Morning did not come to the Tower Drome so much as it intruded. Light crept in low and gray, catching on steel edges and oil-slick puddles, revealing what the night had done without commentary or judgment.

  Three of the attackers were still alive.

  They were alive in the narrow, technical sense of the word.

  The missing-leg man lay on a stretcher at first light, shocky and pale, eyes glassy as medics stabilized him long enough to be moved. The hamstrung man had not stopped screaming until his voice gave out. The third, the one who had called the retreat, lay still and tight with pain, jaw clenched, eyes bright with hate.

  Otwin waited until the yard was secured, until the authorities were awake enough to be useless and not awake enough to interfere.

  Then he had the three men moved.

  The captured turret fort sat slightly apart from the Ol’ Five Seven, its silhouette squat and ugly against the pale sky. Military issue. Standardized. Built to be intimidating without being elegant. Inside, it was colder than expected, metal walls leaching warmth, systems idling at a low hum.

  It did, in fact, have an interrogation room.

  The space was compact and brutally practical. Bolted chair. Drain in the floor. Reinforced bulkhead. No decorative elements, no attempt at comfort. Someone had designed it with efficiency in mind, the assumption that answers mattered more than dignity.

  Doke stood near the doorway, rifle slung but ready, his expression unreadable beneath the low brim of his helmet. He had watched the attack unfold from above. He had fired when told to fire. Now he watched Otwin.

  The DAC’s presence was quiet but attentive, feeding Otwin data he did not ask for. Heart rate. Stress markers. Probability curves. He ignored most of it.

  The men were brought in one by one and secured.

  The missing-leg man went first. He shook so badly the chair rattled. Blood seeped through hastily applied bandages, darkening the fabric. His eyes never left the floor.

  “I do not know anything,” he said immediately, words tumbling over each other. “I swear it. I was just paid. Just muscle. I did not ask questions.”

  Otwin said nothing.

  The hamstrung man was next, dragged rather than walked, his ruined leg stiff and useless. He howled when they moved him, voice breaking into raw animal sounds that echoed off the metal walls.

  “Please,” he sobbed. “Please. I do not know. I do not know anything. I was told where to go. That is it. That is all.”

  Otwin still said nothing.

  The third man was brought in last.

  He held himself differently. Even injured, even bleeding, he carried his pain like a weapon. He looked straight at Otwin, eyes hard, mouth curled in a sneer.

  “You will get nothing from me,” he said. “Sod off.”

  Otwin finally spoke.

  “Oh, won’t we?”

  He raised the energy rifle.

  The DAC registered the target acquisition. Doke shifted his weight but did not interfere.

  Otwin aimed at the hamstrung man’s groin and pulled the trigger.

  The shot was precise.

  Energy burned flesh and bone away in an instant, the impact throwing the man back against the restraints. What had been there was simply gone, replaced by smoke, blood, and the smell of cooked meat.

  The scream that followed was everything Otwin expected it to be.

  The man shrieked until his throat tore raw, body convulsing against the chair, eyes rolling back as shock and agony crashed through him.

  The missing-leg man screamed, too.

  Not in pain.

  In terror.

  “Oh gods, oh gods,” he cried, voice breaking into sobs. “I was just hired. I swear. I swear I was just hired. I did not know who it was for. He knows. He knows. It is him.”

  He turned his head as far as he could, staring at the third man with wild desperation.

  “Wilt,” he blurted. “His name is Wilt. He works for the big gangs in the city. He is the one who arranged it. He is the one who knows.”

  Wilt spat blood and laughed.

  “You rat bastard,” he snarled. “You always were weak.”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Otwin lowered the rifle slightly.

  “Thank you,” he said to the missing-leg man, voice calm, almost polite. “That was very honest of you.”

  Then he shot him in the head.

  The report was sharp and final. The man slumped forward, lifeless.

  Otwin shifted the rifle a few degrees and fired again.

  The hamstrung man’s scream cut off mid-sound, his body jerking once before going still.

  Silence settled over the room.

  Wilt stared at the bodies, chest heaving, rage and fear warring across his face.

  “You are a monster,” he hissed.

  Otwin looked at him.

  “I can be,” he said. “But when I have killers coming to my home in the night... monstrousness isn't unwarranted.”

  Doke stepped forward and drove a boot into Wilt’s stomach.

  The kick lifted him out of the chair, sending him skidding across the metal floor until he hit the far wall with a dull, hollow sound. Wilt groaned, curling onto his side, breath wheezing out of him in wet gasps.

  Otwin did not rush him.

  He let the moment stretch. Let the reality sink in. Let Wilt understand the order of things.

  Outside the interrogation room, the turret fort’s systems hummed softly. Military-grade insulation kept the sounds contained. No one in the drome heard the screams. No one needed to.

  Otwin stepped closer, boots echoing on the deck plates.

  “You see how this works now,” he said. “You tell me what I want to know. Or you do not. Either way, I sleep tonight.”

  Wilt coughed, spit streaked with blood, hitting the floor.

  “Go to hell,” he muttered.

  Otwin’s expression did not change.

  The DAC quietly updated probabilities.

