Gunnar knelt next to the wall, feeling for a seam in the stone. After a couple of seconds, he found the tiniest of gaps and jammed the blade of his survival knife between the blocks. He didn’t immediately pry it loose. Instead, he ran the edge of the weapon along the seam, leaving a trail of cascading mortar to pile on the floor. He traced a rough square, approximately two feet across. Every few inches, he felt slight discharges of ethera as the runes lost contact.

Finally, when he’d outlined the entire thing, a larger pulse of ethera enveloped the block. Then, it disappeared, revealing a deep recess.

Gunnar let out a sigh of relief. When he had reached the safe house, he’d worried that it had been compromised. Because of that, he’d spent weeks just watching and waiting to see if it attracted any undue attention. As he did, he also watched the flow of Seattle’s underworld, and he was unsurprised to see that it was as complex a web as he remembered from his last stay.

There were no less than ten major criminal organizations, each focused on different categories of illicit activities. There was a group that fancied themselves a guild of assassins, multiple gangs that preferred thievery, and others that dabbled in everything from extortion to racketeering.

Most of them weren’t big or impactful enough to notice, but there were a handful that operated topside. And a few with global presences, with operations in multiple cities throughout the world. They weren’t quite on the level of organizations like the various guilds, the Conclave, or the Consortium, but they definitely wielded significant power.

Even if most people never even knew about them.

The majority of his initial investigation had centered on the Undercity, mostly surrounding the safe house. He had no intention of using it until he was absolutely certain that the runes shielding it from observation were still active. Even then, if someone else had stumbled onto it, he wanted to know.

Was his paranoia overkill?

Probably.

But in his experience, that was what separated a dead assassin from a live one. He’d long since learned the necessity of patience, so he had adopted a rudimentary disguise, activated Low Profile, and hoped to avoid surveillance. Some of Isaiah’s newer drones and cameras could see through his ability, so his knowledge of their locations was absolutely necessary to keep him hidden.

Thankfully, most of those cameras were meant to be visible, and Isaiah had developed enough of an ethereal sense to recognize the ones that weren’t. The disguise was meant for the ones he’d missed.

Not for the first time, he wished he’d taken a different route. Thieves and other unsavory classes had abilities specifically meant to counter surveillance skills like Isaiah’s. If Gunnar had access to those, his job would have been a lot easier.

But then again, he’d be a lot less lethal, so perhaps there was a good tradeoff there.

Once the stash was exposed, Gunnar unshouldered his backpack, and retrieved his weapons. To keep them concealed, he’d been forced to dismantle them. It wasn’t ideal, walking around all but unarmed, but if the wrong people saw him toting such an advanced rifle, he’d get all the worst sorts of attention.

And his job would be over before he’d even begun to tackle the task at hand.

Now that he’d established that the safehouse was, indeed, safe, he could get a proper start on solving the mystery of who’d hired him to kill Elijah. He was still a little surprised that he’d been left alive, but the combination of high pay, a few promises concerning charity for the people of the Undercity, and the very real consequences of failure kept him on target.

In truth, though, the biggest reason he’d gone through with it was because Elijah Hart hadn’t proved to be the monster he was supposed to be. If he had been, then Gunnar would not have been allowed to survive. In fact, when Elijah had defeated him, Gunnar had fully expected interrogation and torture, followed by the city of Seattle being wiped from the map.

That wasn’t what had happened, proving that Elijah was, at the very least, a much more complex person than the stories made him out to be. Gunnar felt better about working for him than he ever had when working for anonymous patrons.

With those thoughts distracting him, he shoved his dismantled weapons into the stash, then reconnected the rudimentary runes keeping it concealed. When he was done, the wall looked no different than it had when he’d entered the safe house, which was to say that it was just a bare slab of stone blocks.

Looking around, he had to acknowledge the theme for what it was. Sure, the one-room dwelling had the bare necessities. A stove. A closet-like shower in one corner. And a murphy bed that folded out from the wall opposite the stash. But it was far from luxurious, much like any other building in the Undercity.

“Bare necessities is right,” he muttered to himself, opening the tin medicine cabinet to see a bottle of toothpaste, a hunk of harsh soap, and nothing else. He closed it, then used the mirror to adjust his disguise. It was nothing more than a wig, a cap, and a little dirt, but he’d always had one of those faces that blended into a crowd. So, it was enough, especially coupled with the coveralls that marked him as one of the factory workers meant to produce Seattle’s technological exports.

Of course, he wouldn’t be expected to have any real skills related to that job. No – those factory workers were just there to do the grunt work. The runes that drove most of that technology would be applied by real Tradesmen.

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Was it the best way to do things? Not if one cared about the end product. But if you were looking for mass production of minimally viable products, it was perfect. For the higher-end pieces, there were whole teams of Tradesmen.

But they didn’t work in the Undercity.

Factories that produced relative junk weren’t the limit of the Undercity’s employment opportunities. The lucky ones would commute topside and work in one of the agricultural towers. The work was hard, but at least they would be well-treated. And they got to see the sun.

Most of the time.

But there were mines that delved far beneath the city as well. Plenty of other businesses too, usually catering to the needs of the downtrodden populace. In short, it was a fully functioning city on its own. The only difference was that they never quite got to see the fruits of their labor.

The real benefits went to those living on the surface.

