I get home safe and sound and take a shower, to wash the exhaust and urchin grime off me. I like bathing. A lot of people do, but me especially. Sometimes I think that if I could spend all day in a bath, I’d probably do it. Water doesn’t just clear away physical impurities - it washes away noise, and doubt, and mean looks and bad thoughts. It’s a grounding thing. And I always seem to need a hell of a lot of grounding for a guy so heavy he needs a reinforced toothbrush.

As the warm water runs over me in my dim bathroom cave, I think about my problems. I’ve picked up a lot of them, recently. In my head, I make a list. And not what you’re thinking of when you read “mental list”, I mean a literal text document that hovers in my field of vision even as my eyes are closed. I’m one of those people that makes lists. It’s a nervous habit. Having the words in front of me makes them seem more manageable. And being a cyborg at least takes pen and paper out of the equation.

Get money and pay Electrofuck before he kills me.

Tennima’s tough-love pep talk was illuminating and everything, but it doesn’t change the reality of the situation. In fact, it just makes it harder. I still need that money. And I need it quick. I may not love being alive, but I still like it enough that I might as well put forth a token effort to hang onto it. I guess. This leads into some of the later points.

Find that murderer.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I do want to track this cat down for moralistic reasons. But the Watch is offering a bounty of about a million bucks for a definitive arrest, and that’ll square me up just fine. This isn’t exactly going to be a snap of the fingers, though. I’m not technically at a dead end in the investigation, but I have reached the “brute force” part of the procedure already, which is the last resort option. I need more information, and if Emaphra isn’t able to dig anything up, I’ll have to try a different tack.

Dodge the Brotherhood.

This is a new one, much to my chagrin. Tennima’s right, no matter how much I wish she wasn’t. I can’t take their money. And that means some kind of reprisal. It’s not in the Brotherhood’s character to forget or let things go. They wanted me off the case for a reason, and if their first plan doesn’t work, they’re going to deploy a second. Then a third. None of these are going to be pleasant for me. I’m going to have to actually put forth cognitive energy and vigilance to keep myself safe for once. Corundum is one of the only fish in this pond that’s bigger than me, and he’s got hundreds of friends.

And unless even more fun stuff happens to me soon, those are all the things I’m currently wriggling beneath. I’ll have to get rid of them if I want to get back to my blessedly simple life of doing absolutely nothing. If that’s what I want at all. But now probably isn’t the time to be thinking about that.

Now very clean, I put on some underwear (cherry red with white and blue hearts) and check the messages on my computer.

You might be wondering why I even keep a computer when I’ve got a perfectly good one lodged in my head meat. You’re very observant, reader. Maybe too observant. But I’ll tell you anyway.

The answer is that it’s dangerous. The knowledge pool, the common computer network that the entire city uses, is used by the entire city. And the Brotherhood invented it, because who else. My brain is encrypted, both by specifically-designed programs and the inherent difficulty of getting a brain and computer to communicate. But the fact remains that there is a bridge in my head connecting electronics to meat, and one can affect the other. These are the risks you have to accept when you get an intracranial data platform installed. I know one guy that got impatient with his cerebral interface, went too fast while pulling overtime trying to fill a big order of automechs. He lives in a hospital now. Still thinks his name is HMT07-953B, the poor guy.

An enterprising hacker with enough knowhow could upload any kind of worm into my head. Manipulate my senses, get into my ocular processing card and make me hallucinate, make subtle changes to my behavioral thought patterns, maybe even induce seizures or something worse. I’m pretty resilient, so I’d rebound from a lot of the physically damaging stuff, but it’s the deception I’m worried about. Even a brain with rapid regenerative capabilities can still be tricked, and if it was done right, there wouldn’t even be any way for me to tell it was happening in the first place. So, I try to use my head’s networking capabilities sparingly.

To my surprise, I’ve got three messages. I don’t think I’ve ever had that many at once before. Am I starting to become… popular? My life is in such shambles.

The first is from the Brotherhood. Corundum making good on his promise to follow up. I could reply with a refusal, but that would give them an immediate tipoff. I’ll just ignore them and go about my business. That way they’ll actually have to capitalize on their surveillance, and it might buy me at least a little time before they start to breathe down my neck.

