Chapter 211: Someone Was Buying My Ammunition Before I Made It

Merrow Supply Consortium didn’t look like a conspiracy. That was the first thing Raven noticed.

The office occupied the ground floor of a narrow building beside a secondary trade road. Carts moved in and out, workers carried crates, and a large board displayed prices, routes, and delivery dates. No hidden tunnels, no hooded guards, nothing that screamed secret organization dedicated to copying biological weapons.

Raven might almost have been disappointed if he didn’t already know that the most useful operations rarely looked interesting from the outside. Valeria stood beside him, reviewing a document she had obtained that morning.

"They purchase for third parties."

"We already know that."

"They also store for third parties, transport for third parties, and sign contracts through different subsidiaries."

Roland studied the building. "That sounds legal."

"It is," Valeria said. "Until someone pays enough that nobody cares what they’re transporting."

Elise watched the carts. "Can we go inside?"

Raven shook his head. "Not yet."

"We could ask questions."

"And tell them someone is asking questions."

Elise sighed. "I’m beginning to understand why talking to you always ends with surveillance."

"It’s less dangerous than walking in and announcing ourselves."

"Also more boring."

Raven looked at her. "I thought Saints valued patience."

"We value many things. That doesn’t mean we enjoy all of them."

Roland smiled. "She’s learning."

Raven decided to ignore him.

---

Valeria gained access to the commercial records without threatening anyone. To Raven, that still counted as a strange form of magic. She went inside alone. Twenty minutes later, she returned carrying three partial copies of shipping manifests and a satisfied expression.

"Don’t ask."

Raven took the papers. "I wasn’t going to."

"That almost disappoints me."

They moved away from the office before examining anything. They found a small tavern with outdoor tables and few enough customers that they could talk without drawing attention. Roland ordered food. Elise sat across from Raven while Valeria spread out the manifests.

The records covered purchases from the last two months. Raven started with dates, then materials, then destinations. He wasn’t looking for names. He was looking for functions.

Magical metals reinforced against deformation. That could mean a hundred things. Crystals capable of retaining mana under pressure. More interesting. Preserved tissues taken from monsters with elastic properties, organs classified by muscular impulse or kinetic discharge, biological conductive structures, reservoirs extracted from lesser creatures.

Nothing matched the Mk.I exactly. That mattered.

Valeria pointed toward one column. "I thought this was what you were looking for."

Raven shook his head. "They don’t understand the weapon."

Elise studied the list. "How do you know?"

Raven picked up one of the sheets. "Because they’re solving problems I already had." He pointed to the first category. "They need a material capable of surviving pressure. Something that stores mana. Something that converts or transmits impulse. Conductivity between parts that never evolved to function together."

Elise glanced toward the wrapped Mk.I beside the table. "Those are your systems."

"No."

She raised an eyebrow. Raven continued. "They’re the problems behind my systems."

That silenced her. Valeria understood first. "They don’t know your components."

"Exactly."

Raven looked back over the lists. The Mk.I used a specific combination because FORGE had allowed him to integrate functions that originally belonged to entirely different creatures. But someone attempting to build something similar didn’t necessarily need an Arc Needle Queen, a Deepwell Toad, or a Stormhorn. They only needed to find different answers to the same problems.

Raven wasn’t sure whether he should respect that or worry about it. He chose worry. It was more useful.

Roland returned with the food. "Did we find the evil genius?"

"No," Raven said.

"Good. Food’s still hot."

Valeria looked at him. "Your priorities are admirable."

"My priorities are achievable."

---

Raven compared the dates. That was where the pattern appeared. The first purchases were small and experimental. After Kharad, the quantities increased, not dramatically, but enough. Raven went through the records again.

"Here."

Valeria leaned closer. "What?"

"Three days after testimony about the Mk.I started circulating."

Purchases of pressure-resistant materials had increased. So had storage crystals. Then came another jump, more recent, after the confrontation with Elise. Valeria traced the figures with one finger.

"They doubled the orders."

"Not exactly." Raven pointed toward different companies. "They split them."

Elise moved closer. There were five separate buyers. None stood out on its own. Together, they did. Valeria narrowed her eyes.

"They’re hiding volume."

Raven nodded. That, he knew. Black Hound had seen the same thing with weapons, explosives, medication, and operations that officially didn’t exist. You never bought a hundred units under one name if you could buy ten units under ten different names. Accounting had something in common with camouflage. It worked best when it looked boring.

