Viola parked her rugged car in the outskirts area and killed the engine out past the last streetlight. She then handed Xavier a little white pill cupped in her palm like it was nothing. Her hands were steady. The night smelled of wet tar and something burned two blocks over.

"What's this?" Xavier asked, turning it over between his fingers.

"Sleeping pill," she responded immediately as though she was expecting that question. "Eat it."

He blinked. "Why do I have to eat it? I can fake it. Collapse, snore, whatever—"

She cut him off with a look. "Fake and real read differently on scanners. Pulse, brain waves, micro-twitches. You get scanned once and they'll know."

Xavier swallowed and laughed dry. "What if I don't wake up. What if it drags me down and everything goes to shit?"

Viola shrugged like she hated the question and hated that she had to answer it. "On a normal body it knocks you out for an hour. We're not normal bodies, but the dose is calibrated for someone who moves like you. We're still a forty-five minute drive out. They'll spend maybe ten minutes checking you, doing the handoff, transferring, whatever their ritual is. And I will keep them busy too. By the time they leave, you'll be around the hour mark — you'll come back up with just enough time to move before anyone's suspicious."

He held her gaze, searching for the lie and not finding one. "And if it's off? If I wake up early or late?"

"We built a buffer." She tapped the little pack at her hip. "If you wake early, you lie still and bleed into the part of the plan where they think you're groggy. If you wake late, you still get the building's blind minutes — most of these places don't station people. They leave once the deal's done. You get one shot when they think you're harmless."

Silence folded between them for a beat. The city hummed—distant traffic, a dog barking like it had a point to make. Xavier cupped the pill and felt its small, indifferent weight.

He thought of the syringes in his jacket, the slick black case waiting like a promise. He thought of Kane's ledger and Maximillian's easy arrogance. He thought too of Viola's face lit by a dying neon strip, and the small, sharp trust in her eyes.

"All right." He slid the pill under his tongue and let it go down. He didn't chew. He didn't make a show of it. He just did it.

Viola watched him, then folded her hands into her lap like she was holding something fragile. "Keep your breathing steady," she said. "Don't panic when the room swims. Remember the count we practiced. One… two… three."

He forced out a smirk that wasn't a grin and leaned back as the world softened at the edges, the neon halo blurring into a smear. "This is gonna be so much fun," he mumbled, already losing the thread of the joke.

She didn't smile; she only reached over and hooked her fingers into his coat, a small, practical anchor. "Wake up," she said, dry as concrete. "Five minutes early, and we make the rest count."

He let the dark take him and when it did, he slipped into it like someone folding away a dangerous tool. Viola reclined his seat with the press of the button and then drove off.

Meanwhile, Ethan and Maxmillian were also on their way to the construction site. Once they reached there and slid out of the car and looked at the half-built skeleton of the tower that loomed above them, a gutted tooth against the night. Ethan stood for a moment and let the wind take his words. "Isn't this the one we had fun with the athlete's girl? What was her name? That bastard kept yelling and—" he began, then cut himself off; memory sat like a stain and he didn't need to name it.

Maximillian stared at the grey skeleton of concrete in front of them for a moment, face unreadable. Then he scoffed and pointed at another unfinished tower a block away. "That was there. You're mixing things up."

Ethan shrugged. "Doesn't matter." He started walking toward the elevator, his shoes echoing faintly through the hollow lobby.

They didn't waste breath on ghosts. The lobby smelled of wet cement and coolant. They stepped into the elevator and the cables hummed them upward, the city folding away beneath plate and steel.

Maximillian lit a cigarette and held it like a problem he enjoyed. "How do you plan to take Xavier?" he asked, not curious so much as entertained by the thought. "I've thought of a few ways myself — breaking every bone, maybe letting him bleed out slowly or you know what." The words were sharp but vague; the pleasure was in the suggestion, not the detail.

Ethan's smile was slow, patient. "I didn't get the luxury of time to fantasize," he said. "But it won't be painless. That's the point."

Maximillian's eyes flicked to him, then back to the cage of their ascent. "What if it's a setup?" he asked, the kind of question men ask when their arrogance starts to wobble.

Ethan's laugh had no humor. "If it is, then someone's playing a dangerous game. But I don't lose sleep over what-ifs." He tapped the side of the elevator as if testing the steel. "We're careful. We planned for contingencies."

"Was it worth spending 100 billion on hiring a space mercenary?" Maximillian mused, half impressed, half in disbelief.

"I have only given her the advance of 50 billion," Ethan corrected. "Not charity. And she won't see the rest anyways. That's business." He flicked a small, cruel smirk. "People sign on for work. People get their fees. People who cross me don't get refunds. Once Xavier's dead, she's next. No witnesses, no trails."

Maximillian chuckled, the sound like someone testing a blade. "Two guys against a space mercenary—seems thin."

"We're not alone." Ethan's voice dipped a notch. He produced a photo from his jacket and turned the phone toward Maximillian. It was Viola, caught in a candid frame—hair loose, eyes sharp. Maximillian took the picture, let it rest in his palm like a toy. His face split into a grin that didn't need words.

"It'd be a shame to ruin a pretty thing," he said, the thought crawling across him with that old, animal brightness. "Maybe we can sedate her somehow, cut off her limbs and have some fun with her before selling her off? You can make anything into currency."

Ethan nodded. "We've positioned men. Snipers, watchers, backup. A finger and it's over. And if she somehow slips past the first ring, there are others trailing after her, like dogs. Whatever happens, one thing is clear… Xavier will die tonight!"

The elevator pinged and opened on the sixty-ninth floor. The concrete yawed out into a raw shell of rooms, rebar and ragged light bulbs. They stepped out together, shadow and shadow, and the city spread under them like a map of small, unimportant lives.

They waited. The air smelled like rebar and dust and something like power. Ethan put the phone back in his pocket and folded his hands behind his back, patient as a viper. Maximillian rolled his cigarette between his fingers and watched the corridor, hungry for entertainment.

"Let her come," Ethan said, voice low as gravel. "Let her think she can bargain. We'll see how much she's worth when the ledger opens."

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