Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXQMAKP8MCSQTT8A8HF69M

The rain lashed against the darkened windows of The Raven's Nest, blurring the neon green glow of the sign into a radioactive smear upon the Soho pavement. Inside, the air hung heavy with the scent of beeswax polish and the stale, comforting ghost of tobacco smoke. Silas Blackwood dragged a rag across the mahogany counter, the friction burning a dull heat into his palm. It was a Tuesday. Tuesdays were for the ghosts. The bell above the door didn’t jingle; it tolled, a singular, rusted note that cut through the low hum of the refrigerator. Silas didn’t look up immediately. He focused on a stubborn ring of condensation left by a coaster, his thumb tracing the silver signet ring on his right hand—a nervous tic that had survived three decades of tradecraft. He listened. The footsteps approaching the bar were uneven, heavy on the heel, light on the toe. Wet leather squeaked against the floorboards. "You still keep the lights too low, Si. A man could hide a knife in these shadows." The rag stopped moving. Silas stared at the grain of the wood. The voice was gravel rolling in a cement mixer, rougher than he remembered, stripped of the velvet charm that used to talk grandmothers out of their pension funds in Vienna. Silas lifted his head. Standing on the other side of the bar was a ruin of a man wrapped in a soaked trench coat. Water dripped from the brim of a fedora that looked thirty years out of style. Underneath, Elias Thorne’s face was a roadmap of broken capillaries and deep, canyon-like wrinkles. The handsome, devastating boy who had run visuals in blink-and-you-miss-it operations was gone. In his place stood a wreck. "And you still don't know how to wipe your feet, Eli. I just waxed that floor." Elias pulled a stool out, the wood screeching against the varnish in a way that made Silas’s left knee throb in phantom sympathy. He sat, joints popping audibly. "Wax. Is that what we’re doing now? Domesticity?" Elias placed a heavy, trembling hand on the bar. His fingernails were bitten to the quick, the cuticles ragged. "Pour me something that burns. None of that artisanal gin rubbish I saw in the window." Silas reached for the bottom shelf, grabbing a bottle of unlabelled rye he kept for personal sorrows. He set two heavy tumblers down. Glass clinked against wood, sharp and final. "I heard you were in Leeds. Or was it Lisbon? The wires get crossed these days." Silas poured. The amber liquid swirled, catching the dim light. "Leeds. Lisbon. Hell. It’s all the same geography when you’re looking at it through the bottom of a glass." Elias picked up the drink, bypassing the toast, and threw it back. He shuddered, a full-body convulsion that rattled his coat buttons against the bar edge. "Better. Hits the spot where the conscience used to be." Silas nursed his own, watching the man who had once dragged him out of a burning sedan in Budapest. "You look tired, Eli." "And you look... sturdy." Elias’s eyes, bloodshot and rimmed with yellow, darted around the room, taking in the framed black-and-white photographs, the antique maps plastered to the walls. "Look at this. A shrine to the Golden Age. You got the layout of the Berlin sector up there next to a picture of a 1920s flapper. It’s grotesque, Si. Kitsch." "It’s decor. The punters like the mystery. Makes them feel like they’re part of something important while they overpay for an Old Fashioned." "Important." Elias spat the word out like a cherry pit. He gestured vaguely at Silas's chest. "You got out. You took the limp and the pension and you bought a pub. You sat down." "I didn't have much of a choice. The knee doesn't bend the way it used to. You can't run a dead drop if you can't run." Elias leaned forward; the smell coming off him wasn't just rain. It was stale sweat and cheap hotel soap. "Prague." The word hung in the air, heavier than the smoke, thicker than the glass. Silas twisted the signet ring. The metal bit into his skin. "Prague was a long time ago." "Was it? Feels like this morning. I wake up, and my hands are shaking, and I can hear the tires screeching on the cobblestones." Elias tapped the empty glass fast, a woodpecker rhythm. "Hit me again." Silas poured. He didn't want to, but refusing a man like Elias was more dangerous than indulging him. "I thought you stayed in. Heard you took a desk at Vauxhall. Deputy Director of something vital and boring." "I did. For a year. Then they decided my... temperament... wasn't suited for the new world order. Too analog. Too messy." Elias laughed, a dry, hacking sound. "They retired me, Silas. Handshake, gold watch, and a nondisclosure agreement thick enough to choke a horse. But they didn't give me a bar. They gave me a studio flat in Croydon and a weekly meeting with a therapist who looks twelve." "You could have reached out." "To you?" Elias scoffed, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "The great Silas Blackwood? The martyr of the Charles Bridge? What would I say? 