The night bled with color. Laspeas was a fever dream of neon and smoke, electric veins pulsing through a gray city. Inside Lux Club the light cut across the dancing bodies like shattered glass while the bass trembled up through the floor and into the bones of everyone there.
"Hey, Youri, this is awesome!" Roland shouted, his voice cracking with excitement and his face bathed in violet light.
Youri raised his glass, and the gin swirled inside it like mercury. "Told you, Roboy. This city might be rotten, but it sure knows how to sin."
The music drowned out their laughter. Holographic dancers shimmered above the crowd and dissolved into fractal dust. The air stank of alcohol, ozone and perfume, the smell of a whole city trying very hard to forget itself. But after a while, Roland's grin began to slip. "Hey, Youri," he said, leaning closer, "do you think we should head back?"
Youri laughed, too loud and too wild. "We just got here! What, are you scared your sister's going to crawl through the door?"
"No. I just have a bad feeling."
"Relax. She's buried in meetings. Trust me, we've got hours."
Roland's wrist comm blinked red before Youri had even finished the sentence. "Shit! Anna's calling me!"
"Don't answer it in here," Youri said quickly. "Go outside!"
Roland stumbled out into the alley, where the music was only a muffled thump behind the steel door and the neon rain shimmered on the wet asphalt. He took a breath and tried to make his voice sound normal. "Hey, Anna!"
"Where are you, Sir Roland?"
"Ehh… we're around. Why?" He was trying to sound casual and failing miserably.
"Lady Leonora asked me to check on you."
"Oh! Yeah, tell her I'm fine! We're heading back right now!"
"Don't worry, sir," Anna said, and there was something almost pitying in her voice. "She's already on her way."
Roland froze. "What — no, no, no. Shit!" He sprinted back inside with his heartbeat pounding in time with the bass and grabbed Youri by the shoulder. "Youri! My sister is on her way here!"
Youri only grinned at him lazily over the rim of his glass. "Heh. Which sister?"
"Oh my god, he's so drunk."
Then the doors burst open, and the music seemed to die like a heartbeat cut short. Every head in the club turned. Leonora stood in the doorway with her long coat trailing behind her and rain streaking down her silver hair. Her eyes were black with fury and exhaustion. The silence that spread through the room around her was heavier than any gun.
"There you are," she said, and her voice was soft — far too soft, the kind of calm that comes right before a storm. "Roland. Come here."
He obeyed like a child. "I'm so sorry, sister!" The slap cracked across the room. He staggered back with shame and fear burning on his face.
"Go and wait in the car."
"Yes, sister."
A voice cut through the tension, smoky and sharp. "Hey! What the hell do you think you're doing in my club?" Gloria came striding across the floor with her chin up.
Leonora did not even turn her head. "No one is talking to you. Move."
"And what if I don't?" Gloria said, and put her hand on Leonora's shoulder.
There was a blur, a dull thud. Leonora's fist buried itself in Gloria's stomach. Gloria dropped to her knees, gasping for air, and Leonora stepped past her without a second glance.
"I'll take you myself, then," she muttered, and seized Youri by the collar.
"General! It's you!" he stammered, half smiling and half afraid. "What are you doing here?"
She did not answer him. She dragged him out through the door and into the rain. As lightning fractured the sky above the alley, she shoved him back against the side of the car, her eyes burning. "Listen to me, you drunk bastard." Her voice cracked, and there was a hint of sorrow underneath the rage. "You can throw your own life away all you want, but don't you ever drag my brother into your shit again."
He swallowed. The rain ran down his face and mixed with the gin on his lips. "I didn't—"
"Our arrangement is over." Her hand was trembling where it held his collar. "I want my debt paid by tomorrow."
She let him go and turned away with her coat swirling behind her. She vanished into the dark interior of the car. The door slammed shut, and the sound of it was final, like a coffin closing.
Across the city, in a back room lit only by the dying red tips of cigarettes, a phone buzzed against a metal table.
"Are you sure about what you saw?"
"Yes, boss. It was the Phantom herself. She came into Lux and left in a black sedan."
