The facility the team retreated to was a hospital in name only; it was really much closer to a morgue.

Elias’ signal led to a S-Branch brand vending machine with all manner of glowing tonics and syringes, a blocky-looking nurse robot on standby, and a stout complex filled with private coffins built into the walls. The man himself stood remarkably still as puck-shaped machines diligently scrubbed blood and bile off the walls and floor; regarding the janitors with a bemused curiosity as they bumped into his shoes over and over.

“If this is what passes as healthcare in the Frontier,” he said to our arrival, “I’m returning to the PDT the moment my business is finished here. No personal offense meant.”

“Nobody’s stopping ya,” said Jaxl. “Lotta people would kill for the same benefits, you know.”

Elias looked at Jaxl, then at me, who was being carried around like a suitcase (carrying handle included), then at Nina, who insisted on tagging along — she gave a small wave in greeting — and uncrossed his arms. The permanent evening of Hadron coloured his black cybernetics with a luminous shade of orange, which he took some time to look at as he spoke.

“Chambers 46 to 50. Second floor. They’ll be coming out soon; I was instructed to not wait within the building.” He paused for a moment, then continued, “You’ve assembled quite the colourful cast, Mister Jaxl. Surely there were more qualified and reliable hands for hire?”

“Reliability is predictability.” Jaxl’s mask wasn’t on, allowing him to showcase the full charm of his man-eating smile. “It’s hard to find people with a personal stake in anything these days. They don’t believe in anything, which makes them painfully easy to manipulate with cash and clout.” He pat Elias on the shoulder on his way in. “A man of your position and responsibility must understand that, yeah?”

“Hi hi,” Nina chirped, taking the man’s metallic hand and giving it a good shake. “I’m Nina, certified trader and jack-of-a-lot-of-trades. Here’s my card, look it over, give me a call if you need anything!”

Leaving a crisp paper card between his fingers, she followed behind. When Jaxl looked strangely at her, she turned away and pouted.

“What? Business is hard these days, especially when you’re mangling together a completely mechanical, non-golem body.”

The others were already bickering by the time we reached them: snippets of their conversion bounced off the walls, distorted and reverberated through concrete and steel but was, unfortunately, quite audible even without my inhuman method of hearing.

“What do you mean, I slept with you?” screamed Sier.

“Why are you freaking out at me?” screamed Wiz back. “I just told you what happened!”

“Did you do anything? I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you—”

“A coma. Coma! How am I supposed to control my unconscious body?”

Following this statement was the sound of somebody being shoved into a wall, and some high pitched shrieking between following slams.

After seeing Sier deathly silent in actual combat, I concluded that this was probably not worth worrying about.

“The sounds of young love,” Jaxl said, whistling. “Isn’t it sweet?”

“Scandalous,” Nina commented.

Grimm was entertaining herself with some sort of hand-held game console, tapping buttons and clicking triggers while Sier and Wiz engaged in an impromptu wrestling match. As far as fights go, it was as one-sided as they get.

Though their bodies were covered in bandages — Wiz’s head wrap doubled as a helmet — their wounds were gone, healed to perfect, supple skin and flesh. A quick ping from my Ethersight detected no internal defects that I’d have to fix after the fact.

“Now now,” Jaxl said, waving his hand between Sier and the pinned Wiz. “Take it easy. Wiz is already in a relationship, and he doesn’t have the psychological profile of a horny teen.”

“Wait,” Wiz said, taking a break from grunting in pain, “How do you know that?”

“You’ve got photographs in your back pocket. Nice catch, by the way, she seems like a nice gal.”

Sier allowed herself to be pried free; she stood up and crossed her arms, turning away with a harrumph. “I’m not going to apologize.”

“Just don’t do that again,” Wiz said, rolling onto his back. “Know what, I’m just happy to be alive right now.” He winced. “Think my shoulder is dislocated.”

“It isn’t,” I added, helpfully.

Nobody else had the field of view to notice, but I saw Grimm look at our backs and smile.

“Looks like you’re all in good spirits,” Jaxl said. “Well, it’s about to get even better. You guys have a few days off while me and the other old man make sense of the information we got. Try to develop enough camaraderie that you don’t go off and stab one-another in the back while we’re not looking, and don’t make me do some corp-whack-shit team building exercises.”

“Think my back’s broken,” Wiz said.

“It isn’t,” I added, tactfully.

