Being inside a Brotherhood building is always interesting. It’s never good, or survivable precisely, but interesting. When your hearts are full of ethical contradictions and your brains are full of more cognitive dissonance than an arsonist architect, you’re going to have some unconventional ideas about interior decor.

In the Dynamic Brotherhood’s case, their beliefs discourage the deployment of aesthetics, so their buildings don’t have any decor. They don’t have flooring, even. It’s just concrete. The walls are infested with crawling wires and pipes, just exposed for everyone to see. What would be the point in spending energy to tuck them behind extra wall material? Just get some neutral gray machinery paint on them and move on. All the lighting is glaring white, for maximum visibility and minimum happiness. There are fans up toward the roof of the beast’s mouth, but they’re the kind you very insistently call air circulators. A normal building designer wouldn’t even call this space ugly. They’d ask why they came down to evaluate something that isn’t finished yet. The Dynamic Brotherhood would call it efficient. And I guess it is, if you’ve got the heart of a graphing calculator.

It’s mostly Brotherhood in this cold yawning factory floor of an entry hall, because people of other factions would only show up to a Brotherhood building under threat of great personal violence or great personal paperwork. I can’t keep all their little personnel codes straight in my head, but a lot of them are here. Some in bulky white sterile containment suits - those are the researchers and lab monkeys, with their high metal collars for clean room helmets to be easily screwed on and off. Those guys are the boiler room of the Brotherhood - the breakthroughs they make in their secure laboratories are probably the only real reason the Brotherhood has been able to keep their power after this many centuries. And the only reason they were able to grab it in the first place.

Some initiates in their little jumpsuits, milling about from passageway to passageway. New kids, fresh out of the hatchery. Boosted from orphanages, scraped off the street, or the product of copulation between two actual Brotherhood members, provided their genitals survive the trip across an entire ocean of paperwork and countersignment before being allowed to contact one another.

Flanking the main doors I just walked through and most of the hallways exiting this cavern are some burly-looking people in near-spherical tinted helmets and dark padded armor. In the helmets are some pretty advanced targeting software connected to a series of neural shunts and actuators in the enamisteel carapace beneath the padding - those slim little assault rifles don’t look as threatening as a Centurion’s autocannon, but if one of the Brotherhood’s Defenders pulls the trigger, they can’t miss. The computers in their heads won’t let them. You almost never see a Defender move, and I wonder if they just piss right into their armor. They’re immune to small arms fire, boredom, and mercy. If I made a move anywhere in this building, I’d have eighteen of those rifles’s magazines in my ass before I could shed a single tear for the fate of the revolution.

I approach the reception area, which is a circular island of desks in the middle of the room with one of those little rope barrier mazes orbiting around it. There’s no one in line, so I just move the little posts aside with my thumb and forefinger and cut straight through to the nearest kiosk. A few people scowl at me. I have violated the order of things. Again.

The girl behind the glass looks up at me with an expression that has been very thoroughly practiced to be completely neutral, but she’s not quite good enough yet to prevent that contraction of the pupil, that small amount of color splashing into the cheeks. She’s instantly afraid of me. She’s what, nineteen? Barely old enough to have earned any augmetics. All she’s got is the telltale scarring around her skull where they installed her neural interface and internal antenna. Like me. Except I’m allowed to grow hair if I want. She’ll probably re-earn the right to have hair in a few years. If she’s effective and obedient.

Her eyes flick to her data engine’s screen for a moment, then back to me.

“Baulric Featherlight. You’re directed to proceed immediately to Alpha wing for evaluation and reassignment.” She prints out a little thing and pushes it under the glass. “Your receipt. Show it to the intake officer when you arrive, please. That will be all.”

But no, little lady. I am afraid that will not be all.

Without a word or an expression, I reach into my coat. She flinches such a small, controlled amount that I’m surprised the human nervous system can move itself in fractional distances that tiny. I pull out a screen, which I borrowed from Ten.

I hunch down a little, set the screen on the counter facing the receptionist, and press the play button. My eyes lazily buzz around the place, nonchalantly looking at nothing, while her own are hot glued to the screen. And I get that - the little video I cut together is very interesting. It starts with Corundum in frame, smoking a cigarette and saying “I have been directed, by the authority of Optimizer Exarch OMB1-004 Copper Dawn, to hire you.”

