Nah, wasn’t me, love.

What? I think I’d fucking remember if I did. I remember all the pretty young things I’ve got my hands on. I’d remember making you bleed. Tell me, darling, do you bleed red like the rest of us, or do you—

Hurt? Ha. Like you or your man here have the strength to hurt me. Nah, only thing that’d hurt me is another of your bullets. But I ain’t think you’re in any rush to do that, are ya?

Sorry, mate, did I spit blood over your nice fancy shoes? What a shame. Here, how about some saliva to clean it off with.

See? Bit of blood, a few cracked teeth, none of that bothers me. I’m strong, mate. Got Vigour, haven’t I, and plenty of it. Why the fuck d’you think they hired me?

Warren’s gloved fist pummelled the man’s nose.

There were no rules in a bout like this. Well, one rule, anyway: last man standing is the winner. It didn’t matter to Warren or any of the onlookers that the man’s nose crunched as the fist rammed it, and they didn’t seem to care much about the blood spatter, neither.

It was the third round, but Warren could’ve ended it in the first if he wanted. He had to give the people a show, though, didn’t he? Boss wouldn’t be happy if he had to deal with a stroppy audience. Not that there was much avoiding it when you were a bookie; there were always people pissed off about losing their money fair and square.

Well, maybe not fair, in this case, as Warren had a Vigour skill off the charts, higher than anyone else in the Harbours had had in living memory. But them twats in the audience weren’t gonna know that, were they?

As Warren landed one last punch—this one an uppercut to the opponent’s jaw—the match was over. The other man fell heavy to the floor. Alive. But barely.

The crowd of a hundred or so cheered and jeered as they won or lost their bets, but Warren looked through them all to his boss—a man standing stony-faced in the rear corner. Reid nodded to him. Once. Firmly. And Warren nodded back. That was typically all the interaction that was needed while the floor staff paid out to the winners.

But not tonight, it seemed. Reid tilted his head back, gesturing for Warren to join him. There was work to be done, then. Work even less honest than these off-the-books boxing matches.

Swiping a towel from the edge of the ring, Warren wiped his face clean of sweat and tossed it aside, then stepped through the crowd without bothering to get them to clear a path first. He pressed through—if he hurt anyone, then that was a bonus.

‘What is it, boss?’ Warren asked as he arrived at the small, older man’s side.

‘Trouble. Dealers on our turf,’ the man replied.

‘Down from Crater again?’

Reid shook his head. ‘Nah. The End Street crew.’

‘You want me to head over there? Show ‘em what’s what?’

But again the boss shook his head. ‘Nah. Not all of em. I don’t want another gang war on our hands. Just find whoever’s been selling and… well, do what you do best, eh?’

Warren nodded. ‘Got any leads?’

* * *

The boss pointed him to a marketplace down in Heron—where a boono dealer had been spotted operating under the cover of a grocery stand. A boono dealer who weren’t one of Reid’s.

Warren took a seat outside a cafe opposite the stand, waiting for the woman he was after to make an appearance. He refused all service, leading to the wait staff at the cafe not knowing what to do with him, eventually ignoring him entirely. Good; that was just what he wanted.

Finally, the woman showed, passing slyly to a customer two small vials of boono—but not slyly enough. The boono’s liquid looked clear, pure, much moreso than Reid’s crew dealt in. Maybe he really was on the losing side—a thought that Warren buried, again, for the time being.

This dealer in front of him might have been the woman responsible for heading into Reid’s territory, or it might not. Warren would have to find out, and he’d have to resist killing her until he did. That was the hardest part in all of this, really.

He made a move as the woman left, following her from a distance across the roads of Heron Piers and through the alleys of the Harbour District, until he found an opportunity to strike. Warren closed the gap between predator and prey in one of these secluded alleys, keeping hidden for as long as possible, but being forced into a run as the woman recognised him for what he was.

He fired his weapon low, needing his shots to wound but not kill, and missed with all but one. The round that hit grazed the woman’s leg, sending her collapsing to the ground, but not for so long that Warren could reach her.

The dealer screamed away the pain as she forced herself upright, moving as fast as she could away from Warren while gripping the wound in her leg. All she needed to do was reach the light of the main road, and Warren wouldn’t be able to strike. One onlooker would be fine—people went missing in this part of the city every day—but a whole street of them? Even he couldn’t handle that.

But, as it turned out, there was no need to worry. Warren, even without a Fleet of Foot anywhere above Common grade, was able to reach his target long before she entered the streetlights. Tackling her to the ground, he pulled his revolver and jammed it into the side of the dealer’s head. His finger pressed at the trigger, ever so slightly, and he had a vision of the woman’s brain being blown across the dark, dusty pavement. Like a painting, of sorts.

But he held himself back, and dragged the screaming woman up to her feet with his Vigour-imbued strength.

‘Another scream outta your mouth and it’ll be the last you ever do,’ Warren said as he jammed the barrel of his weapon inside said mouth.

The interrogation was a brutal one, and Warren felt his heart racing with excitement as he pulled out fingernails, stamped on shins, and sliced flesh from the woman in this abandoned house. He didn’t ask the question immediately—they never spoke straight away anyway, he figured, so he’d savour the action instead. But once he asked who was behind this intrusion into their territory, he got an answer immediately. ‘Cuttle,’ she’d said.

That answer had come four fingers ago.

* * *

The plan was set.

In front of Warren—and some of the best shots in Reid’s crew—was the warehouse down on End Street that this particular crew used as a base. Reid himself had given permission for it to go down this way, but the plan had been Warren’s. Originally, at least—there’d been some changes. Reid always had to make changes.

