Thank You for the Support. Please do continue to do so and let me know your thoughts.
************************************
Lucien slowed slightly at the man's last words.
Germa keeps its own business inside.
That narrowed it down.
"Military?" he asked.
The man's expression shifted, not quite a smile, but close enough to show he had expected the question. "Close enough. Important enough that people look the other way."
Lucien's gaze dropped back to the folded paper.
"A year," the man continued. "Longer than most. That alone should tell you something."
Silence stretched between them.
"You've got more," Lucien said.
"I do." The man didn't reach for anything. Didn't move.
"Costs?"
"Depends on how much you plan on knowing."
Lucien looked at him once more, steady. "And if I don't?"
The man's mouth curved faintly. "Then you'll find out the hard way. Like the rest."
Lucien turned and walked away. He didn't give the man another second.
He didn't look back.
The man watched him go until he disappeared into the flow of the alley. Then he turned and moved deeper, past the edges where people still pretended not to notice each other, into a narrow passage, half-shadowed and empty.
He stopped there and pulled a Den Den Mushi from his coat.
The snail stirred. A click.
"Major Daniel." His voice was stripped of its earlier tone. "Your name's still drawing attention."
A pause.
"Outsider. Young."
Another pause, longer.
He glanced back toward the alley entrance.
"No," he said. "Didn't ask for details." A faint smile. "He took it anyway."
Silence. Then: "Mm."
He listened for a moment, head tilted slightly. "Understood."
The line went quiet. He closed the Den Den Mushi and tucked it away. Stood there for a moment, unmoving.
Then he exhaled, almost amused.
"Let's see how far you get."
He stepped back into the alley like nothing had happened.
Lucien was already three streets away.
He folded the paper once more and slipped it deeper into his coat. If the board didn't give details, the rest of the city would. It always did.
The first place was loud. Too loud. A bar packed tight enough that no one noticed anyone for more than a second, voices layered over each other, laughter cutting through, cups hitting wood hard enough to blur anything said quietly. Lucien took a seat near the edge and ordered something he didn't care about. He let the noise settle around him, then dropped the name into a conversation without weight behind it.
Nothing. No pause, no glance, no shift in tone. Either they didn't know, or they knew better than to react.
He finished his drink and left.
The second place was smaller. The kind where people noticed who came in and remembered who left. Lucien stayed near the wall, watched longer before speaking. When he did, he didn't use the name. He used a description instead, vague, just enough to test the temperature of the room.
That got something. A look, quick and gone just as fast. He didn't follow it immediately. He waited, let the silence stretch.
"Outer side," someone muttered, not looking at him. "Near the docks."
Lucien didn't respond. Didn't thank him. Just filed it away and stepped back into the street.
One place gives you nothing. The next gives you something. That was usually how it went.
The third gave him more, and he didn't question it.
A woman this time, older, running what appeared to be a small parts exchange near the waterfront. She had the particular manner of someone who had been useful to enough different kinds of people that she no longer worried much about which kind was standing in front of her.
She heard the description. Didn't look up from the component she was cleaning.
"You're not the first to come asking about that one," she said.
"I know," Lucien said. "What happened to the others?"
She set the component down. Picked up another. "The smart ones stopped asking. The rest stopped being seen." She glanced at him then, briefly, taking inventory. "You don't look like either kind."
"I'm still deciding," Lucien said.
She almost smiled at that. "Outer dock, eastern end. There's a storage facility that isn't on any registry. Shifts change at dusk. If you're going to look, that's when the gaps are." She picked up her component again. "Don't tell anyone I said anything."
"Said what?" Lucien replied and turned and walked away.
The woman watched him go.
Then she set the component down, eyes lingering on the space he had occupied.
"…Too young," she muttered.
She picked the component back up and didn't look up again.
Lucien didn't hear her.
He was already moving toward the eastern docks, hands in his pockets, eyes forward. The afternoon light was flattening out across the water, the kind that meant dusk wasn't far off. Shift change, she had said. That was when the gaps appeared.
He had time. Not much, but enough.
The eastern end of the docks was quieter than the rest of the waterfront, which was its own kind of answer. Quiet in Germa didn't mean empty. It meant deliberate. The crates here were larger, the spacing between them wider, the workers fewer and moving with more purpose than the ones further along. Everything had the look of a place that had been designed to appear unremarkable.
Lucien slowed his pace without stopping entirely, the way he had learned years ago, moving at the speed of someone with somewhere to be rather than someone looking for something.
There. At the far end, set back from the waterline. A low building, metal-sided, no signage. Two men at the entrance who weren't dressed like dock workers but were trying to stand like they were. The kind of men who had been told to look casual and had interpreted that as standing very still.
Lucien walked past without looking directly at it.
He found a crate stack twenty metres further along and leaned against it, facing the water, and waited for the light to change.
The paper in his coat had a name on it.
The building at the end of the dock had two men who weren't dock workers standing in front of it.
Lucien watched the sun touch the waterline.
Far enough, he thought. Let's find out what's inside.
************************************
Remember 1 Chapter For Every 50 Power Stones. Please Do Support.