The second is from Emaphra. She says she’s fine, and her probing has turned up something interesting. After asking around, she’s found that two pyromancers are missing. Vanished, apparently - none of their friends or family know where they are. One went poof about a month ago, the other a week ago. And that’s not all - apparently there’s a hydromancer missing as well, disappearing under equally sudden and mysterious circumstances. Could be unrelated. People go missing all the time for all kinds of reasons. But very interesting nonetheless. I get the details and tell her thanks.

The third message is from Lieutenant Deepwell.

15:33

From: Lieutenant Inspector Dathrun Deepwell, Special Investigations, 10th Precinct (ddeepwell/si/10p/Watch)

To: Baulric Featherlight (KingScumbird/arcreg)

got another one. different flavor, just as tasty. body moves at 8pm tonight. 13, north ward, west 33rd st before then, if you’re still hungry.

My heart speeds up, just a little. Another one. Could be unrelated. Could be. But I’ll bet my partially synthetic lower jaw that it fucking isn’t. It’s just after six right now. I’ve still got time.

Let’s go see what our ghoul’s serving up now.

Off the train and out on the main thoroughfare, Sector Thirteen is a neon explosion of activity. Shops, bars, music in the streets. All the towering slum stacks held together with sheet metal and wire. I haven't had much of a reason to come here, really. When I was a kid, my parents always told me to stay out of Sector Thirteen, because it was dangerous. I've long since realized the irony of them telling me this, considering we lived in the designated inhospitable wasteland of Wellspring City. Admittedly, Nineteen was fairly quiet, but that's mostly because the city's criminal element (which mostly lives in Thirteen) has no reason to go there. Everyone's too poor and there's nothing to steal, unless you really like coal, steel ingots, barrels of industrial chemicals, or lung cancer.

Being here now, it actually seems pretty fun. Not exactly high society, but people seem to be making the most of it. It's hard to describe. Most of the Outer Ring districts are impoverished to one degree or another, and the attitudes of the people there reflect that. In places like Nineteen and Fourteen, the misery and resentment are so thick you could scoop some out of the gutters and make a very bitter, spicy soup out of it. But Thirteen seems... happier, somehow. Looking around, it doesn't look like there's all that much to be happy about, but like I said, it's hard to describe. The mood of the place is different. Maybe they dump opiates in the water system or something.

I head southwest, deeper into the sector, and catch a tram. No one else is on it. The platform dings and automatically rattles off in the direction of the northern district.

They call this place the Night Sector for a reason. It’s the only one that operates on an inverse timetable from the rest of the city. This isn’t really an official rule or anything as far as I understand it, it’s just how it wound up over time. If you work nights, it’s easier to live in Thirteen, because everything’s open, because everyone else works nights too. This leaves the place with a different kind of energy. It’s sundown now. Everywhere else in the city, people are getting off work, ready to relax and unwind. Here, everyone just woke up.

This also leaves Thirteeners with something of a reputation. They’re night people. The backwards schedule results in a cultural barrier that’s even stronger than the literal walls that separate the sector from everywhere else. Thirteeners all seem like they know one another. They’re so tight-knit together in their lamplit shadows that they tend to look at outsiders with a bit less trust than usual, which wasn’t much to begin with. And that attitude leads to the external stereotype that Thirteeners are all… aberrant. This is a secret district, full of whispers, for everyone that lives under the moon. A criminal clubhouse for vampires, ghouls, ogres, ghosts, and every other dark creature that just doesn’t feel like they fit anywhere else.

I’ll be honest, it’s dirty and ramshackle, but I really like the place. Maybe I should sell my hole and move into a shack here. I might end up more comfortable.

Deepwell wasn’t very specific with his instructions, so I get off the tram and wander around the general area of west 33rd until I see some Watch trucks parked on a curb. They’re pretty easy to identify, basically tanks with wheels. Meant to both carry the bulk of a few Centurions and also serve as a mobile base and fort in the event that things boil over. Looking at how the Watch outfit their vehicles, you’d think we have riots every four seconds in Wellspring City. But we don’t. If the opposition has tanks, and their soldiers are wearing tanks, rioting seems a lot less desirable.

Speaking of which, I spy a couple big armored boys standing at the mouth of a back alley off the main thoroughfare, so I head over. The place doesn’t look much different from the one in Sector Ten apart from being dirtier and less modern. After a while, all these utility alleys start blending together.

As I stride my way up to one of the sentries, he shoulders his autocannon, holds out a hand in a very clear “stop right there” gesture, and his amplified voice booms from the speaker grille in his helmet.

