I reviewed the data being sent to me from the bare bones. Kyler Merschoen, son of a high-ranking executive in the Bitte Conglomerate, was suspected of Corruption. Investigate and eliminate if true.

His mother was a low-ranking Mentat, and with their money, would have had connections. Going to the psis was asking for trouble.

I had put the Goldilocks to data-crunching, dredging up his past, and especially his social media exposure.

He had rated high for psionics, and was aggressively pursued by several corps during his finishing years. He hadn’t taken a position with one, nor had he joined the Mentats, and with the family income, there was no rush on such a thing. His grades were good, gene-ratings and tests high...

And his social life for the last year was virtually non-existent, and had been falling rapidly for three years before that.

Time had concentrated around that point, and cross-referencing with other accounts and him in the background of his social circle, looking for ties and connections.

He had been seen frequently in the company of Jandice Baiuer, a Wendlerton graduate who had been administered the Emperor’s Justice one day after my birthday. She had killed two Juris while it happened, and thirty-two innocent and not-so-innocent people before a Coronal Squire cut her down.

They had moved in the same circles, and were never specifically tied together. But a little statistical analysis put the probability of them being at so many different affairs at the same time randomly as highly unlikely.

Then it was looking into his spending patterns and activities of his family, both of which were raising red flags. The family and their servants were spending far less money on social outings, eating out, and the like, and their social media presence had been slowly and discretely withdrawn. Not just the family, everyone... guards, maids, butler, driver... and a few family members of those servants seemed to have vanished, with only desultory reports and follow-ups, as if the families weren’t interested in finding out what happened.

Uh HUH. I knew from personal experience that right now, if one of my girls vanished, I was going to be hell on wheels finding out what happened. Of course, I had the muscle and power to do so. Stopping someone from doing so also required muscle and power.

Kyler was not looking so good. Not being seen in public for six months was a bad sign. Oh, there were inevitable excuses... research, traveling, and so forth, but there was no accompanying documentation to support either activity, anywhere.

A timeline of what photos there were of him had revealed an increasingly gaunt and driven appearance, hidden with makeup, and then suddenly he had looked the same as nearly a year prior, as if it had all been a bout of sickness or something.

That usually indicated shapechanging.

I didn’t think this was a dop infiltration, especially with the mother there. Infiltrating the Mentats was extremely unwise for a dop, and she had been attending regular meetings and undertaking a few special jobs, but only the bare minimum. She was a Six, and had been stuck at the First Ceiling for some time, unable to muster the willpower to push past into the ranks of the elite. It wasn’t just a questions of Stats there... being a Seven meant being more than human, and your mind and soul changed as you stepped into the ranks of superhumans.

Also, I had True Sight all the time now, so dops were as obvious to me as if they were wearing neon signs. I hadn’t seen any in passing for some time, but the girls were all raring to get to Eight and go dop hunting for extra cash. The dops had probably withdrawn to Underspire and the crowds there, but dops hated living in less than optimal conditions, and certainly holding down a laborious job.

Hmm, I should have the girls start attending high-class art performances and showings. Dops loved showing off their false faces at those...

But, the signs for Kyler and his family were not good here.

The tram came to a stop, and I rose and stepped out, to the audible relief of many of the passengers and their sneering mouths. They were ants, I ignored them, and they realized that was what I thought of them, making their faces even more unpleasant. I was going to save their lives and they were looking down on me, when I made more creds a year than they did.

The homes on a spiretop were all very expensive, and the open lawns were worth even more. Most of the homes were actually below ground/roof, like everyone else, and naturally those at the perimeter with a view were worth the most. Open lawns for strolling, trees on boulevards, ponds, some rolling hills for effect, stands of trees and flowers... this was about atmosphere and being able to walk around and enjoy yourself. Private slices of this cost a fortune and a half, and most were community areas, where not-quite top-tier folks pooled money and influence to have some space shared between them.

I had the Goldilocks searching for possible effects on their immediate neighbors and the community board.

Mmm, the last two association meetings had been postponed...

I had the feeling this was going to get violent. Then it was going to get big. Then I was going to get blamed.

The amount of electronic traffic coming out of these homes was about a quarter of what should be going on...

The community was naturally gated, but that didn’t normally deter me. When I waved my Band at it, and the Class IV Warrant didn’t open them, that raised all kinds of alarm bells.

“My Queen, I’m about to enter the target’s community atop Lawnspire, and their gate isn’t acknowledging the warrant. That’s all kinds of illegal, right?”

“If you’re rich enough, they might let you get away with it... if the subject isn’t inside the area. Given that your target is, that is quite a warning sign. I will send out a Juris alert in case they want to shoot you for breaking and entering.”

Which Juris would be happy to do up here.

The gate was naturally durasteel, so not the easiest thing to carve through, but the best point was that it was stylish, so it opened in the middle in grand fashion, instead of recessing up or down. Of course, I could jump it, and trigger the deterrence guns recessed under the flower beds to the sides...

