Inside the room, Silco neither agreed nor disagreed. He pulled his hand out from under the table and rested it on the tabletop, rubbing his gaunt chin with three fingers as he watched Logan in silence.
"Silco… I mean, uncle—do you really think you can make Zaun independent?" Logan asked first.
Silco went quiet, meeting Logan's eyes. Seeing the sincere look on Logan's face, Silco pinched the bridge of his nose and finally spoke.
"I'll be honest with you, Logan. I don't know if I can truly make Zaun independent. But compared to letting Vander lead Zaun, I think my odds are better."
The gap between Topside and the Undercity was like heaven and a crater now—there wasn't even anything to compare.
And with the Hexgates now linking Piltover to the world, Piltover had officially become a jewel of global trade. Ships came and went nonstop. In the past, Piltover had recruited huge numbers of Zaunite workers, but lately, more and more Zaunites had lost their jobs.
Factory owners drowning in money switched to assembly lines and replaced backbreaking labor. Merchants from everywhere flowed through, and Piltover's tax revenue alone already surpassed what all of Zaun brought in.
The gap kept widening. Sometimes even Silco couldn't help feeling the future was dark—yet he still pushed forward with stubborn certainty.
He had no road back. If he stopped now, he would truly become Zaun's sinner. No one understood that better than him.
He even knew that if he died—whether he succeeded or failed—no one would put up a statue for him. In Zaunites' hearts, he would never be respected the way Vander was.
And so what?
"Shimmer is our only trump card," Silco said. "With Shimmer, we can at least make Topside wary—buy ourselves a voice at the table. Without Shimmer, we don't even have the right to sit across from Piltover."
"But you've heard the voices outside, Silco," Logan said. "People are scared of you now. They're forming groups in secret to resist you. You say it's for Zaun, but aren't you just making Zaun messier?"
"It's all small-time noise." Silco dismissed it, grabbed his drink, and knocked it back in one swallow. He set the glass down, wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, and said in a low voice:
"They forgot the past. They forgot who brought them this far. It wasn't only Vander's work—my hands are in it too."
"They forgot that in their hearts Vander is this city's great hero, and I'm a traitor." Silco looked at Logan calmly. "But none of that matters. I don't care how they see me."
"Or rather—if they fear me, that's even better."
Silco held Logan's gaze and continued.
"Kindness doesn't buy you dignity, Logan. Fear does."
Logan's head started to ache.
Silco wasn't an idealist. He was a realist. In his mind, the chaos and infighting in Zaun right now were acceptable—more than that, they were something he had deliberately allowed, even pushed.
If Zaun didn't turn itself upside down, if it didn't make a spectacle, why would Piltover ever pay attention?
Silco was the kind of figure people argued about endlessly—some would say he was the one truly fighting for Zaun, others would say he was nothing but a drug lord. The verdict on him was brutally split.
But in Arcane, Silco really did use Shimmer to force Piltover into granting "autonomy." Even if it looked fragile—like Piltover could flip the table whenever it wanted—Silco was still the only person in centuries who had gotten that far.
He had clawed back a sliver of dignity for Zaun.
Which meant Logan was suddenly realizing something: trying to gently talk Silco into giving up and working with him was going to be extremely hard.
Maybe—besides Jinx—no one could make Silco change his mind.
So Logan took a deep breath and said, "But have you ever thought about how what you're doing is the same thing Piltover did to us?"
"You let cheap, trash Shimmer flood the black market. You let ordinary people get their hands on it. You've destroyed countless families. Did you ever think about them?"
"You keep saying you're resisting Piltover, but what you're doing now isn't any different from what Piltover did to us."
"Hell, at this point their waste water does less damage than you do."
"Yeah—Zaun's gotten richer. But where the hell did the money and power go? It all flowed into gangs and Chem-Barons."
"You people in the middle and at the top live better lives now—but what about the ordinary people at the bottom?"
"You say Vander made mistakes, but when he was in charge, people could still live."
"Back then, yeah, we had to avoid Pilties. Yeah, we had to watch them swagger into our streets like they owned the place."
"But we weren't beating each other bloody over a single silver coin. We weren't murdering people we grew up with because of a bottle of poison."
Silco said nothing. He poured himself another drink, downed it again, and closed his eyes.
After a long moment, he spoke quietly.
"These are necessary sacrifices."
"Sacrifices?" Logan shot back. "So what gives you the right to make them bleed for your cause?"
"If I don't do this," Silco countered, "do you really think their lives get better?"
"At least they won't be worse than this." Logan's answer was immediate—certain.
Logan knew exactly how poisonous Shimmer was. In his memories, once Silco took power, it only took a few short years for the people Logan used to know in the Lanes to become unrecognizable.
Some died.
Some went mad.
Some vanished.
And some—like Marsen—had no choice but to join a gang just to survive… only to turn around and start hurting the people around them.
"Stop," Logan said. "At least stop half the Shimmer factories."
"You can keep your doctor researching it, but you don't sell it anymore."
"What you do privately with your own people, I won't police."
"But if I see Shimmer circulating in the black market again, I will destroy your factories."
"Every last one."
As he spoke, Logan reached out and grabbed a decoration on Silco's desk—a heavy iron piece, at least twenty pounds, a massive beast head.
Logan stared at Silco and began squeezing it with both hands.
The iron warped and folded under his grip, reshaping again and again until it became a metal ball no bigger than his fist. Logan's face stayed blank, but the veins in his bare forearms bulged as he forced the ball tighter.
Crack—
The metal ball split.
Logan set the two pieces down on the table and said, "I don't think you and I can work together. Our beliefs don't match."
"So this isn't a cooperation proposal anymore."
"This is a one-sided threat."
Silco leaned back, staring at the two halves of metal on the desk. His mouth twitched.
You could strap explosives to that thing and it might not even deform—
And Logan had reshaped it with his bare hands.
Then snapped it in half.
That wasn't something Silco's Shimmer brutes could do.
Silco drew a slow breath, and the way he looked at Logan changed.
Not fear.
Questions.
One huge question stamped across his eyes:
How?
"Then we're done here," Logan said.
He looked at Silco—who was still staring at the broken metal—and spoke again, slow and clear.
"Silco."
"Zaun won't become independent in your hands."
"Zaun will rise in mine."
"We'll see."
With Isha in tow, Logan left The Last Drop—
A place he knew, and yet didn't.
After Logan and Isha were gone, Silco stared at the broken metal, picked it up, and ran his fingers over the jagged fracture. His expression was stiff, unsettled.
"Fine," Silco murmured to himself.
"Then we'll see."
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