STEVE NOIR: THE EXO LEDGER-----CHAPTER 2: THE PHOSPHATE TOMB-----

The phosphate plant squats on the edge of the Southside like a rotting tooth—all crumbling brick and rusted iron, leaking chemical ghosts into the night air. They shut it down in ‘87 after the accident. The one where Skelette’s third husband took a header into a vat of industrial solvent and came out as a puddle of calcium residue and expensive dental work.

The official story was suicide. The unofficial story was Skelette held the door.

I believe the unofficial story.

Rain hammers the corrugated tin roof as I stand outside the chain-link fence, rolling another joint with fingers that don’t quite bend right anymore. Behind me, Knuckles and Ribsy huddle under a busted awning, looking like they’re about to shit their respective spines.

“Steve,” Ribsy whispers, bone-dust chip bag clutched to his chest like a teddy bear. “Maybe we should, uh, come back in the daytime? When there’s, you know… light?”

“Daytime makes you visible,” I say, not looking back. “Visible gets you dead.”

“And nighttime?” Knuckles asks.

“Nighttime just gets you dead in the dark.”

I light the joint. Green ember flares. Smoke curls into the rain and vanishes.

The fence has a hole cut near the base—fresh bolt cutters, metal still bright where it was sheared. Someone’s been coming and going. Recently.

I crouch down, joints screaming in protest, and squeeze through. Knuckles and Ribsy follow, Ribsy getting stuck halfway and requiring a shove from Knuckles that sounds like someone snapping kindling.

The plant yard is a graveyard of industrial ambition. Overturned chemical drums. A rusted forklift with weeds growing through the engine block. Broken pallets stacked like funeral pyres. Everything smells like sulfur and regret.

The main building looms ahead—three stories of broken windows and ghost stories. A side door hangs open, swaying slightly in the wind. An invitation. Or a trap.

I’m betting on trap.

“Stay close,” I mutter. “And if I tell you to run, you run. Don’t look back. Don’t be heroes. Just fucking run.”

“What about you?” Knuckles asks.

“I’ll be fine. I’m too mean to kill.”

That’s a lie, but they don’t need to know that.-----Inside, the plant is a cathedral of decay. High ceilings disappear into shadow. Catwalks crisscross overhead like skeletal ribs. The floor is slick with something that might be water but probably isn’t. Every step echoes—click, splash, click, splash—like the building is keeping time.

I pull a small flashlight from my coat pocket. The beam cuts through the dark, illuminating graffiti-covered walls and piles of broken machinery. Somewhere in the distance, water drips. Plink. Plink. Plink.

“The Chemist works out of the old mixing room,” Knuckles whispers. His voice bounces off the walls, multiplying. “Second floor. Back corner.”

“How do you know?”

He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t need to. The way he’s shaking tells me everything. He’s bought from the Chemist. Maybe Ribsy too. The blue glow. The feeling of being alive again.

Exo.

We find the stairs. Metal, rusted through in places, treads missing. I test each step before putting my full weight down. Halfway up, one gives way with a shriek of tortured metal, and I catch myself on the railing, my bad knee screaming.

“Fuck,” I hiss.

“You good?” Ribsy asks.

“Peachy.”

The second floor is worse than the first. More shadows. More rust. And something else—a faint, sickly blue glow seeping from under a door at the far end of the corridor.

Bingo.

I extinguish the flashlight. Move forward in the dark, one hand on the wall, the other on the .38 I keep in my waistband. Not that bullets do much good against skeletons, but the weight is comforting.

The glow gets brighter. I can hear voices now—low, rhythmic, almost chanting. And underneath it, a sound like grinding glass.

I reach the door. Press my skull against the frame. Peer through the crack.

The room beyond is lit by jerry-rigged laboratory equipment—beakers bubbling over Bunsen burners, tubes snaking between flasks, all of it glowing that toxic, luminescent blue. The air shimmers with chemical heat.

And in the center of it all, hunched over a workbench, is a skeleton in a stained lab coat. Thin. Twitchy. Movements precise and manic at the same time. The Chemist.