Sorry, Corundum. You wound up on the wrong side of this. It’s you or me.

Then the video cuts to a few other interesting sights and sounds. I have to say, the editing is pretty masterful. Quick-paced, gets the point across without wasting any time. The point here being, I know what you fucking people have been up to this entire time.

When it’s over, she just looks at me, her mouth very slightly open.

I nod understandingly and say, “Yeah… I’m gonna have to see your manager, please.”

She gets up and retreats through a door behind her desk, to panic at someone more important than her. A different guy comes back through the door. He’s a bit older, sturdier. Demands to know what is the meaning of this. I show him my little movie, so he understands what the meaning of this is. He also runs away from the sight of it. I wait here at the window for a few more minutes while he makes some confused and frightened calls to people that he really never wants to talk to throughout the course of his workday. I tap my fingers and look around idly. Take out a lollipop. Lemon! Yummy. And before I know it, I’m being whisked away under Defender escort to the rear of the building, where the AERO itinerant council keeps its chambers.

At first the faceless Defenders make a show of holding me by the arms like they do with everyone they forcibly escort anywhere, but the tops of their heads only come up to about my shoulders and they realize the sight of them pretending to have any physical control over me is bad for their street cred, so they just let go and we walk together like polite people. They probably assume that I know where I’m going because I have been here before, and that if I suddenly wander anywhere else they can just gun me down and go to lunch. They are correct on both counts.

I’m taken through some low-ceilinged passages (slabs aren’t allowed in the Brotherhood, they’re too crazy), all of which are completely overgrown with utilities and blasted with more fluorescent light than a surgical theater. They’re big into sterilization here and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these lights were equipped with UV emitters. I might walk out of this building with a fucking sunburn. After some twisting and turning, and a lot of unusual smells and contextless sights in door windows and strange looks from people that always comes with walking down the halls of a building where you don’t belong, we come to a set of large rubberized steel doors. Actual blast doors, by the look of them, which should tell you something about these peoples’ attitude and who’s not allowed in here.

One of the Defenders punches a complicated code into a keypad, and the two metal plates separate a little with a pressurized clunk, then rumble open to either side, revealing the council chambers.

This room is for interviews with subjects that AERO thinks need to be subjected to scrutiny from high command. Not every mage gets to come in here, but those that do are generally headed for an upgrade, if not outright execution. This is one of those very few rooms in the city where human lives are tabulated, preserved, or discarded with the stroke of a pen, or a single spoken word.

This is reflected in its austerity. The main floor, where I’m standing, is just a concrete circle. No chair. You’re expected to stand on your own two feet. High up in a circle all around are concrete stands, where any number of observers can come in and look at you, if the situation calls for it. And at the rear of the room, at the highest rim of the gray bowl I’m on the bottom of, are five high-backed seats, four of which are occupied. Now five, as the fifth takes his position. Surprisingly fast. They must have already been in session when I interrupted. Or they’re just that interested.

From left to right, we’ve got some of the heavier hitters in the Dynamic Brotherhood. The Brotherhood aren’t (officially) a military, but if they were, these would be the generals. I recognize two people here.

On the far end is just… just a really old fucker. Like wow is this guy old. He’s got a tube running out of his nose, a bunch of weird clank shunted into his neck, both eyes long since replaced with oculars that probably were high-end about sixty years ago but now make him look like got into a high-velocity collision with a truckload of brass telescopes. His skin looks like the shit a rattlesnake leaves behind because it’s too old to use anymore. The guy’s got claws gripping the armrests of his chair, they look like the talons of a fucking vulture. Eugh. I don’t even want to begin to speculate what’s going on under those robes. A lot of money and metal has been spent on keeping this ancient bastard alive. His vitae is black and red, like coals and smoking embers at the bottom of a burning mineshaft.

