The Destroyer of Worlds

The Case and The Call

Wow. I really don't want to be here.

It's not a eureka moment. It's not a stunning realisation. It's more like the feeling you get when you fall for someone after knowing them for a while. A kind of 'so this is how it's going to be', mixed in with an understanding that this was probably always how it was going to play out, and - if I'm being entirely honest - a curiosity as to exactly how it's all going to go wrong.

Not that I'm the sort of person who proudly brags about being alone, God forbid. I've got time for love. Love's just never seemed to have time for me.

But I digress.

It's roughly four in the afternoon, and I'm in standing in the middle of a jewellery store. The floors, walls, and ceiling are all stark white, with gold trims adorning display cases and structural pillars alike. The room's so brightly lit that there's very little in the way of shadow, which gives the whole place the vibe of an icey wasteland at the peak of the day. At the very least, the chill that shoots through me feels adjacent. Why there isn't sufficient indoor heating, I know not, but I don't raise the issue. I've been hired to find stolen goods; not to give interior advice. And giving out advice for free is never a good business model.

Jewellery displays are everywhere I look. Go figure. The goods shimmer from across the room like a galaxy's worth of stars, but without the dark backdrop of a night sky to highlight them, it feels less like I'm gazing as some amount of beauty and splendour, and more like my eyes are being tit-blasted by a bunch of tiny, incessant lanterns. I blink at the glimmer as it catches my eye once again, and I turn away. Fruitless, of course. I'm an optimist like that.

In short, it's not my scene in the best of times, and these definitely aren't the best of times. In fact, if you were to ask the store's owner - one Franchester Rochare - these are the worst times that any person in history has ever endured. This is something that he has emphasised, repeatedly, beyond all utility. This, in turn, is part of the reason why I've spent today being very unimpressed with him.

The rest of why I'm not taken with him is, to be frank, the rest of him. He's tall, but he's slight, with gangly limbs, and hands that are bony from wringing. He's so skinny that he really only needs one eye, but he has two, in a display of gross excess. He has the demeanour of a man who is convinced that he is worth his own weight in riches - if the sentiment was true to the letter, however, he'd probably have less in the bank than your average salaryman.

"In all my years," he keeps saying. "Such an affront - never!"

He has the capacity to be more verbose than that; he has spent the past hours expending it by bombarding my ears with how much of an 'affront' the robbery of his store is. It might be too much of me to hope that his voice goes completely. I hope, all the same.

"I understand," I say. I am being diplomatic. Perhaps he'll get the hint, this time.

The way he just keeps wringing his hands tells me, more than anything else, that my words have gone neatly into one ear, and just as neatly out of the other.

"Panicking won't do anyone any good," I tell him "Least of all you."

"Panicking?" he echoes, as though it is a dirty word that has fallen from both of our lips. When he turns to me, it is with the affront of a man who believes himself woefully misunderstood. "You'd be panicking, too, if the prize of your collection was- was-! Was gone!" he grabs at the hair hanging from his brow, painfully wrenching at it with anxious hands. Not that I take him for all that much of a liar, but watching him, I have to admit: if he's being performative in any way, he's very committed.

"You must find it," he whimpers, "you must!"

I nod, hoping that I can appease him before he can launch into his story once more. He's told me everything that he knows, about three times over. Unfortunately a necessity, given how his greatest bouts of distress render him effectively illegible.

He came into the store at the normal time, nine in the morning, to open it. The door opened normally, with no indication that it had been tampered with or forced open. There was no mess, or even disarray, inside the store itself. It was only after a customary inspection of the merchandise that Rochare realised - to his absolute horror, of course - that the literal jewel of his collection, a one-point-two-five carat, marquise-shaped, impossibly-purple diamond named "The Destroyer of Worlds", had gone missing. The case was undamaged, every other diamond and precious object was still there, and there was absolutely no clue as to who'd taken it, or why.

The alarms hadn't gone off. The security cameras offered nothing beyond a night-long section of looped footage, meaning that they'd been hacked but that there was no indication of when, exactly, the robbery had taken place. The static security guards - who had been stationed outside the store all night - were all adamant that they didn't hear or see anything out of the ordinary. This, I understand, was a particularly frustrating part of his experience.

After receiving no help from his outwitted hired help, Rochare called the Bulwark Bastions. They told him, with what I can only assume was a generous amount of patience, that they are enforcers of order and social security, and not private detectives. At which point, Rochare got it into his head to bring in a private detective. And that's where I entered the picture. I was awoken by the call, received from one of Rochare's security people, shortly before midday. I resented the hour, but pay is pay. I dressed myself, gathered up my essentials, and made my way across Invictus, arriving at Rochare's store - closed for the day, for obvious reasons - at about one.

It is now past four in the afternoon. I have spent almost that entire stretch of time listening to Rochare talk. My only reprieve has been talking to his hired security, and I can only call it a 'reprieve' in the same way that a woman who's drowning out at sea might count sticking her head above the water, and being buffeted by a wave that hits like a brick, as a 'reprieve'. They are a thoroughly dull, single-minded quint of people, not worth individual address. I think of them instead as a collective. Five pieces of a whole bamboozled thing.

At first, in his anger, Rochare was ready to accuse them of being the culprits. Certainly, the fact that they all deny any knowledge of the theft might cause one to suspect that the theft is, itself, a ploy by them to steal the diamond and divide up the cost between them. However, I was quick to disabuse him of that notion.

For one thing, five guards means five potential plotters, and the more people are involved in a plot, the greater the odds that someone breaks, or makes a mistake, and the whole thing is ruined. And I have talked to each of these people; they are not criminal masterminds. This, if nothing else, is something that they and their employer can take some amount of solace in.

For another thing, they are from a private security company, rather than being public-service, as the Bastions are. Their employer, ReyDel, is prestigious, and serves high-profile clients. The jobs pay well. Why would these guards risk that comfort, and that renown, and that steady-pay, for an uncertain, one-off payout?

It's still possible, I suppose. Everyone gets stupid when money's in the picture. But I just don't think it's likely.

"There was going to be an exhibition next week!" Rochare practically whimpers. "A showcase! And now, the Destroyer of Worlds-"

"Has been stolen," I surmise, keen to cut him off and buy myself a short reprieve, and he lets out a groan as though he has been physically wounded. He has made many such noises, in the hours that I have been stuck with him.

Though I have not told Rochare himself, this - for he would no doubt take offence - I've also considered that it was him behind the theft. The 'theft', if it were indeed the case. Could he have faked a robbery, so that he could sell it for himself? Perhaps pocket an insurance payout? Not that I know how much this diamond was worth, but it was a unique specimen. Probably worth a lot.

But then, I've spent the past hours watching Rochare go round in agitated circles. The man is literally tearing his hair out. Like I said, if it is a performance, it's a totally committed one.

And this leaves me in a bind, because the crime that he's described to me - and the crime that I've observed by my examination of the scene - is, in a word, impossible. There are vents in the ceiling of the display room, but the vents in this building aren't large enough to fit a human form, and there are no signs of a ceiling-based entry or exit. No marks of a ladder, or a rope. Furthermore, there are no unusual marks, or conspicuous prints, anywhere in the showroom. No signs of forced entry, or even of any entry that wasn't Rochare himself.

In fact, if it weren't for the fact that the cameras were hacked to show that loop footage, I wouldn't be so certain that anyone had even stolen the diamond at all. Easier to suppose that this neurotic man misplaced it, and then worked himself up over an imagined crime.

But the cameras were hacked, and the footage on them was looped. So I'm back on the clock, and don't have any more of a clue where to start. The cameras themselves, perhaps, but I'm no gear-head. I'm better at finding real fingerprints than digital ones.

Of course, if tell Rochare that, he'll throw a fit.

"You can find it, can't you?" he asks me. Yet again. "I beg of you - there must be something you can do?"

I'm a PI. I'm not a miracle worker. But when a paying client is standing in front of you, asking for your help... well, you ought to at least make like you're worth your fee. Even if the client in question is seriously annoying.

"I'll give it a shot, of course," I tell him. My tone is nonchalant, and my hands are in my pockets, because a person who's panicking needs to see that someone else is calm about the situation. But, at the same time, I look him dead in the frenzied eyes, because if he interprets my being calm as my not caring about the situation, he won't react well.

And it's not even that I don't care. I may not be invested in this man's diamond showcase, but I'm a professional, and I was hired to figure out what happened to this stolen diamond. I can't take pride in that, I might as well hang up my gig and go crawling back to where I came from.

I see Rochare's eyes brighten - an emotional rollercoaster, this man - and I'm quick to hold up my hand. The more tempered the expectations, the less disappointment down the line.

"I can't promise anything," I tell him. "Said it yourself. What's happened here is unthinkable. Impossible." I suspect that he used the words in different ways then to how I am using them now, but that's secondary. The important thing is that he recognises his own words leaving my mouth. And, as he frowns, it's clear that he does.

"But-" he begins, but I am emphatic.

"The cameras are the only bit of evidence I have to work off of," I tell him. "Whoever your thief was, they've almost committed a perfect crime. I'll take a look at the machines, and see what I can figure out. If you rush me, you won't get your diamond back."

Concrete terms. Tough love. As long as it gets him off my back, I'm not so picky.

He stares at me for long enough that I begin to worry that he's uncomprehending.

"...My exhibition..." he eventually says, in more of a whimper than an actual voice.

I tell him, again, that I'll give it the old schoolgirl's try, and that, in the meantime, he might want to make sure that he's got an ironclad policy on refunds. Then, before he can say anything else, I turn on my heel and head outside.

It's bright, out. The shine of the sun offers me little reprieve after how long I've spent being bombarded by the shine of the store's interior. The heat beats down on me, too, and I start sweating through my shirt almost straight away. it's supposed to be the wet season - not that I'm in a real mood for pathetic fallacy - but I guess the weather hasn't gotten the memo.

Parked outside is a van that belongs to the security people. They drove it down from some company HQ once they realised that they needed to do their jobs. It's small, and squat, and pale grey, and I quickly duck inside. Getting out of the worst of the heat is worth the dense air and stale cigarette smell that greet me.

One of the guards greets me with a tired wave. They're confusingly proportioned, with muscular arms, a fat belly, and skinny legs obvious through their uniform. They have sunglasses pushed up their head. A cigarette glows from between lips that are crooked from, I suspect, the weight of many such instances. At the very least, they have the decency to turn away from me as they exhale smoke towards the front of the van.

"Got the security footage for you to review," they say, clear-mouthed, before putting the cigarette back where it'd been. "No' tha' I reckon you'll ge' much ou''a i'."

I'm inclined to agree. If the cameras really were tampered with, I'd have better luck looking at the actual machines themselves. But the hired guards are already on that. Probably to keep busy, and keep looking useful. So I'm left to scroll through this footage and see if there's anything to catch.

For all that I have my doubts about whether there's even any point in what I'm doing, I'm alert when the guard stands up, and I replace them in the chair they'd been sat in. Estimating my odds ahead of time is one thing, but if I go into any part of an investigation convinced that I'm not going to get anything from it, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Poisonous as any of the stuff that people slip into drinks.

The footage isn't entertaining, which is as much as I expected. Whole point of setting it on a loop is that anyone looking back over it is missing the fun parts. But there's an eeriness to it, as well. An empty stillness, made pertinent by hindsight. My knowledge of the robbery clashes with the vacancy of the footage I'm watching, and the dissonance feels like ants in my skull. Not that I would have had the time to sit through a night's worth of footage in an afternoon, but it's not long before I'm hitting a stubborn pause button and slipping back out of the van. It's only a little less bright outside.

The security people are still examining the camera mechanisms, balancing on ladders and holding screws like knives, but it's clear at a glance that they've had no breakthroughs. Rochare is standing in front of the door, skeletal hands ever wringing. I step back into the van. I eject the tapes I've been watching from the computers, and pocket them. Then, I approach Rochare.

"I'll take the footage back to my office," I tell him.

"You've found something?" His optimism is equal parts inspiring and infuriating.

"I want to be sure that I'm not missing anything, and that means I need to watch it all." If I have to explain the linearity of time to this man, that might be it for me. "I'll get back to you with an update, tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" he echoes, aghast.

I nod, firm. "I'll call you," I tell him.

If his restraint holds that long, I'll be surprised. But there's nothing else for me to do here. So, without another word, I turn and begin to make my way down the street. Past the van. Past the useless security people, in their dark shirts. Past the cameras that they're desperately cracking open.

The cameras in and of themselves are a quirk to this case; most places can't afford them. Technology on this level - video surveillance, advanced robotics, powered flight - isn't proprietary to the Bulwark by law, but might as well be in practice. It's not something that any old private entity can just get their hands on. Rochare's business, if nothing else, does very well for itself. Or maybe he just knows Bulwark people.

If that's the case, I should probably be relieved that I was hired at all. Investigators with past ties to the Bulwark are probably dime a dozen. There are a lot of retired soldiers who miss the feeling of slinking around with some measure of impunity. Who miss having a gun in their hand.

Not that I don't do a fair amount of slinking, but my gun stays sequestered. It's a Yut-03 - much like the beast it was named after, it's obscure and reasonably deadly - and its silver sheen is enveloped by the comforting dark leather of the holster round my waist. It stays there because the hands that would hold it are only so steady, and the eyes that would aim it are only so accurate. Not that there's much of a difference between me and some ex-Bulwark grunt, in that regard, but I, at least, am self-aware.

Still, the gun remains with me. It makes reckless folk think, and thinking folk reckless. Plus, it draws eyes.

The day is growing cooler, but the term remains relative, and I can feel sweat gather underneath by layers. It trickles down the nape of my neck; an unaffectionate lover, attempting clumsy physicality out of habit. I want a drink, but all that I have on me is my flask, and all that I have in my flask is whisky. It's mostly full - I just had the one mouthful two hours ago, after Rochare had screeched at me for approaching the crime scene without his watchful eye on me to make sure that I didn't pilfer any of his other valuables - but I leave it alone. It wouldn't do anything for my discomfort.