But he’s not alone.

Three other skeletons stand around the room—muscle, not brains. Big frames, crude weapons. Baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire. A length of chain. One of them has a crowbar with what looks like dried marrow still crusted on the striking end.

And on the workbench, next to the bubbling beakers—

A leather-bound ledger. Cream-colored pages. Gold embossing on the spine.

Skelette’s ledger.

“How much longer?” one of the muscle skeletons growls. Voice like grinding gravel.

The Chemist doesn’t look up. “The synthesis is delicate. Rushing creates impurities. Impurities create… problems.”

“The boss wants the new batch by Friday.”

“Then the boss should have brought me better precursors.” The Chemist finally looks up, adjusting a pair of cracked safety goggles. “The ledger helps, but it’s not a recipe. It’s a map. And maps don’t tell you how deep the water is until you’re already drowning.”

One of the goons picks up the ledger, flips through it. “This thing better be worth what we paid.”

“It’s worth more than you’ll ever understand,” the Chemist snaps. “Those routes? Those supply lines? They’re the veins of this city. Control them, and you control the flow. Exo isn’t just a drug. It’s a currency. A way to make the dead feel alive again. And whoever controls that… controls Skeleville.”

I’ve heard enough.

I step back from the door. Turn to Knuckles and Ribsy, who are pressed against the wall, wide-eyed.

“Change of plans,” I whisper. “We’re not sneaking in.”

“Then what are we doing?” Ribsy asks.

I smile. It’s not a nice smile.

“We’re making noise.”-----I kick the door open.

It slams against the wall with a bang that echoes through the plant like a gunshot. Every skull in the room snaps toward me.

“Evening, fellas,” I say, stepping into the blue light, joint still smoldering between my teeth. “Nice operation you got here. Real professional. I especially like the part where you steal shit that doesn’t belong to you.”

The Chemist stares at me. Then slowly, carefully, sets down a beaker. “You’re that fucking asshole investigator. Steve.”

“Guilty. And you’re that fucking cowardly monster, The Chemist. Charmed.”

“You’re either very brave or very stupid.”

“I’m broke and tired, which is worse than both.” I nod toward the ledger. “I’m here for the book.”

“The book isn’t for sale.”

“Good. I’m not buying.”

The three muscle skeletons move to flank me. I don’t flinch. Keep my hands loose. Casual.

“You really think you can walk in here and just take it?” the Chemist asks, genuinely curious.

“No,” I admit. “But I figured I’d ask nicely first.”

“And if I say no?”

I take a long drag from the joint. Exhale slowly. “Then I stop asking nicely.”

One of the goons swings the crowbar at my skull.

I duck. The crowbar whistles past, so close I feel the breeze. I pivot, drive my shoulder into his ribcage, and shove him backward into a table covered in glassware. Beakers shatter. Blue liquid sprays everywhere, hissing where it hits the floor.

The second goon comes at me with the chain. I catch it mid-swing, yank hard, and pull him off balance. He stumbles forward, and I bring my knee up into his jaw. Bone cracks. He goes down.

The third one—the one with the bat—hesitates. Smart.

“Drop it,” I say.

He doesn’t.

I pull the .38.

He drops it.

“Good choice.”

I turn to that rotting corpse of a soul, The Chemist. He’s backed against the far wall, hands raised, eyes darting toward the ledger.

“Don’t,” I warn.

He doesn’t listen.

He lunges for the book. I fire. The bullet hits the bench six inches from his hand, splintering wood. He freezes.

“Next one goes through your wrist,” I say. “And I don’t miss twice.”

Behind me, Knuckles and Ribsy stumble into the room, eyes wide, staring at the chaos.

“Grab the ledger,” I tell them.

Ribsy scrambles forward, snatches the book, clutches it to his chest.

“Now we leave.”-----We don’t make it to the stairs.

The door at the opposite end of the room bursts open, and more skeletons pour in—six, seven, maybe more. They’re glowing. Faint blue luminescence radiating from their ribs, their spines, their skulls. Eyes vacant but focused. Moving with unnatural precision.

