The wagon was burning down to embers by the time Marek crossed the street , boots crunching over glass and spent shell casings. He wasn't looking at Cairon's hands. He looked at his face.
"What in hell was that." Saying it in a tone that was Not a question anymore, "What did you do back there? Got something you wanna explain to me?"
Cairon didn't answer. He was already working the buttons of his coat loose with fingers that weren't quite steady enough , and then he got it open, now he knew why the front of his shirt had gone dark and heavy during the fight.
Glass ; Small, sharp broken pieces of it, went into torn cloth and torn skin below his ribs,right above his stomache the wound already black. What was left of the vial was still half-buried in it, a jagged silver crescent, the rest of it , whatever had been left inside , had gone too deep .
He put two fingers into the wound slowly pushing in before his brain caught up with what his hand was doing, and even then he didn't stop, feeling for something even he didn't know what it was.
"I don't know, Marek." His voice came out flatter than he meant it to. "I'm as clueless as you are. But I think it's got something to do with this." He nodded down at his own hand, red past the second knuckle. "Whatever this is that has gone inside ."
"Doran!" Shouted Marek without turning his head to shout it. "Get over here , bring water, now, move!"
The boy came at a dead run, and for a second Marek's whole face was unexplainable ; he seemed worried a harder version of worry that didn't belong on a man built like him , before it went back into the face Cairon knew.
"That wasn't normal." Marek crouched down next to him, peeling the coat back further with hands that had clearly done this before. "I've known you long enough, boy. I trust you enough to know you're not lying to me about this. But we've gotta be careful. I don't know what any of the others saw back there, and I sure as hell know they won't keep their mouths shut if they saw anything."
He paused, just long enough that Cairon looked up from his own hand to meet his eyes.
"What I do know," Marek said, "is that kid you drag around with you everywhere , saw all of it. You want to do something about that?"
"Vynn did?"
Cairon's eyes went to him without meaning to , across the wreckage, where Vynn was elbow-deep in a supply crate someone had knocked loose from the second wagon, already chattering at one of the other boys about the haul like the last five minutes hadn't happened at all. If he'd seen it, it hadn't stopped him being thirteen.
Cairon watched him a moment longer than he needed to. Whatever was moving behind his face, it didn't reach the surface.
"I'll handle it," he said finally. "Don't worry about him. Go check on the others."
"Got you, boy." Marek straightened his back , "I've got your back , same as I always have. Just don't make me regret it." He paused for a second,. "So I can be sure. You're not keeping anything from me?"
Cairon met his eyes and didn't blink. "You're the first one who'll know anything. Right now I've got to find out what was in that vial , and what just went inside my body ."
---
Back at the warehouse, Cairon knelt over the open crate. He'd already turned the same vial over in his hand a dozen times, watching it catch the lamp.
It wasn't doing what it had done before. No hum. No hint of anything moving inside the glass — just liquid.
"It's not humming anymore," he said. "It had a hum. Some kind of glow to it too, when I first opened the crate."
Marek glanced over from the map, unbothered. "Looks the same as it always did to me."
Cairon didn't argue. He was fairly certain — more than fairly certain — that it had hummed, that there'd been something under the surface of the liquid that caught the light wrong. He didn't say any of that. He just pocketed a second vial, it might be needed somewhere .
"Vynn!" Cairon called.
"Yes, sir!" The reply came from down the passage, followed almost immediately by the sound of someone colliding with a doorframe, then a wall, then — from the noise of it — several crates.
Vynn arrived in the doorway a few seconds later, out of breath, one hand braced against the frame like the run had actually cost him something. "Yes, sir Cairon , you called?"
"Drop the sir. Cai's fine."
"Right. Cai." Vynn straightened like the correction itself was an honor.
"Get ready, we're going on patrol let's see what the streets are saying tonight. Get yourself a mask first. Last room on the right. Ask for Rae."
Vynn hesitated. "Rae?"
"Quiet guy. You'll know him when you see him." Cairon was already looking back down at the vial.
