After cleaning up, lutz went to his room and retrieved most of his tools, it was time to get them ready for a date.
The workshop at the back of the warehouse was Lutz's sanctuary of sorts. It was Henrik's domain, a place of grease, ordered tools, and the scent of oil and hot metal. Here, amidst the vises and grinding wheels, the abstract schemes of intelligence and deception gave way to the concrete reality of sharpened steel and cleaned mechanisms. It was a place of preparation, and Lutz had never needed it more.
He laid his arsenal out on a clean rag on the workbench with the reverence of a priest preparing sacraments. Creed came first. The stiletto's blade was already a masterpiece of lethal geometry, but he ran a whetstone along its edge with a soft, rhythmic shhh-click, shhh-click. Each pass was a meditation, the sound a promise of quiet, final arguments. He felt the artifact's subtle hunger stir with the attention, a faint pull in his gut that made him think of the blood he'd washed away. Next was his broad-bladed parrying knife, a less elegant but brutally practical tool. He honed its edge to a dull gleam, ensuring it could turn a blade or chop through bone with equal facility.
The throwing knives were given a more delicate touch, their balance checked and re-checked. Then, the firearms. He broke down the revolver first, the parts clicking onto the rag. He cleaned the cylinder, the barrel, wiping away the faint residue of powder and the scent of ozone that always seemed to cling to it after use. Each piece was oiled and reassembled with a series of satisfying, precise clicks. The shotgun was next, a heavier, more intimidating process. He pumped the action, listening for any hitch, cleaning the magazine tube, making sure the brutal weapon would not fail when he needed it to speak its single, devastating word.
He was building a symphony of violence, and every instrument had to be perfectly tuned. This wasn't for the subtle work of the phantom. This was for the storm that was coming, for the moment the warehouse doors would be beaten down and he would have to fight his way through Church investigators, panicked Vipers, and whatever other monsters his schemes had drawn to the feast. He worked with a cold, focused intensity, his mind clear, the persona of the battered operative shed along with his bloodied clothes.
He was consulting one of Henrik's journals, a section on maintaining the spring tension in specialized sheaths, when a hesitant voice broke his concentration.
"Lutz?"
He didn't need to look up to know it was Peter. The young man's presence had a specific, anxious energy. Lutz finished making a notation in his mind before slowly lowering the journal and turning.
Peter stood a few feet away, shifting his weight from foot to foot, his eyes wide as he took in the array of weaponry on the bench. "I, uh… I saw you come in here. Just wanted to… you know. See how you were."
"I'm functional," Lutz said, his tone neutral. He picked up a cleaning rod and began running a patched tip through the shotgun barrel. "The body heals. The work continues."
"Yeah, I… I guess." Peter fell silent, watching the methodical, almost hypnotic motion. The air was thick with the smell of Hoppe's No. 9 and impending doom. Finally, he blurted out, "It's just… before today, I thought… I really wanted to be one of the guys, you know? One of the tough ones. Like you. Like Karl. To be in the thick of it, to have a rep. I thought that's what being strong was."
Lutz didn't look up from his work. "And now?"
"Now I saw you come back looking like… that." Peter's voice was small. "And it wasn't cool. It was just… real. It was scary. I don't think I want it anymore."
Lutz set the cleaning rod down. He looked at Peter, really looked at him. The boy's earlier hero-worship had been replaced by a raw, trembling vulnerability. It was a flaw, a critical weakness in this world. And yet, for a fleeting second, it resonated with some buried, atrophied part of himself—the part that had been Andrei Hayes, the student who had only ever fought with words.
"That's the first smart thing you've said since I've known you, Peter," Lutz said, his voice losing its edge, becoming almost gentle. "The fantasy is a good recruitment tool. The reality is blood on the floor and the sound of your own teeth rattling. What you felt today? That's normal. That's your brain telling you it wants to keep living."
The unexpected kindness, coming from the man who had just returned from a butcher's shop alley, seemed to unlock something in Peter. The words tumbled out in a rushed, confessional stream.
"I never wanted this for the… the glory, or whatever," he said, his eyes glistening. "My parents… they got the lung-rot. From the factories. They're gone. It's just me and my sister, Pristine. She's twelve. She's got this cough… same one they had at the start."
He looked down at his own hands, as if seeing them for the first time. "We were starving. The Church's soup kitchens… there's never enough. I tried honest work, but what's a brat like me gonna get? A few coppers a day breaking my back on the docks? It wasn't enough for food and medicine. The Vipers… they paid. They paid enough that I could get Elara the syrups from the apothecary, put a real roof over our heads, one that doesn't leak. I joined because I thought… if I could get strong in here, if I could get a reputation, nobody would ever mess with us again. I could protect her. That's all. That's the only reason."