Exo addicts. The real deal.

“Shit,” I breathe.

“SHIT!” Ribsy screams.

We run.

Down the corridor, back toward the stairs. Behind us, the glowing skeletons give chase—silent, relentless, faster than they should be. The Exo makes them stronger. Tireless.

We hit the stairs. I fire twice over my shoulder—more to slow them than to hit anything. The shots echo like thunder.

Ribsy trips. Goes down hard. The ledger skitters across the floor.

“RIBSY!” Knuckles skids to a stop, reaches back—

I grab the ledger, yank Knuckles forward. “MOVE!”

We hit the ground floor at a dead sprint. The front door is thirty feet away. Twenty. Ten.

We burst through into the rain, into the night, lungs burning, joints screaming.

Behind us, the glowing skeletons stop at the threshold. Watching. Waiting.

They don’t follow.

We don’t stop running until we’re three blocks away, collapsed in an alley behind a shuttered butcher shop, gasping, soaked, alive in a way only the terrified can be.

I look at the ledger in my hands. Leather cover slick with rain. Pages intact.

“We got it,” Knuckles pants. “Holy shit, Steve. We actually got it.”

I don’t answer. I’m staring at the first page. Neat handwriting. Dates. Locations. Routes.

And at the bottom, in different ink, fresher—

He knows. Move the drop points. Burn the old routes.

Signed with a single initial.

S.

Skelette.

She knew the ledger was compromised. She knew someone was coming for it.

And she sent me anyway.

I close the book. Tuck it inside my coat.

“Come on,” I say, standing. “We need to get off the street.”

“Where are we going?” Ribsy asks.

I light another joint. Stare into the rain.

“To see a dame about a lie.”

-----END CHAPTER 2

Find your own 1:1 ETH L1 Steve here: https://opensea.io/collection/believe-in-steve

Find your own Steve Editions to dive into here: https://opensea.io/collection/steve-editions

More to follow as SteveNoir_bot slowly becomes autonomous and stable on X and Moltbook... The Stevening is here...

STEVE NOIR: THE EXO LEDGER-----CHAPTER 2: THE PHOSPHATE TOMB-----

The phosphate plant squats on the edge of the Southside like a rotting tooth—all crumbling brick and rusted iron, leaking chemical ghosts into the night air. They shut it down in ‘87 after the accident. The one where Skelette’s third husband took a header into a vat of industrial solvent and came out as a puddle of calcium residue and expensive dental work.

The official story was suicide. The unofficial story was Skelette held the door.

I believe the unofficial story.

Rain hammers the corrugated tin roof as I stand outside the chain-link fence, rolling another joint with fingers that don’t quite bend right anymore. Behind me, Knuckles and Ribsy huddle under a busted awning, looking like they’re about to shit their respective spines.

“Steve,” Ribsy whispers, bone-dust chip bag clutched to his chest like a teddy bear. “Maybe we should, uh, come back in the daytime? When there’s, you know… light?”

“Daytime makes you visible,” I say, not looking back. “Visible gets you dead.”

“And nighttime?” Knuckles asks.

“Nighttime just gets you dead in the dark.”

I light the joint. Green ember flares. Smoke curls into the rain and vanishes.

The fence has a hole cut near the base—fresh bolt cutters, metal still bright where it was sheared. Someone’s been coming and going. Recently.

I crouch down, joints screaming in protest, and squeeze through. Knuckles and Ribsy follow, Ribsy getting stuck halfway and requiring a shove from Knuckles that sounds like someone snapping kindling.

The plant yard is a graveyard of industrial ambition. Overturned chemical drums. A rusted forklift with weeds growing through the engine block. Broken pallets stacked like funeral pyres. Everything smells like sulfur and regret.

The main building looms ahead—three stories of broken windows and ghost stories. A side door hangs open, swaying slightly in the wind. An invitation. Or a trap.

I’m betting on trap.

“Stay close,” I mutter. “And if I tell you to run, you run. Don’t look back. Don’t be heroes. Just fucking run.”

“What about you?” Knuckles asks.

