Mayor Ramón Vásquez wants to end the Association's investigation without having to reveal his daughter's gambling debts to the European syndicates. The sweat on his palms has nothing to do with the television lights as he adjusts his tie in San Isidro's city hall. Geometric patterns carved into marble walls mock him with their perfect order while his world falls apart.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the press," he begins, his voice carrying fifteen years of authority over harbor winds rattling steel-framed windows. "Last night, five brave men died because vigilantes decided our laws don't apply to them."
The press room fills with cigarette smoke and ambition. Art deco light fixtures cast sharp shadows across hungry faces. Outside, steamship whistles echo from the port where cargo containers stack like metal mountains against the Rio de la Plata's muddy horizon.
Kasper de la Fuente stands at the back, wanting to expose these lies without having to reveal his identity as the Void Killer. His exoskeleton hums beneath his jacket, harmonizing with heating pipes that snake through walls like copper arteries. Douglas Berston shifts beside him, thirty years of police work etched around tired eyes that have seen too many politicians sacrifice good men.
"The Association has turned our port into a war zone," Vásquez continues, his voice echoing off polished marble still bearing bullet holes from the 1928 dock workers' strike. "Their investigation resulted in massacre. Millions in property damage. Terror where honest porteños work to feed families."
A reporter from Radio Nacional raises her hand, voice cutting through the pneumatic message system's mechanical hum. "Mr. Mayor, witnesses described military-grade enhancements. Shouldn't we focus on finding these terrorists?"
Vásquez's smile tastes like bitter metal coins in his pocket, each one counted against his daughter's debts. "Exactly what these vigilantes want you to believe. Fear. Paranoia." He shakes his head with practiced disgust. "Cowboys who kicked down the wrong door while honest families slept."
Douglas tastes salt air through the ventilation, remembers when this hall hosted celebrations for port expansion. Now it reeks of corruption and broken promises. He grips Kasper's wrist, thirty years of knowing when to fight and when to wait.
But Kasper's nanobots are already stirring. The familiar warmth spreads through his limbs as rage builds, his body recognizing the scent of lies and political theater. His exoskeleton responds with subtle whirs that only Douglas can hear, mechanical sounds like a predator waking from sleep.
"Yesterday," Vásquez presses on, voice rising over distant ship horns echoing like funeral bells, "one of their operatives brutally assaulted a senior administrator in what they called 'trial by combat.' Medieval barbarism in our modern port city!"
The words hit Kasper like physical blows. His nanobots flare hot against his ribs, responding to the injustice. Sean's trial by combat had saved lives. Delgado's incompetence had killed people. But here it becomes something twisted, painting them as savages in a city where steamship whistles still call workers to honest labor.
The heat spreads through his chest, nanobots fighting against his attempt to stay calm. He can feel Charles Ordemier trying to hold the Void Killer back, but his body wants violence. Wants to cross the room and show Vásquez what real brutality looks like.
Douglas's grip tightens. Not here. Not yet.
"I am announcing a joint task force with federal partners," Vásquez declares, voice carrying over port machinery. "Chief García will coordinate with appropriate agencies to ensure every citizen's safety."
Police Chief Elena García steps forward, and salt-tinged air grows heavier. Kasper remembers when she'd been reasonable, understanding the thin line between order and chaos in a port city where contraband flows like water. The woman at the podium wears García's uniform, but her eyes belong to someone given an ultimatum.
"Effective immediately," García announces, voice flat as Rio de la Plata at low tide, "all bounty hunter operations require prior police approval. Violations result in arrest and prosecution."
The press conference dissolves into chaos. Kasper and Douglas slip out into an alley reeking of rotting fish and industrial oil from nearby shipping yards.
Douglas lights a cigarette, flame illuminating rust patterns on brick walls. His hands shake enough to betray thirty years of steady nerves finally fraying. "Never thought I'd see García bend the knee. She used to say politicians were barnacles on justice's hull."
"Someone's got a knife to her throat," Kasper says, breathing salt air and diesel fumes that define his adopted city. His nanobots are cooling but still restless, like electricity seeking ground. "This isn't about public safety. This is about protecting someone's investment."
