‘Orion? Status update.’

That was Poison. She’d reached her safe spot and shaken any tails she might have had, and now she was calling in. Orion stumbled up the steps from the subway station and turned left at the top.

‘Orion.’

That was Lilly. There was something in his voice. Panic?

‘Your ring is giving me strange readings. I don’t suppose you’re keeping your hand submerged in water while walking, and I bet you’re not that heavy of a sweater. You’re bleeding. Swipe distress to confirm, check-up to negate.’

He fumbled with the ring for a second. He had to let go of his side to twist the movable section and answer Lilly’s question. Warm blood trickled down beneath his clothes and into his waistband.

The first two times he tried to twist the segment of the ring, his fingers slipped with blood and the print sensor refused to activate. He got it right on the third try.

‘OK. Swipe distress if you’re in immediate danger, check-up if not.’

Orion twisted the ring again and then pressed his hand back on his wound.

Lilly breathed out a sigh of relief.

‘Hells!’ That was Poison again. ‘Where are you? I’ll come and patch you up.’

She muttered something else Orion couldn’t understand. He took a few more steps and glanced around. None of the other pedestrians paid him any heed, and none of them were in earshot.

‘I’m three blocks from my safe spot, over by the post office. Alley to the right of the subway.’

A few seconds of silence that he used to hobble down further into that same alley, away from the steady stream of people entering and exiting the subway. It had been hard enough to get here without anyone noticing the blood. The alternative would have been not taking a train. He wouldn’t have been able to get away from the very angry guards at the warehouse, then. Gunshot wounds sucked. Suck. Sub. Subway. He’d taken that here. The subway.

His thoughts might be a bit sluggish right now.

‘Lilly, gimme a route.’

‘Eh… Ten minutes. Go left towards ...’

Orion tuned them out and continued down the alley. From the subway. Into the alley. He glanced down at his side. The blood hadn’t stained his jacket just yet, but he figured it would soon enough. He could feel the warmth seeping through cloth, already leaving streaks on his – thankfully dark – pants. Ten minutes might be long enough to let it reach his boots. The streaks would broaden into a nice stain, visible no matter what colour pants he wore.

He had to find a closer safe point, out of sight, and new clothes. Clothes. Loaves. A bakery? He was getting off track again.

Poison, he needed to meet her.

The voices in his ear had quieted. She was on her way.

‘Lilly, I need somewhere to stay.’

‘Already on it. Go right at the next intersection, then another street over. There’s a closed-down drug store.’

That wasn’t exactly a short route, but it would have to do. To do. To do list. Step one: don’t bleed out. Orion chuckled a bit.

Ten minutes of walking very slowly and with a lot of panting, Orion found the drug store. His side stung with every step, shards of pain pulling up into this chest. The blood loss was starting to make him dizzy, but the pain focused his thoughts somewhat. He wasn’t sure they were all accurate, though. Every time he stumbled, he thought he could feel something tear in him even further. That must be his mind playing tricks on him, right?

He reached the door just as Poison turned onto the street. She spotted him and jogged over.

‘Opener in my left pocket.’ His head spun. His left boot squeaked with liquid.

She snatched the Opener from his jacket and stuck it to the door. The device introduced a small current to the shut-down security system to open the lock without permanent damage, and they were inside seconds later. Poison closed the door and pointed at a spot in the middle of the room, already rummaging through her backpack.

Orion regarded the stone chips, dust, sand, and bits of sawdust. Unfinished construction work? Recent? Would someone find them here? A spike of fear almost made him turn to leave. The pain in his side reminded him that he wouldn’t get anywhere in any reasonable amount of time. His injury needed to be addressed.

He pulled off his jacket and spread it on the floor, standing on it so he wouldn’t leave any bloody smears. The movement sent more blades of pain through his body.

‘Clothes off. I want to see how bad it is.’

Orion refrained from making a joke about her wording and lifted his arms. Poison helped him peel off his shirt and unbuckle the tool harness beneath. She carefully placed both on top of her own jacket on the floor. Then she regarded his side.

‘Yep, needs stitches. Just a graze, though. Your muscle got the most of it, organs are all right, ribs should be, too. Hold still.’

She moved in cold, precise routines, jaw locked. Orion didn’t know whether it came naturally to her or if she was suppressing her shock and simply going through the motions. Maybe he was imagining things again.

