Piltover moved faster than anyone expected.
Logan could roughly guess where Silco's information came from. After all, Silco had a mountain of dirt on Sheriff Marcus—saying he "controlled" Marcus wasn't even an exaggeration.
But the exact timing of the operation… it probably wasn't that Silco refused to tell Logan. Silco was the person who least wanted Jinx to get hurt. So the only explanation was that Silco himself didn't know the enforcers' exact schedule.
And that wasn't strange either. Marcus was only a sheriff. The ones issuing orders and approving operations were the councilors sitting in their towers.
Silco acted quickly. Shimmer's operations vanished from the Lanes almost overnight. The factories in the remote zones shut down. The chem-barons withdrew from the Lanes one after another, retreating to the Entresol or the Promenade, waiting for this whole storm to pass.
And the moment the enforcers came down into the Lanes, all it took was a few questions before their attention swung toward Hope Community and Firefly Community.
Most of Zaun's gangs hated the Spirit Blossom Gang. The undercity wasn't huge, but it wasn't small either—and the Spirit Blossom Gang's growth and rise had happened with their boots on other people's throats. On top of that, the chem-barons would definitely shove the blame toward the Spirit Blossom Gang on purpose.
The bigger you got, the more eyes you drew.
So that afternoon, two squads—twenty-four enforcers—appeared in Hope Community. Wearing respirator masks and steel helmets, fully armed, long rifles in hand, they marched in as a pack, stepping straight onto Spirit Blossom turf.
"Stop!" The moment they entered Hope Community and saw how out-of-place it looked compared to the rest of Zaun, they couldn't help frowning.
Sith was the squad leader for this operation. Under his helmet, his brows pinched together. He spotted a Zaunite who turned and ran the instant he saw them, and Sith immediately lifted his rifle and shouted to stop the person.
Marna heard the shout and stubbornly turned around.
Recently, she'd started her own stall. She no longer piled pastries onto a tray and hawked them through the streets. Now she set them out on a counter—and also sold some homemade liquor on the side.
Her husband had joined one of the factories under Spirit Blossom operations. He had a proper nine-to-five job now—out at nine, home at five. The pay hadn't jumped much, but it wasn't as brutal as before, and the working conditions were better by far.
The new boss provided respirator masks and protective suits. The old factories never had anything like that. Before, they didn't hand out anti-toxin masks—hell, they wouldn't even give you a spare shirt.
Life was improving bit by bit. As someone benefiting from that change, Marna naturally supported the Spirit Blossom Gang.
And the reason she'd run when she saw enforcers was simple—she wanted to warn the Spirit Blossom Gang.
"Get over here!" Sith barked at Marna.
"Don't you shout at a woman!" A fish vendor named Kerr stepped out. He had a thick beard, a wide heavy build, not very tall—yet he still walked out from behind his stall, fearless. "If you've got an attitude, bring it to me, you damn topsider!"
The locals of Hope Community watched the enforcers with cold eyes. They stopped their business one after another, stepping out from their stalls and closing in around the enforcers.
Hope Community had around six hundred residents—not huge, not like Firefly Community—but if you talked about unity, they were the most united Zaunites you'd find anywhere.
Because they'd been bullied by gangs before, and then helped by the Spirit Blossom Gang as their lives slowly improved, they'd learned to support one another. They'd learned what it meant to stand together.
"What are you doing? Rebelling?" When Sith saw the undercity crowd pressing in, he panicked and raised his rifle toward them, shouting.
Facing the black mouth of the gun, Kerr's courage evaporated. He swallowed, instinctively stepping back. But when he saw several enforcers moving toward Marna, he forced himself forward again.
That unconscious act made Sith loosen up.
Why hadn't enforcers dared come into the Lanes before?
Because the Lanes were dangerous.
But looking at this place now, it didn't seem as dangerous as they'd imagined.
At least… these people were afraid of guns.
And they weren't armed either. They looked like ordinary Zaunites.
Good.
Zaunites like this were easy to squeeze.
