The glass was perfect. A pristine, clear sphere in my hand, cool to the touch. The soft, white cloth in my other hand moved in smooth, circular motions, polishing away the last invisible smudge. The scent of aged oak and lemon polish filled my lungs.
The low murmur of contented patrons was a soothing hum. Peace. This is peace.
"Arthur?"
Lily's voice. She was smiling, holding a tray of tankards filled with ale. The afternoon sun caught the dust motes in the air, turning them to gold.
"Arthur."
The sun flickered. A shadow passed over the window. The warm wood of the bar under my elbows turned cold and gritty.
"Arthur."
The voice was sharper now. Not Lily's. It was a blade wrapped in silk.
The Brown Bar dissolved into the cold, damp floorboards of a warehouse loft.
My head jerked up from it. The dream-scents of oak and lemon were replaced by the real, choking stench of rust, saltwater, and rat droppings.
Dawn's grey light fought through grime-caked windows, illuminating the dust motes dancing around the three most wanted fugitives in the city.
Kestrel was staring down at me, her winter-sky eyes utterly devoid of patience. "Finally. We have about six hours before Corvus's sweep patterns overlap this sector."
I pushed myself up, my body responding with a deep, resonant ache that had nothing to do with muscle or bone. It was the ache of absence. The hollow, draining silence in my core where my power should be. The Flawed Vessel. Elara's words were branded on my soul, a diagnosis for a sickness I couldn't cure.
Every breath felt like drawing air through a fractured lung, a constant reminder of what was missing.
Across the cramped space, Rylan was testing his healed hand, clenching and unclenching his fist. The look he shot me was a familiar poison, distilled and sharpened by our fresh disaster.
Ofcourse. He'd always been better at holding a grudge than a defensive stance. His knuckles were white, the tension in his arm a promise of future violence. He wasn't just angry; he was a coiled spring, and I was the thumb holding him down.
Kestrel didn't wait for a reply. She laid out our unfortunate situation. "The Black Ledger would have flagged all of us by now. Corvus wants you dead, Arthur, and the two of us are just loose ends to be cleaned up. Zero has disowned Rylan for his failure and issued a burn notice on me for treason. We have no funds, no allies, and the entire intelligence apparatus of the city is hunting us."
She paused, letting the sheer scale of our ruin settle in the frigid air. "We are ghosts with prices on our heads, and every shadow has eyes."
She finally looked up, her gaze sweeping over us. "Our only assets are my knowledge of Corvus's outer networks, Rylan's intel on Zero's decommissioned safe-houses, and your... reputation." She said the last word like it was a particularly unreliable tool. "We work together until that equation changes. This is a transaction, not an alliance."
"My terms are non-negotiable," I said, my voice rough with sleep and disuse. "Lily. The goal is to make her permanently safe. Not just hidden. Erased from Corvus's board."
Rylan let out a sharp, disgusted laugh. "Of course. Look, Penance—"
"It's Arthur," I cut him off, the name a wall I was desperately trying to rebuild between me and the monster he knew. It was a plea and a declaration, and it sounded weak even to my own ears.
"Actually, it's Jax," Kestrel said, her voice flat. With two deft flicks of her wrist, she tossed the identity wafers. Mine skittered to a stop in front of me. JAX. Rylan's—RHYS—landed at his feet. "And you're Rhys. I'm Sloane. I had these buried for a rainy day. Forget your names for the time being."
She looked between us, the architect of our miserable new reality. "Impossible without dismantling the entire system," she continued, answering my demand as if the interruption never happened. "But it aligns with our immediate need to survive and bleed Corvus."
The negotiation was over. There were no hands shaken. Just the grim understanding that we were each other's only option, trapped in a cage of Kestrel's making, wearing names that felt as hollow as I was.
"The first problem is currency," Kestrel stated, pulling a small, shimmering data-slate to life. "We need untraceable funds. There's a low-level courier ship, the 'GrayManta,' making a drop tonight for one of Corvus's shell companies. Its cargo is a case of blank identity wafers and a payload of old-fashioned Gold Crowns. Physical, untraceable, and universally accepted. And identity wafers we could claim to solidify our alias."
