Location: The Hollow (Mercenary Staging Ground), Sector 2.
Time: 13:00.
The "Hollow" was not merely a hangar, it was a cathedral of violence carved directly into the bedrock beneath the Citadel.
The air was thick, humid, and tasted of unwashed bodies, cheap tobacco, and the acrid, metallic tang of weapon lubricant. The ceiling was lost in shadows, crisscrossed by gantries where steam-cranes moved munitions crates the size of small houses.
This was where the dogs of war waited for the whistle.
Dante and Silas walked through the rows of makeshift barracks. It was a zoo of lethal intent, a gallery of what humanity looked like when it was stripped of morality and upgraded for murder.
To their left, a squad of Trench-Stalkers sat in a circle. They were terrifying to behold—specialists in night raids, they had surgically removed their eyelids. In their place, brass-rimmed night-vision lenses were stitched directly into their ocular cavities, their skin fused to the metal with angry red scar tissue. They sharpened bayonets that glowed with heated mana, the sound of whetstones hissing like snakes.
To their right, a team of Heavy Gunners were playing poker, using live 50-caliber rounds as chips. They didn't hold their weapons, they were their weapons. Ammo belts fed from backpacks directly into ports grafted into their spines, cycling ammunition through their bodies and into the rotary cannons replaced their left arms.
"They're staring," Silas whispered, clutching his bio-hazard sack, which now contained the centrifuge, wrapped in the Persian rug like a dead body. "I feel like a gazelle walking through a lion enclosure. A gazelle wearing a 'Eat Me' sign."
"Don't look like prey, and they won't bite," Dante murmured. The Silvergrin was fixed in its permanent, metallic smile, projecting a confidence he didn't feel. "We need to secure a transport slot for the raid. The Baron said we join the vanguard, but I doubt he's giving us a seat in his personal tank."
They reached the center of the Hollow, a clearing dominated by a massive blackboard where the raid coordinates were being chalked up by a drone.
Standing there were the Captains from the meeting.
Iron-Head, the ogre-sized man with the steel skull, was arm-wrestling a steam-powered exoskeleton suit. With a grunt of exertion, he slammed the machine's hydraulic arm onto the table, shattering the wood. The Silent Sister was dismantling her sniper rifle with blindfolded precision, her cybernetic eye scanning the room independently of her head.
And Captain Grist was waiting.
He leaned against a crate of high-explosive munitions, his leather-patch skin glistening under the harsh electric floodlights. He wasn't alone. He was flanked by six of his lieutenants—men who looked like they had been assembled from spare parts, bad attitudes, and graveyard scraps.
Dante didn't slow down. He walked straight toward them.
"Fresh meat on the deck!" Grist shouted, his voice booming over the din of the hangar.
The room went quiet. The poker games stopped. The sharpening stones paused. Hundreds modified eyes locked onto the intruder.
Grist pushed off the crate and stepped into Dante's path. He was huge, a wall of muscle and stitched leather that smelled of tanning chemicals and old blood. He looked down at Dante, his eyes burning with humiliated rage.
"You think you're clever, Tin-Man?" Grist spat. A glob of spittle landed on the lapel of Dante's coat. "You think bending a gun barrel makes you a soldier?"
"It makes me efficient enough," Dante said calmly, his voice vibrating through his jaw. "Now, move. We have a war to prepare for."
"You don't have a war," Grist growled. He stepped closer, invading Dante's personal space until their noses were inches apart. "You have a death sentence. The Baron likes his bets, but out in the Ash Wastes? Accidents happen. Stray bullets find the strangest targets."
Grist's hand shot out. He grabbed Dante by the lapel of his coat, bunching the fabric in his massive fist. He lifted Dante slightly off the ground, leaving his boots dangling.
"You embarrassed me up there," Grist hissed, his breath hot and reeking of cheap gin. "In front of the General. No one walks away from me after that."
Dante hung there. He didn't struggle. He didn't kick. He hung with the limp dead weight of a corpse.
He analyzed the contact point.
Material: Cured leather glove on wool coat.
Enemy Composition: 80% Organic, 20% Leather grafts.
Proximity to jugular: 4 inches.
Dante's right hand—the Gentleman's Ripper—twitched at his side. The servos whined softly, a sound barely audible over the hum of the hangar. He could load a vial of acid. He could melt Grist's arm off at the shoulder in three seconds. He could turn the man into a puddle.
But he didn't. He used no mana. He used no alchemy.
Instead, Dante stared into Grist's eyes with his dead, grey gaze. He removed all emotion, all fear, all humanity from his expression, letting the "Void" inside him surface.
"If you pull that trigger, Grist," Dante whispered, his voice devoid of intonation, "make sure you kill me. Because if I survive, I will turn your lungs into glass and listen to you suffocate."
