When we walked in, Cleon was in the den—alone, but it felt like a military base.
The den wasn't just a room. It was a command center, dark and clinical, humming with the quiet menace of high-frequency systems. The walls were obsidian-black, pulsing faintly with thin veins of gold light, like circuitry running beneath the surface. The ceiling shifted with holo-lattice grids, tracking biometric data in real-time. It seemed to get the data from the tattoos—our heart rates, breathing patterns, even the micro-tremors in our hands.
Eight curved holo-screens hovered in midair, rotating around Cleon like planets in his orbit. Each screen displayed different feeds—heat signatures in a crowded alley, pulse-wave readings from buildings, data spikes in encrypted comms chatter. Faces flickered in and out, tagged with biometric overlays—name, age, gang affiliation, last known location.
Cleon sat in the center, in his chair with a gold tint, hands on his face like he was plotting, sculpted chair made of gold-laced carbon. The chair's frame hummed softly, adapting to his posture, scanning his vitals, feeding him streams of data through a thin neural filament wrapped behind his ear. His fingers twitched, swiping through holographic interfaces that rippled and reformed with every thought.
"That's interesting," he kept whispering, voice barely audible, as if narrating to the den itself.
As we sat, the seats flared to life—Jack's glowed a deep, pulsing crimson. Skull Kid's a sharp neon coral, flickering like a warning. Mine lit up an obsidian black, matte and cold, absorbing light like a void.
Jack leaned forward, his voice cutting through the hum of machines.
"What's it look like, Cleon?"
Cleon spun slowly in his chair, the neural tether coiling behind him like a serpent.
"There are thirteen guards," he said, voice flat, eyes flicking between the screens like a predator sizing up prey. "Six are new—low-tier, fresh blood. Four are regulars. Three are lieutenants. They call themselves Basilisk."
He flicked a finger, and the screens rearranged—schematics of the building overlaying heat maps and security drone paths. His voice remained clinical, detached.
"No major backing. Just a loose affiliate set. But they've partnered with a black-market faction: Ahuizotl."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop. The air vibrated faintly as the den's systems reacted, lights dimming, holo-screens sharpening their resolution.
Jack's mismatched eyes flickered with enhanced optics—blue pulsing with a cold, clinical glow, gold burning like liquid metal. His knife spun around his hand, a sleek carbon-forged blade with a reactive edge that shimmered faintly, magnetic fields humming along its surface.
Cleon's tone didn't waver—just facts, like he was reading a weather report about a storm that wasn't his problem.
"Ahuizotl harvests kids. Cuts out organs, implants neural dampeners, sells parts on the black market. They're obsessed with the rebirth process. Kids under fifteen develop a new gland near the pituitary. Ahuizotl research causes most kids go blind. Some lose more."
Jack's blade stopped mid-spin. He stabbed it into the arm of the chair, and the material flexed around it—smart fabric adapting, but the dent was permanent. The chair had a groove there already, like a scar from too many stabs in the same spot.
"Why the recap?" Jack asked, voice low and dangerous.
Cleon didn't even glance at him. He gestured toward me with a flick of his neural thread, the holo-screen snapping to an image of me in the training cage.
"Radahn needs to understand what he's walking into. Why we're doing this."
I glanced at Cleon.
"For the kids?"
Cleon's grin was thin, razor-sharp.
"No. I'm doing it to burn Basilisk down. Their product's a liability. The scientists?" He tilted his head, a faint, predatory glint in his eyes. "I don't care about them. If the kids get saved, fine. But after that? Who's feeding them? Protecting them from the next predator in line?"
His voice dropped to a cold whisper, like a machine reading the last rites.
"You can save them from Ahuizotl. But who's gonna save them from the city?"
He leaned back, fingers steepled under his chin as the den's holo-systems kept shifting—projecting crime patterns, death statistics, supply chains.
"This isn't about saving kids. It's about erasing a problem. Basilisk is a parasite, and parasites get cut out."
His eyes flicked to Jack—both glinting with something like clinical curiosity.
"Jack, though… Jack cares. That's why he's running this op. I don't care what happens to the orphans. But I know he does. That's why I need you and Skull Kid backing him up."
Jack's voice cut in, quiet but sharp.
"Oh, so I'm babysitting while you run neural scans on your next pet project, Cleon?"
Cleon smirked, barely a breath of amusement.
"Jack, we both know everyone in this set is a special case. You, Skull Kid, Radahn… you're all chasing ghosts. I just want to understand why. I'm trying to understand what you want to do with the city—I just need more data."
He gestured to the shifting streams of info, his voice calm as a machine.
Jack's jaw flexed, his eyes locked on Cleon like a blade about to be thrown. He exhaled slow, a breath dragged through teeth.
"Lock in. It's gonna be a long night."
I stared at him, something sharp clicking in my chest.
The scars. The mismatched eyes. The weight behind every word.
"Jack," I said quietly, voice barely above a whisper, "you were one of them, weren't you?"
His head tilted slightly. The blade in his hand stopped moving. His breath hitched—a fracture in his mask—and then steadied.
"Found me in a drainpipe when I was seven," he said, voice flat, eyes distant. "One kidney gone. Ahuizotl cut me open, left me bleeding. Wasn't worth the effort to finish the job. Arbiter found me. Pulled me out before they could kill me."
His mismatched eyes locked onto mine, and for the first time, I felt it.
Jack wasn't just another killer.
He was a scar made flesh.
And as I looked at the screens—orphans, gangs, data feeds flickering like the pulse of a dying city—I realized this wasn't just a mission.
It was a system built to consume the weak.
But we were about to show them that they next ones in line.