Before Douglas can respond, Kasper's encrypted phone buzzes. The message makes his mouth taste like copper pennies:
Charles Ordemier died in that cantina. The Void Killer lives. Some secrets are worth more than others. - A Friend
Douglas watches color drain from Kasper's face like water from a broken tank. "What is it?"
"Someone knows who I really am." Kasper deletes the message, but words echo in his skull like ship bells in fog. "About Charles. About everything I've tried to bury in this city."
His nanobots spike again, responding to the threat. This time the heat doesn't fade quickly. His body recognizes danger, and Charles Ordemier's peaceful facade cracks like ice under pressure.
"Blackmail or threat?" Douglas asks.
"In a port city?" Kasper's voice carries an edge that makes Douglas step back. "There's no difference."
Captain Pablo Morales wants to follow orders without betraying the memory of his dead son asking endless questions about exoskeleton servos. The weight presses against his chest as he approaches them at the crime scene where art deco warehouses stand like monuments to a more optimistic age.
Steel and concrete giants stretch toward gray sky, geometric facades streaked with rust from harbor winds. Massive cargo cranes swing lazily, mechanical arms casting shadows that slice afternoon light. Machine oil and rotting rope hang heavy in air, mixing with Rio de la Plata's muddy scent.
"Sir, step away from the crime scene." Officer Martinez's voice carries across loading docks, nervous as a green recruit facing his first port riot.
Douglas holds up credentials, leather worn smooth from years of use. "This is our case, Martinez. We've been tracking this since shipping manifests started disappearing."
"Not anymore."
Morales stops ten feet away. Kasper hears harbor wind whistling through warehouse gaps, remembers when Morales had been Sergeant Herrera. Douglas introduced them at a family barbecue in Villa Crespo, talking football while Pablito peppered Kasper with questions about exoskeleton servos. How they worked. Why they hummed. Could he be a bounty hunter when he grew up?
Fever took Pablito six months later. Morales changed his name back to his mother's family after the funeral, said it hurt too much carrying his ex-wife's name when their boy was gone.
Now Morales looks at them like strangers, police uniform pressed crisp as the money that probably bought his compliance.
"Captain," Douglas says, voice carrying shared grief and old friendship. "Your people don't have training for enhanced threats. These scenes require specialized analysis of tech that changes faster than port regulations."
"What they require is professional law enforcement," Morales replies, hand moving to his service weapon with a man's reluctance reaching for poison. "Not vigilantes playing detective in my city."
The word 'vigilantes' cuts through salt air like a rusty blade. Kasper's nanobots respond immediately, heat flashing through his system. Three days ago, after he saved school children from ATA operatives near the cathedral, these same officers called him a hero. Morales shook his hand, said the city was lucky to have someone who cared.
"You remember the barbecue," Douglas says quietly, voice almost lost in cargo container sounds. "Pablito asked Kasper about the servos. Kasper spent two hours explaining, drew diagrams on napkins. Your boy said he wanted to grow up just like him."
Something flickers in Morales's eyes, quick as lightning over the harbor. Pain, maybe. Or memory of small boy's laughter mixing with Sunday afternoon traffic and distant ship whistles heading out to sea.
But then his face hardens, and Kasper realizes this isn't about following orders. This is about a father who buried his son and can't bear the thought of other children paying the price for heroes.
"That was before I understood what heroes really cost," Morales says, voice cracking like ice on winter rivers. "Before I learned that every time someone plays hero, someone else's child pays the price."
Kasper's nanobots cool suddenly, recognizing something in that broken voice that even the Void Killer can't argue with. This isn't corruption. This is grief weaponized against good men who just want to protect what little they have left.
Douglas stubs his cigarette against a wall marked with faded art deco reliefs of ships and stevedores. "What happened to you, Pablo?"
"I buried my son." Morales turns away, but not before Kasper catches the look in his eyes. "I won't bury anyone else's because you two can't follow simple orders."
