The room was colder than the river above it. Red emergency strips traced the ceiling like veins; the rest was shadow and polished black stone. At the room's heart: a table of obsidian that reflected every figure seated around it as if each wore a second mask made of night.
Four chairs were occupied. One remained empty, more by ritual, not accident. Talon liked its myths.
Cain stood at the foot of the table, sapphire mask glistening, rain still drying on the shoulders of his coat. He did not sit. He never did when he was to be the voice of the meeting.
"Begin," said the woman in the onyx mask, voice smooth and exacting, as if each word had been weighed before leaving her mouth.
Cain clasped his hands behind his back. "Dagger's integration has surpassed projection. He's earned operational trust at Vulturis and within two outpost cells. Through his involvement, Project Meret is back underway. The assistant, Koren, is compliant. Trials have resumed."
A low electronic thrum, like a thoughtful inhale, moved through the chamber as the voice modulator of the golden-masked elder kicked in. "Define 'resumed.' We were promised results, not rituals."
Cain ignored his attitude, he knew out of anyone in the group, his division was the most difficult while this guys division merely secured finances. Of course he felt he was superior to them when in reality if he was faced with a difficult problem, he would fold instantly. "Resumed means controlled," Cain said. "Containment holds. Adaptive spikes are lower. Dormancy protocols function on command."
The crimson half-mask leaned forward, elbows on glass, voice young and edged. "Command by whom?"
"By me," Cain said. "And by those I empower."
"Which currently includes a man who answers to the Director of Overwatch," the crimson mask returned. "Tell me that is not what we are doing here."
The onyx mask did not look at her colleague. "Is it wise to allow him contact with Adawe at all?"
Cain smiled without warmth. "It is inevitable. He is valuable precisely because he maintains that line. If we cut it, he becomes a martyr in waiting. We don't need martyrs. We need instruments."
"And instruments have owners," the golden mask rasped.
The onyx mask's tone turned almost indulgent. "Whatever he still does for Overwatch won't matter. If Rose drifts out of line, we expose what Dagger has done. The world loves its heroes until it remembers they bleed. Public ruin is cheaper than bullets."
"Precisely," Cain said. "As long as we limit what work crosses his desk, what doors he opens—he remains our creature. He does our dirty work while believing it is his penance."
The crimson mask tapped a precise rhythm against the table. "And yet your creature crippled our Rourke arm."
"Its not like any of us even miss Rourke. He was asking for his own downfall." Cain countered.
Silence settled, and with it the sound of the room's machinery: air cycling, data whispering, the heartbeat of an organization that never slept. The elder's golden mask turned slightly, a gesture that meant new pressure was coming.
"Deadlines," the old voice said. "You know them. The first phase of our major initiative is in two months. The scaffolding is in place, finance, logistics, political cover. It collapses without bodies that do what they are told. We 'desperately need, and I'm quoting our Munich node, Meret prototypes that do more than die beautifully in a glass box."
The word desperately hung like frost.
Cain did not blink. "Within the month, I will deliver functional Meret soldiers. They will tolerate order. They will obey it."
"Functional," repeated the crimson mask, skeptical. "As in…?"
"As in they will hold shape under fire, recognize command hierarchies, and execute without improvisation unless directed to adapt," Cain said. "Think of them as trained instincts wrapped in flesh."
The onyx mask's voice was velvet over wire. "And they will not experience the old failures?"
"They will not," Cain answered. "I will put Dagger at the helm of this project. His mind will take up for Koren's shortcomings."
The elder considered. "And the handler?"
Cain turned a palm up, unhurried. "First with a human voice. Later with a key."
The crimson mask laughed once, short. "You intend to teach soldiers what 'Later' means?"
"I intend," Cain said mildly, "to teach the world gratitude."
The onyx mask shifted, a ripple through shadow. "What does Dagger believe he's doing?"
Cain returned the smile to where it belonged. "Saving people from us."
"And we will let him keep believing that?"
"Belief is the cheapest leash," Cain said. "He approaches Project Meret as a man standing between a blade and a throat. He tells himself he is the steady hand. He cannot see that his calm is the engine."
The elder, voice softer now: "Adawe will no doubt put him on a leash as well."
Cain shrugged, "And we can work around that. So long as we point him in the direction that we want, it will be done.
