Karen hesitated at the threshold, her fingers hovering just shy of the reinforced door.
When was the last time she'd stepped foot in Gristle's room?
Only once, she realized—when Nex had warned her in that gravel-cut voice of his:
"Gristle doesn't share space. Doesn't share trust. You breathe wrong near his work, he'll make sure it's your last breath."
The door groaned as she pushed it open, its weight resisting like it was loyal to its dead master.
Mags moved like a shadow at her back, one small hand clutching the strap of Nex's shotgun.
The dim hallway light spilled inside, revealing not a nightmare, but a fortress of precision—gleaming steel tables lined with beakers, burners, and distillation apparatuses arranged with obsessive symmetry.
The air rushed out to meet them, thick with the astringent bite of solvents and the underlying musk of dried herbs.
No horror.
No decay.
Just the sterile sharpness of a man who'd treated his craft like religion.
Karen took the first step inside.
The alarm hit before her boot touched the floor.
A single, ear-splitting siren shrieked—not the chaotic blare of a security breach, but the exacting, rhythmic pulse of a professional system.
Red lights strobed in perfect intervals, turning the glassware into a constellation of blood-tinted stars.
Mags reacted faster than thought.
She slammed the door shut with her heel, cutting the alarm's reach into the halls. The sound didn't stop, but now it was contained, pounding against their eardrums like a living thing trapped in the room with them.
Karen's jaw tightened.
Of course Gristle had safeguards.
The man had been paranoid long before the Hollowing took him.
She moved deeper into the room, her prosthetic hand skimming the edge of a worktable.
No formulas in sight.
No ledgers.
Just row upon row of unmarked vials, their contents ranging from crystalline clarity to murky, swirling depths.
Mags nudged a pressure sensor with the toe of her boot, silencing the alarm as abruptly as it had begun.
The sudden quiet rang louder than the siren.
No glow.
No stims.
Gristle's brews had bankrolled half their operations—his combat enhancers alone fetched triple the price of standard black-market gear.
Without his recipes, the Steel Talons' profits would hemorrhage within weeks.
Her gaze snagged on a locked cabinet bolted to the far wall.
Gristle's share of the income had always dwarfed the other squads'.
If there was anything left of value, it would be there.
Mags was already crouched in front of it, her small fingers probing the keypad.
The red lights flickered once.
Twice.
The cabinet door swung open with a whisper of well-oiled hinges.
No vials.
No carefully labeled formulas.
Just a single leather-bound ledger, its spine cracked from years of use.
Karen snatched it up, her prosthetic fingers leaving faint dents in the cover.
The pages fell open to the most recent entries—columns of numbers, dates, and coded abbreviations that made her pulse spike.
"That bastard," she hissed.
The numbers didn't lie.
Gristle had been skimming nearly forty percent off the top—far more than his agreed share.
Payments from Myriad subsidiaries, kickbacks from black-market chem dealers, even private commissions from Spire clients.
All carefully logged in his precise, spidery handwriting.
Mags leaned in, her small frame pressing against Karen's arm.
She squinted at the pages, her nose wrinkling at the dense columns of figures.
After a moment, she tilted her head, the unspoken question clear in her dark eyes:
Why does this matter?
Karen snapped the ledger shut. "Dead men can't spend stolen credits," she muttered.
She tossed the book aside and turned her attention to the room itself.
If Gristle had hidden his formulas anywhere, they wouldn't be in the obvious places.
The man had been paranoid even before the Hollowing took him.
Her boots echoed against the steel floor as she moved to the far wall.
Just like in Nex's room, she began knocking methodically along the panels, listening for the telltale hollowness of a hidden compartment.
Mags watched for a beat before mirroring her actions on the opposite side of the room, her small hands tapping lightly against the metal surfaces.
The rhythmic knocking filled the space where the alarm had been, a steady percussion undercut by the occasional clink of glassware.
Karen straightened up from the last floor panel, wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her hand.
Nothing.
Every inch of the brewing room's walls and floors had yielded no hidden compartments, no cleverly concealed safes.
Just solid steel and reinforced plating.
She jerked her chin toward the next doorway. "Living room."
The transition was jarring.
Where the brewing area had been all clinical efficiency, this space felt... almost welcoming.
A plush sofa sat against one wall, its dark leather worn smooth in the places where Gristle must have spent hours sitting.
Bookshelves lined another wall, filled not with chemical manuals as Karen expected, but with well-thumbed novels and dog-eared poetry collections.
And the plants.
Everywhere, the plants.