Was it surprising? Not really. Ever had that been the case. Those in power set things up to stay in power. It didn’t matter what economic philosophy they espoused. Governmental structure wasn’t important either. People were people, and there was a certain sort of person who was fundamentally incapable of caring about anyone but themselves.

And it just so happened that those people were really good at taking power and manipulating the populace to give them more.

If Gunnar was a better person, he might’ve ended up as a revolutionary. But he wasn’t. He also understood that there was nuance to the subject. At the end of the day, as detestable as their methods were, those power-hungry sociopaths did drag humanity forward. They left a trail of bodies in their wake, but even more benefited from their selfish efforts. Not by design, but rather, as a by-product.

He could kill a few of them. And maybe that would help in the short run. But he couldn’t change human nature. The best he could do was help those he could and hope that it outweighed all the evil he’d done in his life.

With a sigh, he gathered a few other supplies from beneath a loose hunk of concrete on the floor, stuffed it all into his bag, then left the safehouse behind. As he traversed the undercity, he kept an eye on his surroundings. He’d been marked by a couple of pickpockets, but they clearly didn’t think he was worth the effort. Thankfully, Low Profile remained active. The ability wasn’t particularly powerful, but that was its strength. Rather than turn him invisible, it simply made him seem less interesting. Likely, the thieves didn’t even realize they’d been manipulated by his skill.

Gunnar joined the flow of traffic, knowing that he looked just like any of a hundred other factory workers going to or from their latest shift. Most wore haggard expressions, but there were at least a few who’d managed to keep their spirits up. The work in the factories was hard, but the conditions weren’t bad enough to send everyone into revolt.

And besides, for most of these people, there wasn’t much of an option. Seattle offered safety. The rest of the world was a big, scary place that promised nothing but death. Some would accept anything if it meant they wouldn’t have to go out there and see to their own protection. They’d already lost too much to risk anything else.

Along the way, he passed a few restaurants that served hot, greasy, and surprisingly good food. It was all made with cheap ingredients, but the Cooks were talented enough to disguise that. There were also plenty of general stores and other businesses, but the most successful were always the taverns.

After all, there were a lot of people who wanted to distract themselves from loss or the current state of their lives. Alcohol, which was always cheap and plentiful, was good at doing just that. Likely, the ubiquitousness of liquor was by design. A dependent populace was much easier to control than one without vices.

Gunnar kept going for a couple of miles before he reached the elevator leading topside. It only took a few tokens to buy passage, but even that would have been too much for most Undercity residents. They would stay where they were unless they had good reason to go to the surface.

Even so, the elevator was packed full of people. Each one had paid the same fee, but some were clearly better off than others. Gunnar watched them all, though he refused to see faces. He didn’t need to know them to recognize whether or not they represented a threat.

In any case, the trip topside took almost ten minutes, largely because Gunnar had been on one of the lowest levels of the Undercity. Surveillance was thinner down there, so it was the obvious choice for his base of operations. Still, it was inconvenient.

When the elevator reached the surface, he couldn’t help but blink at the sudden sunlight. It was always the same, reaching the surface. For a few moments, he would be all but blind – which made it the most vulnerable time for him. His hand crept to the handle of the pistol at his hip, concealed beneath a long coat.

But no one attacked, and when his eyes adjusted, he saw exactly what he expected – a transportation terminal. Seattle did a lot of things wrong, but one thing they’d gotten right was their public transportation system. Specifically, the tram, which ran throughout the city. It was a relatively new development – finished just before the summit a few years before – but already, it was the backbone of the city.

Gunnar found his way to the proper car, which was suspended from a cable that stretched off into the distance, and settled into one of the seats. Of course, he gave up that seat after only a few moments when an older woman needed a seat. She didn’t thank him. Instead, she just turned her nose up at his appearance.

Maybe the people of Seattle didn’t deserve saving.

Regardless, Gunnar rode the tram through four more stops until he disembarked. The terminal was built on the same model as the last, though it was far cleaner. And there were a dozen decent-leveled guards, each carrying ethera rifles meant to keep it safe, probably from riff-raff like Gunnar.

He ignored them, and they barely even clocked his presence.

One of them did keep an eye on him until he rounded a corner, though. Not surprising. While his appearance had been effective camouflage in the Undercity, it was a very different situation on the surface. But while surveilling the safehouse, he hadn’t been entirely idle, so he was already prepared.

He quickly found his way into the terminal’s attached bathroom, then slipped into one of the stalls, where he enacted a quick change into something more appropriate for the setting. He exchanged the coveralls for a crisp, white shirt and a pair of slacks. Loafers, a gold necklace, and an expensive-looking watch were next. A pair of aviator-style sunglasses completed the disguise.

Of course, he also washed the dirt from his face and removed the wig, which made all the difference in the world. So, when he exited the bathroom, he looked very different from the Underdweller he’d appeared to be upon his entrance.

This time, when he passed the guards, he didn’t even garner a glance.

Now that he was topside and looked the part of a well-off surface-dweller, the hard part was down. The boring part was still to come. So, he wasted no time in striding onto the sidewalk like he owned the place. He only had to travel a couple of blocks before he reached his destination – a quaint but expensive café on the corner of a busy intersection.

Gunnar settled in, ordered a cup of coffee and a croissant, then settled in to watch. Because across the street was a large, blocky building that was the base of operations for his first real target – Jean-Luc Lefevre.