I flicked on my Vampire’s Veil and vaulted the twenty-foot gates easily. No guns triggered, having lost their target locks once their electronics couldn’t follow me.

If they could follow me, that would have been really bad news. Not because I was afraid of the guns, of course, but because that would mean the guns were demonically Possessed.

I looked at the dozen homes in the area, the upper areas mostly social areas with views and areas for eating and entertainment. Living areas would be down below, not built up higher and obstructing the views, strict codes against that.

And because I wasn’t trying to be sneaky, I had naturally been noticed. I headed right for my target, one of the larger homes here, with a recessed walkway that effectively turned it into a two-story house of some size, looked like they were doing well.

Someone triggered the security system behind me, I could hear the whirring as the deterrence guns rose up. However, they couldn’t see me, which meant they’d be firing blind if someone controlled them.

“Hey! Hey you, stop!” someone shouted, running out of stairs that had opened up on the ground, the mechanical augmentation confirming that they were cybered. I flashed up the warrant on holo; it was beyond my Veil so they could identify it immediately, and their next reaction would confirm that something was wrong. Auto-identify would immediately classify it as ‘fuck off, I’ve got work to do’, so if they didn’t change their attitude...

“I said freeze right there, or we’ll drop you where you stand!” the closest of the four men said, pulling out an inhumanly large sidearm, while the others chambered riot guns.

I turned around and looked at them, the holo still up. My Brand was tingling with munchie-munchies for whatever they had on them.

Rantha Hag visual acuity borrows from too many bloodlines. The thaumaspectrum was just one of the spectra I could see in, and these guys had nails of magic driven into their brains and bodies, stewing around and having a fun time with them.

They were just shells of emptied souls, probably tasped into mindlessness and overwritten by the spell manipulating them.

A lot of gold force flowed into existence, and they started shooting.

Shotguns of the future are pretty wicked. They shoot clustered microflechette rounds instead of pellets, spreading out in a fan of flesh-ripping needles that is absolutely lethal against unarmored opponents. That big handgun was throwing out some massive armor-piercing slugs, too.

Unfortunately, their targeting systems couldn’t lock on me, so all their high-end targeting hardware was worth jack shit to them right now, and I was rather fuzzy in their optic sights, too, eyes being one of the first things to be replaced, usually.

And, I wasn’t unarmored.

My Nog goldskin flowed up, my auburn hair went gold, and suddenly I looked like a motile golden statue. I slid aside from the hand cannon, watching the bullets race past me and explode... pre-measured gyro rounds, capable of blowing a person right apart, flaming trail quite impressive.

Chalice adjusted her suite from Phrenics to Constructs (yay, Tekrons!), cyborgs all qualified, and as the semi-transparent banefire shifted to jangly, rigid vibrations, I let dozens of microflechettes lodge themselves in my golden skin, and just held down Paten’s trigger.

The guy in front took three shots in the chest, the first two being Sun Shots that ripped apart his dermal armor. Sundering and Breaking stacked with Banefire and Nimbus Flaring to blow apart his chest in dynamic fashion, while the Lightning chaser fried his circuits.

Purple and blue lights fritzed around his skull, and the artificial components began to run in an unhealthy manner.

The microflechettes stuck in my armored skin, not having the kinetic energy to really do anything to me. I naturally closed in on the trio as they fired again as fast as possible, and tried to back up.

Chalice fell down from inside my arm into my hand as I came in on the side, they tried to separate to keep their firing angles, but it didn’t mean much.

Chalice went left, Paten went right, and I wove straight at the third.

Sharding slashes ripped into the man on the left, taking off first an arm in a spray of circuits, top-end cosmetic job there, and then crashing into his chest and starting a spray of glowing purple and blue oil that formed bubbles in the air. Paten put two force Bolts into the head of the third one, and lightnings boiled around his head in purple and blue as his armored skin began to melt.

The last guy didn’t flinch a bit as his buddies died, not that he had a choice. My chest now sprouted hundreds of needles in a bristling pad, and then Chalice came back across his chest as Paten blew a bolt into his throat and spine, and he erupted in a crazy collapse of his cyber components, flying every which way in a spray of blue and purple.

Yeah, like I couldn’t tell something was coming next.

One guy was the skeleton, one guy was the circuits, one guy the generator, and one guy the systems. They flowed and flashed and whirled together, coming together into a bigger, solid form, with multiple arms and weapons, crackling with the unholy power of Warp sorcery-

I criss-crossed it four times with Sun Strikes, detonating full Nimbus and Corona Flares on it, and the vivic fire and anti-construct damage was just too much for it as the Star Core carved through its neo-armor like cheese. The conjoined guard-robot-undead minion thing blew apart again, this time unwhite fires chasing the blue and purple down and making sure it stayed dead.