The underground lounge had that cold, velvet hush it only got when Masaru wanted everyone to listen. The ceiling was low, heavy with smoke that refused to rise. A long lacquered table ran down the middle like a blade. At the far end, Masaru sat easy in his chair, legs crossed, one hand loose on the armrest.
A tarp lay across the tabletop. It wasn't even pretending not to be soaked.
Amuy and Raiden stood with the rank-and-file, close enough to see, far enough to remember their place. Vogro fidgeted with the springs on his ridiculous glasses. Zima kept his hood up, still as a post. Up near the front, the higher-ups held the line: Mini WU with his small, deadly calm; Lola kicking her dangling feet from her chair like this was recess; Yuma smiling too brightly; and Fischer, hands in pockets, Axel looming behind him like a faithful, ugly shadow.
Masaru didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to.
"We've had… art appear in our house." he said, and with a small twist of the wrist, he pulled the tarp.
The smell hit first. Metal and freezer-burned meat. Then the shape resolved.
Two bodies, once men. One kneeling, neck broken and bent so far that the head had been sewn to his own chest, the skin pulled taut like a drum. The other forced into a grotesque angel: arms snapped backward and wired into a wing-shape, bone shard feathers white against bruised flesh. Their eyes were open. They didn't see anything.
Murmurs rushed the room and then tripped over the silence sitting on Masaru's shoulder.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Masaru said softly. "And so… familiar."
Eyes slid toward Fischer like iron filings to a magnet.
Fischer didn't blink. "If I wanted to make something this ugly, I'd cut off my hands first."
Masaru's gaze didn't move. "You prefer outdoor installations, lamp posts. Streets. Space to breathe."
Axel leaned in and whispered, way too loud, "He say you only do big outside art."
Fischer didn't take his eyes off Masaru. "Axel, shut up."
Yuma put his hands behind his back like a patient teacher. "Master, if this is a copycat, it's a very dedicated one. The wiring's precise. The joints are cleaned. Whoever did this has time, tools, and a disturbing amount of… enthusiasm."
Mini WU didn't bother to look. "Sloppy. Too much show, not enough message."
Lola tilted her head like a curious bird. "I like the wings, they look like they hurt."
Masaru let their words pass through him like smoke through a grate. Then he pointed at the kneeling corpse, the thread biting into purpled skin where the head met the chest.
"In my territory" he said. "Using my people. And, as some have noticed, borrowing a style that belongs to one of my own." He paused. "Fischer, are you killing my men?"
Fischer laughed once, a dry bark that sounded like it hurt his throat. "If I was, we wouldn't be having a show-and-tell. You'd be reading about it."
Masaru's smile didn't reach his eyes. "Prove it."
Fischer went still. The room tasted like dust.
"Bring me the real artist" Masaru went on. "Make sure he understands what happens to thieves. And if you can't…" He let the sentence trail off like a leash.
Axel shifted, eager. "We hunt,we bring head. Yes?
Masaru finally looked away from Fischer, down at the bodies, and then at Yuma. "Your trainees have been very productive, I expect that to continue."
Yuma bowed, that bright grin never leaving. "Always, Master."
Masaru rose. The room stood straighter without meaning to. He walked past the table as if stepping around a spilled drink. When he reached the door, he glanced back over his shoulder.
"Fischer, don't make me regret investing in you."
He left his chair empty behind him. People started breathing again.
The chatter returned in thin, nervous threads. Accusations in the eyes, not the mouths. A few of the lower ranks tried to look like they weren't looking at Fischer at all.
Fischer stared at the sewn mouth on the kneeling corpse and thought "Amateur."
He turned. "Let's go."
Axel perked up. "Which knife? Big knife? Bigger knife?"
"Bring the one that screams" Fischer said. "I want them to hear us coming."
They moved. Vogro scrambled to keep up, his coat flapping like he expected to take off. Zima fell in behind without a word.
Raiden slid in beside Amuy as the crowd dispersed. "If Masaru really thinks he did it, why let him walk out?" she murmured.
"Because if he did, the collector will kill him for us" Amuy said. "And if he didn't, Masaru gets a better show than we do."
Raiden snorted. "He would sell tickets if he could."
"He already does"
Fischer didn't look back at any of them.
They hit the first scene before the city really woke up. A storage unit complex on the edge of their sector, corrugated doors like a mouth full of dull teeth. The air was cold enough to make breath visible. Axel's came out like a dragon's, and he pretended not to notice and then noticed too hard.
Unit 23 was taped off with yellow ribbon that meant nothing to any of them. The roll-up door was half-open, crooked on its track. Inside, halogen lamps glared sharp and mean.
The body hung from the ceiling by three steel hooks driven through each shoulder blade and one through the lower back. The weight had elongated the torso into something too long to be a person. The face was painted white with some cheap powder, clown-bright circles on the cheeks, a smile drawn where there wasn't one.
Vogro gagged and clapped a hand over his mouth, lenses on his glasses sproinging once in distress. Zima didn't move. Axel tilted his head like a curious dog.
"He make puppet" Axel said. "Bad puppet."
Fischer stepped in close, ignoring the sticky sound under his boots. He didn't touch anything, but he moved like a man reading a page with his eyelashes.