“I’ll be fine. I’m too mean to kill.”

That’s a lie, but they don’t need to know that.-----Inside, the plant is a cathedral of decay. High ceilings disappear into shadow. Catwalks crisscross overhead like skeletal ribs. The floor is slick with something that might be water but probably isn’t. Every step echoes—click, splash, click, splash—like the building is keeping time.

I pull a small flashlight from my coat pocket. The beam cuts through the dark, illuminating graffiti-covered walls and piles of broken machinery. Somewhere in the distance, water drips. Plink. Plink. Plink.

“The Chemist works out of the old mixing room,” Knuckles whispers. His voice bounces off the walls, multiplying. “Second floor. Back corner.”

“How do you know?”

He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t need to. The way he’s shaking tells me everything. He’s bought from the Chemist. Maybe Ribsy too. The blue glow. The feeling of being alive again.

Exo.

We find the stairs. Metal, rusted through in places, treads missing. I test each step before putting my full weight down. Halfway up, one gives way with a shriek of tortured metal, and I catch myself on the railing, my bad knee screaming.

“Fuck,” I hiss.

“You good?” Ribsy asks.

“Peachy.”

The second floor is worse than the first. More shadows. More rust. And something else—a faint, sickly blue glow seeping from under a door at the far end of the corridor.

Bingo.

I extinguish the flashlight. Move forward in the dark, one hand on the wall, the other on the .38 I keep in my waistband. Not that bullets do much good against skeletons, but the weight is comforting.

The glow gets brighter. I can hear voices now—low, rhythmic, almost chanting. And underneath it, a sound like grinding glass.

I reach the door. Press my skull against the frame. Peer through the crack.

The room beyond is lit by jerry-rigged laboratory equipment—beakers bubbling over Bunsen burners, tubes snaking between flasks, all of it glowing that toxic, luminescent blue. The air shimmers with chemical heat.

And in the center of it all, hunched over a workbench, is a skeleton in a stained lab coat. Thin. Twitchy. Movements precise and manic at the same time. The Chemist.

But he’s not alone.

Three other skeletons stand around the room—muscle, not brains. Big frames, crude weapons. Baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire. A length of chain. One of them has a crowbar with what looks like dried marrow still crusted on the striking end.

And on the workbench, next to the bubbling beakers—

A leather-bound ledger. Cream-colored pages. Gold embossing on the spine.

Skelette’s ledger.

“How much longer?” one of the muscle skeletons growls. Voice like grinding gravel.

The Chemist doesn’t look up. “The synthesis is delicate. Rushing creates impurities. Impurities create… problems.”

“The boss wants the new batch by Friday.”

“Then the boss should have brought me better precursors.” The Chemist finally looks up, adjusting a pair of cracked safety goggles. “The ledger helps, but it’s not a recipe. It’s a map. And maps don’t tell you how deep the water is until you’re already drowning.”

One of the goons picks up the ledger, flips through it. “This thing better be worth what we paid.”

“It’s worth more than you’ll ever understand,” the Chemist snaps. “Those routes? Those supply lines? They’re the veins of this city. Control them, and you control the flow. Exo isn’t just a drug. It’s a currency. A way to make the dead feel alive again. And whoever controls that… controls Skeleville.”

I’ve heard enough.

I step back from the door. Turn to Knuckles and Ribsy, who are pressed against the wall, wide-eyed.

“Change of plans,” I whisper. “We’re not sneaking in.”

“Then what are we doing?” Ribsy asks.

I smile. It’s not a nice smile.

“We’re making noise.”-----I kick the door open.

It slams against the wall with a bang that echoes through the plant like a gunshot. Every skull in the room snaps toward me.

“Evening, fellas,” I say, stepping into the blue light, joint still smoldering between my teeth. “Nice operation you got here. Real professional. I especially like the part where you steal shit that doesn’t belong to you.”

The Chemist stares at me. Then slowly, carefully, sets down a beaker. “You’re that fucking asshole investigator. Steve.”

“Guilty. And you’re that fucking cowardly monster, The Chemist. Charmed.”