Whiskey was always my poison of choice. Not for the taste, of course - any person who tells you that they drink whisky for the taste is either a liar, or a clinical case - but I always enjoyed the way the it rolls off the tongue when said out loud, compared to something like 'vodka', or 'tequila'. The 'Wh' eases you into the word with a breath, leading your voice to slide down the centrepoint 'is', and then the hard-hitting 'key' at the end catches you and plants you back upright.

Perhaps it's an odd thing, to decide on a drink of choice based on the feeling of its name in my mouth. Most people, I'm sure, are more concerned with how the drink itself feels. But I've always put more stock in the power of words than most.

I don't take a transport back home. With the heat of the sun atop me, and the weight of the tapes in the pockets of my coat weighing me down, perhaps I should. But the air is still fresher out here than it is in my flat, and I'm in no hurry to start watching ten hours of nothing. So I hoof it, sweating up a storm, watching as the blue of the sky gets darker and the microraptors glide from treetop to treetop. It looks picturesque, even if I don't feel as though I'm a part of it.

My office is ramshackle. She was hard-fought, and hard-won, and looks it. I've been doing my best to fix her up since she became mine, but I've never had a touch delicate enough for her. All I can offer are rough, corrugated placeholders; when one gap opens, I mend it over, and never find the time to address any root cause.

It wasn't so bad, back when I started. Back when the world was our oyster. But, as my reputation's grown, and I've made my way from one case to the next, her fettle's only gotten worse. Now, her windows are damp, and dusty, and one of them has a crack. Street refuse has piled up by her gates, and, since my last broom fell to pieces in my hands, I haven't gotten around to getting a new one to clean her up with. The paint is peeling from her sturdy old door.

I reach for that door, now. Unlock it with clumsy precision. Swing it open. The pained creak that echoes out from the hinges is the closest that I get to a welcome home. The lonely light shining out from the ceiling is a testament to my forgetting to turn it off before I left, and the faint chatter from within speaks to a still-running radio, rather than any human company.

I wonder, idly, about being met by someone as I return my modest approximation of a home. I can almost imagine some owner, who's leasing me the place, greeting me with folded arms and a sour expression, questioning me over where I've been and why I didn't think to say anything. Or a flatmate, sharing the rent with me, letting me know in a casual tone that we're out of eggs and milk again. Or even someone more special, opening her arms for me to sink into, humming something low that I can feel vibrate through her chest.

Here, now, I stand in an empty front room. It's stuffy in here, more so than it is outside. The chairs - old wicker, bought at a bargain, destined to be worked to death - laid out to seat clients who have come for my services are vacant. As always, it's a conflicting sight. The eternal conundrum of being a private detective: you need to be needed, but it is rare that your being needed means anything good. To live, and to earn a living, is predicated on the misfortunes of others.

Rochare's misfortunes are the easiest sort to take on. Many things on the line - money, dignity, reputation - but not life or livelihood. An ideal case to work, if it weren't for the fact that it promises, at this moment, to be unworkable. Damn impossible crime that it is.

I step past the chairs, and unlock the second door in front of me. Through there is my office space - also empty, of course - guarding the flight of stairs that leads to the flat that I, in theory, live out of. The blinds on this door's window clatter as I push past it, sounds off a wooden melody of muted greeting.

My office reflects me in its structure. Many people say that, but they normally do so with pride. I don't take pride in the adequate organisation, nor the many case files and notes stored in various folders - which are, in my mind, the bare minimum - and I don't take pride in how the place so often feels cold, and lifeless. Pale, peeling walls flank a desk with too many things atop it and not enough space to work at. Sans any other option, I stack up piles of papers on the floor so that I have room to take out, and deposit, all the tapes in my coat. The coat itself, I sling over the back of the chair.

I have enough assorted pieces of technology to connect the tapes to the old monitor that sits atop my desk, on one side, but it's not as simple a process as popping it into a slot. Rochare and his security people may have money, or Bulwark connections, but I have neither, so I spend some minutes fumbling with cables that have managed to tie themselves into unworkable knots. They always do that. My elbow knocks into the phone at my desk, and I just about grab ahold of it before gravity does.

It's beginning to get dark outside. I turn on the office light. It flickers, but holds, like a lonely golden soldier dedicated to her post at all cost.

As I finish setting up the tapes, my stomach decides to announce its emptiness to the world. It always did have a flair for the dramatic.

Leaving my work tantalisingly close to being started, I pull myself away from the chair and desk that I'm gripping, and up the stairs to my flat. I don't want to take the time to go out and buy something when I've got work to do, which means that my recourse is leftover surprise.

My walk up the stairs is short, cramped, and dark; my flat itself is small, shadowed, and empty. But it's mine, and that's more than a fair amount of people get to say.

The fridge beckons me. Its low whine is a siren's call, and the light that creeps out from under its closed door guides me on. It's also mine, which is almost a frivolity. A lot of people in this city, I know, just use salt or spice to keep their meat preserved. But it turns out that a lot of clients like it when you can offer then a cold drink, so I opted for the fridge in the long run. Every time I'm reminded of the cost of keeping it running, I assure myself that it's a business expense.

Inside is a selection of said cold drinks, in bottles and featureless silver cans. There're also a dozen cardboard cases of half-eaten meals, of which I take two without examining the contents. That's one advantage of living alone: there's no chance of you coming across food that you won't eat.

In one hand, my leftovers. In the other, a bottle of water. I tramp back down the stairs, and back to my office. Sitting in the chair, I crack open the first container. Noodles. They look and smell like rubber, but the cold will keep me awake during what promises to be a hot night.

Drawing some of the food into my mouth with one hand - and the taste is just what I expected it to be - I queue up the security tapes with the other. As I do so, I can't help but wonder what a stranger would make of me. Without my coat, the t-shirt and jeans I'm wearing don't distinguish me from any other upstart punk. Pale hair and a paler complexion have me resembling the classic image of a ghost, but I imagine the effect is ruined by the way I'm hunched over in my chair, sucking up old noodles. My slight frame makes me look like an easy target, if not an appealing one, and the gun still at my hip offsets that.

My monitor darkens. I know I've paid my bills, so it's an issue with the power. Again. I put the leftovers down, delicate even as my fingers twitch tensely. There's nothing for it.

I duck underneath my desk, and hold my palm out towards the bulky form of my computer. My muscles spasm, my fingertips curl, and sparks - literally - fly. It is not a feeling that I ever expect to get used to.

A little over a year ago, now, a wave of energy was shot right through all of Erde. The details of what this energy was - of who released it, and why - are still hotly debated. I have my own theories, and I suspect they're more coherent than most of everyone else's, but I care less about the cause as I do the consequence. As the energy passed over and through them, a number of people developed what can only, reasonably, be called superpowers. Levitation, lasers, lava; any concept a person can think up, there's now a good chance that someone in the System can control it, or do it.

For my part, I woke up one day with lightning bolts coming out of my fingers.

Not that mine have ever been that large, or destructive. My power, whatever it is, is not heavy-duty. Frying a power grid, or splitting a tree in half, is far-removed from my wheelhouse. But slight power is still power, and mine has plenty of utility. Subtlety, too, which I can't say I don't appreciate. My line of work doesn't mesh well with hurtling thunder down upon anything in my way. And when everyone is paying attention to the big and flashy, they see me - and my gun - and assume that I don't have anything at all.

The computer buzzes, and whirrs with a noise like a strained breath. I let my hand drop, and let my power fade. It'll do, for now.

I sit back up, and take in another mouthful of noodles. My hair is lank, tugging uncomfortably at my sweat-ridden scalp. I lean forwards, scrolling through the tapes to find the place where I left off. And I consider myself once again; a rank, solitary, pale creature, with primordial elements at her fingertips.

Self-reflection is one more thing that can be toxic in excess. I begin watching the tapes. Whether I hope to stay awake through the whole thing, or not, isn't a question that I'm sure I can answer.

More than a reticent, however, I'm still a professional. Late afternoon transitions to evening, and then to the dead of night. Some of the stuffiness of the air fades, which is good, because I finish my leftover surprise quickly. There's still a noticeable warmth in the air, though, and I can't shake the feeling of being a tuber stuck in a greenhouse.

The call of nature rouses me from the fugue state that I've let myself slip into. When I return back downstairs, it's one forty-three in the morning, and I am still awake.

There's only so much security footage left, but any satisfaction I might've found in my progress is tempered by the fact that every uneventful minute of footage watched brings me another minute closer to reporting back to Francester Rochare empty-handed. Sometimes, that's just the way things unfold, but normally, it at least takes me longer to reach that point. And I can't imagine that Rochare would take that news well.

I stoop back down and into my chair. It creaks under my weight, which, with my frame, says something about the state of it. But then, a weight hits my eyes and throat, and I am forced to consider that my own state may be little better.

For a heady moment, I think back to the flask that's still, I know, stowed away neatly in the pocket of my coat. My worst nights, I've gotten by replacing hours of sleep with shots of whiskey. But I do away with the thought. This isn't fun, but I'm not at that level just yet.

I reach for my computer mouse. I'm ready to delve back into purgatory.

And then, my phone goes off.

The Smash and The Grab

The ringtone has me on edge from the outset. My first though is that it's Rochare, and that he's calling me because he's already panicking about some other inanity. But, when I look down at the phone, the number I see isn't Rochare's.

It's unknown.

That doesn't mean much, to me - my number is part of my business advertisement, so strangers on the line is nothing new - but it does stoke my irritation a little further. I'm already working on one case, and it looks dead-end as is. If I have to split my time, those prospects get even worse. I shouldn't take up whatever dangling thread this new number is laying out before me.

I move the phone towards my ear. Because nobody who ever became an Investigator lacked curiosity.

Before I can say anything, the voice on the other end of the line practically blurts out:

"Hello? Hello? Is this, uh, Skye Veil?"

People knowing my name isn't new for the same reasons that people having my number isn't new. But there's a manner of urgency to this particular voice that, despite everything, stops me in my tracks.

After what I've been through today, I'm more sceptical than I'd like to be. It could be a person like Rochare. Someone half-mad with desperation over something that probably won't actually hurt them in the long run. But I don't know that.

"That's me," I say.

The voice on the end of the line lets out a sigh that sounds knife-sharp.

"Oh, great," they say. "That's honestly great. I'm so glad it's you - we thought you might already be dead by now."

It's like a skip in the record. One sentence, said so quickly, contains so many implications that they are enough to stop me in my tracks.

If this was being said to me in person, I would make more of an effort to repress any emotional reaction. As it is, all I have to do is keep my voice even, as I sit up ramrod-straight in my chair.

"Beg pardon?"

Unfortunately, what the voice says next provides none of the elaboration that I'm hoping for. In fact, it only serves to muddy the water further.

"Well, maybe not DEAD, but definitely unreachable. Um- Gone. And that'd be... bad."

I'm torn over whether or not I should cut the conversation off altogether. My first instinct is that it's a prank, or some kind of pretence. But it's very badly done. Shock value is only so effective - already, even as confusion mounts, I can feel myself recovering my wits - and I can't think of any person having any reason to crank call me like this, aside from sheer luck of the draw.

If the message is being sent in earnest, it only becomes more baffling. A slapdash, confused warning of danger that performs its base function, but leaves me with more questions than answers.

The voice continues.

"We're on our way, now," it says. "Just- Don't die 'till we get there, because-"

Before I am given any opportunity to riposte - though the question of where I ought to begin is one that presses me - I hear another voice over the line. Tinnier, and quieter. It's from, I am left to suppose, someone who is standing further away from the receiver.

"What in the fuck are you saying?" this other voice butts in, cutting off the first with a solid sternness. There is a scuffling over the line, and the noise is like a rock rolling down a hill covered in paper. I hold the receiver away from my ear.

Eventually, I hear an almost metallic clatter. Then, the second voice. Louder, this time. The baton has been exchanged.

"I- I apologize for my colleague," the voice says, sounding a lot less firm when I am the subject of address. "She's not... listen, Ms. Veil, we're calling you because we have reason to suspect that you're in danger."

Again, a warning of imminent threat, with very little else. This time, at least, the person delivering the warning sounds less confused.

"Shame you can't elaborate," I say.

The sigh from down the line indicates two things to me: that my response was expected, and that my response is resented.

"Well, it's difficult to believe," it says, and there is an air about it that implies further vacillation that I, apparently, don't have time for.

"Try me."

Another clatter from down the line.

"Killer robots are gonna come kidnap you!" that's the first voice, again. It - she - sounds like it's looking forward to the prospect. I can't say I am, and an undignified squawk from the other voice tells me that I'm not alone in that.

"Killer," I echo, "robots."

It rings of something impossible, and I don't deal in the impossible. But I reserve my judgement, because the impossible did happen a year ago. That why, when I put the phone down, I don't turn it off yet. I purse my fingers, and listen to the panicked squabbling that I can hear coming from the receiver.

I'd be a fool to take what I'm being told seriously. I'd also be a fool to ignore it. I reach back towards the phone. Only, before I can pick it up, it cuts out, the small sounds of people arguing replaced by a single shrill dial tone.

My first assumption is that my connection has been cut off. But when I bend back down to check, there's nothing wrong with my power, or my cables. My second assumption is that it's a service issue, and that seems more plausible when I see that my computer's connection has also stopped working. For a brief moment, my destiny seems to be technical maintenance.

Except then, I hear something.

Above the soft murmurs of my malfunctioning machines, there's a noise like someone's just dropped a knife. I freeze - prick up my ears - and listen as multiple faint knocks ring out from the dark of my surrounds. On the last one, I turn around, and face the open, unlit doorway at the far end of my office.

