Munich at night felt like bone. The winter air came off the Isar in hard, serrated gusts that cut through armor and cloth and memory. There were no street vendors left this far in; no neon pulse from bars, no late cabs, no drunk laughter. The district around the Arc Spire didn't have a nightlife. It had a curfew.
And under that curfew, something else had grown.
"Perimeter three is blind," came the whisper in Dagger's ear.
Not over normal comms. Through the spine-link. The obedience implants at the base of each Meret soldier's neck could throw short-band thought-pulses to Dagger's receiver. The voice that reached him now had a rasping metallic edge, like wire dragged over leather.
That voice belonged to Six.
Six moved like he'd been poured instead of born, kind of wiry, quick, constantly coiled. His real name, the one he'd given, anyway, was Oren. Talon had stamped SIX on his shoulder after bonding. Oren didn't argue. Oren didn't blink much either. He was twitch-fast, range-scout instinct, always checking the corners no one else saw. His jaw flexed when he listened, like he was chewing on sound.
"Copy," Dagger said.
He didn't speak loud. He didn't need to. The Meret unit already listened to him the way predators listen to blood in the air.
They moved in stagger formation through an overflow tunnel buried under the Spire's industrial quarter. The concrete arced low and sweating, forcing even the biggest of them to keep their heads down. Runoff water pushed past their boots in a thin, filthy current, glinting here and there where the overhead hazard lights managed to reach. Every step sent little ripples sliding away into the dark.
There were ten of them. Ten who'd survived full Meret bonding.
Dagger led, his mask reflecting back the tunnel's dim yellow. Behind him:
Brann walked second.
Brann had been the loudest in the lab, the one who'd mouthed off during conditioning and grinned through discipline. Before Cain remade him, he'd introduced himself as Brann Koval, Novgorod mercenary captain. Now Talon just called him BRANN, like a weapon, no number. Built like a siege engine. Shoulders like plated stone. Arms roped in muscle that didn't look like muscle anymore — more like something grown with intention. Brann walked like gravity annoyed him. His eyes carried a faint, steady gold when the dark hit them.
He hadn't stopped smiling since Geneva.
On Dagger's right, just behind Brann, stalked Two.
Two didn't talk if he could help it. When asked for a name, he'd just said "Two" and dared anyone to push harder. He was shorter than Brann, heavier in the torso but dense, brutal, compact. Hands like hydraulic presses. Talon had him earmarked for "contact suppression," which was a clean way to say, "put him on anyone you want to stop breathing." He had a habit of pressing his tongue to his back molars when he was thinking, like he was tasting restraint.
At Dagger's left, keeping pace like a ghost, padded Nine.
Nine was almost pretty, in a too-still way. Lean, high-cheekboned, pale under the serum's faint luminescent undertone. Before Meret, Nine had been intel-runner and knife work; after, he'd become something more surgical. His physiology had taken to blade-growth particularly well — claws, spikes, plated ridges that could extrude from bone with almost no delay. He smiled rarely, and when he did it meant something was going to bleed. He watched Dagger when he thought no one saw.
Beside Nine moved Vex.
No number. Just VEX, stenciled on her collar in scarred white ink. She was the only woman in the unit who'd made it through full bonding. Medium height. Coiled, balanced, clean stride. Vex had the quiet lethal vibe of someone who'd grown up stepping between drunk men and knives. Her eyes were a dark amber now, almost black around the rim. She kept her hair buzzed down to the scalp, which showed the faint gold branchwork under her skin more clearly than the others. She didn't posture. She didn't need to. In training, Brann had tried her once. Only once.
Behind them came Six, Oren, in his natural role: rear scan, eyes everywhere.
Then Rook.
Rook had been support muscle in Gibraltar smugglers once, if his file was true. Broad build, thicker midsection, heavy hands. Slow on paper, not slow in reality. His serum expression leaned toward defense. He adapted by hardening, layering, weight-shifting, he could make his forearms into shields, his ribs into tank plating. Cain liked to watch him take hits. Rook didn't like Cain.