“Halt, citizen. This is a crime scene. Entry is prohibited. Move along.”

I stop and look him square in the visor where his eyes presumably are. For most people, Centurions are pretty scary. And don’t get me wrong, they are. Scarier than Neutralizers, if you’ve never seen a Neutralizer in action. They’re nearly the size of Wellwardens, almost as armored, and the guns they carry can blow a human being into raspberry jam with a single well-placed shot.

Their bulky armor makes them look pretty huge, but I’m pretty huge too. I’m one of the only people in the city that you could mistake for a Centurion if you could only make out my silhouette. I can look these guys right in the eye.

But I don’t bother engaging the Guard Brothers in appealing my case. I step a distance away and ring the Lieutenant’s communicator.

After a second I hear his voice in my head. “Lieutenant Deepwell.”

“I’m here. Can you escort me past the goons?”

“One second.” He hangs up.

Deepwell pokes his head from around a turn in the alley and shouts, “Sentries!”

They turn to face him.

“The creature with the glowing green eyes is, in fact, a consultant of mine. Let him pass.”

The Centurions look at one another, shrug the familiar relieved shrug of no longer having to care about something, and step aside.

I stroll past them as cool as you please and meet up with the Lieutenant. This alley takes a left turn at its end, and there I can see the hanging yellow curtain and the half-dozen or so officers milling around it.

Deepwell, his vitae shining as bright as it ever does, holds his hand out. We shake. He always insists on that.

I glare down at him. “So I’m a creature now, huh?”

He smirks. “We all are. You’re just honest enough to wear it out in the open. Uneventful trip?”

“Yeah. What’ve you got?”

He shakes his head. “Some other stuff first. Didn’t want to talk in the pool. Any luck with the burnt vic?”

I shrug. “Not much. I did some poking of my own. One of my contacts in the community told me an interesting rumor. Two pyromancers are missing, apparently. Haven’t been seen in a while.”

The big man strokes his beard. “That is interesting. Names?”

“Monnert Littlerock and Aklei Horsebreaker. Haven’t looked them up yet, I got the info at the same time you summoned me.”

“Hm. Promising lead. Speaking of, we got an ID on the skeleton.”

My eyebrows pop up. “I’m guessing that wasn’t easy.”

He nods, and says while lighting a smoke, “Dental records. We’re lucky the killer didn’t go further than he did. That and some third party testimony.” He puffs a few times, then continues, “Sidri Rediron has apparently been missing for around three days. We compared the samples and they match. Measurements, too. The lab’s seeing about getting a good genetic flag from what’s left of him to confirm, but it’s all but certain.”

I blink. “Rediron? As in… ?”

Deepwell blows a stream of smoke, his face somewhere between exhausted, apprehensive, and confident. “Yeah. Lord Rediron’s son. His youngest, specifically.”

My hand goes up, and wipes my face. “That’s… very bad.”

“It might be even worse than you think. You know anything about Sidri?”

“No. Should I?”

Deepwell shakes his head. “Probably not. But you know all about Sidri Rediron if you’re a metalworker. Kid was young, but he was passionate. Very, very vocal about unionization and working conditions in the foundries. An activist, you could say. Was gathering a pretty serious following. The working class in Fifteen adored him, saw him as something of a hero. Son of the Lord, but fought for the little guy. I guess he was about to propose a major labor regulations overhaul to his dad and the rest of the Tribunal, but… looks like he never got the chance.”

The gears in my head start spinning, all at different speeds and in different directions.

Deepwell continues, “The story hasn’t been broken to the public, but it will, soon. Once they catch wind of how Sidri died… well. I think you know.”

“Fuck.”

“Quite fuck indeed. If it’d just been some nobody, it probably wouldn’t have amounted to all that much. But not only was Sidri district royalty, he was popular. I’ve heard the word inquest buzzing around the higher offices. It’s not a guarantee or anything, but you know the Brotherhood.”

Inquest. The exact thing I wanted to prevent. More than four hundred heads either behind bars or lined up on the chopping block. And Em’s is one of them. All because I wanted a paycheck.

“How long until the media gets a hold of this?”

“We’re waiting until we have some more definite details so we have something to tell the public, but we’re not going to be able to stall for long. Lord Rediron wants to bury his son’s bones for all to see, and after that, he’s going to want justice. Loud, angry, steelworker baron justice. I’d say two days at the absolute most.”

