Adon waved his phone in Artemis Diamond’s face, holding it steady until the head of the Quartet’s second family registered the photo of Lu. Adon gave him a moment to recognize it, then leaned over the oak desk between them with strained politeness, “don’t fucking touch him, understand?”

Arty raised a brow. 

Adon rolled his eyes and plopped into a chair across from the desk, folding his arms in a pout, refusing to explain. He tossed his phone onto the desk between them. 

Arty looked closer at the photo, nodding slowly, “fine. No one here wants you as an enemy. You’re a freak Adonis,” he waved at Adon’s chest, “there’s something broke in you and no one wants to find out what, but you gotta give me some explanation. We already put out a bounty….”

Adon nodded, pursing his lips. Arty hated looking like the negotiating type, reluctant to be seen as any sort of  intelligent, refusing to be a potential competitor for the Conductor’s seat. Adon’s smile sharpened with a wink. He held out a hand, “I’ll let you bribe me.”

Arty rolled his eyes, flicking the phone back and grudgingly slapping Adon’s hand away. He grumbled to himself about the order of things while pumping sanitizer onto his hands and rubbing them with a menacing frown. 

Adon scoffed at the gesture then nodded at the phone, weighing his options. “How about this: he’s Gideon’s son….” Adon strategized his pieces a final time while the news sank in, then spit out the rest, “the Conductor thinks of him like Gideon’s pet, everything X never was.” He waited for Arty to put it together.

Arty’s mouth fell open in sudden understanding that Gideon had two sons, ruminating all the ways he’d clashed with the Conductor over the Flock, all the insecurities and frustrations he’d never noticed on the old man’s face, all over a son gone soft or straight or wildly off track, or whatever Xeres did in that night club of his. The Quartet had stopped caring ages ago, but the Conductor was hung up on some Upper idea of inheritance or eugenics or sins-of-the-father being the burdens-of-the-son nonsense and no one cared enough yet to put the old man out of his misery because whoever did it would follow close behind.

Adon’s smile curled into a warning sneer, “the Conductor is wrong.” He didn’t like the sparkle of ideas flashing in Arty’s eyes, so he jumped forward and made himself clearer with a knife at his throat. “Ah-ah,” Adon smacked Arty’s hand from his holster, “didn’t anyone warn you not to bring a gun to a knife fight?” Adon sank casually into his shoulder, “projectiles are range weapons and unfortunately, the distance has already closed,” he smacked the flat of the knife blade against Arty’s scarred cheek.

Artemis Diamond rolled his eyes, slouching deep into his chair, unthreatened. 

“He’s mine,” Adon added, following Arty’s retreat, then reiterated in a way people who orchestrated wars for fun might better understand, “so don’t fucking touch him.” He smiled tightly and left the rest of his threat unspoken. The number of rumors that circulated about Adon’s creativity in disposing of a body clung to him, and no one was sure of the truth anymore. Most Grounders were too confused between the Finder and Y—who actually composed their stunts, and who performed them. It didn’t matter what people believed, Adon had left any pride in his plans buried in the Pits with Igor the ear and his pinky. Besides, on the Ground, reputations preceded people, and Y had built them quite a reputation on her own. (If she stole his coat one more time, they were going to have to break that truce.) The most convincing aspect of Adon’s threat was that no one knew exactly how it was a threat. They didn’t have evidence or examples of Adon going rogue on a handsy sec-off like they did of Y, or the web of secrets and blackmail Gideon wielded with the help of his socialite wife, or the trail of bodies X piled beneath his club. Adon’s victims only had the sinking feeling that he was crazy enough to slide the knife over their throats just to see if their blood was still there, and the truth of it was that Adonis Caldera was equally curious to see what he would do. 

Adon generally relied on his victims being smart enough to imagine the full threat while he waited with a knife, but he’d been running into miscreant leftovers of Gideon’s Flock and other half-assed dog-houses that called themselves Quartet competitors, though they were all too eager to lick the Conductor’s ass, and he’d lost some of his confidence in that psycho reputation. But even if some of his reputation was borrowed from Y, Artemis Diamond understood that the Finder was dangerous to his particular interests in Quartet business dealings because he manipulated the truth and got the right people to tell the story he wanted. 

Artemis was no conductor’s pet, unfortunately. He was smart enough to figure out there was a card yet to be played if Doni was tossing threats in the air, and he turned each potential move over in his mind.

Adon sighed impatiently, wondering if Artemis Diamond did actually have blood left beneath his cryogenically plastic skin, or if he’d only find some multichromatic oily heart that should have given out years ago, pressing his knife.

Artemis eyed Adon until the knife pressed with a sting, Adon’s head lolling impatiently. Arty swallowed thickly, pursing his lips. He considered each piece Adon had offered, considering all the Finder might have kept to himself, and ran through scenarios like he was a VR Lar$ony grandmaster, ignoring influencer interviews before an AIE finals match.

