Chương 35: Move On

Cecilia slept when she needed to, which was rarely. But that night she stretched out in the bed in her room in the Palazzo Valperga and let her mind work quietly, shifting through the faces of people she'd met, deals she'd made, plans that needed fine-tuning. Sometime after three a. m.

, she fell asleep with the feeling of the street under her boots, of the gun kicking, of the bodies cooling in the alley, and she dreamed about it all resolving like a number that added up to zero, like everything dangerous settling into a calculation she could solve when she woke. At dawn, she was in the office, sipping coffee, reviewing the overnight notes Bianca had left for her. No new movements. No more attacks. Patrols stable. Ruggiero checking the armory personally before full light.

The three corpses had been cleared without incident. The cleaners were running DNA screens through the city's limited remaining police network to see if the IDs pulled up anything useful. It was a long shot, but it cost nothing to try. Cecilia wrote her initials at the bottom of the report and called Dario on his phone. He answered on the first ring, as he did in the middle of anything.

"I'm at the market," he said.

"Getting the last of the deals done before the storm."

"Anything exciting?"

"A guy tried to sell me a magic amulet." She raised an eyebrow.

"How much?"

"Two hundred euros. It was a fucking coat button."

"Did you buy it?"

"I made him cry a little, then bought it for thirty."

"Good negotiation." Dario laughed and moved away from something noisy and sharp, metal against metal.

"It's not that different from before. Just the fakes come with glowing parts now. You called for something else?" She could tell him over the phone, but it felt better in person, so she said, "Come find me when you're done." She hung up and looked back at her own notes, the plan she'd laid out for the next forty hours, then the one she'd begun drafting for what followed.

She held a meeting in the Palazzo's grand dining room, the space she used when she wanted the people gathered to know she was treating them as if she were still running a formal organization instead of a bunker. She preferred the familiarity, but there was an advantage to projecting the illusion that nothing had changed, even when everything had. Matteo was already at the head of the table on her right, Bianca on her left.

Dario came in a few minutes later, sitting down with a casualness that made her want to slap it out of him just to watch him take a moment to get it back. The rest of the key captains and runners came in after, some looking nervous, some trying not to look nervous. Cecilia waited until they were all seated, until the room was quiet enough that when she lifted her coffee cup, the scrape of porcelain on marble was the loudest sound.

"We are thirty hours from the next scenario," she said.

"We've prepared as well as anyone in the city. What I need now is to make sure we come out of this with more than we start with." She looked each person in the eye for a second before moving to the next.

"That means we have two operations to conduct during the scenario event. The first is territory control. We will secure the Quadrilatero, Centro Storico, and the rail junctions at Porta Nuova. Ruggiero will have direct command of that. You will report to him if you're on shift in those zones." Ruggiero, standing by the wall, didn't react, but a few of the captains exchanged glances, recognizing what this meant.

"The second operation is more delicate. During the scenario, our Analysis Division will be working to determine the new resource flows. A couple of ways for those of us who are Players to grow stronger right now are by taking objectives that the System rewards and eliminating as many of the monsters that emerge from the event as possible. Every death that can be attributed to us is power." She gestured to Dario.

"He'll be running the extermination detail. Bianca, Matteo, you'll help coordinate." She let the statement sit. The faces across from her, except for Dario, weren't gamers. They were the Family's operational muscle, the ones who controlled corners and couriers, protection and enforcement. They didn't think in terms of experience points, but they understood pressure, and she wanted them to feel the pressure before she gave them the direction.

"Our teams will go into the fight in groups, two teams of four." She picked a few names to represent that, then looked at Ruggiero.

"You'll divide the remaining people as you see fit. Dario, you take anyone who can hit a target with a rifle from a moving position. I want a high kill-count when we come out the other side. I don't want you to be reckless. We're not chasing monsters across the city. We're waiting for them to hit where they always do, and then we're ambushing them." There were no objections.

She could see some of them beginning to see the shape of what she was doing, the way the map would look different if they played the scenarios to win strength.

"While you're at it, use whatever powers or abilities your class has given you." Cecilia leaned back, letting a small, cold smile touch her mouth.

"Think of it as your first combat training since the change. When you come back, we'll have a better idea of who does what well, and who needs to shift to a job where they're more effective."

"You think the police or military will mind?" one of the runners asked, a man who'd been with them two years, who still sometimes had trouble looking at her directly when the topics were heavy. It was a fair question, but she'd answer it once and then shut it down if it came back. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"No. The police are barely managing the daylight. The military will be dealing with the city-wide assault. We're not announcing we're hunting for power, and we won't be broadcasting. But it doesn't matter if they notice, because after tonight, our edge is going to be greater than theirs, and they won't have any practical leverage to use against us." Silence. Nods. Some of them were enjoying the idea, the same way they liked cracking a hard target's door open and taking the cash box.

Some of them didn't care, they were here because they trusted the Family. A couple were nervous, but it was fear of change, not the work.

"Matteo, your contracts are set?" He adjusted his glasses.

"All the new agreements have the scenario clause written in. Every business under our protection has an evacuation guarantee and a clear protocol. They'll stay put while we control the field."

"Good. Dario?"

"Supply routes are triple-checked, the market has two extra watchers to keep people from panic buying or trying to buy into the mobs, and the new recruits are stashed near the back rooms of our properties." Cecilia picked up her phone, sent a quick text, then looked at everyone again.

