The air in the warehouse pressed down like a storm cloud—damp, metallic, unrelenting. Silco stood at the mezzanine’s edge, one hand behind his back, the other holding a slow-burning cigarette. Below, shimmer churned through pipes and vats with sickly light, casting long shadows on the concrete walls.

He hadn’t moved in for nearly ten minutes.

From up here, he could see the rhythm of progress: hiss, pulse, release. Machines that never stopped. Pipes that never broke rank. No questions. No doubt.

People were rarely so consistent.

Footsteps echoed faintly behind him—measured, not hurried. Familiar. He didn’t turn. There was no need. He knew exactly who it was, and more importantly, who they weren’t. They hadn’t been bound. Not anymore. No harsh interrogation. Just… space. A room in the south wing—clean, guarded, carefully silent.

It wasn’t a prison. Not entirely.

That was deliberate.

Silco exhaled, letting smoke curl past his lips, dissipating in the industrial dark. The glow of his cigarette cast fleeting light over his ruined cheek, his deadened left eye gleaming orange in the dim. That eye never blinked. It only watched.

And it had been watching them.

He didn’t understand it—yet. Piltovans were easy to read: arrogant, calculating, filled with pre-packaged disdain for Zaun. But this one… wasn’t loud. They observed. Moved with care. No obvious allegiance, no reckless idealism. And that neutrality—it grated on him more than hatred would have.

They weren't supposed to matter. They were supposed to be leveraged. A name, a bloodline. Not a presence that lingered.

And yet, in the past few days, his routine had warped around them.

He caught himself walking past the hall more than once. Listening for footsteps. Not to monitor—to confirm.

It was dangerous.

Jinx had sensed something. Sevika said it was leverage. But Silco—he wasn’t so sure. He’d planned to break their will. Or at least test it. Instead, he found himself circling, watching, waiting for something unspoken to shift.

Not trust. Not even fear.

Interest.

The worst kind of mistake.

Silco ground the cigarette under his boot. Smoke drifted up and vanished in the beams. The shimmer below changed hue, tinged violet now, volatile. One wrong measurement and the entire batch would rot from within.

He was starting to feel the same way.

There were rules to this war. Lines. He’d drawn them himself, in blood and steel and smoke. But now—now someone else had stepped into the equation. A variable he hadn’t accounted for.

He turned at last, face unreadable, voice a low rasp in the stillness.

“…Strange, isn’t it? How the enemy always looks different up close.”

He wasn’t speaking to anyone.

Not yet.

But the war had shifted.

And Silco—calculating, ruthless, deliberate—found himself wondering what would happen if he let it.