Ash had said his name was Ashton and Talon had actually let him keep it for reasons Shawn hadn't asked about yet. He had burns old and new mapped across his shoulders and throat some scars, some fresh adaptive overlay. Ash moved jittery, all nerve. He flexed his fingers while walking like he was practicing throttling someone in his head. He grinned too much at blood.
After Ash came Mara. She was quiet even by Nine's standard. Tall. Long reach. Face like cut stone. Her serum had run cold. Where the others held a warm gold under the skin, Mara ran pale, the faintest frost-line shimmer along her veins that crept and retreated as she breathed. Her adaptation leaned temperature-directional: rapid cooling when threatened, bursts of heat when striking. Koren had looked at her in the lab and whispered, "impossible" in a way that had sounded like "beautiful" and "terrifying" shoved into the same space.
Then Silas.
Silas had kept his full name because he was arrogant enough to insist. He'd come into this as a Talon contractor, not a hostage. Tall, long-limbed, shoulders a little too narrow to be intimidating until you watched him move. The serum had gifted him with elasticity, tendon and ligament that didn't behave like human tendon anymore. He flowed. He bent past what joints should allow. He had a habit of cracking his neck before every fight, like he was tuning an instrument.
Lastly, anchoring the rear, came Six's shadow, Oren's little echo, which the squad had jokingly nicknamed Pip.
Pip hadn't had a designation long enough to earn a real stamp yet. He'd been the last to survive bonding. Youngest, too, early twenties at most, still carrying that coiled hunger of a kid who'd grown up with nothing and had that nothing weaponized. Pip's adaptation was speed. Pure, simple, terrifying speed. He vibrated even when standing still, like his muscles hadn't figured out what "resting state" meant. He stayed glued to Six's flank like a hawk's second set of eyes.
Ten bodies. Ten weapons. Ten problems. And one handler in black. Dagger.
He moved at the head of them, the flood tunnel water breaking against his shins, mask reflecting back a smear of hazard-light yellow. His coat was different down here than the long civilian cut he'd worn to meetings; this one was Talon-make matte, segmented, armored across the ribs and shoulders in a way that didn't read like body armor until it needed to. The mask was full, expressionless, black glass. No insignia.
Cain had told him, quietly and almost lovingly: You're Dagger now. Wear that like a confession or a flag, I don't care which.
Behind the smooth face of that mask, Shawn kept his breathing controlled and his mind split down two tracks.
Track one: mission. Track two: survival beyond the mission.
Ahead of him, the tunnel sloped upward. The water thinned to a thin metallic sheen. The stench of runoff gave way to cold, cycling air, sharpened with ozone.
They were close. Dagger raised a fist. The unit stopped instantly. Not just most of them. All of them. That was new.
Three weeks ago, Cain had needed to shock them to halt mid-action. Now they froze on Dagger's hand signal alone. Even Brann, Brann, who lived to test edges, went from rolling forward momentum to statue-still without argument.
Six lowered his head slightly, listening. "No patrols within fifty meters," he breathed over the link. "Thermals ahead plus internal coolant bleed. Spire vent junction. Blind angle, just like map."
"Good," Dagger said.
Brann leaned in, voice low and full of that feral humor that annoyed and, occasionally, helped. "Smells like someone boiled a factory up there."
"You like that smell," Rook muttered.
Brann grinned. "Smells like work."
"Focus," Dagger said.
Brann flashed teeth. "Always do."
They were near the entry Cain had chosen. Bottom Entry. Cain's words. The maintenance access point under the Arc Spire, the one no civilian schematics listed and no Talon intel net had mapped, because it hadn't belonged to Cain when those maps were made. Weiss had carved this place into his own sanctuary. Cain had stolen just enough of that blueprint back to build an insertion path.
