Location: Tunaro Portside — Erickson and Wilder's Private Residence — Industrial District Loft
---
Erickson's eyes did not leave Elijah's mask.
The silence that followed Elijah's last words was different from the ones before. This one had weight. This one carried the gravity of a question that had been waiting in the wings, patient and patient, until the moment was right.
"Hermos," Erickson said.
The name landed like a stone dropped into deep water.
"Did Hermos send you?"
Elijah's internal thoughts scrambled.
Who the hell is Hermos?
He did not recognize the name. Not from the Halcyon servers. Not from the Tonaro network. Not from any of the fragmented intelligence he had pieced together over the past weeks. Hermos was a blank spot—a gap in his understanding that he had not known existed until this very moment.
But he could not let Erickson see that.
Behind the Azaqor mask, his expression shifted. Not to surprise. Not to confusion. To something else entirely—something that looked like recognition layered over mystery. His eyes half-lidded. The corner of his mouth—visible through the mask's opening—curved into something that was not quite a smile.
It was the expression of a man who knew more than he was saying.
It was the expression of a man who wanted you to think he knew more than he was saying.
"I'm with you guys," that smile seemed to say. "Don't worry about the details."
---
Wilder moved.
He stepped between Erickson and Elijah—not aggressively, not defensively, but with the loose-limbed energy of someone trying to break a tension before it snapped. His hands came up, palms out, fingers spread. The universal gesture of everyone calm down.
"Come on, step bro," Wilder said, his voice pitched somewhere between wheedling and reasonable. "Look at that face."
He gestured toward Elijah's mask with a sweep of his hand.
"Look at it. Really look at it. Does that look like the face of someone who wants to harm us?"
Elijah, helpfully, tilted his head slightly. The mask's smug expression caught the gray light from the window. The sharp jaw. The vacant eyes. The whole punchable package.
"See?" Wilder continued. "That's a trustworthy face. That's a 'I'm on your side' face. That's a 'let's work together and not do anything stupid' face."
Erickson's eyebrow twitched.
"Besides," Wilder said, stepping back and gesturing between the three of them, "Morrecca and Nathy are at each other's throats. Everyone knows that. The whole portside knows that. So why don't we try to work things out with him? Instead of, you know..."
He made a throat-cutting gesture.
"...the other thing."
Erickson was quiet for a long moment.
He raised one hand and adjusted his glasses. The motion was slow. Deliberate. The kind of gesture that gave a man time to think—time to weigh options, to calculate outcomes, to decide whether the risk was worth the potential reward.
His eyes moved across Elijah's masked face. Searching. Probing. Looking for the tell that would reveal the lie.
Then he lowered his hand.
"Fine," Erickson said.
His voice was flat. Neutral. But there was something beneath it—something that sounded like a door being opened just a crack.
"But if I sense anything amiss with you—anything at all—I guarantee you will not leave this building in one piece."
Elijah held his gaze.
The Australian accent, when it came, was drawling. Casual. The accent of a man who had heard threats before and was still standing.
"Wouldn't expect anything less, mate."
---
Erickson led them to a side room.
The space was small—maybe ten feet by twelve—with no windows and a single overhead light that cast everything in harsh white illumination. A desk dominated the center of the room. On it sat a computer monitor, a keyboard, and a series of external hard drives connected by cables that snaked across the surface like black vines.
But the wall was the main feature.
Three large screens were mounted side by side, each one displaying a different feed. The left screen showed a live view of the container terminal—cranes moving, trucks rolling, workers in high-visibility vests. The center screen showed a map of shipping routes, dotted with the positions of Tonaro vessels. The right screen was dark.
Erickson moved to the desk and began typing.
"These are our dashcam feeds," he said. "From the ships. We install them in the bridge—facing the container stacks. Gives us a record of what happens during transport."
Elijah stepped closer to the screens.
The center screen flickered. A new image appeared—grainy, slightly washed out, but clear enough. The view from a ship's bridge, looking out over a deck stacked with containers. The ocean stretched beyond, gray and restless, merging with a sky that looked like hammered lead.
"This is from three months ago," Erickson said. "First incident."
He pressed a key.
The footage began to play.
---
The scene was almost peaceful at first.
Containers stacked three high. Crew members moving between them—checking straps, verifying seals, going about the ordinary business of maritime transport. The camera's timestamp in the corner read a date in early June.
Then the shadows appeared.
They came from nowhere. One moment the deck was empty. The next, figures were emerging from between the containers—silent, fluid, their movements too coordinated to be random. They wore dark clothing. Their faces were obscured by headpieces that caught the gray light and threw it back in distorted fragments.
Elijah leaned closer to the screen.
"Zoom in," he said. The Australian accent was sharper now. Less performance, more focus. "Enhance the resolution on their faces."
Wilder moved to the desk. His fingers found the keyboard—slower than Erickson's, less practiced, but functional. He tapped a sequence of keys. The image expanded. Pixelated. Resolved.
The headpieces were elaborate.
Each one was crafted to resemble a creature—not quite animal, not quite human. Broad snouts. Curved horns that swept back from the temples. Scales etched into the material in patterns that suggested something ancient, something mythic. The color was bluish—deep and cold, like the heart of a glacier.
Beasts, Elijah thought. Guardian beasts. From old stories.
He did not recognize the specific legend. But he recognized the intent. These were not random thugs wearing random masks. These were statements. Declarations.
The footage continued.
Guards appeared on the deck—Tonaro security, moving to intercept. They were professionals. Trained. Armed.
It did not matter.
The figures in the bluish masks moved through the guards like water through rocks. Their attacks were not brutal. They were precise. A strike to a guard's elbow—not hard enough to break, exactly hard enough to disable. A palm to a kneecap—not a punch, a placement. A twist that sent a man sprawling without a single wasted motion.
