The heavy downpour outside the old building blended with the low-volume music drifting from a worn-out loudspeaker in the corner of the room. Zeven stepped slowly into a rusted, dilapidated bar on the fringes of the Iron District, which reeked of cheap alcohol and scrap metal. The air inside the stifling room felt incredibly heavy, thick with cigarette smoke that mingled with the scent of sweat from the patrons. He pulled the hood of his protective cloak lower to conceal his cold face and his pitch-black eyes, which had no trace of white left. His gaze immediately locked onto a middle-aged man sitting alone at a corner wooden table, knocking back a glass of thick yellow liquid. The man was a figure he knew all too well from the underground laboratory documents—a former tribal informant who
