Chapter 2: Black Market Francs

3:00 AM in Berlin, the whole city seemed wrapped in a dead-silent slumber. Only the rain was relentless, pounding against the peeling walls of the Prenzlauer Berg District. The air was thick with the mixed, acrid stench of stale smoke and cheap coffee. It crawled up the nasal passages, triggering a visceral, physiological disgust.

Dorian pressed the letterhead—stamped with the Consortium’s watermarked logo—flat against his chest. Through his thin coat, the coarse texture of the paper’s back side scraped against his skin, sending jolts of minor pain up his nerves. The Ancient Talisman in his palm seemed to sense his mood. It vibrated with a faint tremor, like a current running through frozen nerves: ice-cold and crystal clear.

Dorian didn’t answer. He just stared at the two assistants flanking Marcus. They had formed a classic triangular encirclement. The man on the left had his right hand clenched in a fist, muscles taut, knuckles white from the grip. He was the heavy hitter. The woman on the right kept her left hand in her pocket, eyes locked on the exits, breathing steady. Clearly, she’d been professionally trained in tactical response.

The lingering warmth of the Ancient Talisman flooded back into his fingertips. An indefinable intuition exploded in his mind, manifesting as a cold warning. Marcus hadn’t made a move yet, but the thumb on his left hand had given a slight, subtle hook around the pommel guard of the knife at his waist.

The motion was too subtle for a normal person’s reaction time to catch. But in Dorian’s eyes, time had stretched into slow-motion film, making every fiber of muscle contraction visible.

A low voice drifted out from the shadows, carrying a distinct nasal twang and a rough texture. Marcus stood by the bar counter, idly flipping a silver lighter. The metal click-clack of the lid opening and closing echoed in the quiet. The flickering flame illuminated the old scar on his face. It ran from his brow bone down to his jaw, resembling a claw mark from a beast.

He was the head of the "Crows" syndicate, a scavenger who feasted on the scraps the families tossed away. He survived by consuming these castoffs to gather intel and profit.

"So you’re another piece of trash your family kicked out?" Marcus sneered, his gaze sweeping dismissively over Dorian’s worn leather suitcase. "Old hag Matilda finds even your kind of burden in the way, yet you dared come to my turf to do business. Do you know the rules?"

Dorian’s grip was crushing; his thumb bore down hard on Marcus’s radial artery. The blade slid out in the brief exchange, a flash of cold light pointing straight at Marcus’s throat. The surrounding crowd shrieked and recoiled, forming a massive vacuum circle. Dorian’s voice was terrifyingly calm, devoid of any inflection, as if he was stating a pre-existing fact.

"Tell me. Who hired you to monitor my route? Where is Victor’s account?" The tip of the blade pressed lightly against the skin, seeping a bead of blood that looked horrifying under the dim light. Marcus’s pupils contracted sharply. He looked into the dead, deep blue of Dorian’s eyes and realized the man in front of him wasn’t just another ousted heir.

On the graffiti-covered wall of the subway entrance, a black crow stood out starkly, its wings spread as if it was about to take flight to the sky in the next second. Dorian stopped in front of the mural, his fingertip lightly touching the pitch-black feathers. The light of the Ancient Talisman pierced through his skin, creating a bizarre resonance with the blackness on the wall.

A rush of wind sounded in his ears—not the wind of reality, but whispers from another dimension. The other half of the power of the Contract was waking up.

The clues to the Zurich bank account hadn’t been written directly in the text message. Instead, they were hidden in a seemingly ordinary landscape photo sent by Hans. In the pixel noise, lay the time coordinates for when Victor transferred the final batch of funds.

Dorian looked up, his gaze piercing through Sophia and straight into the shadows behind her. The space was empty, but the blue light of the Ancient Talisman fluctuated violently at that moment, pointing toward the entrance of an abandoned subway station on the other side of the alley. His intuition told him someone was there, and it wasn’t someone Sophia could control.

He slowly slipped his backup phone into the inner pocket of his coat, his movements as gentle as sheathing an unsharpened dagger.

"I don’t need lies, Sophia. I only need time." His voice was hoarse but carried an undeniable firmness. "Hans’s information doesn’t circulate on the surface; it’s encrypted code. Cracking it requires a key, and the key isn’t in the phone."

Dorian stopped walking, avoiding Sophia’s scorching gaze. He didn’t answer; he just looked down at the SIM card in his hand. The card glowed a semi-transparent amber color in the sunlight. Inside was Marcus’s final communication record. He inserted the card into the backup phone and pressed the side button.

The screen lit up. An encrypted text message sat quietly in the inbox, sender ID displayed as "Hans." Why would that taciturn polar guide show up on the black market communication network? Dorian’s fingers hovered over the screen. The blue light of the Ancient Talisman flickered again in the darkness, interplaying with the faint glow of the screen.

Dorian didn’t give him a chance. He accurately calculated the instant Marcus’s center of gravity shifted back. He slammed his right leg outward, kicking Marcus’s knee joint. The sound of snapping bone was crisp and clean, echoing through the empty hall. Marcus let out a muffled cry of pain, his body tilting to one side. He dropped to one knee, completely losing the ability to fight back.

