The common room was dark, lit only by the flickering, corpseblue glow of the television mounted on the wall.
Pranav sat on the floor, his back against the concrete, knees drawn up. He wasn't looking at the screen. He was listening to the voice of the news anchor, a woman struggling to keep the tremor out of her professional cadence.
"…police are calling it the most brutal home invasion in the city's history. The victims have been identified as Elena Reyes, 34, and her two children, aged seven and five…"
On the screen, grainy footage from a news helicopter circled a suburban house. It looked small. Innocent. The lawn was green. A yellow police swing set stood in the backyard. But the front door was wide open, gaping like a scream, and a parade of black body bags was being wheeled out on gurneys. Two large bags. Two very small ones.
Gautham was huddled by the monitor, his face bathed in the blue light. He had hacked into the police band radio, a task that usually calmed him. Now, it was terrified him.
"It's quiet," Gautham whispered, his fingers hovering over the keyboard. "The police bands are swarming the suburbs, but the city? The docks? The drug corners? Silence. Dead silence."
He looked back at the group, his eyes wide behind his glasses.
"Vargo's trucks aren't running. The Triad gambling dens are dark. The Russians have pulled their street dealers."
Sanvi sat on the bench, sharpening a knife. Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. But the rhythm was off. She kept glancing at the TV, at the small body bags. For the first time, her face held no aggression, only a sickened, hollow realization. She knew violence. She knew the streets. But this… this was something else.
"They aren't hiding," Sanvi said softly. "They're gathering."
Arpika touched the purple bruise on her cheek, the mark of Asrit's discipline. A few hours ago, she had felt like the most dangerous person in the city. She had killed five men in a penthouse and felt like a god. Now, watching the news, she felt microscopic. Her vengeance had been a surgical removal of a tumor. Kevin's violence was a dirty bomb.
Sathwik stood in the corner, his arms crossed. He watched the screen with a grim finality. He didn't need a strategy meeting to know what came next. He knew what happened when you backed an animal into a corner. He knew what happened when you took away everything a man had to lose.
Pranav stood up. His legs felt stiff.
He walked to the center of the room, looking at his crew. The "New Blood." They were battered, bruised, branded, and in debt. They had spent the last week fighting each other, fighting for scraps of approval from masters who despised them.
He thought about his plan for the "Empire." He thought about the fish market. He thought about Kevin screaming in the soundproof room, desperate to be the fire.
"We thought we were playing a game," Pranav said. His voice was raspy, dry. "We thought it was about territory. About leverage. About who sits in the chairs."
He pointed at the screen, where the image shifted to a photo of Marco Reyes, smiling, holding his daughter at a birthday party.
"Asrit thinks this is a legal problem," Pranav said. "Sam thinks it's a diplomatic problem. Asuma thinks it's a financial problem."
He looked at Gautham.
"Run the numbers, Gautham. What happens when the Triads, the Russians, and the West Side Syndicate stop fighting each other?"
Gautham swallowed hard. "They have a combined manpower of four thousand soldiers. The Corvini have… maybe three hundred made men. Plus us. The math is… it's a wave. It's a tsunami."
"It's not math," Pranav corrected him. "It's physics. Pressure and release."
He walked over to the TV and turned it off. The room plunged into sudden, heavy darkness, leaving only the thin strip of light from under the steel door.
"Kevin wanted to be a legend," Pranav said in the dark. "He wanted to be James. But James killed rivals. James killed soldiers. Fear works on soldiers. Fear keeps them in line."
Pranav felt the cold truth settle over him, heavier than the branding iron, heavier than the debt.
"You can't scare a man who is holding his dead daughter's toy," Pranav said.
He looked around at the shadows of his friends. They were waiting for a plan. They were waiting for a structure. But there was no structure for this.
"Kevin didn't just kill a family," Pranav said, his voice chillingly calm. "He created a martyr. He gave them a reason to die."
He looked at the steel door, knowing that on the other side, the war had already begun.
"How do we fight that?"