Dagger lifted his wrist and checked the tactical overlay inside his mask. It flickered to life, pale and skeletal against darkness: the Arc Spire in white lines and red veins. The Spire didn't tower like a vanity skyscraper. It sat heavy, rooted into the industrial grid like a drill head. Lower levels thick with machinery and sealed freight doors. Middle layers clean and clinical. Top section bristling with white armored plating and auto-turret spines like quills.
The map Cain had forced into his HUD pulsed out entry vectors, kill zones, structural weaknesses, emergency seals, fallback corridors, even Cain's predictions on Weiss's internal guard rotations.
It also, quietly, showed him where Cain had marked detonation nodes for after.
Shawn didn't look at those yet.
He looked instead at the newest overlay, a single pulsing marker in the Spire's upper core: CONVERGENCE.
That was where Cain said Weiss would be.
"Cain," Dagger said quietly.
His mic fed it straight into Cain's ear. Nobody else's.
"Status," came Cain's voice instantly. Silk on metal.
"We're at Bottom Entry. One hundred meters out."
"Is your channel clean?"
"Yes."
"And the assets?"
Dagger turned his head just enough to catch his squad in the half-light.
Brann rolling his shoulders like he couldn't wait to hurt something that might deserve it. Two flexing his hands, knuckles cracking like knifeblades under skin. Nine quiet, watching for betrayal first, violence second. Vex unreadable, eyes hard. Six twitch-alert, already picturing the rooms they hadn't breached. Rook steady, coiled like a shield about to be used as a hammer. Ash grinning faint and hungry, like a kid about to break a window. Mara icy calm, steam feathering faintly from her mouth in the cold. Silas loose and fluid, every joint relaxed, like he'd never in his entire life felt tension. Pip humming with barely contained velocity, pupils wide.
"They're responsive," Dagger said.
Cain didn't say good. Cain never said good. Cain said, "Your mission profile remains unchanged."
Dagger's jaw went tight behind the mask. "Understood."
"Report back when you breach internal perimeter."
Cain didn't sign off yet. There was always one more thing.
"And Dagger?" His tone warmed, almost paternal. "Make me proud."
The line clicked out.
Dagger felt Brann glance at him sidelong. "He your dad, or..."
"Shut up," Vex murmured without looking.
Brann smirked. "Just asking."
They moved.
The tunnel ended in a vertical culvert shaft with a maintenance ladder half-rotted with condensation. Dagger went first. His gloves bit metal. His coat brushed concrete. He climbed fast, no wasted movement.
One by one, his squad followed.
It should've been noisy. Ten bodies in a narrow shaft? Metal rungs, boots, gear? It wasn't. They'd adapted to their own silence. Weight distribution. Micro-corrections. No scrape, no clatter, no grit kicked loose. Even Brann, who used to stomp everywhere like the ground owed him money, now flowed like someone had retuned every muscle to absorb sound.
At six meters up, Dagger stopped and pressed his palm flat to the seam Cain had flagged in the brief. It didn't look like a door. Just an equipment panel welded into the shaft wall and painted to match.
He slid a blade into the seam. Pried. The weld groaned and parted. Cold, processed air hissed out into the shaft like exhaled refrigeration.
Beyond the ripped panel lay the Arc Spire's underbelly.
Dagger twisted his wrist. "We're breaching interior."
Cain's voice came back immediate, hungry. "Copy."
Here we go, Shawn thought. He slipped through first. The Arc Spire didn't look like Talon inside. That hit him as soon as he pulled himself through the panel and into the guts of the structure.
Talon spaces, or at least the buildings that Cain owned, had edges. Ribs of steel and shadow. Reinforced dark. Corners tight enough to make you feel someone was always standing just out of your periphery. Cain's halls were built like loyal throats. Purpose first, aesthetic later.
This wasn't that. The Arc Spire's underlevel gleamed surgical white.
