A RAT'S NEST of warrior hawks watch my every step as I enter the Rock Bottom side-by-side with Krey. The interior of the club is no more excited than the outside. Low ceilings, open floorplan, a thin corridor of free space between the room-length bar on the right and the lounge pits on the left. Dim neon, a pulsating music-synced hue beneath every piece of furniture, the NeoPop radio rattling my stomach. There's more gangsters sprawled across the seats than I expected. Kun Kharsa's technicians, Wishbone's medics, the Anvil's brawlers, Nero's nano savants, and the remnant's of Dax's boys make a mosh pit of rebels. Different stripes, they're all a part of the same clan now: the survivors.
The Eight's lieutenants- those who survived the Lighthouse- linger at the bar, separated from the rest of the mooks. Younger generation, they're more familiar and less bitter than their dead mentors. Loose friends with each other, street friends; the kind of friend you only count on when you've got something they want. Hard to find better in the Vents.
"Lotta faces here," I murmur, following Krey towards the bar. The 6-Teba hangs low along my leg, drawing as much attention as his Malice does.
"I pulled them together after the Lighthouse. Every fighter here is loyal to the Vents. No one's going to sell out to Dynasty."
"That's what everyone says, before they have a knife to their throat."
But the tension in the room doesn't exactly contradict him. The amalgamated survivors don't look like fish in a barrel- they're arming for war. Patching wounds, prepping their classes, huddled over maps of the Vents handmade from years of street scouting. Not a face I can see is over thirty. It's a young, angry crowd. Disillusioned and dangerous, animals backed into the corner, staring their extinction in the eye and refusing to back down quietly.
Back of the club, manager's spacious office, the electronic heartbeat dulls to a heartbeat pulse as the door slides shut behind us. Krey taps his JOY on a wall-mounted pad, closing the street-facing shutters and lighting up an oldTech lamp atop a wide fauxwood desk situated in the middle of the room. Spread before the high-back leather chair on the far side, a solitaire game halfway finished, empty glass of brandy. Impaled on the other half, a bejeweled hand missing the rest of its body. Krey slips around the desk and crashes into the chair, slouching deep, paying no mind to the severed hand.
Lain bends over to examine the hand. "How much did the owner offer you to let him crawl back to Dynasty?"
"More than they ever paid him," he replies. His dark eyes flick to the bloody knife sunk in the meat of the palm. "He would've squealed if I let him go."
"I'm not disagreeing. But shit, you'd think if anywhere would be off their payroll, the Rock Bottom would be near the top of the list. It's a go-to club for the gangs."
"Their fingers are spread throughout the entirety of the Vents," Matthias says, taking the chance to wash his face in the adjoining washroom. "It's easy to forget that this is just one of the syndicate's many branches. They exist outside this city. Outside the entire Section. The Executor who visits here, I imagine the Vents is only one of her projects. Their resources far outmatched any of the Eight from the very beginning. It's how they were able to hire people like the Armiger."
Krey cracks his knuckles and sits back up in the chair. Doing a good job of concealing it, but he's just as haggard as I am on the inside. Days of horror interspersed with near misses at every turn, constantly on the run, sleep measured in single digits; it's all adding up. Not to mention no one in this room has checked their JOY for fear of confirming what ungodly hour of the morning it is.
Krey pours a little more brandy from a glass decanter, splashes in an eyebrow-raising amount of clear, bubbling caf, and downs it in a quick gulp. The tumbler vibrates as he sets it back down on the desk. "Time to start filling the blanks, Em. What's your idea?"
"That club is half as full as it was an hour ago," I say from a stool near the door, recounting the number of partially-touched drinks I saw scattered in the booths. "You've already been sending out teams to hit the checkpoints Dynasty is forming. Last one was, what, ten minutes ago?" I shake my head when he starts to glare. "I know you, pal. And I know those mooks out there too. There's no way you could get them onboard with an all-out assault on the syndicate like I know you want. It's gonna be hit-and-runs. Start a bunch of scattered fires, don't commit many bodies to any one spot, try to drag Dynasty down in the mud and choke them there."
"They thought we'd get crushed if we went all-out," Krey sneers. "Cowards."
"All-out is what I'm going to need from them. Burn fast or burn slow, we're all threats to Dynasty. We're all burning anyways. A long fight just prolongs the inevitable." I glance at the door as glass shatters outside. "That Executor is the mind behind every one of Dynasty's movements. Sarah had the right of it. End the Executor, we end their expansion in the Vents for good. This is our best and last chance to take a shot at her. It's a long shot, yeah. But there's not going to be another window if they finish taking over the Vents."
