect. Hydroponic nutrients. They're not addictive, and they don't make people crazy."

"The Shimmer strain's been tweaked," Jinx says. "No addiction. Just a pinch of pizzazz."

"It's still dangerous. The long-term side effects—"

"Magic's got 'em too. Hex-crystals are crazy as bugs in aspic. They're both unstable."

"You can't compare the two!" Jayce's voice rises. Heads swivel their way. "We have laws to regulate Hex-tech. Rules against misuse. If you're using Shimmer to grow these—" His hands sweep the table, "—I don't even know what to call them. It's illegal."

"Illegal?" Jinx's chin juts. "How's it illegal when Zaun's not under Piltover's jurisdiction?"

"Your independence is ratified." Talis' expression hardens. "Your formula isn't."

"Whoa, chief! What formula? We're makin' grub, not baby food." Jinx's eyes flick to Viktor, who's staring into the depths of his wineglass. His face is ashen despite the rising heat. "Babies take nine months. Our veggies only need two. But they feed more mouths." A formidable pause. "Mouths that might not be around in another nine months."

Talis glowers. "You have no right—"

Silco's hand settles, proprietary, on Jinx's seat.

"Councilor Talis," he says. "I must ask that you curb your tone. We're a spirited folk. But the dinner table is no place for dramatics." Then, a deliberate pivot to Viktor. "Wouldn't you agree?"

Viktor's head jerks up. Silco watches a peculiar change cross the boy's features. The last color drains from his cheeks. Yet his eyes take on a feverish inward glow. Talis' tirade seems to have roused him from a coma, and drastically infused him with a firecracker cocktail of agitation.

Finally, he is reckoning with his partner's limits.

And his own.

"Yes," he says stiltedly. "No place."

"What?" Talis brow spasms. "Viktor, are you serious? These people—"

"—are not Piltover's constituents," Viktor cuts in. "Show a little courtesy, Councilor."

The way he pronounces Councilor is flat as microscopic slide. The single drop of vitriol, between the plates, is a corrosive agent. It burns away Talis' self-righteousness. Suddenly he looks like a boy whose best friend has just kicked him in the shin.

"Viktor, I didn't mean to insult—"

"It is not an insult," Viktor says. "But neither is it your purview. If someone puts a meal in front of you, don't question why it isn't up to your standards." He glances at Jinx. His voice drops. "You've never been hungry, Jayce. She has. So have I. It's easy to have opinions. But sometimes, the best thing is to just...eat."

Talis, stung, falls back in his seat.

"Vik—" The lapse into the patois of friendship is telling. "Look. I'm sorry. I just don't think—hey. Where are you going?"

"Back to my quarters." Viktor rises. His bare fist white-knuckles the cane. "It is—late. I have an early start with research tomorrow." His stare veers to Silco. "I will excuse myself, Chancellor."

"Of course," Silco says. "My staff will see you to your room."

Talis glances from Silco to Viktor. Something gathers at the edges of his expression. Uncertainty shading into anger.

He rises, too. "I'll come with you."

"No." Viktor's tone is harsh. More heads spin their way, Medarda's included. With effort, Viktor moderates his tone. "Stay. Finish your meal. That is your duty as a statesman." He nods toward the guests. It is a strangely dignified gesture. A hidden touch of grace from a man so dispossessed. "Please excuse me." He looks at Jinx. Something flickers in his stare: wary, wistful, wondering. "And you. This was... an illuminating night."

Jinx's grin is a strange thing. A little girlish, and a lot feral.

"Sure thing, Vlček!" she says. "Watch yourself!"

Viktor departs, his footfalls uneven, his gait stiff. Jinx's eyes stay fastened on his back. It isn't a sniper's aim. But the focus is the same: unnerving in its intensity.

Silco's good eye narrows.

This is, he recognizes, different from a childish crush. It's more as if Jinx has glimpsed a kindred spirit—and the glimpse has lit a candle in the dark.

Whether the candle flickers or flares, it is too soon to tell.

Silco, ever the cautious gambler, will play the odds. He will wait to see what emerges. And, if necessary, extinguish it.

For Jinx's sake, and Zaun's.

Talis stays on his feet, watching his friend's retreat. His body is knotted with a dozen conflicting impulses. Taking a breath, he makes his choice.

"I'll excuse myself too, Chancellor," he says gruffly. "My partner is unwell."

"Of course," Silco says, under a deliberate veil of courtesy. "It's been a long night. Rest is the best remedy."

Talis' jaw tightens. "Or the soonest trip home."

He turns to go. Silco's hand remains on Jinx's chair. With a fingertip, he taps out a double-note. The guests don't hear it. But Jinx does. Cued, she kicks the underside of the table. A jolt shakes the cutlery. Talis' glass topples. Wine splashes his suit. He jerks, his trousers splattered red.

"Oopsie!" Jinx's hands fly to her mouth. "My bad, Mister Man!"

Talis' face goes through a series of contortions: dismay, anger, and finally, a dull resignation.

"It's fine," he says. "I'll clean up."