"There’s something else here," Valeria said.

One company had increased its purchases exactly two days after Raven’s fight with Elise. Raven checked the name. "How did they get the information that quickly?"

Roland raised a hand slightly. "Mercenaries."

Raven looked at him. "What?"

"Rumors about the fight were already circulating before we left the region. Nobody needs to understand what happened. They only need to hear that the rifle pierced a Champion’s defense."

He was right. Raven had been thinking too much about official reports. Rumors traveled less accurately, but sometimes they traveled faster.

Elise looked uncomfortable. "So my fight with you accelerated this."

Raven looked up. "My rifle shooting you accelerated this."

"I don’t see how that distinction improves the situation."

"It isn’t supposed to."

Valeria gave a short laugh.

---

Elise went over the documents again. "The Church could block several of these purchases."

Raven looked at her. "No."

"At least three categories are subject to religious regulation if they came from contaminated creatures."

"No."

Elise put the paper down. "Are you going to explain why this time?"

Raven rested his forearms on the table. "Yes."

Valeria glanced sideways at him. She had noticed the change. So had Raven. Months ago, he probably would have answered because no and kept working. That wasn’t enough anymore with this group.

"If you block the purchases, someone realizes the purchases were detected. They change suppliers, routes, and names. Maybe they abandon this method entirely."

"That would stop them from continuing their experiments."

"Temporarily."

"Temporarily can save lives."

"If we know lives are in immediate danger, we intervene. Right now, all we know is that someone is buying materials."

Elise held his gaze. "Biological materials."

"That isn’t illegal by itself."

"Some of them are."

"Then the Church arrests a few small merchants while the person actually paying for everything learns we’re watching."

Elise went quiet. Raven pointed toward the manifests. "Right now, they think this system works. I want them to keep thinking that."

"So we can follow them."

"Yes."

"And if they use those materials on people while we’re following them?"

Raven didn’t answer immediately, because that was a real question, not a decorative moral objection. "Then the priority changes."

Elise waited for more. Raven continued. "If we find evidence of immediate victims, we stop watching and act. But I’m not burning a route just because we know it might lead somewhere bad."

Elise lowered her eyes toward the papers. "I don’t like it."

"I don’t need you to."

"I know that already." Raven watched her. She added, "But at least now you explain why."

Valeria raised one eyebrow slightly. Raven decided he didn’t want to know what she was thinking.

---

They continued reviewing names for nearly an hour. Most were ordinary companies. Two appeared to exist solely to receive shipments. A third had records that were too clean. And a fourth appeared somewhere completely different.

Roland was the one who found it. "Wait."

He pulled a sheet from his own bag. It contained information gathered from a Mercenary House weeks earlier. Raven recognized several of the routes. "What do you have?"

Roland placed the two documents side by side. Same name. Harrowgate Preservation & Transit.

Valeria frowned. "I don’t remember them."

"I do," Roland said. He ran a finger down the sheet. "Specialized transport. Perishable cargo. Alchemical materials. Monster organs."

Nothing unusual. Then he pointed toward a smaller notation. "And this."

Raven read it. The company had been investigated months earlier for transporting humanoid tissue without certified origin. The case had been closed for lack of evidence. Elise leaned closer.

"Humanoid?"

Roland nodded. "Doesn’t specify species."

Valeria took the document. "Who closed the investigation?"

"A regional trade official."

Raven looked at the company name again. It wasn’t proof. Not even close. But it was no longer a comfortable coincidence. A company linked to the functional purchases behind the suspected rifle project had also been flagged for moving tissue and organs through clandestine channels.

Raven felt the pieces beginning to move closer together. They still didn’t fit. That was different.

"We have a route," Valeria said.

"We have a direction," Raven corrected.

Elise looked at him. "What’s the difference?"

Raven folded the two documents together. "A route tells you where to go." He put the papers away. "A direction only tells you where to start looking."

Roland pointed toward the food, now cold. "So I assume we’re eating late again tomorrow."

Raven stood. "Probably."

Roland sighed. "I’m starting to understand why Black Hound never appeared in stories about happy people."

Raven looked at him. "There were fewer songs."

"That explains a lot."

Valeria stood as well. Elise was still staring at the company name. Harrowgate Preservation & Transit. Tissue purchases, organs, materials capable of storing, transmitting, and surviving energy, and an old file involving biological cargo without certified origin.

The rifle had started as a question. Now that question was touching something Raven already understood far too well.

A network that treated bodies like inventory.