Time: Three Days Post-Op.
Location: The Kitchen / Western Wing of the Laboratory.
Domesticity in Sector 9 was not a gentle affair. It was a negotiated truce between the occupants and the architecture.
The kitchen, much like the rest of Silas's sanctuary, was a repurposed nightmare. The stove was an iron-bellied furnace originally designed for smelting low-grade ore, now retrofitted with gas burners. The refrigerator was a cryogenic storage unit that hummed with a menacing, deep-sea vibration.
Silas Vane stood at the stove, humming a tune that sounded suspiciously like a funeral dirge set to an upbeat tempo. He wore a blood-stained lab coat over flannel pajamas, and on his feet were bunny slippers. However, in true Silas fashion, the bunnies had been modified: their eyes were stitched shut with copper wire, and one of them occasionally twitched on its own.
"I swear to you," Silas said, flipping an egg with a rusty spatula, "this pan has never been used for organ storage. At least, not human organs. I think I stored a chimera liver in it once, but I scoured it with acid. It adds flavor."
Dante sat at the heavy oak table, the wood scarred by knife marks and chemical burns. He was shirtless, the pale skin of his torso contrasting sharply with the fresh, white bandages wrapped around his right shoulder.
He was reading the Sector 9 Gazette, holding the paper with his new reality.
The "Gentleman's Ripper" was a thing of terrible beauty. The matte-black Dead Iron absorbed the morning light filtering through the grime-encrusted windows. Every time Dante turned a page, the delicate servos within the fingers whirred—a sound like a clockwork hornet—threatening to shear the fragile newsprint in half. He was still learning to calibrate the grip strength, ten minutes ago, he had accidentally crushed a coffee mug into dust.
"Vespera's estate is being liquidated," Dante read aloud. His voice buzzed slightly, the Silvergrin resonating against his teeth. "The auction starts Friday at the Gilded Cage. They're selling her furniture, her art collection... and her 'research notes'."
"We should go," Silas said, sliding two perfectly fried eggs onto a chipped plate. "I need a new centrifuge. My old one wobbles when I spin blood samples. And maybe a rug. This place feels cold. A nice Persian rug would really tie the dungeon together."
"We have no money, Silas," Dante reminded him, not looking up from the obituary section. "I spent my last coin on the heavy water for the surgery. We are destitute."
"Details," Silas waved the spatula dismissively, sending a droplet of hot grease flying. "You're a High Aspirant now. You killed a Noble. You can just... glare at people until they give you things. It's called 'aggressive negotiation'."
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The sound was heavy, rhythmic, and utterly devoid of hesitation. The bone-door—reinforced with the ribcage of a leviathan—shuddered in its frame.
Dante froze. The air in the kitchen shifted instantly from domestic laziness into sharp, predatory tension.
His left hand—the human one—drifted toward the brace of throwing daggers resting among the jam jars. His right hand—the machine—whirred loudly, the fingers locking into a combat claw configuration with a distinct snick-click.
"Expecting company?" Dante asked, his voice low.
"Only the pizza guy," Silas said, turning down the heat on the stove. "But he usually screams 'Delivery!' before he knocks. And he usually smells like garlic. This smells like... oil."
Dante stood up. He moved silently across the cold stone floor, the gyroscope in his new arm adjusting his balance perfectly. He approached the door and leaned into the peephole—a giant, preserved cyclops eye embedded in the wood that magnified the view outside.
Outside stood a courier. But it drew no breath.
It was a Clockwork Servitor. A construct of brass and polished mahogany, standing seven feet tall. It had no face, only a smooth, blank brass plate where features should be. It wore the velvet-and-gold livery of the Gold Sovereign, tailored perfectly to its mechanical frame.
"Safe," Dante muttered. He unlocked the three deadbolts and pulled the heavy door open.
The machine bowed. The sound of gears grinding against each other was the sound of money, precise, expensive engineering. It held out a heavy, lead-lined box with both hands.
"Delivery for the Pale King," the machine clicked. Its voice was produced by a spinning wax cylinder inside its chest, scratching and synthetic. "Compliments of Lord Aurum."
Dante took the box. It was incredibly heavy, dense enough to anchor a small ship.
"Is a signature required?" Dante asked.
"No signature. Only memory." The machine bowed again, stepping backward with jerky, calculated movements. "Lord Aurum sends his regards. And a reminder: Investments expect returns."
The Servitor turned and walked away, its brass feet clanking into the morning mist of the alleyway.
Dante kicked the door shut. He carried the box to the table, sweeping aside the salt and pepper shakers with his metal forearm. The wood groaned under the weight.
"Aurum?" Silas whistled, abandoning the eggs. "The Banker? That's high-profile. He doesn't send gift baskets. Did he send a bomb?"
