The gym smelled of sweat and rubber. Thick mats lined the floor, broken only by sandbags and a single rack of dull, blunted training knives. Deadshot moved through the room like a metronome, slow and methodical he taught the staff of the continental. He watched a pair of hotel staff circle each other, then stepped in with a correction before they could make a sloppy strike.
"Chins down," he said, voice flat. "Keep your hands where I can see them. If you reach for something at the wrong time, you're dead. We're not making movie moves here we're making you functional."
A younger man — one of the concierge team who'd been pressed into a night rotation — lunged with a practiced, clumsy stab. Deadshot caught the blade arm against his forearm, twisted, then knocked the knife away with the flat of his hand. The kid hit the mat with a grunt, blinked, and rolled to his feet.
"Again," Deadshot said. "Slow. Control. When you're in a fight you won't have time to think. Train your body to do the thinking."
They ran the drill until muscles trembled. Blunted knives were swapped for rubber practice blades; the strikes were hard but controlled, each hit rated and corrected. Deadshot walked the room, a coach and a cutter both, correcting stances, showing footwork, demonstrating how to turn a shove into a throw, how to clear a line of sight and create space to run.
Timing was everything — hotel shifts rolled like gears. Once the current squad finished the circuit, they were met at the door by the incoming rotation: bell staff, room attendants, a pair of kitchen porters — tired eyes bright with reluctant focus.
"Good work," Deadshot told the outgoing crew, voice calm. "Remember the two rules. One: keep moving. Two: aim small, miss small. If someone's expecting theatrics, don't give them one." He gave a dry half-smile. "And don't bring this back here unless it's an emergency. The Continental isn't a combat zone. It's a hotel."
The newcomers padded down onto the mats, adrenaline fizzing as they stretched. Deadshot shifted into instructor mode again, leading them through a quick warm-up and the same baseline drills: stance, block, disarm, run. He emphasized simple things — how to yank a wrist, how to drop weight to break a hold, how to scuff a shoe to put distance between you and a threat.
Between sets, one of the senior attendants — a broad-shouldered woman who'd worked nights cleaning for years — asked, voice low, "What if it's someone with a real gun?"
Deadshot's eyes were flat, unreadable. "Normally you don't go to ground with a gun," he said. "You make a decision. You run, you hide, you do something that makes it harder for them to center on you. If they're into the hotel's rules, they won't be waving guns in the lobby; that's what we're buying time for. And if they're not, you make it painful for them to stay. Plus if I understand your boss well enough you will have some fire power after all you aren't normal staff."
The training slot wound down into repetitions and timed runs, the clink of blunted steel punctuating Deadshot's clipped instructions. On the side table, a travel mug steamed; the concierge trainer rewound the phone footage and already started tagging notes for the next briefing packet.
By the time Deadshot called it, the incoming rotation had learned the basics well enough to keep a visitor alive long enough for security or a pro to arrive. They filed past him, breath fogging the cold air of the gym, faces set with a new bit of competence.
Outside the gym door, the mezzanine's glass looked over the city. Kieran Everleigh stood at that window for a long moment, hands folded, watching the hotel staff come and go below. He didn't step into the room; he didn't need to. The soft thump of training boots below sounded like the first small beats of a larger drum.
Through Deadshot's headset, the incoming trainer received the last set of instructions — who to keep on call, which rooms to double-watch tonight, where the staff's fallback points were. As the new team rotated out, they took their water bottles and their bruises, handed off their notes, and slipped back into the hotel's bloodstream: bell to lobby, lobby to door, door to rooms.
Kieran turned away from the window as the first message pinged his phone a status update from Naima at the warehouses. He read it, thumbed a curt reply, then walked away from the view, the hotel already shifting like a machine around him — staff trained, roles set, contingencies folding into place.
***
Nolan stood at the edge of the penthouse window for a beat city spread below him like a circuit board—then turned to the whiteboard mounted on the far wall. Evening light pooled on the wood floor. A small army of screens hums: live feeds, burner line chatter, a schematic of the rail nodes. He tapped the headset, accepting the next call.
"Boss, update," Marcy said, voice clipped and undeniably tired
"Go," Nolan replied, marker already uncapped in his hand.