It isn't intuitive. My flat is a dead end. But there isn't any mistaking the movement I see at the top of my stairs. A sheen of silver glints like a diamond in the dark, catching my eye and drawing me in like a lure. Maybe I'd be tempted to bite down, if it weren't for the fact that it's moving like one, too.

As it is, I take a step backwards. Wary. My fingers drift towards my hip; less a conscious choice on my part, more their own rebellious, panicky impulses. I hold them back, give my own reins a sharp jerk. If I'm killed, it won't be because my gun was jumped.

And make no mistake, I recognise life-and-death when I see it. When I feel it. I feel it now, watching silver tendrils twitch and writhe as they creep down the stairs. They knot together and slide apart within the same breath; like a living creature, they cleave through the comfort of the shadows with a selfishness. I see them clearly, and I see more of them, as they approach, and I take another step back.

A heavy thunk from the stairs. Amidst the tendrils, there is something more solid. A heavy, bulky box, the size of the computer under my desk, is being carried by the writing silver mass. No - not carried - it is within, and connected to, it all. The tendrils are twined around it, and spearing through it. It whirrs as it moves, and I just have time to recognise that I am looking at some kind of machine before it stops dead where it rests. All of it. The silver strands freeze in the air where they are, like a raptor that has just caught the scent of her quarry. And then, slowly, a single tendril raises into the air, bead-like. Faces me directly.

Killer robots. That was what that voice over the phone had said.

Well, I'll be damned.

Prey instinct pushes me backwards. It might be a better idea to stay still, but I fly. Though the door of my office, and out into the front room. I come to myself again. Shut the door behind me. My hands fly to lock it, but the key is in the coat that I left on the back of my chair. And now the robot is approaching, a writing mass of metal tendrils. Watching it through the window, I can't help but think that it's all backwards; wires around a box, when it should be the other way around.

It slides across the floor, low, falling out of my sight. I feel a soft thump from the other side of the door that I am holding shut. And then, it rises, billowing up and back into view like a ghost under a bedsheet. I watch as the wires coalesce, almost hiding the box entirely, and cluster together. Their shape becomes less amorphous. More human. I hate the comparison, but have no other. I watch it stumble about on legs. I watch it face me with a growth that could be called a head. And I feel it grasp, and turn, the handle of my door with, if not a hand, then something that works quite well enough.

It's got me beat in the strength department, not that that says much. It's all I can do to hold it back for a few seconds, and then I'm sent reeling. The door - my last line of defence - swings open. The robot walks like a snake slithers, and I'm still trying to back away in a room that's running out of it. It reaches for me, tendrils twining into grasping fingers, and I decide to jump the gun anyway. Maybe I will be killed, but it won't be because I let a killer robot just happen to me.

The shot ricochets. Sparks fly. From my hands, too; once I'm done flinching, I reckon that shorting it out is my best bet at stopping it. It's an electronic device, after all. Its arm, the facsimile, is cold to the touch, and the shock of it feels as strong as the shock of the bolts from my fingers. But the robot gives no reaction as the electricity flows through it, beyond twisting its tendrils to give me the sense as though it's just turned to look at me. I'm not sure if its look is supposed to be disparaging, or threatening, or both, but it's enough to get me to let go and back away. I hold up my Yut again, trying to keep my aim steady. The robot turns the full expanse of its wirey body.

The front door caving in is almost a pleasant surprise. The massive figure that steps through my office's new ventilation should be something I find more concerning, but it's a massive human figure, and that's come to count for something this past minute. I dart backwards, taking the opportunity to refer to the better part of my valour. There's only so much I can see in the unflattering light, but the new arrival looks to be a woman. She's wearing a torn jacket and short shorts, and her hair is a mane that cascades down her back and out to her sides like a cape.

"And what fresh hell are you supposed to be?" I ask out loud, not quite meaning to. My nerves are as shot as my gun.

"Fresh hell!" the woman echoes, like she's never heard the term before. "That's a cool name." She looks over and down at me, and her eyes are luminous green. They shine in the dark like small moons. When she smiles, she looks earnest and predatory at the same time - like she's a rex that's just so happy to have found a good-looking meal. "Mine's Gaia, though."

Gaia. Mother Theia. She's sure planet-sized, my knight in shining armour. Towers over me by at least a foot, and the legs that she steps into my waiting room with are built like cannons.

"Charmed," I say.

"That's your name?"

She sounds like she's joking, but the thick brow above her burning eyes raises in genuine confusion. Suddenly, I have a bit less hope than I did a moment ago.

"It's Skye Veil." Then, recognising her voice from the phone, I add: "I thought you knew that."

She snaps her fingers. "Right!" Then, like she's just remembered where she is, she marches forwards, pushing me back and to the side, placing herself between me and the robot. "Get outta here."

The circumstances are what they are, but that doesn't mean I appreciate getting ejected from my own home. "Whoever you are-"

She turns to me, face full of confusion once again. "I just told you, I'm Gaia!" she protests.

That's when the robot strikes. Whether it's coincidence or a sense of timing, I don't rightly know. But it reaches forwards, losing the humanoid posture it only just adopted as it tries to wrap itself around Gaia's arm. I see the metal dig grooves into the surface of the tall woman's flesh like worms trying to burrow their way back into dirt, but she doesn't so much as flinch; instead she hauls herself backwards, almost off her own feet, pulling the robot forward with her. Then, she leans forward with her other fist clenched, and the noise of her pummelling metal is like a gong being struck full-force.

The robot's grip on her slackens, and it sways on the spot. The fact that it gives more of a reaction to being hit than Gaia is not lost on me, but I don't have any time to raise it as the woman suddenly wheels around and points over my head to the door. Her face is set in determination, even as she's still smiling.

"Go!" she orders me. "This one's mine!"

I'm inclined to ask her if she's stupid. I don't, on account of being more inclined to take her advice. It's not worth running back into my office to take my coat, but I still take a moment to consider it. Then, the robot straightens up again, and some of its wires whip out towards me before Gaia seizes them in a meaty fist, and I decide that no article is worth my life. So, I turn tail, careful not to stumble over the splinters that the big woman has seen fit to make of my door.

The cold of the outside arrests me like a hand on my shoulder, and I almost gasp. I wasn't expecting it. It's a warm night, but a night's still a night when your arms are bare, and goosebumps raise up and along mine.

It's more than the cold that makes me freeze. Circumstance pins me to the spot like I've been nailed there. There's something just across the road from me. It's big, it glimmers silver in the moonlight, and it turns to face me just a heartbeat after I've caught sight of it. Its constituents aren't winding tendrils, like its counterpart behind me; it's big, and boxy, and brawny. It looks like a fridge - maybe less like my own, and more like the kind that a man like Rochare would own - with limbs, and a stubby square head.

A loud clatter rings out from behind me, and I see a flash of colour from atop this new robot. I barely have time to imagine what that might have been before it begins to march towards me, crossing the street with earthshaking strides. If Gaia was a behemoth, this is a goliath. It looks even bigger up close; one of its arms alone is the size of my body.

I don't much like running, but I like the idea of getting grabbed by this thing even less. So I bite my tongue, swallow my pride, and leg it.

My newest pursuer moves with a speed that belays its size. Or, perhaps, it's just the length of the strides it can take compared to me and mine. I don't see it catch up to me as I run, but I hear it. Great, heavy footfalls that make my heart leap up into my throat. I've never imagined what it would be like to be an insect as it's run down by a mal-intentioned toddler before, but the thumps closing in on me tell me that I'm about to find out.

I've just about made it to the end of the street when I feel it. A strong grip at a bad angle, iron in every sense of the word. Blocky fingers wrap themselves around my sides, squeezing at my ribs hard enough to elicit an audible response from me. I immediately try to wriggle out of the robot's grasp, but the feeling of metal scraping against my bones sets my jaws together and bids me hold still. A panicked heartbeat later, my feet leave the ground.

My hands light up again, but my electricity is just as effective against this robot as it was against the last one. I'm struck by it, and why it might be - shocking a robot seems an intuitive way of bringing it to heel - but no sooner have I remembered that not all metals are conductors than I'm raised level with this one's head. It doesn't have an eye, or a face, so much as it has both at once. Glass panelling emits bright light that forces a wince of reflex out of me. Even when I close my eyes, I see spots flash in my vision. I feel my own face, awash in the glare from the construct holding me. Cracking an eye open tells me very little, other than exactly how bright the light is still shining.

My arms are pinned to my side. I can't reach my gun. I can't break out of the grasp that holds me. I cannot run. My electricity is still ineffective. I am left to presume that the woman, Gaia, is still fighting the other robot; in any case, she is nowhere to be seen.

It isn't that I resign myself to my fate so much as realise, calmly, that I have no way to free myself. It's always important to face such things with clarity. So, I don't beg or scream as the robot draws me in closer. I hear a whirring of mechanisms from within its chest, and steam wafts out from a slit along the centre of its body. The same light that half-blinds me from its face, now, begins to emerge from that seam as though it's desperate to escape. It is a deep, ominous red.

No hero bursts onto the scene along the glow of a miraculous sunrise. No announcement, or speech, arrests my attention. I am not faced with a confident stranger that tells me everything will be alright. Instead, small slaps echo out from behind the robot; somewhere out of both of our fields of view. From those areas, sparks fly, and the robot abruptly drops me. I do my best to work with the fall, but it's unexpected, and it is all I can do to guard my head as I hit the ground hard. Pain blossoms across my hips and shoulders - the beginnings of bruises, no doubt - and my elbow knocks against the pavement in such a way that I let out a bark that's neither laugh nor cry.

"Get clear!"

I heed the order. More sparks are flying from the robot, and I pick myself up off the ground to see that it is locked in place, seizing with a terrifying violence. It half-reaches towards its back, but doesn't acknowledge me at all.

My saviour is a man standing on the other side of the street. He's wearing a coat so bright that, even in the low light, I am caught off-guard by its garish yellow shade. The same shade, I recall, as the coat that Gaia was wearing; his, however, has sleeves. He's holding what looks like a large box half-underarm, like it's a weapon. I make my way over to him.

"Ms. Veil." He greets me like he knows me. I recognise him too, in a manner of speaking.

"We spoke over the phone."

"We tried to, at least." He glances over at me like he's not quite sure what to make of me, which feels backwards. "I apologize for my, uh, colleague. She's..." he trails off. I don't know if it's because he doesn't think he needs to say anything, now that I've met her in person, or if it's simply because words fail him. Either way, he doesn't need to say anything else.

"Probably causing a lot of property damage." I suddenly crave a stiff drink.

"She does that," the man agrees, with the air of someone who's been in my exact position before. Just like that, he feels like a lot less of a stranger.

The robot is still sparking and convulsing. It shows no signs of going back on the attack.

"How did you stop it?" I have to ask.

The look on his face tells me that he knows it's a bad time. He answers me, anyway. "This." He angles the box that he's holding. The way the side of his mouth suddenly quirks, I think I can see pride in it. "See those disks?" He points, then, to perhaps half a dozen slivers of dark metal. They are visible on the robot's back, and they're collectively emitting a hum that I can hear from where I'm standing.

"I see them."

"We developed them to disrupt this thing. Stop it from functioning. Not with EMPs or shocks - it's immune to electrical disruption, as I'm sure you've noticed - but by... digging into the systems themselves." He lifts one hand away from the box to wiggle his fingers, like an eel trying to swim into a current. "Talk to it in its own language, and get it to start cycling power to the panels."

I want to ask after the 'we' he's mentioned, but there is an implication in his words that I need to address first. "You've fought these things before?"

"No. But we've been hunting them." He hefts the box again. "This shoots those, and those ought to keep it down. Maybe even cause a bit of thermal configuration, if we're lucky-"

A noise like half-a-dozen knives thrown into a sink interrupts him. We both swing back around to stare at the robot as, through full-body convulsions, it tears the small disks off of its own frame and crushes them in a meaty metal fist.

"...Son of a bitch," the man hisses, before urgently patting my arm. "Run. Now."

I don't even have to be told once; I've already half taken-off by the time he finishes his sentence. My pride, evidently, has taken a back seat altogether, ceding its regular space in my psyche for the self-preservation instinct. I thank them both as I pelt back down the street; conscious both of the man beside me, panting as he lugs his machine along, and of the booming sounds of the robot following us. It's closing the distance again, and all I can do is keep running.

A silver missile streaks in front of us. From the side, it hurls through the air and passes through a hedgerow that looked sad enough beforehand. The sound of snapping branches is a grisly one. The woman, Gaia, appears to have taken her fight with the first robot outside.

"Oh, fuck yeah!" I hear her say. Then, a crunch. The bigger robot behind us topples as she leaps onto it. I keep running, but her laugh echoes out above the sound of metallic shrieking.

"Keep going," the man besides me urges. He doesn't slow down either.

We turn a bend. The houses don't get any nicer, but the road itself becomes a bit more spacious. Useful, for the vehicle that rests in its centre.

I draw to a stop, taking in the sight before me. A dark bodywork with no visible windows. Big, unwieldy growths on either side that must be engines. An open door, with a light lit inside. No sign of wheels or treads. This is a flying vehicle, and these people want me on board.

The man runs past me. He stops just short of the gaping door, turning back around.

"Come on!" He beckons me with an anxious jerk of his head.

I look from side to side. There are a number of lights lit on either side of this street. Shapes, flitting about nervously. It's only a matter of time until people start to emerge.

"So what is all this?" I ask, instead of following. It's hardly the most discerning question I've ever given thought too, but I feel as though I have no other place to begin.

It does not help that the man scowls at me. I know that look: he finds me unreasonable.

"Come on!" he calls.

I do not.

"You taking me someplace?"

The man huffs. I don't blame him, given how we were set upon just a moment ago, but I still find something very ugly about the way his face contorts, even as he keeps panting heavily.