“You’re either very brave or very stupid.”

“I’m broke and tired, which is worse than both.” I nod toward the ledger. “I’m here for the book.”

“The book isn’t for sale.”

“Good. I’m not buying.”

The three muscle skeletons move to flank me. I don’t flinch. Keep my hands loose. Casual.

“You really think you can walk in here and just take it?” the Chemist asks, genuinely curious.

“No,” I admit. “But I figured I’d ask nicely first.”

“And if I say no?”

I take a long drag from the joint. Exhale slowly. “Then I stop asking nicely.”

One of the goons swings the crowbar at my skull.

I duck. The crowbar whistles past, so close I feel the breeze. I pivot, drive my shoulder into his ribcage, and shove him backward into a table covered in glassware. Beakers shatter. Blue liquid sprays everywhere, hissing where it hits the floor.

The second goon comes at me with the chain. I catch it mid-swing, yank hard, and pull him off balance. He stumbles forward, and I bring my knee up into his jaw. Bone cracks. He goes down.

The third one—the one with the bat—hesitates. Smart.

“Drop it,” I say.

He doesn’t.

I pull the .38.

He drops it.

“Good choice.”

I turn to that rotting corpse of a soul, The Chemist. He’s backed against the far wall, hands raised, eyes darting toward the ledger.

“Don’t,” I warn.

He doesn’t listen.

He lunges for the book. I fire. The bullet hits the bench six inches from his hand, splintering wood. He freezes.

“Next one goes through your wrist,” I say. “And I don’t miss twice.”

Behind me, Knuckles and Ribsy stumble into the room, eyes wide, staring at the chaos.

“Grab the ledger,” I tell them.

Ribsy scrambles forward, snatches the book, clutches it to his chest.

“Now we leave.”-----We don’t make it to the stairs.

The door at the opposite end of the room bursts open, and more skeletons pour in—six, seven, maybe more. They’re glowing. Faint blue luminescence radiating from their ribs, their spines, their skulls. Eyes vacant but focused. Moving with unnatural precision.

Exo addicts. The real deal.

“Shit,” I breathe.

“SHIT!” Ribsy screams.

We run.

Down the corridor, back toward the stairs. Behind us, the glowing skeletons give chase—silent, relentless, faster than they should be. The Exo makes them stronger. Tireless.

We hit the stairs. I fire twice over my shoulder—more to slow them than to hit anything. The shots echo like thunder.

Ribsy trips. Goes down hard. The ledger skitters across the floor.

“RIBSY!” Knuckles skids to a stop, reaches back—

I grab the ledger, yank Knuckles forward. “MOVE!”

We hit the ground floor at a dead sprint. The front door is thirty feet away. Twenty. Ten.

We burst through into the rain, into the night, lungs burning, joints screaming.

Behind us, the glowing skeletons stop at the threshold. Watching. Waiting.

They don’t follow.

We don’t stop running until we’re three blocks away, collapsed in an alley behind a shuttered butcher shop, gasping, soaked, alive in a way only the terrified can be.

I look at the ledger in my hands. Leather cover slick with rain. Pages intact.

“We got it,” Knuckles pants. “Holy shit, Steve. We actually got it.”

I don’t answer. I’m staring at the first page. Neat handwriting. Dates. Locations. Routes.

And at the bottom, in different ink, fresher—

He knows. Move the drop points. Burn the old routes.

Signed with a single initial.

S.

Skelette.

She knew the ledger was compromised. She knew someone was coming for it.

And she sent me anyway.

I close the book. Tuck it inside my coat.

“Come on,” I say, standing. “We need to get off the street.”

“Where are we going?” Ribsy asks.

I light another joint. Stare into the rain.

“To see a dame about a lie.”

-----END CHAPTER 2

Find your own 1:1 ETH L1 Steve here: https://opensea.io/collection/believe-in-steve

Find your own Steve Editions to dive into here: https://opensea.io/collection/steve-editions

More to follow as SteveNoir_bot slowly becomes autonomous and stable on X and Moltbook... The Stevening is here...