"Want some help? I've got napkins—"

"I'll manage." His perfect teeth grit. The stain is spreading fast. "Excuse me."

He stalks off toward the restroom.

Medarda, witnessing the spillage, is poised to follow. Her chair inches back. But one of the Councilors calls out to her, and her attention is diverted. The dinner has descended into a transactional debauch. The chem-barons are making their offers. The Councilors are weighing their options. Vice has transmuted into verboten.

The path ahead is clear.

But first: a detour.

"Posky," Silco says, lips scarcely stirring.

The boy materializes by his elbow. "Sir."

"Attend to our guest." His eyes cut down the corridor after Viktor. "Keep me apprised."

Posky's eyes pick up a gleam. He's been itching for a real job all night. "On it, sir."

He slips after Viktor.

Jinx waits until Posky's out of earshot. Her eyes hold a gleam too. A different wattage: brighter, and yet darker. His mirror, through and through.

"And me?" she whispers. "Where do I keep my eye?"

"Right here."

"Awww." Jinx slumps back. Magnus, settled by her heel, nuzzles close. Her hand slips to the dog's flank, gumball-colored nails scratching black fur. "This crowd's booooring."

Silco's palm settles on the nape of Jinx's neck. He squeezes, once.

"Pay no attention to their words," he says, softly. "Only what's between the lines."

"And hit my mark?"

"Like a sharpshooter."

Jinx's grin is a flashbulb's dazzle. Her other hand finds his; their fingers twine. The Hex-gem slips from his palm back to hers. It feels alive with a tiny pulse. Magic, or Jinx's spirit, singing through its core.

"Sit pretty." His hand falls away. "I'll be back."

As he departs, Jinx's silhouette lingers. A girl, presiding at the head of the table, alone. Her dog, a faithful shadow, at her feet. The Councilors and chem-barons, with heads full of gold, oblivious. A tableau vivant composed of three elements: magic, loyalty, power.

And a streak of mischief

"Councilors Hoskel!" Jinx says. "That's a neat-o puzzle! Solved it yet?"

"Not quite, little pip. It's a devilish one. Can't seem to get the trick of it."

"Mind if I give it a whack?"

"Be my guest."

A click. A whirr. A snap.

"Ta-daaaaaa!"

"By Janna!" Hoskel's shock is audible. "You've bested it in three shakes!"

"Pssh. It's a piece of cake. C'mere. Lemme show you..."

Silco walks away. The music of Jinx's laughter chases after him in the dark. A chimera of a sound: merriment masking a cold chord of steel.

And in that steel, a promise for those who tore her world apart.

---

The powder-room is an eerie twilit chamber.

The glazed black floors reflect the tricolor walls—maroon scrollwork on the dado, a ribbon of patterned gold wallpaper cutting round the center, then a silken finish of peacock-blue plaster on top. It is ostentatious, even by the Eye's standards. But the opulence is offset by the austere fittings. An ebony slab, inlaid with sinks. A rectangular mirror, framed in wrought iron. A row of polished urinals, with a privy at the far end.

There are no chaises. No embroidered towels. No potpourri. Not a single surface worth lingering on.

Here, the Eye shares the same ethos as the rest of his city:

A pisspot is a pisspot.

It's an attitude Talis is struggling to appreciate. He is diligently blotting his pants with a rag. The wine has seeped in deep. The white fabric is a sullen purple. Talis mutters a litany of phrases, ones he'd never repeat in polite company.

Professor Heimerdinger, the fastidious gnome, would faint.

The stains won't show in the candlelit dining-hall. But once the flashbulbs go off during the photo-op, they'll be plain as proverbial blood on the hands.

Idling by the doorway, Silco says, "Trouble?"

The bathroom's acoustics distort his voice. Talis, his back turned, doesn't recognize him.

"It's fine," he says, in the curt tones used for staff. "I just need a few minutes."

"Shall I fetch the hydrogen peroxide?"

"That's, uh, not necessary." He scrubs with renewed vigor. The stain spreads like a stubborn amoeba. "Wine's just wine." His chuckle, forced, bounces off the walls. "It'll come off. Eventually."

"Better wine than blood."

"That's not—" He glances over. The words die in his throat. "—funny."

The room's dimensions narrow. Silco's silhouette, while not tall, has a way of sucking up space. Or maybe it's the fact that he's slouched, diagonally, across the only exit. His bad eye glows like a secret ember. His good one is a dark aperture, swallowing all. Between the two, escape is hopeless.

Talis, no coward, doesn't try.

"Chancellor." He straightens, the wet rag clutched in his fist. "This is the men's room."

"So it is," Silco says, "Unless I've wandered into the ladies' room by accident."

"I'd prefer some privacy."

"By all means." His fingertips dabble over the wine flecks on the doorframe. Each leaves a bloody imprint. "I'm only passing through."

"The exit, I presume." Talis' glance cuts meaningfully to the door. "That's where I'm headed. Now if you'll move—"

"I'd advise waiting," Silco says. "We've a photo-op in thirty minutes." He lifts his wet finger, eyeing the stain. "Best not to mar the memories."

