The door creaked open into the hidden chamber beneath the old train hub, and Kieran paused to just long enough for the shift to happen.
His posture straightened. The tension in his shoulders settled. The refined calm of Mr. Everlay faded, and Quentin stepped into the flickering half-light with a cigar between his teeth and the weight of command behind his gaze.
He took the seat at the head of the long, scarred table. The air was thick with smoke and damp stone. Around him sat the leaders—Naima, Marcy, Dre, Terrell, and half a dozen lieutenants who'd carved out slices of territory beneath Gotham's feet.
Quentin lit the cigar with a steady hand, took a slow drag, and exhaled.
"Let's talk Janus," he said, voice gravel-thick. "Updates."
Naima tapped a folder and slid it across the table. Inside were grainy photos printed from old scanners—angled shots of the boutique storefront, side alleys, service entries, the back lot. In one image, a white van was caught in mid-unload. Another showed a man in a sharp suit handing off a briefcase to a woman in a lab coat just after sunset.
"That van's shown up four times this week," Dre said. "Always around the same time—just before close. License plate's real, but fake reg. We think it's running cash or unmarked chems out the back."
Marcy pointed to another shot. "Two guards rotate every night—one inside, one by the side alley. Light patrol. Building's armored below the second floor. And there's this."
She produced a rough, hand-drawn schematic of the lower floors—scrawled in pencil, patchy and incomplete, but enough to give shape to what they were heading into.
"Access tunnel's still intact," Naima added. "Our guy was right. Gets within ten feet of the foundation. We'll need to breach carefully, but once we're through, it's two flights down to the vault."
"Internal cams?" Quentin asked.
"Private network. Not hooked to GCPD. If we hit the comms node on the south end first, we can black it out before they even know we're there."
Quentin nodded slowly. The cigar glowed at the end of his breath.
"Three crews," he said. "Breach team through the tunnel hits the vault. Suppression team at street level shuts down the storefront, neutralizes outside response. Third crew watches the perimeter and blocks off escape routes. No alarms. No noise we don't want."
"Fast and surgical," Terrell said, eyes lit with that dangerous gleam.
"We move in two nights," Quentin said, standing. "You've all got your roles. If this goes clean, we don't just take his money. We take his heart. His records. His contacts. Everything."
Naima looked up from the map. "And if it goes loud?"
Quentin smiled grimly around the cigar. "Then we burn the damn place down and still walk out with what we came for."
He let that hang in the silence for a moment.
"Get your people ready. Last night of prep starts now. I want comms tested, gear staged, masks fitted. If anyone's name shows up on those manifests, we take care of them before Black Mask can."
He crushed the cigar out in an old tin plate and turned to go.
"Two nights," he repeated before blowing a puff of smoke from his lips
"That hotel, its opening soon huh?" Terrel asked
Quentin nodded, "Staff training is going to finish soon and construction is finalizing as we speak."
'We don't have much time here.' Vey noted
"Yeah yeah I know we are on a time crunch." He waved him off before stopping and staring at the room
'You said that out loud dumb ass Jesus Christ!'
'Shut up Kieran!'
Yeah there was those stares again, "Anyway two nights."
***
The conference room at Janus Cosmetics' corporate tower wasn't the kind meant for war councils.
But that's what it had become.
The lights were low, curtains drawn. The long, polished table was littered with city maps, photos, and pinned red strings. Surveillance shots. Candid captures of men and women huddled around burn barrels. Some were armed. Some wore makeshift armor. All of them problems.
Black Mask stood at the head of the room, hands braced against the table. His mask glinted under the light obsidian and grinning, utterly still as he studied the chaos he intended to crush.
"They're organized," he said, voice cold and mechanical. "Armed. Smart. They've got a leader—or leaders. And they've hit us twice."
He tapped a photo of the aftermath from the warehouse raid. Shell casings. Blood on concrete. Empty crates.
"That is two times too many."
Around the table, his lieutenants nodded. These weren't street thugs. These were his core. Red Mahaffey his underboss, Giovani Luchese, along with others who'd risen high in the criminal food chain.
"They're moving like a guerrilla unit," Giovani said. "Hitting fast, retreating. No pattern we can trace yet."
"We don't need a pattern," Black Mask said. "We need to remind them what it means to crawl."
He turned slowly to the room.
"We're going to sweep the tunnels. Every bridge, every sewer grate, every underpass from Midtown to the Tricorner. I want our people walking through the dark with flamethrowers and floodlights. Smoke them out. Box them in. Kill or capture. No one walks away."
There was a grim silence.
Then Red spoke up, leaning back in his chair, thumbing through a stack of grainy surveillance photos. "Word on the street is people are starting to call them something. A name."
Black Mask's head tilted slightly. "What name?"
"Underpass Society," Red said, almost like a joke. "Sounds like a bad punk band."
Giovani snorted. "Nah, I heard it was 'Underpass Cabal.' Real cloak-and-dagger shit. Like they're some secret order or whatever."
"Whatever they want to call themselves," Tobias muttered, "they're making us look weak."
Black Mask didn't laugh. Didn't speak. He slowly reached forward and picked up one of the photos Quentin, barely visible in the background, face obscured by firelight and shadow. Just a silhouette with a lit cigar, but distinct. Intentional. Leading.
"I don't care if they call themselves the Gutter Kings," Black Mask said, voice low. "I want them eradicated. I want this 'society' or 'cabal' or whatever-the-fuck they are turned into bloodstains under train tracks."
He tossed the photo back down. The clack echoed across the room.
"We'll flood the tunnels. Poison their water. Rig their corridors with mines. I want to choke them out of this city until even the rats won't remember they were here."
A few men exchanged glances. No one questioned the brutality. They knew better.
Black Mask's voice sharpened. "And while we're gutting the sewers, I want eyes on that hotel. The Arden. Something about it stinks."
Red nodded slowly. "That's the fancy one, right? Rumor is some clean-cut charity case took it over."
"Find out who he is," Black Mask said