ARMS CROSSED under my furred cape, I fall in a step behind Volt with Matthias at my side, Lain wrapping up the rear. The Psi's careful mental overwatch lingers like a barely-forgotten thought in a corner of my mind. I set the ground rules while he was working on my outfit earlier. Never worked closely with a Psi before, but the class is one of the most coveted to have in professional fighting teams, even if it's got a reputation even shittier than the Assassins. I'd be a fool not to use him. Matthias agreed to keep tabs on Lain and I separately and shield us from any hostile Psis. No telepathy, though.
As we wend through a series of alleys that cuts behind the main promenade's gambling halls, the golden lights of the district fade to a muted brown, electronic jazz to a thin buzz over the nearest rooftops. Tamer familiars belong to waiters and staff dart back and forth between the crate-stacked thoroughfare, running bottles between the businesses. Their owners sit on overturned boxes and lean against brick walls, chatting between breaks while watching pro fight streams that pollute the air with shoutcaster ambiance. Lighter smoke fills my lungs with incense fragrance. My nose wrinkles as I follow Volt through hazy clouds of the stuff, completely ignored by the wait staff on either side. Everyone here is working in the pocket of one gangster or another. They know what's up.
"Five zeroes for a one-night security operation at the Kwa-Hon, gambling included, is one of the few things that could entice me out of an early retirement," Volt says, glancing back at us. "I imagine you're here for a similar reason?"
"Haven't scored buying-a-pad-in-the-Glass type credits yet," Lain says, knitting her fingers behind her head. Her forehead dips nonchalantly down at me. "Just paying back a favor. This one's not exactly made of money, either."
A heavy brass band rips out the opening chords of their next song to raucous applause as we exit the last alley separating us from the Lighthouse. Dead ahead, across a thickly populated road drenched in golden streetlight, the famed casino's spiraling windows loom like crystal snakes above its tributary gambling halls. Staff entrances buzz with activity on the other side of the street. Volt lingers on the sidewalk to let a three-long convoy of armored autocabs drift past before starting across.
"Kun Kharsa," I say, noting the blue hues of the autocabs' running lights.
Volt palms a small comm unit wormed into his ear. "Running as fashionably late as we are. Yelena and her witches are in the lobby with Wishbone. The Anvil, I believe he's at the lifts."
"Ulysses?"
"In the conference room for the past half an hour with our patron. Didn't think he and Nero were quite so amicable, last I saw them together."
Last they met a few years back, street rumor swears Ulysses ripped one of Nero's arms clean off at the socket. The story did the rounds in every bar in the lowVents for an entire season.
"Must be something in the air," I mutter.
Volt claps his palms and motions us along. Inside, I'm trying to figure out his affinities. He's good, though. No external tells. Knows his business.
Into another alley, sidling past a cluster of sweating young waiters, slipping through a propped-open back door at the base of the Lighthouse. Staff corridors, the inner workings of a machine that no client will ever see. Thin halls, dangerous confines with high ceilings and bright lights that leave no space to hide. Get in a fight here and it's not a question of who's dying, but how many bodies will be cleaned up at the end. Cream-colored paint, fake darkoak planks echoing with real timbre beneath the heels of my boots. The sounds of the casino rattle through revolving doors heading into gambling halls and reserved rooms. Clinking wine glasses, popping corks, fizzy champagne pouring, cards shuffling, clattering credit chits. Fat laughter, rich laughter, the kind of laughter that has never seen the streets that prop this golden hell up.
I know there's plenty more places like the Lighthouse on the surface. But seeing the gross decadence of it for myself, I can't help how angry I am at how wrong it is. This place is no better than the Orange. It's a leech that strip-mines the Vents of its humanity. Gorging itself on our labor, our bodies, our lives. Even if Dynasty is stopped, these parasites will live on. The same greedy devil in a different skin. Why is this one any better just because we know it well?
Through a half-open door, I catch a glimpse of a backroom with green felt tables, fat men and women laden with rings and jewelry shouldering and laughing over cards. Liquor splashes from their goblets to stain the floor. A dour eyed waitress waiting in the wing exchanges a look with the dealer that those sleezers will never see before she goes to clean the spill. But I see it. I've seen it so many times before.
I should burn this place to the ground. Burn it to the fucking ground. The Vents will never be free as long as there's sickness like this feasting on us. If I had the matches to set the whole city on fire, I'd start right here-
Matthias finds my wrist with a warning grip, snuffing out the itchiness building in my trigger fingers. "Calm, Mori." He snags two shot glasses off a passing serving tray and hands one to me. "Drink this. Loosen up, you're too tense."
"You think Krey would do it?" I ask.
