Location: Upper Grid, Maatari
Time: 01:30 AM
The roads back ran slick and empty. Maatari changed faces as they climbed—warehouse sprawl growing into stacked housing, stacked housing giving way to glass and steel and the kind of landscaping that pretends wealth is soft.
Scars drummed the wheel with two fingers, off beat and intentional.
"You ever think about the ones who don't get named in the report?" he asked.
"No."
"Good. Names make echoes." He tipped ash into an old cup holder. "Lesson one: the boss likes clean. Lesson two: the boss already knows."
Khazim turned just enough to register that.
Scars bared a grin without humor. "Don't sweat it. He likes the watchers more than he likes the noise. That's how he keeps score."
They merged into the service lane beneath the Loft's building. Concrete swelled into pillars and the air went still with money. Scars killed the engine and let the last song of the heater click itself to death.
"Carry three," he said, popping the trunk. "Balance matters."
They climbed the delivery stair instead of taking the front. The door at the top recognized Scars' print, hissed, and surrendered the hall.
The room was almost identical to how they'd left it. Same angles. Same quiet. Only the tone had shifted—like the air had been listening since they walked out and now wanted the ending.
Drev sat behind the stone-slab desk, stylus moving across a dim panel. He didn't look up when they entered. He didn't need to.
Scars set the duffels down first, exactly spaced. "Target: Vorrin Kett. Confirmed deceased. Stash retrieved. Port co-conspirators named—Nial and Vos."
Drev nodded, still writing. "Collateral?"
"Structure only."
"Sound."
He set the stylus down and lifted a hand without looking. A screen on the far wall brightened—grainy, angled, but clear enough. The QuikRig office appeared in washed-out color, the target bent over the table. A shadow crossed the door, then Scars, then the blade, then—
Silence did the rest.
Scars' jaw worked once. "You had a watcher."
"Always." Drev's tone didn't shift. "Walk me through the part you left out."
Scars didn't blink. "I extracted the names. Promised him distance if he stayed gone. Then I handed it over."
"And he finished it." Drev looked to Khazim, not quite a question.
Khazim didn't move. "You pay for completion."
Drev leaned back, eyes on the freeze-frame. the exact moment between plea and quiet. The reflection of the feed ran along the edge of his glass like a second city inside the room.
"Spare theatrics next time," he said to Scars, soft but sharp. "This is work, not theater."
Scars' mouth tugged into something like a smile that didn't make it past his teeth. "Understood."
Drev tapped the desk. The feed bled out. He opened a drawer and slid a band of Musa across with that same small efficiency that made every gesture look decided ten minutes ago.
"To the point," he said to Khazim. "As promised." He set a second band on top of the first. "And to the end."
Scars watched the second band land. "For what?"
"For finishing the scene I ordered," Drev said. "You extracted. He executed. Both get paid. But only one gets my attention."
He didn't have to point at who.
Khazim collected the bands without counting. Counting implied distrust. Distrust implied leaks.
Drev's gaze held him just long enough to feel like a contract signed in silence. "You keep working like that, your route gets cleaner. Routes are currency. Don't waste them."
Scars shifted his weight and let the bakky die against his tongue. "Want the rest of the report?"
Drev didn't look away from Khazim. "You'll file it."
Scars took that flat and folded it into his cheek like old gum. He stepped back from the desk, eyes never quite leaving the man who'd just earned two bands for doing exactly what Scars had said out loud.
"Permission to clear?" he asked.
"Cleared," Drev said.
Scars turned on his heel. For a second, as he crossed the glass corridor, his reflection overlaid Khazim's—two silhouettes walking in opposite directions, sharing one spine.
The door shut soft.
The room went still in a way only expensive rooms can. Even the sound of the city through the paneled glass felt curated.
Drev poured another measure of whiskey and didn't offer it. He lifted the glass and held it against the skyline as though testing the hue.
"You know why I sent the watcher," he said.
"Yes."
"Tell me anyway."
"So you don't argue with memory," Khazim said.
Drev smiled with his eyes, not his mouth. "Good."
He set the glass down untouched and tilted his head, assessing something quieter than the scene they'd just untangled.
"You don't flinch," he said. "Even when someone tries to make you."
Khazim's face didn't move.
"That's expensive," Drev added. Then a beat. "Spend wisely."
He gestured toward the open balcony with two fingers. Giving permission without theater.
"Go see what you bought today."
The door breathed open and cold air stepped inside first. Night had settled into the city's bones.
Maatari reached to the horizon in organized disorder—arteries pulsing along high roads, low grids blinking in tired rhythms, a smear of ghost-yellow where the fog swallowed light and made it hum.
From here, sound arrived late. The last brittle pops of the QuikRig burn rode the wind like a rumor that didn't care about distance. Somewhere far below, a delivery drone cut a measured path across a service lane; somewhere else, old men argued about a bracket they'd never see.
Khazim stood at the rail. The Ghostglint chain on his chest warmed just enough to remind him it was there. His scar gathered the city's light and let it go.
Behind him, the glass door eased half open. Drev's voice came out without the rest of him.
"Most people blink on the first fire," he said. "Guilt dresses like heat and tries to climb in."
Khazim didn't turn. "Heat is honest."
"That's why it's useful."
Silence spread again. It didn't feel empty. It felt like something being counted.
"Scars won't stop pushing," Drev said. "He likes to find walls and lean."
"I won't be one."
"That's what he'll try to prove wrong." The smallest chuckle. "Let him waste the hours."
Drev let the door fall shut. The muffled click carried more finality than any speech.
Khazim stayed. The city's reflection lived in his dead eye for a long moment, then became only light again.
Somewhere in the near dark, Tre'co's presence shivered around the edge of perception. The soft weight of a tether not yet asked for and already listening. It lingered, then receded, as if recognizing the ritual in this new height.
Wind knifed across the balcony and cut through coat and chain. It smelled like rain off metal and the last of a small fire dying. Far below, a billboard unfroze and tried to sell someone a better morning. It failed.
The muscles across Khazim's jaw eased and tightened and eased again.
Down there, the paths braided: markets, back lanes, private elevators, rooms where money counted itself. Drev in one of them, smiling at numbers. Scars in another, smiling at nothing he could keep.
Up here, it all looked obedient.
He let himself wonder—not if he could change it, but how long it would agree to be changed.
The chain pulsed once against his sternum, a small confirmation that felt less like pride than alignment.
He didn't smile. He didn't sigh.
He watched until the horizon dimmed a shade, he didn't have a word for and then turned from it like a man leaving a door open behind him.
He was officially in.