I returned to my apartment.

Ironic that I was beginning to finally think of it that way—as mine—now that I was on the verge of losing it, along with everything else.

There was a throbbing hum as Sae stepped through the portal behind me. It was harder to read her these days—along with the physical changes and expressionless compound eyes typically hidden behind sunglasses, she’d become far more reserved than before. Still, the way her shoulders drooped and the way she pulled herself inward was simple enough to read.

“It’s not too late for you to bow out.” I called over my shoulder as I pulled my social UI and tried to send Kinsley another message, mainly to confirm squelch was still in effect.

“That’s something you’re gonna learn about me, Helpline. I don’t back down.” Sae stared at me coolly. Still, the bluster fell a bit flat.

“You get that what I’m asking you to do isn’t just for me, right?” I asked gently. “It serves a dual purpose.”

Sae waved me off. “Yeah, I get it. If I kept hiding forever, my ability to find a solution to this shit—“ She gestured to herself “—would be severely gimped. This theater gives me a chance to present myself in a positive light. Not to mention, my usefulness would be limited.”

“Sae.”

“Fuck off with the mothering. It’s just a lot, alright?”

“Yeah.”

Sae crossed through the living area and went to her knees, removing one of the lacquered white panels beneath the TV. An adjustment Kinsley had insisted on that seemed extraneous at the time, given our alternative methods of getting in and out unseen. Sae peered in, only to turn and give me a thoughtful look. “Sure you’re going to be able to come off as an inexperienced mook?”

I shrugged. “Not long ago, I was an inexperienced mook.

She shook her head. “When you’re in the shit, you tend to push things too far.”

“How so?”

“The first time I got into combat, it was a nothing. A couple of low-level goblins. But I was shitting my pants. Jinny had slightly more experience than me, and she kept shrieking whenever her spells went off. Hell, Nick took to it better than any of us, and he was on the verge of losing his lunch constantly, especially when he cut something open.”

My brow furrowed. “You’re saying I seemed off.”

“Way too comfortable. It didn’t matter because Nick vouched for you. But that first ambush? The Trial after? I must have wondered a half-dozen times what your background was. Because you just slipped into this analytical combatant mentality, like you’d been wearing it your entire life.” She studied the door. “I guess, in a way, it makes me feel better that you were experienced before then. Otherwise, someone might get the impression you’re some kind of psycho.”

My lips pressed together. As much as I understood that Sae had a point, it was a precarious balance. If I presented myself as too meek and timid, it would seem incongruous in comparison to the type of person who would fight through a forcefield to attempt to save a region. Going too far the other way would arouse suspicion as well.

I opened my mouth to speak, only to be cut off by a sudden explosion of noise.

BANG BANG BANG

That was a cop knock if I’d ever heard one. I snapped my fingers once and pointed to the hole. Sae slipped into the crawlspace, gripping the handles on the reverse-side of the panel and pulling it on behind her. It didn’t align perfectly. I helped secure it from the other side until it locked in.

BANG BANG BANG BANG.

More insistent this time. If I made them wait much longer, there wouldn’t be a door left to bang on. I grabbed the remote from the coffee table and turned the TV and Blu-ray player on. Unfortunately, the last person to use it had apparently been Iris. A still image of a computer-generated princess belting out a song within the bounds of an ice castle manifested on the vibrant screen. I spent precious seconds scrubbing through the video, looking for anything that resembled a dialogue scene, and pressed play on the first one I found, slowly bumping the volume from mute.

I dropped the controller and headed into the bathroom, kicking my shoes and socks off and mussing my hair, putting a few drops of Visine into my eyes.

BANG BANG BANG—

I threw the door open, revealing both Foster and Hawkins, Hawkins with her fist stopped an inch from the door. She studied my appearance. “Where were you?”

“Asleep.” I said irritably.

Foster shook his head. “Told you.”

Hawkins shot him a look, then gave me a level-stare. “Took you a while to answer the door.”

“No, waking up took a while. Answering the door went fairly quickly.” I glared at her. I was being intentionally obstinate. Regardless of how in the right they were, they’d turned my life upside down over the course of the afternoon. Being too cooperative would be an obvious tell.

“Should be the last check for the night, Matt.” Foster said sympathetically. “Probably being overly careful, but with there’s too many new and unknown powers in play to take half-measures.”

“Glad you’re expending so much manpower on watching me, rather than looking for Myrddin.”

Hawkins pushed past me and did a lap around the room, sticking her head into each door as Foster waited by the front with me. “You, uh, talking to anyone in here?”

I shook my head, sticking a thumb towards the TV.

