Chapter 202 Clearing The Board

• They took the war room back.
• Not the table—too obvious—but the old shipping office off the garage with the glass half-painted white and a map of the city pinned to cork. Bishop’s monitors hummed; Decker’s tools lay in neat rows that looked like a museum of bad intentions. Ellerei slid into the high-backed stool at the end like a queen taking a throne she didn’t ask for and would not return. She was still a little pale beneath the attitude, still moving like her ribs argued with stairs—but her eyes were live current again, and that was enough.
• Bishop tapped the first screen. “Donatello’s org broke into four cliques the second the news hit. Two want a ceasefire to see where the money lands. One wants to prove they still bite. One is praying for a new puppeteer.”