Chapter 1: The Dusty Barrel's Stage
The bassline wasn’t music. It was a physical presence, a thrumming pressure in the chest that made the condensation on whiskey glasses tremble. The air in the Dusty Barrel was thick, a soup of sweat, spilled beer, and cloying perfume. Under the rusted neon glow, everything looked bruised—purple, deep red, sickly green.
Winter Schnee stood in the shadows just off the main stage, her fingers cinching the tie of a sheer black robe.
It was a costume. The robe, the six-inch heels that made her calves scream, the silver pasties glittering under the satin—all of it was a uniform for a war she hated. Her own skin felt like a liability. She took a slow, measured breath, the kind they taught you for stabilizing a rifle. In, hold, out. The discipline was still there, a steel beam in the center of her chaos.
The DJ’s voice, slurred and echoing, announced “Frost” to a scattered round of cheers.
She dropped the robe.
The cold air of the club hit her, but the heat from the overhead spots followed instantly, painting stripes of light across her stomach, her thighs. She moved forward, the heels clicking with a definitive, unnatural sound on the stage floor. Her hands, encased in fingerless leather gloves, closed around the cold brass of the pole.
Her mind split neatly into two channels.
One channel was the performance. Her body, trained for efficiency and lethal grace, translated those mechanics into something else. A spin, a controlled arch, a leg extended with ballistic precision. It was all angles and tension, a series of calculated movements designed to suggest one thing while concealing everything. The crowd saw a cold beauty moving with an alien, hypnotic rhythm. They didn’t see the topography map of the room she was building behind her ice-blue eyes.
The second channel was the mission. Scan. Assess. Identify.
Booth one: two traders from the docks, already too drunk.
Booth three: a woman crying silently into her phone.
The bar: a group of junior enlisted Atlas personnel, their faces a mixture of bravado and shame.
Where was he?
She pivoted, letting her hair—loosened from its usual severe bun into a long, white cascade—swing across her face. Through the veil of it, she continued the search.
There. The raised VIP section behind a tinted glass partition.
Junior Xiong sat sprawled in a plush booth, a mountain of a man in a silk shirt that strained over his chest. His slicked-black hair reflected the neon. He was holding court, a crystal glass of something amber in one hand, the other gesturing broadly as he told a story. A bodyguard, all neck and no expression, stood post beside the booth’s entrance.
Their mark. The information broker who liked to watch.
Winter’s stomach turned, a hot surge of contempt she immediately flash-froze. Professionalism is endurance, she reminded herself. This was reconnaissance. Infiltration. He was a objective, not a person.
She locked her gaze on the tinted glass, though she knew he could see her clearly. A slight tilt of her head. A look that wasn’t an invitation, but a challenge. See me. See the weapon you mistake for decoration.
She saw him pause his story. She saw the gold tooth flash as his smirk widened. He leaned over, said something to the bodyguard, and nodded toward the stage.
The signal.
Winter completed her set with a final, statuesque pose, the music crashing to an end. The applause was a wave of hollow noise. She collected her robe, wrapped it around herself without haste, and stepped off the stage into the murky darkness of the back corridor.
The bodyguard was waiting. He didn’t speak, just jerked his head toward the VIP stairs.
“I need a moment,” Winter said, her voice deliberately flat, drained of the warmth the performance pretended to have.
“He doesn’t like to wait.”
“He’ll wait for this.” She walked past him, not to the stairs, but to the grim little hallway that led to the “performers’ lounge”—a room with a stained couch, a broken mirror, and the smell of despair covered with drugstore glitter spray.
Emerald was already there, leaning against a locker, dressed as a cocktail waitress. Her red eyes flickered up, instantly reading Winter’s face.
“He took the bait,” Winter stated, pulling a compact from her bag. In the mirror, she watched Emerald’s reflection.
“Of course he did. You look like his type of impossible.” Emerald popped her gum. “Nervous?”
“Anxious to conclude the transaction.” Winter carefully blotted a faint sheen of sweat from her brow. “The package is secure?”
“In my locker. You get him talking, I get it planted in his office. Standard romance.” Emerald’s grin was sharp. “Try to smile, Frost. Maybe bat your eyes.”
