The rain in Backlund didn't fall; it dissolved into the air, creating a suffocating, damp veil that seeped into the marrow of one's bones. For Victor, the cold was no longer just an environmental discomfort—it was a ticking clock.
He crouched beneath the skeletal remains of an abandoned pier near the Tussock River. His Intis coat had reached a state of "stabilized filth," the mud and soot forming a crust that offered a pathetic, stiff sort of insulation. His stomach growled, a low, predatory sound that resonated in the hollow of his chest. The scraps he had scavenged from The Iron Anchor were gone, digested by the Hunter potion to fuel the final knitting of his damaged ribs.
I am healing, but I am shrinking, Victor thought, his blue eyes scanning the foggy shoreline. At this rate, the potion will have me fit enough to run a marathon just as I die of starvation.
He watched the activity on the riverbank. This was the "Dead Zone," a stretch of the river where the current deposited all the refuse of the city—rotting wood, dead livestock, and the occasional "floater" who had crossed the wrong people. It was also where the poorest of the poor, the mudlarks, scavenged for anything they could sell for a copper.
Victor didn't join them. He wasn't looking for copper nails or bits of coal. He was looking for an "opening."
He noticed a group of four men—rough, thick-necked dockhands—standing near a flat-bottomed barge. They were waiting for someone. They weren't scavengers; they were "Night-Watchers" for a small-time smuggling ring, guarding a shipment of illegal grain before it was moved into the city's underbelly.
They are tired, cold, and paranoid, Victor observed, his mind weaving through the social geography of the docks.
He saw a younger man, likely a runner, approaching the guards. The runner looked terrified, his hands shaking as he spoke to the leader of the guards. From the distance, Victor couldn't hear the words, but he could read the body. The runner had bad news. The shipment was delayed, or perhaps the "protection" hadn't arrived.
The leader of the guards, a man with a jagged scar across his nose, shoved the runner into the mud. The tension was palpable. The guards were now on high alert, looking at every shadow with suspicion.
This was the "danger" Victor had to navigate. If he were caught here, they wouldn't ask questions; they would simply tie a stone to his neck and toss him into the river.
But Victor saw the opportunity in the crisis.
He didn't sneak away. Instead, he moved further into the shadows of the pier, deeper into the territory that should have been his grave. He found what he was looking for a small rusted iron pipe that led from the street above down to the riverbank. It was a drainage pipe, long since clogged with filth.
Victor picked up a heavy stone and began to strike the pipe in a rhythmic, deliberate pattern.
Clang... Clang-clang... Clang.
The sound echoed through the fog, distorted and haunting. To the paranoid guards, it didn't sound like a man with a rock. In the superstitious atmosphere of the docks, it sounded like a signal. Or worse—like the "clinking" of a Mandated Punisher's armor.
"Did you hear that?" one of the guards hissed, his hand reaching for a rusted cutlass.
"It came from the pier," another whispered.
Victor stopped. He moved with the silence of a cat, repositioning himself twenty yards to the left, behind a stack of rotting timber. He picked up another stone and threw it into the water on the opposite side of the barge.
Splash.
The guards spun around. "There! Someone's in the water!"
As the four guards moved toward the edge of the river, their eyes fixed on the ripples in the fog, the path to the street above was momentarily left unguarded.
Victor didn't run for the street. He wasn't done.
He slipped toward the spot where the runner had been shoved into the mud. The runner was still there, scrambling to his feet, sobbing quietly. Victor stepped out of the fog, appearing not as a threat, but as a silent, grim savior.
"They're going to kill you for the delay," Victor whispered, his voice a cold, authoritative rasp that cut through the boy's panic.
The runner gasped, staring at the soot-stained dandy. "Who... who are you?"
"A friend of your survival," Victor said, his blue eyes pinning the boy in place. "The 'Punishers' are sweeping the next pier over. That sound? That was their signal. If those guards stay here, they're dead. If you stay here, you're a witness they can't afford to keep."
"I... I have to get out of here!" the boy stammered.
"Give me your cap and your vest," Victor commanded. "I'll lead them away. Run toward the clockmaker's district. Don't look back."
In his terror, the boy didn't question why a beggar wanted his clothes. He stripped off his coarse wool vest and cap, handing them over with trembling hands, and vanished into the fog toward Cherwood.
Victor didn't put the clothes on. Not yet. He watched the guards return to the barge, cursing the "rats" in the water. They were more on edge than ever.
Victor threw the boy's cap onto the deck of the barge, then slipped away, climbing the rusted ladder up to the street level.
He sat on a stone bench in a deserted square, the boy's wool vest wrapped around his shivering chest beneath his ruined coat. It wasn't much, but it was another layer of warmth. More importantly, he had "hunted" a resource without shedding a drop of blood or revealing his true nature.
I am a Hunter, Victor realized, the logic finally solidifying in his mind. Being a Hunter isn't about the kill. It's about the manipulation of the environment until the 'prey' gives you what you need voluntarily.
He had saved a boy's life, gained a layer of clothing, and sowed discord among a gang—all with two stones and a few well-placed words.
As the morning fog began to turn from yellow to a dismal gray, Victor felt the bronze medal in his pocket. It was still silent
He was still cold and hungry. He was still a scavenger in the mud of East Borough.
But as he looked at his raw, soot-stained hands, Victor felt a flicker of something that wasn't hunger. It was a cold, sharp satisfaction. He was no longer just a victim of the sludge.
He stood up, his joints popping, and began to walk toward the East Borough market. He had a vest to trade for a bowl of porridge, and a thousand more lies to tell before the sun went down.