The silence that followed was heavier than the anvil in the corner. Lutz stared at the boy, the confession hanging between them like a ghost. Peter's story was a common one in Indaw Harbor, a tiny, personal tragedy swallowed by the city's immense, grinding indifference. But hearing it, here, now, from this boy he was so expertly manipulating, felt like a physical blow.
He saw the future with terrifying clarity. Peter, eager to prove himself to his mentor Lutz, would take more risks. He would overhear something he shouldn't.
The moral conflict was not a battle; it was a swift, clinical execution. Andrei Hayes screamed in the vault of his mind, a faint, useless echo. The path to power was paved with the bones of the innocent.
"You did what you had to do, Peter," Lutz said, his voice soft but hollow, the gentleness a carefully crafted tool. "For your sister. That's the only reason that matters in this city. Remember that. Whatever happens, you did it for her. Hold onto that."
Peter looked up, a tear finally tracing a clean path through the grime on his cheek. He misinterpreted the words as profound understanding. "Thanks, Lutz. I… I will. I'll remember."
He lingered for a moment longer, watching Lutz return to his work, the rhythmic shhh-click of the whetstone on Creed filling the silence once more. Then, comforted and fortified by the words of his hero, Peter turned and left the workshop, his step a little lighter, his resolve hardened.
Lutz listened to the boy's footsteps fade. His own hands did not shake. His breathing remained even. He finished sharpening Creed and set it down. The blade gleamed, a sliver of perfect, amoral light.
He looked at the journal open on the bench, but he didn't see the words. He saw Peter's face. He saw Pristine, a girl with a cough, waiting for a brother who was walking into a trap Lutz had built.
'It doesn't matter' he told himself, the thought a block of ice in his gut. 'None of it matters. Survival is the only morality. He is a cost of doing business.'
He picked up his revolver, the oiled metal cool and comforting in his hand. He spun the cylinder, the click-clack sound a metronome counting down the seconds until the end. The architect saw only the final structure.
The air in the Baron's office was always cold, but now it held the deep, penetrating chill of a tomb. The single gas lamp on the massive oak desk threw long, dancing shadows that seemed to cling to the corners like specters. Gunther Vogler, the Baron, sat behind the desk, his posture rigid, his flint-like eyes fixed on a ledger that was essentially a chronicle of his empire's rapid dissolution.
The door opened without a knock. Only one person had that privilege. Karl entered, closing the door behind him with a soft, definitive click. The usual predatory grace in his movement was tempered by a visible weariness. He came to stand before the desk, not taking a seat, his hands clasped behind his back.
"Report," the Baron said, his voice a low rumble, like stones grinding together at the bottom of a well.
"It's the arteries, Gunther," Karl began, bypassing titles. In this room, they were still, and would always be, brothers. "Not the capillaries anymore. They've hit Portos."
The Baron's head snapped up. "Aelius? How?"
"Church raid. This afternoon. Reverie Noire led it herself." Karl's jaw tightened. "The entire operation was done in seconds. Our men were neutralized without a single shot being fired. They have his books. They have everything."
The Baron leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking in protest. The news was a physical blow. Portos wasn't just an accountant; he was the linchpin of their financial obfuscation. With him gone, the trail of their wealth led directly back to this warehouse.
"Who else?" the Baron asked, his voice dangerously quiet.
"The Larkspur brothers. Picked up an hour ago from their townhouse. The two watchmen on the west dock, Goran and Hewitt—vanished from their posts, likely in Church custody. The bird-seller fence in the market, gone. It's a cascade. The legal fronts are collapsing. The protection rackets are being rolled up. The flow of information from the docks has dried up." Karl delivered the facts like a doctor listing fatal symptoms. "If this pace continues, we'll be functionally paralyzed in two days. Completely dismantled in three."
A muscle in the Baron's jaw twitched. His hands, resting on the desk, curled into fists. The flaw in his empire, the one he had built his power upon, was being exploited with an efficiency that was both terrifying and… admirable. It was the work of a master.
"And the source?" the Baron's voice was a razor's edge. "This 'ghost'? What of Lutz? He was supposed to be hunting it."
Karl let out a short, sharp breath, the closest he ever came to a sigh. "Lutz returned an hour ago. He's alive. Barely. He tracked one of the sources to the Rustwater Canals. It was a trap. Five or six of them, he said. Coordinated. Professional. He took two down but they carved him up pretty good. He was lucky to get out."