As they walk through streets smelling of diesel fuel and yesterday's rain, Kasper feels institutional betrayal settling on his shoulders. But it's the break in Morales's voice that haunts him, the way grief can be weaponized against decent men.
Harbor wind carries ship horns across the city, calling vessels home while honest men choose between conscience and survival.
Rosa Herrera wants to expose the truth without ending up floating face-down in the Rio de la Plata like the last reporter who asked too many questions about European shipping contracts. That much is clear from the way she glances around the empty Gazette cafeteria, voice barely rising above printing press rhythms two floors below.
The building tells San Isidro's story. Art deco eagles carved into the facade have lost gilded wings to acid rain and neglect. Inside, geometric patterns have faded to old newspaper color while cigarette smoke stains ceiling tiles yellow as aged parchment. Burnt coffee mixes with printer ink and salt air seeping through every crack in the city's armor.
"You didn't hear this from me," she says, sliding a manila envelope across the formica table still bearing coffee rings from desperate conversations. "But there are things happening in this port that go deeper than politics."
Douglas opens it with fingers that have handled evidence from too many crimes that officially never happened. The photographs show Mayor Vásquez entering Restaurante Alvear, one of the few establishments maintaining original art deco splendor. Two men in expensive suits flank him, faces sharp as geometric shadows cast by elaborate facades.
The quality is grainy, shot through telephoto lenses from across the street, but Kasper recognizes one face immediately. Agent Carter, the federal coordinator whose smile never reaches his eyes.
"Three nights ago," Rosa says, voice mixing with distant printing press heartbeats. "Same night those hunters died in the warehouse district. Strange time for social dining."
Douglas studies photographs like a sailor reading storm clouds. "Who's the third man?"
"That's where it gets interesting." Rosa leans closer, journalist instincts warring with memories of her predecessor's funeral. "Facial recognition came back clean. Too clean. No records, no fingerprints, no entry visas. But my immigration contact says someone matching his description arrived on diplomatic passport exactly two weeks ago."
"Which embassy?"
"Million-peso question. The passport shows a country that doesn't exist on any map."
Kasper feels pieces clicking together like mechanical sounds of port loading equipment. The coordinated attack. Carter's perfectly timed arrival. The mayor's transformation from political survivor to moral crusader. It isn't coincidence threading through the city's corruption.
It's orchestration, planned with steamship arrival precision.
"There's more," Rosa says, producing photographs that smell faintly of developer chemicals. Chief García shaking hands with the same mysterious diplomat outside police headquarters while uniformed officers load evidence boxes into unmarked trucks with European plates.
"They're sterilizing crime scenes," Douglas says, voice carrying strong coffee bitterness and broken promises. "Removing evidence before we can analyze what those enhanced soldiers were really after."
"But why would García cooperate?"
Kasper thinks about the message on his phone, about Agent Carter's face changing color when Estela's recording revealed Administrator Delgado's complicity. Someone orchestrated the Project Lazarus file theft with the same precision used to schedule cargo shipments. Someone with influence to coordinate federal agents, corrupt mayors, and police chiefs who used to be decent men.
"They're not hiding evidence," he realizes, voice mixing with harbor wind through broken windows. "They're protecting an asset. Someone valuable enough to sacrifice a port city's integrity."
Rosa's police scanner crackles with metallic dispatch voice cutting through afternoon air:
"All units, multiple casualties at Mercado Central. Shots fired. Suspect described as enhanced individual with military-grade equipment. All Association personnel ordered to maintain distance."
The central market sits in San Isidro's old quarter heart, six blocks through streets lined with art deco buildings remembering better days. Close enough to smell smoke rising like black prayers against gray sky. Close enough to hear screams of people who came to buy vegetables and fish, never expecting to become casualties in someone else's war.
Kasper and Douglas want to save those civilians without sacrificing their investigation, but Rosa's warning carries weight of experience bought with other people's blood.
"It's a trap designed like a perfect mousetrap," she says, hands steady despite voice fear. "They're using innocent people as bait. The minute you show up, you'll be arrested for interfering. Then you disappear into the system like smoke into harbor wind."
