Jack limped back onto Hatchet Street with his shotgun braced under his arm. He hadn't planned to return. But the gaps in his memory itched worse than the bad leg, and somewhere in this dust was proof of what Blackjack had done while he was gone. If he ever wanted to call that thing out on his own terms, he had to know what it did off them. He found the first sign near the noticeboard in the square. A rough poster flapped against the wood, a crude horned skull inked above the words CARD DEMON. Someone had been collecting accounts. Names. Times. Jack pulled the paper down and folded it into his coat. A few steps on, he saw the cards. Two of them, lying face up in the dirt like they'd been set there on purpose. An ace of spades. A jack of hearts. No wind had moved them. He stared a long moment, then nudged them apart with his boot. Underneath, the dust was dark. Dried. He didn't remember bleeding here. He didn't remember anyone bleeding here. He lifted his eyes to the end of the street. The old clock tower stood watch over everything, its shutters cracked just enough for a man to see out without being seen. A shape shifted behind the slats and went still. Jack felt the weight of being watched settle on his shoulders. He started toward the tower, dragging his bad leg, shotgun thumping the dirt. Whoever was up there knew what Blackjack had done. By the time Jack reached the door, the watcher was already coming down the stairs to meet him.

The tower door swung wide before Jack could knock. Three men filled the frame, hands already on their guns. Jack saw the setup for what it was. A trap, dressed up as an answer. He backed off the step, dragging his bad leg, and limped out into the open paved circle that fronted the tower. He planted his shotgun against the stones and tried to read their faces. None of them spoke. The middle one drew first. The shot cracked off the old walls and Jack moved on instinct, throwing his good hand up. His body came apart in a rush of paper and ink. A cloud of playing cards spun where he had stood, and the bullet sliced clean through nothing. When he pulled himself back together on the far side of the circle, something else came with him. Blackjack. Cold pressed up behind his eyes. His own heartbeat went quiet. His hand started to rise on its own, steady as a dead man's. Then he saw them. The tables under the umbrellas next door. Coffee cups frozen halfway to mouths. A dozen faces watching, kids among them. If he slipped here, this whole street would have a new poster by morning. Jack jammed his free hand into his coat pocket and closed his fingers around the dice. Black and red, smooth, warm from his body. A gift from someone who had believed he was worth giving things to. He squeezed until the corners bit his palm. The cold drew back. His heartbeat returned, loud and his own. Blackjack sank, grudging, beneath the surface. Jack let out a slow breath, lifted his shotgun off the stones, and turned to face the three men with the dice still tight in his fist.

The three men pushed Jack off the circle and herded him down a side alley to a loading dock behind the café. A half-closed metal gate boxed him in. Stacked pallets cut off the sides. Jack's bad leg was shaking against the shotgun. He counted three barrels and one of him. "Out-manned, out-gunned," Jack muttered. He let his grip loosen on the dice in his pocket. Just a crack. Just enough. The cold rushed back behind his eyes. A shadow slid across half his face like a mask drawn in ink. Jack flung his hands forward and his fingers came apart in a torrent of playing cards. The cards tore through the dock like a black wind. They sliced wrists, throats, and the soft spots under jaws. The three men dropped against the pallets before they could fire a second shot. Blackjack wanted the rest. Jack felt his other hand lifting toward the nearest body, fingers curling for something worse. He shoved his hand into his pocket and crushed the black and red dice against his palm. The warmth pushed the cold back down. His heartbeat returned. The shadow slid off his face like water. Jack limped between the bodies, breathing hard. On the middle man's coat he found a small lapel pin shaped like a red moon, polished and bright. He pried it loose and turned it in his fingers. Luna Eclipsed. So that was the name behind the trigger. Tucked under the man's jacket was a sealed folder, his own name written across the front in plain black ink. Jack opened it just far enough to see the warning stamped inside about what he might become. He closed it again, slid it under his arm, and started back down the alley before anyone came looking.

Jack ducked into a narrow passage between two close-set buildings. A single hanging lamp buzzed above him. He pressed his back to the cool stone and cracked the dossier open. His eyes ran down the page. Then down the next. His jaw tightened. Vague accounts. A bar fight he remembered. A street brawl he'd already bled for. Nothing he didn't carry himself. He shut the folder. "Useless," he muttered. A breeze pushed a scrap of paper past his boot. Jack lifted his eyes and saw it across the way — a worn brick library, its windows dark and quiet, its heavy wooden door half open. A roof. Walls. Shelves. Somewhere a Luna Eclipsed scout wouldn't think to look for a man with a shotgun crutch. He pushed off the wall and limped across the stones. The door creaked shut behind him. The air inside smelled like old paper and dust. Jack sank into a chair between two tall shelves and finally let his shoulders drop. He had cover now. He had quiet. The dossier could wait — what he needed was something older, something written by someone who'd seen a curse like his before. He set the shotgun against the table and started pulling books.