"You really need to know?"

His demand only bolsters my commitment to digging my heels in. I fold my arms and don't say a word. From behind me, I can hear crashing sounds. The fight isn't done, and it sounds as though it's getting closer.

Slinging the box up and over his back - it is held in place by a strap on his shoulder - the man throws his now-free arm up into the air.

"We have a base on the city outskirts," he says. "We're with the Bulwark, we're not going to kidnap you- can you just get in the damn ship?"

I hum. Make a show out of swaying on the balls of my feet.

The man's sigh is ragged. Resentment erupts from his nostrils in a huff of air.

"I can prove it-" he begins, patting at his coat like he's checking his pockets for something, but I hold up a hand to stop him.

"No need."

Flying vehicles are rare. Ones that can be parked in a street light this, without use of a takeoff or runway to land, even more so. These people having Bulwark ties was never in question. And, even if they weren't who they said they were, it wouldn't lessen the threat that these robots pose to me. My ribs ache at the memory of blocky fingers and a crushing grasp.

"I'm with you."

No, I was never not about to leave with him. With them. I'm not stupid. And I don't want to die today. But I wanted to see what his reaction would be, and I've sure gotten one.

He stares at me as I walk towards him, past him, and through the door. The ship's interior is dimly lit, and empty aside from a row of seats on either side and another doorway at the far end. It evidently isn't built for anything more than transporting people. There are splatters of paint - orange and pink - across all the walls, along with a scorch mark in one corner. A story is being told to me.

When I turn back around, the man is just about shaking himself out of his stupor. He steps through the ship's threshold, glowering at me over the top of the thin glasses that he's wearing. His eyes are all mismatched, rigid lines, and there's a thin meanness to them. I'm inclined to give him some leeway, given our situation. All the same, if eyes are the windows to the soul, his soul is made up of right angles.

And then, he does something I doesn't expect. He turns around and barks across the empty ship, to the closed door facing us.

"Take us up!"

At once, the engines roar to life. The ground lurches, and I grab onto the open doorway to steady myself as we're lifted off of the ground. I've been in the air before, but not often, and not for a long time. A gasp slips from my lips, unbidden, as the road the ship was parked in pulls away from us.

"Gaia?" I ask him. For all that she's a woman I only met minutes ago, she's also a woman who put herself in harm's way for my sake. Even if she's a whole a box of frogs, it doesn't feel right to leave her behind.

The man doesn't answer me. Instead, he leans further into the ship, and makes a gesture. A circle with his free hand. There must be someone where who saw and understood it, because our ship tilts as it lifts. Brushing over roofs, we circle right back around. My view of the street sways, and then I see her. Gaia. She's fighting both robots, now, and the fact that she's still standing is equal parts impressive and alarming. As I watch, she uses the tendrils on the first robot to swing it around like a morning star. It collides with the second with a noise like a car crash, and both fall to the ground.

I almost lose my balance as the man joins me back at the edge of the open doorway. It is my turn to glare, and his turn to ignore it. In truth, I'm not sure he notices.

"Gaia!" he calls down. "Come on!"

The obvious question - the question I ask myself - is how Gaia is supposed to join us when we're at least a dozen feet up in the air. The answer, it turns out, is simple:

She jumps.

I hear concrete crack, and I see her cape of hair blur, and then she is grabbing ahold of the bottom of the ship. Her hands are oversized; her fingers are claws, knifelike. As we climb, so does she, hauling herself on board between me and the man's legs.

The man turns back to the front of the ship without missing a beat. Evidently, he doesn't find this feat particularly extraordinary.

"We're clear! Go!"

The ship lurches. Our ascent quickens. The man lets go of the doorway, stumbling down into the ship; Gaia rolls across the floor with a manic giggle. I am left as alone as I can be, staring out over my neighbourhood. I have never seen it from this angle, before. There's a novelty to it that I can't deny.

In minutes, I've been snatched out of normalcy, and dropped feet-first into insanity. I never even had time to go back for my coat, and now the lack of the essentials within - my housekeys, and my flask - eat away at me as sure as any cold drought of wind. But there's nothing to be done. I can hope that nothing of mine gets carted away before I get back, but I know how unlikely that is.

We raise higher, and we do so faster. I see the robots moving, picking themselves up from where they'd been knocked down. I see the ruins of the front of my office; my home. The cold air whistles up and down my arms. I miss my damn coat.

And then, the doorway that I'm leaning on lets out an electronic beep. I step away on instinct, just in time for it to close with a hiss and a clack. And then, that's that. We leave the ground far behind, and my stomach flips upside-down. And it occurs to me, in that moment, that I might have finally experienced a night worse than the whiskey shots one.

The Plot and the Pilot

The man's bedside manner could use some improvement.

"I can't believe you!" Dropping his box onto one of the empty seats that line the sides of the craft, he paces the walkway in front of me. I take the opportunity to sit down. My arms are folded, and at rest; his are animated, gesticulating in contrast with the emotions on his face and in his voice. It's a good microcosm for how well each of us is holding themselves together right now, even if it's not so micro.

"We were in danger," he's saying. "We were trying to get you out of there. And you-!" He pauses, for a moment, as though he's so vexed that he's forgotten to finish his sentence.

"I asked a couple of questions," I say on his behalf, leaning back in my chair and letting out a sigh. When your life has been upended as thoroughly as mine has been tonight, this isn't really the sort of conversation you want to be getting into. But the adrenaline that's probably stopping this man from thinking straight is in his system because he stuck his neck out to save me. If I don't at least acknowledge that, then I'm not doing my job properly. "For what it's worth, I appreciate the rescue."

"Seriously? You've got a real funny way of showing your appreciation."

"Yeah," pipes up Gaia - although 'pipes' doesn't seem the appropriate verb, given how loud she speaks - from where she's lying, sprawled, across several of the chairs on the ship's other side. "But we all got out, so..."

The man pinches his thin nose. His glasses, uprooted by the motion, distort his eyebrows. His prescription is a strong one. He must be reliant on them to see. When he removes his fingers, the glasses slide right down the bridge, and I realise how slick with sweat his face is.

The vehicle shakes in the air, and the man almost loses his balance.

"Sit down, high-top boy," Gaia calls out.

With a grimace, the man sits down. Opposite me, which gives me a better chance to examine him. As well as the garish coat, he's wearing grey outdoors trousers, and scuffed high-top shoes. Still sweating, he fastens a seatbelt around his waist and then unzips the coat, pulling himself away from its high collar to reveal a stained t-shirt underneath. He looks like a cross between a lollipop man and hiker, but the way that he talked about his device means that he's, at the very least, some kind of technician.

"So," I say, slowly, eying the two people on the other side of the ship like they're animals I've just fallen into the enclosure of, "who are you people?"

"Duh!" the woman sits up. "Did you forget already? I'm Gaia?" she points a massive thumb, affixed to a massive hand, over to the man. "That's Jacen!"

"We're part of a group called Pandemonium's Bane," the man - Jacen - has understood my question a little better. "Part of the Bulwark." His eyes and voice harden. "Like I said."

"Like you said," I echo. "So. Those things tracked me down. Were you looking for me, or for them?"

Some of the hostility fades from Jacen's eyes as he registers my question.

"...Both," he answers, after a moment of thought. "Those things have been kidnapping people throughout Invictus for weeks, now. We're after them because we want to stop them. We knew to come to you because-"

"There was a pattern in the kidnappings."

If Jacen doesn't appreciate the interruption, he doesn't show it. "Savants. People like you - people with your power."

"My power?"

"The..." he wiggles his hands in the air in leigh of saying the actual words. I understand, all the same.

"Specific."

"It's the-"

"No. Them. You're saying that want lightning? Electricity?"

It's not the most outlandish thing I could've been told. Power is power. There's a host of reasons as to why someone might want it. The strange thing, in my eyes, is that people with the same ability as me are the ones being targeted. If a person wants to get some electricity generated, there have to be easier ways of doing so. Someone is going to the effort to use robots to kidnap people. And then what? Coercing them into making power? Using them as human batteries?

There's a baseline, but there are a lot of unknowns, and the information doesn't serve to make anything about this case any less strange.

Jacen, for his part, shrugs helplessly. It's clear that he has no more of an idea as to what's really going on than I do.

"Looks like it."

To say that there is vaguery in his answer is like saying that there is water in the ocean.

"But," continues Jacen, at once hasty and defiant, like he's anxious to assuage my concerns even as he judges me for having them in the first place, "we know their methodology. And we knew - or, well, deduced, at least - that they'd come for you next."

That much is, I will not refuse to admit, true.

"Where does this leave me?" I ask, leaning back in my chair as the craft rattles around us. "Will they move on to another target? Or are they going to keep after me?"

Jacen exchanges a glance with Gaia. I follow his gaze to hers. Her eyes are still that same shade of vivid, luminous green; not just reflecting light back to me, but actively emitting it. I'd glossed over that detail when I first saw them - suffice it to say, I had other problems - but now I found myself captivated by them in a way that a rabbit is probably captivated by the shine of a wolf's stare in the dark of the night.

She yawns. Her teeth are oddly sharp.

"...We don't know," Jacen admits over the rattle of the craft, turning away from Gaia and back to me. "This is the first time we've been able to actually interfere in one of their kidnapping attempts. There's no precedent."

"Hope they come for you again," rumbles Gaia from the side.

Jacen reaches out and hits Gaia's thigh with the back of his hand, in the way that a parent might chastise a child.

"What?" Gaia sounds halfway between confused and affronted. "I wasn't done! I want a rematch!"

A scoff comes from Jacen, but a ghost of a smile appears on his lips all the same. He pats the box that he has placed on the seat by his side.

"Get in line," he tells her. "Once I figure out what went wrong with Sedecim, I'll have to field-test it again."

"Sedecim?" I echo.

A curious thing happens. A light flush, barely visible in the glow of the craft's lighting, colours Jacen's face. At the same time, Gaia hoots.

"Nerd-face like to name all his toy-ys~," she croons, very obviously teasing him.

A nervous, plastic clatter is Jacen's riposte. As he adjusts his glasses, he also shakes his head slightly. It is at once a display of disapproval and denial.

"It's not a name," he says, in a voice that I'd call haughty if it didn't sound so defensive. "It's a number. Based on the old caelan system. I number the things I make-"

"Then why not just call it number se-de-thingy?" Gaia seems insistent on playing the part of the peanut gallery. "Or are you just afraid it'll make you look like more of a dweeb if you admit that your numbers are super old instead of actual numbers?"

I, for my part, am content to be an audience member. Realising that the thump of my heart in my chest has slowed down - evidently, my body has recognised that I am no longer in danger - I shuffle around in my seat, trying to get comfortable. There isn't much to observe, from where I'm seated, that I haven't already. The sparse interior, the paint on the walls. The lack of windows imply that this craft is military, or at least built to withstand harsh conditions, which makes sense.

"-ust because you're allergic to any amount of intellectual stimulation-"

"Hey! I'm plenty stimulating!"

"Eugh. Not what I meant."

"You're a baby."

"You're a slag."

"Kiss your momma with that mouth?"

The byplay is, admittedly, fascinating. There's a lot to learn about people in such moments. How one talks to the other, and what one says about the other, can both be very illuminating. But my ears have only just stopped ringing after our escape, and I'm not looking to see them filled by such chatter for however long our flight is. So, I make the choice to cut in.

"Why not just use normal numbers?" I ask Jacen. "Why the caelan language?"

The real thing I'm curious about is whether or not Jacen will take offense to the question. It's a moment of pleasant surprise when he doesn't. Just a moment, though. A man being more receptive to questions, and even inanities, when he doesn't perceive himself to be in mortal peril? It's not exactly a shocker.

"Well, our leader - Dante - he loves making all his codenames caelan." In answering my question, Jacen spreads his arms out, like he's gesturing to something vast and unseen before him. "It's a whole thing. And when he suggested it..." his arms all but collapse down to his sides. "He's a good guy, but when he's got something in his head, you can't really tell him 'no', you know?"

"Yes you can," Gaia insists from the side, but Jacen shakes his head.

"You can. You're incorrigible."

"Tch-yeah." Gaia snorts, then folds her arms. "Still haven't told me what that one means."

Before they can descend back into a rapport that is clearly second nature to them, I hone in on the name that Jacen has given me. "Dante. You said he's your leader?"

The shift of mood in the craft is almost imperceptible. Certainly, it isn't a metaphorical landmine that I've trodden on; it's more like a twig. There's a sudden alertness in the air, and to both of the people in front of me. I make note of it, even as I don't give any indication that I've sensed it.

"...Yeah," says Jacen. "Dante Wilder. Bit of a maniac, but... a good guy."

"Love that guy," Gaia chimes in.

The sentiment should be insincere. From most people, talking about their superiors, it would be. But there's an earnestness to their insistence that this Dante is, in fact, a 'good guy' that's hard to ignore. It makes me want to dig deeper, but it also feels like I'm being cautioned away from doing exactly that. Curiosity, obligation, debt of gratitude, sense of danger; there are a lot of components, and they're all worth juggling. I settle for continuing to pretend as though I haven't noticed. Evasion is so often better than engagement.

"Is that who you're taking me to?"

Another glance exchanged. This one is less wary, though. In fact, when Jacen turns his attention back to me, he now looks downright awkward.

"He's... away," he reveals. "For the time being, he's unavailable."

Questions lining themselves up like bullets in the chamber. I keep that gun holstered. No further need for iron in the hand tonight.

"So who's in charge?"

"That," proclaims Gaia, managing to project her voice well considering that she's lying down, "would be us!"

The craft's interior rings with the strength of her proclamation.

"...We're the deputies," Jacen elaborates. "Me and... her."

I can tell at once that he anticipates scepticism. Judgement. If the curl of his lip is anything to go by, he also seems to be pre-emptively judging himself, and especially Gaia, on my behalf.

