Forty-one days after the imperial ambassador’s murder.

Hotel “Red Summit”, undersurface, Thi district, Radaar, 8:49 am.

Devan sat cross-legged in his room. He sat on the bed, hands on his knees, eyes closed, breathing slowly. In. Out. In. Out. The position didn’t matter, but having practised in it for years, he had ingrained it into his subconscious as necessary. It would take more effort to get rid of the habit. So he used the calm draped over his mind, let sensations fade, and studied how the rivulets of the Gift trickled through him. His left arm still pulled on the flows of power like a magnet, but by keeping them weak he found that he could still use most of his body when forming the spell weaves – the further away from his arm, the more he could channel.

He opened his eyes. The room seethed with possibilities, shadowy images extending outward from everything inside the room, a kaleidoscopic scattering of the achievable. He heard the Gift’s song, that melody that reverberated through his body, tingling up his spine, twisting his stomach with thrills, exciting his heart with desire; it was a dopamine high that sent his brain into blissful overdrive. As he breathed in, the images gained electrifying clarity; they trembled in anticipation of his will. Then he breathed out. The world shimmered and flexed, and the feeling subsided. He breathed in. Out.

The door creaked open, and Raid walked in. He waited quietly. When Devan let the power fade and turned towards him, the captain said, “Any progress?”

“Some.” With how things were, adepts like Wicker or Macreen still outclassed Devan in sheer power; however, the scales tipped in his favour if it was a battle of skill.

Raid rolled his bleary eyes, the burst capillaries visible even from where Devan sat. He looked haggard from a lack of sleep. Crossing his arms, he leaned on the doorframe; the room beyond could barely be seen past his hulking form. “Right. The same ‘some’ that means you’d still wipe the floor with anything we normals consider a threat?”

“Could be,” Devan said. He got off the bed and stretched. “Is there coffee?”

“Drank it all last night. There’s more downstairs in the foyer.” Raid frowned, staring at Devan with the same intensity an overworked employee would reserve for their boss when they thought the other wasn’t looking. “With the rest of the stuff you had me dig up. Overnight at that. Do you know how many ships come and go from Radaar in a day? No? I didn’t either. Until I had to go through the entire damned list – even narrowed – searching for any ship that might have had our Earthborn assassin onboard. Worse still is that half of those didn’t have their passengers’ IDs properly logged. I burned through more favours in four hours than I had in the last four months. And even then, there’s still a few that I can’t investigate.”

Devan walked to the door. When Raid stepped aside to let him pass, Devan looked at him, made a mouth shrug, and said, “Could have just said it’s downstairs.” Then he continued into the living room and out to the lift. Raid followed.

They descended four storeys in relative silence: no words, just the hum of the motor, and a beep once they arrived at the ground floor.

The foyer sprawled before them, all marble-looking linoleum, worn dark wood, and imitations of luxury crafted using pieces of badly aged opulence: broken items that might have once belonged to the oversurface or some rich district on the ground. Despite the incongruence that should have been glaring, the place held a vintage charm, though that might have been Devan’s warped sense after spending several weeks in the decrepit pit that was the undersurface.

The barkeep – Wilson, Raid had said his name was – wasn’t at his customary place, sitting at one of the many round tables on the right side of the room. Of course, he wasn’t behind the bar counter either. The left side was empty as well; dark-red sofas stood side by side in pairs, facing mounted screens that played the latest news. There were, however, several whirs that indicated the presence of cleaning droids zipping about across the floor.

Devan headed towards the table littered with papers and a powered-off tablet, both evidence of Raid’s late-night endeavour. His grey coat was still draped over one of the chairs. There was also a half-empty glass of alcohol. He picked it up. The first whiff revealed it was brandy, the second that it was a crime to pay money for it. Devan lowered it back onto the table.

“What did you find in the logs?” he asked.

Raid pointed towards the papers. “It’s all there.” He slipped behind the counter, probably to make coffee. “Black?”

“Yes, and sum it up for me,” Devan said and sat down.

“It’s already summed up.”

“Then sum it up some more.”