They're not fighting, Elijah realized. They're becoming. The technique isn't something they do. It's something they are.
One of the figures stopped.
Turned.
Looked directly at the camera.
And raised a middle finger.
The gesture was slow. Deliberate. A message meant to be seen, meant to be remembered, meant to be felt.
Wilder's hands clenched into fists.
"Seriously," he said, his GenZ accent sharpening with anger. "If I ever find out who those punks are—me and Ericky would go give them a piece of what we're made of."
His hands illustrated the sentiment. A punch. A chop. A gesture that somehow managed to convey both violence and theatricality.
Erickson reached up and adjusted his glasses. The motion was automatic—a tic that emerged when he was thinking.
"The problem," he said, "is that identifying the attackers has been the difficult part. They leave no traces. No evidence. No witnesses who remember anything useful."
"How long has this been happening?" Elijah asked.
Erickson's eyes flicked toward him. That skeptical look again. The guard, still raised, still watching.
"About three months," he said.
He stopped there.
But his composure shifted. Just slightly. A micro-movement—the tightening of his jaw, the way his eyes lost focus for a fraction of a second. Beside him, Wilder's posture changed too. His shoulders dropped. His hands unclenched. His expression, which had been angry a moment ago, softened into something else.
Something that looked like sadness.
---
Elijah's internal thoughts churned.
Three months.
The words echoed in his skull. Three months since the attacks began. Three months since this pattern had started.
Wait.
He stared at the frozen image on the screen—the figure in the bluish beast mask, middle finger raised, captured forever in grainy digital amber.
Isn't that the same period when Azaqor lured me and Chloe to the Hollow?
The realization hit him like cold water.
No. It can't be. It's a coincidence. It has to be a coincidence.
"What day was it?" Elijah asked.
His voice was steady. The Australian accent was steady. But something in his posture must have changed, because Erickson's eyes narrowed.
"The first incident," Elijah clarified. "What date?"
Erickson glanced at the screen. The timestamp was still visible in the corner.
"June ninth."
Elijah's expression—behind the mask, invisible to the brothers—shifted.
June ninth.
The same week. The same window of time. The Hollow. Azaqor. Chloe. The whispered warnings about an unknown power that had taken Aubrey.
His thoughts spiraled.
If I'm right—if Elena Tuner Sae'thar also disappeared around the same time—then this isn't a coincidence. Three disappearances. Three threads that shouldn't connect, but do.
Aubrey, taken by an unknown power that Azaqor himself is wary of.
Elena, vanished, leaving Erickson and Wilder exposed.
And these attackers—these figures in bluish beast masks—appearing exactly when the protection disappeared.
Same power?
Or different branches of the same tree?
He stared at the frozen image on the screen. At the figure. At the mask. At the raised middle finger that seemed to mock him even through the stillness of the paused footage.
His eyes lit up.
Behind the Azaqor mask—invisible to Erickson and Wilder—something clicked into place.
I have an idea.
---
"Wilder," Elijah said.
His voice was different now. The theatrical drawl was still there, but underneath it was something sharper. Something more focused.
"Let me take it from here."
Wilder blinked.
"Take it from where? What are you—"
Elijah was already moving.
He crossed to the desk, reached into his jacket, and produced a thin cable—black, coiled, with connectors on both ends that Wilder did not recognize. Before anyone could object, he plugged one end into the computer and the other into a small device he pulled from his pocket.
"Hey, hey, hey—" Wilder started.
"Relax," Elijah said.
The Australian accent was back in full force. But there was something else beneath it now. Something that sounded almost like confidence.
"Let me—the magician—work my craft."
Wilder's hands hovered over the desk, uncertain whether to intervene. He looked at Erickson.
Erickson's expression was unreadable.
Wilder leaned closer to his stepbrother. His voice dropped to a whisper—low enough that Elijah, focused on the screen, might not hear.
"Are you sure Nathy boy is working for Hermos? Or are we being played right now?"
Erickson did not answer immediately.
His eyes remained on Elijah—on the masked figure bent over the keyboard, cable trailing from the computer, fingers moving across the keys with unsettling speed.
"I'm not certain," Erickson admitted, his voice equally low. "Hermos did promise to send someone to assist us. Backup. He did not tell me who."
He paused.
"But it does not matter now. If he—" a nod toward Elijah "—is just a pretender, just a fraud trying to cheat us..."
His hand moved.
A single gesture. Edge of the palm across his throat.
Wilder saw it. Nodded.
Then, still whispering: "Though he is kind of rocks. Unlike certain downer I know."
Erickson's expression shifted.
It was subtle—the kind of micro-expression that most people would miss. But it was there. A flicker of something that might have been annoyance and might have been reluctant affection and might have been both at once.
His eyebrow twitched.
His jaw tightened.
And then, just as quickly, the expression was gone.
---
Elijah's fingers moved across the keyboard.
Tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.
The screen flickered. The frozen image of the figure in the bluish mask expanded. Pixelated. Resolved. Expanded again.
He was running a scan.
Not a simple image enhancement—anyone could do that. This was deeper. This was a spectral analysis, breaking the image down into layers of light and shadow, texture and contour, searching for patterns that the human eye could not see.
The masks were the key.
Every headpiece had a maker. Every maker left traces—microscopic flaws in the material, unique patterns in the coloring, signatures embedded in the design that were invisible to casual inspection but undeniable once you knew where to look.
Elijah was looking.
The screen filled with data. Overlays. Heat maps. A three-dimensional reconstruction of the mask's surface, rotating slowly, showing every ridge and valley.
"I'm in," Elijah murmured.
The Australian accent was gone now. Not replaced—just... set aside. What remained was something quieter. Something more focused.
"Let's see who made you, you bluish bastard."
---