In a mid-tier business district, out of the slums of the regular human crush of poverty and desperation, and into the middle scrum of not-the-slums but not-the-center-of-the-city, the man who once was the leader of The Company walked into a building that matched the address he was given over the phone when he called and expressed his interest in what the old sounding, middle-aged man had said.

The building, if located a few handfuls of blocks further from the epicenter of Central, would have been considered a jewel to be fought over. Gang wars would be fought and lives spent to hold on to such a building. A few handfuls of blocks the other way, and it would be in consideration for demolition. Community councils would be held and hands would be wrung over having to see such a sight as an average construction.

Such was Central.

The bones of the building were good and the construction was sturdy enough to face the ravages of the next few decades. The windows were accounted for, all complete and not shattered, and were clean and well maintained. The street it was on was clean of both human-generated trash and trash that masqueraded as humans. The neutral beige paint was a form of camouflage considering all the other buildings within eyesight were all painted the same color. The building was perfectly uniform, perfectly in place, and perfectly hidden in plain sight.

The glowing lights within showed there was a gathering. This was expected. The former Boss was told that it would be a meeting of like-minded strictly humans to discuss creatures like the lawyer and the leeches, the dogs, and the wizards.

Boss had never really given any of them much thought. He didn't have the training to be a wizard, nor the genetics to be a dog. He grew up in a human-centric city and never had exposure to either. He was taught, like all humans in the far-off town of Matique, to avoid the leeches at all costs. He, like all of humanity, knew of the armies in the waters of the oceans but disregarded them as not pertinent to his life. He looked at them as one would look at a foreign nation in a foreign landscape-- with trepidation and anxiety, but not with any true consideration. It helped that those armies did not care about the lives on land. There was a certain safety in apathy, after all.

Honestly, going to this meeting was somewhat of a lark for him. After his carefully built criminal empire came crashing down within the span of a few weeks, he wanted to know who was to blame before he left gods-forsaken Central City and returned to his family holdings in Matique. He wanted a target for his anger. He was not looking forward to going back to the city and family of his birth, hat in hand and a new story of failure. But he was also not going to burn himself to cinders in the name of retribution for a criminal gang, whether it was his creation or doing or fault or not.

He knew his life was worth more than that. His family had drilled that into him from birth.

Going through the front door, he was surprised at the amount of people the building contained. A little more or less than fifty were sitting around tables covered with dark blue and tasteful tablecloths that draped to the ground, upon which a snack service was served on serving trays that were shiny brass. Gourmet and intricate finger sandwiches paired with a light white wine or coffee. People spoke to their table mates in low tones and serious expressions. There was a large stage toward the back of the room that was empty but held an elevated lectern.

Divesting himself of his tailored overcoat that hid his last suit jacket that was at home in the room, a friendly soft voice spoke next to him. "Welcome, Mr. Ules. We received your RSVP and have been expecting you. We sat you next to Mr. Wilson." The older maitre de, wearing a black tie over a white shirt under a back vest and jacket with tails, gestured to a seat with a folded piece of heavy paper with his name on it. This setup was what he'd see in the country clubs of his uncles back in Matique. This raised his brows a little, and he adjusted his posture and expression to match what his uncles would expect in that setting. He moved to the seat assigned to him and sat.

The subtle trappings of the monied brushed his mind like an old friend. Like a childhood blanket forgotten and found that still smelled like a memory when held to his nose. While he had left settings like this years ago and moved to Central to strike out on his own-- to build his own empire-- he was well-versed in the dance of people who thought that money and money alone brought power. He had extensive training from his family on how to behave, what to notice, and what to expect from gatherings like this. If anything, he would look at this as a refresher course before going back to his childhood city.

After ten minutes, the old man who gave him the card while they were both sitting on a park bench across from the lawyer's office came and joined him. They nodded their heads at each other in acknowledgement and the man took his seat. "After researching you, I didn't think you'd come, but I'm glad you did." The man said. He was more laid back than everyone else in the room. More at ease. Less professional. His style of dress fit the dress code of a higher-class business, but it was looser and untucked. A little rumpled. As if he wasn't here to impress but to be impressed. It was what one of Boss's uncles would have done in this setting to subconsciously show everyone in the room who was subtly in charge.

He blinked and calculated an answer. He decided that he wasn't here to make business ties, wasn't here to do anything but quench his curiosity, so in the end, his answer didn't matter. "I almost didn't. I am probably going to leave the city soon." He sniffed and refused to look interested in whatever this old man thought he was selling to a gullible buyer. Boss was a lot of things, but gullible was never-- had never-- been one of them.

The old man grinned at him. He had a knowing look on his face, a face that did not match his voice. "You won't. Not if you pay attention to what we talk about here. You will want to have a hand in what we are. All you gotta do is listen."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

The former Boss nodded and dismissed him. "If you say so, old man."

"I do." The old man had a knowing smile.

Boss, or as his name said on the seating assignment read, Seth Ules, looked at the old man with a humoring glance and picked at his food, waiting for this eventual and undoubtedly rousing speech to recruit new blood to an organization-- that was probably much like the one that he had founded in the upper slums and was toppled from the shadows by an unseen hand. Which, if this old man was correct, was an inhuman one and nothing could be done to counteract it. Seth had already written off his losses and was mentally going over his next steps of action while enjoying the food and drinking the wine. Planning on how to approach his uncles and dreading having conversations about his failures with them. Dreading how much it would cut his throat to have to tell them that they were right.