It wasn't a shout. It was a statement of fact. It was a promise delivered with the certainty of gravity.
Grist flinched.
It was microscopic, a twitch of the eye, a loosening of the grip. It wasn't fear of magic, it was the primal instinct of a predator realizing it had grabbed something it couldn't digest. He looked into Dante's eyes and saw... nothing. No fear. No anger. Just an empty furnace waiting to be fed.
"Enough!"
A massive hand clamped onto Grist's shoulder.
Iron-Head stood there. The steel plate on his skull gleamed under the lights.
"Drop him, Grist," Iron-Head rumbled. His voice sounded like rocks tumbling in a dryer. "The Baron gave an order. No infighting before the raid. You kill him now, the Baron feeds you to the moat. And I won't stop him."
Grist hesitated. He looked at Dante, then at Iron-Head, then back at Dante. The moment of psychological dominance had passed, replaced by sullen anger. He shoved Dante back.
Dante landed lightly on the balls of his feet, smoothing his coat as if he had merely tripped.
"You're lucky, Scavenger," Grist sneered, backing away to save face. "But the Wastes are big. Watch your back."
Grist spit on the ground near Dante's boots—a final, impotent gesture—then turned and marched away, his lieutenants trailing him like a pack of hyenas sensing a wounded alpha.
The tension in the room broke, but the hostility remained. The Heavy Gunners went back to their poker game, disappointed there wasn't a show.
Iron-Head looked down at Dante. He wasn't friendly, but he was professional.
"You got guts, little man," Iron-Head grunted. "But guts spill easily. Don't let that trick upstairs get to your head. Grist is a butcher. He'll use you as a human shield the first chance he gets."
"I appreciate the advice," Dante said, the Silvergrin flashing.
The Silent Sister, who hadn't looked up from her rifle during the entire exchange, finally spoke. Her voice was a digital rasp from a speaker embedded in her throat, flat and robotic.
"Target priority: Titans," she said. "If you become a liability to the mission, I will shoot you myself. Efficiency is paramount."
"Understood," Dante nodded politely.
He signaled Silas. They walked away, finding a quiet corner near the vehicle bay where The Psychopomp was being fueled.
A mechanic in a hazmat suit was pumping a thick, viscous red sludge into the hearse's tank. It smelled of copper and gasoline—Alchemical Ichor, a fuel blend made from refined monster blood and oil.
Silas exhaled a breath he had been holding for five minutes. He leaned against the cold armor of the hearse, sliding down slightly.
"That went well," Silas muttered, wiping sweat from his forehead. "I thought you were going to dissolve him. Why didn't you? You had the acid loaded. I heard the servos priming."
Dante leaned against the car, watching the red sludge pulse through the fuel hose. He reached into his coat and pulled out the leather-bound book—The Architecture of Eternity.
He opened it to a marked page. It wasn't a map. It was a dossier.
"I didn't dissolve him because I need him," Dante said, tracing a metal finger over Vespera's elegant handwriting.
"Vespera analyzed the Baron's forces," Dante explained. "She knew she would need a distraction to rob the vault. Look at her notes on Grist."
Silas peered at the book, reading the neat script. "Subject: Captain Grist. Vanity exceeds tactical acumen. Prone to reckless charges when challenged publicly. Optimal use: Bait."
Dante snapped the book shut. Thud.
"I provoked him on purpose, Silas. I need him angry. I need him reckless. I need him to want to prove he's better than me."
"Why?" Silas asked, looking at Dante with a mix of awe and horror.
"Because we're hunting a Bio-Titan," Dante said grimly. "Those things regenerate. They are unstoppable walls of flesh. To kill one, I need it to expose its Core. And to expose its Core..."
"...it needs to be feeding," Silas finished, realizing the cruelty of the plan.
"Grist wants to be the big man?" Dante said, pushing off the car as the fueling pump clicked off. "I'm going to let him. He's going to lead the charge. And while the Titan is busy chewing on him, I'm going to walk inside and kill it."
Dante looked back toward the group of mercenaries. Grist was laughing loudly, sharpening a massive machete, unaware that he was already a line item in a dead woman's ledger.
"It's a cruel plan, Dante," Silas whispered. "Even for us."
"It's not my plan," Dante said, his voice cold. "It's Vespera's. I'm merely the executor."
A siren wailed throughout the Hollow. The white floodlights died, replaced by spinning red hazard lights.
"ALL HANDS," the Baron's voice boomed over the speakers, shaking the dust from the ceiling. "DEPLOYMENT IN T-MINUS TEN. TARGET: SECTOR 7. LOAD UP AND ROLL OUT."
Dante climbed into the passenger seat of the hearse. He checked the pressure gauge on his arm.
"Let's go, Silas," Dante said. "The meat grinder is opening."