Outside the barn, beneath the eaves where moonlight barely reached, the air had thickened into something like judgment. Dust hung still, as if afraid to move. Crickets had gone silent now, as if they too knew not to interrupt what came next.
Kneeling in the dirt, one of Jeffery's men the one from the saloon was bound in a rope that wasn't rope at all. It shimmered faintly under the stars and lanterns, strands woven from polymer and metal, laced with threads that hissed and flexed with each of his breaths. It wasn't tight it adjusted, reacting to his muscle tension like a snake deciding whether to strike.
He didn't speak. Not yet. His face was bruised, lip split, and a tremor in his hands betrayed the calm he tried to fake.
Inside, Jeffery sat slumped in a reinforced chair not just wooden, but steel-barred and nailed into the barn floor. Chains wound around his chest, across his legs, and even his throat, anchoring him with brutal finality. The cuffs on his wrists still pulsed faintly with that containment grade hum, syncing with the chains like a pulse gone mechanical. His grin had dimmed, flickering like a candle nearing the end of its wick.
Outside, the barn doors creaked open.
Scott stepped through first. The air around him had shifted; something quiet had settled in his posture, something old and unsparing. His boys followed behind five of them, broad shouldered, tight jawed, fists clenched. Sons of the dust and bone, born not into war but shaped by it. Each of them bore the look of boys who'd stopped being boys far too young.
Without speaking, they unspooled the short lengths of chain from their belts, wrapping them tight around their fists. Links clicked into place like loading a weapon.
The man kneeling swallowed hard.
Scott didn't bark orders. He just gave a nod.
The first boy stepped forward.
His punch came low and sharp stomach, not face a silent hammerblow that forced the man to retch on impact. The chain snapped against the ribs like a drumbeat.
The second boy followed. Then the third.
Each hit came with no flourish. No cruelty. Just force delivered with the kind of precision that said this was not rage. It was ritual. A response. The answer to a question no one should have asked.
By the fourth blow, blood trailed from the man's mouth. He was gasping now, trying to stay upright. His eyes were dull like he could faint at anytime but the punches which didn't rest jolted him awake. The chain marks had started to welt.
The fifth boy hesitated for only half a breath. Then he stepped in and his blow lifted the man off his knees before he crashed back down, limp, dirt sticking to the blood on his face.
Inside the barn, the trainees who had gathered to observe green, eager, unblooded had fallen dead silent. Their eyes wide. A few swallowed hard. One looked like he might be sick. Because this wasn't a spar. This was retribution rendered in bone in which in a way could be said to be what they brought upon themselves.
Julius stood in the shadows, arms crossed, watching without a flicker of emotion. He wasn't testing his boys. He was showing the others... this... is what lines look like when crossed.
And then the real test came.
Three more of Jeffery's men who'd stayed hidden in the corners of the barn, pretending to be unconscious or injured moved all at once. The flick of a blade here. A reach for the inside of a coat there. A silent signal passed in glances.
But they moved too slow.
Oscar and Crook moved like they were born from gunpowder and summoned from the shadows.
Oscar was on the first one in a blur, snapping the man's wrist sideways before he could even draw. The knife clattered to the floor.
Crook spun low, his boot sweeping the second man's leg out from under him before he even cleared the holster. The third reached for a sidearm and Crook shot forward, ramming him against the barn wall with a sickening crack of ribs.
The whole skirmish was over in less than four seconds.
By the time the rest of the guards stepped forward, weapons half raised, there was no need. The would be attackers were already down, groaning, disarmed, bleeding but alive.
Julius didn't even blink.
His voice, when it came, was cool steel in the back of every throat.
"Lesson's over."
The trainees backed off. Some nodded stiffly. Others just stood still, like statues waiting for permission to move.
Julius walked slowly out to the kneeling man, now collapsed forward on the dirt. Scott's boys stepped back, forming a rough line behind him. Julius knelt beside the man, his boots stirring dust.
He tilted the man's chin up with one gloved hand.
"I want you to remember what you felt here," Julius said. "The weight. The silence. The pain."
The man's bloodied eyes flickered open.
Julius leaned in, voice low but absolute.
"Because if you or your masters send one more whisper of a scent in that saloon direction... I will not send fists. I will set fire to your world."
The man didn't speak. He couldn't.
Julius stood, nodding once to Scott. "Dump him at the tree line. Let him crawl back."
Scott signaled his boys. Two of them grabbed the man by the arms, dragging him into the dark.
Back in the barn, Jeffery watched through the cracks in the wood, the last of his grin fading.
Crook moved to stand behind him. "Guess that leash of yours just got shorter."
But Jeffery didn't respond. He was listening now not to them, but to something else. His eyes flicked once toward the ceiling, where the satellite blinked unseen.
And very quietly, he smiled then frowned as he felt the satellite above the sky move far away from his line of site.
Within the market where many children played and chattering along with acrobatic displays, a familiar figure stood smiling brightly while he crushed a phone in his hands.