Jack froze with a book half-pulled from the shelf. A floorboard creaked deeper in the library. Not the wind. Not settling wood. Steps. Slow ones. He set the book down and reached for the shotgun leaning against the table. He limped between the stacks, shotgun thudding soft against the floor. Past a reading table he saw it — a pallet stacked with old books, shaped into a low bed. Blankets bunched at one end. Someone lived here. Jack's grip tightened. He pushed further in and found the corner: two tall shelves dragged into an L, cushioned seats wedged inside, desk lamps angled outward like eyes. A fort. A watch post. A voice came from behind the shelves. Flat. Bored. "Shotgun's loud. Don't." Jack stopped. A young man stepped out from the nook, hands loose at his sides, a red band across his forehead. No Luna Eclipsed pin. No drawn weapon. Just tired eyes that had already counted Jack's bad leg. "Not a scout," the stranger said. "Name's 13. Living here. You're bleeding on my floor." Jack glanced down. He hadn't noticed the cut. Jack lowered the barrel an inch. Not all the way. "You hiding from them too?" 13 tilted his head. "Hiding from worse." He nodded at the shotgun. "You're the card man. Heard about the dock. Three bodies." Jack's jaw set. The thing inside him stirred at the word bodies, quiet and patient. He breathed through it. The library wasn't safe anymore — but it wasn't a trap, either. He eased the shotgun down and pulled out a chair. Whatever 13 knew, Jack was going to need it.

Jack sat across from 13 in the fort of shelves. The lamp light caught a small pin on the kid's jacket — a red moon, polished, quiet as a held breath. Jack had seen that mark before. Red Hounds. His hand drifted toward the shotgun. "Don't," 13 said, flat. He tugged the jacket open. A red feather was pinned beside the moon, sharp as a brand. "Sent to find you. That's the job." He shrugged like it was weather. "Don't much care about the job." Jack's jaw tightened. "Then walk." 13 tilted his head. "Can't. Got something in my skull. Friday. Scientist put it there — same one who marks his work with that feather. You help me find him, I lose your trail. Easy trade." "And if I say no?" Jack asked. 13's voice went quieter. Complete sentences now. The tell. "Then I let Friday off the leash. He meets that thing inside you. Blackjack, right?" He nodded slow. "Two of them in one street. Blood. Noise. Walls down. Kids under them." He looked at Jack steady. "You want that on your ledger?" Jack felt the thing inside him stir at the name, patient and pleased. He thought of three men on a dock. He thought of bystanders who hadn't asked for any of it. He set his palm flat on the table. "Fine," he said. "We find your scientist." 13 leaned back, almost smiling. The pin caught the light again. Jack had a partner now — and a leash on his own neck he hadn't agreed to wear.

The book gave them no scientist. It gave them a pressed sketch of a horseshoe wrapped in ribbon and a single line of ink: ask the old woman who tamed her own bad luck. Jack closed the cover. 13 shrugged. "Not what we came for." "It's a thread," Jack said. "We pull it." They followed the thread to a tall, weathered house with a crooked picket fence. Smoke still rose from a broken window. The front door hung off one hinge. Boot prints crossed the porch in fresh mud. Luna Eclipsed scouts had been here, and recently. Inside, a woman stood in the wrecked parlor with a stick raised like a blade. Silver hair. Orange dress. Her lower half was no longer human — pale flanks, hooves on the splintered boards. A dark horseshoe hung at her belt, still humming. Children peeked from a back hallway. "Stop where you are," Amelie CloudRunner said. Flat. Final. Orobas had not yet let her go. "We're not them," Jack said. He showed empty hands. "We came to ask about luck. About curses." Her eyes did not soften. "You came late." 13's hands drifted to his pistols. "Lady. Easy." The horseshoe at her belt pulsed once, and Jack felt his own thing inside him answer it — patient, pleased, leaning forward like a dog at a fence. 13 went very still. His jaw locked. "Friday's awake," he whispered. Complete sentence. The tell. Jack's hand shook around the shotgun. Blackjack pressed up under his skin, drawn by the demon in the room like iron to a magnet. Three pulls. Three leashes straining at once. Amelie saw it on their faces and lowered the stick a quarter inch. "Oh," she said quietly. "You're cursed too." She set the stick down. The horseshoe stopped humming. The pull eased — not gone, but quieter, like a door pushed mostly shut. "Sit," Amelie said. "I will tell you what I know about the things inside you. But the scouts will come back. And when they do, you will help me get the children out." Jack swallowed hard and nodded. They had their teacher. They had also just been drafted into her war.

