The hidden garage had never been this loud. Morgana stood before the entire crew, laying out Aiden's proposal in full detail — the 15% credit threshold, the independence clauses, and her reasons for believing this was a risk worth taking. Ashen light from the industrial lamps overhead cast long shadows across the assembled faces, each one carrying a different measure of doubt, curiosity, or outright hostility as she spoke. But the moment she finished speaking, a wave of protest erupted from several directions at once, voices overlapping until the garage felt smaller than its actual dimensions.

"Are you serious right now?" Finn stood up abruptly, his voice shaking with anger, knocking his chair back against the wall with a clatter that echoed off the concrete. "Partnering with the very institution that killed my father? You want us to take dirty money from the hand that seized everything my family ever had? Do you even remember what it was like when you first found me, half-starved, with nothing left?" His hands were shaking now too, years of carefully suppressed grief suddenly close to the surface in front of the entire crew.

"This isn't 'dirty money,' Finn." Morgana replied, forcing herself to stay calm despite understanding exactly the pain behind his outburst. "This is a chance to reduce the risk for everyone while we investigate something far bigger than any job we've pulled before. I haven't forgotten what happened to your family. I will never forget it. I still remember the state I found you in, and I've never once forgotten why you're here."

"Who's to say this isn't a more sophisticated trap?" another member, a scarred orc veteran named Grath, spoke up, his voice low and serious, arms crossed over his massive chest. "How do you know this Chief isn't using you to lure the rest of us into a bigger ambush? Ledgerhold's history is full of exactly this kind of setup — gain trust, then close the net. I've seen it happen to gangs twice our size, wiped out overnight because they trusted the wrong handshake."

Morgana had no perfect answer to that question, and she knew it. "I can't guarantee it absolutely." she admitted, an honesty she always valued even when it weakened her own position in front of the crew. "But I confronted him directly, negotiated with him directly, and my instinct — the same instinct that's kept all of us alive for four years — tells me he's being truthful. I've built this crew on trusting my own judgment when the evidence isn't complete. I'm asking you to trust it one more time. I wouldn't bring this to you if I thought it put any of you at unnecessary risk."

"Instinct isn't proof!" Finn shot back, his voice still raw with fury, stepping closer until only a few feet separated him from Morgana. "My father also trusted the 'honesty' of the people the Bank sent, and he paid for it with his life! Do you know what it's like to watch someone work themselves to death trying to pay off a debt that was never fair in the first place?"

The whole garage fell into heavy silence at that. Morgana knew Finn's story well — how his father had been tricked into signing a loan with hidden terms, leading to unpayable debt, and finally dying from exhaustion trying to work it off before the Bank could seize his soul. It was one of the deepest reasons Finn had joined the crew, and she understood that any proposal to cooperate with the Bank struck at the rawest wound in his heart, a wound that had never fully closed no matter how many successful jobs they'd pulled together since.

"I understand your pain, Finn." she said, her voice softening, stepping closer to him despite the tension still radiating off his posture. "I will never ask you to forgive what the Bank did to your family. But this isn't about forgiveness. It's about finding the truth behind a conspiracy that could be hurting hundreds of other families, just like yours. If we can expose it, if we can stop whoever's doing this, maybe fewer people end up where your father did."

Finn didn't answer right away, his jaw clenched tight, eyes torn between loyalty to his leader and a wound that had never fully healed. He looked away first, staring at some fixed point on the concrete floor as though the answer might be written there.

Wren, standing near the back, decided to speak up, stepping forward with the calm of someone who had thought carefully before opening her mouth. "I used to work in the Bank's internal audit department, all of you know that. I saw things bad enough that I couldn't stay silent anymore. But I also learned something important in that time: not everyone wearing that uniform is evil. Some of us just hadn't found the courage yet to act differently."

She paused, looking around at the assembled faces, many of whom had heard fragments of her story before but rarely all at once. "I remember sitting in that office, signing off on lien after lien, telling myself it was just paperwork, that I had no choice. It took me two years to work up the courage to walk away and find Morgana. I remember the first family I processed a soul-collateral order for — an elderly couple, married for forty years, and I remember convincing myself it wasn't my fault, that I was just following procedure. I carried that with me every single day until I finally quit. If this man is truly willing to risk his career to expose the truth, maybe we should give him a chance — not out of blind faith, but because it might be the fastest way for us to reach the goal we all share. I'm not asking anyone to trust the Bank. I'm asking you to trust that Morgana knows the difference between an institution and an individual willing to burn his own career down to fight it."

Wren's words, though they didn't fully convince everyone, shifted something in the tense atmosphere of the garage — a few members began nodding, reconsidering their initial positions. Even Grath's crossed arms loosened slightly, his scowl softening into something more contemplative. One of the younger members, a girl barely seventeen who'd joined only months earlier, wiped at her eyes quietly, clearly moved by the rawness of Wren's admission in a way she hadn't expected from someone usually so composed.

"So we vote." Morgana decided, recognizing that further argument wouldn't lead anyone to a clear conclusion. "Who agrees to a conditional trial cooperation, with close oversight and the right to withdraw at any moment if we find any sign of betrayal? No one is forced into this. If enough of you object, we walk away, and I respect that."

She waited, watching the room carefully as hands slowly began to rise, not all at once but one at a time, each person clearly weighing the decision on their own terms before committing. The majority raised their hands, though not everyone. Finn, after a long pause that stretched uncomfortably through the room, finally raised his hand as well, reluctantly, though his eyes still carried unresolved doubt.

"I'll go along with the majority." he said, his voice hard, cutting through the quiet. "But if that man betrays us, I'll be the first one saying 'I told you so.' And I want it on record that I said this was a mistake."