“What’s the motive here? The only people that benefit from Sidri’s death would be the foundry owners. If he was all about worker’s benefits, the fat cats would have hated him. A desperate pyromancer mercenary would make the perfect scapegoat.”

Deepwell taps his ash on the greasy concrete. “That’s the theory. But until we find your Littlerock and Horsebreaker, we can’t know for sure.”

Something occurs to me. Should I tell him? I already might have jeopardized hundreds of lives by not keeping my mouth shut. But as far as I can tell, this bit of information only endangers me. And I think I should take my fair share.

“The Brotherhood tried to pay me off the bounty today.”

The Lieutenant’s brows knit. “What?”

I tell him the whole story, about Corundum paying me a housecall. Once I’m done, Deepwell frowns in puzzlement and takes out his little notebook.

“That doesn’t make any sense at all. What did you say the guy’s name was?”

“NH3-588 Corundum Vengeant.”

He writes it down, then puts the notebook away. “I’m assuming you can prove this?”

“I’ve got it on camera.”

“Why would the Brotherhood want you away from this investigation? And why would they pay you to do it? … And come to think, why wouldn’t you take the money?”

I frown at him. “I almost did. But then I had a change of heart. It stinks. Whatever the Brotherhood gains by me not being involved, I don’t want them to have it. I just have to do the work and I can take the Mayor’s money anyway. Would you take a bribe from the Brotherhood?”

He raises his eyebrows appreciatively. I can’t tell if he’s surprised, or impressed, or neither. “I guess I wouldn’t. So you’re on their shit list now, just by talking to me.”

“They’re probably watching me right now. Wooooo!” I waggle my fingers spookily. “... No, but seriously, they probably do have me under surveillance. It’s what I would do.”

Deepwell scowls. “My ass. If I catch the Brotherhood interfering with an ongoing investigation, I’ll throw an injunction at the Tribunal faster than a scumbird that’s seen a dead cat. I’ll look into it. In the meantime, I’ll set you up with some scramblers, courtesy of the precinct. I can’t have those creepy twidgets spying on one of my favorite pawns.”

I level an unimpressed look at him. “You’re all heart, Lieutenant.”

He steps on his smoke. “Ready for the main attraction? It’s not as impressive as the last one, but it’s… still pretty weird. Almost magical, one might say.”

I scoff. “I’ll be the judge of that. Lead the way.”

He ushers me behind the curtain, and I come face to face with a sight that is less spectacular than the last, but somehow more unsettling because of it. No theatrics. Just death, from a strange place.

Lying on the grimy alley pavement is a corpse. A portly man, brown hair, probably early thirties, in dark clothes. Eyes open, and dull in death, staring at nothing. On his back, arms and legs splayed slightly out. Hair matted down, skin gray and pale, bruised and discolored in some spots on his neck and arms. That’s not what’s unusual. Corpses are one of the most usual things in the world.

What’s odd is that he’s completely soaked.

His clothes are sodden wet, and his body is bloated, as though he’s been left in water for a long time. The dirt and grease of the alley have mixed with a great volume of water to form a filmy layer of mud all over the ground. The machinery and pipes all over the walls, however, are strangely clean. Like they’ve been power-washed recently. Some of them are still dripping.

Em said a hydromancer was missing.

“What do you think?”

Without taking my eyes off the corpse, I reply, “Well, detective, my immediate impression is that this man has been drowned. A lot.”

“Woah. You should apply to the Academy. Something tells me you’d be ace at this whole crime solving thing.”

I glare at him. “Why don’t you tell me what you’ve got so far, Inspector Extraordinaire?”

He opens his little notebook again. “Contents of the vic’s wallet have him as Mr. Spurlon Whiteyear, thirty-four. That’s his birth name, anyway. Lately he’s been going by, uh... ‘CTI7-057 Tourmaline Inscriptor’.”

My head twitches reflexively. “This guy’s Brotherhood?”

“We checked, he’s got the chip in his arm. He’s new. Only joined about a year ago, according to the records, which is why he still looks kind of normal. CTI7 translates to Catechist Inculcator, seventh rank. He’s a priest. Or, was.”

The son of a city baron and worker’s rights activist, and a low-ranking Brotherhood holy man. What’s the pattern here? How do these relate, if they do at all?

“Body was called in by a woman walking her dog, a few hours ago. There was a lot more water here before it evaporated - she saw it from the street and thought there’d been a leak.”

