Autumn rain cut right to the bone. Isaac could even feel it through his dark cloak - a long parka that went down to his knees. A hood covered his head and hid his features; this was the type of assignment where secrecy was vital.

Yesterday, after Isaac met with Reed, Stockham briefed him in his office. Just as expected, the assignment would take him to the Four Eagles ghetto. As to what he was looking for in there - Isaac had a photo tucked away in his pocket, but he burned the picture of the twins into his mind already last night. Dark eyes, sandy blonde hair, two identical men in their late twenties. One of the civilians Isaac saved at Machigonne knew those two scientists from their childhoods together in Four Eagles. And as for how to find them within that ghetto - he would need to locate a bar with the lovely name of Crusty Calydon. The next night, Isaac was on the case.

Back when he first arrived in Narragansett, Babs took him dancing in a rundown part of the city. Memories of the strawberry scent in her hair warmed Isaac through the perpetual downpour from above. Tonight, he even passed by the dance hall, passed by the park where they got ambushed by street urchins, and passed by homeless encampments and tent cities. He wasn’t alone - downtrodden men and women walked alongside him down the cracked streets, back from the factories, begging, stealing, working street corners. Whatever they could do to make money in a world where their options were limited.

Conditions got worse as he approached the outskirts of Four Eagles. The previous neighborhoods and squares featured sturdy, if dilapidated and overgrown, brick buildings, but Isaac now found himself walking through shantytowns. Flickering electric street lamps gave way to barrel fires and ragged people warming themselves around them. Isaac kept his head down as he walked on.

As he got closer, Four Eagles literally loomed over him like a drunken giant. Isaac couldn’t help but lift his head at the sight - the intel said Zhanghai Industrial Corporation had emptied the ghetto of its inhabitants, but that wasn’t quite true. Within the center of Four Eagles, where Isaac could find the entrance to the underground, that spot must’ve been vacated and bulldozed. But surrounding it was a maze of shacks and shanty towns growing atop one of another like moss on a tree. Isaac couldn’t believe it - Four Eagles rose at least fifteen stories high, an unkempt monstrosity of rotting wood, faded brick, and rusted sheet metal all stacked on top of each other. Regulations and building codes didn’t exist here; neither did the law, outside of the central area where Zhanghai worked. According to Stockham, Restorationist-allied triads and criminal gangs ran this whole area.

There was no obvious entrance for Zhanghai personnel to enter, adding further evidence to the idea they could move below ground through the old city’s tunnels. Isaac very much felt like he entered a tunnel as he entered Four Eagles. The rain only came down intermittently now since the sky was no longer visible through the web of buildings above him. Isaac stepped through murky streams produced by gutters emptying the rainwater onto the ground layer of the ghetto. The streets were far too narrow for cars and trucks; the alleyways jutting out from either side of the main road could only fit a thin person.

Fortunately, everyone here was thin. Malnourished refugees, migrants, homeless, and junkies all watched him with empty eyes as Isaac walked on. They sat on porches, on balconies, on ladders crossing the street up above. Isaac could feel the stares burning into the back of his neck. He instinctively reached toward his right arm; Stockham gave him some extra firepower for his mission. Wrapped around that arm were several charms - sound silencers for stealth attacks, huge flares for surprise or distraction, extra doses of Rddhi to use in his attacks. All Isaac needed to do was run his left hand across them, just like lighting a match, for them to activate. All that extra power, however, wouldn’t do him any good if the entire ghetto collapsed on top of him. Seeing the rickety construction all around him, it seemed like an everyday possibility.

Isaac had a vague idea of the Crusty Calydon’s location. No normal street signs existed here. The names of the roads were written in sprawled paint across the walls of buildings; Isaac could even see them up above, painted across the bottom of overhead shanties. The paint was faded and often competed with colorful graffiti for attention; from his classes, Isaac recognized some of the writing as Atalantan, but couldn’t decipher it. Rural Arcadian migrants rubbed elbows with Atalantan refugees here; fortunately, most of the street names were written in Arcadian Common.