"Duly noted." Morgana replied, a small, tired smile crossing her lips despite the weight of the moment. "Thank you, Finn. I mean that."

Once the vote had settled and most of the crew had drifted back to their evening routines, equipment maintenance and quiet conversations resuming as though the tension of moments before had never happened, Morgana found a quiet moment alone with her thoughts, sitting on an overturned crate near the entrance. She pulled the Summons Decree from her jacket pocket, unfolding it once more, rereading the familiar lines with a strange new distance, as though the crisis at court had briefly receded behind the more immediate crisis unfolding in front of her. Six weeks, the Council had said. Six weeks felt like both an eternity and no time at all, depending on which problem she chose to focus on in any given moment. Whatever tomorrow's meeting with Aiden brought, she resolved to keep both crises firmly compartmentalized — the crown waiting in one corner of her mind, the investigation demanding the rest of her attention, at least for now.

Finn approached quietly, sitting down a short distance away without a word for a while, the earlier fire in him banked down to something quieter, more tired. "I don't trust him." he finally said. "I probably never will."

"You don't have to." Morgana replied, folding the letter away again before he could catch a glimpse of the royal seal. "You just have to trust that I'll pull us out the second something feels wrong. That's the only promise I can make right now."

Finn nodded slowly, still unconvinced but no longer openly hostile. "Just don't let this cost us more than it's worth, boss." He hesitated, then added, quieter, "I meant what I said about my father. But I also meant what I said about trusting your judgment. Don't make me regret both at once."

"I won't." she said, though even as the words left her mouth, she wasn't entirely certain whether she was making that promise to Finn, or to herself.

Meanwhile, at the Ancient Bank's headquarters, Aiden faced a confrontation of his own. Regional Director Valeria Krane, a woman with eyes as sharp as blades, had summoned him into her office first thing that morning, the summons arriving via a curt, unadorned message that gave him no opportunity to prepare a defense in advance. The glass walls of her office looked out over the whole of Ledgerhold, a view Aiden usually found impressive but which today only made him feel exposed, as though the entire city could see straight through him, every secret he'd been carefully guarding laid bare beneath the morning light.

"Your report on the Copperline incident is missing far too many details." she said, her voice as cold as anything Aiden himself typically used in his own work, tapping one finger against the thin file on her desk. "'A Golem malfunction, resolved'? That's the entirety of what you can tell me about an event that left four officers injured and damaged equipment worth thousands of credit units?"

"The situation was chaotic, Director." Aiden replied, maintaining the composure trained into him over years, though his heart beat faster than usual. "I recorded what I judged most essential under those circumstances."

Valeria studied him for a long moment, her eyes searching for any crack in his professional shell, the same shell that had served him well through eight years of increasingly difficult negotiations and confrontations. "You've always been one of my most meticulous officers, Aiden. This kind of omission doesn't suit you. I'd hate to think you were developing sloppy habits at exactly the moment the Board is watching this district more closely than usual."

"I'll submit a more complete report within the next few days." he said, trying to sound calm despite knowing he was walking a thin line between protecting the secret he needed to keep and avoiding further suspicion.

"I hope so." Valeria replied, her tone carrying an unmistakable undertone of warning, rising from her desk to stand by the window, her silhouette framed against the glittering skyline. "The Board is watching closely for any unusual activity in the region lately, especially after the ATM breach. I'd advise you to make certain there's nothing else unusual in your own record, Aiden. For your own sake. You've built a solid career here. It would be a shame to see it complicated by carelessness." She turned back to face him fully, her expression unreadable in the way that had made her so effective in her position for over a decade. "I've recommended you for advancement twice, Aiden. I'd rather not have that decision come back to reflect poorly on my own judgment."

That final sentence hung in the air like a threat wrapped in professional concern, and Aiden left the office with a cold shiver running down his spine — not from fear for himself, but from the realization that whatever time he had left to act before being discovered was likely far shorter than he'd hoped. He returned to his own office, closing the door quietly behind him before allowing himself a long breath. He sat at his desk for a while without moving, staring at nothing in particular, weighing just how much longer he could keep operating this way — one foot inside the system, the other already stepping outside it, with no clear sense of which side would claim him first.

He thought of Lira, frozen and unaware in the vault beneath this very building, and of Morgana, somewhere across the city gathering her own crew's trust for a partnership neither of them had ever expected to need. Both of them, he realized, were counting on him to hold his position long enough to matter, and both of those obligations pulled in directions that grew harder to reconcile with each passing day.

It was into that uncertainty that Morgana's message arrived that evening, short and sharp as everything else about her had proven to be so far: "Agreed. But if you betray us, I'll be the first person you have to fear. — M."

Aiden read the message twice, a feeling of relief mixed with something close to strange happiness stirring in his chest — a feeling he'd deliberately buried for years, now beginning to surface again in a way he hadn't anticipated at all. He typed a brief reply, deleted it, then typed another, finally settling on something simple: "Tomorrow. I'll bring the draft." Whatever the Board suspected, whatever Valeria's warning truly meant, he found he could not bring himself to regret the choice that had led him here, sitting alone in his office at the end of a long day, feeling, for the first time in longer than he cared to admit, that he was finally moving toward something that mattered more than simply surviving another quarter at the Bank.

Across the city, in his quiet office overlooking Ledgerhold's endless lights, Aiden felt something similar settle over him — the uneasy, fragile hope of two people betting everything on a partnership neither institution they belonged to would ever have sanctioned. Whatever came of it, both of them had already crossed too far to turn back now, each carrying secrets the other didn't yet know, each trusting the fragile thread between them to hold a little longer than either had any right to expect. Tomorrow, at least, they would face the next step together.