"Escabedo moved on the Penitente yards last night. Took two smaller stash houses—no major losses, they folded quick. Falcone pressed the Raven quarter; got a handful of small crews. Odessa's leftovers are getting swallowed up by Russian outfits pushing south." Marcy ticked items off like a list in a ledger. "We lost a caching point near Pier 7—re-routed supplies. I've got a convoy prepped to patch it in two hours."
Nolan writes: ESCABEDO → PENITENTE (TAKEN). FALCONE → RAVEN ENCROACH. ODESSA → RUSSIANS PUSH. PATCH PIER 7 @ 0200. He draws a thick red line between the docks and the eastern warehouses.
"Good," he said. "Hold the convoy schedule. Naima will coordinate cover."
He ended the call and flipped the board to a fresh section. The dry-erase squeaks under his marker. Kieran sat in the armchair across the room, hands folded, perfect smile in place. Quentin paced along the rug, cigar—real or pretend—tucked into a corner of his mouth. Vey leaned against the windowsill, expression unreadable, fingers tapping a slow rhythm.
A burner chirps. Naima's voice comes through, breathless from the rail line.
"Boss. Whisper cells are splintering—small wings defecting to whoever promises safe routes. We can press tonight if you want, but Odessa's remnants are still dangerous. Also, Triad scouts were seen near South Track Nine. They're testing exits."
Nolan adds: WHISPERS FRAG→PEREGRINE? TRIAD PROBES S9. He shades a section of the map in blue, connects it with dotted lines to lines Marcy just outlined.
Quentin took over and moved to the board, peels off a Post-it, and slaps it over a rail spur. "If the Triads poke at South Nine," he says, voice low and sharp, "they'll overextend. We hit them then. Or we can find a middle ground. So many decisions." He tsked in annoyance before switching out
Kieran folded his hands, amusement flickering. "Or we do it soft. Buy them off where it saves us the bullets. A little cash, a shipment here or there—keeps eyes up top busy with other prey."
Vey watched the map, then taps a thin white line he's drawn through a tangle of back alleys. "We don't have cash for everything. If Falcones and the Russians are all re-dividing the city, we'll be sitting in the middle of a pressure cooker. Our advantage is mobility. Hold what we can. Deny them the big plays."
Nolan ran his thumb across the dry ink, thinking in geography and time. He wrote quicker now—names, times, rendezvous, a small square earmarked for a site he's been watching for months.
"Marcy, patch two teams to Pier 7 at 0200," he says aloud, confirming what he's written. "Naima, keep South Nine eyes on constant sweep. Dre, more scouts on the sewer exits—notify Croc we need them sealed if Falcone gets bold."
He catches himself and smiles despite the weight. "Also—start a quiet outreach to any small-time bosses who want protection. Not a tribute—an agreement. Implied. Keep it informal. If we're the ones people call when things go sideways, we build leverage without overreaching."
Quentin clapped once, sharp. "That's the play. Bite-sized land grabs, consolidation, constant pressure. We aren't trying to be the biggest shark in the pond tomorrow—we're trying to something very rare here. To become a big player in a city such as this in such a short amount of time we need the small time support."
"Wait scratch that," Nolan smirked, "Make it formal. We could use some formal friends don't you think?"
Kieran chuckles, drumming his fingers. "And charity boxes for the press. Make Kinsey proud. Public face, is important you know?"
Vey's mouth quirked. "One thing: whatever we take, we fortify. Cameras, safe exits, fallback nodes. The city is changing. The winners won't be the loudest—they'll be the ones who can hold what they took."
Nolan stepped back from the board and looked at the web of ink and tape and notes. The room smelled faintly of solder and coffee. His hand hovered over the marker cap for a second, then he clicks it shut and tucks it into his pocket.
"Most people won't notice it while it's happening," he says quietly, more to himself than to the others. "But this war isn't just chaos anymore. it's a clearing. The big ones will fatten. The small ones will crack. It's subtle but the war is starting to taper off and it will be sudden and immediate when it does happen."
Deals are being formed, that much everyone was aware of.
Quentin's laugh is soft, almost reverent. Kieran leans forward, conspiratorial. Vey stares at the city, expression hard as a knife.
Nolan spreads his hands and lets the quiet of the penthouse fill the space between them. The whiteboard is a map of the future, and for the first time in weeks he allows himself a small, steady pulse of optimism.
"We get there," he says. "We make sure we're in the center."
—
A/B: planning chapters are some of my favorites tbh