By noon the city had thawed just enough to smell like itself. Street steam curled up from gutter grates; scooters buzzed; a vendor yelled about chestnuts like he'd invented fire. Fischer cut through it with Axel, Vogro, and Zima in tow, four shadows moving like one thought.
"We start with mouths," Fischer said.
Vogro blinked. "Uh… what?"
"People who talk for a living," Fischer said. "Rumors. Whispers. Gossip dressed in better shoes."
He took them down a set of crumbling stairs into the Underline, where the concrete arteries of the city ran warm. The market down here wasn't a place; it was a disease that learned to sing. Stalls made from stolen doors. Lanterns strung with surgical thread. Merchants who never used their real names twice.
A woman with a tattoo of a spoon on her cheek flicked up her stall curtain when she saw Fischer. "Oh, it's you," she said. "The picky one."
Fischer smiled with only half his mouth. "I like my information cooked, not raw," he said.
Axel leaned on the table and scattered a display of antique scalpels. "Sorry," he said immediately, and then less immediately started pocketing two of them. Vogro hissed and tried to put them back. Zima simply stood and let the stall reflect in his dark hood like a polite threat.
"We're looking for someone buying hooks, wire, and pharmacy-grade powder," Fischer said. "Quiet buyer. Leaves tiny paper birds behind like they mean something."
The spoon woman's eyes ticked by habit. She tapped one finger against the table. "You mean cigarettes," she said.
Fischer waited.
She pulled a single white cigarette from a tin. The filter had been folded, once, twice, thrice, into a crude crane. "Kids do that sometimes," she said. "Bored hands. I've seen two grown men do it this week and both of them were too clean."
"Names," Fischer said.
She smiled. "Prices."
Axel fished in his coat and set down one of the scalpels. "Souvenir."
"You stole that from me," she said mildly.
"And now I bring back," Axel said, proud. I don't...borrow forever?"
Vogro snorted laughter through his nose and then pretended he hadn't. Zima didn't move.
"Two names," the spoon woman said, pocketing her own knife. "One is Sanga. Night shift at the riverside cold market. Cuts fish like he's angry at it. The other is a kid who thinks he's a surgeon. Calls himself Dr. Paper. Don't laugh. He will."
Fischer didn't. "Which stall?"
She jerked her chin toward the east tunnel. "The old bait lockers. You'll smell it before you find it."
Fischer laid a thin chain of yen on the table like he was feeding a quiet animal. The spoon woman swept them away without looking. He turned. "We go to the river," he said.
Axel inhaled, regretted it instantly, and made a face. "River stink."
"That's the perfume of honesty," Fischer said.
They found honesty ten minutes later. The cold market lived under a bridge, metal tables lined in neat rows, bodies of fish slit open to show their clean work. On a far table, a man in rubber apron and rubber soul had turned away from his knife to fold a paper crane from wax butcher paper. His fingers moved fast. The little bird perched on a mound of ice like a blessed idiot.
"Sanga," Fischer said.
The man looked up with the dead-eyed politeness of someone who had seen the same dawn too many times.
"You fold while you cut," Fischer said. "Habit or nervous tick?"
Sanga shrugged. "I used to smoke. This keeps the hands busy." He pointed the blade at the paper bird. "Those are free if you buy the fish."
"We're buying conversation," Fischer said.
Sanga slid his knife through a salmon like he was taking off a necklace. "I don't sell that, go away." he said.
Fischer nodded. "Then we'll rent it."
Zima set a small roll of cash on the table and anchored it with a fingertip. The market's breeze tried and failed to move him.
"We're looking for Dr. Paper," Vogro said, fighting through his gag reflex.
Sanga almost smiled. "He's a child," he said. "He buys gloves he doesn't need and powder he can't spell, and he overpays like it's a kink. He also asks very loud questions in very quiet places. You're not the first to follow him."
"Where?"
Sanga thought about refusing and then watched Zima not blink. "North. Packing warehouse with the rusted cranes. Second floor, northwest corner. You'll know it by the smell of new bleach." He leaned closer. "And he's not the one you want."
Fischer's eyes sharpened. "Why?"
Sanga kept cutting. "Because his cranes have bad folds."
Behind them, Axel whispered to Vogro, "Bad fold mean bad person." Vogro nodded like this was law.
The warehouse district was where metal went to retire and die noisily. They reached the building with the rusted cranes and the new locks. Axel tugged one, then ripped it off without trying to be subtle. Inside, the air was wet and teeth-cold. Floodlights hummed like bored insects.
Second floor, northwest corner. A door stood ajar. Bleach hit their throats like a slap.
Dr. Paper was exactly what Sanga had sold him as: barely 16, gloves two sizes too big, surgical mask printed with little yellow ducks. He didn't hear them at first; he was too busy arranging a tableau on a steel table, plastic mannequin arms, a butcher's hook, and a paper crane perched daintily where a heart would be.
