Neon stitched the walls together—thin tubes humming like tame lightning, lockers lined up in soldier rows, a fat table in the middle with a cracked cart-terminal flickering maps no one believed were accurate. The place was bigger than before, cleaner too, and colder for it. Progress has a way of sucking the warmth out of a room.
Tara sat on a workbench, shoulders squared, dress traded for soft pants and an oil-stained tee, teasing a micro-board apart with a scalpel and a look that said the board had personally offended her. Limar had a cloth and a handgun and a religious focus, sliding metal against metal until it gleamed like a lie. Breuk stood at the window with a cigarette and his hands in his pockets, the reactor's jaundiced glow cutting his face into a before and an after.
"Tev and Lig've been gone three days," Tara said without looking up. "If they come back empty again, I'm ripping somebody's head off."
No one asked who. The room already knew.
The heavy door squealed—the kind of noise a door makes so you remember it has a job. A man stepped in like he had every right: dark coat, calm eyes, a tiredness that didn't ask for pity because it had already turned into discipline.
"Kane," Breuk said, soft, surprise cracking the word in two.
Tara's pistol was in her hand before the echo landed. "Who the hell—"
Kane gave her that same quiet, near-sorry smile he'd worn the last time their lives had caught fire together. He had the look of someone who'd learned to pray in rooms without altars. "Knew you were still breathing," he said, gaze landing on Breuk. "You're stubborn like that."
Breuk's metal hand tightened just enough for the servos to click. "Stubborn's a nice word for a guy who's toured hell."
Kane slipped the coat off and set it neat on a chair. Up close he was all control—voice low, movements unshowy, a tea cup warming his fingers when Tara, against her own instincts and against the gun in her other hand, shoved one at him. Steam curled up, smelling faintly of moss.
"Our paths cross when the bottom's burning," Kane said, easing into a seat.
"Yeah?" Breuk took a drag, exhaled at the floor. "It on fire again?"
Kane's laugh scuffed the air and looked down, the way people do when they're searching for nicer words than the truth. "A little. We've… got unrest. In-house. Argument over who leads."
Breuk cocked an eyebrow. "Thought you folks let fate decide."
"Fate needs a ballot sometimes." He leaned back, eyes half-shut like a man measuring the weight of each sentence. "New head's an older man. Teacher. Kids love him. The elders… not so much. Some don't trust him. Some say he's soft. Others—well—some people just hate losing."
Tara snorted, tucking a loose wire behind her ear. "Sounds like every damned crew I've met."
"Maybe," Kane said, nodding slow. "But for us, cracks aren't just bad vibes. When faith breaks, everything breaks."
Breuk studied him. "Which side you on?"
Kane paused. The corner of his mouth lifted, a ghost of a smile that didn't commit. He didn't answer.
He straightened instead, as if the room had just reminded him why he was here. "I'm not here to talk about me, gentlemen." He slid a slim folder across the table. Limar drifted behind Tara's shoulder like a kid at a candy window. "I brought you an offer."
A tap on the folder lit a low holoprojection—clean lines rising into a villa perched high in the Heights. Terraced gardens under growlamps. Security fencing that looked tasteful and wasn't. Guards with the posture of men who trained on live targets.
"The Valeris family," Kane said. "Old money. Refined tastes. A habit of collecting relics from the 'Old World.'"
Tara's mouth pulled sideways. "The Heights? Different rules up there. Mostly that rules are for other people."
"That's why you hire professionals," Kane said, unruffled.
His finger skimmed the display and the villa shrank away, replaced by a pendant. Silver chain. A round, translucent disc, something like glass and not; inside it, a faint line gleamed like a trapped nerve.
"This piece belongs to the head of the family," Kane said. "They call it the Necklace of Ascent."
Breuk leaned in a touch, cigarette forgotten between two fingers. "What's the trick?"
"Story goes it belonged to the man who became the angel," Kane said. "His human part stayed behind—here." He didn't say it like a preacher. He said it like a man repeating a rumor while watching your eyes for what you believed.
Kane stood, hands folded behind his back, voice steady. "My people call it blasphemy that some dilettante keeps the symbol of ascent in a display case. We want it back. Clean in, clean out. No one sees your faces."
Breuk leaned back and let the chair complain. "Every 'in and out' I've ever heard turns into a bloodbath by the second door."
"No blood," Kane said with a small, calm smile. "A handoff. Quiet. We handle the rest."
Breuk dragged the cigarette down to ember. The light flecked the rough planes of his mechanical forearm, turning the weld scars into constellations. "You know we've never worked the Heights. Up there you got drones with good batteries, fences that hum back, and guards who put rounds into shadows and write poetry about it later."
"I know," Kane said. "That's why it pays like a risk."
He pushed a datapad toward Breuk. One tap. A number bloomed.
Tara hissed—involuntary, like touching a hot plate. Limar choked on nothing and then grinned like he'd found God in a vending machine. "That's more than we've cleared in two years," Tara said.
"Enough you could stop after," Kane said. "If you wanted."
Breuk stared at the figure like it might bite him. The old fan in the corner kept up its dull, stubborn hum.
One clean exit. One quiet year. One breath that ain't borrowed.
He lifted his head. "I want details," he said. "Schedules. Patrol routes. Which sensors are real and which are just there to scare interns. If this thing's legit, I'm not walking in blind."
"Of course." Kane's relief didn't show; it lived under the words. "You'll have everything. But one thing you need to hear now: if you touch the necklace, it'll know you."
Breuk's eyes flicked to the projection. The pendant threw cold light into his pupils. "Know me?"
"It only reacts to those who've fallen," Kane said.
Silence put its hands on the room. The only sound left was the terminal's little hum and the tick of Tara's thumbnail against a metal case.
Breuk looked at Kane like a man checking a mirror to see if some new line had appeared. There was a flash of something he didn't like to admit to—fear, maybe—and under it, the old, ugly curiosity that gets men killed and saints canonized.
He stubbed the cigarette. "Send the files," he said, voice level again.
Kane nodded once, like a prayer he'd rehearsed. "You'll have them by morning."
He finished his tea, stood, and found his coat. At the door he paused. The smile he offered wasn't comfort. It was permission. "Good to see you alive," he said to Breuk.
"Yeah," Breuk said, and the scar on his jaw didn't move. "For now."