The cavern sat under the city like a ribcage, a network of old service tunnels and brick vaults the planners had forgotten. For anyone who wanted to be invisible, it was a good place to practice. People who didn't belong in the normal hours came here to sleep, count teeth, and trade favors that would get them killed in daylight. For Brendon it was perfect because the police rarely saw beyond the storefront lights and the predictable routes of patrol. The cavern's windows were the vents of the transit line above; its doorway was a hatch behind a boarded bakery. If you knew where to look you could vanish.
He slid down into the hollow with the casual, practiced motion of a man who belonged nowhere and everywhere. The air here smelled like old bread, oil, and the ghost of cigarettes — everything a city used to keep its quiet. Outlaws moved about in predictable orbits: a pair of cardsharp kids arguing quietly over a crooked hand; a woman knitting something too bright for the place; a middle-aged man carving chess pieces out of scrap. They looked up, nodded. Brendon returned their nod. He had been here before, long enough that faces had become maps and nods were currency.
He found the corner he liked: behind a stack of crates painted with a grocery brand that had long ago been discontinued. No one bothered this spot. He dropped his shoulders against the brick, let the jacket sag, and dug his phone out. The river-walk had been loud, bright, and alive with the sort of pretend normal that left him feeling immediately older. Down here, the sound compressed around him, thick and comforting.
He thumbed the screen, scrolling through messages that had not been answered. Camelia's name blinked like a little island he had been trying to reach for two months. He had left messages, encrypted notes, and a fragmented attempt at an apology that had never been sent; for weeks the phone had been a small dead thing. The controversy had burned hot and fast: Brendon had somewhat promised to help to Ninja Fox, the meeting with Dargo had happened, and then everything had tangled. The press had pounced, the mayor had deflected with a smile, and Brendon had become something the police liked to name with sharp accusatory nouns. He'd been forced to disappear until the heat softened.
He pressed the call.
Rings crawled. The cavern breathed. He was two calls away from an answer that might undo him or salvage whatever little he had left.
"Brend," Camelia said when she picked up. Her voice came through thinner than Brendon remembered — something in the compression of the line, in the carefulness of whatever room she was in. "It's been a while."
"Long enough," he said. He kept his tone light, trying on the old cadence that had once won him doors and winked at danger. "You good? You okay? You hadn't answered my calls."
Silence on her end, the kind that sounds like a person choosing which part of the truth to feed you. "It wasn't safe," she said finally. "Not for me. Not for her. And even not for you."
"Not for you?" He let the reproach hang. "You— you gave me to the fox face-to-face, Camelia. That was a risk I took, not a trick."
"You'd have come anyway," she replied. "You always go where there's a high risk with reward. That's not my point."
Brendon listened. Camelia's tone shifted, softening in the way a hand does when it touches a wound. "Ninja Fox wanted it that way. She wanted to force things forward."
He felt a line of frost run down his spine. "What do you mean, force things? Robert's leak? The sweep?"
Camelia hesitated. "Not directly. But she timed things. She made sure there were eyes and noise around the meat district. She pushed evidence where it would be found — subtle nudges. She pushed the right people to notice. Then she left. She gave Robert a thing to bite on."
"You mean she gave—" Brendon's voice went low. The river under his ribs stirred. "You mean she fed the source."
"No." Camelia's voice sharpened. "Not fed. She created a stage. She put a light where a lie could be outed. She wanted Guerieo's people to feel pressure, to panic. That makes them to make mistakes. She wanted the mayor's men to show their hands."
"That's... an expensive burn," he said. "And it almost got me taken tonight."
"It almost did," she agreed. "But she knew you could move. She knew you were on the edge of being useful. She's not careless, Brend. She's… precise. Dangerous in a way that doesn't look like danger. She wanted you to see the crate without the crowd. She wanted you to feel the brand."
He pictured the alley again: the scorch marks, the burlap bundles, the way the hyena had laughed like a man pleased with what he owned. "So she put you on the leash and pulled." Brendon tasted the word like iron.
"Look, I didn't agree with all of it." Camelia's voice had that brittle note that carried regret. "I argued. I tried to make sure we had contingencies. But the fox convinced me. She convinced all of us — not by force but by the way she made the bottom of the city seem less dangerous than the top. She's been taking names, Brendon. She has a way of making betrayals look like charity."
"And you just... left me to become a story?" he said. It was not an accusation so much as a cataloguing. "You left and I— I became a problem."
"You were part of the problem that we didn't asked for." she said. "And besides—" There was a pause. "Brendon, I owe you something. She... I mean Ninja Fox wants you at Drago's. Tomorrow. Drago's lair. Says he has a room — an old safehouse under the fishmarket — says it's neutral ground. Says he wants to talk to you."
"Drago?" The name tasted like old debts. Drago was a thing of rumor — a fixer, a lizard who remembered favors and had a way of reminding people that debts had a tendency to return with interest. The last time Brendon had seen Drago it had been over a folded table and the person with whom his secret meeting turned into a trap for him. The man had a smile like a razor in a velvet pouch.
"Yeah," Camelia said. "He's agreed. I told the fox I'd bring you. She said she would be there. She said she wanted the city to know where the rot began before we cut the heads off. She didn't say how clean it would be."
Brendon's fingers tightened around the phone until the plastic creaked. He thought of the brand, the bone bundles, the hyena's rope, the way the city tasted of salt and copper. He thought of Sofie's worry and the eyes of the outlaws who had barely glanced up when he walked in. He thought of Drago's lair under the abandoned factory — wet wood, the smell of old deals — and of Ninja Fox, who arranged things like a chess player who never lets you see the queen until you've already moved.