Winter snapped the compact shut. “When this is over, I’m burning these shoes.”
The climb to the VIP section felt longer than it was. The bodyguard led her through the door into a pocket of startling quiet. The bass was still there, but muted, a heartbeat through a wall. The air was cooler, smelled of expensive cigar smoke and cologne.
Junior watched her approach, his eyes doing a slow, appraising inventory. She stood before the booth, not sitting, letting him look. Letting him think he had the advantage.
“Frost,” he said, his voice a gravelly baritone. “Suits you. All that ice.” He gestured to the seat opposite him. “Have a drink. You earned it.”
“Thank you, Mr. Xiong.” She sat, back straight, arranging the robe over her knees. She accepted the glass he pushed toward her—whiskey, neat—and let it sit on the table between them.
“You’re new. And you don’t move like the other girls.” He took a sip, his eyes never leaving her. “You move like you’re following a manual.”
Winter allowed a ghost of a smile. “Perhaps I am.”
He laughed, a short, barking sound. “I like that. So what brings a girl with a manual to my little barrel? Debt? Trouble?”
“Information.” She cut to the core of it, seeing no benefit in the flirtation charade. His amusement seemed to deepen, so she continued. “I represent a consortium with an interest in the dust-weapon surplus coming out of the Vale refurbishment projects. We understand you broker… discreet introductions.”
His smirk faded by a fraction. The businessman surfaced, pushing the lech aside. “That’s a very specific interest. And a dangerous one. Atlas military police are crawling over that surplus.”
“Which is why discretion is paramount. We are prepared to pay a significant premium for a direct introduction to the primary liquidator.” She took a tiny, symbolic sip of the whiskey. It burned all the way down. “We hear that man is Roman Torchwick.”
Junior’s face went perfectly still for three seconds. Then he set his glass down with a deliberate click. “You hear a lot of names in here, sweetheart. Most of them are wrong.”
“This one isn’t.” She leaned forward slightly, lowering her voice. The move made the robe gape, a calculated distraction. “We know he moves volume through the abandoned metro tunnels. We know he uses front companies like the ‘Sparkling Gem Gallery.’ We don’t know his schedule, his security detail, or his current drop points. That’s the information we’re buying.”
He stared at her. The amused patron was gone entirely, replaced by a shrewd, paranoid broker assessing a threat. Or an opportunity. “You’ve done your homework. Which means you’re either serious, or you’re a cop. You don’t move like a cop, though. Cops are nervous. You’re just… cold.”
“I’m a professional. Like you.” She held his gaze. “Is Torchwick’s business something you can broker, or should I take my premium elsewhere?”
The silence stretched, filled by the distant thump of music. Junior’s eyes drifted from her face, down to her neck, then back up. The lech and the broker were at war in his head. Greed won.
“It might be,” he said slowly. “A premium, you said. We’re talking six figures, for the introduction alone. Non-negotiable. Cash, or untraceable crypto.”
“Agreed.”
“I’ll need a show of good faith. A deposit. Say, ten percent. Tonight.”
Winter inclined her head. “My associate has it. She can bring it to your office.”
Junior chuckled, leaning back. “See? Business. I like business.” His gaze turned predatory again. “The deposit, yes. But for the rest… I think I want you to bring it. Tomorrow night. We’ll discuss the details. More privately.” He let the implication hang, thick as the smoke.
Every fiber of Winter’s being recoiled. She kept her expression a placid lake. “If that’s a condition of the transaction.”
“It is.” He smiled, the gold tooth glinting. “Now, finish your drink. The business talk is over for now.” He shifted, his tone deliberately lightening. “So, a manual. Who wrote it? An ex?”
Winter knew the game had changed. The information was on the table. Now was the part where she played the role he’d originally paid for. She forced her shoulders to relax a millimeter, took another sip of the fire-water.
“Something like that,” she said, her voice a soft murmur against the bass. “He was full of rules.”
And as she spun a bland, fake story about a fictitious controlling ex, her mind was already elsewhere—tracking Emerald’s progress through the security feeds she’d memorized, calculating the risk of tomorrow’s private meeting, and wrapping the name Roman Torchwick in mental barbed wire.
She would get what she came for. The cost was just a number, written in a currency of dignity she had already decided to spend.