The Brooklyn Navy Yard was a graveyard of rusted iron and shattered glass, where the salt of the Atlantic bit into everything it touched. It was a place where GPS signals died and the police only entered with an escort of heavy armor.
Evelyn led the way, her silhouette a jagged line of defiance against the morning fog. She was still wearing Silas's oversized cashmere sweater, now stained with the grey ash of the Aether and the dark oil of the Hudson. Her bare feet were numb, her skin pale, but her eyes held a violet-edged fire that even the freezing mist couldn't dampen.
Silas followed, his limp more pronounced than ever. He leaned heavily on a length of iron rebar he had scavenged from the pier, his tuxedo trousers shredded and caked in salt. He didn't look like a king anymore, but the way he watched Evelyn—with a gaze that was equal parts terror and worship—made him more dangerous than he had ever been in his office.
"The third container from the North crane," Evelyn whispered, her voice a low hum that carried over the sound of the crashing waves. "The one with the 'V' stenciled in faded blue. That's the entry point."
Silas didn't ask how she knew. He simply positioned himself behind her, his 9mm at the ready, his body a trembling but solid wall of protection. "In this city, the only thing deeper than the Static is the harbor," he rasped. "Who is he, Evelyn? Who has been hiding in your mother's code for ten years?"
"A ghost who survived the 'Thorne' purge," she replied.
She reached the container and tapped a specific rhythm on the corrugated steel. Tock... tock-tock... tock. The container didn't open. Instead, the ground beneath it groaned. A heavy hydraulic lift began to lower, revealing a narrow, neon-lit passage that led down into the concrete bowels of the pier.
At the bottom of the lift stood a man.
He didn't look like a hacker. He looked like a dockworker who had been through a war. His skin was the color of sea salt and tobacco, and his right arm was a masterpiece of Victorian-looking mechanical brass and copper. He was holding an old-fashioned oil lamp, the flame flickering with a strange, violet hue.
"Evelyn," the man said, his voice a deep, gravelly baritone that sounded like stones grinding together. "You're late. Rose said you'd be here when the first house burned."
Evelyn stepped off the lift, her fingers tightening on the silver Mercury drive in her pocket. "My mother is dead. Silas's father killed her. Who are you?"
The man looked at Silas, his gaze turning into a cold, clinical appraisal. "A Nightwood. I should have guessed. The scent of blood and expensive scotch follows the line like a curse."
He turned back to Evelyn and beckoned them deeper into the bunker—a space filled with ancient telegraph machines, modern server blades, and a wall of CRT monitors that were currently displaying the live heat-map of the Manhattan power grid.
"They call me Vex," the man said, leaning against a massive, rusted valve. "I was your mother's failsafe. When the Chrysalis was born, she knew Arthur Vance would try to sell it and Julian Nightwood would try to bury it. She needed a third pillar. A man who lived in the cracks where the sunlight doesn't reach."
"You have the second half of the Mercury," Evelyn said. It wasn't a question.
"I have the truth," Vex corrected. He walked over to a small, dusty table and picked up a medical file—one that looked like it had been stolen from the Vance family archives decades ago.
He tossed it onto the table between them.
"Arthur Vance didn't kill your mother because he wanted the code, Evelyn," Vex said, his voice dropping into a somber, terrifying register. "He killed her because he found out about the 'purity' of the asset."
Evelyn reached for the file, her hands trembling. Silas moved closer, his hand resting on her shoulder, his heat a grounding presence in the cold room.
She opened the folder.
It was a paternity test. Dated September 2001.
Father: Not Arthur Vance. Biological Match: 99.9% to Julian Nightwood.
The air in the bunker seemed to vanish. Evelyn felt her lungs seize, the world turning into a kaleidoscope of grey and violet. She looked at the paper, then at Silas, then back at the man called Vex.
"No," she whispered, her voice a jagged shard of glass. "That's impossible. My father... he hated the Nightwoods. He—"
"Arthur Vance is a petty thief who married a genius for her name," Vex interrupted, his eyes hard and unsympathetic. "Your mother and Julian... they were the architects. You weren't a business merger, Evelyn. You were the original Chrysalis. The fusion of the two most powerful bloodlines in this city."
Evelyn turned to Silas, her blue eyes wide with a mix of horror and a sudden, sickening clarity. Silas stood paralyzed, his hand slipping from her shoulder as if the skin of her arm had turned to fire. The man he had called father had not only killed her mother—he had sired the girl Silas was now desperately, hopelessly in love with.
"Silas," Evelyn breathed, the word a plea and a curse. "Did you know?"
Silas looked at the paper, then at the girl who wore his father's eyes and his mother's brilliance. The room began to spin. Every touch they had shared—the shower in Chelsea, the kiss in the SUV, the heat of the fire—it was all tainted by the realization that they were the same blood, the same sin, the same broken legacy.
"I didn't know," Silas rasped, his voice sounding like it was being torn from a dying throat. "I knew they were lovers... I knew he obsessed over her... but I never thought... Evelyn, I swear to you..."
"You're a Nightwood," Vex said, his voice a cold, metallic gavel. "And she is the rightful heir to everything you own, Silas. Julian didn't leave the empire to you because you were his son. He left it to you to hold it in trust until the 'daughter' was ready to claim it. He didn't want a merger. He wanted a monopoly of the blood."
Evelyn let out a sharp, hysterical laugh, the sound echoing through the concrete bunker. She looked at the silver drive, then at the two men in the room.
"Chapter twenty-six, section one," she whispered, her eyes turning into shards of lethal, violet ice. "When the family tree is a gallows, the only thing left to do is cut the rope."
She grabbed the file and the drive, walking toward the server banks with a speed that made Marcus reach for his holster.
"Evelyn, wait!" Silas shouted, trying to follow her, his legs failing as he collapsed against the rusted valve.
"Don't touch me, Silas," she said, not looking back. "We're not partners. We're not a contract. We're a crime. And tonight... I'm going to finish what our father started. I'm going to delete the Nightwood name from the Static."
Vex watched her with a grim, dark smile. "That's my girl. The Mercury is ready. But remember, Evelyn... if you kill the name, you kill the man standing behind you. Are you ready to be the only Nightwood left in New York?"
Evelyn didn't answer. She plugged the drive into the master relay.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard began to hum with a terrifying, rhythmic power. The war hadn't just changed. It had become fratricide.