Karen moved closer to one of the ceramic pots, her fingers brushing a broad, waxy leaf.
At first glance, they'd seemed decorative—proof that even a man like Gristle needed something green in his life.
But now she saw the truth.
The subtle variations in leaf shape, the careful pruning to maximize alkaloid content.
Not houseplants.
"Reagents," she muttered.
Mags crouched beside a low table where a bonsai tree twisted in an unnatural spiral, its trunk bulging with grafted nodes.
Her small fingers hovered over a cluster of blue-veined leaves but didn't touch.
Karen moved to the bookshelf, running her fingers along the spines.
If Gristle had hidden his formulas anywhere, it wouldn't be in the brewing room—too obvious.
Here, surrounded by the trappings of a normal life, was the perfect place to—
Her hand stopped on a volume of pre-Aether Incident's sonnets.
The spine was wrong.
Too stiff.
She pulled it free, and the entire shelf clicked.
A hidden panel swung open beside her, revealing a slim metal drawer built into the wall.
Inside lay a single notebook, its pages filled with Gristle's cramped handwriting.
Karen exhaled through her nose. "Got you."
She flipped through the pages—dosages, chemical structures, distillation times.
Everything they needed to keep the Steel Talons' operations running.
Except for Glow.
Tucked between formulas for combat stims and other brews was a folded map of Sector 12.
Mags made a small sound in her throat, her dark eyes locking onto the page.
Karen's fingers stilled on the folded map.
The paper felt strangely heavy in her hands, its edges worn soft from repeated handling.
She unfolded it carefully, revealing detailed blueprints of the Myriad lab's Sector 12 facility—the same lab they'd raided, the same one that had cost them Nex and Gristle both.
Mags made a quiet noise beside her, the barest exhale through her nose.
Her small finger jabbed at a series of handwritten notes in the margins—security rotations, guard change times, all dated weeks before the job.
"Just recon notes," Karen muttered, more to herself than Mags. "Had to case the place before hitting it."
But something about the precision of the markings nagged at her.
The way certain corridors were highlighted in perfect detail while others were left blank.
The specific attention paid to the sub-level entrances.
Too thorough for simple reconnaissance.
Too... intimate.
She folded the map and slipped it into her jacket, turning her attention to the chest freezer humming quietly in the corner.
The white enamel surface was pristine, untouched by the dust that coated everything else in the room.
The lid lifted with a hiss of escaping cold air.
Inside, row upon row of gleaming vials stared back at her, each precisely labeled and organized by type.
Combat stims.
Pain inhibitors.
And shelf after shelf of Glow - the luminescent blue drug that had become their most profitable product.
Enough inventory here to keep the Steel Talons flush for months.
Karen's prosthetic hand clenched around the freezer lid.
"That bastard," she breathed.
The drugs were perfect.
Untouched.
Which meant Gristle had been holding out on them even before the raid.
Stockpiling instead of distributing.
Building his own private empire while the rest of them scrambled for scraps.
Mags reached past her, plucking a vial of Glow from the top shelf.
She held it up to the light, watching the blue liquid swirl.
Her expression didn't change, but the set of her shoulders spoke volumes.
Karen slammed the freezer shut hard enough to make the glassware on the nearby tables rattle.
Dead men couldn't spend stolen credits.
But living ones could sure as hell use abandoned drug stashes.
Mags moved with quiet purpose while Karen inventoried the freezer's contents.
Her small fingers traced the edges of the ventilation grate near the floor, pausing when she felt the faintest give in the metal.
A careful push revealed it wasn't screwed in properly.
She pried it open with the blade of her knife.
Inside the duct, wrapped in oilcloth, lay a slim notebook.
The cover bore a single word in Gristle's spidery handwriting: "Glow."
Karen crouched beside her as Mags flipped through the pages.
Formula after formula filled the notebook, each variation meticulously documented—different purity levels, alternate stabilizing agents, notes on potency and duration.
This was Gristle's masterwork, the culmination of years of tweaking and refining his signature product.
"At least the bastard was thorough," Karen muttered, taking the notebook.
The final pages contained what looked like a simplified version—a basic recipe that could be replicated without Gristle's specialized equipment.
But of course, with lower quality than what Gristle had been making.
Mags made a soft noise, pointing to a scribbled note in the margin:
For the Talons.
Karen exhaled sharply through her nose.
Of course.
Nex wouldn't have let Gristle hoard all that knowledge without a contingency.
The old bastard had planned for this.