The timing feels as orchestrated as port authority arrival schedules. But across the distance, carried on salt-tinged air, comes gunfire and breaking glass sounds that mean people are dying while they sit in this faded cafeteria discussing political games.
Kasper's nanobots surge again, responding to distant violence. This time he doesn't fight them. The heat spreads through his chest, down his arms, pooling in his hands like liquid fire. Charles Ordemier is trying to hold him back, but the Void Killer smells blood in the water.
"Then we don't arrive as Association operatives," he says, reaching for spare identity documents every survivor learns to carry in cities where power shifts like harbor tides. "Charles Ordemier died in that cantina, but he can breathe again for one afternoon."
Douglas understands immediately, thirty years teaching him when to follow rules and when rules become obstacles to justice. "Detective Berston is off duty today. Just a concerned citizen who happens to know how to handle enhanced threats."
Rosa looks between them with the expression of someone watching friends walk toward execution. "You're both insane. They'll kill you and dump your bodies in the harbor like the union leaders in '29."
"Maybe," Kasper admits. His exoskeleton begins powering up with sounds that harmonize with building ventilation, nanobots now singing with anticipation of violence. The Charles Ordemier facade cracks further, revealing something underneath that tastes like copper and smells like ozone.
"But people are dying right now while we discuss politics over bad coffee. That has to matter more than our survival."
As they prepare to leave through the art deco lobby where marble eagles spread wings over a city that's forgotten how to soar, Rosa grabs Kasper's arm with fingers still smelling of developer chemicals and desperation.
"There's something else about those forty-seven shipping containers from Europe. They weren't sent to any registered facility in Argentina."
"Where did they go?"
"According to port manifests, they were transferred to a research installation that doesn't appear on city planning documents. The kind of place that builds things governments don't want to acknowledge."
Forty-seven containers. Enough material to outfit a small army or continue experiments claiming lives across two continents. In a port city where everything has a price, such cargo doesn't arrive by accident.
"If you don't make it back," Douglas says, voice carrying final confession weight, "make sure those photographs reach someone beyond the city limits. Someone Carter's influence can't strangle."
"Where will you go afterward?"
Kasper and Douglas look at each other across the scarred formica table while printing presses beat mechanical rhythm below. In that moment, they both understand they're about to cross a line drawn in salt water and blood, stepping from legitimate law enforcement into something darker and more necessary.
They're about to become exactly what Mayor Vásquez accused them of being: vigilantes operating outside the law in a city where law has been bought and sold like cargo on international markets.
But Kasper's nanobots are done waiting. The heat in his chest spreads like infection, and he can feel Charles Ordemier's peaceful facade finally cracking completely. What emerges underneath isn't the quiet barman who serves drinks and minds his own business.
It's something that remembers how to hurt people who deserve it.
"Somewhere the official channels can't follow," Kasper replies, voice carrying new edge that makes Douglas step back. "Somewhere Charles Ordemier can remind this city that some monsters are too dangerous to leave swimming in our waters."
The sirens grow closer, wails mixing with ship horns and mechanical symphony of a port city that never sleeps. As they prepare to step into chaos someone else orchestrated, Kasper can't shake the feeling they're not just walking into a trap.
They're finally learning the rules of a game that's been playing them since they first set foot in San Isidro's salt-stained streets.
Evening falls over the Rio de la Plata like a gray blanket, and in growing darkness between art deco spires and harbor lights, Kasper de la Fuente makes a choice that will reshape power balance in Argentina's most corrupt port city.
He stops being Charles Ordemier, the quiet man who serves drinks and minds his own business in a city built on other people's secrets.
He becomes the Void Killer once again.
Somewhere in shadows cast by steamship smoke and electric lights, phones ring with urgent calls that will echo across the harbor like warning bells. The political game has begun in earnest, and the rules are written in the language every port city understands.
Survive or be fed to the fishes.
There are no other options in San Isidro, where the River Plate carries secrets out to sea and never brings them back.