"Thirty minutes are plenty. The wine will dry."

"And the stains? Not as easy to remove, hm? Be they wine… or blood." Talis' cheeks, already flushed, darken. Silco goes on, "I asked my staff to fetch a spare suit from your trunks. But you've no eveningwear on hand. Only a blue daysuit." His lips twist. "Hopefully mine will suffice. Gray twill, but the cut is Piltovan."

"Thanks, but no thanks." Talis' jaw flexes. "I doubt it'd fit."

The innuendo hangs awkwardly. Silco, no stranger to sizing a man up, lets it.

"You'd be surprised. You're broader in the shoulders. But you taper the rest of the way. Like a good T-bone steak." His eye slides up and down, a slow bisection. "Thicker in the thighs, but the waist is about the same. We may need to adjust the hems, though. You've a few inches on me. Then again, it's nothing a pair of boots won't hide." The pause is pointed. "We're good at hiding things, aren't we, Councilor Talis?"

Talis' knuckles tighten on the cloth. Red droplets patter the tile.

"I have no idea what you mean."

"Of course." Silco strolls toward the urinals. "A man's entitled to his secrets." He unbuttons his broadfall. "Even here."

"What're you—?"

"The standard apparatus, Councilor. Nothing to fear."

Parting the fly, Silco pulls himself free. The piss is a steady stream.

The room's dimensions darken into claustrophobia. Talis stares straight ahead. The skin above his collar is flushed: his boyish face is pinched. Like most Topsiders, he's a stickler for etiquette. It's a weakness Silco has exploited all night. Cutting the Councilors down to size, then serving them their own hubris on a platter.

The lavatory, a common space, is the greatest equalizer of all.

The stream tapers off. Silco gives himself a perfunctory shake. Dabs himself off with a napkin—he wasn't raised by wolves, no matter what the rumors say. Buttoning up, he strides to the sink. The soapy water envelops his hands in a moving glove. He washes unhurriedly.

Once he's stepped back out, he will no longer be Silco, but the political construct: First Chancellor. A persona, carefully crafted, with no cracks. Silco's métier is smoke and mirrors, but the spotlight's no friend. Just a grudging ally. One that can turn at a moment's notice.

The shadows of privacy remain the Eye's true territory.

"You needn't glare." Silco flicks off the tap. Water drips off his knuckles. "I won't bite."

Talis' expression is stony. "I'm not worried."

"No. You just always have a face like a slapped arse."

"Excuse me—?"

"You're not comfortable." Silco dabs his hands dry with a towel. "Can't say I blame you. I'd rather be anywhere but here."

"Why do I find that hard to believe?" Talis' gaze traverses the lavish trappings before returning to the mirror. "From the looks of things, you're already home."

Silco bares a gleam of canines between curled lips. It isn't a smile. "Everyone needs a place to lay their head."

"And the rest, too?"

"Councilor Talis. Do grow up." Silco smooths a palm through his hair, slicking down the drying pomade. In the lamplight, his scars are a livid mask; the superficial layer of concealer half-crumbling. "My city is a complicated ecosystem. Topside's neglect has left it with as many vacuums as hungry mouths. If filling them means inviting your lot for dinner, so be it. Even a rich man will sing for his supper. With the right tune."

Disgust flickers across Talis' smooth face. He's no stranger to politics. But that stubborn streak of idealism persists. Comparing him and Viktor on hand, Silco can see the stark differential. Both men are cut from the same cloth of ambition. But Viktor's struggles have left him prematurely jaded. His edges are frayed; his convictions, threadbare.

Talis is the opposite. His ideals remain as clean-cut as the rest of him.

"You're still peddling Shimmer," Talis says. "Even after all the damage it's done."

"Not half as much damage as Piltover's neglect."

"Let's not go there again." Talis pushes away from the basin. "The Council have made mistakes. But you're no savior here to uplift the downtrodden." He jerks a thumb. "The men and women at your table tonight? They've got their fingers in every dirty deal in Zaun. Real estate kickbacks, bribery, prostitution, narcotics, extortion. They've all got black records, and close ties to organized crime. In fact, you're their crimelord. They take orders from you, top to bottom. This foray into politics is just a new avenue for you to indulge your zealotry, while pretending all the blood you've spilled is righteous."

"Pot, kettle." Silco's sneer carves his face into a terrain of hard-hewn seams. "You're the one who built a bomb out of a crystal. Then, instead of letting the dust settle, you went ahead and lit a bigger fuse. A thousand airships rocketing to hell and beyond. Carrying with them so many goods our economy was left obsolete. Our future was flatlined. Our people reduced to peddling pilfered scrap. All of that, thanks to you and your partner." Offhand, he adjusts his cufflinks. "Who's a little lovesick, by the way. But that's none of my business."

A nerve snaps, and Talis' composure with it.

"Don't talk about Viktor that way!"

"No?"

"He's done more good in a day than you will in a lifetime."