She closed the notebook with a snap and stood, tucking it into her inner pocket alongside the map. "Let's go. We've got what we came for."
Mags lingered just a moment longer, her small hand resting where the grate had been.
Then she stood, adjusting the shotgun across her back, and followed Karen out without looking back.
The Steel Talons would have their Glow.
And Gristle's legacy would live on—just not in the way he'd intended.
***
The private message window blinked insistently on Lucent's holoscreen.
He hesitated for only a second before clicking it open.
>> Raker: You an idiot?
Lucent's mouth twisted into a grim smile.
Of course this would be Raker's greeting after weeks offline.
The man had all the charm of a rusted scalpel.
His fingers flew across the keyboard.
>> I knew what I was doing.
The reply came instantly, the words laced with Raker's trademark sarcasm:
>> Yeah? Then why's half the Undernet chewing glass over that Myriad raid? Newsfeeds say 'terrorists' - but deeper down, people are asking real questions.
Lucent's spine straightened.
The terminal's glow cast sharp shadows across his face as he typed:
>> What people?
A pause.
Then Raker's response, blunt as always:
>> The kind that make Reclamation Units look friendly. Check your secure drop.
A file transfer request popped up.
Lucent accepted, his fingers tightening around the edge of the terminal as the video loaded.
Grainy surveillance footage filled the screen.
There, clear as day despite the poor resolution: himself, Kai, and Karen moving through the lab's ruined corridors.
The timestamp placed it an hour before the explosion.
Lucent's jaw clenched.
They'd been made.
Raker's final message appeared:
>> That's just the preview. Someone's shopping full footage to the highest bidder. Stay low. And for fuck's sake, stop bringing that Spire kid everywhere.
The screen went dark.
Outside, the ever-present hum of the Junkyard seemed louder somehow—less like background noise and more like something breathing down his neck.
Lucent leaned back in his chair, the old springs groaning under his weight.
Somewhere in the city, their faces were being traded like currency.
And in his experience, that kind of attention only ended one way.
The terminal flickered again. Another message pulsed in the corner of Lucent's vision, this one marked with Raker's priority tag—a red skull icon that meant life-or-death intel.
Lucent clicked it open.
>> One last thing.
A pause—deliberate, theatrical. Raker always knew how to land a knife.
>> Just a rumor floating in the Spire channels. But reliable enough.
Another beat. The cursor blinked like a racing pulse.
>> Kai's father bought it last night. Corporate hit, clean and quiet.
Lucent's fingers froze over the keyboard.
The words hung in the air like gun smoke.
Ryota Renner—dead.
The man had been iron-spined royalty in the Spire world, a tech baron who'd built an empire on next-gen Conduit designs and military contracts.
The same empire that had exiled Kai for reasons the kid still wouldn't talk about.
And now someone had erased him.
Lucent exhaled slowly, his mind racing through the implications.
This wasn't just corporate bloodsport.
The Renners didn't fall to petty boardroom assassinations.
This was a message.
A power play.
And Kai—reckless, privileged, connected Kai—was suddenly the last loose thread of a dynasty someone wanted buried.
Raker's final line appeared:
>> Tell the kid or don't. But either way, you're sitting on a live grenade.
The screen went dark.
Outside, the neon glow of the Junkyard pulsed through the hideout's makeshift blinds, painting the walls in alternating streaks of crimson and electric blue.
Somewhere in the distance, a Reclamation Unit's siren wailed—a sound like metal screaming.
Lucent leaned back in his chair, the old leather creaking under his weight.
He'd seen this story before.
It never ended well.
***
The abandoned lot behind Sector 19's smelter pits was Kai's usual training ground—a graveyard of broken machinery and scorched earth where his botched glyphs wouldn't draw attention.
Tonight, the orange glow of distant refinery fires painted the rubble in flickering shadows as he cycled through Lucent's stolen SpellApps.
"Rank 2—Kinetic Push."
The glyph flared to life across his Conduit's cracked screen.
Kai exhaled sharply as the energy coiled around his forearm, unstable but holding.
He aimed at a rusted coolant tank twenty meters away—
A rock clattered behind him.
Kai whirled, the glyph sputtering out.
Three kids—couldn't be older than twelve—hovered at the edge of the lot, their threadbare jackets flapping in the chemical wind.
The tallest one, a girl with grease-smudged cheeks, took a hesitant step forward.
"That magic?" Her voice was equal parts awe and street-smart skepticism.
Kai wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. "Glyphwork. Basic kinetics."
The kids exchanged glances.