"Wire work's cleaner than the lounge piece, he's improving. That makes him either careful… or excited."
Vogro winced. "Or both, is 'excited careful' a thing?"
"It is now"
Axel sniffed. "I smell metal and cheap soap. And… fish?"
Vogro blinked. "Fish?"
Zima finally spoke, voice low. "The powder's pharmacy-grade. Masking the smell of rot. Whoever did this wanted it to be seen before it was smelled."
Fischer's mouth twitched, respect and irritation sharing a seat. "Good, Zima. Better than I expected from a guy who only talks in winter."
Zima went quiet again, which was fine with everyone.
Fischer crouched to study the floor. 'Footprints. Two sizes. One big, one small. The small were careful. The big were careless and… danced?'
Axel pointed, proud. "Paper"
Near the drain, half-stuck to a smear of blood, lay a little white crane. Neat folds. No writing. No signature. Just a tiny bird that shouldn't be in a place like this.
Vogro bent for it, but Fischer's hand shot out. "Don't touch that, use the tweezers."
Vogro made a face. "You carry tweezers?"
"Always" Fischer said. "Art is in the details."
Axel scratched his cheek with a knuckle. "What bird mean?"
Fischer stared at the crane. "Bait, or brand. Either way, it means we're going to see more of them."
He reached into his coat and flicked a small camera to life, snapping quiet photos: the hooks, the wire anchors, the powder's spill pattern on the floor, the crane alone in its little galaxy of blood.
Vogro hovered. "You think Masaru planted this to mess with you?"
Fischer didn't answer that. He didn't have to. The idea was smart enough to sit in the room on its own.
Axel looked up at the winch mount. "You want I taste blood?" he offered, deadly earnest.
"No, Axel, I want you to stand there and not lick anything for five whole minutes. You think you can manage that?"
Axel considered, then nodded slowly like he'd just agreed to climb a mountain.
Footsteps scuffed at the door. A pair of Masaru's sector enforcers leaned in, saw who it was, and leaned right back out. No one wanted to be in the room when Fischer was cataloguing his anger.
He finished and straightened. "Okay, this one's a message. Sloppy enough to be found fast, clean enough to say 'I can do better'. He's not hiding yet. He wants a chase."
Vogro tapped his glasses. "And the crane?"
Fischer looked at the tiny thing like it had been rude to him personally. "It means he thinks he's original."
Zima's hood tilted toward the door. "Where next?" he asked.
Fischer turned to Axel. "You hungry?"
Axel blinked, surprised by the pivot. "Always."
"Good, we're going to the theater district."
Vogro perked. "Snacks?"
"No, ghost lights."
The old Aurora Theater didn't operate anymore, but its bones remembered how. The marquee still held rusted letters from a show no one saw. The lobby smelled like mildew and old candy. Axel wrinkled his nose and then got excited because he found a popcorn scoop and pretended it was a weapon.
Fischer pushed through the velvet curtains to the house. Dust motes hung thick in the air, lazy as planets. The stage was empty except for a single lamp on a stand, bulb bare, plugged into a wall that probably shouldn't have had power. The ghost light cast a lonely circle on the boards.
Fischer pointed. "See that?" he said. "That light stays on in every dead theater, so the stage never goes dark. It keeps the ghosts from tripping."
Axel grinned. "Ghost polite."
Vogro shivered. "I hate this place."
Zima stepped onto the stage. The boards groaned. In the wings, something small skittered and died of embarrassment.
Fischer circled the ghost light. There, just at the edge of its little sun, another paper crane sat, pale as a bone. Deliberate as a confession.
He didn't smile, exactly. His face did something close to it and then decided against.
He wants an audience, Fischer said. He wants me to see him seeing me.
Vogro peered out over the empty seats. "Does he get to clap, or do we?"
Axel suddenly pointed up. "Rope!"
They all looked. Above the stage, catwalks webbed the air, rigging lines sagging like bad stitches. One of them was taut. At the end of it, barely visible in the dark beyond the lights, something heavy hung and turned and hung and turned, slow, slow.
Fischer exhaled. "He's watching us," he said. "Or he was."
Zima's voice was a quiet blade. "Then watch back."
Fischer stepped into the circle of the ghost light and looked up, letting the glare burn his pupils until the shape above him resolved. It was a mask, big as a man's torso, carved from something pale and light. No features, just a blank oval with holes where eyes would be. The eyes looked down. Of course they did.
Vogro whispered, "Why do I feel like we're the ones on display?"
"Because we are." Fischer said.
He took the crane with tweezers and slipped it into a bag. Then he turned to the others, and if anyone else had been there to see his face, they would've taken a step back.
"Tell him," he said to the empty theater, each word clean. "Tell the little thief that I'm coming. Tell him I'm going to break his hands and feed him his signature. Tell him I'm going to show him what ugly really looks like."
Axel clapped once, delighted. "Good speech."
Fischer looked at the ghost light again, the way its small, stubborn glow insisted on claiming a patch of dark.
He reached out and turned it off.
The house went black.
For a heartbeat, no one breathed.
Then Fischer's voice came out of the dark, calm and close.
"Let's go make some noise."