The business concluded, the air in the garishly decorated office shifted from a battlefield of wits to something resembling a wary armistice. Lutz carefully slid the revised documents back into his portfolio, the crisp sound of vellum a final period on their negotiation. He stood, and Gene mirrored him as he started checking some documents on the shelves, the movement slightly less fluid than before, as if his mind were already racing ahead, processing the implications of their deal.
As Lutz turned to leave, he paused at the door, his hand on the knob. He looked back at Gene, who was watching him with that same sharp, assessing gaze, though now it was layered with a newfound, deeply personal curiosity.
"You know, Mr. Takavic," Lutz began, his tone casually conversational, almost off-hand. "You remind me of a certain someone. Real funny guy."
Gene's eyebrows lifted, his practiced, cynical smile automatically returning. "Yeah? Who would that be? I might have to sue him for plagiarism of my impeccable style and winning personality." The joke was there, but his eyes were guarded.
Lutz held his gaze, his own expression neutral, save for the faintest, most ghostly hint of a grin that touched the corners of his mouth and never reached his eyes.
"Jimmy McGill," he said.
The name dropped into the room like a single, perfectly aimed drop of poison.
Gene Takavic did not move. He did not flinch or gasp. He simple stopped in place. The cynical smile froze on his face, a brittle mask. His bright green eyes, which usually danced with sarcastic energy, widened just a fraction, then sharpened to a terrifying intensity. They weren't looking at Lutz anymore; they were scanning him, dissecting him, trying to peer through the James Morgan suit and the Lutz Fischer cunning to the consciousness underneath. The air seemed to be sucked from the room. The chaotic office, the garish suit, the entire facade of St. Millom—it all seemed to recede, leaving only the silent, seismic shockwave of those two words.
Lutz let the silence hang for a beat, long enough for the name to echo in the stillness, for its earth-shattering implications to fully take root. He saw the minute tremble in Gene's still hand, the almost imperceptible tightening of his jaw.
Then, as if he had merely commented on the weather, Lutz continued smoothly. "I'll go take care of the matters you instructed. I hope you'll do the same. We'll keep in touch."
He gave a slight, polite nod, turned, and opened the door. The cheap bell jingled with its same tinny desperation as he stepped out into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind him with a soft, final click.
He didn't look back.
Inside the office, Gene remained standing, rooted to the spot. The door clicked shut, but he didn't hear it. The sounds of the city outside were a distant murmur. The only sound was the frantic, thunderous beating of his own heart in his ears.
The name reverberated in his skull, a key turning in a lock he thought was buried forever. It wasn't a guess. It wasn't a coincidence. The way Morgan had said it—the neutral tone, the direct eye contact, the ghost of a grin that said "I know". That wasn't the look of a man repeating a funny name he'd heard. It was the look of a man laying down a card from a deck no one in this godforsaken world should possess.
His legs felt weak. He slowly, stiffly, lowered himself back into his theatrical chair, the cushion groaning under his weight. He stared blankly at the wall opposite his desk, where a cheaply framed, entirely generic landscape painting hung slightly crooked.
For a full minute, he was catatonic, his mind a whirlwind of panic, disbelief, and a wild, terrifying hope. He knows. What does he know? How does he know? Is he one? Is he from…?
With a jerky movement, he swiveled his chair and reached for the bottom drawer of his desk, fumbling for a moment before pulling out a bottle of the paint-stripper Feysacian brandy and a single, slightly smudged glass. His hands were not quite steady as he poured a generous two fingers, the liquid sloshing against the sides. He didn't bother with a toast. He threw it back in one burning gulp.
He set the empty glass down with a sharp clack, his breath hissing out between his teeth. He stared at the empty glass, then back at the crooked painting on the wall.
"Okay," he whispered to the empty room, his voice hoarse. "Okay. So that just happened."
A slow, shaky, but genuinely amazed smile finally broke through the shock. He had just been outmaneuvered in a business deal, handed a metaphysical bombshell, and then left to deal with the fallout alone by the most dangerously composed man he had ever met.
He poured another drink, this time sipping it slowly, his mind beginning to churn not with panic, but with strategy. James Morgan—or whatever his real name was—wasn't just a client. He was a connection. A possible ally from a shared, impossible past.
But as the brandy warmed his chest, Gene Takavic, felt something he hadn't felt in a very long time: the exhilarating thrill of a game that had just become infinitely more interesting. The game in St. Millom had just found a second player who knew the real rules. And as terrifying as that was, it was also, undeniably, a hell of a lot better than playing alone.
The rest of the day unfolded with a focused, almost frenetic energy for both men, though their environments and methods could not have been more different.
For Lutz, the afternoon was spent in the pragmatic world of commerce and bureaucracy. He left Gene's office with a clear, if complex, checklist. His first stop was a reputable printing house, where he commissioned the creation of professional-looking letterhead and corporate seals for both "Filip Innovations" and "The Northern Star Import & Export Co." The physical artifacts of legitimacy were as important as the legal documents themselves. A crisp piece of paper with an embossed logo could disarm suspicion far more effectively than a perfect lie.