Amelie pressed the dice back into Jack's palm. "Not an anchor," she said. "A bridge. You hold the rail. He walks across." Jack rolled them once on the floorboards. Red and black. The thing inside him stirred, curious instead of clawing. He almost had it. He almost understood. Then the front door blew off its frame. Suited men poured through in fedoras and red moon pins. Behind them, a cybernetic wolf padded over the splinters, yellow eye scanning. Through the broken window, Jack saw more shapes circle the picket fence. Scouts. Hounds in red collars. The perimeter had closed while they talked. "Children. Back room. Now," Amelie said. Small feet thundered down the hall. 13 didn't speak. He pulled his bandanna up his forehead, and the third eye opened wet and bright. "Friday," he murmured. "Go play." Something invisible slithered out of him and across the floorboards toward the door. Amelie unhooked the horseshoe from her belt. She gripped it tight. A black unicorn skull bloomed up over her silver hair, jaw working, horn scraping the ceiling. Orobas. Her stick became a blade in her hand. One of the suits fired. The bullet broke against her flank like rain on stone. Jack looked at the dice in his palm. He thought of her words. Bridge, not leash. He squeezed them once — not to push Blackjack down, but to hold the rail steady — and said, low, "Come on out. We've got work." Cold flooded his chest. His crippled leg straightened under him. The shotgun lifted clean off the floor. He felt Blackjack step up beside him, not over him. Two sets of eyes behind one face. The cards came to his fingers like they'd been waiting. The room turned to noise. When it ended, the suits were on the boards and the wolf was scrap. Jack stood breathing hard, still himself, dice warm in his fist. Amelie's unicorn skull faded. She looked at him a long moment. "You held," she said. Then, quieter: "Barely." Outside, somewhere past the fence, a whistle blew. More were coming. But Jack had crossed the bridge once. He could find it again.

The whistle outside grew louder. Amelie didn't wait. She herded the children down the back steps to a tall carved gate set in her garden wall. To Jack's eyes it looked like an alley mouth — dark, sour, full of trash. To her, it bloomed open on a small stone cottage ringed with flowers and soft light. She hurried the children through the threshold one by one. Amelie pulled the gate shut behind them and turned the lock with an ornate key. The metal sang once and went quiet. She pressed the key into Jack's palm and folded his fingers over it. "Take this to 13," she said. "Tell him to use it on the clock tower door at the end of the street. That becomes the new way out." Jack looked at the key, then at her. The dice were still warm in his other hand. He wanted to ask about the bridge, about Blackjack, about everything she'd promised to teach. The whistle blew again, closer. He found 13 in the hall, third eye closed now, Friday coiled back inside. Jack held up the key. "Clock tower. Now." They moved. Boots through the broken doorway, down the cracked walk, past fences and shuttered windows. The tower loomed at the street's end, clock face cracked, door pale with age. Jack slid the key in. It turned like it had been cut for the lock that morning. The door opened onto green light and the smell of wet grass. Small faces looked up from inside the cottage beyond. Jack let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. The children were through. The promise was kept. Now he could turn back to the dice in his pocket, and the bridge he'd only just learned to cross.

Jack pulled the dice from his pocket as they hit the street. The black faces were split now, a jagged red seam bleeding faint light through the crack. Blackjack had found the bridge from the other side. He was pushing. "He's testing it," Jack said. His fingers tightened. The seam pulsed warm against his palm. "We need to get to Amelie. Fast." 13 didn't ask. He just moved, boots hammering the cracked walk. They cut across to the old meat packing plant Amelie had marked — red brick, tall chimneys, a worn loading door cracked open for them. Jack limped hard on his shotgun, the dice burning hotter every block. Inside, Amelie was already talking to someone. A red-haired woman with rabbit ears and blue fire on her hands. 13 stopped short. "Seven." The woman smiled small. "Knew you'd come here." Amelie turned to Jack, calm. "She left the Red Hounds. Said Luna Eclipsed will turn on them when the targets run out. And she follows him" — a nod at 13 — "not them." Jack held out the cracked dice. The light bled between his fingers. "He's coming through. I can't hold this much longer." Amelie took his wrist and pressed his hand flat to a workbench. "Then stop holding. Listen." She set her own hand over his. "The bridge isn't the dice. The dice are just where you learned to stand. Breathe with him. Match him." Jack breathed. The seam pulsed once, twice, slower. The light dimmed. The dice were still cracked — they would always be cracked now — but the pushing stopped. The bridge held in him, not in his pocket. He set the dice down on the bench and they didn't drag him after. For the first time, he had walked off the bridge and left it standing.