"From our brief meeting? I gathered the impression that there is little your friend wouldn't do." Matthias closes his eyes as we pass another revolving door. "Sometimes I wish I had his conviction. If only he wasn't aiming the wrong way."
"Places like these make me wonder if he is." I hold the shot up to the light, tilt from side to side. I'm not sure it isn't lighter fluid. Vitriolic cyan, it glows with interior light. "Maybe we're already too far gone, and we just can't see it."
"I've wondered that myself. If it wouldn't be better to burn it all and start over."
Past another wide-open gambling hall, I force myself to not glare at the occupants. "Sarah's dream made sense where we came from. LowVents, everyone just trying to survive, corpos and streets taking turns fucking us over. But this?" I shake my head at the gross wealth. "The Lighthouse was built decades before Dynasty ever arrived. We did this to ourselves. What's stopping us from doing it again once they're gone?"
"But what good would come of the alternative? It would take a tyrant or a war to end the cycle of exploitation. Either the Vents burns and the greed goes down with it, or one person takes the reins of the entire undercity and sets the rules for all. And that's no freedom at all. It's just Dynasty under a different name." His eyebrows narrow as we file closer behind our escort. "Or, if the Eight refuse to unite, it'll be the syndicate in the flesh."
"Still doesn't feel right knowing that in some fucked up way, we're making sure this place keeps running." I down the shot with careless nonchalance, burying the flash of disgust I feel. It goes down in one gulp, sugar-electricity-liquid fire punching into the back of my throat all at once.
Matthias cringes and pinches two fingers on the bridge of his nose. "You... aren't supposed to swallow that."
"You think this is my first Nirvalian? That's cute."
"Let her run," Lain drawls. "She did two full doses of Shatter back to back in less than an hour. Nirv's just going to give her a buzz."
Volt glances back at the exchange with humored swagger. As he returns to facing forward, Matthias leans against my hair and whispers against my ear, breath scented with cinnamon and mint.
"Don't turn your back when Volt is around. He's worked for Dynasty before." A subtle tug on my mind directs my eyes to Volt's left wrist, encircled by a small timepiece forged from pure orange-gold. "Same for Nero. I didn't tell Lain, but I don't entirely trust him. He's run contraband for the syndicate before. It's not unheard of for him to play both sides of the line."
"You think Nero looks like a snake because he wants people to trust him?" I roll my eyes and raise my voice at Volt. "Nice watch."
Volt arches an eyebrow at my tone, though he doesn't deign to respond. The service hall we're following dead-ends at a bank of wide circular lifts in an intersection between the different wings of gambling halls. Gang fighters and wait staff bustle in and out of the doors at a frenzied pace. Armaments of every class dangle openly in sheathes or in hand. Gunslingers stand side by side with Martial Artists. Ki Fighters lurk on the edges of the room surrounded by sullenly tamed auras. Psis lean beside Assassins and Hunters, muttering with Innovators and Tamers. Rarer classes like the monstrous Modds or celestial Mythos are the centerpieces of individual groups, separated by the color of their garments and armor.
Our lack of identifying marks draws eyes as we wedge ourselves into a lift alongside a group of Yelena's witches and a pack of gruff fighters draped in the Anvil's slate-grey color scheme. I'm thankful it's a short ride. Nine floors up, emptying into a museum-quiet promenade of painstakingly polished cream-marble tile and vaulted pillars. The gang warriors filter out into a huge circular atrium where high-ranking lieutenants of the Eight give assignments of patrols and security detail.
Consulting a small message that flashes on his JOY, Volt motions us away from the other fighters and through a small side door further down the promenade. "Nero has made arrangements for you three to watch from an adjoining room. This way."
At the distant end of the hall, a quartet of tech-armored dragoons hold silent vigil over the conference room where the summit is to take place. Smooth brassy plating, draconic helms, capes of drakeleather draping to their heels. The massive doors behind them stand slightly ajar. Familiar shadows and voices move inside, faint and filtered by the distance. Others, less familiar, linger at the threshold. Three lords of the undercity, alone without their attendants, heads bowed in hushed conversation. The Anvil, broad shouldered and fuming, towers over the most infamous bonedoc in the Vents and the Witch of Withered Airs, Yelena.
The last of the three is the most vibrant in color; draped in pastel pinks and blues. Her glossed lips part in expectation as another figure slips out of the doors to join them in conversation. Dressed no better than a farmer from the capital's outskirts, Ulysses mutters a friendly response to Yelena, but his gaze is above her, sweeping the rest of the promenade as if searching for an old friend, or hunting a glimpse of a familiar color. A look meant for me. But I've already disappeared into the catacombs between the walls. Reunions will have to wait.