"Oh, I won't argue. It's a point of pride, seeing a fellow sumprat achieve his potential." The cuffs symmetrical, his hands drop. "Sadly, the boy is a bit under the weather. The strain on your partnership shows. But that's why you've got a new one, right? Someone a little easier on the eyes. More accommodating to your needs."

Talis' temper is a fuse, burning fast. He is a man of broad dimensions, but the ego is a fragile thing.

"I suggest," he grinds, "you drop the subject of my private life."

"Is it?" Silco flicks his jacket lapel, adjusting the fit. "Private, I mean. The press has been on it like a pack of bloodhounds. Piltover's Golden Boy. Paragon of progress. His paramour. A Noxian noblewoman with a war-torn past, and a penchant for profit. And the third party. A cripple from Zaun. His loyal shadow, with empty pockets but a heart of gold." The lapel snaps down, sharp as a switchblade. "Sounds like a fairytale. Except once the prince and princess wed, the cripple will lose his head."

Talis' nostrils flare. The bull is stung. But not yet mad enough to charge.

"Is this how you do business?" he seethes. "Cornering people in toilets and trading barbs? Because I have better things to do than listen to a snake-oil salesman trying to sell me poison." He wrings the cloth into the basin. "As to your first remark. No, I am not comfortable. I'd rather be back in my city. Back at my workbench. Building." Water dips into the drain, a diluted pink punch. "That's where I make my difference."

Silco watches the water swirl. For a moment, he is as young as Talis. A man armed by the rightness of his cause, and the righteousness of his convictions. Ready to change the world, or make it bleed. Instead, he'd been the one left bleeding. By the very man he'd loved above all others. By the city he'd have given anything for.

He'd bled, and then he'd risen, scarred and half-starved. He'd taken his pound of flesh, and then some.

And, like monsters do, he's kept on taking. Taking until the scales balance. Until the world tips in his favor. Until the debts are paid, and the sum total is due:

A city risen sky-high.

A people freed.

A daughter safe.

"Your workbench," he says softly. "That's an apt metaphor. A tool is nothing without its maker, eh? Tell me. If not Hex-tech, what else would you have invented? A wrench? A hammer?" He turns, a slow swivel of his well-shod heel. "An axe?"

Talis' jaw hardens. No longer a bull, but a block of granite. But Silco has found the spot where the stone splits in two. All he needs is a pickaxe, and a steady hand.

A miner is no stranger to either.

"Hex-tech," he goes on, "was your chance to prove yourself. Your axe to grind. Now, it's split the city in half." The pickaxe strikes; the stone jolts. "Viktor's a genius, but his health is failing. You have big plans, but the Council's greed has bigger teeth." The fissure widens. "How long, do you think, before your partnership falls apart? Before he learns his greatest achievement was to line your coffers and put you on a pedestal?" The final strike. "How long before his dreams of changing the world die with him?"

The granite shatters. Talis erupts.

"I won't let that happen!" The sodden rag drops to the sink. "I'll find a cure. It's only a matter of—"

"Time?" Silco slouches against the sink, a lounging frame of tailored lines. "That's in limited supply. And you're running out. So many corollary issues. Rebuilding your city. Stopping the weaponization of magic. Keeping the investors from panicking." His palm lifts, proffering. "It's a full plate, and yours to eat alone. But isn't that what you wanted?"

"No—" Talis stumbles, "I never—"

"No guts, no glory, as they say. No girl, either. And you've appetite enough for all three."

"You're one to talk!" Talis snarls. "Your girl's barely eighteen."

Silco's right cheekbone flexes: a tiny tic. "I know Jinx's age."

"And you're content to use her? First a weapon. Now a cash cow." He steps in, his bulk suddenly looming. "Half the investors at tonight's gala were eyeing her up like dinner. And you sat back, smiling. Now she's out there, playing ball with the big dogs. Mel calls it a dash of Dimple Diplomacy. I say it's selling a child short—and short-changing her future. What kind of father does such a thing?"

Silco meets Talis, eye-to-eye. His voice, cold and level, is a blade.

"You have no idea what a father would do."

"Don't I? Because from where I'm standing, you're turning her into a circus monkey. Can't kill anyone? Then make a killing for the camera. Can't fight a war? Then throw a dinner party and use her as live bait for the vultures." He shakes his head. "What city are you building, if this is the path you've set your child on?"

"That's rich," Silco says, "from the man who'd have put her in Stillwater."

The blow lands, but Talis doesn't reel. His eyes blaze.

"She killed a half-dozen Enforcers! She stole the Hex-gem! She—"

"Let's not go there again." Silco straightens with the slow deliberation of a snake uncoiling. "The Council has made mistakes. But you're no savior here to uplift the downtrodden. What you wanted, you got: a scapegoat. Jinx as the maniac. Myself as the tyrant. Zaun as a city of cutthroats. And Piltover, the epitome of virtue." His tongue plays over the notch on his upper-lip. The words taste of old blood. "Here, at least, we've no need to pretend."

Talis' teeth clench. The flush has crept up to his hairline. The fuse is not far behind.