"And some hit-and-runs won't be enough to pull their garrisons out of the Orange. I get it." He drums his fingers against the desk, eyeing the door like he can see the lieutenants waiting beyond it. His hand makes a play on the solitaire game. "Still. Lotta ifs, Em. Gonna be a hard sell."
"We're Venters. If is the best we've ever gotten." I shoot him a crooked smirk that makes me feel twice as old as I really am, and not in a good way. It's the same I-got-this confidence Ulysses used on his officers. The same Sarah used on me before that last job. "You can convince them. I've got faith."
Krey shifts another card. "What's the rest of it?"
I point to the washroom, where the water is still running. "Matthias keeps in touch with a few people with contracts in the Orange, including a handful of Iros. One of them recognized him when we were fighting the Armiger. We're going to reach out to her, turn her, and use her to get us past their security. Lain will be guiding us from the outside."
Even I know how loose of a plan it is. Sarah, at least, had a gameplan with hers. Mine is the definition of winging it. Lain already poked two dozen holes in it without even trying. Krey pinches his fingers at the bridge of his nose and voices the most obvious.
"You just made walking around the Orange sound a day trip to the overcity. You do know there's a million credit bounty for your face, right?"
"Which is why she won't be going as Emilia Mori, and she won't be going alone," Matthias calls out from the washroom. He emerges a moment later dressed in the silken disguise he wore the first time I saw him, that elevator in the heart of the Orange. Dark, sheer, suggestive. A servant's uniform. And he's holding an even thinner one for me to take. It looks like loincloth underwear beneath a sheer black robe. Answer enough to Krey's question, though it just gets a scoff from Lain.
"I told them already, they need something different. The dancing girl plan is idiotic," she snipes. "Besides, I'm pretty sure there's a height requirement to be an Iros."
"That actually has a shot," Krey says, more interested now. "No one questions the Iros. I think it'll work. Buncha sick fucks there, you think they won't snap up a piece like her?"
"Of course you think it'll work. You'd believe the Showmaker could shit gold if he promised it'd beat Dynasty." Lain laughs at me next. "And where the hell do you think you're gonna hide a gun in a thong, short stuff?"
Hopping off the stool, I unlatch the 6-Teba from my leg and gently move to lay it atop the desk. Golden halogen light seeps into the rampant cracks that splinter its battered frame. "It's staying here. I'll make another with my JOY once we're inside."
"What if they take your JOY?"
"They won't where we're going," Matthias answers. "Slaves often use their affinities for... customized experiences. It's completely normal to have them activated in the deep sector."
"Of course. Totally normal. Totally normal for them to fucking behead you when they figure out you're not one of theirs, too."
"I'm the one putting my life in Matthias' hands," I snap. "It's already a dice roll. You're not even going to be in there with us. Trust your boyfriend. Or don't come with us at all."
Lain's mouth opens, then slowly closes as she bites back an incredibly amount of vitriol. Glowering, she sinks into a chair in the darkest corner of the room, fingers steepled in front of her mouth. No more objections. I can't fix the fact that she's unhappy with the plan, that it's a fucking shot in the dark, and even if I'm able to stop the Executor, there's no guarantee we'll make it out. Lain chose to attach herself to Matthias. But I do wonder, as Krey rises from his chair, if I'd go so far for him.
Maybe, when we were younger. But it's like he said. We had that luxury then. Things are different now. I'm starting to understand the world Sarah and Ulysses lived in. A reality that I couldn't grasp before the blinders were ripped away from me: that there's no such thing as right choices. Only hard ones.
I get what Sarah meant, now. About everything changing. Fold once, how much easier it must be the second time.
In another world, I wouldn't gamble our lives on odds like these. But this isn't that world. It's our world. Our backs against the wall. And if no one else can pull the trigger that might save the Vents, then I'll take Matthias with me and pull it myself.
I've tried fighting. I've tried running. Neither did anything but slow the inevitable. However slim the chances might be that this will reverse our fate, I have to take them. Like those kids I freed from Carto Bask. I could never live with myself if I just turned my back when it's in my power to take a stand. I could never go to sleep knowing Sarah's killer is still out there. That her Sixer is hanging from his hip. That's not who I am. She put a gun in my hand for a reason.
Maneuvering around the desk, Krey makes one last play on the solitaire game before heading to the door. His face wrinkles and he draws another card, bringing it with him. "I'm in. I'll keep your Sixer safe, Em. You just make sure you come back for it." He flicks the card at me as he slips past. "See you uptown."
The door whisks shut behind him, leaving me no time to finish the mantra. In his absence, I turn the card over, running my eyes down the ace and the spade. My fingers smear the blood that stains them both. Then I look up to the thieves, who wait on me.
"You're up first, Matthias." I slide the card in my back pocket, forgetting it the moment it leaves my sight. "Let's go talk to an Iros."