Wiz covered his eyes with his forearm. “Sure feels like it is.”

Nina rested her gloved hands on her nape and smiled a genuine smile, sweeping the room with her gaze. “Lively bunch. Don’t see stuff like this that much these days.”

Her smile wavered. “We’re missing one.”

The lock was still engaged on coffin 50, ticking down the last fifteen minutes until release. Jaxl stepped over and knocked twice on the steel, frowning at the hollow noise.

“Wiz,” he said, “do your thing.”

The hacker pulled himself to his feet and scampered over to the door. From his sleeve came a long dagger, a sliver of broken red glass; it sank into the steel underneath the monitor and locked into place. From there, Wiz pulled out his phone and ran a script. “Security’s a bit outdated. I’ll have to run this by the guys, they might get a kick or two out of it.” The door’s deadbolts clicked open, allowing us to peek inside.

Owl’s coffin was empty.

Nina’s heart raced, a spike so sudden I thought she was under attack. “That’s just like her,” she said, laughing the incident off before anybody else reacted. “She’s a bit of a loner. Don’t worry, I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

Wiz had gotten into the hallway’s camera and was performing a frame-scan of the last few hours of footage. His carefree expression had suddenly warped into one of barely-hidden doubt.

“I’ll be taking Vivi for a spin,” she said, pulling on my chassis. Jaxl, with a hint of surprise, actually let go of me. “I’m gonna make sure Owl doesn’t wander off into trouble.”

Nina walked down the stairs and out the S-Branch clinic, then broke into a full sprint — brushing past Elias into the single, multi-layered street of Hadron. Several white glyphs appeared over her right eye as she ran; a map of the pocket city with dozens of illegible symbols and signs, an interface manipulated with twitches of her eye.

Compared to me who was still new to the world and people, Nina knew Owl for a long time. I could read it in her body language and expression; they were those of somebody who actually gave a shit. And if that wasn’t enough to worry me, my unnatural viewpoint allowed another glimpse of information that I shouldn’t have been able to see.

Wiz isolated the moment Elias and Grimm dragged the trio of casualties in. Many people came and went, Hunters, civilians, private contractors, whoever the hell was desperate enough to take pills from a vending machine and lock themselves in a small box.

Owl came in, but the feed never caught her leaving.

Accelerated by my Stigmata, Nina flew across the arched bridges of Hadron.

“Her signal’s already gone,” she muttered, somehow projecting her voice into my drone’s speaker. “C’mon, hurry, hurry, hurry—damnit!”

A hundred thousand faces and ongoing stories blurred into a single mass of grey flesh and heat; there wasn’t a single trace of Owl in my general area of awareness.

And as much as I hated to admit it, I saw something like this coming.

I saw it. Why didn’t I put together the fragments earlier?

Too focused on the moment. Too focused on learning. I wasn’t an observer anymore — I was given the ability to interact and I had squandered it, swept up by my own incoherent thoughts and the current of events around me.

When did I surrender my agency? Complacency had made me numb and passive; Owl was suffering right in front of me and all I did was watch, unsure and unable. Without realizing it, I almost resigned myself to the tide of the world and my self-absorbed emotions.

Nina leapt from a rail, spreading her arms as she fell foot-first towards the midday crowds. In the small gaps between her sleeve and gloves, blue circuits crackled and formed brilliant armbands that allowed her to control her descent. She landed at the entrance of a junction station and, ducking past the queues and automated tills, smashed her fist against the cage of a certain crystalline bird.

“Well well,” it said, struggling to hold onto its little hat, “Fiesty, aren’t—”

“I need information. Emergency,” Nina said, cutting him off. She pulled a marked device that looked like a cross between an astrolabe and compass out of her pocket and jammed it into his workspace. “Looking for a Hunter named Owl, Class 6. Need gate logs.”

The raven stared at the device for a long moment. “The Prince’s stance on privacy isn’t for show. Nobody’s exempt.”

“But—”

“Customers ain’t always right. Don’t try escalating, you already know who you’re talkin’ to, missy.”

Hands balled into fists. “It’s for an ongoing investigation. If I don’t move now, I’ll lose my lead.”

“Somebody with a bit more authority than you would be around if it was real important.” The raven returned Nina’s crest. It clattered onto the counter. “Can’t exactly override the bossman’s will, anyhow.”

Eyes began to drift, attracted by the commotion. Nina took back her device and held it tight in her palm, barely suppressing a look that could melt through steel.