Unfortunately, Isaac still managed to get lost in the darkness, the somber atmosphere, and the utter maze known as this ghetto. He recognized trouble right as it appeared; he passed by a group of men looking slightly better-fed than their peers. Isaac could hear their footsteps approaching him from behind, as well as the distinctive metal clink of a switchblade. More men jumped down from a building in front of him, blocking his way out from the front as well.

The biggest man in front of him had slicked back hair and wore aviator shades (despite the general darkness); he gripped a crowbar tightly in his hand. “This here is triad territory,” he called out. He spoke Common with an accent that reminded Isaac of Demetrius; he must’ve been an Atalantan. “You gotta pay a toll.”

Isaac realized this would be a convenient way to find his destination. “I’ll trade you,” he offered. “I’ll pay for information.”

“Don’t think you get it, kid,” the triad answered. “The toll costs ya everything you have on you. You won’t have enough for any info afterwards.”

The men moved closer. And then Isaac had an unexpected emotion - nostalgia. The lazy smell of summer came back to him, as did the arrogant, youthful face of Fat Lou and his two fallen followers. These men might work for the triads, but when Isaac looked at them closely, they couldn’t have been older than he was. In another life, they would’ve been kids from a rival ore vein that Isaac fought at sunset and then got drinks with at dusk.

Isaac went on the verbal offensive. “Last chance. You tell me what I want to know, otherwise I’m going to be hazardous to your health right now.”

No dice. The six men all lunged towards him, crowbars and tire irons and knives in their hands. Isaac went to activate his cultivation…only to realize he didn’t need it.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

It’s like they're moving in slow motion.

Thinking, reacting, and moving faster, Isaac got to work. Two jabs knocked both a knife away and a man out cold. A roundhouse kick swept out a man’s legs. Uppercuts to the jaw, strikes to the chest. Isaac kicked a man into a gutter; a deluge of rainwater washed over the fallen opponent. Bobs and weaves navigated Isaac through a flurry of tire iron attacks; that man ended up thrown through a window boarded up with wooden planks. One man went to stab him, only to seize up and then back away when Isaac glanced in his direction. Those who could flee disappeared from the scene; those knocked unconscious littered the ground.

All that remained was the lead triad. The man moved quickly and had some serious weight behind his slashes. But Isaac had better footwork; the man unbalanced himself after a heavy attack, enabling Isaac to palm strike the crowbar away. Before the man could react, Isaac slammed a fist into his jaw. The triad fell into a puddle of rainwater; Isaac bent down and gripped both of his collars.

“Where’s the Crusty Calydon?” Isaac demanded to know.

“Go to hell,” the triad spat back at him.

Isaac raised a fist, intent on slamming it right through the man’s aviator shades. When the triad realized this, he raised his hands and stammered out, “Stop, stop, stop! It took me forever to get these!”

The fist never plunged down, though it still remained dangerously angled toward his face. The triad sighed in relief, then spoke in a shaky voice. “K-Keep going down this street for a while. You’ll see a large mural of the Atalantan countryside. You’ll want to go up the stairs there. Just keep going up. The bar is on one of the highest levels.”

The man cried out as Isaac hoisted him to his feet. “Thank you,” Isaac offered, then shoved him away. The triad immediately fled, disappearing into the darkness and rain and shadows.

Isaac looked down at his fist. The slight bruises from his strikes were already disappearing from his knuckles. “I guess I’ve come a long way, Lou.”

The mural wasn’t that much of a long way off. Isaac had no more encounters with ruffians since defeating those triads; he soon found a large wall decorated with faded green and golden paint that felt utterly alien in this dark, cold world. Isaac slipped into a nearby alleyway and moved under sheet metal awnings for dentists and doctors; he suspected they didn’t have their credentials. A stone staircase jutted out from the alleyway; Isaac ascended, moving past tiny doorways for tiny homes. The stone soon ended, replaced by metal; wood eventually overtook that.