'Hello, old friend, sorry I didn't take the shot earlier? Sorry you caught the bullet meant for the extract team?'" Silas stiffened. The pain in his leg flared, a sharp, electric jolt. He shifted his weight, the bad knee buckling slightly before locking into place. "It was chaos, Eli. Fog of war. Back room deals gone sour. We don't do 'what ifs' in this house. We serve drinks." "You serve lies." Elias spun the glass on the wet counter. "You sell the aesthetic of the game. The romance. Look at this place. The Raven's Nest. Clever. Hiding in plain sight. But you and I know there’s no romance. Just cold pavement and wet socks and waiting for a phone to ring." "It’s a living." "It’s a mausoleum." Elias finally looked at him, really looked at him. The envy in his eyes was naked, ugly. "You got out with a piece of yourself left. You built something. I have... I have silence. The phone doesn't ring anymore, Si. Not even for the wrong number." Silas picked up a towel and began drying a glass that was already dry. "Everyone leaves the game eventually. Some of us walk, some of us are carried, some of us get pushed." "I didn't want to leave." Elias's voice dropped to a whisper. He stared into the rye as if it were a scrying mirror. "I didn't know how to be anything else. Who is Elias Thorne if he isn't checking for tails in a reflection? Just a sad old drunk in a wet coat." The back door creaked open. Heavy boots thudded on the stairs leading up to the flats. Aurora Carter—Rory—breezed in, helmet under her arm, rain slicking her black hair to her forehead. She stopped, sensing the pressure drop in the room immediately. Her bright blue eyes darted from Silas to the stranger, analyzing the threat level. Smart girl. She recognized tension before she saw the cause. "Silas? Everything alright? I saw the light on." Silas didn't break eye contact with Elias. "Fine, Rory. Just catching up with history. Go on upstairs. Get dry." Rory hesitated. She looked at Elias—the trembling hands, the desperate posture—and then at Silas’s rigid spine. She nodded, once, sharp and professional, and disappeared up the stairs, the sound of her footsteps fading into the ceiling. Elias watched her go. "One of yours?" "Tenant. Works for the restaurant down the street. Good kid." "She clocked me. Saw the weapon under the coat before I even turned around." "You aren't carrying, Eli." Elias smiled, a grotesque revealing of yellowed teeth. He reached into his deep pocket. Silas’s hand dropped below the bar, fingers brushing the cold steel of the shotgun mounted there. Elias pulled out a silver flask. Dented, tarnished, engraved with initials that had long since worn away. "Just this. My service weapon." Silas released the breath he hadn't realized he was holding. He let his hand return to the counter. "You should go home. Before the weather turns worse." "Home." Elias debated the word. "I came here to tell you something. I rehearsed it on the train." "And?" "I forgot it." Elias stood up. The stool groaned in relief. He swayed, catching himself on the bar rail. "No. That's a lie. I didn't forget. I just realized it doesn't matter. You built a life, Silas. A real one. With walls and dry floors and people who check on you." Elias buttoned his coat with fumbling, numb fingers. "I hated you for Prague. For years. I thought you botched it on purpose to get the medical discharge. To get out." "You know me better than that." "I did. Once." Elias adjusted his fedora, pulling it low to hide the ruin of his eyes. "Now? I look at you and I don't see the operative. I just see a barkeep. And God help me, I’d trade every medal, every commendation, every secret I’ve ever stolen just to be the one polishing that glass." Silas remained statuesque, the towel in his hand a white flag of surrender to a war that ended years ago. "There's always a stool open, Eli. If you want to dry out." Elias laughed again, but the edge was gone, replaced by a hollow defeat. He turned to the door. "No. The cheap stuff doesn't sit right with me anymore." "Goodbye, Elias." The door opened, letting the London rain gust in, cold and biting. The bell tolled its singular, rusted note. Elias Thorne stepped out into the dark, and the shadows swallowed him whole before the door even swung shut. Silas stood alone in the silence. The refrigerator hummed. The rain drummed. He looked at the empty glass Elias had left behind, a ring of moisture already seeping into the wood, threatening to leave a permanent mark. He picked up the glass and smashed it into the bin. It shattered with a satisfying crunch. Silas poured himself another finger of rye, drank it in one burning gulp, and went back to polishing the counter. The spot where Elias had sat was still warm, but soon, like everything else in this city, it would turn cold.