“I see your request in the system,” the bird said, reassuringly. “Give it a few hours and I can drop you anywhere in the world. No rush.”

Nina backed away, covering up her initial outburst with an unconvincing smile and stiff bow. “Expect to see me again soon, then.”

She clenched her fists hard enough that she would’ve drawn blood had she not been wearing enhanced gloves. The next client slid past Nina and knocked his knuckles on the till; I braced for an extreme retaliation, only to realize that we were already acquainted with the person waiting behind us.

“I’m on the trail of a heretic,” he said, resting his hand on the red-threaded grip of his blade. “Relic Hunter Owl, id 6b894-14-C6, is suspected to have information regarding their whereabouts. I trust you are already familiar with the Disaster Liaison Treatise.”

The raven looked between Nina and Elias, sighing loud enough for the entire lobby to hear. Some spectators only grew aware of Elias when he spoke; a select few of those averted their eyes or found the nearest person to slip behind.

“Yeah yeah,” the raven said, defeated. He grumbled something about ‘damned zealots’ and ‘no respect’ as he pecked at a terminal, then glanced Nina’s way. “Say, you two aren’t working together, are you?”

“We are in a mutual agreement. Of sorts.”

“Of sorts,” the raven snorted. “Yeah, sure, whatever. Stranger bedfellows have existed. Now get the fuck outta here, you’re holding up the actual proper line.”

The crystal raven plucked one of its feathers and dropped it in Elias’ mechanical palm. He gestured for Nina to follow, then immediately set off towards his assigned private departure bay.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Nina asked, chasing his heels.

“You were in a hurry,” Elias said. “Nobody runs off like that unless they’re doing something important. Here, take a look.”

The file acquired was a single transaction, the record of a ticket to a decommissioned zone: a place with no Husks or worthwhile resources to obtain. There was no reason to go to one, yet Owl had purchased herself a one-way ticket with the very last of her savings.

Elias crushed the feather in his hand and threw the resulting shards at the diminutive gate for one, forming a black helix entrance. Nina nodded her thanks and rushed through, still carrying me along.

I was momentarily blinded by misama on the other side. The Ether saturating the area was a thick and greasy thing, a sludge that poured from the skies and sank deep into the land. My cameras showed me a static-filled view of a corroded city. Perhaps once it was a proud coastal port, home to vessels of all types and origin and tourists and scenic vistas, yet all that remained was grey.

Grey were the walkways that refused to rust. Grey were the crumbling concrete scaffolds that emerged from the waters like forgotten pylons; grey was the acidic rain that fell from the skies and grey were the colour of the lingering shards in the sky; in every direction around us, a labyrinth of grey towers, black water, and dead skies. Cables eaten raw by decay and a reddish, slightly luminescent mold were the only discernible furnishings in the near total darkness, yet even that was made fuzzy and unfocused by the condensation on my eye’s lense.

“She’s around here somewhere,” Nina said, covering her mouth with her sleeve. “I don’t know where all this interference is coming from. Smells like fucking sulphur and salt and shit. Shit.”

Elias followed through, blade in hand. He looked around for a moment, then sheathed it. “Nobody else but us around.”

“I can’t see anything,” I said, desperately focusing on the camera display. We were on a partially collapsed rooftop of some kind, but there was too much fog and interference to make out anything else. “What happened?”

“Willful blindness,” Elias said. His eyes flickered red as he scanned the area — he pointed to the south and began walking. “That way. She’s there.”

We moved. Nina and Elias hopped, slid, and leapt through an abandoned maze of sloped roofs and bridges built with corrugated steel plates and wire ropes. The miasma only seemed to get stronger as we went on, constricting and suffocating the mind itself; there was no room to think, no room to ponder, no room left to imagine.

I made another mistake. Hoping to not bear the same pain I experienced many times before, I merely observed and tried to calculate a solution to the obvious problem in view. I could’ve prevented this with ease.

Why didn’t I pay more attention? Why didn’t I do anything sooner?

Was I so afraid of messing something up that I forgot to act at all?

Unforgivable. I already witnessed this once and thought I learned my lesson — why did I let it happen again?

Nina missed a foothold and slammed into the wall. Elias helped her back up, but her expression had changed to a flat, confused stare — she stopped moving entirely. Rain against steel was the requiem that marked her realization.

A single gunshot told us that we were too late.