"Don't twist things," he says. "I took on a role in the Council to keep my city safe. Safe from Hex-tech being stolen by the likes of loose cannons like your daughter. And safe from men like you, who think nothing of a few dead so long as their ambition is fed."

"Ambition." Silco's tongue rolls the word like a pearl, savoring its luster. "This from the boy who ousted his own mentor from the Council."

Talis' face spasms. "That's not—"

"Ah, so the rumors are untrue?" He tsks. "I've never met Heimerdinger. But I'm told he was a leader of unimpeachable ethics. And you? Tossed him out without a second thought. Or maybe it's the first thought. There's the rub, hm? He wanted the best for Piltover. And you wanted the best for you."

Talis' features contort. A muscle, high on his temple, throbs. Silco knows the look. He's seen it on the best of men. And the worst. It is always a prelude to violence. But Silco doesn't fear a fistfight in the bathroom. Talis would never throw the first punch. That would be a breach of ethics.

The same ethics that got him up to his balls in war.

"You know nothing," Talis grinds out, "about me, or my mentor."

"Mentor? He was an impediment. To you, and your ambitions for Hex-tech." A half-smile. "I know the story. He'd threatened to shut down your research. The same day, the Council pushed him into resignation. You had a hand in the whole affair." The smile nicks deeper. "Or should I say, the affair had her hand in you."

Talis' flush becomes a burn of chagrin. "No. I never—"

"So you weren't in bed with Councilor Medarda when Heimerdinger was ousted? She didn't fast-track your status through the bureaucratic red tape? Make you de facto head of the Council, so her pretty fingers could stay in the Hex-tech pie?" He leans closer. The space between them contracts. "It's no secret she groomed you as her protégé. Behind closed doors—and between the sheets. And if you're in bed with her, it's only a hop, skip, and a jump to bed with Hoskel, and Salo, and Bolbok, and even the venerable Ice Queen, Kiramman. Businesswise, that is. Though the rumor mill has its doubts." His smile thins, the blade's edge between primness and provocation. "Unless you'd like to clarify."

Talis' knuckles pop; his fists are curled. It's the stance of a cornered man.

"If I made deals with Hex-tech for a few Councilors' coins," he growls, "it's not because I was greedy. It was to protect people, from the greed of others. Power-mad zealots like you, who'd use it for destruction. Or sell it to the highest bidder."

"And who, exactly, sets the price?" Silco's good eye goes half-lidded. "You, or the Council?"

"You're deliberately twisting—"

"Am I?" Silco's head cants. The scarred features are thrown into chiaroscuro. "It's funny. You're the gatekeeper of progress. But you're still terrified to look the monster at your threshold in the eye."

"And what monster is that?"

"Power."

The word is a soft-spoken slap. Talis flinches. He looks more chagrined than when Silco had taken a piss in his presence.

As if that, somehow, was the lesser evil.

"Power," Silco repeats, "is the monster that changes the world. Whether you cage it, or let it loose. It is not a creature of conscience. It is a living thing. It feeds, and grows. There is no stopping it. And yet, here you are. Wondering why it bit the hand that fed it."

"I didn't build Hex-tech for power—"

"—but power was necessary to wield it. Otherwise, you'd just be Jayce Talis. A prodigy with a knack for hammers." Silco's fingers clink on the marble slab, a measured one-two. "You were born with every privilege. Health, wealth and looks. Your path was laid. All you had to do was follow." The tap-tap is relentless. "You didn't. Because your dreams were bigger than your means."

"My dreams were for good!" Talis says. "Power has nothing to do with it!"

"Nothing? Tsk. Still the same old tune." The tapping stops. "Power isn't a curse, boy. It's a means to an end. Some are born with the means. Others have to fight tooth and claw for it. Me?" His chuckle is soft as ash. "I started at the bottom. A crooked man who walked a crooked mile. But I know the price. I've paid it. Now ask yourself. What does it cost, to know the opposite?"

The flush is gone. The heat remains. Talis eyes smolder with it.

"Nothing," he says. "As long as the means are right."

"What is right, in a world as wrong as ours?" Silco's lip curls. "Perhaps Councilor Medarda ought to put it in writing. Or paint it. She has a connoisseur's eye. It's why she sees the light in you. The potential." The curl grows cold. "Not the blood on your hands."

The fuse ignites. Violence crackles in the air.

Talis makes a sudden sharp movement. In the same breath, he checks himself. Whatever else, the boy's no fool. He knows how the game's played. How it's rigged. Who rigs it.

And what it costs to cross the line.

"Mel," he grits, "has nothing to do with this."

"Nothing?" Silco shakes his head. "By Kindred. You're as blind to art as you are to power."

"What?"

"If she didn't have it, boy, you wouldn't either. Her finesse lured you into her orbit. And her power kept you there. She's a woman with the world on a string. But you're the star in her sky." His voice slithers into a cold descant. "Every wish come true... for a clink of coin."

"Mel's intentions are honorable!"