Isaac suspected he had arrived halfway up through the ghetto. He couldn’t tell anymore; concrete, wood, brick, and metal in varying states of decay blocked both his view up and down. In fact, the longer he stayed in here, the more he suspected he might even lose his sense of up and down. Man orientated himself with the sky above and the ground below, but there was no sky in sight and the ground had no direction to it. The stairs disappeared; Isaac’s footsteps clanked across an alleyway with a floor made of sheet metal that ended with a series of shacks, one slightly taller than the other. Isaac realized these were the stairs themselves and stepped up even higher.

The rain fell around him more consistently now; Isaac could finally see the cloudy night sky in patches. Electric lights returned as well, their wires hanging from utility poles struggling to reach the sky like saplings in a crowded forest. Guided by the light and another sheet metal alleyway, Isaac finally found the Crusty Calydon.

A woman with sunken eyes peered at Isaac from a nearby balcony as he entered the bar. Music and even warmth greeted him; a ragged musician played a harmonica with all the power of rhythm and blues. Inside the bar reminded Isaac of the mural; people of all ages sat around old tables, drinking mugs of beer and ale. The smiles on their faces, ragged as they may be, were still smiles.

Isaac found an empty stool at the counter. On the other side, the bartender stood in front of a cabinet filled with Atalantan wines, beer, and ale, much of it moonshine and homebrewed. No Rusalkan vodka could be found, of course. The bartender was an old mustachioed fellow in a dirty apron; he currently washed an empty glass.

“What’ll it be?” he asked in a gruff voice.

Isaac spoke in a low tone. “I’m looking for the Dederick twins.”

Everything else in the bar continued as usual. Only the bartender heard, and only he skipped a beat for a second before returning to normal. He kept his eyes on the glass.

“Sounds vaguely familiar. But not sure I can help you.”

Isaac held a distant hope that he wouldn’t have to resort to bribery once again. It had been a while since he purchased an action-packed dime novel, after all.

“Perhaps I can help convince you.”

Isaac subtly slid several bills across the counter. The bartender gazed down at Supreme Commander Pulaski’s serene face for a moment before tucking them into his apron. “The Dederick twins were the smartest boys in Four Eagles. Had they been born lucky, they would’ve been millionaires. Instead, they were born here.”

The bartender rested his elbow on the counter and leaned in closer to Isaac. “Two years ago, when Zhanghai cleared out the center of the ghetto, the Dederick twins were evicted. With nowhere to go, they signed contracts to work with Zhanghai. I thought I saw the last of them after that…but a few weeks ago, the two arrived back here, looking ragged. They told us we should all stop working underground.”

“Underground?”

“There’s work underground.”

Isaac understood the implication. “Smuggling. Distribution.”

“And construction.”

“Construction?”

“They’re building something down there, alright. Zhanghai’s been using migrants to clean up tunnels, too.”

Isaac leaned forward. “What are they building down there?”

The bartender eyed the counter. Isaac resisted the urge to sigh as he set down another set of bills. Once pocketed, the bartender continued his story. “That’s what I want to know. The Dederick twins worked on it. But whatever they worked on drove them mad. They wrote equations on themselves. Spoke about the Heart.”

“A heart?”

The bartender shook his head. “The Heart.”

Isaac didn’t understand, but from the look on the bartender’s face, neither did he.

“Where can I find them?”

An empty chuckle answered him. “The boys have a hidey-hole in the northeast part of Four Eagles. They escaped from Zhanghai, you see. From whatever they were working on. But corporate samurai were always after them, so had to lie low for a while. Unfortunately, it was too long.”

Despite the warm music and atmosphere, Isaac once again felt the cold and darkness as the bartender gazed at him with grim eyes.

“Zhanghai already killed them.”