Of course, I am sceptical, but scepticism is my profession, and I'll be the first to admit that their deputy-ship makes sense on paper. Brawns and brain. I'm sure there's something to be said for their professionalism, and I'm sure that other people have already said those things in the past. But, at the end of the day, they saved me. I would not have been able to fight off those robots without them. Overlooking some eccentricities seems like a small price to pay.

At that moment, Gaia yawns again, and the tongue that flops out of her mouth before she pulls it back in is not only serpentine, but inhumanly long. A stark reminder of just what kind of eccentricities I'm seeing fit to overlook.

Still. Sometimes, being a PI isn't just about noticing things, but pretending that you haven't. I keep my attention on Jacen, who's watching me with wide eyes. There isn't a tremor in his hand so much as there is a light twitch, but it's still present, bouncing his fingers up and down against his precious box.

"Good to know," I tell him, and watch as the twitch subsides. Then, because I don't know how much longer this flight is set to last, and I'm genuinely curious: "Who do you get to order around, then?"

Gaia beams. Clearly, the thought of ordering people around is one that she likes the weight of.

"OI!" her yell is so loud, and so sudden, that it catches me off-guard. Jacen, too. He jumps where he's sitting, and then glares daggers at her. But she only has eyes for the front of the ship.

And then, a voice calls out from behind the closed door. Faint, but steady.

"Yes?"

It's not a surprise that someone is flying this craft. It's a new moving part being added into the conversation, though, and I brace myself accordingly.

"GET OVER HERE!" calls Gaia.

In what is a surprise to me, the door opens. A man walks out, calm as you please, despite the fact that he appears to be our pilot, and appears to have abandoned his post.

A shuffle from where Jacen is sitting tells me that he shares at least some of my concerns. "Really?"

I expect the man to shrug, but he doesn't. "We're on a clear course," he says. "I can go hands-off, at least for a few minutes." Monotone and masculine, his contrast to Gaia's boisterousness is almost eerie.

More steps bring him into the light of the craft's interior. He is wearing grey jogging bottoms, a purple t-shirt, and a purple, yellow-accented jacket undone over the top. He has his hands hanging loose by his sides. He is walking slowly, minding his balance in the airborne craft. He has his hair - long, and a deep golden - held away from his face by a bun and a series of braids at the top of his head, with the rest being left to fall loose down his back.

He is a perfectly average-looking man. And so, mistrust rears up in me like an animal.

Jacen is what an average man in a situation such as this ought to look like. He is frazzled, explanatory, and in possession of just enough quirks to make himself fit in. This man's only outstanding display of personality, as he stops walking in front of the rest of us, is that he has none. There is no slant to his stance; no kink to the way that he's standing. He isn't slouched like a layabout, he isn't fidgeting like a neurotic, he isn't standing to attention like a parade solider. He simply... exists in the space that he takes up. The picture of inoffensive, quiet neutrality.

"What's up?"

There's no flexing of his jaw, or running of his tongue over his lips, before he speaks. There is no shifting, examining movement to his eyes.

And then, I realise that I can't even see a rise and fall to his chest.

It is this, more than anything else, that stops me in my metaphorical tracks. My horizons have already been thoroughly broadened by tonight, but is this really what it has come to? Am I so easily ready to accept the prospect of a man, standing and talking in front of me, who isn't breathing?

And yet, I don't see it at all, and instinct all but screams at me to not let the detail slide.

Gaia reclaims something of my attention by pointing a meaty hand in my direction.

"Skye wanted to know who I could boss around," she said in a voice that sounds like she's about to knock a glass off a table on purpose.

The man blinks. It is the first time, I realise, that I have seen him do so.

"You can, indeed, boss me around," he says, evenly. When he turns to me, the movement is almost mechanical. "Skye, I presume?"

"Veil," chimes in Jacen before I get the opportunity to say anything. "We managed to save her."

"Excellent job." The congratulation is toneless. The man tilts his head a little. It should reassure me, but doesn't. The movement looks too mechanical. It reminds me of the robots that just attacked me.

"And you are?" I ask.

"Max." The man - Max - remains totally neutral. He seems neither pleased nor displeased to be introducing himself. He gives no indication as to whether my presence is welcome or not.

"You're our pilot?" I ask him.

"Among other things."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Receptionist. Tech specialist. Custodian. Warm body."

I wonder if his body really is warm.

Whatever else he might or might not be, he seems able to pick up on my scepticism. He turns to Jacen.

"I should probably tell her."

I blink, surprised by something so candid - and incriminating - leaving this odd man's lips. Jacen seems surprised, too. He frowns. Leans forward.

"Are you sure it's a good idea-"

"She's a detective. She'll figure it out eventually." He looks at me, then. Beholds me in his unblinking gaze. "In fact, I think she already has."

I make a show of leaning back in my seat. "I've sure figured something out."

"You don't know for sure? Or you just don't want to say it?"

I'm not rattled, but I'm something close to it, though I keep that to myself. I hadn't expected to be confronted by a person such as this, and I certainly hadn't expected for him to make something of a game out of it. But then, perhaps it's on me for being surprised. Whatever else Pandemonium's Bane might be, they've been very upfront with me up to this point. If not in what they've told me, then in what they've let me see.

"Alright." Deciding to test my hunch, I beckon the standing man over with the crook of my finger. He's as docile as a pet as he walks over, which only makes me more suspicious. Plenty of animals, after all, are docile enough until you look away. What kind of mischief might this one cause, if my eyes leave him?

I turn my finger downwards, indicating that he should hunker down so that he's eye level with me. His obedience holds. His eyes are a shade of cool brown, like dust before the sun has risen.

I reach out, and I pluck a hair from his head. He doesn't flinch. I dangle it between our faces. Then, I hold my breath.

In my fingers, the hair remains perfectly still. I still don't see his chest move.

Through our eye contact, I can see something flicker in his gaze. Not a literal flicker, like Gaia's eyes, but something that I pick up on all the same.

And then, he smiles. And, for the first time, he looks somewhat human.

"Good eye."

And then, without missing a beat, he reaches up and plucks one of own his eyes right out of its socket. My first thought is that it's a glass eye; the wire trailing from the eyeball, as well as the circuitry that I can see inside the socket and beyond, disabuses me of that notion.

It's no wonder he reminded me of my attackers.

From behind us, Jacen awkwardly clears his throat.

"Suffice it to say, Max... isn't like whatever came after you tonight."

As if I needed the clarification!

He pops his eye back in - I watch it light up like a bulb before returning to its previous appearance - and stands back up.

"My topmost layer is actually lab-grown flesh," he says, in the same way that parent might say something comforting to a child that was having a night terror. "Of course, my internals are very much different from yours, but if you prick me, I do bleed."

He's appealing to a sense of shared humanity. He doesn't trust that I trust him. It's manipulation, but it's perfectly fair. It also explains why, for all that his patterns of movement give him away, he looks human enough. His hair is natural, and there are blemishes and marks on his skin the way that there would be on any normal man's.

"But," continues Jacen, "also suffice it to say, we, uh, know a thing or two about robots."

"Androids."

The correction falls from my lips. I feel three pairs of eyes flick to me.

"...Beg pardon?"

I'm committed, now. "It's semantics. But 'robot' is a broad term. An android is what you call a robot that looks and acts like a human."

The android blinks, as though the distinction hasn't occurred to him before. Gaia blinks, and I can almost see the rusty gears in her own head grinding against one another. Jacen, however, is quick to roll his eyes with a huff.

"Does it matter?"

"Bold question, considering how thoroughly you categorise your toys."

Given marching orders by my words, a flush invades his cheeks.

"You do not need to bring that up," he all but squeaks.

"No." I fold my arms. "I don't."

The flush annexes more territory.

"I like her," Gaia sees fit to speak up. "Can we keep her?"

"We- no!" Jacen all but snaps. "We don't 'keep' people!" He squirms in his seat, and his hands twitch again. His brows, hidden away behind his glasses, visibly furrow. He looks like he wants to try and strangle Gaia, but also like he knows that he wouldn't have any luck in the endeavour. It's a strong reaction to ribbing. So much for calming down now that the adrenaline is out of his veins; this man may just be tighter than a military boot.

Of course, I only have so much room to judge him. When the craft shakes in the air, I'm quick to rest my own hand on the seat to the side of me, trying to stabilise myself in the turbulence. Max - who has thus far been watching everyone else with unblinking eyes - turns on his heel and begins to walk back to the cockpit.

"I should make sure that we don't fall out of the sky," he says. "If nothing else, I'd hate to crash during touchdown. That would just be ironic."

His speech is unaffected, and flat as a basin, but his words feel alive. He expresses preference, and he has a sense of humour. Anything non-human baring such traits is the hallmark of science-fiction, and yet there he goes, back through that cold door.

I wonder, not for the first time in a short time, what this night has made of my life.

The craft rattles again, and we begin to dip in the air. My stomach spins once more, but my head doesn't spin with it. Our descent feels controlled, and there is a pair of sober - if not human - hands at the wheel.

Unfortunately, that sobriety doesn't extend to Gaia. I suspect that no sort does. At this latest bump in our ride, she shoots out of her chair, eyes wide. I blink, and one of her hands is a blade, jutting outwards from her elbow. It looks like a bone, strong and gnarled, but the way it gleams in the light leaves me under no illusion as to how sharp it is.

"Don't get excited," Jacen tells her, like a parent scolding their child for lingering at a tuck shop window. "We're fine."

She just blinks.

"We're fine," Jacen insists. There's an edge to his voice that insists he doesn't want to tolerate anything else from Gaia for the evening.

With a roll of her broad shoulders, Gaia sits up in a single chair for the first time. I watch as her hand gradually turns back to normal. It's a fascinating process to observe, now that I'm not afeared for my life and can take the time to do so. Her normal self is fair and unremarkable, but when she transforms, it becomes something entirely different. Her skin becomes black, and rugged, taking on an almost hatch-marked texture. Small sparks and forks of pure-white energy rip outwards from within her flesh. A vivid pink glow underpins her body as it changes. She yawns again as the blade cleaves into fingers, and I can see the same shade glowing in the back of her throat, like she's about to breath magenta fire.

And then, with a shift of her body and a crunch that sounds like bone, the process is over, and her hand is normal once again.

Evidently a veteran of this process, Jacen gives no reaction beyond a roll of his angular eyes.

I, on the other hand, am so distracted by it that I don't realise how close we are to the ground until I feel the whole craft shake from the bottom-up. My stomach files one final motion of complaint, and I feel a solidity that I'd been missing to that point, and I realise that we've come in to land.

A second later, the door to the cockpit opens, and Max walks out once more.

"Another happy landing," he says.

Without another word, Jacen rises. Following his lead, I rise too. Gaia slithers off of her seat and down to the floor, where she seems content to languish for a moment before finally hauling herself up back up onto her tree-trunk legs. The door hisses open, and I am bundled out amidst the wave of strange bodies that have taken me into their care. We emerge to a balmy evening, a field of swaying stalks, and the chirping of a dozen grasshoppers. The craft has come down on a flat patch of ground, dug out from the field that surrounds us. Breaking the stretch of horizon, barely visible in the night sky, is a building.

"Woohoo! We're home!"

Gaia breaks formation, and begins to run eagerly towards it. Her hair billows out behind her as all but her silhouette vanishes into the black of the night. Jacen follows after her, power-walking like he's trying to keep up but can't stomach the social embarrassment of breaking into a run of his own.

My first thought is that the building before us is dimly, strangely familiar. My second is a recollection; I'm familiar with it through repute. It's an aged estate, positioned on the edge of the city of Invictus and owned by the Abernathy clan. Plue Abernathy, as I recall, is currently the Supreme Commander of the Bulwark. Hence my third thought: a stunned wondering as to how on Theia this motley group is wandering up to it and calling it home like it's nothing.

My fourth thought, and the first that gives me true pause, is that it doesn't look how it should. Based on my secondhand knowledge of the place, it was run-down - not a ruin, but something close to it - and being overtaken by nature. And yet, the building that Gaia is currently sprinting full-pelt towards has no creepers caressing its walls. No overgrowth smothering its windows. Not even a canopy to blot out the illuminating light visible from within.

"She was a bit of a fixer-upper."

I hadn't even realised that Max was by my side. When I look up at him, the android is staring at the house with an expression that might just be fondness.

"Can't say I was aware she'd been fixed up," I comment, and Max nods like he expected it.

"When we were first formed, the Bulwark gave us this property," he gestures to the building, "to use as our headquarters."

"Gave it to you?" My cynicism can't help but echo. "If it was half the wreck I've heard it was, you were being hung out to dry."

To his credit, Max is quick to acquiesce. "Yes. Some of our number certainly shared the sentiment. But it was better than nothing. And we worked hard."

Looking at it, I can't help but think of my old office. Our never-ending fight against entropic elements. The fact that her front is now a pile of rubble.

It must show on my face. In a prescience that I did not expect from him, Max places his hand on my shoulder and gives it a single squeeze before letting it go. I'm so surprised by the gesture that I don't protest it, even though I tend to resent that kind of invasion of my personal space on principle. I consider saying something, but don't. It's been a very long night, and it doesn't look to be over just yet. I could do worse than receive a show of comfort.

As Max's footsteps crunch, and as he, too, begins to walk towards what I now understand to be his home, I am left to my own devices. I stand, with dried sweat on the back of my neck and forearms bared to a night that is at once chilly and muggy, in front of the entrance to the ship, and wonder - not for the first time tonight - what I ought to do next.

These are strange people.

I look again at the building. Tall, wide. A sloped roof, made of orange tiles, with enough metal spires and antenna sticking out to make it look like an upturned hairbrush. Rough, colourful brickwork comprises the walls. It's difficult to tell for certain without the light of day, but I think I see more splatters of colourful paint on one side of the building. In the distance, I hear the low bellow of a sauropod herd, roaming the plains; a sound that a city-dweller like myself is entirely unaccustomed to.