Dorian crouched down, his movements composed and cold. He patted down Marcus’s pockets to retrieve that phone, deftly popped out the SIM card with his thumb, and tucked it into his pocket. Marcus lay on the ground, face pale, still cursing the family’s curse, but his voice was already weak.

Marcus stood up. The sound of the scabbard slipping down was harshly loud in the silence, like metal scraping against glass. "Leave what you brought behind, and get the hell out. Or stay here and become the Crows' food."

He waved a hand. The two assistants immediately stepped forward, trying to block Dorian’s retreat. The air solidified instantly. The only sound was the dripping water from the distant pipes. Drip, drip. Like a countdown.

Dorian took a deep breath, smelling the pervasive iron rust smell in the air mixed with the expensive cologne on Marcus. These two scents intertwined, creating an absurd backdrop for the Contract.

"I don’t know what account you’re talking about." Marcus’s voice began to shake, but he still tried to act tough. "I just took the money and did the job. Anonymous instructions, yeah? Can’t you afford that? I never even saw the sender. All I saw was the Old Franc mark."

He pointed to his own collar. A small silver coin was pinned there—the exact emblem of the Victor Consortium. Dorian’s eyes sharpened into blades. Marcus suddenly realized he was talking to an abyss. Panicked, he tried to grab a phone to call his men, but his hands flailed in the air, stumbling and falling.

"Don't rush to reply." Sophia’s voice rang out again, this time with a barely perceptible tremor. "Hans is a former Victor asset. If he’s active on the black market, it means Victor’s purge plan has already started. Every second of hesitation is shrinking your survival window."

She stepped forward. The sharp, urgent rhythm of her high heels hitting the ground echoed. "You need cover, or a lie. I can provide the former, but you must hand over that lead. Even just a fragment."

At the exact moment the assistant on the left took his first step, Dorian moved. He didn't retreat; instead, he stepped forward, dodging the assistant’s shove with a sidestep. Simultaneously, his right hand struck like a venomous snake emerging from its hole, locking precisely onto the tiger’s mouth of Marcus’s hand gripping the knife. Marcus, caught off guard by his own arrogance, stiffened for a split second. Then he let out a cold laugh, attempting to shake off Dorian’s grip.

"Who the hell do you think you are?" Marcus’s voice turned shrill, laced with annoyance. "Those bankers in Zurich? They don't even bother to look in my direction."

Sophia gave a cold laugh, turning to leave. "Suit yourself. But when your corpse is hauled back to Zurich, I’ll make sure the whole world knows how you died."

Her figure disappeared around the street corner. The red light of the recorder went out, leaving behind a sea of silence. Dorian didn’t follow. Instead, he turned and walked toward the subway entrance hidden in the shadows. The air was filled with damp iron rust and the faint whiff of gasoline—the precursor to an imminent explosion. He pulled his hat brim low, pressing the Ancient Talisman tightly against his chest, his steps steady.

Dorian closed his eyes, reconstructing that photograph in his mind. Storm and snow, an abandoned dam, coordinates, time. All the fragments snapped together in the vortex of his consciousness, forming a complete picture. When he opened his eyes again, the iron grate door at the subway entrance was slowly opening. A pair of boots, encased in military-style leather, stepped into the accumulated water, splashing mud.

A man in a grey trench coat stood in the doorway, idly flipping a rusted key in his hand. He wore a half-mask, revealing only a pair of emotionless eyes.

Dorian stood up, ignoring the moans on the ground. He shoved the letterhead back into his robe. He walked through the crowd toward the exit. The moment he stepped out of the alley, the glaring streetlights forced him to squint. A familiar figure leaned against the wall, holding a voice recorder. The green light of the screen illuminated Sophia’s cold face.

She was an independent journalist, and one of the few people who knew Dorian’s true identity. Sophia’s gaze was sharp, as if it could see through his heavy clothes and strike directly at the Ancient Talisman.

"Mr. Dorian," Sophia’s voice was clear and chilly. "What did you get out of that damn place? I’ve been tracking Victor’s fund flow in Zurich for three months. Only you have the final piece of the puzzle. I need it."

She held up the recorder. The red light blinked, issuing a silent warning. "Your family treats you as a disposable pawn, but in this city, the truth is more expensive than bloodline. Are you really going to bear that weight alone?"

Hans’s name cut like a cold knife across Dorian’s mind, leaving a trail of blood. The man who had once guided him with frostbitten fingers at the foot of the Alps was now an invisible node in the undercurrents of the black market.

Dorian unconsciously stroked the Ancient Talisman. The cold metal seeped into his veins. At that moment, intuition surged through his nerve endings like electricity—danger wasn't nearby; it was deeper. It wasn't in physical space at all. It was at the informational level.

"This goddamn place has no signal."

"If you're not gonna talk, forget it."

"Did you find the lead?" The man opened his mouth, his voice sounding like sandpaper rubbing deep in his throat. "Victor sent me to confirm whether you are still worth keeping, or just need to be cleaned up."

He held up the key, letting it glint under the light. It was not an ordinary key. It was a biometric lock key specifically designed to open the underground vault of the Zurich bank. The Ancient Talisman in Dorian’s hand was hot as a branding iron. He took a sudden, aggressive step forward. His figure stretched long down the narrow alley before vanishing, leaving the man staring in shock.