Next is someone I know - numbers letters etc etc Indomitable Query. She was middle-ranked in the Brotherhood the last time I saw her, but evidently she’s scraped enough to earn her own big girl chair. She’s a tall, pale woman with an elegant, streamlined left monocular, a high collar of white and gold, and impressive crimson hair. She looks like a lit torch with arms. An impossibly bold statement for someone of her station to make, especially for a professional spy, but far be it from me to tell someone how to do their job. Query’s the one who came to my house twelve years ago offering medical treatment for my mother in exchange for my body and medical agency. My dad threw a glass beer stein at her head. Looks like she’s gotten that scar paved over. Fitting, considering me and Dad ended up capitulating to her anyway. She looks down at me impassively, like a vaguely disapproving marble statue. In a manner of speaking, she’s the reason I’m standing here today. I’d be upset too. Her vitae is blue and yellow, and sharp. Alert. Inspecting. Curious.

The guy in the middle, I’ve never seen before. He’s a big boy, with a dark stony face unmarred by augmentation, dressed in cobalt blue. Pauldrons on his shoulders, just symbolic of being a big tough man boy who… I dunno, needs armor as part of his uniform, I guess. He’s sitting in the middle and has the broadest shoulders, so he must be the shot-caller here. Probably a War Executor of some kind. Taking a break from mercilessly destroying peasants in faraway lands to do a bit of mild recreational classist oppression here at home. His vitae is huge, blocky, and purple-green. Calm and authoritative. An imperious fortress, on whom hundreds of dissidents have broken.

Center right is [insert serial number here] Hexagonal Stricture. A flabby-looking guy with flickering twin readout screens over his eyes and a bunch of plates installed on his lumpy white head, layered over the top of who knows how many neural augmetics. Rubbery clean-room suit creaking as he sits. Fidgety, which is strange, considering these days he’s one of the Brotherhood’s premier body carvers. Parts of this guy have been inside more people than even the most exhausted gigolo could claim. He’s the one who headed up my slabbing surgeries. I was the selected subject for a set of experimental new procedures that Hex had cooked up. For weeks, this ghoul’s dead-frog face was the last thing I saw before being set adrift in dark anaesthetic depths, only to wake up to pain in a body that wasn’t mine. Sometimes he comes back when I’m trying to sleep. His vitae is a mechanical assembly of black and white shapes, combining to form intersecting gray pieces before separating again, to try another combination.

I wonder if he’s forgotten me. I almost hope so. I intend to show him the results of his work today.

And on the far right is a handsome man of indeterminate age, with dark eyes and unusual long black hair. He looks like a charcoal lion. Clothes without as much pompous artificiality or aggressive utilitarianism - just a shirt, jacket, and tie. I didn’t think the Brotherhood were into plainclothes. His suit is tasteful steely gray, but the tie is aggressively copper-colored. I zoom in on his face. His eyes are copper, too. Not his irises - the whites of his eyes are metallic copper in color. Very subtle emerald circles glowing around the irises, normal dark pupils. Those are some elegant oculars. Complex synthetic eyeballs, not just some bulky suite rammed into the orbit like a shovel into dirt. Just a little thing, but the attempt to stray very close to normal human anatomical appearance makes him look less human than any of the other catastrophes sitting here.

He’s smiling at me. Legs crossed, one hand on the table like an executive considering whether my contract terms are agreeable. His vitae is… like a victorious sun rising over a desolate barren land, shedding a metallic ionizing radiance on all things.

A copper dawn.

How is that even -

“I am War Executor WX3-019 Diamond Lance, presiding chairman of the Arcanist Evaluation and Registry Office. To my right are Catechist Exarch CI1-005 Fulgent Signal and Acquisitor AQ3-099 Indomitable Query. To my left are Augmeticist Exarch AB2-662 Hexagonal Stricture and Optimizer Exarch OMB1-004 Copper Dawn.”

He meets my gaze completely evenly. This guy isn’t cheating, isn’t hiding behind any facial augmetics. He’s just straight up hard to read. That’s real composure.

“It has been brought to our attention that you have something you believe we should see, Mr. Featherlight.”

I nod very neutrally. “That’s correct.”

A loading arm on the ceiling lowers a huge viewscreen to the presentation floor, which powers on when it hits bottom. Diamond Lance motions toward it with an imperious hand. “Please.”