As the guard changed, Warren signalled the men into action, crossing the street under the cover of darkness, revolvers in hands, ready to use them at the slightest hint of trouble. No cry for support came from the warehouse as Warren and team made it to the cast iron fence—they’d made it.

Warren nodded to a member of Reid’s team whose name he didn’t know, and the unnamed woman pulled out the wire cutters from her pocket. At the first snip, the metal chain link fence rippled and rang gently—not loudly enough, apparently, to set off any alarms, but a risk that Warren probably didn’t wanna take.

The woman paused at the sound, eyes wide, and Warren responded by placing his fingers in the holes in the fence, holding it steady, and motioned for someone else to do the same the other side. Held in place, the metal fence made much less noise as it was snipped, and before long, they had a hole made in it big enough for a man to fit through. Even one that was Warren’s size.

With the butt of his revolver, he signalled the team through. One by one, they entered the grounds of the End Street gang’s warehouse, the last of them pausing to stare into the street.

‘What?’ Warren snapped, as quiet as he could.

‘I… nothing, boss,’ the man said, and he pushed through the hole in the fence too, but not without one last glance at the road.

Warren watched as his people got into position, half on the left, half on the right, ready to fire once he stepped into the light and drew the guards’ fire. He could take a round or two, long as it didn’t get him in the head—but he was hoping that wasn’t on the cards.

With a sigh, Warren pulled the clipped metal fence apart, and—

Movement.

Behind him.

He turned on the spot, raising his revolver towards the source of the footsteps, and prepared to squeeze the trigger.

But there were too many of them. Emerging from the shadows down End Street was a half-dozen, a dozen, two-dozen people, armed and pointing their weapons directly at him.

This Cuttle had known he was coming. Warren weighed up the odds—twenty or so weapons versus his none—and realised that even with his level of Vigour he wasn’t going to come out of this alive.

‘Drop it,’ the closest man said.

Warren was about to swing and fire anyway—even if he took out a few of them, that’d be worth it—when a strange thought occurred to him. That man hadn’t spoken with the accent of the poorer southern districts. That was a Dripcanal accent. This… wasn’t Cuttle.

Against his better judgement, Warren pulled his finger away from the trigger. As he held his hands up in the air, dropping his revolver to the ground, he heard gunshots ring out behind him. Familiar and unfamiliar voices screamed as they were hit, a massacre unfolding on End Street.

‘Warren Hargreaves?’ a well-dressed man said, stepping out of the shadows with no weapon in hand. ‘I’d like for us to talk. Somewhere… a little quieter.’

* * *

As it turned out, the dungeons beneath the Tower weren’t really any quieter. Or, at least, not the part that Haven’s police force had taken him to. This area, deep in the dungeons, was apparently where they interrogated suspects in ways that the voters couldn’t know about. In ways that Warren would’ve taken some delight in if he hadn’t been on the receiving end of them.

Warren kept quiet as the fist bashed into his face yet again.

The interrogator hadn’t asked any questions, and Warren hadn’t tried to answer them. It seemed like that weren’t gonna change any time soon, neither.

The fist hit him again, and Warren’s head drooped to the floor, his eyes struggling to focus on the blood pooling below him as he hung from metal bindings.

He braced himself for another hit. One that never came.

Instead, Warren was only vaguely aware of the door opening. One man stepped outside, while another entered. Warren heaved his head up, forcing his eyes to focus, and saw the man from the road. The man who’d said he wanted to talk.

‘This how you talk, yeah?’ Warren said, spitting blood across the room in the process.

‘I thought I’d loosen you up first,’ the stranger replied. ‘Let you know what the alternative is.’

‘How’d you know? Who ratted?’

‘Ratted?’ The man’s confused tone seemed real.

‘Yeah, who told you what we was up to? Reid finally want rid of me, or was it someone else?’

‘Oh, that? The attack on End Street?’ the man said. ‘The only reason they were there at all was to retrieve you. Haven’s police department don’t otherwise get involved with squabbles between petty crooks. No offence.’

Warren stayed quiet. He knew his brain wasn’t the quickest, compared to some people out there, and he figured he’d keep his mouth shut until he could figure out just what was going on here.

‘No, we…’ The man paced over to the side of the room, stroking his chin as he picked his words. ‘Did you know, someone attacked Enoch Chambers earlier today?’

Warren opened his mouth to give an answer—a “no”, of course—but the man went on before he had a chance.

‘Agents of the exiled queen, we reckon. Elmira. She’s got a few of them in this city, and no matter how hard we try, we just can’t seem to stamp on all of them.’

‘What’s what got to do with me?’ Warren asked.

‘Well, Enoch’s starting to feel a little… vulnerable, I guess. Has asked me to put together a team of sorts. Bodyguards, really. Not a big team, because we gotta make sure that Elmira doesn’t have her claws in anyone we pick. So a small, but strong team. And I think we’re gonna need someone like you.’

‘How much does it pay?’ Warren asked, spitting blood onto the man’s shoes in case he didn’t get that he was taking the piss.

‘More than you could possibly want. Could get you a penthouse suite in the Sunrise District, if that’s what you wanted. Could get you two. But I don’t think you live for money, do you, Warren?’ The man crouched down, putting his face in sight of Warren. ‘You live for a whole different kind of vice, don’t you? What if I tell you that you would be in charge of interrogating treason suspects? That you can do whatever you want with them—stuff that makes this look like a picnic? That you get immunity from prosecution on bloody everything? How does that sound?’

Warren couldn’t lie; it sounded fucking excellent.