“Interesting choice.” Foster said.

“Background noise. Can’t sleep without it.”

“Uhuh.” He raised an eyebrow as the animated snowman on screen cracked wise.

“And maybe I like the soundtrack okay—christ. Is she gonna be done anytime soon?”

Hawkins strolled in, as if she’d just gone for a casual walk in the park. “You said you live alone?” I didn’t miss the way she eyed the guest room.

“Yep.”

“Problem?” Foster asked.

“Just doesn’t look that way. More than one toothbrush in the bathroom, couple of mugs in the sink. Blanket in the guest room seems a little odd.” Hawkins’ eyes slid to me. “Unless you just happen to be a fan of system knock-off Hello Kitty. Surprised you and Cook missed that, Foster.”

Along with breathing room to deal with the suits, this was precisely why I needed to redirect the focus of their investigation quickly. None of the feds were pencil pushers. They all had clear field experience and were extremely perceptive. It was only a matter of time before I made a mistake I couldn’t explain away.

“Or,” I rolled my eyes, “They were paying attention when I went over how most of my family lived in this suite during my recovery. Given everything that’s going on, moving has been something of a scattered process.”

“Of course.” Hawkins pulled a pot of coffee off the machine and sniffed it.

Foster smiled apologetically. “Anyway. This isn’t the Kremlin. Miles was clear. You’re allowed to stretch your legs or work out some frustration at the rec center. We’ll be rotating out, but I’ll be around tonight and tomorrow morning, then back in the PM after I’ve caught up on sleep.”

Smart on Miles’ part. Political. He was keeping a sympathetic presence near me by keeping Foster nearby, and making up for any potential weakness that created by making sure there were two of them on my floor at any given time.

Still, it wasn’t like he strong-armed Foster into acting this way.

“Thanks, Foster.” I said.

‘You got it. We heading out?” Foster looked at Hawkins, who’d helped herself to the stale coffee and still had that leveled stare focused in my direction.

Hawkins inclined her head to the door. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Once the door was shut, I entered the open kitchen and leaned against the counter, facing Foster, making sure to keep my hands visible and my posture non-threatening. “This the part where you tell me why you’ve apparently decided to swap to bad cop over the interim of a handful of hours?”

Hawkins sipped her coffee, then set it aside. “Know anything about work dogs, Matt?”

I blinked, thrown by the non-sequitur. “Like, seeing eye-dogs?”

“No. Drug dogs, corpse dogs, etcetera.”

Only a little, but it felt like more of a rhetorical question. I shook my head.

“Lotta controversy around them these days. But they have their uses.” Hawkins looked up, as if she was recalling a memory. “A Long time ago, before I ended up where I am now, I was rank and file up in Aledo assisting with an investigation. A little boy disappeared. He was small. No more than fifty pounds. We were about a week beyond the first seventy-two hours. Understand the implication there?”

It was safe enough to answer, seeing as how practically every police procedural had blasted this particular factoid out to the public at some point. With every day that passes after the first seventy-two hours of a missing person's case, the chances of success plummet.

“The kid was dead.” I said flatly.

Hawkins nodded. “The detectives running the investigation came to the same conclusion. They had almost everything they needed for a conviction. A solid suspect, pieces of trace evidence in the suspect’s possession including the victim’s backpack, a shirt, and an iPad. It was damning. All they were missing was a murder weapon and a body.”

“Guessing you found the body.”

“Not right away. The suspect owned fifteen acres. Canvassing was hell. Foliage so thick you could have walked over a hundred shallow graves without realizing it. Eventually, the DIC stopped being a chintzy bastard and ponied up for cadaver dogs. They have this system, right? The handler and the dogs. They’ll canvass an area, and every so often the dog will signal.” Hawkins raised her arm and moved a pointed finger in a circle. “False positives are common, so they’ll usually wait for both dogs to signal repeatedly. Only we didn’t have to wait long. Both dogs signaled almost immediately, ten yards away from the house. Sure enough, there was upturned earth underneath a clump of leaves. We started digging and found…”

Hawkins made a sarcastic magician’s flourish. “A fucking buried possum. We dug under it, of course. The killers who think they’re smart love to hide bodies under animal corpses.”

“Was it there?”

“No.” Hawkins glanced at her coffee cup. Wordlessly, I held out a hand, and she passed it to me. My fingers brushed her skin lightly, and somehow I managed to avoid smiling at the minor victory. With my new vocation ability, I had the means to spy on both Miles and Hawkins now. Three more made a set. I refilled the cup and handed it to her. “But twenty yards to the south, the dogs signaled again. And again. And again.”