Poison cleaned his side, stitched it up, and put a syringe full of antibiotics and painkillers into him. He registered only half of it on a conscious level. She bandaged his side and finally sat back with a sigh. ‘All done. Lilly, how far to Orion’s stash?’

Stash, right. She’d been able to raid her own before coming to meet him. That’s where she had the medical kit from, the bandages and the gloves she was peeling off right now. She was wearing normal clothes again, he saw. She’d changed. He should do that, too.

‘I can get you there and back in fifteen to twenty minutes.’

‘All right. Orion, I’ll go and get your things. Then we’ll get you changed and home. Got it? Hey, look at me.’

He nodded slowly. The painkillers were starting in on what remained of his senses. They shouldn’t be working that quickly. Was it his imagination? He felt tired, groggy, and sat down on his jacket.

A door somewhere closed and opened again.

Something jostled him. A low hum next to his ear.

Orion tried to brush it away, but his body felt heavy.

His hand wouldn’t move right.

His head moved, but he couldn’t fix it on anything. It lolled somewhere.

The room spun.

And then everything was clear again. His fatigue was gone, his body wasn’t heavy any more. Orion opened his eyes.

The room was dark. The silver sheen of moonlight played along the coffee table next to him.

He was home. Home in their flat, on the couch. He turned his head, and his sense of balance found that very funny. He made a sound not unlike a groan.

The armchair flinched. A muffled curse. Then a light went on, blinding Orion.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ Lilly mumbled. He moved away and pounded on a door. ‘He’s up.’

Rushing feet, then Poison was next to him, grinning. ‘Morning, sunshine.’

Orion scowled. ‘Sunshine, my ass. And it’s not morning.’

His voice was hoarse and quiet. Lilly held out a glass with a straw in it. After a few gulps and coughs and some spilled water, Orion found his voice again, still rough but much clearer. ‘What happened?’

‘The blood loss had you sleepy. And the painkillers knocked you right out after that,’ Poison related, still grinning. ‘I finally got you halfway conscious and dragged you back here. Stumbled into some other tenants on the way, so officially, you got thoroughly wasted after our, uh, “camping trip”. You’ve been asleep for almost two days. I’m never giving you oxycodone again. How do you feel?’

Orion’s head reeled at the load of information. ‘Sleepy,’ he answered, failing to keep a straight face. His body ached and his muscles seemed to strain with every movement, but there was no pain. Just a kind of pleasant tingle in his stomach. ‘Do you always have that sewing kit on you?’

‘Yep,’ Poison proclaimed happily. ‘Though I used some stuff from my stash yesterday. The wound’s healing well. You pulled it in your sleep once, but there’s no infection. Should close up nicely in a few weeks. Aren’t you happy you got me.’

‘Hells yeah I am.’ Orion rubbed at his eyes. ‘How’s the street?’

Lilly scoffed. ‘No worries. Rivers’ men made fools of themselves, running around like lost puppies and not finding any of their mysterious “raiders”. They’re pissed. We shouldn’t go poking them again any time soon, but we’re safe for now.’ He paused. ‘No news on Michael, though. The stuff you got is interesting, but not particularly useful to us. Doesn’t give us anything more specific on Dan Shio, either. We could try and sell it.’

Orion sighed and settled into the ouch. ‘Let’s lay low for a while. See what the two of you can do without me. Plan.’ He closed his eyes.

‘Oh no, you don’t. You’re not nodding off here.’ Poison poked him in the shoulder. ‘I put you on the couch so we could keep an eye on your breathing. Now you’ve woken up, you can go to your room, and I can have my couch back.’

Ryan yawned and ran a weary hand over his face. He felt a hundred years old. Maybe more. His desk was filled with a sufficient amount of cases to keep him at work long after he was supposed to leave.

A shooting in a warehouse a few days ago.

Two people had been killed in their homes.

And he hadn’t gotten anywhere concerning Hounds’ activities.

Most of the workload, he could redirect to his units, but he still had to supervise, and he had to do some of the immediate work himself. This was just one of many too long nights at the station, and it wouldn’t be the last.

