By the time Brendon fought his way to the alley, Ninja Fox was already at the mouth, her dark shape a cut against the wet night. She had the satchel across her shoulder, the tubes and photos pressed close. Brendon vaulted the lip and felt the night air like salvation.
They ran into the outer yard and for a breath the world opened — then closed again. Men ringed them at the fence line, flashlights turning them into animals under spotlights. Drago stood there, hands in his pockets, his coat the color of old liquor and an expression that tasted like a locked jaw.
"Playtime's over." Drago said, as if they were children who had been naughty. "You should have let me take the lead, sheriff."
Brendon pressed his back against the crate and looked at Ninja Fox. Their breaths came hard, tiny white clouds in the rain-slick light. He had the tubes in his satchel like a hot thing against his ribs.
"You double-crossed us," Ninja Fox said. Her voice was small but the words landed like stones. There was no performative shock in her; only a measured, flat rage that promised a patient reckoning.
Drago smiled. "I didn't double-cross you. I made a choice. The mayor wanted results and I arranged for him to get them. I only ever sell to people who can pay for discretion." He clicked his tongue. "I told him we'd shake the place. I sold him the certainty you'd be here."
The men around them shifted like a pack reminded of the nature of hunger.
Brendon slid his hand into his jacket and closed around the small blade there, the metal cold and honest. There were a thousand small calculations in his head: escape, negotiation, betrayal, who lived and who became a ghost. He thought of Sofie and the way she had risked so much; he thought of Camelia and the way she had hesitated in the cavern. He thought of the tubes in the satchel, the thing that had made the brand mean less as symbol and more as warning.
"Why?" he asked Drago softly.
Drago's eyes gleamed like glass. "Because every hand that reaches for the mayor's throat thinks they can do it clean. He pays better when he's panicked. He pays better when the proof is almost there. And because some debts you repay with people."
Something in the faces of Drago's men tightened — an appetite for the finishing blow. Brendon had been in rooms where men chose currency over flesh, but this was a different level. This was the line where he had to decide whether to die full of answers or live carrying the infected knowledge.
Ninja Fox moved, swift and terrible. She threw something — a chain of small mirror slivers — that exploded in the light like a spiderweb. The mirrors flashed the spotlights back into the eyes of Drago's men, blinding them briefly. In the same motion she shoved forward, a low and controlled fury. She was fast as a blade and just as cold. She knocked two men aside and then looked to Brendon with a question that required no spoken answer: go.
He lunged, blade flashing. They broke like a break in ice. Brendon found a path through the cluster, joining Ninja Fox to the street. They ran under a curtain of rain and into the alleys, where the city swallowed their noise. Behind them, Drago's laughter followed like a curse.
They had the evidence. They had the tubes. They had a double-cross in their bones and a man who would now know their faces. Brendon's chest ached with the knowledge that the mayor had been given exactly what he needed: a chance to make the hunt legitimate. The fake robbery had become real in a way nobody planned.
They ran until the city's breath calmed to a hum. In the distance sirens split the night and men shouted names of people they wanted to break. Brendon's fingers closed over the satchel's strap until his knuckles ached. The magic tubes rubbed cold against his hip like accusation.
When they finally slowed, breathing like hunted things, Ninja Fox dropped to a crouch and breathed through the smoke of the city like a predator listening for its own heartbeat. She unbuckled the satchel and put the wooden tubes on a piece of cardboard, in a small ritual of reverence or disgust. The photos were spread out like a confession.
"Drago's hands are in this." Ninja Fox said, and the words had the weight of a verdict. "He sold us. He sold the raid. He sold them out plan."
Brendon looked at the tubes again, feeling the hollow in his chest — the brand's echo like a memory of a place he had not yet been. The question that had lodged behind his teeth all night that now had a new shape: how deep did this rot go? Who had the keys to buy men like Drago? Who had the stomach for the bones in those tubes?
Camelia's voice finally bled through the comm, ragged and apologetic. "I tried to cut them. Somebody rerouted me. They knew. Brendon — you're on your own. There's chatter — Guerieo is furious but also careful. Someone named the Crooked Man is contacts are stirring. Don't—" Her voice broke, "—don't go back to Drago."
Brendon closed the satchel and wrapped his hand around the tubes until the wood warmed slightly against his palm. Hearing the name his ears stood up as if he got a shock. He felt that he has heard this name somewhere... somewhere during his childhood but can't remember now what it is.
But for now he quite this thought. "We won't." he said. "But we'll need to figure out who paid him."
Ninja Fox's eyes were empty and fierce at the same time. "Then we must find the buyer." she answered, and there it was: not just the hunt for proof, but the hunt for the men who bought the masks for mythivens and the bones for charms. The city had teeth, and now they were going to pry one out.