“He was killing animals and burying them.”

“By the dozen.” Hawkins looked disgusted. “That went on for at least a week. A week of digging in dirt and finding stinking, mutilated bodies in shallow graves, none of them human. Fatigue set in.”

I sighed. “Fascinating as this is, I’m not really seeing the point—“

“I’m getting to it.” Hawkins cut me off. “One of the last graves we uncovered was fresher than the rest. A horse. It wasn’t even close to dried out, and its stomach had been slashed open, the remains… thoroughly infested. I’ll save you the gory details—“

“Those weren’t the gory details?”

“Trust me.” Hawkins shuddered. “It was bad. No one wanted to go near it. Shortly after, some rookie found the murder weapon. A baseball bat tossed into his neighbor’s field. DNA did the rest. Matched the traces of blood in the grain to the blood on the backpack. Word came down that the DA was willing to prosecute the case without a body, and we packed it in.”

My mouth twitched. “No one bothered to dig under the horse.”

Hawkins chuckled. “That’s right. Miles said you had good instincts. It stuck in my craw. Even if every other star aligns, prosecuting a murder case without a body is risky at best. And this wasn’t the kind of guy who would crack and just give it up, even if the verdict came down as guilty. There was a good chance the family would never be able to bury their son. It kept me up at night. So, I committed the unforgivable sin of jumping the chain of command and brought it up to my lieutenant. Told him everything.”

“What’d he do?”

“He was pissed. And instead of laying into the detectives, he grabbed a crime-scene tech, threw three shovels in the back of a squad car, drove us to the property, and marched across the field to the grave. And after a few hours of cutting through filth, and rot, and viscera, we found him.”

I dumped the rest of the coffee in the sink, watching it swirl down. “Congratulations. Was this meant to be some thinly veiled parable about how you’re not afraid to get your hands dirty?”

“During the interview—“

“Interrogation.”

“—interview,” Hawkins emphasized. “Waller uncovered something ugly. You didn’t bother denying it. Instead, you came clean. Warts and all. But it was a little too easy. I’m uncertain whether we’ve dug deeply enough.”

“It’s time for you to go.” I said coldly. I needed these people out of my life as soon as possible.

“Sure.” Hawkins placed her mug in the sink and approached the door.

Unable to help myself, I called after her. “That lieutenant—the one that believed you and put his career in the line—that was Miles, wasn’t it?”

Hawkins paused, her hand on the door. When she turned back, her expression was unreadable. “In the off-chance we end up taking this another direction? Whether it’s six months or a year from now. No matter how suspicious or mundane the circumstances, if something happens to Miles? You’ll find me back on your doorstep. And I won’t be as nice the second time around.”

“Got it.”

“Have a nice night, Matthias.”

As soon as the door clicked shut, I sagged, hand pressed to my chest, heart beating rapidly beneath my palm. I previously thought I’d won Hawkins over. Or at least earned her sympathy. As it turned out, I was utterly wrong.

I turned the TV off, set my alarm for a half-hour and tried to catch some sleep on the couch. If everything worked out perfectly, and they bought it, this could all be behind me.

But sleep wouldn’t come. The insides of my eyelids felt like oppressive curtains, robbing me of precious minutes.

Eventually, I rolled off the couch and opened the door. Foster and Cook were standing outside.

“Looking a little rough there, champ.” Cook sneered. He’d changed from his blue flower-print Hawaiian shirt to a red flower-print Hawaiian shirt. At least the man was consistent.

I ignored him and glanced at Foster. “Mind if I take you up on that rec time?”

Foster grinned. “Sure thing.”

A few minutes later, we strode down the hallway. They flanked me professional, Cook behind me and to my left, Foster ahead and to my right. The formation was tight. If I had to do anything physical to alert Kinsley that the wheels were in motion, they would have clocked it immediately. But that wouldn’t be necessary.

The solution was the most recent entry in the quest screen.

Quest: Totally Real Merchant’s Guild Quest

Primary Objective — Find a dungeon and clear it.

Secondary Objective — Avoid turning Kinsley’s hair white before her sixteenth birthday you bastard.

Reward: 1 Selve

Accept Quest? Y|N

I rejected the quest. With squelch blocking direct communications, it was the best alternative we came up with for getting a signal through. Currently, Kinsley and a solid chunk of her mercenaries would be ironing out a highly visible trade deal with merchant holdouts on the far end of the city. This had been in the works for a while, she’d just have a slightly larger entourage than previously intended.

Leaving me, the building, and the feds coincidentally vulnerable. It was all coming together.