I connect my little handheld screen to the jumbo one, and play the file. The whole thing this time, no skipping around for expediency. It starts with the entire conversation between me and Corundum. I’m not looking at the show, obviously - I’ve seen it a dozen times. I’m looking at them. When Copper Dawn’s name comes out of Corundum’s mouth, every pair of eyes in the room snaps to him. His stay on the screen, watching. He just smiles.

And he keeps that smile, on through the footage of me examining the crime scenes, which show my neural augmetics’ best attempt at visually representing the all-sense experience of the arcane energies present in the corpses. Then the footage of Seagraves attacking me in Sector Seventeen. It’s not much, but when it’s Seagraves’s star moment, I think I can see a little teeny something behind Query’s eyes. Hmm.

Then my rescue of the two pyromancers. Then the stakeout downstairs, which conveniently leaves out all the footage of Rocky, but leaves in all the signal analysis interpolated with my conversation with Voldzet (identity unknown) about it definitely being a Brotherhood signal.

When Niner shows up, I’m watching for who isn’t surprised. Because a machine that can do magic should be the single greatest technological breakthrough in human history, or near it, and these are the exact people who should be up roaring in an uproar about it. The ancient Fulgent Signal and Diamond Lance are very obviously surprised, not even attempting to conceal the fact. Signal looks outraged though, while Lance just looks a bit taken aback. Query looks nervous. Hex might have been replaced with a particularly lifelike mannequin at some point and I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. Copper Dawn is just smiling like his kid came home from school with perfect marks this grading period.

The show’s over. I reach into my pocket and take out a grapefruit-sized wad of electronics and plastic, which I set on the table nearby.

I look up at the five of them. “I allege that the recent string of assaults and killings, with victims including CTI7-057 Tourmaline Inscriptor, Sidri Rediron, Alkei Horsebreaker, Monnert Littlerock, and an as-yet unknown number of Subterranean residents, was perpetrated by a hitherto-unknown variety of animech capable of wielding arcane energies to tangible effect. I further allege that the sentience and autonomy of this animech was disrupted and destabilized as the result of an attempt by the Dynamic Brotherhood to remotely influence the machine’s behavior with these signaling devices, and that that when its behavior became too erratic and deleterious for it to remain a secret, a deliberate attempt was made to blame its actions upon the arcane community of Wellspring City, in blatant defiance of Article Three of the Wellspring City Charter. I allege yet further that any one of you that knew about this and let it happen is a filth-hearted liar and a contemptible scumfuck who deserves a hell of a lot worse than they’re going to get.”

I light a cigarette. The tension in this chamber is so substantial that I could have struck a match off it. There’s a long moment of silence. A few of the chairs look at one another.

The old fucker suddenly spurts, “What is this?”

I frown at him. “... Okay, sure, I can field this one. What is what?”

“Silence, aberration. I speak to your betters. What is the source of this nonsense? Who permitted this creature in here to bandy some software-generated lightshow before us? It was a time not long ago that we would terminate a mutant for approaching us with fakery of this magnitude.”

I smirk up at him. “I can give you. The source videos. If you want them. Just hand me a goddamn drive and you can watch them as many times as you want.”

Hex speaks up. “The subject’s implication is sound. Media of such length would be nigh-impossible to synthesize given the resources available. In addition, preemptive evaluation: subject also displays no symptoms of neural degeneration or augmetic malfunction. Council is reminded that subject was previously under the medical authority of AB2-882. Subject’s mutations all but preclude the possibility of evidence having been manufactured via extended fugue or audiovisual hallucination.”

Signal replies, “You take the creature’s case very readily, Hexagonal Stricture.”

Hex fires back, “Negative. Indicating only the integrity of provided evidence.”

The old fucker realizes, probably correctly, that he’s not going to be able to bully a glacial wall like Hex in any direction at all, and instead aims his ire at Copper Dawn.

“So what say you to this machination, young man? Thy name appears within it. Explain.”

Copper Dawn speaks for the first time. His voice is sinuous and heavy, slithering through the air like a massive iron snake. Coiling around you so you can’t pay attention to anything but the words.

“Do you know where you are, Mr. Featherlight?”

I take a deep drag of my smoke, and let it out to indicate that yes, I very much do.

“World’s largest ashtray. Do you know?”