Jack set the cracked dice on the bench and turned to Amelie. She was already moving. "One bridge held," she said. "Now the other gift. Probability. Come." She led him and 13 to the back of the plant, where a long concrete floor stretched into shadow. Bottles stood in a row on a metal shelf downrange, each painted with bold targets and numbers. Past them, mounted on the brick wall, a heavy spinning wheel of numbered discs clicked slowly around a red bullseye. "Yours," she told 13, nodding at the wheel. "Land your shots where you mean to. No more spray." Then to Jack: "Yours is smaller. The reels." Jack lifted Lady Luck. The shotgun's stock glowed faintly — three slot reels set into the wood, painted with tiny suns, drops, sparks, and stars. "Spin them," Amelie said. "Pick fire. Make it land on fire. Every time." He pumped the action. The reels spun, blurred, slowed. Sun. Drop. Spark. Wrong. He fired anyway. The bottle on the far left burst in a soft puff of water. Beside him, 13 cracked off two quick shots from his pistols. Both pinged off the outer ring of the wheel. "Patience," Amelie said, not looking at him. 13 grunted and reloaded. Jack breathed. He thought about the bridge inside him, steady now. He thought about wanting, instead of forcing. The reels spun again. He watched them tumble and felt, for half a second, the soft pull of every possible stop. He nudged. Sun. Sun. Sun. The shotgun kicked. The middle bottle exploded in a clean orange bloom that scorched the shelf. Three more pumps. Three more triple suns. Three more bottles gone in fire. "Good," Amelie said, quiet. Jack lowered Lady Luck, smoke curling from the barrel. His hands were steady. The reels had listened. Behind him, 13's wheel still spun, his shots still wide — but Jack had found the second thing he'd come for. He could choose his luck now. The question was what he'd spend it on.

Jack shouldered Lady Luck and limped after 13 and Seven, the plant's back door swinging shut behind them. The reels still hummed in his hands, but a hum wasn't cover. Outside, somewhere close, a metal snarl cut the air. A scout was on the street, paws clicking, tracking. "Move," 13 said. Flat. He pulled Seven by the sleeve and they broke into a run. Jack swung his shotgun-crutch hard against the pavement, fighting to keep up. Behind them, the cybernetic wolf barked — a wet, mechanical sound — and somewhere else, another answered. They ducked into an alley between two shuttered storefronts. Jack pressed his back to the brick, lungs burning. He couldn't train a bridge with bullets coming. He couldn't think. He just breathed and listened to the clicks fade past the mouth of the alley. Seven exhaled and turned. Her shoulder brushed a wall of torn paper — old flyers layered three deep. One caught her eye. She peeled it back. An underground fight card. A bear man at the center, robe open, a red feather branded on his chest. The same red feather 13 carried folded in his jacket. 13 went still. He pulled his own feather out and held it next to the poster. "Same mark," he said, quieter than before. "Same hand made both." Jack looked at the bear man's name printed beneath — Arthur Von Arctus — and the date. Tomorrow night. Seven grinned, ears twitching. "Then I'm fighting," she said. "Sign me up. I lose pretty, I ask questions in the back room, somebody talks." 13 didn't argue. Jack didn't either. The scout's bark drifted further off. They had a lead now, and a direction, and a plan that wasn't his — and for the first time all day, Jack let someone else hold the reins.

The fight night came fast. Jack and 13 followed Seven down into a forgotten train tunnel, the air thick with sweat and old smoke. Cracked tiles lined the walls. A makeshift ring sat at the far end, walled in stone and strung with bright red ropes. The crowd pressed against those ropes, hungry. Jack leaned on Lady Luck and found a spot in the shadows. Seven climbed in first. She rolled her shoulders, and blue light bloomed around her fists — spectral gauntlets, sharp as glass. Across from her, Arthur Von Arctus stepped through the ropes. The bear man was twice her size. The red feather on his chest caught the lamp light. The bell rang. Seven moved fast. She landed three clean hits to Arthur's ribs, the blue light cracking against fur. Arthur didn't flinch. He just watched her, measuring. Then he stepped in and caught her shoulder with one slow, heavy swing. Seven hit the stones and skidded. The crowd roared. "She's done," 13 said. Flat. He wasn't wrong. Seven pushed up to one knee, grinned through a split lip, and stayed down. Arthur raised one paw. The bell rang again. Backstage smelled like liniment. Seven leaned on 13's shoulder and waved them past the guard with her fighter's pass. Arthur sat on a low bench, wrapping his knuckles. He looked up at the three of them and was not surprised. Jack held out the feather. "We're looking for the hand that made this," he said. Arthur studied it a long moment. "Dr. Owl," he said. "Crimson Wing. He marks what he owns." He paused, started another sentence, let it go. "Find him before he finds the boy again." 13 folded the feather back into his jacket. His hand wasn't quite steady. Jack saw it and said nothing. They had a name now, and a face to put on the thing in 13's skull. Outside the tunnel, somewhere above them, a scout barked. Jack tightened his grip on Lady Luck. The hunt had a direction.

