The lab smelled of metal and lemon oil, a clean, clinical scent that pretended the world outside still belonged to rules and order. On the long bench, beneath the warm arc-lamp, things were folding themselves into a temporary peace: spools coiled, tools aligned like teeth in a comb, and the drone carcass Howard had dragged back from the workbench was slowly becoming something new.
Marc wiped his hands on a towel, the motion methodical, practiced — as if scrubbing could erase the memory of bone and the wet, copper-sweet scent that lingered in the nostrils like a word that never properly ends. On a smaller bench, sealed beneath a block of cooled polymer, was the graft — black glass and living stitch, the thing he had pried from Juarez and hurled into the dark. He had not touched it since that night. He had not wanted to know what it would say if he listened.
Howard's fingers clicked and soldered and clicked again. He had a way of making the lab hum with small, almost domestic noises: the soft thunk of a battery pack snapping into place, the ratcheting whisper of pliers. He opened the drone like a surgeon opening a chest, coaxing the wiring out into the light.
"So," Howard said, voice casual where his hands were anything but. "You're always going to be brutal to everyone?"
Marc looked up from the graft. The reflection of the lab lights made his pupils seem darker than usual. "No, mate. Only those who deserve it." His voice was steady but not untroubled. "I don't enjoy it."
Howard laughed, a short dry sound. "You say that now. But the mask — the skeletal thing. You ever have visions? Is it a curse? A tool? A side effect of being reborn?"
"Sometimes when I get too angry it happens," Marc admitted. "It's like a second skin. I don't know why it forms. Tecciztecatl says it's old imagery — Aztec, symbolic. But there's nothing ancient that maps neatly to what I feel. It isn't borrowed, Howard. Not anymore." He tapped the graft's case with two fingers. "And sometimes when it blooms I see things differently. Not always clearer. Just…other."
Howard set the first prototype battery into the drone's belly and frowned at the numbers on his tablet. "Silicate-carbon cells would give us longevity, but they're heavy. Old tech but reliable. You asked for endurance—keep the autopilot running for three hours without thermal spike—this gets you there. But it's blunt. I'm trying a hybrid matrix on the side. If I can stabilize the Aetherium output, we can shrink the cell and keep runtime steady."
Marc's eyes slid to the hull of the drone, to the seams Howard had designed to snap for rapid retrieval. "I've been using the smaller drones to tail Diego's convoy. His men rotate routes, but they favor a meatworks on the east side for storage. He keeps irregular shipments there. If we can keep eyes on his pickups—see patterns—we can pin him down without starting a war."
Howard breathed out slow. "Diego's dangerous. He's less showy than Juarez, more clinical. Sangre de Luna was Juarez's vice; Diego's experimentation was refinement—he's the one who tried to stabilize the black liquid into pills. We can trap him, but not without evidence that ties him to the ritual chain. The warehouse isn't his altar; it's a lab. He needs a lab to refine. He needs a place to test. And if William's smart, the actual sacrifice site will be far cleaner than any of those dumps."
Marc rubbed his temple and the graft's container blinked under the lamp like a tiny, patient eye. "William uses public faces. He gives speeches where the press can lap up every carefully curated sentence. But those rituals—those are hidden. He knows the law better than anyone. He knows how to hide a truth beneath corporate memos and contracts. He doesn't use the warehouse for the final acts because warehouses leave records. He uses places where the ledger is a believer's chest."
Howard's hands stilled for a beat. He held up a length of filament. "So where? We've checked docks, we've checked the usual cartel routes. We dug up the depot and found Aether tech, but ritual sites aren't Aetherian labs. They're…they're older, tied to ground and stone. If William is using tech to mask the magic, he's thinking several steps ahead."
Marc's jaw worked. He hated planning as much as he hated indecision. "The women are disappearing from neighborhoods William's charity reinvestments suddenly light up. Young women hired into training programs. Females in supply chains. He builds networks of trust—payments, lunches, scholarships—and somewhere in the middle, a girl disappears from the program and someone says she ran away. No missing-person notices. No public alarm. That's precise. That's not clumsy crime. That's surgical."
Howard's soldering iron sizzled. He looked up, eyes catching the glint from the graft's case, then away. "You think William has people who make bodies vanish? Or someone who makes evidence evaporate?"
"I think he has both," Marc said. "And the graft—whatever it does—gives men like him leverage. The graft teaches you to be something else. It's a treaty with a voice. The one I pulled out was reactive. It was alive."
Howard did a slow whistle. "We should burn it. Or blow it up, or put it under a lead blanket and forget it."
Marc's fingers closed around the case. The graft's surface was cold but not dead. He could feel, if he was honest, a faint liveliness beneath the glass. Images pricked the edge of his thoughts—faces, altars, heat flushes—as if the thing tried to remind him of its job.
He set it down gently. "I can't destroy it yet. If I do, I lose proof—proof that ties Juarez to something bigger. Proof William will bury. Evidence is what brings down men like him in the daylight. Evidence gives me leverage without watching the city burn."
Howard slumped back on the bench. "So you'll study a piece of a god's graft in your living room and hope it doesn't wake up and take a bite of your hand?"
Marc smiled without humor. "Pretty much."
Outside, the rain had stopped. A single lamp buzzed on the street, throwing a pool of light that shook with traffic. Inside, the lab was a nest of little lights and careful hands. Howard fitted the new battery into the drone, sealed it, and handed it to Marc like an offering.
"This one should follow autopilot for five hours in the cold," he said. "It'll have a small passive scanner built into the belly so we can pick up faint thermal signatures and chemical traces. Not Aether-level, but good enough to detect if someone's been processing organic compounds there." He thumbed at the tablet. "If we sync it to a mesh, we can leave a whispering net across zones. Nobody will know until they've been watched for a week. Patterns reveal themselves."
Marc clipped the drone to a holster on his belt. The graft's case hummed faintly in the corner of the bench as if it, too, wanted to be moved.
Howard leaned in. "You sure you want to keep going after this the old way? You could—"
"No," Marc cut him off gently. His voice was steady, but the room felt narrow with decision. "I can't strike down a man with only my anger. I killed Juarez because I had to. But to take William down I need a net—proof, witnesses, patterns, and a way to make people listen. If I just walk in and start killing executives, Alexia won't sleep, and she has every right to be terrified. I need the city to see the man behind the suit, not the myth I become when I hunt him."
Howard nodded slowly, brow furrowed. "So we build a case."
"We build a case," Marc echoed. He reached for the graft's case, fingers hovering. "But if the world keeps tearing blindfolds off to replace them with new ones, we won't have a city to show proof in."
Howard's eyes were tired but alert. "Then let's make sure we do it fast."
Marc picked up the drone, felt its weight in his hand, and felt the graft's quiet thrum behind his teeth like a countdown. The lab's light steadied, and somewhere beyond the bench and the map and the whisper of solder, the city turned, oblivious and dangerous, while two men prepared a trap lit by moonlight and the stubborn belief that proof could still be a weapon.