His phone lit up, vibrated once, and emitted a familiar ringtone through the – muted – speakers. The same one as from the website they’d found after the break-in. Ryan stared at the phone and wondered whether he should feel dread or relief. Orion usually took less time to call after a job. Was that good or bad? He tapped an icon on the screen and then accepted the call.

‘Orion.’

‘Silas! Nice to talk to you.’ The younger man’s voice was quiet, raspy.

‘The feeling’s mutual.’ Ryan settled for relief, and let the dread dissipate. As long as Orion called, he wasn’t up to anything new and sinister.

‘Aww, that’s very nice of you,’ Orion drawled. ‘So, I never got to call you after the whole station mess. Sorry to disrupt your schedule. Next time, you won’t even know we were there!’

‘Hah. I’d rather have you call ahead. So we can clean up a bit.’

It was an old routine, and Ryan had grown accustomed to it. Orion would boast and tease, Ryan would try and get something out of him, get him to get overconfident. It hadn’t worked too well so far, but it wasn’t like he could stop Orion from calling. He’d tried.

For three years now, ever since Ryan had taken the case on Hounds, they’d had these little chats, and Ryan had never succeeded in tracing the call. He wondered why he bothered any more, but he still tried.

Orion laughed, a pleased little chuckle, and Ryan decided to get serious. This may be a game to Orion, but it wasn’t to him.

‘You took my flash drive.’

The thief paused, and answered slowly, as if talking to a very small child. ‘Yes, I did.’

‘And considering you got Alexander Rivers on your team, I guess you rooted through it already. By the way, please ask him not to use our servers for video games, would you?’

Another pause. Orion’s voice went flat, losing some of its bravado. ‘You exchanged notes with the Agency. That’s cheating.’

Ryan grinned. He’d struck a nerve. ‘No such thing. I’d like to know what you were looking for.’

Again, a moment of silence, this one much longer. Ryan waited in anticipation. Normally, Orion was quicker in his responses, and Ryan was the one lagging behind. He might finally get Orion to slip up.

‘You’ve got more than one flash drive,’ Orion said quietly.

Ryan cursed silently. He’d celebrated too soon. Instead of cornering Orion, he’d overextended and left himself wide open. He forced himself to act confused, though he knew it was already too late. ‘What?’

‘Nice try, Silas. You wouldn’t care which one of your people I’m after. It’s equally bad news anyway. You have more than that one flash drive, and you want to know if I got the one I was looking for.’ He chuckled again, but quickly stumbled into a cough.

‘Die quietly, please,’ Ryan said dryly.

He could hear Orion take a sip of water and continue his chuckle. ‘Ah, it’s always fun talking to you. Gotta go, though.’

Ryan wondered what Orion got out of their conversations. He just called and chatted and played his games. Ryan at least had a chance to glean some information, but why did Orion indulge this? He remembered that he had just now given away the existence of more than one flash drive in his possession, and revised that thought. Still, Orion had to have another reason. To make things more interesting? To taunt?

Maybe he wouldn’t ever find out. One thing was familiar, though. As soon as Orion decided to end the call, it was done. The first few times he’d called, Ryan had tried to stall him or get him to talk longer. But once the thief said his goodbyes, he hung up within twenty seconds, no matter if Ryan was in the middle of a sentence.

‘All right,’ he sighed instead, stepping into routine once more. ‘Have a nice night. And try not to get killed.’

‘You too, Silas,’ came the routine answer, and then a little extra. ‘Don’t work so late, it’s bad for your health.’

He hung up. Ryan checked the phone. No tracking results, no traces of a call at all, as always. He idly wondered how Orion knew he was still working, and not at home. Simple assumption? That if Ryan was awake this time of night, he was most likely working?

For that matter, had Orion known Ryan was awake at all? Had he just chanced it? How many times had Orion called and Ryan hadn’t been there to pick up? There were never any call records, after all. And the phone was off when Ryan was off duty.

Maybe Orion had managed to locate the phone. Which would be quite a disturbing feat.

It didn’t really matter. Ryan wouldn’t find his answers any time soon, and he couldn’t take any measures without them. It was strange enough that Orion managed to call this phone without being traced. Ryan couldn’t start to imagine what else he might have done, and he tried not to think about it too much.

