I wove through the trees, carbon walking staff in hand, making slow progress. I cursed the snow for deciding to fall before I’d finished my investigation, even though it had followed the reported forecast. Just bad luck.

I had to leave my crawler behind a while back because according to our best intel, I was getting close, and the crawler, while fast, was also noisy and conspicuous as hell. I had enjoyed walking for a while, since the crawler was a bit like a rocky, all-terrain motorcycle/snowmobile/jet ski, and whipping around the hills on it was cold and cramp-inducing, but after almost two days now I kept finding myself thinking I could have covered this distance in an hour on the crawler.

I peered through the trees and saw that it broke into a huge clearing ahead. Concrete ruins everywhere, just like it’d been filed in that bounty hunter’s report. Shunning the exposed open, I stayed in the trees, keeping far enough back from the edge to avoid detection in case he happened by.

He. Him. The target, the Exhuman Athan Ashton. My mark.

The bounty hunter’s report had been vague on the specific location, and had grown only more so in future reports. I knew only that I was looking for a structure of some kind out here. Given the amount of destruction in this area, I was certain I needed to get further from the epicenter before I’d find anything standing. I checked my wrist and a holo appeared with a number of helpful info readouts.

Hmm, the Dodgers were losing again.

I dismissed the holo and headed south, following the clearing. The forest kept me covered and concealed for quite a while until I was so far from the ruins that the structures started resembling structures again. There were no ruins in the trees, so I broke from them and continued south. I’d get to the right distance/level of destruction and then do a radial sweep until I hit something, hopefully.

Thankfully, it didn’t take long. Scanning the area with a set of optics, I was able to pick out a structure in the distance. Almost directly south of the main impact site was a little concrete structure, short and squat, and fitting the description I had, vague though it may be. I pulled up my wrist holo and checked my remaining power…it was good, though not as good as it could have been. I’d had to use some earlier in the day to avoid some wildlife and my cells weren’t back at full charge just yet.

Still, this was important, maybe the most important use of them I’d have. I folded up my walking stick and magnetically stowed it on my pack, then tapped a few buttons on the holo and watched as my arm disappeared under it, along with the rest of my body. Full active camouflage. Drained power like a bitch, but made me almost undetectable without crazy advanced optics.

I was invisible but not silent or insubstantial. I could move quickly at first, but as I closed on the building, had to slow my pace to avoid disturbing the grass and snow too obviously. I’d leave footprints, but there wasn’t much I could do about that now. If I had time, I’d conceal them on my way out.

Only a few feet from the door, I again turned to my wrist holo and turned on inertial dampeners. More power burned, but now I could move as fast as I wanted in complete silence. If I found myself trapped, the few moments difference between moving fast and moving quiet could make all the difference. Looking at my estimated power consumption, I only had a few minutes. I knew it would be less once I got inside and the active camo would have to process and render a more complicated background around me.

So, no point in hesitation. With steps so silent they slightly unnerved even me, I strolled right in, and was immediately disappointed.

The building had been lived in, the lights strung up in the ceiling and open layout showed that clear enough, but not recently. It was cold in here, doing some quick calculation on my holo, exactly as cold as it should have been, meaning that nobody had been warming the room by any means–say by living in it–for the last few days at least. Things had obviously been taken and moved recently, and it seemed reasonable that the Exhuman had packed up to go somewhere else for the winter.

I turned off my stealth gear and frowned at what looked like a small shrine set up in the middle of the room. A note, two papers folded in half like cards, and a leaf-wrapped parcel leaning up against a small box. I picked up the note and read.

Ashton,

I welcome you back from whatever adventure you found yourself upon and hope that you conducted yourself with honor and righteousness, as I suspect you have. You were missed in your absence, and it is my hope that this note finds you before too long, as I should hopefully not have to remind you that as a man of honor, you are bound by obligation to fulfill our agreement.

I hope you are well and wish to see you soon. My other work reminds me constantly how much I treasure our relationship, and I find my days filled with yearning for when next I can attempt to kill you.

You are in my prayers,

XO Karu

PS: To help you through the winter months, I have left a box of nutrient pastes of a deliberate variety of flavors. Please let me know your preference and I can set those aside for you.

I wasn’t sure if it was a love letter or death threat, but the salient point was Athan was here and now he wasn’t, and even those close to him…possibly disturbingly close…did not know where he was. I browsed the other notes, but one was just a list of tips on ice fishing with some pleasantries, and the other a handprint with an indecipherable scrawl.

I left the parcels, interested only in information.

This was an unexpected dead-end. It wasn’t like Exhumans in exile to suddenly get up and move elsewhere like this, they often spent months or years establishing a home for themselves and defending it jealously. Something felt strange about the whole situation, but without more to go on, I felt stuck.

I sat down and ate my own nutrient paste, half a tube I’d started earlier that morning before the incident with the wildlife and thought. I was only like that for a few moments before my wrist vibrated very subtly, my equipment informing me in the least-intrusive way possible that I had unwanted company.

I finished the end of my nutrient tube and held it there for a moment, seeming to savor it while I glanced around the room inconspicuously. There, above me, I saw just a hint of motion, almost impossible to pick out of I weren’t looking for it. I opened a pocket and crushed the remains of the tube, dropping it in the pocket.

Then, faster than fast, whipped a device from the pocket and pointed it upwards, jamming the trigger. A wave of electronic interference sent all my equipment on tilt, and it wasn’t even in the cone of fire. The little cam-drone stationed above me stood no chance and was fried instantly.

I stood and pried its little magnet legs from the ceiling to inspect it. First, I waved it past my wrist holo, once that had a chance to stabilize. The bug was broadcasting nothing, I’d fried it for good. A bit of a shame, but at least I wasn’t being surveilled. Next, I sat down again, a pair of tiny tools appearing to jump into my hands by magic, and began pulling it apart.

It was assimilated on a mass-fab, that much was obvious by its construction, and it really had not much to it but a camera, rotors for flight, and a local broadcast antennae. No onboard AI or anything, entirely controlled remotely…meaning whoever had this one reposition above me had definitely seen me in here.

I wasn’t too concerned about being found out, but was more interested in if this spy knew the whereabouts of my mark. I pulled out the tiny antenna and held it up for my holo to scan.

Basic principles of antennas, they worked best when they were the same length as the wavelength they transmitted on, or half, quarter, double, etc. that wavelength in a pinch. My holo did the math, and I had a band of frequencies to scan for.

And sure enough, there was one of them broadcasting. Had to be, for this little guy to be getting commands from somewhere. Triangulating the exact origin point might be a few hours of difficult…wait…no…it was right here. I traced the signal following my holo to a corner of the room where there was a plain-looking rectangular bar, also mas-fab assimilated.

It was a signal repeater. Used to extend a broadcast range. I swore softly. If the ruins were full of these, it could take days or weeks to chase the signal, running into dead ends at every step. And by the time I got to the real source, they’d have plenty of time to pack up and leave.

I put it back and walked out, heading north and mostly east, in the direction I’d parked my crawler. The last thing I wanted to do was scare off the one remaining person who might know where my mark was. I would leave and report in, come back with different equipment and under the cover of stealth and try again.

I didn’t relish the thought of crawling through the woods, evading every single camera staked out there as I followed the breadcrumb trail of signal repeaters, it sounded like awful, painstaking work, which would be even more drawn out if I had to be in camo for much of it.

But if that’s what my employer wanted, that’s what they got. I wasn’t paid the big bucks to bring home excuses. I snapped my walking stick off my pack with a flourish and got back to hiking.