Dominic Alaric stood beneath the city's bones, where the old steel of Chicago's elevated railway crisscrossed the night sky above him. The distant rumble of a retrofitted L train echoed through the dripping concrete tunnels, a metallic heartbeat for a city that had forgotten how to sleep. Here in the Underloop, a clandestine subterranean warren running beneath downtown, the neon glow of the surface was filtered to a dull phosphorescence, seeping through storm grates into puddles of oily water.
Dominic's augments painted ghostly green waypoints across his vision, highlighting an approach vector through the gloom, but he blinked the overlay away. This was a realm better navigated by instinct and caution than by any corporate AR algorithm.
He tugged the collar of his coat up against the damp chill, feeling the soft hum of the encrypted comm in his left ear. Eva Montrose's voice had whispered over the line earlier, confirming that the meeting place was secure, but Dominic insisted on checking it himself. Trust, he knew, was a currency in short supply tonight.
Behind him, a rusted service door led back to the basement of a defunct parking garage where his armored sedan waited with Jasper Kwon at the wheel. Kwon was ex-special ops, now Helios Corp's loyal security contractor, a living shadow at Dominic's beck and call. For this rendezvous, however, Dominic had asked Jasper to hang back. The last thing he needed was spooking his guest with obvious muscle.
Dominic paced once, soles quiet against the cracked concrete. Rats scurried away from the cone of his cigarette's ember. The smoke curled upward in languid ribbons, snatched occasionally by the draft of a ventilation fan deeper in the tunnel.
Above, through a grid of ironwork high overhead, he glimpsed the faint glow of the city proper, enough light to remind him that Chicago still thrummed with life up there: neon billboards, AR propaganda flickering across high-rises, endless streams of traffic lights blinking like artificial stars along Michigan Avenue. Down here was another world entirely, a liminal space of mildew and shadow where deals could be made in whispers. A perfect haunt for ghosts and kingpins alike.
He did not keep waiting long. A crunch of glass underfoot echoed from the darkness ahead, and Dominic's HUD instinctively tried to trace the movement. The outline of a tall figure is resolved in low-light enhancement mode, followed by two more flanking shapes. He recognized the confident swagger before the man fully stepped into the pale wash of a single flickering tube light. Ilya Novak, broad-shouldered under a threadbare trench coat, a subdermal tattoo glowing faintly across his neck. The two brutes behind Ilya fanned out, one of them sporting chromed cyberarms that reflected the sickly light.
"Mr. Novak," Dominic greeted, voice calm and low as he stubbed out his cigarette on the wall. "Punctual as ever."
Ilya's mouth curled into a smirk beneath a scar that bisected his upper lip. "Had to make sure I wasn't walking into an ambush. You understand." His accent gave his words a hard edge, Eastern Slavic undercurrents mixing with rough Chicago street slang. Ilya swept his gaze around the tunnel, his own augment lenses glinting red for an instant as they adjusted. Satisfied there were no hidden gunmen, he nodded for his men to hold position a few meters back.
Dominic opened his palms in a conciliatory gesture. Beneath the surface, his heart thumped a measured tempo excitement tempered by control. "Ambush? If I wanted you dead, Novak, we wouldn't be having a conversation at all. I'm here because Helios Corp values our... special relationship."
Ilya barked a short laugh. "Relationship? What do suits call it now?" He took a step closer, the odor of cheap cologne and street dust wafting off him. "Last I checked, Helios treats those who do its dirty work as disposable. Why should tonight be any different?"
Dominic allowed a thin smile. "Perhaps because tonight I came with an offer that benefits us both. A way out of a mutual problem."
Ilya folded his tattooed arms across his chest. The neon-blue snake inked along his forearm flexed with the motion a gang insignia, Dominic recalled, of the Azure Vipers, which Novak led. One of the mid-tier outfits ruling Chicago's west side neon slums. Not the biggest gang in town, but cunning enough to hold their territory.
Ilya narrowed his eyes. "I'm listening."