It took an hour of argument, but Darius finally relented.
"This is the stupidest thing I've done in years," the former bodyguard muttered as he helped Rei into a wheelchair, ancient, rusty, probably older than both of them combined. "If you die from this, I'm not explaining to whatever family you have why I took a cripple on a midnight adventure."
"Fair enough."
The streets of the Western District were dark and mostly empty at this hour. The mechanical birds had retreated to their charging stations, even surveillance had to sleep, in a manner of speaking. The few people they passed were either drunk, desperate, or both, and none of them paid attention to a man pushing a wheelchair through the shadows.
The opera house loomed ahead, a monument to better times, now just a hollowed-out shell with broken windows and graffiti-covered walls.
And across from it, exactly as Darius had described, stood a building with a faded gold serpent barely visible on its crumbling facade.
The Gilded Serpent.
Most of the windows were broken. The entrance was boarded up, but the boards looked old, rotted, easy to bypass. It was the kind of building that cities forgot about—not important enough to demolish, not valuable enough to restore.
Perfect for hiding things.
"We're actually doing this," Darius said flatly.
"We're actually doing this," Rei confirmed.
They approached from the side alley, where a service entrance hung partially open, rusted hinges that had given up their resistance years ago. Darius maneuvered the wheelchair through with surprising skill, cursing softly when the wheels caught on debris.
Inside, the building smelled like mold, decay, and old dreams. What had once been an elegant gaming floor was now just empty space, furniture gone, fixtures ripped out, only the bones of architecture remaining.
"Basement," Rei said. "There has to be a basement."
"This is insane," Darius muttered, but he was already looking for stairs, for doorways, for any indication of lower levels.
They found it behind what used to be the main bar, a narrow staircase descending into darkness.
"I can't get the chair down there," Darius observed.
"Then carry me."
"You're enjoying this entirely too much for someone who's paralyzed."
"I've had a strange few days."
Darius hoisted Rei up, surprisingly gentle for someone built like a soldier, and navigated the narrow stairs carefully. Each step creaked ominously, threatening to give way. The air grew colder, damper, carrying the musty scent of years of abandonment.
The basement opened up into a series of storage rooms, most of them empty or filled with broken furniture. Darius had brought a small oil lamp, and its flickering light cast dancing shadows across the walls, making every pile of debris look like something it wasn't.
"This place gives me the creeps," Darius muttered, adjusting his grip on Rei.
"You served a Count. Protected nobility. And this gives you the creeps?"
"Nobility I understood. Dead buildings full of ghosts and bad memories? Different category of creepy."
They moved deeper into the basement, past overturned tables and shattered bottles, until they reached what looked like a collapsed wall. Behind it, partially hidden by fallen debris, was another section.
Darius set Rei down on an old crate that groaned but held, then began clearing a path.
"If there are records, they'd be in the back offices," Rei said. "Somewhere the owners could"
CRASH.
Something metallic exploded across the room, slamming into the wall beside them with enough force to dent the stone.
Both men froze.
Darius' hand went to his hip, where a weapon should have been but wasn't, because he'd left it behind to avoid looking suspicious.
The lamp's light wavered, casting wild shadows.
"What the hell was" Darius began.
A cat mangy, one-eyed, absolutely furious, shot out from behind a fallen shelf, hissing like a demon summoned from the deepest pits of hell. It had apparently been nesting in an old metal bucket that it had knocked over in its panic, which had then rolled and crashed into the wall.
The cat took one look at the two intruders, let out a sound that was more war cry than meow, and disappeared into the darkness.
Silence.
Darius and Rei stared at each other.
Then Darius started laughing, a harsh, breathless sound that spoke of pure relief. "A cat. A gods-damned cat. I thought, " He couldn't finish, doubled over with laughter that was probably thirty percent humor and seventy percent released terror.
Rei felt his own lips twitch despite everything. "The mighty bodyguard, defeated by a one-eyed feline."
"Shut up," Darius wheezed, still laughing. "You jumped too. Don't think I didn't see you flinch."
"I'm paralyzed. I can't physically jump."
"You flinched internally. I could see it in your face." Darius wiped his eyes, his expression caught between amusement and embarrassment. "Seven years of military service. Survived three assassination attempts on the Count. Nearly got knifed by Order agents. And a cat in a basement just took five years off my life."
"At least it wasn't a ghost," Rei offered.
"Don't even joke about that. This place is haunted enough without, " Darius stopped mid-sentence, his expression suddenly serious. "Wait. Do you hear that?"
Rei went still, listening.
Nothing. Just the settling of old wood, the distant drip of water, the wind whistling through broken windows above.
"Hear what?"
Darius relaxed slightly. "Nothing. Just... making sure that cat didn't have friends." He shook his head, picking up the lamp again. "Come on. Let's find what we came for before something else tries to give me a heart attack."
They continued deeper into the basement, though Darius now checked every shadow twice and flinched at every small sound.
"You know," Rei said conversationally, "for someone who claims to have protected nobility, you're remarkably jumpy."
"That's because I learned to stay alive by being jumpy," Darius retorted. "The bodyguards who weren't paranoid? They're dead. I'm not." He paused. "Though at this rate, this stupid adventure might finish what the Order couldn't."
But despite his complaints, he kept moving forward, lamp held high, clearing the path.
And in the back, behind a collapsed shelf that took both of them to shift well, Darius doing the shifting while Rei provided moral support and sarcastic commentary they found it.
A door.
Locked.
"Of course it's locked," Darius sighed. "Because why would anything about this night be simple?"
Rei reached into his pocket and pulled out a thin piece of wire, he'd taken it from the medical supplies upstairs earlier, anticipating this exact situation.
"You know how to pick locks?" Darius asked, genuinely surprised.
"Learned from watching too many people break into places they shouldn't," Rei replied, which was technically true in his previous life, he'd seen plenty of scavengers and desperate people break into abandoned buildings.
"So you're a crippled prophet who picks locks and has suspiciously specific knowledge about noble gambling debts," Darius observed. "You're either the strangest kid I've ever met or the worst liar. Haven't figured out which yet."
The lock was old, simple, corroded. It took Rei three minutes of fumbling with hands that barely cooperated, but eventually
Click.
The door swung open.
Inside was a small office, surprisingly intact. Someone had cleared it out, but not thoroughly. Filing cabinets lined one wall, most of them empty. A desk sat in the corner, drawers pulled out and ransacked.
But behind the desk, partially hidden by fallen ceiling tiles, was a floor safe.
"There," Rei pointed.
Darius set him down carefully on a chair that threatened to collapse but held. "A safe. Great. And how exactly do you plan to open it?"
"Same way I knew about the door," Rei replied. "Informed guessing and stubborn refusal to accept defeat."
"That's not a strategy."
"It's worked so far."
"You're going to get us both killed."
"Only if that cat comes back."
Darius made a rude gesture but moved to examine the safe more closely.
And in the darkness of the ruined gambling house, surrounded by the ghosts of fallen nobility and terrible decisions, they prepared to steal the truth.