The two months that followed the Black Dogs' takeover felt like a long tunnel of gray. The Gnats' life had found a new balance—precarious, built on submission and joyless labor. Every day Koss came to collect his tithe, his arrogant shadow casting a chill over the workshop. The children worked with a sullen diligence; their laughter extinguished, their movements mechanical. They were no longer a gang, but a production line. Fear had become the new normal.
Jem had shut himself up in a stubborn silence. His defeat had broken him. He was no longer the protective leader but the first of the slaves, the one who took Koss's orders without flinching. He did as he was told, grinding his teeth, his physical strength reduced to a useless burden. Lira, for her part, had hardened. She had grown more taciturn, her green eyes like shards of glass, watching everything and commenting on nothing. She managed discipline with an iron hand, making sure no one provoked their new masters' wrath, though a taut tension thrummed beneath her like an overdrawn bowstring.
Tony had become a ghost. He was there, but his mind was elsewhere. He supervised production, issued technical instructions in a monotone, and endured Koss's jibes with a patience that was almost inhuman. Lira watched him, noting the darker circles under his eyes, the way his body had thinned, almost to emaciation. She saw him refuse food to preserve his coin, disappear at night and return at dawn covered in soot that wasn't from their pitiful campfire. She didn't ask questions. She waited.
The waiting ended on a particularly humid night, a moonless night when the miasma from the Nera seemed to suffocate the city. Koss had been gone for hours; the youngest were already asleep. Tony moved closer to Jem and Lira, who sat by the dying fire.
"Come with me," he said simply. His voice was low, but it carried a new, sharp authority.
Jem lifted weary eyes. "For what? To steal scraps that Koss will take back tomorrow?"
"For something else," Tony replied. "A safe place. There's something you need to see."
Lira rose without a word, her short knives secure at her belt. She had felt the moment coming. Her look convinced Jem to rise as well—not out of hope, but from a loyalty that refused to die.
Tony led them out of the den, not toward the docks or the markets but up the hill toward Steel Street. The climb was symbolic: out of the muck of Flea Bottom and into the world of labor and craft. They moved in silence, three shadows through the maze of alleys. Jem was wary; Lira alert. They stopped in front of a small smithy, "The Northern Forge," its facade dark and quiet.
"Here?" Jem grunted. "What are we doing at a smith's?"
Tony didn't answer. He knocked three quick blows and one slow one on the back door. After a moment there was the sound of bolts drawn, and the door opened on the massive silhouette of Theron. The smith studied them, his expression unreadable, then stepped aside to let them in and closed the heavy door behind them.
Inside, the forge was warm, saturated with the smell of cold coal and metal. Tools were arranged with meticulous precision. Theron said nothing, leaning against his anvil with arms folded—just a simple observer of a scene he seemed to dread.
"Is this your big secret?" Lira asked, eyes sweeping the room. "You found yourself a smith friend?"
"More than a friend," Tony said. "A partner."
He led them to the back of the shop, to a long table covered by a great piece of jute. With a slow, almost ceremonial motion, he pulled the cloth away.
Jem's breath cut off in his throat. Lira made a low, almost inaudible whistle.
On the table, lined with military precision, lay ten creatures of steel and dark wood. Ten crossbows, identical, yet unlike any crossbow they had ever seen. They didn't have the crude wooden stocks of the Guard's weapons. Their bodies were skeletons of steel—angular and functional. They had pistol grips, shoulder stocks, and on top, metal housings that hinted at a complex internal mechanism. The flickering light of the single lit lantern caught on oiled steel and on braided strings that gleamed like silver thread. It was both magnificent and profoundly disturbing. It shouldn't be possible.
Jem was the first to move. He approached as one approaches a wild animal. His hand—accustomed to the weight of a club or axe—rested on one of the weapons. He lifted it. Surprise washed across his face. It was heavy, but perfectly balanced. He felt its solidity, its concentrated brute force.