Sith felt his mission was going to go perfectly.
"I am Enforcer Sith, badge number 102," he announced. "Undercity resident, I have the authority to search you. I suspect you are connected to the violent criminals responsible for an attack on the Upper City! You are obligated to submit to a lawful search!"
Sith lifted his hand. Four enforcers with rifles surrounded Marna. The moment they got close, they moved to restrain her.
They also flipped her stall. Two enforcers knocked pastries and liquor to the ground and started smashing things with their rifle butts.
"Stop!"
A furious shout rang out.
The Zaunites packed around the enforcers immediately parted, opening a corridor.
Down that corridor came a group of Zaunites in strange graffiti-marked clothing—only eight of them. Leading them was a young man: tall and skinny, wearing a white jacket splashed with blue-and-pink paint.
"Who are you?" Sith demanded, looking at the young man.
The locals in Hope Community visibly relaxed the second they saw those youths.
"You don't get to ask me who I am," Marsen said as he walked up to Sith, face dark. "Since when do enforcers come to Zaun to search people without even showing a warrant?"
"A warrant?" Sith raised his rifle and aimed the muzzle at Marsen's face. Under the helmet, his eyes narrowed. "My word is the warrant."
Marsen stared at the gun.
If it had been the old him, he probably would've dropped to his knees right then, begging, shouting "Enforcer, please spare me."
But now, facing the cold black barrel, Marsen had to admit—he still felt fear.
He was afraid. Afraid the gun would spit fire and he'd die right here.
That was instinct.
But what he'd just seen—kind Marna being surrounded, the other Zaunites being ordered not to move, the work he'd put into Hope Community these days…
Right now, what filled Marsen more than fear was a burning, raging fury.
Why did Zaun have to accept Piltover's investigation?
Why?
No longer a Zaun punk—now the undercity enforcer of Hope Community—Marsen met Sith's eyes and stepped forward, long stride, closing the distance.
Anger crushed fear under its heel.
He locked onto Sith and didn't blink.
"You—" Sith's finger hovered on the trigger.
Marsen shot out a hand, seized the barrel, and yanked it upward—until the muzzle pointed straight at his own face.
"Shoot."
"What?" Sith froze for a split second. "Are you insane?"
Threatening someone was one thing.
Actually firing and killing someone was another. The memory of Zaunites charging the bridge was still carved into enforcer history, and Sith… couldn't carry that responsibility.
"Motherfucker!" Marsen suddenly roared. "Shoot, you damn cop! Kill me!"
Behind him, Willa and Manzu drew their weapons—two rusty-looking firearms leveled at Sith. They didn't look at Marsen. Their eyes stayed locked on Sith.
The madness in their gaze made the enforcers' blood run cold.
The other Spirit Blossom members drew their own weapons too. Only eight of them—but none of them backed down. They stood toe-to-toe with the enforcers.
"Come on!" Marsen snarled at Sith. "Kill me, and then you die too! This turns into a firefight! We're not afraid of you!"
He stared into Sith's eyes through the helmet.
"This is Hope Community. This is our turf. You're on our turf, pushing around the people we protect—what do you think we are?"
"Come on!" Marsen bellowed. "Shoot!"
Sith's teeth started chattering. His hand hovered over the trigger, but he couldn't pull it. He looked at Marsen's wild eyes and shuddered.
Sith just stood there, rifle raised, not daring to fire and not daring to speak.
Marsen abruptly threw the barrel aside, glaring at Sith with ice in his eyes.
"Get out of our turf, cop."
"You—"
"You've got some nerve!" Sith snapped, scrambling for authority. "How dare you openly resist lawful enforcement! You're leading an active defiance of Piltover's laws—can you carry that responsibility?"
Marsen remembered what Logan had told him.
In his eyes, madness and clarity existed at the same time—two opposite emotions pouring out together.
He stared at Sith and spoke, slowly, word by word:
"This—place—is…"
"Zaun."
TN: Thank you so much for the stones!
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