Chapter 46 - Conversations in the Workshop

The food had been handed off at the tavern's rear exit by the very same cook Maria had nearly bowled over minutes earlier.

The demon surrendered the cast-iron platter of roast boar ribs, the parcel of malt bread, and the earthenware crock of shredded beef stew without uttering a solitary word, pocketed the ten-scrip tip Dante slipped through the half-open door, and slammed the heavy timber shut with an iron bolt, clearly wanting nothing to do with any discussion about the fugitive busboy.

They walked back to townhouse forty-two in silence.

The aroma of hot food wafting through the heavy butcher paper filled the cold street air, but the hunger that had driven them had given way to guarded vigilance, both of them keeping their eyes swept across the district's rooftops and elevated steam lines.

Down in the ground-floor workshop, Maria hauled two wooden stools up to the edge of the oak workbench.

She carved into the rack of boar ribs with bare, clean hands, ripping free a long bone wrapped in a thick slab of charred, glistening meat. Steam rose into the high-ceilinged workshop as she took a deep bite, chewing slowly while keeping her eyes fixed on the double doors barred with the iron crossbeam.

Dante took the other stool, resting his steaming bowl of stew over a clean plank, holding a brass spoon in his right hand.

The graze along his left arm no longer throbbed. The bandage remained clean and dry, the surrounding skin settled at normal body temperature.

"Meat is good," Maria said after swallowing the first mouthful, her tone unusually reflective for someone who had been starved an hour ago.

"The rendered fat helps replenish baseline stamina," Dante replied, bringing a spoonful of thick meat-and-root broth to his mouth. "Slag boar carries a dense mineral concentration in its muscle fibers."

They ate in silence for several minutes, the only sound the occasional pop of coal inside the cast-iron radiator banked against the basalt wall.

Maria set the stripped bone on the rim of the metal platter, wiped her grease-slicked fingers on a dry rag, and leaned both elbows onto the oak bench.

"Do we really need to track that kid down tomorrow?" she asked, looking straight at Dante.

Dante paused his spoon in the air. He lowered the utensil back into the bowl and met her gaze.

"You want to leave him loose in the city?"

"I'm not pushing for anything, Dante. I'm asking," she folded her heavy arms over her iron cuirass, her expression turning somber. "He took a shot at us out in the canyon because he marked us as easy marks to steal copper from. But when I cornered him on that gantry, he didn't even reach for a boot knife. He was ready to take the blade across his neck without making a sound."

"He tried to kill me, Maria," Dante stated, his tone carrying the sterile chill of raw telemetry. "That half-inch slug missed my jugular by two inches. Had I not pitched forward to grab the pack strap at that exact millisecond, my head would be red paste smeared over the boiler sill."

"I know that," she countered instantly, not wavering. "I was right there. I hauled you through the hatch by your collar. But that shot happened in the middle of nowhere, in an open trench where everyone cuts throats over stale bread. Here, it's different. He was working as a busboy hauling ale mugs for half a dozen gray bills just so he wouldn't starve in an alley."

Dante chewed a piece of bread soaked in the rich broth, his gray eyes calculating the variables in rapid succession.

"If we do nothing, he remains an operational liability," Dante laid out the points. "He knows we are in the Third District. He saw us face-to-face inside that tavern. In his mind, we are headhunters dispatched by the exact same apparatus that slaughtered his family fifteen years ago."

"And what are the odds of him making a move against us here?"

"Low, in the near term," Dante conceded. "He lost his long rifle, his chitin jaw is fractured from your cross, and he lacks the capital to purchase heavy ordnance from the canal gunsmiths. But if panic tips into cornered desperation, he might try an ambush outside our gate, or drop a tip to the Legion garrison claiming we're running unregistered contraband without guild chits."

Maria snorted through her nose, dragging a heavy palm through her short brown hair.

"He won't go to the Legion," she stated with total conviction. "Anyone carrying black-market surgical scars on their skull and animal mandibles grafted to their mouth stays a mile away from town guards. He knows that if he steps into a military post, he'll end up in an iron cage down in the lower wards."

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She leaned across the workbench, holding his gaze.

"The problem isn't what he can do to us, Dante. The problem is what he knows."

Dante held his tongue for two beats. He picked up his brass spoon, stirring the cooling broth in the earthenware bowl.

That was the crux of the matter.

Miro was the only living soul they had encountered in seven years who possessed firsthand knowledge of the white-jacket outfit's operations.