"What's the market for firearms looking like? Who's buying?" It was an open question, checking in on what Dario already knew. He grinned.

"There are only fourteen registered gun stores in the greater metropolitan area. Six of those are under our influence or are directly run by us. The other eight are dealing in some hot goods and have some inventory left, but it's hard to say how much they'll actually sell, and they might hold back once the bullets start flying in the open. Ammo's getting scarcer."

"We've got the underground traders, though," Ruggiero said.

"Lots of gear moving off-the-books already. Mostly sidearms, some bigger pieces, and ammo is the hottest ticket. Some security shops that are thinking about hiring their own mercs after tonight."

"What about military or police stocks?" she asked. Matteo answered before Ruggiero could.

"Both the police and army are under direct orders to stop private purchases. We've had inquiries into at least three stockpiles the cops missed." He paused.

"We're seeing a trend on the street. Anyone not willing to trust the police anymore wants firepower more than food. There's a fear economy building that's bypassing normal black market caution." Cecilia liked that answer, and she wrote that last line down verbatim to think about later.

"If you haven't already, tell the six we own to close shop and distribute what they have left among our own before noon. Quietly. Compensate the shopkeepers. Then pull back our traders, no sales tonight, and tell the market watchers to note everyone who comes by asking for heavy weapons. We'll figure out who those people belong to after the scenario. If we know the ones trying to arm up ahead of time, it'll be easier to control them afterward."

Dario had already taken his phone out to send the orders, Bianca was listening to someone through her earbud, Ruggiero was nodding like this made sense to him. Good enough for now.

"Right." She stood, pushing her chair back, and they all shifted with her, an old habit that was both familiar and reassuring.

"Last order of business. During and after the scenario, everyone keeps their eyes open for Player groups who might try to step up while the military's busy. We don't need every jackass who's picked up a System ability thinking they can build a militia or run their own protection rackets. If anyone starts making that kind of noise, it comes to me first, not to your guys. We shut them down fast and clean." Another round of agreement.

The one runner who always needed explicit instructions had a question on the tip of his tongue, then swallowed it.

"The Family's first," Cecilia finished.

"Make sure everyone we're responsible for knows it. Go brief your crews. We don't do this twice." They began to move. Chairs scraped, voices rose as people went out the door, making calls. She waited a beat, letting the room clear until only Bianca remained, still silent and still watching.

"You think we'll get some pushback tomorrow night?" Cecilia asked, picking her coffee back up and walking over to stand next to the tall window that looked onto the garden courtyard, which was overgrown and needed weeding.

"We're always getting pushback," Bianca said.

"But you're counting on it."

"I am."

"The question is how much and who from."

"Yes." Bianca stayed by the table, not moving closer, not trying to occupy the space when it wasn't wanted, but staying present like a bodyguard who never quit until the job ended.

"And the other question." Cecilia raised an eyebrow. Bianca almost never pushed past one layer of implication.

"What question is that?"

"The question of what you do if someone dies who you wanted to keep." Bianca's voice didn't change much, but Cecilia could tell how much she didn't want to say it aloud.

"If it's a civilian or a contract-holder, we take the cost out of someone's flesh."

"And if it's someone like us."

"If it's us—" Cecilia turned, looking at her with the coolness she let into her voice on purpose, to draw the line clearly "—then you take care of what caused it, and I decide if we move on." Bianca blinked once and nodded, taking the words with her, the way she always did. She and the other three were the only ones who understood without being told what Cecilia would be willing to do, what she'd already done, and why it wasn't a question she needed answering more than once. It wasn't that she didn't care.

It was that she cared so deeply about what came after, she couldn't let the costs of one life derail her. There would be enough dying as it was. It wouldn't change the plan, not anymore. It took the rest of the day to finish the preparations. Ruggiero ran them through drills in the yard at the back of the Palazzo, walking the squads through positions they'd take if the fighting reached certain buildings.

Matteo went over the protection protocols for the civilians under contract with them, which had gotten more detailed and less flexible in the last two days. They couldn't afford a breach right now. Dario took his hunters to scout the Porta Palazzo area and the railway access points, getting them comfortable with the idea of using their abilities in public and in coordinated patterns. They were nervous. Most of them were still figuring out what they could do.

The training would fix that, or make it obvious who couldn't adapt. Cecilia spent hours with Luca and the Analysis Division, walking them through the projections and asking hard questions, pushing them to refine their scenarios. They responded well to the pressure. They were learning to trust her agenda, or at least to trust that she knew the stakes. She hadn't forgotten Ivan Carceri's declaration that he could figure out the spawn points in advance.

She hadn't pursued it aggressively because she needed to see how much of a priority it was for them to develop predictive capabilities versus reactive advantages. By late afternoon, she knew the pieces were in place. It wasn't the first time she'd sent her people into danger, but it was the first time the danger wasn't human, the first time the threat wouldn't come with a recognizable face and clear motivations. In some ways, it made her job easier. There was no reason to negotiate with the creatures.

You killed them. It was a clean relationship. It also meant that, unlike with every human rival she'd faced, there wasn't any weakness in their pattern she could exploit until she saw them in action. It left her with only her preparations to trust, and it was the kind of test she would never be afraid of because preparation was always her strength. She sent the last order, took a final look at the map with all the Leonelli-controlled zones highlighted, and went upstairs to rest.