They have brought me to a strange place.

But, for all that I'm sceptical, it still barely qualifies as a decision. They went out of their way to save me. They've shown me no signs of ill intent so far.

They're also not exactly waiting up for me.

Decision made, slowly and yet in a snap, I begin to wander after them, fighting to keep up with their longer strides as they lead me further into their home, and into the lifestyle that I have been so abruptly thrust into.

The Calm and The Cold

Inside, a cluster of insects is swarming a strong orange bulb. In a similar manner, we are swarmed by a woman as we let ourselves into the building. Referring to a single person as such would normally be an exaggeration, but there is an intensity to her - a kind of frantic speed - that makes the comparison apt enough.

Perhaps fittingly, she is small in stature. Not as small as me, but then, I've set a tough benchmark. As the members of Pandemonium's Bane pull forward, she approaches them, and they all look down to meet her anxious eyes.

"And you're okay?" she's saying, in a voice that's only a little bit desperate. "You're all okay?"

She reaches Gaia first, and begins to fuss over her like a mother, examining her arms and clicking her lips as Gaia launches into an enthusiastic retelling of how she fought my robot assailants to a standstill. She - the woman - is wearing a dark turtleneck, with the ends pulled as far up her neck and down her wrists as they can be. She seems young, but there are streaks of grey in her otherwise-black hair that give me pause.

"And you?" she turns to Max, who immediately takes a step backwards, giving her a thumbs-up that communicates everything well enough.

Without missing a beat, the woman turns to Jacen. She slows down, like she's started to wade through water, and the soft padding of her bare feet against the stone floor ring out through the room as she makes her way over to him.

"Hey."

Jacen's voice has dropped. I never had an ear for music, so I can't tell if it's gone down a full octave or just a half, but I can recognise the shift in tone well enough. I wonder if she knows that he likes her. I wonder if even he knows. He seems the sort to bury himself six feet in denial over that sort of thing.

"Jacen."

Between the way she says his name, and the way she's looking at him like he's an island in the middle of the sea, the feelings may well be mutual. I watch as she approaches, curious, but there's no sign that they're on the same page. After a lingering look, she steps back, and something in the moment is broken. They look like friends, and it's all that they could reasonably be perceived as by anyone who hadn't just seen that moment of connection between them.

I don't say anything. It's not my business to interfere, and I've never been one for matchmaking besides. Maybe they'll figure it out someday.

"We're all good," Jacen says, in his regular tone of voice. "I- we're fine. Promise."

The woman nods. "Promise." Her echo is like that of a cave, soft and warbling.

And then, her eyes drift over to me. They're round, a deep brown, and unexpectedly piercing given her demeanour.

"Are you hurt, ma'am?" she asks me, coming close and taking my hands in hers before I can protest. Her presence is almost cloudlike, no doubt accentuated by the softness of her jumper and the free-flowing waves of her hair. She examines my fingers like a curious medium, and I watch as she takes in the red marks patterning them; mementos of struggles against the trigger of my own gun, and the grip of the larger robot. Static electricity passes between us, and she doesn't flinch. In fact, I don't even see her so much as blink.

"Not a scratch," I say, through a twinge of my bruised ribs.

The woman squeezes my hand, briefly but firmly, like she's trying to convey something important to me. I get the sense that she can tell I'm lying. She doesn't, however, call me out on it. Just stands back and keeps looking at me like she can see more of me than is really there.

"You're safe, I promise," she tells me, before finally letting my hand go. I blink, because I can't remember the last time a woman held my hand like that, and there's an unnervingly sentimental part of me that wants it to have lasted longer than it did. Residues of adrenaline and nerves, turning me to mush.

"And you are?" I prompt her.

She blinks, like she's surprised that a stranger is asking for an introduction.

"Oh - I'm Rose." There's a softness to her tone, but it's not comforting in the way it once was; it's reticent, now. Like she wants to apologise for her words as she says them.

"Welcome to HQ," Max chimes in from over my shoulder.

His declaration prompts me to look over the room that I've just walked into. It's a kitchen, plated with brick and streaked with silver. Hobs; ovens; a kettle that, surprisingly, only looks slightly dented. I can see a doorway, leading out to what is most likely a hallway. Beyond that, shadows.

It doesn't look much like a headquarters. I can't say it looks all that much like a home, either.

Before I can draw any more parallels, the shadows of the hallway unveil, like a zipper being drawn, and another man steps out of them. It a big step, wild, like it's off a shaking pontoon, and it's made by a leg sheathed in a set of plaid pyjama bottoms. The torso that follows is sheathed in nothing at all, revealing a wiry body with strong arms. A pair of scars, symmetrical, are astigmatic streaks of pink across the bottom of his dark chest. His hair is the same colour as his bottoms; a floppy red quiff tumbles down his forehead and demarks an otherwise jet-black set of locks.

The man grasps the door handle, rears back, and all but yells:

"I'm awake!" He yells. "I'm so awake. You people have no, fucking, idea just how awake I am." He points his finger at us all, and then stops like he's just considered something. "...What the hell is going on?"

There is context to this. Of that, I am sure. But discerning context requires wit, and I'm just about at my wits' end. So, as Rose and Jacen both approach the man at once, I lean back against the wall, fold my arms, and do nothing else.

"That is Anand." It's the android, once again, that sees fit to hang back and mutter into my ear. "He's Rose's cousin. He's come to visit, and he's staying over."

A social call. I hadn't realised that a Bulwark offshoot would take those. Then again, making assumptions about Pandemonium's Bane was a loser's game from the moment the big woman spun a robot's jaw like a broken clock hand.

"-And you brought a friend!"

Anand has seen me. Max takes the initiative, placing his hand firmly on my shoulder. It feels unerringly human through my t-shirt.

"Anand," he says, "this is-"

"Max." Andy interrupts him, all but pushing past his cousin and her colleague as he closes the distance. "Maxy. Maxine. Maximum. Like I said - you don't need to suffer me the name. In full. Andy's more than enough." He's in front of me, now, holding out his hand. "Andy Hargrove," he tells me. "Free spirit, rock star, contrarian. And you, I'm guessing, are a madame, who is perfectly capable of introducing herself." The looks that he sends almost above my head, towards Max, is neither deadly serious nor in possession of an ounce of humour.

"Andy," I echo, regarding him. Maybe it's the scars, but I get the sense he puts a lot of stock into names. A lot of agency. "You know, you sure picked a hell of a time to visit."

He spreads his arms wide, like the rock star he's proclaimed himself to be. Or maybe a martyr. Is that going to be what he self-styles as, next?

"That's me," he agrees. "Raising hell."

When he drops his arms, he returns his hand to where it was, waiting for mine. Not that I couldn't keep him waiting, but there's no fun in that, so I grasp it and give it a good shake. The callouses on his fingers tell me that, if nothing else, he really does play the guitar.

"Skye Veil." I'm not exactly meeting a client, but this definitely isn't a social call. I give him my name like the title it is.

"She's here on Pandemonium's Bane business," says Max, chiming in from the background, giving me more agency than I might've asked for.

Andy smiles like a shark does. "And I'm not. That right?"

It's Jacen's turn, now. "That's exactly right," he says. "Not that we don't appreciate you being here-" he says it with as little sincerity as I've ever heard it said- "-but you should just go back to sleep."

"That's not fair," says Rose, "Maybe he can help?"

"Help with what?" Jacen asks her, voice softening a little once again. "Rose, we're post-op. We're going to make sure Skye's settled in, because she's staying with us - you're staying with us for tonight, Ms. Veil - I'm going to write a report, and then we're all going to go to bed. I don't know what he's supposed to be helping us with, in that scenario, unless he thinks that we all need to be tucked in."

Andy makes a show of the way he shrugs his naked shoulders. "I mean, I sure wouldn't mind tucking in some of the people here," he says, and I feel his gaze on me. Roaming over me, and my thin t-shirt, and the lack of coat over my own shoulders.

He's barking up the wrong tree. Flattering, though, to have anyone barking up it at all, so I hold off on telling him that for the moment. Instead, I fold my arms, and let a flustered Rose trot over and lead her cousin across the room.

"It was lovely to meet you, I hope you're alright, I'm glad you're alright, goodnight everyone!" she says, all in one breath, as she shepherds Andy out the room. Andy, for his part, sticks out his tongue and gives me a wink before the shadows swallow him up again.

Jacen drags his fingers down his face with such force that he almost looks like he's trying to do legitimate damage. Fortunately for the sensibilities of everyone else in the room, he seems to remember himself after a scant couple of seconds, and settles for a drawn-out sigh instead.

"I'll get started on that report. Max, could you see to it that, uh, Ms. Veil gets set up someplace? Is there a spare room ready? And Gaia... uh..." he looks like he's in danger of bringing his fingers back up to his face. "I really don't know. Maybe just... stay alert. Make sure that we weren't followed, or anything."

"Why would they follow us?" the question is Gaia's, and Jacen raises his hands up like he's beseeching the heavens.

"Why would they follow us? I don't know, Gaia, but that's the point, we don't know anything about these things, we don't..." Self-control fails him. He pinches the bridge of his nose, like he's right back on the ship, losing his temper at me. "I don't know. Fine. Do whatever. Just do it quietly. Please."

And then, he's gone, too. I am alone with the oddities, and I can feel one of them staring at me.

When I turn to Gaia, to meet her stare with one of my own, I am surprised by something. She's changed, and it takes me a moment to process how, but then I realise:

She's become more normal.

She's still tall, but less tall than she was. Her jacket is still clinging to her broad shoulders, but with less desperation. There are no claws on her fingers, and no scars on her arms. When she opens her mouth to yawn again, I see nothing about her teeth and tongue that imply she is anything other than human.

For a moment, I begin to question my perception of reality altogether. Except then, I register that she still has the same glow in her eyes.

"'Sup?" she asks me, unprompted.

I don't reply. She nods as though I did. "Andy was looking at you funny, huh?"

On that, I have to agree. "He sure was. In fact, I'm sure he had more than looking on his mind."

"More than looking? Oh. Oh?" Gaia blinks. "What, like, sex stuff?"

The ever-remarkability of a blunt instrument.

"Maybe. I don't know him, and I don't know how serious he might have been. But maybe he was interested."

"But you... weren't?"

"I know some people find that kind of thrill in near-death experiences, but I've never been the type. Besides..."

I pause where I'd normally do something with my hands, or take a drink from my flask. But there's nothing for means of the former, and I don't have the latter, so I don't fill the silence, and Gaia just keeps staring at me. But then, her cloud of an expression breaks to reveal a surprisingly bright sun of understanding.

"Oooh, nice!" She claps her hands together and it sounds like thunder. "No kidding? Nice!"

"You really don't need to shout," I tell her, because I'm here, and not next week. She shakes her head.

"No, no. It's cool, it's cool. Just nice to have another girl around who gets it." Gaia leans on Max's head. I'm not even sure the android flinches. "I mean, I love Rosie, she's great, but she doesn't, y'know..." she makes a gesture with her fingers that could, in fact, mean many things. "...understand Caelan."

I've never heard that one before, but I understand the implication, and give the goliath a small, solemn nod. Truthfully, it might be the most normal thing that I've found out about her - Gaia - so far.

"Meanwhile Jacen doesn't like anyone," she continues, which I don't suppose to correct her on, "and Max doesn't like anyone either!" she turns to look down at Max, whom she's still leaning on. "Ain't that right, Max?"

"I feel nothing more than slight platonic affection for you all in my cold metal heart," deadpans Max. I want to take it as a joke, but I struggle to tell for sure how much he means what he just said, and it bothers me.

"I mean The Boss likes girls," Gaia continues, "but he's not a girl, and anyways, he's super obsessed with his girl. Which is like, fair, they're adorbs an' all, but-"

"I think she gets the picture."

The android isn't wrong. It's a more thorough run-down than I would have asked for. About the only thing I don't know is whether Gaia's own fluency in Caelan is specialist, or whether she's a polyglot. I don't ask, because it doesn't affect me in the slightest, and I don't speculate, because I don't care.

Additionally, I'm very tired. I have my priorities. I turn to Max.

"I'd wouldn't mind if you followed your deputy's orders and showed me a place to sleep."

With an affirmative nod, the android moves past me and towards the same doorway that the other members of Pandemonium's Bane disappeared through. With the image fresh in my mind, it feels like something of an induction; but then, if my scruples are my ship, tonight has been an unprecedented storm, and it has left me clinging to splinter-ridden flotsam to stay afloat. So long as these people don't try to violently kidnap me, or worse, they have my grace. I follow the android.

There's a bark from Gaia that makes me worry, before I register the words.

"Wait! I'm a deputy too! Max, you should follow my orders!"

"You haven't given me any orders." Max doesn't turn back, dutifully leading me on, but there are no telltale signs that he is surprised or irritated. I wonder if there would be any.

From behind us, there is a sound like the snapping of fingers, but with more solidity, and more of an echo. It must be the sound of Gaia snapping her fingers.

"Max! Do a headstand!"

As far as power trips go, I've seen less harmless. Max must feel the same way - insofar as he feels anything - because he remains nonplussed.

"You and Jacen are both deputies. He asked me to see to Ms. Veil before you asked me to do a headstand, so I will see to Ms. Veil first." His head finally turns, just enough for me to see that the corner of his lip is quirked upwards, like his programming is forcing him to bite back a smile. "Then, I can do a headstand for you."

"I love you, Max!" is the last thing that Gaia calls after us.

Max leads me into a room that, shrouded in darkness as it is, is obviously large and cavernous.

"There used to be a couple more dividing walls in here, but we took them down when we moved in." He sounds like a tour guide.

"Let me guess," I guess, "you let Gaia do it?"

