Chapter 7 - The Artisan's Arsenal
Vance hauled himself out of the water a mile down the river, shivering violently, coughing up brackish water. The city was beginning to wake up, the first grey light of dawn creeping over the skyline.
He didn't go to a hospital. He didn't go to the police. He went straight back to his subterranean vault.
He stripped off his soaked clothes, his mind operating with cold, lethal clarity. Silas had Elena. Silas operated out of the Apex Club, a heavily fortified luxury penthouse spanning the top three floors of a Wall Street high-rise. An army couldn't breach it conventionally.
But Vance wasn't an army. He was a master jeweler. He understood the fundamental properties of matter. Heat, pressure, and chemical reactions.
Vance opened a specialized chemical cabinet. As a master gem cutter, he regularly used highly dangerous acids and compounds to clean and test stones.
He grabbed a bottle of concentrated nitric acid, mixing it carefully with sulfuric acid and glycerin to create a highly unstable, improvised explosive paste. He packed the paste into small, coin-sized detonators.
Next, he went to his welding station. He dismantled his high-temperature jeweler's micro-torch, modifying the fuel regulator and attaching a localized canister of oxygen and acetylene. It wasn't a gun; it was a handheld, silent plasma cutter capable of melting through reinforced steel in seconds.
Finally, he armored himself. He put on a tactical Kevlar vest he had bought years ago, covering it with a sharp, tailored black suit he kept in a vacuum-sealed bag. He didn't look like a convenience store clerk anymore. He looked like the grim reaper in Italian wool.
He loaded his spare Glock, packing his improvised chemical explosives and the modified plasma torch into a sleek leather briefcase.
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Vance looked at his reflection in the polished steel mirror of the vault. The ghost was dead. The Artisan had returned. He checked his heavy, diamond-encrusted watch. 8:00 PM.
It was time to crash the party.
