CHAPTER 57: THE SCRAPPER AND THE ANARCHIST

The Undercroft smelled like home.

At least, it did to Jinx.

It was a familiar, comforting blend of damp concrete, ozone, and the faint, greasy aroma of noodles being fried in synth-oil.

She moved through the neon-lit gloom with a practiced, easy grace, her boots making soft sounds on the grimy floor.

Beside her, Jax was practically vibrating with a cheerful, chaotic energy.

"I’m telling you, Jinxie, a moat," he said, his voice echoing slightly in the wide, crowded tunnel.

"A big one."

"And we fill it with those electric eels from that Gate in the Gowanus Canal."

"We’ll call it our ’Shocking Welcome Mat’."

Jinx just grunted, her eyes scanning the crowd, cataloging threats, exits, and opportunities with a survivor’s instinct.

"We’re not getting a moat, Jax."

"But think of the property value!" he insisted. "And the sheer entertainment factor!"

"We’re on a supply run, not a brainstorming session for your next terrible idea," she said, her voice a low, cynical growl.

"Fine, fine, no moat," Jax pouted, but his good mood was impossible to suppress.

He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that was still loud enough for half the Undercroft to hear.

"So."

"What’s the deal with Captain ’No-Fun’ and our boy, Spooky?"

Jinx didn’t break her stride.

"Don’t know, don’t care."

"Oh, come on!" Jax protested. "You can’t tell me you haven’t seen it! The tension was so thick this morning you could have used it for ballistic gelatin."

"It was adorable!"

Jinx finally glanced at him, a single, perfectly sculpted eyebrow raised in a look of profound disbelief.

"Adorable is not the word I would use to describe two emotionally constipated tactical geniuses having a silent, psychic staring contest over a mug of chamomile."

"Exactly!" Jax said, snapping his fingers. "It’s like watching two supercomputers try to flirt by sending each other aggressively encrypted spreadsheets!"

"I saw them," he continued, his voice full of a gossipy glee. "The morning after the big heist. They were both asleep in chairs, like they’d pulled an all-nighter trying to calculate the optimal trajectory for their feelings."

Jinx let out a short, humorless laugh.

"As long as she keeps planning the missions and he keeps eating the monsters, they can play whatever weird, repressed tactical romance game they want."

"Nah, it’s cute!" Jax insisted, his grin widening. "She looks at him like he’s a highly unstable explosive device that she simultaneously wants to disarm and also... you know... cuddle."

"It’s a tactical liability is what it is," Jinx muttered, though there was no real heat in her words.

Deep down, in a place she would never, ever admit to, she was glad the kid had someone looking out for him.

Even if that someone was a scary robot lady with the emotional range of a brick.

"Besides," Jax said, his tone turning a little more serious. "Spooky’s been... quiet. Even for him. The whole Soul-Eater thing at the ghoul nest freaked me out, Jinx. I mean, I owe him one, big time. But that power..."

He shuddered.

"It’s like he’s got a black hole in his pocket. It’s not natural."

Jinx’s face hardened.

"None of this is natural, Jax," she said, her voice a low, cold thing. "The Gates aren’t natural. The DGC isn’t natural. We just do what we have to do to survive."

She looked at him then, her electric-blue eyes burning with a fierce, protective loyalty that she would die before admitting she felt.

"He’s one of us now," she said simply. "He’s part of the crew."

Jax was silent for a moment, the weight of her words settling over him.

He gave a single, slow nod.

"Yeah," he said, his manic energy softening into something a little more solid. "Yeah, he is."

Their destination was a familiar, reinforced steel door at the end of a dark, dead-end tunnel, marked with a single, glowing blue rune.

The Alchemist’s shop.

Jinx knocked, a hard, impatient rhythm.

The familiar metal slot slid open, and the single, cybernetic red eye whirred as it focused on them.

"Ah," the Alchemist’s gravelly voice rasped. "The agent of chaos and his pink-haired chaperone. Come for more of my beautiful, agonizing poison, I assume?"

The door hissed open.

The Alchemist stood behind his cluttered counter, polishing a strange, glowing crystal with a greasy rag.

"Not this time, you old cyborg," Jinx said, tossing a heavy credit chip onto the counter. "We’re here for supplies. The real kind."

She slid a list across to him.

"And we need it fast."

The Alchemist picked up the list, his red eye scanning it with a bored, transactional air.

High-grade energy cells.

Military-spec plating.

A metric ton of ball bearings.

"Building something fun?" he asked, a flicker of professional interest in his voice.

"Something loud," Jax confirmed with a grin.

The Alchemist grunted, scooping the supplies into a series of reinforced crates.

He stopped, his cybernetic eye focusing on Jax.

"Your friend," he said, his voice dropping. "The Arcana boy. The one with the appetite."

"How is his... condition?"

Jinx tensed. "He’s fine."

"Is he?" the Alchemist asked, a cruel, curious smile touching his lips. "Because the whispers on the wind say that Project Chimera isn’t as dead as the news would have you believe."

"Gideon was a manager," he said, his voice a low, chilling rasp. "A bureaucrat. A man who followed the recipe."

"But the real artists... the ones who wrote the cookbook... they’re still out there."

He leaned forward, his red eye whirring softly.

"They say there’s a new variable in the equation. A new ghost in the machine."

He tapped a key on his console, and a grainy, flickering image appeared on a monitor behind him.

It was a security feed from a back alley somewhere deep in the city.

It showed a DGC patrol, torn to shreds.

Their armor was ripped open, not by claws, but with a terrifying, surgical precision.

In the center of the carnage, a figure stood over the last, dying agent.

It was humanoid, but its form was unstable, glitching, its limbs unnaturally long and thin.

Its face was a smooth, featureless plate of chrome.

"They say he’s Kael’s new pet project," the Alchemist whispered, a note of genuine, scientific fascination in his voice. "A Chimera built not for brute force, but for silent, perfect assassination."

"They say it can walk through walls and steal a man’s thoughts before it steals his life."

He looked at them, his grin turning into a thing of steel and bone.

"Tell your friend," he said, his voice a grim, final warning.

"That the ghosts he’s been hunting are nothing compared to the ones that are about to start hunting him."

He pushed the last crate of supplies across the counter.

"Now get out. You’re bad for business."

Jinx and Jax walked out of the shop, the weight of the Alchemist’s warning a cold, heavy presence between them.

The familiar, comforting smells of the Undercroft suddenly felt a little less like home.

And a little more like a hunting ground.