  This was not over yet.

  ***

  The door exploded inward.

  The impact was blunt and immediate. Powered armor met wood and metal at speed, and the barrier failed in a single violent motion. Panels tore free, hinges shrieked, and the doorway ceased to be a doorway at all. Broken sections skidded across a polished interior floor and came to rest against the far wall.

  They stepped through the opening wearing their armor, boots heavy, presence undeniable.

  The space beyond the door was quiet in the way expensive places always were.

  Not silent. Just controlled.

  The sound of the outside vanished as soon as they crossed the threshold, swallowed by thick stone walls and layered construction meant to smother noise as effectively as it repelled intrusion. Even their armored steps seemed muted by plush carpeting laid over the stone, offering just enough resistance to remind a man he was walking on wealth. The air smelled faintly of polish, old paper, and the subtle metallic tang of wards humming beneath the surface.

  The room opened up around them in measured excess.

  Mahogany dominated the space. The desk alone was massive, its surface polished to a mirror sheen, edges carved with restrained patterns that caught the light without demanding attention. Behind it, shelves held leather-bound ledgers marked with dates instead of titles, spines aligned with obsessive precision. Between them sat artifacts that bent the air around them in subtle, unpleasant ways, objects that made the eye want to slide away if it lingered too long.

  Along one wall, old banners were mounted behind glass, their fabric preserved far beyond what age should have allowed. Symbols stitched into them spoke of lineage, conquest, and debts paid in blood rather than coin. The light fixtures burned steadily and warmly, no flicker, no hiss, illuminating everything evenly without casting harsh shadows.

  Everything in the room existed to project control. Control that was suddenly, and violently, stripped away.

  The man from earlier stood up behind the desk.

  He was composed, suit perfect, hair immaculate, indignation already forming on his face as if he were practiced at being offended. He straightened to his full height and opened his mouth to speak.

  Otwin raised his energy rifle and pointed it directly at the man's chest.

  “Who would have thought,” Otwin said, voice flat and steady, “that one of the top members of the Banking Guild would also be the head of the criminal gangs in Rafborough.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought it,” Doke replied.

  Meechum’s expression hardened.

  “So what do you have to say, Mr. Meechum?” Otwin asked.

  “How dare you?” Meechum snapped. “You cannot just barge in here and...”

  Otwin surged forward.

  The desk was in his way.

  It was no obstacle.

  Otwin grabbed the heavy piece of furniture and hurled it aside. Wood and metal crashed across the floor, papers scattering, objects tumbling and shattering. The illusion of order collapsed with it.

  Meechum stumbled backward.

  Otwin closed the distance in two steps and seized him by the throat.

  Powered armor servos whined as Otwin lifted Meechum cleanly off the ground. His feet left the floor. His hands flew to Otwin’s wrist, fingers clutching at armored plating that did not yield.

  “You work for us now, Meechum,” Otwin said. “Got it?”

  Meechum gagged, face flushing, breath failing him.

  Otwin did not wait for an answer.

  “See, we got your man Wilt,” Otwin continued. “And we got a full confession out of him. We know enough to put you in prison. Or worse. Get you hanged.”

  Meechum’s eyes flicked sideways, calculation warring openly with the panic creeping up his spine. His jaw tightened, lips pulling back from his teeth as he tried to assemble an answer that would not get him killed.

  “You probably shouldn’t have sent your right-hand man,” Doke said casually, as if commenting on a bad investment instead of a trail of bodies.

  Meechum made a strangled, furious sound, part curse and part denial, the kind of noise a man made when reality refused to line up with his assumptions.

  “True,” Otwin said. “But we probably killed his other guys.”

  The words did not need emphasis. They carried their own weight.

  Something in Meechum broke at that. The anger that had been holding him upright drained out of his face, leaving it pale and tight. His grip on Otwin’s wrist weakened, fingers trembling as the fight went out of them. He was no longer thinking about power or position. He was thinking about survival.

  Otwin leaned in close, visor inches from Meechum’s face, close enough that Meechum could see his own distorted reflection in the armor. The servos held steady, inexorable, reminding him that this was not a grip he could escape.

  “We know you now,” Otwin said quietly. “We have you. We can come for you any time we want. There are dozens of us you don’t know about, and any one of us can turn your life into a living hell.”

  Meechum’s chest hitched as he tried to pull air past the pressure on his throat. His eyes darted again, searching for an out that did not exist.

  “Nod if you understand.”

  For a long second, pride held on, stiff and stupid.

  Then survival won.

  Meechum nodded, the motion small and desperate.

  Otwin held him there for another heartbeat, long enough to make sure the message settled deep, long enough for humiliation to take root alongside fear.

  “Good,” Otwin said.

  He released him.

  Meechum dropped hard to the floor, coughing violently, one hand clutching at his throat as he dragged air back into his lungs in ragged gasps. He did not try to stand. He did not look up.

  Otwin turned away without another word.

  The room around them was ruined. The desk lay overturned, its polished surface scarred and split. Papers and shattered objects littered the floor. The butler lay where he had been thrown, unmoving.

  And the balance of power in Rafborough had just shifted.