Outside the tunnel, Jack handed 13 the lead and let the kid keep it. Seven leaned on 13's shoulder, lip still bleeding. "Owl's yours now," Jack said. "I'm out." 13 looked at him a long moment. "Fair." No threat in it. No Friday. Just a nod. Jack turned up the street and limped away on Lady Luck. The old library waited where he'd left it. Faded brick. Peeling paint. The door still gave under his shoulder. Inside smelled like dust and damp paper. Jack moved through the shelves to the back lot, where weeds had eaten the fence. Three battered dummies stood in a row, bullseyes scuffed pale. Quiet. No witnesses. His. He set the cracked dice on a stump between him and the targets. Red light bled through the seam. Not a crutch anymore. A marker. A place to aim the bridge at, instead of letting it aim at him. He breathed in. Held the connection steady. Felt Blackjack settle behind his ribs like a dog at heel. Jack drew a card from his sleeve and flicked it. It crossed the yard as a thin silver line and split the center dummy's throat clean through the wood. He smiled, small. Dealt another. Another. Three cards, three holes, no shake in his hand. No pull behind his eyes either. The dice glowed and stayed where he'd put them. He shifted Lady Luck off his hip and braced her against his shoulder. The reels spun. Jack picked the left dummy's heart, nudged the odds, and pulled. The shot bent in the air and punched the bullseye dead center. He worked the lever. Picked the right. Pulled. Same result. Sweat on his neck, but his head was his own. Jack lowered the shotgun and looked at his hands. Steady. The dice on the stump dimmed as he let the bridge ease. He'd done it alone, on purpose, without losing a minute or a mile. Not mastery yet. But proof. He sat down on the stump beside the dice and let himself breathe.

Jack stepped out of the library with Lady Luck under his arm and the dice quiet in his pocket. A red roadster ripped past the curb, brass fittings flashing. Dr. Owl sat behind the wheel, calm as glass. Behind him, a pack of cybernetic wolves loped in tight formation, red plates catching the sun. Jack's gut dropped. They were headed for 13. For Amelie. For the only people who could still teach him. He pushed off the doorframe and limped hard after them. He made it three steps. A shape peeled off the alley wall and blocked his path. Black suit. Black helmet with a white eight painted across the face. Two blades crossed at the back. Eight stood still as a closed door. "Owl will catch them," Eight said. Flat. No threat in it. Just weather. "He's already past you." They tilted their head a fraction toward the street, where wolf prints pressed fresh into the dust, ringed faintly in red. A scout had marked the trail. Owl knew exactly where to go. Jack tried to step around. Eight moved with him. "I was sent to finish what 13 couldn't," Eight said. "You're the job now." A blade slid free without sound. Jack braced on Lady Luck and let his hand drift to the dice. Blackjack stirred behind his ribs, awake but seated. He held the bridge steady. Held himself steady. He fired first. The reels spun and the shot bent low, clipping Eight's knee through the suit. Eight dropped one leg and still didn't flinch. Jack threw a card. It split the blade's flat and knocked it spinning into the gutter. He didn't wait. He limped past, shoulder grazing Eight's, breath ragged. Behind him, Eight rose on the ruined knee, watching him go. No chase. Not yet. "You'll come back through me," Eight said. Jack didn't answer. He rounded the corner where the roadster had vanished. The street was empty. Only tracks, only a red feather pressed into the dust at the curb, already drying. Owl had been here. Owl was gone. Jack stood alone on the pavement, steady in his head, late to the only people who could save him. He'd kept himself. He'd lost them.

Jack pushed off the curb and limped hard down the street. His leg screamed. The trail was cold, but his head was hot. He couldn't think about Owl, about 13, about Amelie, not with boots landing soft behind him. Eight was back up. Eight was coming. He cut toward a small cafe with warm windows, hoping for a wall to put his back against. He never reached the door. The air popped. The streetlight ahead of him crashed down, pole snapping clean, lantern bursting on the stone. Eight stood beside the wreck, blade already drawn. They hadn't run. They had skipped the distance entirely. "You come back through me," Eight said. Jack swung Lady Luck up. The reels spun. He fired low and the shot bent under the blade and clipped Eight's hip. Eight stepped in anyway. The blade came down. Jack threw a card into the wrist and the blade went wide. He drove the shotgun stock into the white eight on the helmet. Eight staggered. Jack fired again, point-blank, and the reels chose the shoulder. Eight went down on one knee, then onto their back, blade ringing on the stone. Jack stood over them, breathing ragged, bridge held steady, Blackjack quiet behind his ribs. He kicked the blade away. "What is your deal with me," he said. "Why this hard. Why now." Eight tilted the helmet up. From inside their coat they pulled a folded dossier and let it fall open on the pavement. A red circle. Five stars. Three sharp question marks. "Yours," Eight said. "Five. Mine is four." A pause. Flat. "I have never missed. Until you." Jack almost laughed. Pride. That was all. A number on a page. "Doesn't matter now," Eight said. They didn't move to rise. "One is coming. One is five too. You won't outrun him." Their helmet tipped back against the stone. "I'm just the consequence. He's the next one." Jack picked up the dossier. The paper was warm. Somewhere down the street, a heat he couldn't see yet was already bending the air. He had won the fight. He had bought himself minutes. He turned and limped, faster now, into a street that already belonged to someone worse.