Panels all seamless, ceramic, sterilized. Floors without plating seams. Corners smoothed instead of punched. Light diffused from behind frosted strips, a soft clinical glow instead of Cain's predatory red. Air at a perfect regulated chill.
Not a den but more like a sanctum.
Brann hauled himself through the panel behind Dagger and let out a low whistle. "Huh."
"Words, Brann," Ash whispered.
Brann grinned. "Fancy."
"Stay tight," Dagger said quietly. "Six — check rear. Vex, left. Two, right. Mara, cover Weiss vectors."
"Weiss vectors?" Mara breathed.
Dagger didn't elaborate. They advanced.
Tables lined the service bay beyond, but these weren't standard maintenance benches with stripped-down rifles and oil-stained tools. These worktops gleamed. Weapon racks sat in regimented rows, each rifle pristine, wiped, and etched with a mark that wasn't the Talon spiral they wore everywhere else. Each weapon bore a clean, minimalist insignia: a single black vertical stroke with two angled slashes like stylized wings.
Weiss's mark.
"Boss," Six whispered through the implant-link. "Movement. Two heat signatures. Far column."
Dagger didn't answer. He didn't have to. Two blurred.
The big man moved with shocking speed for his build, not Brann's bulldozer violence, but sudden, decisive impact. He covered the distance in three heartbeats, grabbed one of the hidden guards, and slammed him into the white wall with a crack that sang.
The guard dropped his weapon and went still, gasping.
He wore a uniform that almost matched Talon issue, black modular weave, armored plating, reinforced harness, but it wasn't Cain's. The chest patch carried Weiss's mark. The shoulder stripe wasn't Cain's crimson-slate; it was white over slate.
Weiss's colors. The second guard raised his rifle. Pip moved. There wasn't time for a command. There wasn't space for a command.
Pip blurred into motion so fast he left an after-image. One instant the guard had a rifle up. The next, Pip was on his shoulder, knee jammed into the joint, one hand clamping the muzzle and forcing it to the floor while the other knifed across the man's throat and stopped, just pressed. Not a cut. A promise.
"Noise gets you dead," Pip hissed, voice almost eager.
The guard froze.
Good. That meant Weiss's security still remembered fear.
Dagger crossed the floor in three long, silent steps. He caught the first guard's face in one gloved hand and forced his gaze upward.
"Make noise," Dagger murmured, calm as still water, "and I let him open you."
The guard swallowed. Hard.
"Where is Weiss?"
The guard shook his head frantically. "You...you aren't supposed to be... he said nobody could..."
"I didn't ask what he said."
The man's throat bobbed. "Top. Convergence tier. Central tower. He… he doesn't come down anymore. He said you'll die up there like the rest. He said Cain will watch it. He said—"
"Sleep," Dagger said.
Two obliged. One efficient slam of skull to wall. The guard crumpled.
Pip glanced at Dagger like a dog looking for praise.
"Secure," Dagger said.
Pip flashed a grin sharp as a fracture and released his hold on the second guard, then knocked him out cold with a face-first drive into the floor.
Behind Dagger, Rook let out a low breath. "Cain said Weiss'd be harder than this."
"He will be," Dagger said.
Rook nodded once. He didn't argue.
Dagger swept a hand forward. "Stack."
The squad closed on him instantly, falling into formation so fast it looked rehearsed. Vex drifted left, low and controlled. Nine slid right, quiet as a cut. Mara and Silas anchored midline, fluid and cold. Two and Rook took the heavy block positions. Ash bounced on his heels behind Brann, vibrating with the kind of excitement that got people killed. Pip hovered beside Six, waiting to explode the next time Six twitched.
They were listening. To him. Not to Cain's voice in their heads, not to Meret's hunger in their blood. To him.
Good. That wouldn't last forever. He knew that. But it was true now, in this breath, in this hall. That was enough.
He lifted two fingers and pointed toward the interior corridor.
"Up," he said.
They moved. And Munich, whether it knew it yet or not, was about to feel the first fracture line in Talon's spine.