"She alleges that it was one of the best days of her life."

The floor is old stones, and in my fatigue, the tip of my shoe catches in a gap. I don't fall, but I stumble, and I curse.

"Sorry," says Max. "Should I put the lights on?"

I wave him off. "Save you on bills."

"Counterpoint. If you fall and break something, we'll be culpable, and be obligated to pay for your treatment."

"I wouldn't sue you. Or coerce you at all, if that's what you're worried about."

"It's doubtlessly easier for you to say that now, leg un-broken. If it's all the same to you-"

A flick of a switch, and I am squinting in what feels like daytime.

"-this is a preventative measure, and is, as such, a perfectly legitimate use of Bulwark funding." He gestures, now that I can see him, to the far end of the room. I see a set of closed lift doors, as well as a smaller door off to the side. "Please. This way."

I'm seeing the robots that attacked me in everything, and that is why I shy away from the massive silver doors to the lift. The android humours me, stepping to the side and opening the smaller door to reveal a flight of cramped stairs. He begins to ascend at once, pausing only to beckon me on. After an obligatory pause of my own, I let myself be led up to the building's first floor. I am greeted by a narrower corridor, and more doorways that lead off into their own individual rooms.

Max leads me to a bathroom. I'm sure that he doesn't mean to make me sleep in it, but his clarification comes before I even open my mouth to ask.

"Obviously you look uninjured, but looks can be deceiving." He continues, as though it isn't a wholly ironic thing for a bucket of bolts masquerading as a person to say. "With your permission, I'm going to check and make sure that you don't have any serious injuries." He flicks the light of the room on, revealing a true bog-standard. Shining white tiles, a limescale-ridden showerhead, a porcelain throne. Behind the toilet is a cabinet, and he opens it to reveal several colourful boxes, one of which he takes with a hand and lays out on the lid of the seat.

"How'd you know I got hurt at all?"

"Aside from being on comms with my colleagues?" He looks me up and down. It's a quick flick of the eyes, but it still feels more intense than any leer I can remember. "Slight idiosyncrasies in your walk, and your stance, that indicate pain in your torso. I understand that one of the robots grabbed you?"

I'm not staggering, or hunched over. Maybe there really are idiosyncrasies in my posture, but I've certainly never met someone who could make that kind of thing out before.

Then again, the man is an android.

"That they did."

"Would you be comfortable raising your shirt?"

"That I would."

There are large red welts across my body from where the robot seized me, and they're already beginning to bruise purple. Armed with eyes that are already beginning to hone in on my injuries, Max makes his approach.

"I'm surprised you don't have some kind of scanner in those things," I tell him. "Not like they're trying to be human."

"Maybe not, but an upgrade like that would make it obvious that they weren't." He crouched down, lowering his eye level to my ribcage. "Though, if you're any indication, it's obvious that I'm not human as is."

I want to reassure him that I probably wouldn't've guessed the truth of his nature if he hadn't been so candid with me, but my curiosity muscles its way forwards. "Are there more like you?"

"Yes and no." Without preamble, he presses his hand against my ribs. I grit my teeth as I feel his fingers dig into my bruises, but there's something reassuring about the mechanical way he moves from one rib to the next. He runs his hands along me like I'm an engine he's trying to get back in working order. "There are others of my make, if you will. Other androids. It was all part of a Bulwark project that got shut down a while ago. But they were drones, constructed to blend in and follow orders. My personality matrix was developed independently, and then inserted into the body that I inhabit now." He gestures to himself with a free hand. "As the others might say, I'm one-of-a-kind."

He switches to the other side, and the pain lessens.

"A Bulwark project?" I ask him. I like to think that I'm on top of current affairs, as well as what the Bulwark is capable of, but I've never heard of them making machines that could pass as human.

"If you have the free time, you might want to look into something called Highwing," replies Max. Then, he pulls away, and stands tall enough that we're eye-to-eye. "No breakage. Any other injuries that you know of?"

"That's a negative."

"Alright." He turns back to the box. When he next faces me, he's holding a pair of thin ice packs in one hand, and a roll of medical tape in the other. "With your permission, I'm going to affix these to your sides. They'll last through the night, and the cool will keep the swelling down."

He doesn't move. It takes me a moment to realise that the onus is on me.

"Permission granted."

He is silent and efficient, and yet I swallow down something unfamiliar as he ties the packs to me. It feels wrong, almost, to go through so much in a night and to end it with no obligation beyond holding my shirt up so that someone else can do the hard work.

I'm no stranger to getting hurt. God knows it's happened before. But this is the first time in a while that I've been patched up by anyone other than myself. The intimacy of the scene is striking, and I'm stuck with nothing to do but reflect on it. It isn't a moment, but it's a moment-that-might-have-been, if only either of us were so inclined.

"What's your plan?" I ask him, just as he's done taping the first pack to the smaller of my welts. "Your team's plan, that is?"

"In a word? Proactivity." Max keeps working as he talks. "We figured out the pattern of these things' attacks. We stopped them from taking you. Our next step is to track them down, and then track them back to their home turf."

"You think they have one?"

"They've got to be taking these people somewhere."

He's right.

"How are you going to find them?"

"We'll find whoever their next target is going to be, and we'll intercept them. That is, assuming they don't change tactics now that we've caught up with them once already."

"How do you plan on tracking them?"

"If they do appear? Jacen and I have been working on a tracer. It'll ping their location to us, no matter where in the city they are."

"You probably should've done that when you saved me."

"We probably should." Max's words are punctuated by the sound of him tearing off another strip of tape to wrap around me. "Jacen said that he wanted to immobilise one of them, and then plant the tracer. I can only surmise that it broke out of its paralysis too quickly."

I remember the big robot crushing the disks, and how Jacen had no recourse other than telling me to run. "You're probably right."

"We live and learn." Max leans back. "I think I need to stick one more pack on you, if that's alright with you."

"Go for it." I let my head hang, staring up at the ceiling. Ignoring the pain, even if it isn't civil enough to ignore me. "And then what? You find the place, and rush it?"

"Rushing places is our speciality." There's something about the way Max says that; makes me think I'm not in on a joke of some kind. "Though we'll be careful if we can. Ideally, we'll be able to find and extract the people that've been taken before we bring it all down."

There's a thought that's been nestled in my mind for a short time, now, comfortable - too comfortable - and it's beginning to take root. It doesn't feel like a good idea, but keeping quiet also doesn't, and the pain from my torso is still barking at me. It pumps through my body with my heart, and it makes me realise that I'm clenching my fists.

I set it free. I give it form.

"You're going to need help."

"We're capable." Max holds the last pack against me. The cold burns and soothes in equal measure. "But help certainly wouldn't go amiss." He begins to twine another length of tape around my back, eyes remaining firmly in front of him. "Full disclosure: I'm not the one in charge of our books, but I don't believe that your salary is in our budget."

"I'll do it gratis." Even under the gentle touch of the android's fingers, my ribs ache. "You give me the chance to bring down these things, and the people that made them? That's payment enough."

"I understand." There are no pauses for consideration from Max. No moments where he seems to consider what he wants to say. Every response is immediate, timed to unerring perfection so that it keeps our conversation moving and on-subject. "I'll bring it up with Jacen. He'll be the one to convince, but he's so busy rebuffing Andy's offers to get involved, I don't think he'll have the bandwidth to rebuff you as well."

I can't say whether I'd rebuff Andy's help or accept it, based on my interaction with him. Max must pick up on that, because he elaborates. "Andy's ex-Bulwark. He says he left, but it's possible he was let go. Either way, Jacen doesn't like him very much."

"On principle?"

"On both principled and personal bases. And the feeling is mutual."

That, I can see. "Hell of a stick that Jacen's got up his ass. I can imagine Andy wanting to wedge another up there after half a conversation in him."

"As a witness to their first meeting, I compliment you on your prescience. Though I suppose it comes with the job."

Led me to the job, more like. But I get a feeling that wriggles through my chest like a worm, and it says that I'm getting too friendly with a Bulwark associate who isn't even human. So, I keep that personal titbit unspoken, and I let the android finish his work in silence. When he moves his hands away, I let my t-shirt drop back down. The chill of the ice packs keeps my eyes firmly open, and my feet firmly on the ground

"Now," is the next thing he says, as he turns around and rummages through the first-aid box once more, "would you like a sticker for good behaviour?"

I assume that he's joking. Then, he produces a page of colourful stickers.

"There are heart-shaped ones, star-shaped ones..." He points them out to me with a finger as he says them.

"Your clientele regularly take you up on that kind of offer?"

"Actually, Gaia's keeping a chart. If she gets three more hearts before the end of the month, we've agreed she gets to go dress shopping and then write it off as an expense."

My inability to tell how serious Max is being is getting old, fast. "I'm surprised your other deputy signed off on that."

"I said we agreed. I never said that consensus wasn't achieved through persistence."

It's like talking to a genie.

He points at his sheet of children's stickers. "I'm partial to these, myself." His finger prods at a golden-yellow star.

It is no doubt delirium, caused by fatigue, that has me pulling at my collar.

"I'll take it," I hear my own voice say, and I watch, a spectator, as Max carefully smooths the sticker into the upper breast of my t-shirt. It's not my usual end to a day; especially not a day I've spent on a case.

"Do you want me to show you your room?" Max asks, and I can't even gripe about his prescience.

"Lead the way."

He takes me to a room; dark, and I keep it that way when I enter. There is nothing inside, save a single mattress in the centre, which is almost a double by my standards. If it's a prison cell, at least I don't have to worry about clutter. I have no problem falling atop it. The sounds of my shoes hitting the floor coincide with the noise of Max closing the door behind me.

I also discard my trousers and my hair tie - which are biting into my legs and scalp, respectively - but my Yut-03 stays by my side, resting firmly in reach of my outstretched arm. I lie on my back, and feel the sting of my ribs, and the cold burn of their treatment, ebb away with my consciousness.

My ears are pricked for the sound of the room's door being locked. It never comes.

The Punk and The Plan

The android is as good as his word.

It is morning - a morning that I am lucky to be seeing - and I'm stood beside the Pandemonium's Bane HQ kitchen table. It is also, so Max has explained to me, the place where the team carries out their mission briefings. I don't think of myself as a critic, but I'm no philistine, either; the milk stains and toast crumbs, sunk deep into the wood, don't strike me as the right visual backdrop for this kind of thing. Certainly, it doesn't really inspire me to take them seriously.

Then again, hunching over a decomposing desk like an ammonite is hardly any sight better, and a debt doesn't incite interior design critique. For better or for worse, my thoughts go unspoken. If nothing else, I don't much fancy tarring myself with the brush of hypocrisy.

The android also knows his team well; as he predicted, Jacen is too busy trying to tell Andy to buzz off to honour me with the same amount of effort. When I approach him with my offer, he doesn't do much more than raise an eyebrow.

"We can't really hire you right now," he says, which makes me wonder what these people's budget even is, but when I repeat that I'm willing to do the job for free he mutters something intelligible under his breath and then waves his hand. Not one to stand on ceremony.

Then again, neither am I. What does two plus two equal, if not four?

The brief is not. Jacen heads it up, looking like he doesn't want to be there. The table lets out a creak as he adjusts his lean. By his side stands Gaia; she also looks like she doesn't want to be there, but for very different reasons. The table downright quivers underneath the force of her eager grip.

I sit on the other side, far away but at an easy angle, on account of how I don't much fancy twisting myself around today. My sides are feeling much better, and I took the packs off first thing, but there's still a tenderness there.

Aside the deputies, further down the table, are Rose and Max. She is wearing the same jacket that he is, and was last night - purple with yellow accents - evidently the uniform for this organisation's non-deputised personnel. Unlike Max, Rose's jacket is zipped up, with only the collar left open. Behind it, I can see the silhouette of her ribbed turtleneck. Her hands are fastened together atop the table, rocking back and forth on the wood, cradlelike. The android, meanwhile, is as still as a statue.

I turn my attention to the last person at the table: Andy the tagalong. His outfit is not the yellow-and-purple-accentuated uniform of Pandemonium's Bane, but instead an ensemble of red and black, the colours stark like they're a flag of war. His legs are clad in jeans so ripped that 'clad' may not be an accurate turn of phrase; his scars have been put away underneath a shirt with a skull insignia and a dark, tough-looking leather jacket; various studded bracelets and chains are visible across his person, as though they're the lynchpins holding the whole look together.

He sneers when Jacen talks.

"Alright," says Jacen. "As you all know-"

"If we all know it," Andy butts in, "why are we being told it?"

Jacen clamps his mouth shut like he's trying to stop himself from spitting fire. For all I know, that's actually something in his wheelhouse.

"We're gonna fight robots!" Gaia butts in, not so much taking over from her fellow deputy as she is unable to keep herself quiet any longer. She hits the table with a loud enthusiastic thump.

"Gaia..." Jacen mutters, as Rose winces.

"But," she continues, suddenly eying all of us like we might be killer robots in disguise, "we don't know where we've gotta be. I mean, we know, but we don't know."

"We've been tracking the kidnappees and tracing a path through Invictus," Jacen elaborates, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "That's how we knew that Ms. Veil was next on the chopping block, so to speak."

He gestures to me, and I nod. Metaphorical as the chopping block might have been, I appreciate my rescue from it all the same.

"The issue is," he continues, sounding louder and more confident with each uninterrupted sentence he gets through, "the next two potential victims that we've identified live an equal distance away from Ms. Veil. We don't know which one these things are going to go after next - which means we don't know which ones we're supposed to be guarding."

"Split up and do it," Andy chimes in.

The look that Jacen gives him is technically a dirty look, but calling it dirty is an undersell. It's a look like the bottom of a plumber's boot as she climbs out of her sewer pipe at the end of the day.

"That is what I was going to say," he says.

Andy is nonplussed. "Should've hurried up with it," he says, coolly.