Jack limped two steps and stopped. Eight wasn't moving right. Blood pooled black under the shoulder he'd shot. The white eight on the helmet tipped sideways. Down the block, a patch of stone glowed dull red, cracked open with heat still bleeding from the seams. One had already walked this street. Eight lifted one gloved hand. Slow. They tapped the metal band locked tight around their own throat. A red light blinked steady against the dark collar. "Tracker," Eight said. "If I die here, the rest of them know exactly where you stood." Jack's grip tightened on Lady Luck. He couldn't tell if it was a warning or a trade. With their good hand, Eight pulled a second collar from inside their coat and set it on the pavement between them. Identical. Cold. "Dr. Owl wants you alive. Wants to make you one of us. Had a number picked. Twenty-one." Their helmet tilted toward the scorched stone glowing down the street. "One won't bother. He finds you, you're ash on the ground. Like that." Jack looked at the collar. He looked at the burn. He stepped past both, raised Lady Luck, and put one careful shot through the blinking red light at Eight's throat. The collar sparked dead. Eight exhaled, almost grateful, and went still. Jack kept walking. He had chosen the worse hunter on purpose.

Jack followed the scorched trail away from Eight's body, leg dragging, shotgun braced. The burns led him to a weathered orphanage with peeling green paint and a crooked porch. Relief hit him hard. Dr. Owl had come here. Not to the meat packing plant. Amelie's hideout was still safe. He leaned on Lady Luck and studied the ground. Halfway down the trail, the prints changed. Three lion paws, scorched black into the dirt, veered sharp across the street. He followed them with his eyes. They stopped at a sagging porch with a faded star nailed above the door. The paw prints turned into boot prints there. Heavy, human, still smoking at the edges. Jack's stomach dropped. A shape-shifter. Walking on two legs now. Inside that building. Watching. He reached for the bridge inside his chest, the one he'd built without the dice. It held. Steady hum, no pull. He breathed out slow and lifted the shotgun. "Alright," he muttered. "Don't lapse. Don't blink." The door blew apart. A black fireball roared straight at him. Jack threw himself sideways, hit the dirt, rolled up on his good knee. Smoke curled off his coat. Out of the doorway stepped a young man with red spiked hair, sleeveless vest, fingerless gloves. Heat shimmered off his skin. His eyes burned orange. "Eight gave you a chance," One said. Flat. No flourish. "My turn to clean up." He cracked his knuckles, and the porch wood blackened under his boots. Jack tightened his grip on Lady Luck. The bridge held steady. The fight had already started.

Jack ducked as a black fireball roared past his ear. He scrambled into a gutted storefront, glass crunching under his boots, metal security bars half-torn from the frame. Inside, display cases had been shoved into a tight maze, every exit blocked but the one he came through. A trap. One had set this up before the fight even started. "Nowhere to hide from Leona," One said from the street. His voice stayed flat. "That's the name. Figured you should know it." His skin split with orange light. Bones cracked outward. Black flame swallowed him whole, and a lioness made of fire stepped through the doorway, eyes burning. Jack reached for the bridge. It bucked. The dice in his pocket pulsed hot, cracked seam bleeding dark light through the fabric of his coat. Blackjack was shoving against the bridge from the other side, hammering it. Jack tried to throw a card. It crumbled to ash in his hand. He tried Lady Luck's reels. They spun and locked on nothing. The cobbles under his bad leg split open in a jagged seam, red light bleeding up through the crack like the floor itself was tearing. "Not now," Jack hissed. "Not now, not now—" One word slammed through his skull, loud enough to white out his vision. *OUT.* The dice in his pocket shattered. The storefront windows blew outward in a single black pulse. Jack felt his knees give, felt himself fall backward into something deep and quiet inside his own chest. From the dust stepped a shape that wasn't Jack. Inky black, edges smoking, shotgun held easy in one hand. Blackjack tilted his head at the burning lioness and smiled with Jack's mouth. Somewhere far behind his own eyes, Jack watched, locked out of the driver's seat. He had lost control. Not all the way. Not forever. But the bridge was Blackjack's now, and the fight was only starting.

