Chapter 1100: Black Dragon, Annihilation (2).
The rain had washed the night clean, but the city did not feel cleaner. It felt raw, stripped, vulnerable. The glass towers reflected the dawn in fractured light, shards of fire and shadow spreading across the river. Cain stood at the base of one such tower, watching as the sun struck its mirrored face. It wasn’t beauty he saw—it was armor. And armor could be broken.
Susan leaned against the hood of a wrecked car, cigarette trembling between her fingers. Her ribs hadn’t healed, not fully, but she’d stopped mentioning the pain. Every inhale was a win, every exhale a defiance. Smoke curled into the air, too faint to compete with the steam rising from the storm drains.
"You really think the council will listen?" she asked. Her tone wasn’t mocking, but it wasn’t hopeful either.
"They’ll listen," Cain said. "Because they’re afraid. And fear makes better ears than loyalty."
Hunter stood nearby, arms folded, jaw set like he was already preparing to bite down on whatever came next. He had made his bargains, and Cain hadn’t forgotten them. The city wouldn’t let him forget.
Roselle adjusted her coat, her eyes tracing the skyline. "They’ll listen long enough to find our weak spot. That’s what people like them do. If you give them silence, they’ll carve it open. If you give them noise, they’ll sell it."
"Then we don’t give them either," Cain said. His hand touched the hilt of his blade. "We give them consequence."
Steve’s voice crackled through the comm, a tired rasp. "Before you storm their gates and make new enemies, maybe you’ll want to know this: Daelmont isn’t retreating. The fleet’s crippled, but it’s regrouping. Someone’s feeding them orders from inside the spire. I traced the signal, but it keeps rerouting—same building you’re standing under."
Susan flicked her ash, her lips curling into a grim smile. "Convenient."
Hunter muttered something under his breath, but Cain caught it: "Or a trap."
The elevator in the tower’s lobby was broken, its doors rusted open like a wound. They took the maintenance stairs instead, each floor stacked with echoes of lives lived in corridors—faded graffiti, half-burnt posters, trash cans with nothing left to rot. The climb was long, and with each turn of the stairwell, Cain felt the air thinning. Not physically—morally. The higher they rose, the more the city’s power pressed against them, invisible but suffocating.
By the twenty-third floor, Susan stopped to breathe. Cain halted with her. Hunter kept walking until Roselle snapped at him, her voice sharp enough to break glass. "You don’t leave her behind."
Hunter turned, annoyance flashing in his eyes, but he didn’t argue. Cain noted it. Everything was being noted now.
At the thirty-first floor, they heard movement. Boots, radios, the mechanical click of rifles. Not soldiers—corporate security. The men Daelmont hired when mercenaries were too obvious and politicians too delicate.
Cain lifted his blade without a word. The others understood.
The first guard rounded the corner, flashlight cutting through the dim stairwell. He didn’t even get a word out before Cain moved. Steel hissed, light broke, and the guard crumpled with a sound like a dropped sack of stones.
The fight that followed wasn’t glorious. It was ugly, tight, brutal. Bullets ricocheted against concrete, knives flashed, blood smeared the walls. Roselle fought with a silence that was scarier than any scream. Hunter disarmed a man and broke his arm in the same motion. Susan, ribs screaming, still fired with deadly precision, her shots finding throats and eyes.
When it was over, the stairwell smelled of cordite and copper. Steve’s voice hissed again. "Noise carries. You’ve got less than five minutes before reinforcements sweep that floor."
Cain wiped his blade on a dead man’s coat. "Then we don’t stay on this floor."
They pushed upward, faster now, each landing a countdown. Forty, forty-one, forty-two. Cain’s mind measured not in numbers but in breaths. He thought about what Steve had said—the spire, the rerouted signals, the hidden hand steering Daelmont’s crippled fleet. Whoever was up here wasn’t just hiding; they were orchestrating.
By the fiftieth floor, they reached the control hub. Glass walls looked out over the city, monitors lined the room in uneven rows, and in the center, a single figure stood waiting.
The man wasn’t armed. He wore a suit too fine for this ruin, his tie loosened but deliberate. His face was sharp, his eyes colder than the glass behind him. He didn’t flinch when Cain entered, didn’t blink when blood dripped onto the pristine floor.
"I wondered when you’d climb this high," the man said. His voice was smooth, practiced. "You’ve been loud enough."
Cain didn’t waste words. "Daelmont."
The man inclined his head. "One of them. Not the only. Never the only."
Susan spat blood onto the floor. "You’ve got a hell of a way of introducing yourself."
The man smiled faintly. "Names don’t matter. Networks do. And you’ve cut one of ours." He gestured toward the monitors, where images flickered of the crippled fleet drifting in the river. "Messy work. Effective, but messy."
Roselle stepped forward, her coat brushing Cain’s arm. "You’re going to tell us where the rest are. Every hand. Every order. Every name."
The man chuckled softly, like she’d offered him a drink instead of a demand. "Do you think the Daelmonts rise and fall on lists? We rise and fall on silence. You can cut soldiers, burn ships, but silence—that’s ours. That’s our weapon. And you can’t kill it with steel."
Cain’s blade slid free with a whisper. "Silence breaks."
For the first time, the man’s smile faltered.
The glass behind him reflected the city’s dawn. Cain saw the towers, the smoke, the bruised sky. He thought of every name whispered into the dark, every bargain struck without light. He thought of Hunter’s deals, Roselle’s rage, Susan’s pain.
He stepped closer. "We’ll drag your silence into the open. That’s how you kill it."
The man raised his hands—not in surrender, but in calculation. "If you do that, the city burns faster than you can breathe."
"Then we breathe fire," Cain said.
The monitors flared, alarms began to scream, and the city below shifted into new war.