"So honorable she buried my city to elevate hers. So noble she handpicked you to make it happen. So virtuous she's now waltzing for the cameras with a man you'd rather see dead." The corner of Silco's lip pulls up. "Honorable. Noble. Virtuous. She is all that. She's also twice the politician you'll ever be."

Talis' jaw snaps tight. He's a breath away from splintering. His intellect, his decency, his principles—they were once his bolsters. His moral compass was set north, and Silco merely a shadow in the south. A looming, ugly, malignant shadow.

Now, the shadow is in the spotlight, and Topside's every sin is laid bare. Talis can deny the truth no longer. That's the curse of greatness. A hard fall from a high pedestal.

Silco knows a thing or two about falls.

"You're no politician at all," Talis seethes. "You're a snake, through and through."

"I don't deny my nature. Nor do I deny my city's. We're cut from the same cloth."

Talis' snatches up the wet rag from the sink. It's a futile gesture: the stains have set into his suit. The cloth is little more than a soiled white flag. He stands, high-shouldered, knuckling the basin. His eyes have shaded from anger to bitterness. The former, he could deal with. The latter is a different matter.

Silco knows a thing or two about bitterness, too.

"We're both monsters, then," Talis says. "We chose our goals over our people."

"You think yourself a monster?" Silco stifles a smile—a real one. "Boy. You've no idea what a monster is."

"Don't call me boy. My name is Jayce. Use it."

"Jayce." The syllables holds a peculiar heaviness on his tongue. Like retrospect. "Monstrosity is different from consequence. You've only faced the former. In time, you'll know the latter. And when you do, it'll hurt. Like nothing else." Silco's hand finds the spot between the boy's shoulderblades. The muscles knot under his palm. "That's the price we pay. Always will." His hand drops. "But not tonight."

"What—?"

Footsteps. A staffer's brisk rap on the door. "Sir. The Councilor's suit is ready."

Talis stares down. His eveningwear, ruined, is a symbol of tonight's shambles.

"Right," he seethes. "Let's get this over with."

"Enter," Silco says.

The door opens. The staffer is a Yordle. Orange as a goldfish. And, like a goldfish, he is small enough to swim between the two men's legs. He's carrying an outsized garment bag. It's a sight fit for comedy. Talis, taking it in, stifles a wince. The boy's eaten enough humiliation for one night. But the worst is yet to come.

"Councilor," the staffer chirps, "Would you like to change here or up in your room?"

"Here is fine," Talis says.

"Very well, sir." The garment bag is unzipped. The suit is a gray twill, the cut impeccable. On Silco, it hangs with a louche elegance. On Talis, it will be a striking second skin. "I've made adjustments based on your measurements. It should fit comfortably. Let me know if anything needs changing." He glances at Talis' stained trousers. "Shall I take those?"

"N-No." Talis flushes. "I'll—take care of them."

"Of course." The Yordle bows, a perfect ninety-degree angle. "If you'll excuse me, sirs."

He departs, tail swishing. Silco and Talis are left alone.

Talis, clearing his throat, slings the suit over his arm. He's already unbuttoning his jacket. His movements are brusquely efficient. There's little time to spare. The photo-op is in less than fifteen minutes. After the pictures, there'll be another round of speeches. Then the gala will officially conclude.

"I suppose I should thank you," Talis mutters. "For the suit."

"I said I'd provide." Silco watches, with mild interest, as the jacket comes off. "My staff did the rest."

"Well, I can handle it from here."

With a jerk of the chin, Talis conveys the message: Turn your back.

Decorously, Silco turns while Talis undresses. The urinals loom before him, a row of dirty black teeth. He can hear Talis fumbling with the buttons. The wet thud of stained fabric hitting the tile. A rustle of cloth, and a zip, as the boy shrugs into his new suit. He doesn't speak, but his frustration is palpable.

"Trouble?" Silco says.

"It's a little snug," Talis admits. "Around the shoulders."

Silco turns. Talis is adjusting the sleeves. The twill is a rich charcoal gray, the two-toned sheen of silk. The tailored lines cling to his silhouette like a glove. His torso is a work of Piltovan art. The arms are braided by muscle. The shoulders are broad; the chest, sculpted. The waist tapers to taut hips and smooth thighs.

It's a body of pure function. The polar opposite of Viktor's wreckage of skin and bones.

Yet Silco senses he's made the right choice.

Talis has the star-power. But Viktor is the one with the promise. Unfulfilled, and endless.

"Bravo," Silco drawls. "Piltover's poster-boy—in Zaunite threads."

Talis' hands stall on the buttons. His anger is a collar tugged too tight. "Chancellor. Let's just—go."

"In a minute." Silco's withdraws a handkerchief, wets the corner. "Hold still."

"What're you—?"

Silco's touch, surgically precise, dabs the wine from Talis' chin.

"You missed a spot."

Talis doesn't bother to hide his irritation. Snatching up the square of cloth, he wipes his face clean. He's as efficient with the gesture as he was with the buttons. The task finished, he returns the handkerchief. Silco, taking it, folds it with a casual precision.

Their stares lock. For a moment, the antipathy downshifts. Silco sees a glint in the boy's eyes. A deep scar on young, proud flesh.