The last room on the right didn't look like it belonged to the rest of the warehouse. Crates sat stacked outside the door, half emptied, packing straw spilling onto the floor like something had been dug through in a hurry. Vynn picked his way around them and knocked.
"Sir Rae?"
Nothing. Somewhere behind the door, something scraped against a table — metal on wood, unhurried.
"Sir Rae?" He tried again, louder. "Cai said I should come find you."
The door came open so fast it startled him , making him back up a step.
"Cai sent you?"
The man who filled the doorway was thin in a way that made him look taller than he was, pale enough that the black of his hair looked painted on, with matching black eyes set in circles so dark they might have been bruises if they hadn't looked so at home on his face. When he smiled — and he was smiling now, wide and sudden — it didn't sit quite right, like his face had learned the expression from watching other people do it rather than from feeling it.
"Cai sent you?" he said again, delighted, already pulling the door wider. "Come in, come in. Where is he? Why didn't he come himself — what's he doing, is he busy, is it something interesting…."
"He only trusts me ," Rae said, stepping back to let Vynn through, already turning away before he'd finished the sentence. "Did you know that? Out of everyone here — everyone — he only lets me handle his business . I'm is most trusted comrade, that's what I am to him." He said it like he was trying the words on, checking how they fit. "So. How can I help you?"
"Cai said I should come to you. For a mask. Before we go out."
"Ohh." Rae's whole face lit up. He circled Vynn once, slow, studying him the way a butcher studies a hanging carcass, deciding where to start. "Let's see. There's nothing special about you, is there. Normal face. Normal build , everything about you is normal , you're insignificant. " He said it without unkindness, which somehow made it worse. "Too normal. Too weak-looking. Hmm."
He was already turning away, talking more to himself now than to Vynn. "Jagged jaw on the bottom — bone, has to be bone, or it won't read right — and something hollow for the eyes, dark, like there's nothing behind them. And hair." He snapped his fingers. "Hair like it's on fire. Messy. Wild. Yes. Good. Menacing."
He dropped into a chair at a workbench buried under tools and scraps and didn't look up again.
Vynn stood where he'd been left, not sure whether he was meant to sit, leave, or say something. Rae worked with his back to the room, fast and precise, tools scraping and clicking, the sound of it steady enough that after a while Vynn stopped being able to tell how much time had actually passed.
It felt like five minutes. It might have been ten. The room had no window, and the one lamp threw more shadow than light, and somewhere in there Vynn's eyes had started to go heavy — from the boredom of it, or the closeness of the air, or both — when Rae's voice cracked through the quiet like something breaking.
"Done."
He turned, holding it out in both hands like an offering. Leather straps trailed from the sides. The jaw was bone, or worked to look like it, jagged and yellow-white against the black of the rest, set below two lenses so dark they looked less like glass and more like two pieces cut out of the room itself. The hair, if it could be called that, had been shaped and lacquered into something that did, genuinely, look like it was caught mid-burn.
"This is mine?" Vynn asked.
"Try it."
He worked it over his head, buckled the strap under his jaw, and the room went black for a sec , before , everything becoming visible like the whole room lost it's shadows . The lenses did something for him — every shadow resolving into shape, the tools on the bench, the grain of the wood, Rae's own face, all of it sitting there clear as noon in a room that had no business being anything but dark.
"Special lens," Rae said, watching him look around with something like pride. "Sees in the dark same as I do. Good for night work — you'll be out there with Cairon soon enough, won't you. Need anything else?"
"No. Thank you. It's—" Vynn turned his head, testing how far he could see. "It's amazing. I love it."
"I knew you would." Rae was already back at the bench, already somewhere else entirely. "Go on, then. Don't waste his time."
Vynn didn't need telling twice. Something about the room — or the man in it — made him want to be almost anywhere else, though he couldn't precisely tell what it was . He pulled the door shut behind him and didn't look back at it.
Cairon was still crouched over the crate when Vynn found him, the mask under one arm, straps trailing.
"All set. Got the mask."
Cairon looked up at him for a long moment, unreadable.
"Good." He rose, brushing off his coat. "We're going into the streets. Grab whatever else you need. Mask goes on before we're outside."