The study's fire smoldered low, more ornament than warmth. Frost webbed the blackwood desk in delicate veins, creeping around the feet of crystal decanters and the neat row of soul-candles guttered to dark. Velvet curtains hung heavy at the panes, their edges rimed in pale lace. Breath misted with every exhale.

Thomas knelt on the bare flagstones where the carpet ended, head bowed, hair plastered to his skull with sweat. The cold gnawed at his fingers and knees, but he didn't dare shift. The room smelled faintly of juniper and ink and the bitter tang of old ice. He kept his eyes fixed on a knot in the floorboard, watching it go out of focus and back again, as if it might answer the sick question turning in his gut: How did it come to this?

Silence lingered long after he finished choking out his report. It pressed at his ears, made them ring. Across the desk, Icefinger sat as a carved thing — still as the frost itself, blue eyes burning like trapped stars. The capos ranged to either side in their accustomed arc: Kira, shadow-still with her hood thrown back, green eyes slit; Seraphina composed, fingers folded around the head of her moonlit staff; Isolde with one hip perched on a side table, smile too bright by half; Orion, sleek silver tails coiled at her ankles, tapping her staff in a slow, impatient rhythm. Seeker lounged nearest the liquor, all easy charm and polished boots, his bright smile dimmed only by the bruises he'd bothered to cover.

The quiet stretched until the hairs on Thomas's neck prickled. Then Orion's lips peeled back from white teeth in something that was not a smile.

"I told you it was foolish," she said, her voice a velvet purr edged in glass. "New blood and old ties make poor replacements for experience. You send a boy to do a professional's job, and we bleed for it."

Thomas flinched despite himself. He stared harder at the knot, jaw clenched. He could still see it when he closed his eyes — Maggy's sparks blooming into explosions, the red-haired brat turning bear, Sister Audrea lifting half the street with a flick of her wrist. Jonah's eyes lit silver like coins in the dark. He swallowed, throat clicking.

Seeker's laugh came warm and mild, the practiced balm of a friendly merchant. "Oh come now, Orion. Even my handler didn't see that twist coming." He gestured past Thomas with two fingers, and a thin smile cut across his face. "Besides, the boy's brought back quite a consolation prize."

On the desk, three palm-sized crystals lay on a square of black felt, each catching the chill light in different colors. With a flick, Seeker rolled one toward Icefinger. Frozen images bloomed within their depths: Maggy, soot-streaked, staff lit like a coal; Garrelt with his hunter's eyes and weathered jaw; Dr. Maria stepping out of the smoke with her nurses like a general with her banners.

"Faces," Seeker murmured, tapping each with a nail, "Enough to confirm what we already suspected — with or without the girl."

Kira's ear twitched. "Proof that a handful of Guild pets and an old woman can embarrass us on a temple's front steps," she said, voice flat.

Isolde's bracelets chimed as she leaned forward, eyes bright. "It was rather dramatic, wasn't it? The flares, the ice — mm. Shame about the bakery. I liked their almond cakes."

"Enough," Seraphina said softly, and the room quieted. Her gaze slid to Icefinger, patiently waiting.

The criminal lord didn't move, only lifted a gloved hand. The room stilled further, sound leached by cold. Even the fire dimmed.

"Orion," he said, and the single word laid frost along Thomas's spine. "Confirmation."

Orion's ears flicked. She dipped her head with reluctance. "Confirmed. Through three separate channels." A lazy swish of her tails. "Maggy Greenwood and Garrelt of the Guild, co-leads for the expedition to the Deep. The healer is Dr. Maria Corvane." She glanced sidelong at Seeker, eyes glittering. "Hired on your recommendation for Bosco's advance team. Before… their sudden failure."

Seeker's smile didn't falter. "Which I've been very clear about making amends for," he said lightly.

"As for the fourth," Orion continued, ignoring him, "we have an armored figure of unfamiliar make. Aesthetic aligns with what Seeker brought back from the cavern. He spoke for the insect drone. Odds are excellent he's connected to the dungeon somehow." Her mouth flattened. "The boy with the silver eyes, however—"

"Later," Icefinger murmured.

"I see," he added, and it was impossible to tell whether the words signaled approval or the promise of a grave.

A new voice broke in from the back, unsure, too loud in the hush. "So its true then? Magnus… failed?" Isolde's mirth faded as she asked it, sudden and small. Seraphina's eyes cut sharply her way, a warning born of old discipline.

Thomas dared a glance up. Icefinger's gaze had fallen on one of the candles — the black one shot through with blue, cold wick dead and dull. His expression did not change. Frost spread in a thin fan across the desk's edge, the sound of it like paper tearing.

Another capo — Kira, perhaps, or one of the enforcers clustered near the door — clicked a claw against leather. "But could they have arrived before our men?" she pressed. "They would have had to leave beforehand."

"They had help," Orion said before Seeker could open his mouth. "You can feel it in the gaps. The pattern's wrong. Someone cut a path for them."

Seeker chuckled, all teeth.