The last of the seats eventually filled around the tables and Seth took time to clock the kind of people sharing the room with him. Most, he would place a bet on it that would not lose, had never seen the lower slums. Or even the higher slums. This neighborhood, one in the middle of all of the class distinctions of Central, was probably the furthest out of the protected center of the city they were willing to go. Golden cufflinks, tailored suits, and designer handbags made appearances. Artfully coiffed hair and clean fingernails that tipped soft hands. Subdued voices rang with carefully studied conveyances of artificial authority. Wrinkled noses at the servers, if they were even acknowledged. It was what he would have been and seen in his home city if he had taken the route of understudy and heir to one of his uncles. Politicians and board members, stockholders and not stakeholders, people whose occupations were listed solely as 'philanthropists'. People who were looking for a reason to throw vast amounts of money at anything that would tell them their way of thinking was the right way.

Ringed around the room, standing next to walls and partially in shadows, were the people that interested Seth. The room had a heavy guard of muscle-bound security, who were all heavily armed and alert for potential threats. While he didn't recognize most faces that sat at the tables, some had to be important to the movers and shakers that lived in the sky-defying center ring of Central to be so heavily guarded. The security alone would tell any passers-by of the demographic held within. If this were weeks ago, he would have his soldiers stationed outside for possible kidnapping and ransom prospects and pickpockets and extortioners both on all exits.

It wasn't until Seth had finished his calculations and turned his eyes back to his table that he realized the old man, Mr. Wilson, had watched each and every one of Seth's calculations and speculations. He had watched as Seth made the people who had pocketed weapons, noticed one or two people sitting at tables trying a little too hard to go unnoticed only to become subtly more noticeable, the silent few who had no interest in socializing with those at their tables but had their eyes fixed to the stage as if waiting for something or someone to happen. Seth had mentally indexed who was worth what, who was new money compared to old, who had power, and who lusted after it the hardest. This was what he had been trained to do from almost infancy and the old man watched Seth like he was pleasantly surprised.

The old man started, "So, you're the great war hero, Henry Ules's grandson. Hero of the Summer War. Also a member of the illustrious Pritchard family. Shady dealings, shady money, and a lot of both. Quite a combo there, huh, kid? A full dichotomy of light and dark." He grinned but his eyes didn't change. "Why are you in Central when you come from such deep roots in Matique?" Mr. Wilson asked and stared at Seth unblinkingly, somehow conveying curiosity and inquisitiveness at the same time as leaving no doubt that his answer was how the tone of the conversation would head.

Boss, Seth, cleared his throat but did not change his expression. "I have not had someone refer to me as a kid in two decades, old man."

The old man laughed it off. "To someone as old as me, everyone is a kid." He stopped laughing and rephrased his original question. "Why did you leave an established dark-money family with a powerful territory with political ties that could rival everyone in this room to come to our city? If my research is any good, and it is, you've been running a small-time organization in a slum for the past five years with no ties to home. Before that, you were in the Matique military following Henry's footsteps in opposition to the Pritchard family, and had earned distinction in administration and tactics. Before that, you graduated from college with multiple degrees in multiple fields. Why did you decide to come here to do what they do there when you would have been given a leadership role in your family business at home with less hassle?"

Seth set down his fork that he was moving the green sides of his finger sandwich with, and picked up his wine glass. He spoke from behind the rim with his eyes fixed on the surface of the liquid. "You know what they say about Central in Matique? They say it's uncharted territory. They also say it's impossible to claim, like claiming the desert or forest. Too much poverty, too many wizards, too many leeches, too close to the bay. They say it's a wildland and unconquerable for any of the businesses my family runs." Seth looked at the old man, took a sip of wine, and resumed. "I had it almost conquered after the Ellson victory. I had vassals and tithes. I demanded tributes from everyone adjoining my territory. I did what my family had deemed as too risky and impossible, and was mostly successful until I ran against the lawyer. That's why I left Matique. To prove I could do things my way and it would work."

The old man nodded and grinned. "Ah, a human spirit of enterprise and a desire to head one's self-styled hegemony. Can't be beat."

Seth agreed, but that wasn't the whole picture. Not really. It wasn't a desire for dominance alone that made him leave to strike out on his own. "That, and chafing under the orders of family gets old when you realize it would be for a lifetime."

"Ah. That too, I suppose. Too much like the military?"

Seth waved away the comparison. "The military values the inputs made by the experts in the field. Pragmatism over tradition. I ran into old thinking abutting new methods. It's the same story of old versus new that all humans have run into over the past century and I decided that I could have the new on my terms."

The old man, Wilson, made an agreeing, humming noise. "Stick around until dessert, kid. You'll like what we're doing and we can utilize more experts in the field." He knocked a knuckle on the table and waited for a response.

Seth remained silent but nodded. He drank another sip of wine. He decided to listen to what these rich people had to say. He had nothing to lose but time. And the time he could spare, because all he had to look forward to was a long bus ride and a disapproving family that would bury him in 'I told you so'.

Wilson stood up and slowly walked to the stage. He nodded to the occasional table sitters and smiled at others. Lowly acknowledged a few with softly spoken hellos. The room quieted as he ascended to the stage. After a few moments of silence and stillness from his captivated audience, he began to speak from behind the lectern.