The man at the table leaned forward into the light. Steel fingers clicked against the tabletop, one after another, and half of his face was metal — a grin welded to a scar that had never really healed. "The Gray Phantom," he said slowly, as if tasting the words. "In the flesh." They dripped from his mouth like poison.
He rose from his chair, and his long coat brushed the floor as he stood. His one remaining human eye was narrowed, and the other glowed a faint, steady red in the smoky dark. For years he had waited for this. For years he had listened to every rumor that drifted out of the capital, every report of her victories, her parades, her medals. He had kept every one of them like a coal in his chest. And now she had walked into his city, without her Knights and without her machine, as if Laspeas belonged to her.
"Finally," he murmured. "I get to return the favor."
"All the boys are ready, boss."
"Good. Find that car. And don't kill her yet." A thin smile tore across his face. "I want her breathing when I skin her alive."
The road stretched ahead of them, washed in the white-blue of the streetlights. Inside the car the only sounds were the hum of the engine and the whisper of the rain against the roof. Roland sat silently in the back with his cheek still burning, staring at his hands.
"My lady," Anna said softly from behind the wheel, "should I go back for him?"
Leonora kept her gaze fixed on the window, where her own reflection looked back at her, pale, cold, haunted. She was angrier than she had been in a long time, and some small part of her knew that not all of that anger was for Youri. "To the hotel, Anna," she said. "We're done for today."
"Yes, my lady."
The silence after that was brittle, and it did not last. The night exploded into chaos in an instant as a black sedan came out of a side street and slammed into them with bone-jarring force. The whole world tilted. Metal groaned and glass shattered into a glittering rain around them. Anna screamed as the car skidded sideways with its tires shrieking and sparks spraying from the point of impact. Roland was thrown hard against the door, his eyes wide with panic, and Leonora braced herself against the seat in front of her with her heart hammering against her ribs. The cabin filled with the smell of burning rubber and ozone. Time seemed to stretch out, every second a razor's edge, as she understood that this was no accident. They had been ambushed.
"Anna! Are you alright? Roland?"
The doors were wrenched open from outside, and gunmetal shadows flooded into the car. "Don't move," a voice ordered, and a rough hand dragged her out into the rain.
"Who are you?" Leonora shouted, twisting against the grip on her arm.
"You're about to find out." The butt of a gun slammed into the side of her head, and darkness fell over her like a curtain.
When she woke, it was cold. Chains bit into her wrists. The air was thick with the stench of oil, blood and rot. A single light buzzed somewhere above her. Out of the dark beyond its reach came the sound of footsteps — uneven ones, one heavy and soft and the other ringing like metal on concrete.
The man who stepped into the light was a terrifying blend of man and machine. The left side of his face was scarred but human, and the right was a sleek, glowing implant that scanned her with a crimson eye. His right arm was black steel, its hydraulic pistons flexing as if they were eager for something to destroy, and half of his torso had been rebuilt with exposed circuits that pulsed like a second heartbeat. He was no longer entirely human, but the fury in his remaining eye was real enough.
"Wakey, wakey, dear Phantom," he said, and his voice was honey poured over razors. He crouched in front of her and studied her face. "Even prettier than I remember. The pictures never did you justice."
"Who the fuck are you?" Leonora spat.
He laughed, a horrible, grinding sound. "Oh, that hurts. After everything we've been through? At Gara. You carved me in half."
Her eyes went wide. She saw it all again in a flash — the battle at Gara, the arc of her blade through his machine, and the certainty she had felt afterward that no one could have survived it. "Dimitry Oron," she whispered.
He grinned. "Ah, so you do remember. I can see the recognition — and the fear. You took my arms, my men and my life. Now I'm going to take yours, piece by piece." He leaned close enough that she could smell the rust and alcohol on his breath. "Your brother begged, you know. 'Don't take her,' he said. He cried for you."
"If you touch him, I swear—" Leonora strained against the chains until the cuffs cut into her skin.
His metal fingers closed around her face and dug in until blood welled up beneath them. "Swear what? You can't do a thing. You're mine now. No one can hear you, and no one is coming."
He let her go and reached for the wall. With a flick of a switch, an electric saw roared to life, throwing blue sparks across the rusted walls of the warehouse.
"Now," he said, turning it slowly in the light, "let's see what the Phantom's blood looks like."