Blackjack chased the burning lioness out of the storefront and down the street. Glass crunched under his boots. Leona's black flames scorched the cobbles in long streaks. They tore past awnings and bolted chairs until the road opened wide at the foot of the old clock tower. The cul-de-sac waited there like a stage. Blackjack stopped at its center and smiled with Jack's mouth. He raised one hand. The stones under his feet split into wedges of red and black. Numbers burned into the ground. The whole circle began to turn, slow then fast, until the cul-de-sac was a roaring wheel. Wind ripped through the sidewalk café. Tables tumbled. A chair sailed through a shop window and shattered it from the inside, glass raining onto the floor between potted ferns. Leona dug her claws into the spinning stone. The wheel flung her sideways. She hit a storefront window hard and crashed through it. Her fire guttered. The black flame peeled away in strips. On the shop floor lay a thin red-haired young man, breathing shallow, eyes shut. Just One. Just a boy. Blackjack walked across the slowing wheel. He racked the shotgun easy, one-handed. He stepped through the broken frame and aimed down at the unconscious body. Locked behind his own eyes, Jack saw the barrel drift toward One's forehead. He shoved. He shoved hard. He found the bridge and threw himself across it the wrong way, dragging his weight back into his own chest. The shotgun jerked. The shot punched a hole in the wall above One's head. Jack staggered, gasping, his hand shaking on the stock. The wheel beneath the cul-de-sac sank back into plain stone. The wind died. Around him sat overturned chairs, a shattered café window, and the slow drip of plaster dust. Jack looked down. His bad leg was wrapped in inky black, curling like smoke held to the bone. Under it, the leg felt strong. Steady. He took a step without his shotgun for the first time in years. Something on the other side of the bridge smiled back. The door he had pulled himself through was open now. It would stay open. Both ways.

Jack stood in the broken storefront, breathing hard. The black flame on his leg curled but held him up. The cul-de-sac behind him had stopped spinning. The stones had locked into a giant roulette wheel, red and black wedges frozen around a brass spindle. On the double zero, two cards lay crossed like a calling card. An ace of spades. A jack of hearts. Blackjack had left a note. Jack looked back down at the unconscious boy. One's chest rose and fell in shallow pulls. Near his open hand sat a flip lighter, lion's face stamped into the steel. Blackjack had not bothered with it. Jack stared at it a long second. Pick it up. Leave it. Pick him up. End him. His hand would not move. Air cracked beside him. Eight stepped out of nothing, black suit, blank mask, sword across their back. Jack swung the shotgun up on instinct. Eight raised one gloved hand, palm flat. "Thank you," Eight said. "For sparing me. The shot only killed the collar. I worked it out after." They knelt by One and slid an arm under his shoulders. "I'll take him somewhere they can't reach." Jack lowered the barrel an inch. "Why tell me?" "Because you should know what's waiting." Eight lifted One like he weighed nothing. "Dr. Owl knows 13 is hunting him. He's set a trap. If your partner walks in alone, he doesn't walk out." Eight paused at the broken frame. "That's the debt paid. Do what you want with it." Then they were gone, air folding shut behind them. Jack stood alone in the glass. The lighter still lay where One had been. He bent and picked it up, thumb on the lion's mane. Behind him the frozen wheel waited, two cards smiling at the center. The bridge inside him hummed, open both ways. He had a name, a trap, and a partner walking toward it. Jack pocketed the lighter and started moving.

Jack stepped over the broken glass and out onto the street. He stopped. Looked up. Right at you. "Hey. Quick question. Did you notice I was a completely different dude in that last comic? Tall. Handsome. Both legs working." He tapped his bad leg with the shotgun. Black flame curled around it. "Weird, right? Anyway." He kept walking like he hadn't said a thing. The lion lighter sat heavy in his pocket. Eight's warning sat heavier. Dr. Owl had a trap waiting, and 13 was walking straight into it. Jack needed to find the kid first. He pictured 13's flat face, the twin pistols, that quiet way he spoke when something actually scared him. Somewhere behind 13, Seven would be following, fists ready, luck running thin. Jack moved faster. The bridge inside him hummed steady, open both ways, and for once that felt useful instead of frightening. He picked a direction and committed. Find 13. Pull him out before the doctor closed the jaws. Jack Thompson, late as usual, started to run.

Jack ran until his bad leg burned cold under the black flame. Wolf prints showed in the dust ahead. Scout tracks, fresh, pressed deep. He grinned. 13 had come this way. He followed the paws around a corner and stopped where they ended at the base of a rusted water tower. The tracks circled the legs of the tower once and went no further. Jack looked up. Yellow paint, old ladders, a lookout cabin perched on top like a crow's nest. A trap, maybe. Or the doctor himself. Jack tightened his grip on Lady Luck and climbed. He took the rungs two at a time, shotgun banging his hip. The cabin door hung open. Inside: a chair, a thermos still warm, a pair of binoculars on a hook. No Owl. No 13. Jack's stomach dropped. He picked up the binoculars anyway. He turned to the window and looked where the lenses pointed. Across the way sat a red brick warehouse, doors chained, windows boarded. A single figure walked toward it from the far side of the street. Small. Red headband. Twin pistols loose at his hips. "No," Jack said. "No, no, no." This wasn't the trap. This was the chair the doctor sat in to watch the trap spring. Jack had climbed the wrong building. The warm thermos meant Owl had left minutes ago, probably down to meet his guest in person. Jack dropped the binoculars and threw himself at the ladder. He knew the direction now. He knew the door. He just had to beat a man with a head start, on legs that only half worked, before the chain on that warehouse came off and snapped shut behind his partner.