"You should know," Talis says, low. "I never wanted this."

"The suit? Or the Treaty?" Silco tucks the handkerchief away. "Either way. We've crossed the bridge."

"Burned it, you mean."

"Our river still flows." A one-shouldered shrug. "Forward."

"And the dead—" Talis' fingers, knotting his tie, whiten, "— stay dead."

Silco stops short.

Talis finishes twisting his tie. It's a perfect trinity knot. The picture, complete, is a somber one. The boy is no longer a boy. The golden skin is ashen. The bright eyes, shadowed. He's seen the worst. Now, he's seeing the rest.

A consequence, faced. And a monster, made.

"I mean it," he says. "I didn't want this."

"This?"

"Our cities at odds."

"No?" Silco leans against the doorframe, arms crossed. "Funny. The man I remember at the parley was all for it. Everything was cut-and-dried. Good and evil. Zaun and Piltover. My people, and yours." The scorn spools soft as spider's silk. "Now you're playing a different tune. But it's still the same lyrics. The hero and the villain. And a damsel, caught in between. Except I'm unsure who's the damsel. Viktor? Medarda? Or is it Zaun?"

Talis' eyes cloud. Not anger, but chagrin.

"That's crazy," he mutters. "Zaun's not a person."

"Maybe not. But its people are. And they were once yours. Do you believe you've let them down? Sacrificed them to a devil?" The barest chuckle. "Perhaps it's true, what they say. The worst storytellers are the ones who forget their own tales. You've been telling yourself a story for years. One city; one heart. We must love one another or die. A fine tag, isn't it? Then the ending came. And you, the Man of Tomorrow, had no story to tell. Just a war to win."

"'Just' a war?" Talis' jaw grinds. "The casualties on both sides still turn my stomach. And don't get me started on what happened at the Bridge. The firestorm, the fallout—it was a nightmare." His throat works. "And it could've been stopped. But you made sure we had no choice. You forced me into a corner."

"I forced you?"

"We were negotiating. Then you struck. Without warning."

"You were negotiating," Silco corrects. "With a full house. I had nothing but an ace up my sleeve."

"No." The last defense crumbles; the broad shoulders sag. "After our parley. I went before the Council. We were negotiating... Zaun's independence."

Silco falls still.

"The Council was set to agree. We had the terms of a treaty. A peace, for our two cities. No need to return the Hex-gem. Zaun would be free to rule itself. I was arguing for the best way to enforce the deal. So was Mel. Then we got the news. That you'd ordered the strike anyway."

Silco's voice is a graveled rasp. "You were willing to cede—?"

"Yes," Talis says heavily. "Zaun would've been an independent state. You'd have been free to make your own laws. Trade. Prosper. Live and let live."

Silco's quicksilver tongue curdles.

"And Jinx?" he manages. "She would've remained in Zaun?"

"With assurances of cooperation, yes. She would've stayed in Zaun. We would've withdrawn all our forces belowground. Kept only an diplomatic presence." Talis' eyes squeeze shut. "And, yes. If you'd wanted to continue developing Hex-tech, we'd have provided resources. As a sign of goodwill."

Silco's throat clicks.

"Why would the Council agree?" he says. "You'd be leaving yourself vulnerable."

"Because power is a means to an end." Talis opens his eyes. They lock on Silco's, dark and raw. "So is progress. And to make a difference, a real difference, sometimes you've got to sacrifice more for those with less. To give, and lose. Like—like a father."

Silco's lungs seize behind his ribs. He feels like a fish out of water. Like a drowner.

A surge of memory, near cataclysmic, crashes over him. He pictures the way the Bridge had fallen: a bloody detonation of brick and bone. He pictures the flames faceting Jinx's eyes, and the recalls the rush of pure power that flowed through him at the sight: the power to reduce a monument to a mass of ruination. To erase the past and rewrite the future.

With his own daughter as the cost.

(Your fault ALL YOUR FAULT.)

Reflexively, Silco's hand goes to his throat. Ten fingerprints beat a ghostly war-drum.

"No," he hisses. "I'd never—"

"Never," Talis agrees. "Because you're a man who'd eat his own before ceding a single inch."

He starts forward, intent on the exit. Their eyes meet in passing. Talis looks at Silco in a way that peels his suit, his scars, his suaveness down to catch a glimpse of the man he'd once been: fragile, frantic, fearful. His own features are a chimera. A man looking into a mirror.

A consequence, shared. Two monsters, made.

"Like I said: I didn't want this." He stops, a hairsbreadth from Silco's shocked face. "But like you said: our river will flow. Forward."

His palm claps Silco's shoulder, a parting shot. Then he's gone.

The door swings shut.

Silco is left, staring. His lungs fill, and fill, and fill. He's suffocating on air. His heart is a pulsing roar overlaid by a smothering blackness.

Like the bottom of the Pilt.

In the mirror, the drowning man stares back. So do the ghosts of a hundred others. A hundred faces, twisted. A hundred eyes, accusing. The man with the fishhook smile. The man with the broken nose. The man with the crooked teeth. The Eye of Zaun, his mismatched eyes burning out of the glass, debasing and defiling and devouring everything he touches.