"Aurum doesn't send bombs," Dante said, running his metal finger along the seam of the box. "Bombs destroy assets. Aurum collects them. He sends bribes."
Dante popped the heavy latch. Hiss.
The lid swung open, releasing a puff of cold, pressurized air. Inside, nestled in black velvet like crown jewels, sat three rectangular bars.
They weren't gold. They glowed with a faint, sickly green luminescence that made the shadows in the kitchen stretch and warp. The air above them shimmered with invisible heat.
Enriched Uranium-235. Weapons-grade.
"Holy Mother of Alchemy..." Silas backed away until he hit the refrigerator. He pulled his collar up over his mouth. "Dante, close that! That's radioactive death. You're irradiating my breakfast!"
Dante stared at the bars. To a normal man, this was a silent, invisible killer. It was cancer in a box. But to Dante, whose body was a furnace constantly burning through its own existence, whose soul was leaking out through the cracks of the "Return to Origins" curse...
It looked like a gourmet steak cooked to perfection.
"It's not death," Dante corrected, his pupils dilating. "It's lunch."
He reached in. His "Gentleman's Ripper" was immune to the radiation, the Dead Iron simply absorbed the scattered ions. He picked up one of the glowing bars. It was warm to the touch.
He brought it to his mouth.
The Silvergrin parted. The liquid metal of his jaw retracted, unhinging slightly to reveal the terrifying, swirling void of his throat—the Alchemist's Furnace.
He took a bite.
CRUNCH.
The sound was horrific—like a rock crusher eating a diamond. Sparks flew from his mouth.
It didn't taste like food. It tasted like electric lemons, ozone, and heavy metal. It tasted like the air right before a lightning strike.
He chewed, the uranium grinding between his prosthetic teeth. He swallowed.
BOOM.
A rush of warmth flooded his body, explosive and immediate. It wasn't the gentle warmth of soup, it was the heat of a star. The constant, nagging ache of entropy—the feeling that his cells were slowly unzipping—vanished instantly.
His skin flushed with color. The dark circles under his eyes faded as his biology supercharged. Veins along his neck glowed a faint, translucent green for a second before fading back to normal.
"High-density fuel source detected," Prime purred in his mind. The voice was smooth, satisfied, like a cat that had just eaten the canary. "Isotope purity: 98%. Efficiency rating: 900%. We are operating at peak capacity. Core temperature rising to optimal levels."
Dante finished the bar in three bites. He wiped a smudge of glowing dust from his lip. He felt fantastic. He felt stable. He felt like he could punch a hole through a mountain and walk out the other side.
"That," Dante exhaled, a tiny puff of green smoke escaping his lips to dissipate in the air, "was delicious."
Silas stared at him, wide-eyed, holding his plate of eggs like a shield. "You just ate a nuclear fuel rod. You literally ate a meltdown. You are the most expensive roommate in history. Do you know how much that costs?"
"Aurum knows what I am," Dante said, his eyes narrowing. The green glow in his irises lingered for a moment. "He knows I need mass. He knows I need fuel. He's feeding the tiger so it doesn't eat him."
"He is buying time," Prime interjected, overlaying Dante's vision with tactical assessments of the remaining two bars. "He calculates that a fed weapon is a controllable weapon. But he forgets the First Law: Nothing is free. Equivalent Exchange."
"What do you want, Prime?" Dante asked aloud, closing the lead box to shield Silas from the remaining radiation.
Silas sat down slowly and started eating his eggs, entirely used to Dante holding council with the voices in his head.
"You are healed," Prime stated. "You are fueled. The biological debt is paid. Now, you pay the rent."
"Name the price," Dante said, flexing his new hand. Whir-clench.
"The Second Axiom," Prime said. "The Gilded Crucible. To access the path, I require data. I need a reference text. A tome titled 'The Anatomy of Empires'. It was written by the founder of the War District, a treatise on the alchemy of conflict."
"And where is this book?"
"It is not in a public library," Prime said coolly. "It is in the private collection of The Red Baron. The Warlord of Sector 2."
Dante sighed. The euphoria of the uranium faded into the grim reality of the job. He looked at Silas, who was happily chewing on toast.
"Silas, how do you feel about a heist?"
Silas paused, a forkful of egg halfway to his mouth. He looked at Dante, then at the glowing box, then at the new metal arm.
"Is it dangerous?"
"Suicidally so," Dante admitted.
"Does it involve fighting the Red Baron's army of steam-tanks and trench-constructs?"
"Almost certainly."
Silas ate the egg. He chewed thoughtfully, swallowed, and a wide, reckless grin spread across his face.
"I'll go warm up the Hearse."