The "Blind Spot" smelled of wet wool, oxidized iron, and the ozone of a dying radiator.
The radiator was a cast-iron relic that Arthur had learned to bribe with a specific, calculated kick to the left valve. It didn't provide heat so much as it provided a rhythmic, metallic heartbeat that filled the dead channel of the office. Tonight, that lack of noise was thicker than usual—saturated with the unspoken math of two people who had just realized they were being hunted by the man who signed their paychecks.
Arthur arrived first. He didn't turn on the overhead lights; the flickering fluorescents were a VIR staple he didn't want to bring home. Instead, he sat in the dark, his charcoal coat still heavy with the industrial sediment of the North District rain. He reached out and touched the desk—the particle-board surface he had once claimed as his solo sanctuary. It felt cold.
He didn't move for twenty minutes. He just listened to the city.
Onyx Port at 1:00 AM was a low-frequency hum of distant turbines and the rhythmic hiss of the transit lines. It was a language he usually understood, a blueprint he could read in his sleep. But tonight, the 0.5 Hz vibration from the dam audit was stuck in his marrow. It made the floor beneath his boots feel like it was vibrating on a different axis than the rest of the world. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the decimal points drifting.
The service door at the back of the building groaned.
Arthur didn't reach for the 9mm taped under the desk this time. He knew the gait. It was a measured, heavy tread—the sound of someone carrying more weight than their skeletal structure was designed for.
Sloane Miller entered the room like a shadow detaching itself from an unoccupied frequency. She didn't look at him. She walked straight to the small, cracked sink in the corner and turned the tap. The water came out in a rusty stutter before smoothing into a cold, translucent stream.
She began to wash her hands.
Arthur watched her silhouette in the dim amber light of the streetlamp filtering through the blinds. She wasn't washing off dirt; she was scrubbing at the memory of the alley. Her movements were mechanical, repetitive, the rhythm of an operator resetting a weapon.
"You're bleeding," Arthur said. His voice was a low rasp, a jarring break in the office's isolation.
Sloane didn't stop scrubbing. "It's not mine."
"Your right side. You're favoring the ribs. Short breaths."
She finally turned off the tap. The silence that rushed back into the room was absolute. She leaned against the sink, her head bowed, her wet hands dripping onto her boots—the boots still stained with the pale, dried ghost of the milk she'd dropped in the Grey Ward.
"An Accountant," she said, her voice a hollow echo. "He was waiting near the transit hub. Unremarkable. Grey coat, grey eyes. The kind of man you forget while you're looking at him."
"Vane?"
"Vane." She looked up then, her eyes catching a sliver of streetlight. They weren't the Reaper's eyes, and they weren't the Aunt's eyes. They were the eyes of someone who had seen the math of their own life and realized the variables were rigged. "He's not testing us anymore, Arthur. He's auditing. He's checking to see if we're still profitable assets or if we've become... overhead."
Arthur stood up, his joints protesting with a stiffness that felt like rust. He walked to the desk and pulled the burner phone from the locked drawer—the one that had received his emergency code. He laid it on the desk between them. The screen stayed dark, but the implication was glowing.
"The Dam," he said, his voice dropping an octave. "The vibration wasn't an accident. It's a sub-frequency resonance embedded in the foundation. It's a Tectonic Backdoor. A design flaw meant to be triggered, not repaired."
Sloane walked to the desk, her movements stiff. She didn't sit. She stood over the phone, staring at the message: REB: DAM. HUM. NON-ACT.
"Non-actionable," she repeated, her voice testing the weight of the lie. "You signed off on it."
"I followed protocol," Arthur corrected, the "Golden Son" mask flickering for a second. "The deviation was within 0.02%. Reporting it would have been an act of professional hysteria. I gave Vane exactly what he wanted: a perfect analyst who follows the rules even when the rules are designed to kill. If I had flagged it, I wouldn't have made it to the transit line."
"And if the resonance hits 1.0 Hz?"
"The concrete liquefies," Arthur said, his mind involuntarily rendering the simulation. "The North District becomes a lake in under six minutes. Three hundred thousand variables, erased. The state-run insurance pays out, the reconstruction contracts go to VIR, and the liability is buried under three million tons of silt."
Sloane finally sat. The chair groaned—a familiar sound of structural fatigue. She reached into her coat and pulled out a small, crumpled bag of medical supplies she'd picked up at a twenty-four-hour pharmacy.
Arthur didn't ask. He reached for the bag, pulled out a roll of heavy athletic tape and a bottle of antiseptic.
He wetted a cotton pad and began to wrap the tape around her ribs. The Blind Spot Laws didn't forbid care; they only forbade history. He worked with an analyst's precision, keeping his focus on the bruising rather than the person beneath it.
"The Accountant," Arthur asked as he tightened the tape. "Did you finish it?"
"I broke his sternum," Sloane said, staring at the peeling wallpaper. "I didn't stay to see if he stayed broken. There will be others. Vane doesn't send one Accountant to close a file. He sends a firm. They'll be looking for the crack in the foundation. They'll be looking for us."
Arthur stepped back, his hands lingering for a fraction of a second before retreating. He could feel the heat radiating from the injury. "He's using the relatives, Sloane. Maya noticed the bruise on my wrist. She's nineteen, and she's starting to run the numbers on the North District bridges. She's seeing the gaps I left in my cover."
Sloane pulled her sweater back down, the movement slow and pained. She looked at the desk—the particle board Arthur had spent years trying to keep pristine.
"Why did you send the code?" she asked quietly.
Arthur looked at the burner phone. "Because the Ghost can see the backdoor, but he can't close it. Not without a Reaper to handle the men guarding the key. Vane wants the Dam to fail, but he needs an 'Incompetent Senior Analyst' to take the blame. I'm the fall guy. And you're the one meant to clean up the witnesses afterward."
The air in the room settled. It wasn't the peace of roommates; it was the heavy atmosphere of co-conspirators.
Arthur walked to the window and moved a single slat of the blinds. Below, the street was empty, save for the rain. But he knew they were there. The invisible eyes of a city built on the bones of people like them.
"We need to move the data," Arthur said. "The Tectonic Backdoor isn't just a design flaw. It's a signature. If I can trace the frequency code, I can prove Vane authorized the installation years ago."
"And then what?" Sloane asked. "We go to the police? In a city Vane owns? We go to the Republic? They're the ones who trained me to do exactly what Vane is doing now."
"We don't go to anyone," Arthur said, turning back to the room. "We use the backdoor. If Vane can use it to destroy the district, we can use it to bankrupt him. We don't just survive. We audit him until there's nothing left but debt."
Sloane stood up with a grimace, her hand resting on the taped ribs. She walked toward the door, her steps a little steadier. At the threshold, she stopped.
"I fixed the desk," she said.
Arthur blinked. "What?"
"The left leg. It was loose. I jammed a piece of leather from an old holster into the joint while you were at the Dam. It doesn't wobble anymore."
She didn't wait for a response. She stepped out into the hallway, the sound of her footsteps fading into the rhythmic heartbeat of the radiator.
Arthur walked back to the desk. He sat down and gripped the edges of the board. He pushed.
It didn't move. It was solid. A foundation.
He pulled his tablet from his bag and began to run the numbers—not for Vane, but for the "Blind Spot." If they were going to fight a man who owned the city, they needed to make sure their own variables were locked.
The rain continued to fall, a heavy sediment coating the world outside. But inside, for the first time in years, the math felt right.
0.5 Hz... 0.6 Hz... 0.7 Hz...
The count had begun, and this time, he wasn't alone in the calculation.