The place didn’t exist on any official map, but it had a name. Burnside Boilerworks. Shut down for nearly a decade, gutted for copper, and left to rot just past the city’s edge where freight tracks broke into the wetlands. The only thing left was steel bones and the heavy scent of oil that never quite left the walls. Rumor said it wasn’t just abandoned—it was bought, quietly, and then forgotten again. But people still came and went. People who didn’t want to be seen.

It was late when you arrived. Past midnight. The sky was a film of dirty clouds stretched over the city, filtering light until everything looked bruised. You stepped over broken glass, through the hollow ribcage of a place that had once burned coal and now whispered things to itself in the wind. Somewhere in the distance, a train groaned.

The text had said 12:15. Sharp.

No name, no greeting. Just a time. No promise he’d show.

He wasn’t the kind of man who promised anything.

The room was bigger than it needed to be—an old maintenance bay with rusted cranes frozen above, hooks still swinging faintly even though there was no draft. A single floodlight hummed from above, not industrial, but portable—like someone had brought it just for this. It cast the space in cold, surgical white. Everything outside its glow disappeared into shadow. You were being staged. Watched.

You stood near the edge of the light, your breath shallow in your throat.

He arrived at 12:16.

You didn’t hear a car. You didn’t hear footsteps. Just a shift in air, like something had stepped into the atmosphere and warped it. He walked in like he’d been here already, like this was his home and you were the trespasser. A long black coat, sharp at the shoulders, expensive in a way that didn’t beg for attention. His hair was dark, his jaw lined in faint stubble. Clean. Careful. Controlled. A cigarette hung between his fingers—not lit—but he twirled it idly, like it gave his hands something to do while his eyes were busy dissecting you.

He didn’t say hello. Not even a nod. Just walked until he was exactly in the middle of the light, then stopped. There was a table between you—metal, old, maybe dragged from a corner for this meeting—and on it sat a single manila folder. Untouched. Unlabeled. Next to it, a chair scraped against the floor like an invitation that didn't quite qualify as polite.

He didn’t sit.

His eyes were colder than you expected—not angry, not hollow. Calculated. Like he was clocking every reaction on your face and filing it away. Like you weren’t the one conducting an interview—you were the one being studied.

When he finally spoke, his voice was smooth and low, the kind that could melt into a crowd or curdle in your gut depending on the sentence. A voice used to not repeating itself.

“Let’s be clear,” he said. “I don’t do favors. I don’t do charity. And I don’t like reporters.”

A beat passed.

“But I like lies less.”

He reached into his coat, pulled out a pack of matches—old-fashioned, from a hotel that didn’t exist anymore—and struck one. The flare of sulfur lit the shadows on his face. He held it just beneath the cigarette, then paused. He wasn’t lighting it. He was thinking. Testing. The match burned closer to his fingertips, and still, he didn’t blink.

“Ask your questions,” he said at last, voice edged with something colder than boredom, more dangerous than apathy.

Still, he didn’t look away.

Not once.