His expression doesn’t change. He looks like he’s got me on the end of a fork and he hasn’t eaten in days. “More than you could possibly imagine, Mr. Featherlight.” His gaze flicks to the old man. “We live in more advanced times, CI1. But you do raise a compelling point. We will have to go over this evidence very thoroughly. This is a very serious matter, as I’m sure you know. We have had to take some regrettably drastic steps to ensure the continued safety of the people. I don’t doubt that you would understand that your temporary non-punitive detention here would be required while we conduct interviews and perform our analysis.”

That’s the most words I’ve heard anyone ever use to say “We’re gonna lock you up, fucker.” Fortunately, I came prepared.

I nod. “I’m sure you’d love to just stick me in a box so your plan can go on uninterrupted. I know, believe me, that’d be a relief for a lot of us here. Unfortunately, there’s a data bomb somewhere in this city that will go off if I don’t enter a password into it every 24 hours. You’ve already seen what its payload is. If you want mayhem, I’m happy to help you along. Let’s start this fire, Copper Dawn. I’m ready for the heat.”

There are three data bombs, actually. Courtesy of my quick thinking and Voldzet’s operatives. But he doesn’t need to know that.

Copper Dawn shows me his teeth. They’re perfect.

The instant I’m done talking, Query puts a finger to her head. “Run a network scan of every onboarded data package at every node within a primary interchange, dated-”

I cut her off. “It’s a nibbler. Are you new around here? The hell else would it be?”

The general furrows his brow. Not a man of contemporary illicit information technologies, I guess. “A nibbler?”

Indomitable Query fixes me with a very displeased, and somewhat uncomfortable glare. “A data delivery device connected to a pneumatic piston that can be remotely fired. When activated, it ‘bites’ into the network relay to deliver its packets. Until then, it has no physical connection to the network. And thus cannot be scanned for.”

Fulgent Signal scoffs. “It is bluffing. A microcephalic attempt at deception, nothing more. It thinks to threaten a lion with rumors of a mosquito.”

Hex chimes in to helpfully note, “Subject does not suffer from microcephaly.”

I can’t help but laugh. “Sure. It’s a bluff. Man, I’ll be in a cell, so I won’t be able to catch the show. But they are going to have a fucking field day with this footage. I know you guys will clamp on WCBN, send Neutralizers to their editors’ families and shit, but you’ll never be able to snuff every single indie rag in town. Your name up in lights, Copper Dawn. It’ll be great. Think of the royalties off the movie rights alone.”

Query looks down at me. “You have no conclusive proof that binds any of this to the Dynamic Brotherhood at all. For all we know, this is a string of remarkable but ultimately unconnected occurrences for which we have no accountability whatsoever.”

I smirk at her. “Okay. I mean, I’ve got the decrypted access flags that conclusively bind this transmitter and all its brothers to information originating from your servers. You tried to clean it up, but you’re not as smart as some of my friends are. You’ve consistently denied it, but it’s an open secret in most circles that Seagraves does your heaviest lifting and dirtiest work. That won’t fly in a court of law, but in the court of public opinion it might as well be fucking Exhibit C. And the two pyromancers that got attacked? They were uh, attacked. They saw shit. And they can tell people exactly what that shit was, provided you don’t have them assassinated any time soon.”

Going by the look of him, Copper Dawn’s never been happier. He leans forward a bit in his chair.

“You want something, Mr. Featherlight. If you didn’t, you would have set your blaze and not bothered coming here at all, yes? And I think I know what it might be. I believe I know her name.”

Indomitable Query looks verifiably upset now. Signal looks like he needs his diaper changed. Diamond Lance looks mostly confused - I’m guessing he only recently transferred in from the front and isn’t quite up to speed with all the little projects going on at home, seeing as how he wasn’t here the last time I reported. Hex hasn’t made a facial expression since having his auxiliary cogitator installed when he was five.

“You’re right, Copper Dawn. But I want more. I want the inquest shut down, and all your captives released sight unseen. Today. You know, considering they didn’t do shit and everyone here knows it. I want you to slither your ass down to Rediron Hall and explain to the Sector Lord why his youngest son didn’t outlive him like he should have. I want you to shell out cash fucking money to Monnert Littlerock and the Horsebreaker family for the shit you’ve put them through. And if I so much as get a whiff of any of your goons following me or anyone I give a fuck about, I’m gonna blow this story so loud they’ll hear it in fucking Shattershard. Not gonna play well with all the people in those foreign courts you’re trying to impress, huh?”