Steam whistled upwards from behind the counter, and the scent of crushed coffee grains wafted over to Devan. He slouched in his seat and idly picked up one sheet of paper. Text and tables filled the white page: arrival and departure times, ship specs, relevant passenger information, names of the travelled ship lanes – and there was writing in pen, the “summed up” information Raid had mentioned. Those were scribbles Devan had no hopes of deciphering. He wondered if Raid could decipher them; the man had written them, after all, but it was more likely that the captain would wretch the specifics from memory rather than the clutter here.

Raid plopped down onto the chair opposite and set down two cups of coffee. “Admiring my work?”

“If you’re referring to this piece of high-class encryption, then yes,” Devan said. Raid waved it off as nonsense. Devan continued, “How many ships are we looking at?”

“Ninety-six that might have had the man aboard, hidden in some corner of the cargo hold. Six with incomplete records. Two with nearly purged records. ‘Nearly’ in this case means there’s just enough info not to arouse suspicion at first glance.”

“The ambassador arrived here in a day, so he must have used a jumpgate. How many directly from Jagda?”

Raid scratched his chin in thought, then picked up the papers and flipped through them, skimming the contents. Some of them he looked through more closely. He squinted. There was a pause. With a frustrated grunt, he threw the papers back onto the table. “Can’t read a damn thing.” He scratched his head. “There’s less of the first, not sure how many, and there’s three of the second, and there was only one ship with purged records that fits the bill.”

“I take it the ambassador wasn’t on any of the passenger lists,” Devan said, and Raid nodded. “How likely is it for someone to hide in the cargo hold?”

Raid shrugged and sipped his coffee. “Depends on the rush. Security’s generally pretty tight. You think our augment arrived with the ambassador?”

Devan picked up his coffee. It was no longer steaming. “Could be. And I maintain that it’s not an augment. I don’t care what the Hand said, it’s impossible.” He took a sip. The brew was more black than brown and so bitter it knocked the dregs of sleep right out of him.

“Could you beat an augment?”

“If we fought in a wide area and there were no distractions and I had backup and it didn’t, then I probably could. Probably, because making a single mistake would get me killed now that I effectively can’t use my left arm to fight.”

Raid drained half his cup in big gulps. “Could have just said yes.”

“Did Zyke get us info on Castwick?” Devan asked.

“In a way, but he wasn’t too happy because we couldn’t deliver everything he was hoping for.” Raid raised his hand, palm facing Devan, before the other man could ask the obvious question. “He said Macreen knows. Gave me her holo ID.”

“Call her, then. I don’t care who gives us the info as long as they do.”

Raid removed his phone from his pocket and inputted her number. A hologram of a waiting sign appeared above the device. “This might be trouble.”

“She would have found out anyway.”

“Not what I meant,” Raid said, shaking his head. “It’s unlikely that Zyke doesn’t know the information himself. He’s playing some game. The question is if we’re part of it or if she is.”

The hologram flickered into Macreen’s image before Devan could form a reply. The stripes of fuzziness rolling down the projection did nothing to conceal her irritated expression. Her audacity, at the very least, was impressive; she’d been the one who tried rummaging through Raid’s mind again and yet there was not a speck of guilt on her.

“What?” she asked.

“Sheela Castwick,” Devan said. “You know her?”

Macreen cocked her head, eyes going up in search of some dusty memory. She shrugged. “No. Should I?” Her voice was without inflexion, disinterested.

If the woman was lying, he couldn’t tell; either she was just that good, or the hologram and speaker quality were that bad. “You should,” he said. “We did our part, Zyke said you’d fulfil his.”

“He said that?”

“Said you gotta remember breaking rules has consequences,” Raid said. He kicked away a cleaning droid that had gotten too close. “That ring any bells?”

A pause. Looking down, Macree tongued the inner wall of her cheek, her face set in thought; only, this time her expression was mottled with emotions she failed to conceal. The words had left her in a tumult. “I remember,” she said, affecting calm. “Names are the first to leave after all.”

There was no way she had forgotten. Devan observed her a moment more, but she didn’t betray anything else. “And?” he asked. “Where can we find her?”

She shrugged. “Beats me. Out here in the streets, some abandoned district, maybe the sewers, maybe a ditch.”

