Action and consequence were playing out behind Flint’s eyes, and the world was full of possibility.

When the elevator’s doors opened, fate was a violin string plucked and then pulled progressively tighter and tighter. The tension built, the string whining, threatening to snap, and every passing second gave birth to a multitude of eventualities. Flint saw them all, action and consequence, reaction, endgame: explosive diagrams that scattered and expanded and branched in endless near-chaos.

He lunged forward with hands outstretched and dragged the half-elf to the ground, a big cat overwhelming his prey. He felt the skull crack and give way between his hands. A month later, his men started dying on the streets, culminating with Roxanna’s body found jammed up in the Boilerworks. Radek would die sometime later - burnt? Lightning. Battered. Here Flint would stand at the end, again on this very spot, waiting as the elevator came down, and it would open to reveal the Breaker, looking grim, here for revenge. Flint’s empire would collapse. He’d be defeated - maybe die. Ettermire would fall shortly thereafter, unless Josh took over from him as he had from Swanra’ann. Unlikely. Revenge, not ambition.

Flint dismissed the vision, and a dozen others like it. More scenarios were stacking on. In some he seized Jake as a captive: could he ransom him to Lye, or back to Breaker? Unwise. Not worth the risk, the payoff in question…

And then Jake showed them all what he was worth, what he could do, and all the scenarios melted away and left only one possibility - only one viable course of action, despite the inherent threat to all he’d been building.

Roxanna and Radek were professionals even before he’d met them, and despite his gifts and training, he saw in their body language the same realizations striking them. Roxanna’s deltoids rippled almost imperceptibly as the tension gathered in her shoulderblades. The lines around Radek’s eyes faded as his jaw relaxed.

“Come with me,” Flint said to their guest. “I want to show you something.”

He didn’t wait for the half-elf to respond. He turned and walked away. Radek eyed the young man before turning to follow. Roxanna stared at him openly, and when he glanced up at her, she raised red eyebrows and jerked her chin toward Flint’s back - go on. She kept herself behind Jake as he walked, one hand on the hilt of her sword.

They entered his makeshift sanctum amidst all the chaos of ongoing construction, and Flint waved one hand over the multitude of maps and diagrams on display there. The topmost blueprint, centered on the long table, was apparently a warehouse. If Flint was worried about Jake seeing the rest of his plans, he didn’t give sign of it.

“The Crimson Hands have assassinated a figure of some prominence in my city,” Flint said. My city. “The contract was forbidden by me, and also by the grahfs who police such things. The Hands are the only organization both bold and resourceful enough to carry out such a contract, despite it being out of bounds.”

Flint tapped one massive finger on the blueprint. “This is a warehouse on the river. It flooded recently, rendering it unusable, and it will be some months before the dry season. Repair crews won’t bother even checking in on it before then. The Hands are to meet with the man who hired them to fulfill the contract here. That man is dead. You will go in his place. I don’t know how many of them are there, or what they know, or what their capabilities may be. Lye himself may be in that room.”

“Do you think that’s likely?” Jake said. His tone indicated he didn’t think so.

“No,” the brute said, agreeing with Jake’s assessment. “Your presence here now, so close to the culmination of my plans...I suspected this to be a trap. Lye is cleverer than me, and one of the few men left in the world to whom I am physically inferior. Your mentor is another. No, I think this is an elaborate scheme to remove me from the board as a nuisance, and you...perhaps you’re to be a bonus. He would know that I cannot fail to recognize the bait, and that by showing me his hand would force me to commit to action.”

Roxanna was glancing between Jake and Flint now, and spoke up, albeit quietly. “Would it not, then, be wiser to ignore the bait?”

Flint shook his head again. “Lye will not be easy to overcome. He is paranoid...like me. But he is also overconfident. He is taking a risk, so I will take a risk too. Maybe he does not know what Jake can do...but I know for a certainty that he does not know what I can do.”

It was Jake’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “What makes you so sure?”

There was the barest ghost of a smile in Flint’s eyes when he looked down at the demon hunter. “I’m not sure what I can do,” he said. “This is a small risk for Lye, and success would benefit him greatly. He will not be concerned. In his mind, failure would simply mean the loss of some low-level recruits and a relatively inconsequential amount of money. We must find a way to capitalize now, before he recognizes the danger and formulates a plot we cannot respond to. We must turn his small risk into a great advantage, now. We must be more dangerous than we appear.”

“Okay,” Jake said uneasily. “...how?”

“You will go to the meeting,” Flint said again. “Alone. You will present an opportunity with the minimum appearance of risk. You will tempt them to obliterate you. And when the temptation is far too great for them to recognize the threat, you will use your talents….”

“...you want him to bring them here,” Radek said, frowning.

Flint did smile this time.