"He saw the interior of their bunker," Dante said softly, his words carrying heavy resonance in the quiet workshop. "He saw the purple conduits, the brass needles, and his entire family rot away from soul matrix rejection. He called them by the exact title we use."

"They run experiments, Dante," Maria pressed, her voice dipping almost to a whisper. "They round up living souls in this realm and pump foreign matter into their meat to test biological thresholds. Miro survived only because the grafted mutation absorbed the toxicity."

She brought her right hand to her collar, touching the iron plate directly over the old scar across her left shoulder.

"And what about you?" She looked him dead in the eyes. "What about the wings that tore out of your spine when you hit Level 15? The man in the white jacket told me your frail husk was engineered to mask your soul. He said you were what remained of an ancient storm."

Dante felt the basilisk bone plate resting cold and solid against his vertebrae beneath his vest.

"I know what I might be, Maria."

"And what about what happened to me inside the Black Smelter?" she pressed, the uncertainty that had shadowed her since that clash returning in full force. "That fire in my veins, that stench of black sulfur venting from my teeth when I cracked that colossus... The man in the white jacket didn't log that. It was an absolute blind spot in his report. What if that's also the result of some poison they shoved into my head when I was a kid back on Earth, and I don't even remember it?"

Silence descended over the workshop.

Maria's hypothesis was far from unreasonable.

Dante had drawn his first breath with a full system matrix branded onto his soul inside a public hospital delivery room. Maria had been tethered to that same system at nine years old by a casual snap of the fingers from that very man in the white jacket, the same entity now herding them through the Capital with six-month deadlines.

They were not plucky adventurers who had stumbled into a magic wardrobe.

They were subjects inside an active program. A long-term field trial spanning two distinct dimensions, stress-testing attribute limits, biological mutations, and soul tolerances through scripted quests and pre-programmed rewards.

"We need to talk to Miro," Dante said, his voice level and resolute. "We cannot approach him as hostiles. If we corner that boy in an alley with drawn steel, his animal reflexes will drive him off a roof or into a suicidal charge with those talons."

Maria nodded slowly in agreement.

"He needs three things," she cataloged with her usual survival pragmatism. "He needs food that isn't boiler refuse, he needs coin to rent a dry bunk, and he needs medicine to knit that jaw I cracked."

Dante gave a thin, dry smirk, tipping back the final sip of broth from the bowl.

"And we have his patrol chart in our pocket," Dante added. "Along with the three tins of fifty-caliber ammunition we liquidated back at Low Ember."

Maria arched an eyebrow, regarding him with faint amusement.

"You're planning on paying the kid for the ammo we took after he nearly blew your shoulder off?"

"It's the most efficient way to disarm the paranoia of a scrap scavenger," Dante rose from the stool, collecting the empty bowl and platter to carry them to the wash sink. "We can't return the cartridges because they're already sold, but we drop six hundred scrip into his hand and present it as the purchase price of the lot. A scout handed six hundred in clean paper without having to take a slug in return will pause and listen before diving out a window."

"You're weird, Dante," she pushed off her stool as well, rolling her shoulders and stretching her spine until three vertebrae popped loudly beneath the high ceiling. "Good logic, though. Spares us burning stamina chasing him across rotted shingle roofs."

They wiped down the oak bench with a damp rag, stored the remaining rations in the cupboard, and mounted the timber stairs to the second floor.

The upstairs corridor was dark, lit only by the slit of amber glare leaking through the transom above the parlor.

Dante paused at his bedroom door, hand on the brass knob.

"First thing tomorrow we visit the tavern to press that cook," Dante said over his shoulder. "He has to know where the kid sleeps or who sponsored him for dishwashing duty."

Maria stopped outside her door, resting a hand on her hip, looking far more at ease than she had all afternoon.

"Thirty scrip to a line cook will loosen the tongue of any demon in that galley," she replied with easy confidence. "Night, bighead."

"Goodnight, Maria."

Dante entered his room, shut the door, and threw the interior iron latch.

He slipped off his leather vest, draping it over the back of the chair, and laid flat on his back across the pocket-spring mattress, hands laced behind his head.

Through the double-paned window, the white glow of the avenue's arc lamps reflected softly across the pine-plank ceiling.

The hunt beginning tomorrow had nothing to do with experience points, monster carapaces, or forge stock to liquidate for coin.

It was their opening move toward tearing the veil off the man in the white jacket, and uncovering who had decided their lives belonged on this board of ash and iron.

Dante closed his eyes slowly, letting the cold equilibrium of his soul surrender to the fatigue of the night.