He looked up and tried to make his voice deep. Who are- He saw Axel. He saw Fischer. He swallowed. "Fans?"
Axel beamed. "I am big fan of not-dying."
Fischer walked the perimeter, eyes on the ground. No blood spatter, no drain grate stains, no drag marks. "Dr. Paper," he said softly, "you don't kill. You decorate."
The kid flushed above his duck mask. "Drawing is art, too," he said, defensive as a kicked dog.
"Who are you copying?" Fischer asked.
The kid fidgeted. "No one. Me."
Fischer flicked a crane off the table with a knuckle. "Where did you see the bodies in glass?"
Dr. Paper blinked. "Glass?"
Vogro stepped closer. "Listen, baby doctor. Someone is making… *He gestured vaguely*. Installations. In our space. In our name. We would like to end their career before it takes off."
Dr. Paper hugged himself. "I don't…. He trailed off. The cranes. At the theater. He leaves them like holy bread."
Fischer turned his head just enough. "You've been following him."
"I… go sometimes," Dr. Paper admitted. "To… learn. The glass is…" He shivered. "Beautiful. Ugly."
"Where."
It took too long for the kid to answer. "Fourth block over. Storage. Unit B-17. He leaves after dark. He hums. Something from the radio. Old."
Fischer nodded once. Thank you.
Axel tilted his head. "We go now? We break him in half like bread?"
"Not yet," Fischer said. "First, we look. Then we decide what to break."
They left the kid with his duck mask and his small pretend world. Zima glanced back once. Dr. Paper had returned to rearranging his plastic limbs, trembling.
B-17 was a box with a lock that wanted to be opened. It slid with a moan. Inside, the light hit glass and made the room into a multiple-choice test. Cases lined in rows, refrigerator units converted into coffins. Bodies inside, arranged with a pervert's devotion. Faces powdered, mouths stitched shut or widened. Fingers replaced with silver spoons. Toes polished to a military shine. Jets of halogen carved shadows across them like new ribs.
Vogro made a small sound he would later deny. Axel, usually so eager to make messes, went very still.
Zima's hands curled slightly at his sides. His voice, when it came, had to push past something vicious. "These were ours-" he said.
Fischer let the hate come and go like weather. He was quiet for a full minute, reading. Learning the cadence of the thief's appetite. The paper cranes were placed like signatures, always at the border of light, never in the middle. The wire anchors were symmetrical even when the poses weren't. The bleach was recent, fumes fresh enough to burn. The designer liked to reset after every viewing.
Vogro found a clipboard with inventory lines filled out in sloppy print. Names replaced with numbers. A single note scrawled in the margins: "Masaru likes perfection."
Fischer took the board, read it, smiled with a shape that wasn't a smile, and then snapped it in half.
Axel pointed at the far wall. "There-...camera."
A tiny lens blinked. Fischer stepped into its field and let it have his face.
"Talk," he said.
There was no talk. There was a hum. Tinny, distant. A melody from an old radio, warbling through bad reception. It seeped through a vent.
Zima was already moving. He pulled the vent grate with his bare hands. Behind it, a duct. Far back, a single speaker wired with care and taped like a secret.
"He left us a song," Vogro whispered.
"He left us a line," Fischer said. "And he's tugging."
The bulbs above them clicked twice, an insect shiver. Axel's head snapped up. "Boom?" he asked.
Fischer's eyes were already on the door. "Move."
They cleared the threshold as the first charge popped, small, mean. Glass screamed. Refrigeration units groaned and died. The second explosion ripped the row of cases into teeth. Bleach and blood kissed the air and married into something awful.
They hit the corridor when the third device went, a lazy thud that pushed their backs with a hot hand. Zima swung the rolling door down and it jammed a foot from closed, metal warped. Smoke slithered into the hallway like it had appointments to keep.
Vogro coughed. "We just… we just lost the evidence."
"No," Fischer said, breath even, anger folding itself into purpose. "We found the body of his work. That's different."
Axel smacked his fist into his palm, delighted by the wordplay he only half understood. "We hunt bomb boy now," he said. "Good. I am bored of birds."
Fischer looked down at his sleeve. A single ash smear made a line like a signature. He wiped it off and smiled like it hurt.
"He wants me to chase," Fischer said. "So let's chase."
Zima's hood tilted. "Where first?"
Fischer listened to the humming still ringing in his teeth. The song. He closed his eyes and let the stupid little melody play on. Soft static. A woman's voice crooning nothing words. He knew it. He hated that he knew it.
"The night FM station," he said. The late show with the old love songs.
Vogro blinked. "He's… romantic?"
"He's performative," Fischer said. "There's a difference. We're not chasing a butcher. We're chasing an audience member who thinks the stage loves him back."
Axel held up a fist. "We break his heart," he said, eyes shining.
Fischer turned toward the exit, toward the cold air, toward the city that made monsters because it liked the company.
"Better," he said. "We teach it to stop beating."