“Fine.” Adon rolled his eyes, flipping his knife away. Arty wanted the moveable pieces, so be it, “this is Lu.” Adon tapped his phone screen revealing the recent photo of Lu leading his workshop, Phaios hovering in the background. “Lu-Bird, you’ve met him at a few events, I’m sure. You probably were even introduced to him as Gideon’s son but you don’t remember. No one remembers, he’s particularly unmemorable. Was,” Adon corrected, not pausing long enough to consider how young Lu had never offered to show Adon his house, how he’d so easily followed Adon home to a moldy-carpeted unit that might collapse any second and helped him make dinner like it was the most normal thing in the world. He continued with a huff, “at first it was on purpose, now… it’s how he gets on Gideon’s nerves.” Adon tapped the phone, lighting up the photo once more, sitting back in his seat, “Gideon used him to illustrate the Conductor’s fantasy about a perfect son. Still dangles it like a dog treat. But it’s not true. Lu-Lu left ages ago, so….” Adon kicked his feet up with a hypothetical shrug, “you could kill Lu. Then I will kill you. X will help—”

“Why in Wells would X help you—”

“Because Y will help me.” He smiled, sneering at Arty’s delayed fear. People were always more scared of Y, but that was because she was rabid and feral, while he staked out his battlefields and planted the explosives. Her enemies lived just long enough to run at the sound of her laugh, his just… died, usually. He should play with his food more. 

Adon shifted in his slippery dress shirt, tired of the cold silk. He snapped his fingers loudly in Arty’s face, returning his attention to their current predicament, snatching the buzzing phone from the desk. “Or you can let Gideon’s boys play out their little inheritance game until Gideon loses everything, revealing his true colors. Then you can swoop in just in time to say I told you so to the Conductor before you decide what to do with him.” Adon eased out of his chair and walked toward the door, waving without turning, “patience isn’t a virtue, Arty, it’s a necessity. Let me know what you decide, I’ll be sharpening knives—”

Arty jumped up, slamming his palms excitedly on the desk, “you can guarantee Gideon’s fall?”

Adon paused, considering. 

“This year. Or I go after the kid.”

Adon blinked a daring smile at Arty negotiating Lu’s life, still facing the exit, “are you giving me orders, Mr. Diamond?”

Arty sighed at the ceiling, straightening into the leader of the first family, “no, Adonis, I’m making a deal.”

Adon spun to face him, hands deep in his pockets, “I don’t make deals. I find things.”

“Find me Gideon’s end then, I’ll bring the brick box.”

Adon frowned, cocking his head, “why do you hate him so much?”

Arty sucked his teeth at the obvious, “because, much like you, he’s an annoying, unpredictable variable, but unlike you, he has ambitions.” He sat heavily, “the Conductor may be persuadable, but he’s not stupid. He calculates each step to keep the Wells as is, and Gideon wants his flock to join the Quartet so he can take over.” Arty licked his teeth as if the word flock had been distasteful. He sighed, “I don’t care about recruitment, I don’t care about ARC programs. If my people want out, they’re free to go. I don’t collect discarded dogs—” Realizing who he was talking to, he winced, “sorry. You know what I mean.”

Adon was not a discarded dog, despite the Wellian rumors, so he did not react, crossing his arms and shifting his impatient balance. He was very used to ignoring things that hurt, but his left side had been irritated all week. A pulled muscle, a stress fracture, whatever it was, he wasn’t going to undermine his threat by limping away. He’d crawled over bodies after melee rounds in the Pits, now he preferred to stride out of a room whenever possible.

“I don’t need Gideon’s tainted cult running around down here, okay?” Artemis scowled, “I like clean cuts, clean business, clean conscience when possible.”

Adon knew this, which was why he’d taken jobs from Arty but none of the others.

“Gideon… Gideon likes mess, not chaos, just… mess.” Artemis rocked back in his chair, happily venting, “he’s like Creon, he was just an annoying pest before, but now he’s like those bugs or mice that carry deadly diseases, his infection is spreading. So if I can make a cat out of you, then so be it. Because the Conductor has become blind in his comforts. And if he continues with his attitude and can’t get his own goons, Gideon will start providing the labor. His flock is brutish and they don’t follow rules, but the Conductor will use them anyway and four families will be loyal to the Quartet and yell about rules and traditions, the Conductor’s own likely kicking up the most dirt, but the new one will be loyal to the Conductor himself. With Gideon’s Flock, the Conductor’s people, the political alliances they built in the Pits, and Chroma’s position with their balls in a Vice grip, there’s an even-matched war that will destroy the Wells. Throw in X’s escapades, D’Arjon’s bullshit, Vice’s smuggler crackdown, and Chroma’s upcoming Mids governor election, and all of Caldera might just well crumble on top of it. My family lives here, Adon. I don’t need things to stay as they are, but I do need them to change slowly, not topple over until our corpses are the only thing holding up the city. I don’t give a broken Med-Pod about Gideon’s kid if he’s all that stands between that nightmare or safety, understood?”

“Well I do, understood?” Adon mocked, feeling like an overwhelmed child. Artemis Diamond wasn’t even that much older than him. 

Arty quirked a smile, waving Adon dismissively, giving in, “I won’t send anyone for now. Get rid of Gideon for good. One year. Starting from two weeks ago when I sent you the bounty.”

Adon shrugged, “I’ll think about it.” 

He shuffled out, chuckling at Arty’s annoyed sigh, and realized that it wasn’t that Gideon wouldn’t kill Lu himself, just that he still had a use for him, and Lu knew it. He recalled again how Lu had talked of escaping Gideon like a caged zoo animal escaping one pen and landing in another. He wondered how trapped Lu still was.