"By the Seven Hells…" he murmured. He ran a finger along the steel frame, along the loading lever, along the metallic string drawn taut to the point of breaking. "This isn't a weapon. It's a… a machine. Theron? Did you make this?"
The smith shook his head, his gaze fixed on Tony. "I was only the hands. The mind that designed this… is him."
Lira took a different approach. She didn't touch anything at first. She circled the table like a predator, taking in every detail. She saw the ergonomics, the logic of the design. Each angle, each component had purpose. She picked one from the end of the row—not at random, but deliberately.
And then the magic happened. The weapon didn't feel alien in her hands. The grip fit her palm; the stock settled against her shoulder as if it had been shaped for her alone. It was lighter than she expected. It felt like an extension of herself, a continuation of her will. It was built for motion, for speed, for the hunt. It was built for her.
"Does it fire?" she asked, voice barely above a breath, eyes never leaving the weapon.
"Fifteen bolts," Tony said. "In ten seconds. Reloadable."
Silence fell, heavier than before. Fifteen bolts in ten seconds. The idea defied reason. Such firepower did not exist—not in this world.
To prove it, Tony lifted the first crossbow—the Black Widow—and loaded a magazine. He turned to the test target they'd been using: an old iron-plated door. Without a word he shouldered the weapon. Jem and Lira watched, fascinated and terrified.
The mechanical clack-clack-clack tore through the forge's silence. A brutal, uninterrupted burst that made the air vibrate. When the last bolt struck, the door looked like a porcupine of splintered wood and steel points.
Jem stepped back a pace, his face pale. The brute force he embodied, the power of his fists—all of it suddenly felt trivial, pathetic. Lira, meanwhile, had a slight smile—a joyless grin, the predatory smirk of someone who had just discovered a new, sharper claw.
Tony set the weapon down and turned to them. "Groleau and his dogs control Flea Bottom with fear and numbers. They're dozens strong. We can't face them head on. So we won't."
He took a piece of charcoal and began to draw a map of their neighborhood on the packed earth of the forge floor.
"My strategy has three phases. Phase one: strangulation. We will strike at their sources of income—the tax collectors, the illegal gaming dens, the smuggling. We'll kill them. Maim their revenue streams. Leaving them alive to tell what happened is not an option. Fear is a weapon, and we will turn it back on them."
His voice was cold, clinical. He was no longer a child but a general laying out his campaign.
"Phase two: decapitation. Once they're weakened, panicked, and their men start to desert, we'll hit the heart. Groleau and his lieutenants. We'll bait them into a trap—an enclosed place where their numbers won't matter. Then we'll finish them. All of them."
He paused, letting the weight of the words settle.
"Phase three: purge. The survivors—the underlings—will have a choice: join us or leave Flea Bottom for good. There will be no mercy."
The plan was terrifying in its brutality and efficiency. Jem, who had begun to color up again, felt a fierce excitement rise in him. It was a chance to wash his shame in blood. Lira, pragmatic, nodded. The plan was risky, but it made sense. It was a survivor's plan.
But as the adrenaline of vengeance ebbed, a deeper reality asserted itself. They looked again at the weapons, at Theron, at Tony. The smith—a genius artisan. The crossbows—creations of another age. The battle plan—worthy of a seasoned strategist. And at the center of it all, an eleven-year-old boy, a war orphan, a street kid. It made no sense. The story he had told them was a lie, a thin façade that had just disintegrated before their eyes.
Silence stretched, heavy with unspoken questions. Jem, usually so blunt, searched for words, his brow furrowed by an effort of understanding that eluded him. Lira spoke first, her voice low but incredibly clear in the forge's hush.
She stepped slowly toward Tony, green eyes fixed on him, trying to pierce whatever secret hid behind his gaze.
"Tony…" she began, and for the first time there was a note of vulnerability, of confusion, in her voice. "That story… about your family, the war… that isn't true, is it?"
She stopped a step from him, her eyes drilling into his.
"Who are you? Who are you, really?"