Devan had wanted to protest, but by the time she’d finished, the fight in him had left. They had considered the possibility before, but her words now made it sink in. “She’s dead.” It wasn’t a question. “How?”

“Bullet straight through her chest, tore through her heart.”

They’d found nothing suggesting her death, and the staff at Mannock’s manner would have been informed in normal circumstances. So these weren’t normal circumstances and someone had covered their tracks. “How do you know?” Devan asked, though, he already had a good idea on the reason.

“Because I killed her,” she said matter-of-factly. “Well, not me, one of my crew.”

He nodded. “When? And who hired you?”

“Twenty-third of Mul,” she said. That was the day before the ambassador had arrived on Radaar – the day he’d rushed out of the conference room in the palace in As’al’Zahn. “Not sharing anything on the client though. We have work ethics. The undersurface would’ve crumbled by now if that weren’t the case. Was that all?”

“No. I assume you tracked her movements?”

“Just the last day. The rest? I wouldn’t count on even Zyke. His cybernetic brain hasn’t fixed his obsession for hoarding data, but he’s not bored enough to track every single person down here.”

“Send it, and then we’re done,” Devan said.

The data file arrived around ten minutes after the call ended, breaking Devan’s mulling on Castwick’s death. Purely looking at the facts, the ambassador had rushed out of the meeting due to his secretary’s murder. Adding context, however, the two should logically be completely unrelated events.

“Think he knew?” Raid asked.

“On the same day? That would require for the news to be priority one.” Importance determined the speed by which information arrived at its intended destination. A notice of death would have taken two days at least to reach the ambassador. “I can’t see a mere secretary raising red flags, not to mention that the staff should have found out first.”

“What if she wasn’t a mere secretary?” Raid asked and grinned. “The lass and her mother left years back. Maybe he wanted some company.”

“Company and fun? Sure. Anything else?” Devan shook his head. “The highborn value their honour above all else. They wouldn’t be caught dead having a relationship with anyone from the lower spheres.”

Raid produced five credit chips and set them on the table with a series of clinks. “Hundred creds they had something goin’ on.” His eyes sparkled with mischief and had the predatory gleam of an experienced gambler.

Devan eyed the small heap. He looked up and quirked a brow. “That’s Mannock’s money, isn’t it?”

Raid shrugged, grinning in a way that made Devan feel as though he’d get scammed for all he was worth given the chance. “Ascendants know I ain’t betting my own,” the captain said.

Five more chips hit the table’s surface. “Fine,” Devan said, retracting his hand. “Though, I’d rather you be right because that would finally shine some light on this case.”

“That what your gut’s telling you?”

“My gut agrees with you. Common sense says you’ve lost it.”

Red lettering on the Breaking News banner on one of the mounted screens caught Devan’s eye. He looked over and—

Undersurface brutal murder: highborn Ronad Olmeen and four unidentified people were found dead yesterday evening. The prime suspect is the Earthborn killer.

“Shit,” Devan muttered. The death of the second highborn would certainly summon the Val Tairi and maybe even the Hand. It might even cause the Empire’s military High Command to advance the date of the start of the war.

A beep came from Raid’s phone. He checked it and frowned at the message. “It’s from the lass. Says Olmeen’s our lead.”

Devan stared blankly at the other man, quiet and disbelieving. “Olmeen?” he asked, and Raid nodded. Devan sighed and inclined his head towards the screens. “He got killed. Will we need to work with Zyke again to get some info on him?”

“Maybe not,” Raid said. If he was bothered in any way by the news, he didn’t show it. “We got a name to go on. ‘Hot Booze.’” He reached for the hotel’s tablet lying on the table. Access points to the undersurface holonetwork were safest to connect to using technology from there. If there was one thing the dwellers were truly spearheading, that’d be their hacking AIs. “It’s a bar in West Island, all the way on the west side.”

Devan pushed back his chair, wincing as the legs scraped against the floor. He drained the rest of his coffee, which was cold at this point and tasted godawful, stood up and slung his coat over his shoulder. “Let’s go then. Before any more of our leads get themselves killed.”