Words started to stack, voices trod over one another — quick, sharp, dangerous. "—if the Guild knows—" "—what of the boy—" "—Seraphina, deploy—" "—my men at the river—"

Then the temperature plunged.

Frost bloomed across the walls, raced up the velvet like ivy. The air itself thickened, turned to glass in Thomas's lungs. He bit back a gasp as ice shocked his sweat-chilled back. Even Isolde's playful little fire-charm guttered on her wrist, strangled to a coal.

"Quiet." Icefinger didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to.

Silence obeyed him like a well-trained beast.

He steepled his claws, eyes hooded, and let the room count their heartbeats.

"Watch the temple," he said at last, voice so soft that they leaned in to catch it. "All of it. Doors, tunnels, roofs. Watch their 'guests' and the ones who come and go to solicit them. The Guild will circle; the clans will sniff. I want names, faces, routes. No one touches them yet."

Orion bowed, lips smoothing into professionalism. "Consider it done."

"Kira," Icefinger continued, "shadow the Guard posts. If any of ours are pulled into custody, replace the watchers with our own. Quietly."

Kira's whiskers twitched. "Understood."

"Seraphina," he said, "begin pulling threads. If they came ahead of my… messenger, I want to know how, and from where"

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Seraphina inclined her head, the faintest of smiles curving her mouth. "It will be a pleasure."

"Seeker." Icefinger's eyes found the smiling man at last. "Clean your mess. Quietly. I don't want the smell of your handlers on the wind."

Seeker pressed a hand to his heart with theatrical earnestness. "Wouldn't dream of doing otherwise."

Icefinger's gaze slid past them all, finally alighting on Thomas as if noticing him for the first time. The boy's head bowed on instinct, shoulders drawing tighter. His mouth filled with the copper taste of blood where he'd bitten the inside of his cheek to keep from shivering.

"Thomas," Icefinger said.

The name cracked through Thomas like a rod. "Sir," he croaked, voice rasping.

"You will remain useful," Icefinger said. "Or you will stop being a problem at all. Do you understand?"

The words weren't loud. They didn't need to be. They settled on Thomas's spine like snow that would never melt.

He swallowed and forced his voice steady. "Yes, boss."

"Good." Icefinger flicked two fingers, a dismissal and a benediction made of ice. "Report to Orion for assignments. And get your face mended. I prefer my men unrecognizable for their competence, not their bruises."

A ripple of low, humorless laughter moved through the room and died there. Orion's tails swayed as she turned, already beckoning. Seeker tipped the stopper of the decanter with a gracious flourish and poured himself a measure of something that smoked faintly in the cold.

Thomas pushed himself up, legs slow to obey. Pins and needles shrieked in his feet. He dared a last look at the desk as he rose. The crystals glowed faintly, holding those faces in their depths — Maggy's, proud and infuriating; the huntsman; the old doctor with the hard eyes. The black candle on the corner sat dead, as if what it had once held had slipped away forever. For a breath, the room swam.

He kept one ear cocked as he backed toward the door, as any gutter kid learned to do. Orders murmured, schedules spun. The ice creaked. Seeker laughed softly at some private jest. Orion didn't glance back to see if he followed.

Thomas swallowed the taste of fear and pride and something that felt like sickness, square in the middle of his chest, and wondered if he'd really made the right choice. He pulled the door open at Orion's nod, the handle biting his palm with cold, and stepped into the dim corridor beyond, shiver riding his spine and the echo of Icefinger's "Watch" following him like a second shadow.

——————————————————

The hearth in the Prima temple's small meeting room ticked and hissed, its heat more symbolic than real. Stone held the night's chill like an oath. A long table of dark oak ran the length of the chamber, scarred with years of parish ledgers and children's homework, now crowded with faces that had looked death in the teeth an hour ago.

Introductions had been made. The story had been told — Maggy and Garrelt carrying the shape of the Deep into the room with them with spare, careful words; Dr. Maria filling in quiet gaps with a surgeon's clarity. By the time they finished, the air itself seemed heavier.

Sister Audrea leaned back in her chair until the wood creaked, eyes distant. The lamplight cut thin lines along her cheekbones. "If anyone else told me they planned to root out and eliminate Icefinger's organization, I would have laughed them out of my doors," she said at last. She shook her head, a small, tired gesture, and looked toward the divan against the far wall.

Jonah lay there, slack as a shed skin, his robe open at the throat. Ann had scrubbed away most of the grime before disappearing out the door. Damp hair clung to his temple, but his breath, measured and even, seemed almost peaceful, even as the silver threads under his skin chased each other faintly like fish beneath ice.

"But after what I've seen…" Audrea let the sentence trail off. The unspoken settled like dust.

A door whispered. Ann shouldered through, balancing a tray heaped with pastries and a teapot fogging the air. In the sterile lantern-light, she hardly resembled the red-maned fury who had torn through men minutes before. Instead, it fell as a glossy black curtain, braided over one shoulder in a tidy twin to Audrea's. The fire in her features banked to cinder; wariness cooled her eyes to slate. She did not look at the tea she set down. She crossed to Jonah and, with the precise tenderness of someone used to cleaning scraped knees, wiped another sputter of soot from his jaw.