He shuts his notebook. I ask, “Was he like this when you showed up? In this position?”

“No, the examiner’s looked at him already. Here’s a picture of how we found him.”

He reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a photo. It shows the drenched dead man crumpled ignobly in the corner of the alley, face pressed into the wall and limbs tangled at unnatural angles.

Deepwell continues, “Examiner said he’d need to perform the autopsy for all the details, but it didn’t take him much to conclude that the cause of death was drowning. The guy’s lungs were completely full of water. And he’s been dead for less than a day. Plenty of physical trauma to go with it, too - broken wrist, wrenched neck, two cracked ribs, dislocated hip joint, and his lips, eyelids, and nostrils are pretty torn up. Doc said if he didn’t know any better, he’d say the guy’d been thrown off a waterfall. Then taken back up and thrown off it a few more times for good measure.”

He looks at me and asks, “How’s a guy come across a violent death by riptide in a Sector Thirteen alley, Featherlight?”

I shake my head. “Either he drowned somewhere in the Subterrane and someone brought him here, or hydromancy. And not from some amateur street mage, either. You need power to do this.”

“Can you verify one of those two theories for me?”

“Yeah. Hush a minute while I go a-verifyin’.”

I close my eyes again, cross my arms, and extend my senses toward the corpse, my vitae rolling outward and across the ground like a swarm of questing termites.

There’s no vitae left in the body. Not from Mr. Tourmaline, at least. His soul’s long gone, and without that spark, the vitae has nothing to call home. But, this being a nutrient-filled dead body, there are things living here. Microbes. Very faint. I have to squint my essence hard in order to be able to detect their presence at all, but they’re there, in the man’s guts and other places throughout the newly-putrefying meat.

Mixed in with their signal is what I’d hoped not to find. Not a lot, but it’s there, the residue flowing in and around the germs. A shimmering blue-green energy that smells like rain, and the sea, and morning dew. The rushing taste of it leaves the mind feeling clearer, and just slightly more refreshed.

Water energy, in its pure form. Not water, but water’s soul, the substance that causes water. I’ve never encountered it firsthand before, but there’s no doubt what this is. This man was killed by someone with the power to control deluvium.

My senses reel back into my body, and I feel a little more tired than I had. Sensing things like this isn’t free - it takes energy, and that’s something I don’t have much of these days.

I open my eyes. “Hydromancy. The energy’s all over it. No mistake.”

Looking as grim as me, the Lieutenant replies, “You’re sure?”

“Double sure. There was magic here. And someone used it to kill. Again.”

Deepwell sighs, and writes something down in his notebook. I stay silent, staring at the man who drowned in the middle of the desert.

“Those contacts of yours wouldn’t happen to know of any water mages that have also gone mysteriously missing lately, would they? That’d be convenient. And helpful.”

Without looking away from Mr. Whiteyear’s lifeless eyes, I respond, “No. I’m going to have to ask around some more. See what I can find.”

I don’t gain anything from telling him any more than I already have. Locating criminals in Wellspring City is a cutthroat business - the bounty goes to whoever finds the suspect first. With this, the game has changed. I need the money more than Deepwell needs the points on his next performance review.

And I’m starting to think that if an arcanist doesn’t have at least one hand in resolving this situation, our reputation as a whole is going to start circling the drain faster than it already is.

The next morning, I’m sitting at home, staring dumbly at nothing and going over the situation in my head.

I took the pocket change I got from showing up at the crime scene and bought some food. Not much, but some. A few things to keep the cobwebs in my pantry company and keep me from guttering out like a candle in a stiff wind. I idly munch some crispy squash fries and run my oculars over the cracks in my wall, thinking.

After I got back, I didn’t waste any time in messaging Em with what I’d found. She hasn’t gotten back to me yet, and it’s sending little spider legs of paranoia scuttling up and down the back of my neck. If I don’t hear from her soon, I’m going out myself.

A death by fire, and now a death by water. Two elements, two killers. And two bodies that couldn’t have less to do with one another.

I get why an arcanist in this city would be disgruntled. We’ve got plenty of reasons. The only reason I’m not a frothing mess of indignant rage all the time is because I’m an easygoing realist with a very high threshold for discontentment. A lazy coward, in other words. I figure if you’re going to rage against the machine, you’d better be sure that you’re going to survive when the machine inevitably rages back. And I’ve never been that confident. So I play nice. Mostly.