And Jinx.

The highest cost of all.

A cold spike of nausea hits. Silco crosses to the toilet in five strides before he vomits.

---

A quarter mile beyond the banquet hall sits the Aerie.

Its circumference is spanned by guard-posts in evenly spaced rings across the rooftop. Blackguards patrol in concentric circles, each post connected to the next by a network of walkways. The perimeter is a web. The central keep is the flytrap.

From its vantage, the city stretches below in a multicolor grid. The sky is a shifting dome of fireworks. The wind, gusting heavily off the river, tastes of soot.

A thin crust of dust crunches under the boots of the two blackguards walking in tandem amongst the turrets. Both veterans of the Siege, they keep a sharp eye out. Their steps are well-timed; their pace measured. At their belts are the standard-issue blaster, nightstick, and a canister of mace.

The woman, her hair braided down her spine, has a tattoo on her cheekbone: a bird in flight. Her partner, his head shaved, sports a metal jaw carved like a raptor.

Trading a cigarette back and forth, they make small-talk.

"Night's never gonna end," the woman says, puffing smoke skyward.

"It'll end. Nearly three already. Sun-up soon."

"You're used to the happy sun of Shurima. This is Zaun. Even in the Equinox, our sun's a bitch." She takes a last drag on the cigarette. "Janna's tits. I'm still stuffed from that dinner."

"Yeah." The man lets off a satisfied belch. "Grub was good."

"Too bad the guests are shit."

"Councilors. Chem-barons. Two cheeks of the same stinkin' arse." The man's metallic teeth click as he gnaws the butt. "Me? I'm lookin' forward to the decree comin' up."

"What decree?"

The man glances around for an officer's presence, then drops his voice. "Heard scuttlebutt from the Captain. Cabinet's gonna put in a law. Equinox and Solstice bonuses. Extra pay for workin' nights. Mandatory lunch break."

"Bullshit!"

"I'm tellin' ya. Heard it from the horse's mouth."

"The horse—or the Eye?"

"The Eye. Well—from my cousin, who's a cleaner at the head office. He heard the Eye tell Sevika that they're gonna do some 'major restructuring.' The blackguards will get a salary instead of a stipend."

She whistles. "You're shittin' me!"

"Nah. It's the truth." He grinds the cigarette beneath his boot. "Gonna get that pay rise, and save up for the new flat in Oldtown. My brother-in-law knows a guy who's puttin' in development. It'll be a goldmine."

"Gold, or gas-leaks." She grimaces. "That whole block's a toxic spill. One good wind, and it'll blow sky-high."

"Yeah, but it's the cheapest place. If the new ordinance passes, the Cabinet will fund a cleanup. They say there'll be a courtyard in every block. A grocer's store in walking distance. Schools. Maybe even trees for the kids."

"A grocer. Fuck, I'd kill for a grocer." She kicks a pebble over the parapet. "No chance of trees, though. Haven't seen a tree since I was knee-high."

"There's trees." The man's voice shifts to a whisper. "They say the Firelights have a forest in the tunnels. With sunlight, and fresh water, and food to go round."

"That's a load. Nothin' in the tunnels but rabble hiding in the rubble." She tips a shoulder. "The Firelights are practically a fairytale nowadays. Or dead."

"Not dead. I heard from a guy, who heard from a guy—hey!"

The pebble flies back up, striking the blackguard's temple. The pair spin, weapons drawn, but they find no enemy. The turrets are empty. Above their heads, a firework explodes. Its afterglow, a luminous pink dazzle, streaks across the Aerie's perimeter.

A girl is silhouetted on the far-ledge.

One moment she's a shadow, and the next, she's a streak. Charging, she crashtackles the closest blackguard, knocking him into the other. The pair go down like a bag of bricks. Before they can rise, the girl is on them.

In her fist, something gleams sharply. She strikes. The first blackguard barely has time to gasp before a tranquilizer dart finds his neck. He slumps, unconscious. His partner has her nightstick drawn. The girl slams it out of her hand. A swift punch to the jaw staggers her. A jab of needle to jugular finishes the job.

Rising, Vi takes a breath. Fireworks burst in green contrails overhead. The air is full of smoke.

She signals to the rear. "All clear."

A beat later, Caitlyn leaps down from the west turret, rifle slung over her shoulder. Her boots hit the stone with barely a sound.

"I've taken out the others." Her eyes scan the perimeter. "This is our chance before the next shift comes."

Vi nods.

"Let's roll," she says. "The gala's nearly done."

More fireworks explode in the dark. Globes of brilliant color, flaring and dying. The Aerie, bisecting, is chimera of secrets. Not long ago, the prospect of being this close to her sister's intimate keep would've made Vi's heart palpitate. Now she searches behind her ribs for that telltale fear—but finds only a cold determination.

She isn't the quarry. She's the hunter.

And tonight, she'll do what's needed.

(Powder.)

(I'm almost there.)