He nods his head slowly. Appreciatively. And still smiling like a well-fed crocodile.

Diamond Lance frowns, and starts, “You are not in a position to make demands, Mr. Featherlight. You do not negotiate from where you are standing. You will be remanded to-”

Copper Dawn waves a hand, and Diamond Lance instantly shuts up. Which is very, very interesting to me.

“I admire your mercantile spirit, Mr. Featherlight. I come from a long line of merchants, you know. It was one of my forefathers that sourced the iron from which Kaastvam’s shells were made. It is that eye for value that can so easily set a man above or below where he ought to be. My eyes look upon only what there is to be gained, Mr. Featherlight.” His metallic gaze is completely unbroken. “As are yours, it seems. We have found pace with one another, I think. Now there is only the matter of price.”

No one in the room looks very certain about what’s being discussed anymore. I’m not really on sure footing either, to be honest, but whatever. I just want my people out of the cooler, thanks.

He continues, “What assurance do we have that you will not simply broadcast this information anyway?”

I snort smoke. “Cost versus benefit. Right now, peace is preferable to citywide riots and crackdowns. And that’s the way it’ll stay, unless you decide to push me. Then I might have to re-evaluate. But I won’t have to do that, right? ‘Cus after this, you and me are gonna leave one another the fuck alone. Just like I think the two of us would prefer.”

I can tell from the way he’s looking at me that that particular assumption of mine might not hold much water.

He asks, “This… machine that you encountered. That is, apparently, responsible for sowing so much chaos and violence. Clearly it is something that should be remanded to our custody for containment and research. Where is it now?”

I tilt my head very confusedly. “Oh, I threw it down a ravine.”

A little twitch at the corner of Copper Dawn’s mouth, like he just had to bite back a laugh. “Oh?”

“Yep. After that fight you saw. You’re right, it was too dangerous. I might’ve saved a lot of lives, tossing it into that chasm. The Dark River’s probably washed it halfway out to sea by now.”

“Such a shame. We could have learned so much. You’re quite sure it isn’t currently being repaired and examined by an automech engineer acquaintance of yours, one Tennima Earthboon? As an aside, I was personally overjoyed to hear of her sponsorship by Halfmoon Systems. My associates within their board of executives were quite correct in their assessment of her, I believe. Such an uncommon talent.”

I lock eyes with him, smoke wafting all around me. “Never met her. Not much of an ACL fan, really. But, and this is me speculating here, she sounds like she’s way, way smarter than every brain in this room put together, and has a lot of eyes on her. If someone were to, say, go after her? For some reason? It’d probably be a real catastrophe. Not to mention it might piss me off a bit. You know, just as a matter of principle.”

Copper Dawn nods. “Yes. Yes, a matter of principle. I believe I understand you, Mr. Featherlight.”

“I’m so very fucking glad we’re so full of understanding for one another. Now, I’m gonna walk out of here. No one’s gonna fuck with me on my way out. I’ll show up for my reports like a good boy, but your lackeys are gonna inspect me way the hell less from here on out. Y’know, just as a little courtesy.”

He nods. “I’m sure our inspectors have more dangerous arcane elements to be looking into regardless. Expect no unexpected guests from us, Mr. Featherlight.”

“Great. So we’re clear, I give my word as a Featherlight and swear on my parents’ early graves that all I’ve said here is true, and will be acted upon. All of it. I don’t expect you to extend the same, but I want that said on the recordings I know you’re making of me right now.”

The other four are basically just set dressing at this point. It’s just me and him. Me and that smile, those metal eyes.

“I don’t believe paperwork needs to enter into this, Mr. Featherlight. You have my word in turn as a scholar and supplicant before the Rectifier that these terms shall be abided. And may I say, I am glad to have had this opportunity to meet you in person. I look forward to our next encounter.”

I flick my smoke onto the concrete.

“Likewise, pal. You all have a super fantastic day.”

And I walk right out of the mouth of the monster, having dodged every single fang.

Until the next bite, that is.