I know other people don’t see it like I do. This wouldn’t be the first time some angry mages decided to try to toss off the shackles of their oppression and stage their own little anti-Reclamation, and it won’t be the last. Hopefully. It’s just that it never works. We’re outnumbered. Hilariously, miserably outnumbered, on all sides, by utter millions. Each time someone’s tried, they’ve gotten Neutralized or Watched or… Wellwarden’d. Either dismembered or thrown in the Arcanix to die a long death in the dark.

I try to put myself in their shoes. Think like a rebel for once.

Killing a Brotherhood priest, I understand. If I was a mage out for vengeant blood, they’re the first place I’d stop. And it probably wouldn’t matter much who it was, depending on how angry and sloppy I am - first Brotherhood guy that walks into the wrong alley, he’s mine. Sure. I can see that. It’s stupid, but it’s comprehensible.

But bumping off Sidri Rediron? How does that work? There are only a few reasons I can come up with for why these guys would want Rediron dead, and none of them are particularly watertight. Going with the Sloppy Idiots hypothesis, it’s possible that Sidri was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. One of our cabal of angry insurrectionists was skulking around Sector Ten, saw some wealthy-looking young guy in nice clothes, followed him, and vaporized him. Again, pretty stupid, but it’s possible these guys have turned up their nose at Logic Salad in favor of the much more satisfying Deep-Fried Rage Burger Deluxe with a side of Moral Justification Fries.

Assuming our perps aren’t letting their mental diets go directly to their asses, the only profit I can see from killing Sidri is the publicity. Making a statement. We’re the ones with the real power, we can make anyone die no matter how famous and wealthy they are, et cetera et cetera, the usual terrorist swill. It wouldn’t be Sidri’s goals or personal values that matter to them, it would just be the fact that he’s popular and upper-class and doesn’t walk around with a retinue of bodyguards. Even so, that still seems pretty stupid to me. If they’d done their research, they’d know that Sidri was loved in certain public circles, and that his dad would absolutely not accept his death lying down. Wouldn’t they know that? I would. Maybe these guys really are idiots. They’ll get their publicity, sure, but the reprisal is going to be overwhelming. If they thought that far ahead at all, the only reason they’d charge forward and do it anyway is…

Is if they were confident that it didn’t matter. Which means our two-plus conspirators are either completely suicidal or convinced that they can take on the entire city by themselves.

Now, it’s true that this group could number way more than two. It could be that there are more planned killings coming, and that the ones doing the bloody legwork are just the tip of the treasonous iceberg. Or it’s just two or three guys, who are either furious morons or deathbound zealots.

I sigh. Without more information, this is just speculation. I need to track down these two firebugs, or Kaiamora Stonecutter, the missing splasher. Which means I need to put on pants, I guess.

But before I do that, I’m looking these three up in the Registry. Probably won’t be that enlightening, but it’s better than walking out the door with nothing at all. I plant myself in front of my data engine and type some names.

Hmmm. Let’s see here. Aklei Horsebreaker is twenty, lives in Sector Seventeen, works at a trash plant. Rated green, no criminal record. Kid’s clean. Psychographic report paints a picture of an obedient, quiet, relatively unintelligent guy. Looking at his picture, I can buy it. He’s got the doughy, dull-eyed face of a guy that isn’t about to win an academic decathlon anytime soon. Not very ambitious or independent. Keeps his head down and does his work. Gotta say, this guy’s breaking every single pyromancer stereotype without even trying. Lives with… lives with his parents. Oh, what a break! Thank god for loser kids that never leave home. I can go to their place and see what his mom and dad have to say.

Next is Monnert Littlerock. This guy’s a little more interesting, which is all well and good for him but a pain for me. Thirty-six, residence… none. Shit. He’s either homeless or squats somewhere that doesn’t have an address. Rated yellow, because of his record. He’s been held up for petty theft and drug dealing. Nothing major though - just selling scrub without a permit. Occupation is unknown too. So, he’s probably a professional criminal of some kind. His psyche profile has him as hardheaded, argumentative, and unscrupulous, with an anti-authoritarian streak as wide as his face. He’s a blocky, mean-looking man with weathered skin, a bent nose, and an ugly scar crossing over his chin and lips to end by an ear. My guess is that he’s either a gangster or some other kind of criminal tough, possibly even a Lowlife, seeing as how he doesn’t have a listed address. I might have to literally go underground in order to dig up anything on him.