He mentally recalled the conversation. These chats tended to yield a little something, if you listened well enough. It was rarely anything important, but Orion was not quite as careful as he thought himself to be. What else had there been …

The coughing, the voice. Orion had sounded tired. No big things happening in the last day, no jobs he could have been involved in. Something longer-term. Injury? The coughing fell in line with that. An injury attained a few days ago. Why did that nag him?

Ryan went over his files again. Warehouse shooting, two people killed in their homes – the warehouse. He checked the details again, looking for clues.

The building had been found deserted and burnt out earlier today, but eyewitness accounts placed multiple distinct individuals there just days before. Armed guards in particular, and lots of activity around the premises, things being moved.

Then, two days ago, early in the morning, a truck diver beginning his shift in the district not far from the warehouse had heard shots. He’d reported the incident immediately. According to him, the commotion had gone on for several minutes before the property quieted down a bit again. Due to circumstances Ryan didn’t really want to think about, the officers on duty had taken their time to check it out. Enough time for someone to empty out the warehouse and torch the remains. It was to be expected in a city of this size, but it still irked him.

The first time he’d found one of his officers being a little more lenient than they should be, Ryan had bristled. He’d formed an investigation squad with people he trusted and spied on his own people. It had landed him nowhere, and even hindered the progress his people were making in other areas. In the end, letting a few influential people get away with some technically illegal activities beat not solving murders. Ryan had eased off and limited himself to the uncomfortable feeling in his gut, even if it meant he had no idea what exactly had happened two days ago, and he had to piece it together.

In the aftermath of the commotion at the warehouse, other sections of the city’s underground had been affected. There had been an increase of trouble between Max Rivers’ people and rivaling gangs, enough so that the police caught wind of it. The skirmishes weren’t serious enough to give them an opening to make a move, though.

If the warehouse had belonged to either of the gangs, that would explain the delay in investigation, too. Max Rivers greased a lot of palms. Someone had been a bit sluggish in passing on reports, just slight enough that it could be explained away.

When the evidence team finally got to the site, they had found little of use. The interior had been torched. The exterior was barren. Nothing usable forforensics, aside from ash, which was being analysed right now.

There would be nothing there. Probably. Maybe. But if there was?

Ryan decided to visit the scene himself. It couldn’t hurt, and it might give him clues on either or both Hounds and Rivers. He trusted his people, and the evidence team was good at their jobs, but they relied a little too much on their equipment for his tastes. He liked to get a feel for these things himself. Seeing something in person was so very different from reading a report about it.

There might also be a small perfectionist part in him whispering that if he missed anything, at least it would be his own fault. Anything he missed he couldn’t fault his team for not noticing, and it would give him peace of mind.

He put in a note with the – restocked – night shift and drove to the industrial section of the city in his private car. It wasn’t far.

As he pulled up at the edge of the compound, the night was reaching its coldest point, just before sunrise. A few more days, and the first traces of frost would creep out around this hour. Ice would stretch across grass and earth and car windows, only to be banished shortly after by the rising sun.

As his breath clouded in front of him, Ryan admitted he should really catch some sleep after this. No use in driving back to the station just to do his paperwork half asleep. He wouldn’t get anything done then, anyway. For now, the cold revived him enough to stay cautious. Flash-light pointed ahead, he approached the fence.

Where the gate had been, empty sockets gaped at him from the ground. Ryan recognized the more tell-tale ones where heat sensors, magnetic plates, and what could have been a heartbeat scanner had been embedded just a few days ago. Other marks were incomprehensible to him. Impressive security.

The building itself was black with soot and ash. It was burned to the point where nothing was left save for the bare walls and roof and a few lumps of blackened stone or steel. A circular area at the centre of the building was depressed and cracked into a shallow crater. Something seemed to have been blown up, or hit by a very large hammer. Ryan huffed at the idea.

He regarded the crater and the chunks of material strewn a ways to any side. Blown up, then. There might have been an office or machinery here. He looked up, shining his flash-light across the ceiling. Usually paid to check upward, and it did now. The remnants of a large pipe led out to the roof.

Ryan turned slowly, shining his light from different angles, trying to make sense of it. Looked like a chute. But on the roof? There were not remains of a staircase anywhere. Maybe another access, something that had burned completely?