The crimson mask steepled fingers. "Morrison? Reyes?"
"I have people watching their movements. So far, it looks as though they are still ignorant of Vulturis. I doubt either of those men would know of its existence and not burn it to the ground."
The onyx mask's next question was a blade angled at his throat. "Have you even asked him about his future knowledge yet? We need to know what he knows.
"Nothing yet." Cain said dismissively. He knew she was impatient, even though she deals with information gathering and spending misinformation. "It's obvious that he doesn't even share information like that with Adawe, we would have to either establish a level of trust between us and him or force him into a situation where he has no choice but to share that information with us. Without making him into an enemy, of course."
"And our names, our true identities?" the elder prompted.
Cain's eyes cooled. "Buried. Always."
"What's your plan for the Meret Project?" Crimson asked.
A screen along the wall pulsed to life without command, an external feed from Vulturis: a containment bay, two technicians, the dull glow of a subject sleeping under the new scaffold, chest rising with metronome regularity. The crimson mask watched it with something between fascination and distaste.
"Ugly," they said.
"Useful," Cain corrected.
The onyx mask folded her hands. "Outline the month."
Cain obliged.
"Week one: finalize the dormancy lock and command handshake. Koren believes he invented it. We will let him keep that pride; proud men walk where you point them. Dagger will be visible in the lab, seen to be the steadying force, heard insisting on ethics while he signs the work that kills them."
"Week two: small-unit training. Four prototypes under live-fire simulation, handler line-of-sight only. We measure compliance drift, pain response, group echo."
"Week three: field shadow. We attach two prototypes to a deniable cell in the Carpathian corridor under storm cover. Limited exposure, controlled egress."
"Week four: culling and consolidation. We discard the screaming, keep the quiet, roll learnings into batch two. Deliver eight to Munich for the first movement of the plan."
"Your 'first movement' will not wait," the elder said. "The window is two months because the window is two months. Political weather cannot be scheduled a third time."
"It won't need to be," Cain said. "You will have bodies that bow on command."
The crimson mask flicked a glance sideways. "And Dagger, won't throw your toys on the floor when you hand him the box?"
"He may try to oppose us, but in the end, he'll help with the project as he has no choice but to. He can't help but prove himself to us so we take advantage of that and give him our much needed to complete projects and they will be done."
The onyx mask's breath was almost a laugh. "You admire him."
"I admire instruments," Cain said. "He is a Stradivarius someone tried to use as a shield."
"Be certain, then," the elder warned, "that when the concert ends, the violin is not playing you."
Cain allowed himself the luxury of honesty. "If he plays me, it will be because I composed the music."
A soft tone chimed from the wall. The Vulturis feed zoomed without a hand on it: the subject's eyelids tremored; the chest quickened; the heartline steadied beneath the plateaus. The crimson mask tilted their head.
"Waking?"
"Dreaming," Cain said. "Learning is a kind of dream that repeats itself until it believes it's real."
The onyx mask rose, the motion elegant and unsettling. "Then let it dream quickly. The board will have proof of function within the month. No more simulations dressed as triumphs. Soldiers, Cain. At least prototypes that can follow orders."
"You will have them," he said. "And you will have them in the right uniforms."
The elder's voice gentled into finality. "Proceed."
The crimson mask lingered. "Remember Cain, that if Dagger betrays us and you share the same fate as Rourke, you'll be the only one going down, not the rest of us."
The onyx mask tapped the table once, meeting over. One by one, the other figures dissolved into dark as their secure relays cut. Their reflections clung a second longer on the glass, then vanished too, as if the room refused to admit anyone had ever occupied it.
Cain stood alone with the hum of the systems and the faint reflected pulse of a city that had no idea who owned the floor under its feet.
He exhaled, slower than the machines around him, and turned toward the exit. The elevator answered his approach like a dog that understood only one master.
Halfway to the doors, he stopped, listening, a habit, not fear. Somewhere in the bowels of the compound a distant alarm chirped twice and died. Correction, not trouble. He smiled. It pleased him when the building remembered its lessons.
At the threshold, he palmed the panel, then paused again and spoke to no one the way men in empty churches do.
"Within a month," he said, as if sealing a vow to the steel. "Soldiers who can hear a command and love it."
The doors slid shut.