"A dockside grab?" Rylan grunted, a flicker of his old ambition surfacing. "Simple."
"Simple if we don't kill each other first," I muttered, pulling on my longcoat. The familiar weight was a small comfort, but the fabric felt thinner than I remembered, as if it, too, had been diminished by my fading power.
───────────────────────────────
The ambush at the docks was a messy, brutal affair. The rain had started again, turning the cobblestones slick and the air thick with the smell of brine and ozone. We moved like strangers, our rhythms clashing.
Rylan was aggressive, overextending, trying to prove he wasn't the one who'd been beaten in the Archive.
Kestrel was a sniper in a brawl, frustrated by the close quarters, her movements precise but unnaturally contained.
I was too measured, too conscious of the hollow ache in my core, trying to conserve a power that was leaking away by the second, a reservoir with a crack in its foundation.
When a guard got a lucky angle on Rylan, I had no choice. I moved with a burst of raw, inelegant speed that drained me like a hemorrhage. I slapped the blaster aside, my palm numbed by the impact, and drove my elbow into the man's throat.
The effort sent a wave of dizziness through me, the world tilting on its axis for a terrifying second. I stumbled, catching myself on a stack of crates, the rough wood splintering under my grip.
Rylan saw it. Of course he did. He finished his own opponent and shot me a look of pure disdain.
He's going to comment on it. Of course he is. Can't just be grateful I kept a bolt out of his spine. He has to pick, pick, pick. Like a scab over a wound that never heals. Six months of this. Six months of his petty little comments from the sidelines, and now I'll have to listen to them again and again.
"Heard you held the line at Blackwater Gorge for three days straight," he sneered, wiping blood from his lip. "One little dockside brawl and you're gasping. What's the matter, Penance? Losing your touch? Looks like the legend I've been chasing for six months isn't that much of a legend."
The old name was a deliberate jab. I just shook my head, breathing through the void inside me. "I'm fine," I lied. He was too irritating for me to tell him I'm burning inside.
Back in the new safehouse, a different and slightly less leaky warehouse that still smelled of despair. We split the haul. The case sprang open, revealing the wafers and a pouch heavy with Gold Crowns. The solid, cold weight of the coins in my palm was the first real, tangible victory since this nightmare began. It was a foundation, however small.
Rylan, counting his share, let out a bitter, humorless laugh. He shook his head, a gold crown glinting between his fingers like a mocking eye. "I just never understood it. Why you? Why give you a title like 'Penance'? The rest of us were just numbers."
I stopped counting and looked at him sternly.
I wore the name without even thinking of why I was awarded it. Kestrel and I started going on solo missions around the same time, but he still referred to her as 'Kestrel'. Then why rename me 'Penance'?
Kestrel, stacking her own coins into a neat, obsessive pile, didn't look up. "You think it was a reward?" Her voice was dangerously soft. "A title of honor?"
Rylan shrugged, a gesture of pure, frustrated ignorance. "What else?"
She finally lifted her gaze, and it landed on me like a physical weight. There was no pity in her eyes, only cold curiosity, as if she were observing the final stages of a long-running experiment. "I always thought it was the opposite. I think Director Zero looked at him and saw a walking, talking monument to his own greatest sin." A tiny, knowing smile touched her lips, devoid of any warmth. "Naming him 'Penance' wasn't a boast. It was a confession. The most pathetic one I've ever heard. Good thing he didn't do the same with me."
She stood, pocketing her gold, the conversation clearly over. "Don't think about it too hard, Jax," she said, using the alias like a weapon to remind me who I was now, a man with no past and a crumbling future. "It'll just keep you up at night."
Then she was gone, leaving me alone with Rylan's suspicious glare and the heavy, ringing silence her words had left behind. I looked down at the gold crown in my hand, its monetary value suddenly feeling insignificant next to the crushing weight of that single, unanswered question.
His own greatest sin.
The patient hunter had a new scent to follow, a trail that led straight into the darkest, most forgotten part of my own past. And for the first time, I was terrified of what I would find when I finally caught up to it.