Next, he visited the Imperial Patent Office, a grand, intimidating building of marble and brass that hummed with the quiet power of the state. He didn't file anything yet—that would require Filip's signature—but he obtained the necessary forms and, more importantly, paid a clerk a few silver shields for a discreet conversation about the current backlog and the names of the most fastidious examiners. It was a small investment in future expediency. He moved through the halls with the air of James Morgan—a man slightly out of his depth but determined, his Swindler's charm ensuring the clerks were more helpful than they might otherwise have been.
His final errand was to a corporate registry, where he formally submitted the documents Gene was finalizing to reactivate "The Northern Star Import & Export Co." and establish "Filip Innovations" as a subsidiary. The process was dry, filled with stamps, signatures, and the smell of old paper. It was the unglamorous plumbing of his scheme, and he oversaw it with meticulous attention. Every "i" dotted, every "t" crossed was another brick in the fortress wall he was building around Filip's genius.
Meanwhile, in his riotously colored office, Gene Takavic was engaged in a different kind of craftsmanship. With Lutz gone, the performative charm had vanished, replaced by the intense focus of a master artisan. He spread Lutz's drafts across his desk, a pot of strong black coffee at his elbow—the Feysacian brandy bottle was back in the drawer, a treat for later.
His pen flew across fresh sheets of vellum, his Sequence 9: Lawyer abilities guiding his hand. He wasn't just rewriting; he was engineering. He took Lutz's bluntly predatory clauses and sculpted them into elegant, legalistic traps.
The blatant "perpetuity" clause in the patent assignment was replaced with a cascading series of definitions and sub-clauses. It now stated that Filip assigned the rights for the "full statutory term," which was then defined in a separate appendix that cross-referenced Feysacian imperial law, which, conveniently, allowed for near-infinite renewals by the filing entity. It was a matryoshka doll of obligation; by the time you unpacked it, you were buried in legalese.
The egregious buy-sell clause was his masterpiece. He didn't remove the trapdoor; he just hid it under a very expensive rug. He created a complex valuation metric based on "projected net revenue of non-core, ancillary patent applications," a figure that would be astronomically expensive to calculate and would inherently be worth very little for a company that, on paper, only had one core patent. He then buried the triggering mechanism for this clause in a section about "material breach of fiduciary duty," defining "material breach" in such a narrow, specific way that it would be almost impossible for Filip to accidentally trigger it. But if Lutz needed to, the lever was still there, now disguised as a supporting beam.
He worked with a smirk, occasionally muttering to himself. "Oh, that's nice and slimy... Let's just tuck this little monster in right here... He's gonna love this." He was, in his element, a virtuoso. By the time he was done, the documents were a work of art—outwardly professional, even generous, but with a hidden architecture of control that was both more robust and more insidious than Lutz's original design.
As dusk settled over St. Millom, both men concluded their tasks. Lutz returned to 17 Vesper Lane, the tangible evidence of his progress locked in his safe. Gene sealed the final drafts in a leather tube, ready for Lutz's review and Filip's unwitting signature. The foundation of their alliance, built on mutual recognition and wary respect, was laid.
That evening, after a quiet dinner during which Eliza chattered about market prices and he responded with appropriate, distracted interest from James Morgan, Lutz retreated to his study. The house was quiet, a sanctuary of manufactured normalcy. He lit a single lamp, its warm glow pushing back the night outside his window, and retrieved the heavy, leather-bound tome from his safe: The Tongue of Titans.
Settling into his chair, he opened the book. The script of Jotun was immediately arresting. Where Hermes felt ancient and fluid, like the flow of time or secret knowledge, Jotun felt primordial. The characters were angular, harsh, carved as if from stone and ice. They didn't seem designed for pen and paper; they looked like they should be scratched onto monoliths with a flint tool. There was a brutal, physical weight to them.
He had learned from Gordon's Primer that languages were not just tools for communication for Beyonders; they were conduits. Hermes was the language of mysticism, secrets, and exchange. Jotun, was similar, albeit in a more primal way.
As he began to sound out the guttural phrases, his voice a low rumble in the quiet room, he felt a distinct and unsettling sensation. The words seemed to resonate not with the air, but with the very stone of the house's foundations, with the latent heat of his own body, with the slow, patient power of the earth itself.
The book confirmed his initial thought: Jotun and Hermes were siblings, both stemming from a time when language was power.
After an hour, he closed the book, the strange, angular script seeming to pulse faintly against the dark leather. His mind, however, would not quiet.
The events of the day swirled together—the crisp legality of the corporate documents, the garish shock of Gene Takavic, the primal rumble of the Jotun tongue. It was a dissonant symphony of his new life. He had spent the day building a cage of paper and law for one man. He had found a possible ally from a forgotten world, a man who could weave traps with words in a way that complemented his own talent for weaving deception.
So many threads, so many plates spinning. As he extinguished the lamp and climbed the stairs to his bedroom, the darkness felt both like a threat and a cloak. He lay in the silence, a thousand things on his mind. Sleep, when it finally came, was a shallow sea, beneath which the currents of intrigue, power, and memory continued their relentless pull.