The Bone Yard hadn't changed. Not really. More tags. More bodies. The freight cars had rusted deeper, but the bones were the same.
So was the smell—metal, piss, and hopelessness.
Aaron moved like he belonged. Leon flanked him, twitchy, eyes scanning the dark. Fires burned in trash cans. Music bled from a busted boombox half a block down. Laughter—sharp, mean—cut through the air like broken glass.
Eyes were already on them.
Aaron didn't care.
He passed the rail office—now a throne room of trash and ego. They called it "The Box." Inside: a gang that called themselves The Cracked, too desperate to be careful, too strung out to be sane. Burnouts and former muscle who used to kill for Bishop, now forgotten or discarded.
He kicked the door open.
Six heads turned. Four grabbed for weapons.
He didn't flinch.
"Where's Reggie?" he asked.
A laugh from the back. Someone moved. Big, slow, drunk on his own legend.
Reggie rose from the mattress throne like a man made of steak and spite. Tattoos like warning signs. One eye milky. A thick scar carved across his throat like punctuation.
"Aaron fucking Hughes," he said, voice gravel and whiskey. "Last time I saw you, you were bleeding out behind a bar in Bridgeport."
Aaron didn't smile.
"And you were begging Bishop not to cut your balls off. We both had a rough year."
The room tensed.
Reggie grinned, wide and cracked. "So what the hell you doing here, ghost?"
Aaron stepped forward, unbuttoned his coat.
Pulled out the bishop piece.
Held it up like a middle finger to God.
"He's back."
Silence.
Then Reggie's smile dropped. Just for a second.
Aaron kept going.
"And he's playing again. This time, we're flipping the board."
Reggie stared at him. At the piece. At the thing it meant.
Then he laughed. Low. Joyless.
"You ain't got an army, Aaron. You got a twitchy ex-enforcer and a body you haven't found yet."
Aaron stepped closer.
"I don't need an army. I need fire. I need teeth. And I need you to remember what it felt like when he held the leash."
Reggie didn't laugh that time.
He just looked at the piece in Aaron's hand.
And remembered the sound of his own screaming.