He gave up and spotted an empty frame where the back door had been. He wouldn’t have to circle the building to get to that side, then. Rubble shifted beneath his shoes in the eerie quiet, but there was no echo from the burned walls. The soot weighed on him like a blanket. A crisp, scorched, heavy blanket.

The perimeter was separated from the next property over by a standard chain-link fence, with a few steps of space to the warehouse. There were more structures on the other side, and not much else to see. A few boards of wood leant against the wall of the opposite building.

He glanced around, at the building behind him, at the burned out windows, up at the roof, down at his feet.

Something glinted in the light of his flash-light. Ryan bent down and picked up the bullet casing. That would fit in with the reported shooting, but it wouldn’t tell much about the participants. Ryan doubted that anyone trying to hide their activities would use extravagant weapons. And if they did, they surely wouldn’t leave their casings lying around.

Ryan glanced around once more, but quickly realized that he wouldn’t see any marks or chipped away stone from stray bullets in the walls. Not after a fire, in this light, from this distance. No way to guess at the trajectory of the shots, assuming they weren’t simply all over the place. Fate rarely gave him nicely aligned crime scenes to tell a story.

But there were still some things he could check, to maybe turn this visit into something resembling useful. With a smirk, Ryan pulled a small box from his pocket, courtesy of the tech team. He flicked the switch, and the sensor buzzed for a few seconds. Some minor adjustments, and Ryan’s phone displayed a 3D map of the area within fifty feet in any directions. It reached downward, too, and it showed a small dot at the centre that was the position of the device itself.

He navigated through the map, picking along the bright spots along the grid. Each spot marked the reading of a metal source – iron and its alloys, to be precise. Most of the readings would be steel, from the bullet jackets and remains from the fire. One of the first things he found were leftover door hinges, warped by the heat and hanging crookedly.

Most of the readings, he interpreted as bullets, scattered widely. Several were lodged in the walls above him, some in the ground, and a few even down the alley to his right. One of the boards on the other side of the fence seemed to be riddled. Some of those might be nails, though, the readings weren’t accurate enough to discern that from afar.

Ryan shone his light up at the roof again, then over to the next building. The bullet scattering suggested that someone had been on top of the roof. And on the one a building over.

Or maybe one of the guards had set his weapon to automatic and fallen, or given off wild warning shots.

Maybe someone had gone down the alley, instead. But they’d been shot at. The lack of bullets lodged on this side of the fence suggested that either a perpetrator had been quickly eliminated on this side, or crossed over the fence and gotten a bit farther.

But how did anyone get across a gap several feet wide? It was too great a distance to jump reliably. If more than one person had been involved, and they had used a spanned rope, surely one of them would have been hit and likely fallen. That did kind of sound like one of Hounds’ reckless plans, though. Maybe they had been lucky and gotten away with injury, as Orion’s call had indicated.

He was missing something. Some other route, perhaps. The roof could have been a distraction, drawing fire away from the actual path of escape. Maybe the alley would provide more clues?

Ryan sighed. He knew what was missing. Any kind of connection at all. His hypothesis was too risky, too random, too reliant on luck for Hounds’ style of operations. True, Orion liked to take risks, but they were usually calculated ones. Hounds rarely put themselves in as much danger on a job as they’d have had to on this one.

The call with Orion had indicated nothing, really. It was all wild speculation, the assumption that Hounds had been here, during the shooting two days ago, somehow involved.

He was getting paranoid, resting his theories on a rough voice and a cough. Orion might have just as well have caught a cold. Sometimes, shootings between gangs were just that. Not everything had a deeper meaning or connection or plot behind it. He was starting to see clues were there were none, hoping that all of his cases could be grouped together with one nice, simple solution at the root of it all.

In fact, he was standing in a burnt-out building at five in the morning, with nothing of any use left in it. After his people had gone over it again and again, already analysing bullet patterns and anything else he could think of.

Ryan shivered in the cold. He couldn’t continue this approach, but he couldn’t drop it, either. This was still a shooting, and it wasn’t as convenient as to be connected to Hounds. He’d have to balance his workload, then. Oh joy.

He would make the teams go over this place again in daylight, check the strange pipe, the bullet patterns, the alley. The roofs. He would check out who had owned that warehouse, and hoped nobody tried to obstruct him.

If this got even closer to Max Rivers, it might just all go to hell.