Jack hit the ground at the base of the tower and bit back a yell. Across the street, 13 was already moving, a black pistol in one hand, a gold one in the other, sigils on both burning soft in the dust light. He walked straight for the chained doors of the red brick warehouse like a man late to a job. Jack ducked behind a stack of crates and counted the distance. Too far to run. Too far to throw himself in front of it. And somewhere inside that warehouse, or above it, Dr. Owl was waiting for the door to open. A shout would carry. A shout would also bring the doctor down on both of them before 13 could turn around. Jack pressed his back to the crates and felt his bad leg pulse cold under the black flame. He looked at his hand. The bridge inside him held steady, quiet, waiting. He had cards. He had a partner who could read a hand. Jack drew four from his sleeve and fanned them. He thought about the arched wooden doors across the street, the iron bands, the chain hanging loose where someone had already cut it. He pictured each card landing where he wanted it. Then he flicked his wrist. The cards cut the air in a low arc. They struck the wood one after the other, soft as knocks, and stuck there. T. R. A. P. Four letters at eye level on the warehouse door. Jack held his breath. 13 stopped three steps from the threshold. His head tilted. He looked at the cards. He looked at the empty street. He looked up once, slow, at the lookout cabin on the water tower, and Jack saw the moment the kid put it together. 13 took two steps back from the door without turning his back to it. He brought the black pistol up to cover the high windows and the gold one down to cover the seam between the doors. He did not call out. He waited. Jack moved. He kept low along the crates, shotgun under his arm as a crutch, dragging the bad leg in quick jerks across the open ground. He reached the wall beside 13 and pressed flat to the brick. 13 didn't look at him. He kept the pistols steady on the door. "Nice mail," 13 said, quiet. "Owl inside?" "Above," Jack said. "Or was. Thermos still warm in the tower." 13's mouth twitched. "Two doors. One trap. You pick." Jack looked at the four cards pinned to the wood, then at the partner he had almost watched walk into a grave. The bridge inside him pulled once, gentle, like a hand checking he was still there. He pulled it back the same way. Steady. His own. "We don't open it," Jack said. "We make him come out."

13 kept the pistols steady on the warehouse door. Jack pressed his shoulder to the brick and worked through what they had. Two of them. One trap. A doctor who didn't spook. Jack thought about a fire at the loading bay, smoke pushed under the seam, something loud enough to crack the doctor's patience without burning the kid alive inside. He started to say it. Then the wind shifted. A low whine cut down the block, metal on stone, claws clicking. Jack turned his head and saw it round the corner past the last brick wall. A wolf, half flesh and half plate, red panels along its ribs, one yellow eye fixed on him. It had their scent. It lifted its snout and let out a sound that wasn't a howl. It was a signal, clean and electric, pitched for whoever was listening inside. "Scout," 13 said. Quiet. The full sentence. "Pack behind it." Jack looked past the wolf. Two more shapes slid into the street, lower, slower, fanning wide. The block narrowed at the warehouse end. Brick wall on one side, chained doors on the other. The pack pushed them toward the only door that mattered. Jack felt the bridge inside him pull once, asking. He held it steady. Not yet. Inside the warehouse, something moved. Not footsteps. Pistons. A long hiss of steam vented through the eaves above the door. Iron groaned. The chain on the doors snapped taut and tore loose from its bolts. The arched doors blew outward and slammed flat against the brick. A brass machine ducked through the frame and straightened in the street. It was taller than the doorway, plated in yellow brass, joints stacked with gears, a blue lens burning in its chest. Steam rolled off its shoulders. Dr. Owl rode high inside the chest cavity, hands on two short levers, glasses catching the dust light. "Thompson," Dr. Owl said. Flat. He did not raise his voice. "Step away from the instrument." His eyes moved to 13 and stayed there. "You are late for collection." Jack felt the wolves close behind them and the mech's lens swing forward. The trap had teeth on both sides now. He shoved 13 hard against the brick and drew four cards from his sleeve. He thought about the lens, the levers, the seam where brass met glass. He felt the bridge open a finger's width, no more, and let the cold run down his arm. The cards flicked out and hung in the air a beat, suspended on his will, waiting for him to choose where they cut. Behind him, the lead wolf crouched to spring. In front of him, Dr. Owl pushed the levers forward and the brass machine took its first step.