And now for Kaiamora Stonecutter. This one’s weirder. Twenty-seven, and a Zhalsiran immigrant. Her last known residence is Sector Twelve, but there’s a warning stripe at the top of her listing that says she hasn’t reported to the Brotherhood for her yearly profile update since she arrived in the city three years ago, so all this information could be completely outdated. Great. Psyche profile says she’s confident, taciturn, cynical, and not very trusting, with signs of post-traumatic stress. She’s pale, like most people from the mountains up north, and pretty, with long hair so blond it’s almost white. Seriously indignant expression on her face. Her power writeup has her as a cryomancer, which is super interesting. Ice mages are a pretty rare subspecies of water arcanist - she’s one of three in the entire Registry. Her threat level is red. Wanted. Not for any outstanding criminal activity, but because her information is three years out of date. If she’s such a mysterious recluse, I wonder how Emaphra found out she’s gone missing lately. She must have some friends, maybe in the Consortium. Same for the other two-

My head rings in the middle of scrolling. I check the flag. It’s Em. I pick up the mental receiver.

“Hello, Emaphra.”

“Baulric. How’s the weather?”

“We’re not being listened to. Lieutenant Deepwell was kind enough to give me some signal scramblers. I’ve got one in my pocket, one bolted to my computer, and two more fixed to my walls. Nice and clean.”

I can hear her doubt on the other end. Its silence is very loud. “Why? You trust him?”

“As far as I can throw him. Which is… I dunno, probably about twenty feet or so. And he’s a big boy, so that’s pretty far! I told him about the Brotherhood trying to bribe me and he’s being territorial. I’d rather work for him than for them, and he wants it to stay that way.”

“Huh. Okay. Hopefully they do what he says they do and they’re not just sending all your conversations to a Watch server.”

“I checked before using them, Em. I set up their encryption myself. It’s fine. I’ve got some updates for you, unless you want to go first.”

“Go.”

I tell her about the new killing and Sidri Rediron. She doesn’t sound pleased.

“Shit. Double shit.”

“Yeah. That’s what I said.”

“So it has to be a group. But that doesn’t make much sense to me. From what I’ve dug up, Littlerock seems like the kind of guy who might do this, but Horsebreaker definitely isn’t, unless he got suckered into something over his head. And Stonecutter… I don’t know much about her, but from what I’ve heard from her associates, she’s not a killer. And if she was, she’d use ice, not water. It doesn’t add up.”

“Who is this Stonecutter chick?”

“I don’t have a lot on her, but I’ve heard of her and talked to some of her friends. She’s popular with the Zhalsiran immigrant population. Lives in the Subterrane, keeps out of sight. Apparently she’s some kind of pilgrim, or prophet or something to do with their religion. I’m not clear on it. Her associates are a tight-lipped bunch.”

“Hmm. A priestess. Fanatical, maybe? Fanatical enough to rope others into killing?”

“I don’t know, Baulric. But we might find out more soon. The Consortium is calling a meeting, today, and they want you there.”

“Oh that’ll be fun. They must be taking this pretty seriously if they’re willing to listen to me.”

“It’s at the third location, under Sector Sixteen. Noon. You remember where?”

“Yeah. Who’s gonna be there?”

“Everyone, I think. It’s hard to tell.”

“Berix?”

“Yes. I saw her RSVP.”

“Fantastic. She really hates me, you know.”

“Yes, she does. You’ll just have to put up with it.”

“Will you be my bodyguard? She might try to blow my head off.”

“Mmmm… no. Fight your own battles, Baulric. Maybe she’d hate you less if you showed a little respect for once instead of constantly ridiculing her.”

I sigh. “I dunno, Em. That’s a tall order. She’s really, really full of herself. If I didn’t take her down a few pegs, I think all the hot air in her head would carry her off into the mountains. She might get eaten by something! I’m just doing my civic duty.”

“I’m hanging up now, Baulric. I’ll see you in a bit.”

The connection closes.

I roll up my bag of fries and start putting on clothes. Some clothes, at least. It’s hot out there today - autumn isn’t going down without a fight. I’ll go to their little tea party if they want me there, but I’m not wearing a shirt. Putting my scars on display is gaudy, yes, but it’ll remind them that they’re not the only ones to get knifed by life. I reload my coat pocket with lollipops and head out, mentally preparing myself for a journey into the underworld.