Sven and Kai didn't waste time once they left Lenny's flat. They got what they needed, clothes, a little cash, and a moment to breathe, then they hit the ground running.

The day only got more chaotic from there.

If there was one thing Kai learned quickly, it was that Sven knew everybody.

And not just your average street thugs or info peddlers - no, Sven's network was a sprawling, tangled mess of favours, old debts, blackmail material, and street cred stitched together across every corner of the city. Maybe even across the damn world.

One name led to another. One connection opened the door to three more.

An informant in a bar led them to a twitchy drug dealer holed up in an abandoned cinema. The dealer tipped them off about a mercenary running private security gigs out of a strip club in Southside. The mercenary, after a tense backroom conversation and a small bribe, pointed them towards a mutant bouncer working at an underground cage fight in the docks.

Kai was convinced at least three of those people were high out of their minds, and one of them, an actual stripper, gave them valuable intel while sliding down a pole in glowing heels.

"Are you seriously getting intel during a lap dance?" Kai muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Sven, arms crossed and watching with an amused glint in his eye, just grinned. "Hey, you work with what you've got. She's legit. Used to work with Dominique."

Mutants, non-mutants, lunatics, criminals, and a guy who claimed to be a reformed assassin turned dog groomer - Sven's web connected them all.

They bounced from borough to borough, riding the city like ghosts in borrowed skins. Stolen scooters, a hijacked taxi, even a mail truck at one point - whatever got them from point A to B without drawing too much heat.

To Kai, it felt like they were in an open-world game, unlocking missions, chasing objectives, skipping sleep, and dodging cops and hostiles alike.

But this wasn't a game.

And the deeper they went, the more Kai realised Sven wasn't just throwing them into chaos for fun.

He was hunting. Systematically, ruthlessly, following a trail.

Information. Leads. Names. Sven was digging into the city's underworld like a man on a mission. And he was - the Messiah's cult, their distribution lines, the current state of Dominique's criminal empire - all of it was unravelling.

Dominique's fall had left a gaping hole, and Kai could feel the tension in the streets. That kind of power vacuum doesn't last long.

Everyone wanted a piece of it.

Dominique had ruled the mutant criminal underground with an iron fist and a venomous tongue. She wasn't just a crime boss, she was the middle-woman. The artery. The beating heart of the Messiah's supply line in the city. With her gone, the cult's drug pipeline was broken.

They couldn't allow that to remain the case for their goals and for their own sakes, since their supplier wasn't the most forgiving.

Someone was going to have to fix it.

Or replace it.

The One-Eyed Serpent held her grip over the city for months, and for the past couple of weeks had joined hands with the cult. But without Dominique, their influence was vulnerable. They needed a new distributor, someone with reach, muscle, and connections to keep the flow of their so-called "divine elixirs" running.

The Messiah wouldn't just let the chaos fester; he would simply adapt, which was within expectations.

And eventually, Sven found someone who cracked.

A sweaty little man in a neon-lit laundrette, eyes darting around as if the walls themselves were listening. He didn't want to talk and kept claiming he didn't know anything, that he wasn't involved.

But Sven didn't press with fists or threats. He offered something far more terrifying: understanding. A whispered truth. A reminder of old favours unpaid.

And that worked.

"Alright, alright!" the man had hissed, wiping sweat from his brow. "There's a meet happening tonight. Real hush-hush and only a few people in the know. Messiah's meeting the new guy... the one trying to take Dominique's place."

Kai's eyes narrowed. "Who's the new guy?"

The man swallowed hard. "Name's Krane. People call him 'The Scalpel.'"

Kai exchanged a glance with Sven, who nodded and seemed to have heard of the man.

Krane was a ghost from the darker parts of the mutant underworld. Not just a brute, not just a dealer. He was methodical. Clean. Calculated violence dressed in a suit and gloves. Rumour had it he could kill a man in a hundred ways using just his bare hands.

He was a skilled mutant, or so the rumours said, since few had witnessed his abilities and lived to tell the tale. And now, the most realistic contender to take Dominique's seat at the table.

Kai exhaled slowly, a familiar itch crawling up his spine.

'So the Messiah's meeting with a man like that… to talk business.'

The night was going to be dangerous.

Blood would definitely flow.

And if they played it right… maybe they'd finally get close enough to deal with them all at once and complete their mission in one fell swoop.

-

Moments later...

"Where were you guys all day?" Nadya's voice cut through the motel room like a blade as soon as Sven and Kai walked in.

The tension that had coiled in the room after someone knocked on the door and didn't seem to lessen after Nadya looked through the peephole.

She was standing near the door with one hand still raised, a pulsing sphere of crackling orange energy hovering above her palm. Her hair was slightly messy, like she'd been pacing for hours, and her expression was somewhere between relief and irritation.

Isaac was already halfway into a phase-out with his hand on Amina's shoulder, both of them frozen like statues ready to vanish at the first sign of trouble. They relaxed a split second later.

The moment she saw Sven's smug, self-satisfied Nadya's scowl deepened.

But upon hearing what they had got up to and where they were about to head to together, an ominous smile crept on her face. Like that of an excited, mischievous child...

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