Bartholomew sat beside Audrea, one heel hooked on the chair rung, Jonah's staff propped within easy reach. He had gone very still during Maggy's account, and now stared frowning at the group on the other side of the table. He straightened and leaned forward, his fingers tenting.

"We've heard plenty about this cavern and why you're here," he said, eyes on the [Wasp] perched on Hugo's shoulder. "And we thank you for the timely rescue. Even if it was for Maggy's sake. But we've still heard nothing about what you've done to Jonah."

The drone's red eye adjusted a fraction. Alpha lifted one delicate forelimb. "We're getting there," he said, the words smooth as a plane shaving wood. "It's simply… difficult to explain without context." He turned the optic toward Dr. Maria. "Doctor, if you would."

Dr. Maria exhaled as if bracing for a lecture she'd given a thousand times. She rolled back one sleeve past the elbow and laid her forearm across the table.

At first, nothing. Then hairline seams parted along her skin with a soft hiss, and two lattices of matte metal irised out from beneath, unfolding like flowers from a seed. Tiny instruments winked to life between them — needles no thicker than hairs, diagnostic nodes that gave off the faintest blue. The table audibly gasped.

"This is called a cybernetic implant," Alpha said. His voice carried the patience of a tutor with an obstinate class. "Think of it as an… artifact that integrates with the body."

Audrea's mouth flattened. She turned her face to the drone with the slow inevitability of a turning millstone. "And you've given one of these 'artifacts' to Jonah?" Her tone didn't rise; it deepened, something like stone shearing beneath a river. "Can it be removed?"

"That," Alpha answered, "is where things become tricky."

A wash of light spilled from Dr. Maria's arm. Above the table, a ghost of Jonah's body appeared, lines clean as an anatomical woodcut. As Alpha spoke, segments glided into view: thousands of fine threads lacing through flesh like veins of blue; the lower three-fourths of Jonah's spinal column replaced with an elegant, terrible framework of metallic bone and crystal alloy.

"For someone like the good doctor, who can freely manipulate her own body, installing or removing implants is straightforward," Alpha continued. "For others, the process is more… intrusive but simple enough. The D.U.C.K. system, however, is another beast entirely."

Ann's cloth paused on Jonah's cheek. Bartholomew leaned in despite himself. Garrelt swore under his breath.

"To allow the user to do what they do," Alpha said, "the implant given to Jonah doesn't merely augment. It consumes. It supplants much of the spinal cord and peripheral nerves, grafting in its own network."

Audrea flinched as if struck. The little color she had left fled. "You—" Her chair scraped stone. She planted both palms on the table and pushed.

Hugo shifted instantly, plates sliding with a whisper. Bartholomew moved at the same time, intercepting Audrea with his hands on her upper arms; Maggy stepped in on the other side, breath tight.

"How could you do that to a boy?" Audrea hissed. The stone underfoot thrummed; a single hairline crack walked itself across the tiles between her feet and the drone.

"Because he was going to die," Alpha said, not unkindly. "Because you were all going to die."

"Sister, please," Maggy grunted, muscles straining under Audrea's corded strength. She looked past the braid and the fury to the little red lens. "You said it was difficult to remove, not impossible. Right?"

Alpha took the smallest of beats. "Right. Not impossible." He retracted the projection with a flick. The ghost of a spine sighed out. "We have removed D.U.C.K. systems before. It's not an easy thing to do, but it's not unheard of."

Bartholomew's grip loosened a fraction. Audrea's chest heaved.

"The difficulty lies in what must be rebuilt to replace what the system replaces," Alpha went on. "We would need specialized equipment to regrow large sections of his nervous system — every axon guided, every synapse taught to fire in sequence. What's more, it takes months of rehab afterward for the new network to learn the body again. Its not something that can, or should, be done easily."

"I'm assuming something like that takes highly specialized equipment, however. Doesn't it? Equipment you would have to build." Dr. Maria said, voice already brisk, businesslike. She folded the lattices back into her arm as neatly as knitting.

"Eventually," Alpha said. "But not tonight. And not tomorrow. I can build it in the Deep, at my facilities there, or after I am established here. Those are the options."

Ann's face did not change, but the cloth in her hand trembled once. "So he's stuck like this," she said flatly, gesturing toward the boy. "As this… monster you made him?"

Alpha shook his head. "He's not a monster, and he's not stuck like this," Alpha smirked. " Besides. You're forgetting one very important fact," Alpha said.

Audrea turned her head, jaw clenched so tight the tendons stood out like cords. "And what," she said through her teeth, "would that be?"

On the divan, Jonah stirred. It was not the convulsion from before, nor the puppet-precision of the thing that had stood on the steps. It was the slow, human struggle of someone surfacing from too deep a dream. All eyes snapped in his direction.

He blinked, lashes clumped. He pushed himself up on both elbows, shaky, and swallowed until his voice obeyed him.

"This," he said, hoarse but steady, "is what I agreed to."

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