The smallest one—a boy missing two front teeth—edged closer, eyes locked on Kai's Conduit.
The device was a Frankenstein mess of scavenged parts, but to these gutter rats, it might as well have been Spire-forged gold.
"Can you... make stuff fly?" The boy reached for it instinctively before snatching his grimy hand back.
Kai hesitated. Back in the Spire, he'd had tutors, simulators, polished training halls.
These kids had probably never touched a Conduit that wasn't fried scrap.
He crouched to their eye level, the gravel digging into his knees. "Watch."
With a swipe, he pulled up the most stable glyph Lucent had given him—"Static Shield, Rank 1." The air shimmered as a translucent dome flickered to life around them, repelling a gust of smelter smoke.
The kids gasped.
The girl reached out, her fingers stopping just shy of the energy field. "We could use this when the Reclamation drones sweep the scrap yards..."
Kai's throat tightened.
He'd once used this same glyph to deflect champagne corks at his father's gala.
The boy tugged at Kai's sleeve. "Where'd you learn? You Spire?"
A siren wailed in the distance. Kai killed the glyph. "Not anymore."
The words tasted like ash.
The girl—Jessa, she'd said her name was—dug into the pockets of her oversized cargo pants with grime-blackened fingers.
"We seen you and that scarred guy picking here at last time," she said, dumping a handful of components onto the cracked concrete between them. "Figured if you wanted this stuff, might be worth something."
Kai crouched down, the glow of his Conduit casting blue light over the sad collection of parts.
A cracked capacitor.
Two fried Aether regulators.
A handful of screws still caked with carbon scoring.
Most of it was junk—the kind of salvage even the lowest-tier scrappers would leave behind.
The smallest boy, Tink, rocked back and forth on his heels. "We tried putting some together but... dunno how to make 'em to work with each other." He mimed connecting two pieces, then made an explosive sound with his mouth.
Kai picked up the least-damaged regulator, turning it over in his hands.
The kids had clearly tried cleaning it—scratch marks covered the surface where they'd attempted to polish off the corrosion.
"This one's not completely dead," he said, reaching for his toolkit. "See these contact points? You've got to—"
A shadow fell across the makeshift workbench.
Lucent stood at the edge of the lot, his arms crossed, the ever-present knife glinting at his belt.
The kids froze like glow-rats caught in a spotlight.
"Teaching strays now?" His voice was flat, but his eyes flicked to the components spread across the ground. "Those parts came from the Myriad scrap piles. Tagged with tracker dust."
Jessa's head snapped up. "Ain't no trackers on—"
Lucent kicked over a piece of sheet metal, revealing the underside crawling with tiny, beetle-like drones no larger than a fingernail.
Myriad surveillance tech.
The kids scrambled back as the drones whirred to life, their miniature lenses focusing.
Kai's Conduit flared as he triggered a Static Pulse—the weakest glyph he could manage that wouldn't fry the kids' salvage completely.
The drones sparked and died.
Lucent didn't look impressed. "Next time it won't be bugs. It'll be a Reclamation Unit." He turned to leave, then paused. "And kid?"
Kai looked up. "What?"
The word hung in the air between them, sharp as broken glass.
Lucent's jaw tightened.
For a heartbeat, he considered saying it outright—Your father's corpse is probably still warm in some Spire morgue—but the kids were still watching with wide, soot-smudged faces.
Too many ears.
Too many loose ends.
He pivoted instead, kicking a fried capacitor out of the circle. "Every skill you teach them," he said, voice low, "they'll turn into weapons. Maybe not against you. But against someone."
Kai's brow furrowed. "Then why teach me?"
The question hit like a backfired glyph.
Lucent froze.
The smelter's distant glow painted the scars on his knuckles a livid orange.
Why had he bothered?
The kid was Spire-born, soft-handed, a walking liability.
He should've dumped him after the warehouse incident.
Should've left him to the corporate wolves.
"Should I stop?" Kai pressed, rising to his feet.
The Conduit in his hand flickered erratically, reacting to the tension in his grip.
The children shrank back, sensing the shift in the air.
Jessa grabbed Tink's arm, already calculating escape routes.
Lucent exhaled through his nose. "You're different," he said finally, the lie tasting bitter. "You're already marked."
He turned away before Kai could ask what that meant, before the kids could see the truth in his face—that he didn't have an answer.
That some decisions weren't calculations, just failures of judgment.
The alley swallowed him whole, leaving Kai standing amidst the salvage and wide-eyed children, the weight of unspoken truths pressing down on all of them.