A more fanciful woman would say that they can, in that moment, hear Jacen's teeth grinding. Me, I can imagine it just fine.

"...What my understanding is," says Rose, glancing anxiously between her cousin and her irate deputy, "is that we're having one team of two, one team of three, and then one person is staying behind here." She turns her doe-eyed gaze upon Jacen and Gaia. "Is that right?"

Gaia grins, and shoots her a thumbs-up. "Jacen said he was going to figure out the teams!"

All eyes return to Jacen, but it's Rose who speaks before him.

"Should- Um, I'm sorry- should you two go together, maybe? And be one team?" she points at the deputies. "Because I can go with Andy."

"Damn right," Andy interjects.

"That wasn't the plan." That's Jacen, now, recovering his words just in time to risk losing them again.

"Too bad. I'm sticking with Rose."

As the friction strikes up again, Max turns to me. He's holding a file in his hands.

"I got these for you," he says. "I thought you might find them useful."

Choosing not to remark on the fact that once again, the person coming across as most helpful isn't actually a person at all, I take the file. It's a large number of sheets. Info. Raw data. Very robot of him. I nod, and start reading as the voices around me begin to rise up like a wave.

They're personnel files, I quickly realise. Details on who people are, where they live, their patterns of past movement and extrapolations about the future based on that. It's incredibly advanced information. I didn't need any further confirmation that Pandemonium's Bane isn't lying about being a Bulwark offshoot, but this would be enough to convince any sceptic. The BCI numbers, alone, would be enough. Nobody outside of the necessary Bulwark staff are even supposed to have those.

The voices around me are still rising, and I take a moment to reflect on the wider implications of these people, of all people, knowing as much about me as anyone can. Then, I place it in its own, segmented compartment, stow it away, and focus back on the matter at hand.

The first two profiles are dated from late last night and early this morning; they are the individuals who are next in the line of fire. One is a man and an off-duty soldier, family name Knightley, currently living in a flat with a roommate and multiple pet rapts. The other is a woman woman, family name Gallardo, living in a house of her own, and no insight into a career or history beyond something vague about SD Investment. Initially I don't think much of it, until I look at the grainy image the team has managed to acquire of her house. Or, to be more accurate, her mansion. Multiple floors, a well-kept exterior, a set of stairs leading up to double-doors engraved with a sigil; It has to be at least the size of Pandemonium's Bane's whole headquarters. It is quite possibly larger.

If she lives alone in a place like that, she's either filthy rich, or beholden to someone who is. I decide, in that moment, that I don't want anything to do with her.

Unfortunately, it isn't my call.

"Enough!" Jacen palms the top of the table, evidently deciding that the winner of this argument must be the one who his standing up and being louder than anyone else. "Gaia and Rose, you can go to the flat. I will stay back, and Max: you can take Andy, and Ms. Veil, and go to the big house."

Gaia mutters something about how she wanted to go to the big house. Andy leans forward, presumably ready to keep arguing his point; he holds his tongue, however, when Rose places her hand on his shoulder.

With the divisions decided, I let myself tune out the remaining team chatter and focus back in on the file. This time, on the notes that've been compiled on the people who were in the pattern before me. The ones who, now, are gone. Fates uncertain.

I remember the robot grabbing me. Holding me. I skim through the pages.

As Jacen said, every one of them had some form of electrokinesis as a registered power, and it's the most obvious connection between them. The only other, and one that I'm not sure Pandemonium's Bane might've noticed, is that they're missable. There are no rich men on this list. No Bulwark officials, nobody in the public eye. They're all, for lack of a term that affords them the extra dignity, grunt workers. Most of them don't even have living relatives.

Nobody's going to come looking for these people, I reckon, feeling the stares of the pictures in the profiles and trying not to blink first. Nobody... except this group. I look back up. Gaia gnaws on the handle of a ceramic mug as Rose nervously tries to get her to stop. Andy is dragging his hands through his hair and loudly saying something to Max, who is staring back at him without blinking. Jacen looks suicidal.

I wonder if any of Invictus' columbariums withhold places on request.

Given the stakes, it's only after a surprising amount of faffing that we're all out of the door. Gaia spends a long time hunting for a pair of boots to wear, and Andy decides that it's worth a few more minutes' delay for one last chance to pull faces at Jacen. I don't have much in the way of preparations to make, so I settle for eating some energy bars that Rose has offered me and standing side-by-side with Max as we wait by the main entrance. The android has a shotgun slung across his shoulder by the strap, and part of my wants to say something, but I don't. I know his hands are steady. If there's one member of this team I can probably trust to aim a gun like that properly, it's him.

As Gaia finally comes back, Jacen appears. He's holding something in his hands - something bright purple, highlighted with equally bright yellow.

"Here," he says, holding the jacket out to me.

I take it. The material is light, but it feels sturdy, and it brings me more comfort than I care to admit as I slip it over my too-small shoulders. I have to roll up the sleeves so that they fit, but then, that's not a particularly novel experience for me.

"Is this a recruitment pitch?" I ask him, as I do so. "Or is this just so that whoever we visit doesn't waste time asking about what I'm doing there when I'm not one of you?"

"Actually, it was Rose's idea." Ah, that explains why Jacen looked as though he hadn't considered his own actions before making them. "She said she felt bad that we didn't have time to grab more of your stuff before we rescued you."

"Rose wasn't even there," I feel compelled to point out, and Jacen nods, like he finds Rose's line of thinking equally baffling.

"Well, she feels bad anyway."

With that final, odd gesture behind him, Jacen shuffles the team - us - out in much the same manner that a cleaner empties a dustpan into a bin. Our cohort, undeterred and finally moving in earnest, trots down the stairs at the front of the house and out into another unkept field of tall green grass. There's a path, but it's one built of habit rather than concrete. We quickly turn off it, heading left, towards where Max parked the ship. I notice a fence made of black iron some distance away, demarking the property, as well as a set of nicely trimmed bushes positioned at the front of the house that's a little surprising. Only a little, though. These people take care of other things for a job, and they even mostly seem to enjoy it. It's not so shocking that one of them might've managed to turn that duty of care onto plantlife.

To my side, Andy and Max are having what might generously be called a back-and-forth.

"I'm driving."

"We're the larger group. Wouldn't it be prudent to take the shuttle?"

"It's my car."

Max backs down. I can't say that it surprises me.

There must be something on my face, all the same, because Rose all but materializes at my side. She peers down at me. Then, her brows raise, as though she's surprised to actually be looking down on someone. I'm not unfamiliar with that look; at this point in my life, I've mostly learnt to replace the envy with being resignedly pleased that that I can do someone else the service.

Her recovery is graceless, but it is a recovery nonetheless. And then, she is shaking her head, abashed over something else entirely.

"I know, I know. Why is Jacen staying behind, right?"

I wasn't about to ask that, but I'm also not in the business of rejecting the answers to any particular question. I give a noncommittal grunt, and let Rose interpret it as curiosity.

"It's, well... Pandemonium's Bane tradition, I guess." Rose tugs at the sleeve of her jacket as we approach Andy's car. It has chipped black paint, and minute crack at the top of the front windscreen. It's an Isleworth, which means that, if I subscribe to car-owner stereotypes, Andy will happily risk his own life to be one car in front, and has brawled in front of a set of traffic lights at least once in his life. It's a stereotype, so it's not altogether helpful, but it also doesn't contradict anything that I've learned about Andy so far. Certainly, the way he's jogging towards it makes it clear that he's an eager driver.

Rose is still speaking, and I do my best to listen. "You know, I don't know when it started, but, um, it's just something that we do, now- whenever we go out on a mission, we always keep at least one person back at base. I guess they're on reserve, but it's not... they don't..." she trails off. She's seeing something, I realise, that I can't. That ineffable glaze over her eyes is the one that comes with memory. It looks sad, on her; then again, I suppose that everything does.

I nod, willing to leave it at that, but she pushes through the memory of her own accord.

"I guess, maybe, some of us also reckon that it's bad luck if we all go off to do the same thing, all at once."

I'm tempted to ask if this counts. They have a leader, as well, and he's not at home, but he also doesn't seem to be joining us today. But we're meters away from the car, now, and Andy is already yanking open the door to the driver's seat, so I break away. There are worse things to let die than a conversation, and Rose's nod to me as I turn doesn't leave me with the impression that she's offended.

"My wheels, my wheel, blondie," Andy says as I open my own door. My heart has the time to beat once before I realise that he's talking to Max, who, despite being nominally in charge of our group, is climbing into the back seats without a word of complaint.

"Of course."

Andy shoots me a look of contempt and ridicule from behind the cover of his headrest. I return it, but the twinge of my conscience feels like cool fingers over pained ribs, and I turn away as I actually take my seat. Looking out the window, I can see the figures of Rose and Gaia venturing back towards the shuttle. Rose has caught up with her colleague quickly; from this distance, both of them are like smears of finger paint. It is Gaia's bulk, and mane of hair, that distinguish her from the shape that is, by process of elimination, Rose.

I wonder which of the two of them will actually be flying the craft. Then I decide, as Andy starts up the car with a rumble, that it's not my problem.

For a while, the road is dirt track, which doesn't give any of us much time to do anything aside from hold onto the doors and grit our teeth as Andy, true to stereotype, careens up and down, going over rocks like speed bumps and leaving a long cloud of dust in our wake. But eventually the ground smooths out, Max starts giving input on which direction we ought to be going, and Andy flips him off even as he heeds the advice. The fields and clusters of trees begin to fade away, and are replaced by the hulking manmade monolith that is the city of Invictus.

History says that the city started off as one big Bulwark fortress. You look around, it's difficult to not see it. The buildings are thick and blocky. Lots of them jut outward, like spears pointed at some great invisible enemy. It's almost an oxymoron, that the most populated place in the Erde system should feel this hostile. A hunkered-down, grey-haired old soldier with more than twelve million people tucked under her elbow.

Left to my own devices, I sit at Andy's side and scrutinise him. It's a hobby. Given my profession, it's also keeping in practice. I look at his practical stud earrings and the deliberate notches in his right eyebrow. I notice a faint scar on the underside of his jaw and the fact that he is missing one of the fingernails on his right hand. I observe the colourful, defiant patches on his jacket, and the sewn-closed tears in the material just about visible next to them.

He sees me seeing him.

"I know that look." Andy says 'that' like it's a dirty word. Not dirty in a profane sense, but in the sense that it has been muddied by the filth of dreadful consistency. "You're wondering why I'm pitching into help at all."

"That's presumptive of you," I tell him.

He yanks the wheel. There's an arbitrary amount of force behind the gesture, and the car veers a little on the road, but it's back in control almost straight away. When he looks back at me, it is with self-satisfaction evident in the quirk of his slit brow.

"The thing about presuming," he says, "is that you can get away with it if you're right all the time."

His motives are, in fact, one of the many things that crossed my mind as I observed him. It felt - feels - obvious. He is a belligerent young man whose hands-on attitude is matched only by the chip on his shoulder. He doesn't like being associated with the Bulwark; either on principle, or because he left their ranks on bad terms. However, he's willing to stomach it today, if it means two things: that he gets to do something active, and that he gets to crack some heads that have been deemed worth cracking.

"Hit me," I challenge him.

We slow down as we approach the city centre, and hit a line of traffic. The glow of the sun reflecting off the glass of the skyscrapers outside the window illuminates him, framing him like a sinner at the gates. He'd probably like that.

"Well, you know Rose is my cousin," he starts off, tapping the wheel with a jittery hand. He's keeping one eye on me and one eye on the traffic. "Was visiting her when this whole... thing happened with you." His characterful eyebrow raises. "Killer robots?"

"It's hard to believe."

He shakes his head. "Too easy, actually. You seen half the bullshit that the Bulwark proper can cook up? The mechanics? I mean, they can make buildings move. Who's to say that someone with the same resources couldn't make something smaller? Make it more like something out an old serial?"

As far as I can remember, only one Bulwark building ever had the ability to move, and it was some sort of prototype. Even then, he has a point. Now that I'm not staring down my would-be kidnapper in the shock of the night, it's hard to be as scared as I was. A robot is not, in and of itself, that outrageous a concept.

"These ones seemed very advanced," I'm compelled to point out. "But alright."

Andy shakes his head again. "S'yeah, so you guys are trying to fight killer robots, and you think- what? That I'm just going to sit back? Wave goodbye while you're doing all that, promise to water the plants while you're gone?" A hack from the back of his throat has me worried that he's about to spit inside the car, but thankfully he doesn't. "Fuck that."

The obvious thing to do is to ask him why he does it, and why he feels that way. I don't. One of the most common human experiences is to strongly want or feel something without any good justification. You can't offer up answers when they're demanded of you; your tongue goes as limp as a dead thing. All you can do is insist that something must be a certain way. Slaves to compulsion, all of us.

"So that's your compulsion?" I'm curious as to how self-aware he is. "Getting stuck in? Or is it that you refuse to sit back, let things happen?"

The traffic lessens, and Andy starts the car again with a jolt. His eyes are on the road, now, and both of them are as hard as ice.

"...I don't look the other way," he says, in a voice that sounds like finality.

There's more righteousness to him, I realise, then I expected.

"But, hey," he continues in a lighter tone, "that makes two of us. I overheard you and Jacen - you're not getting paid for this, right?"

Now that I understand his character better, I'm wondering how I could have missed the signs earlier. Certainly, he's assuming better of me than I deserve. "I'm getting payback. It's in the word."

"Hah-hah." Andy grunts. "And how much is a payback worth, exactly? Because I- I didn't realise it was measurable in Sergeants and Captains."

"It's payment enough."

"You're not a very savvy businesswoman, are you?"

"I'm working on a case for a client who's set to give me promissory notes." I think to the case I was working on when I was attacked. The impossible theft. The Destroyer of Worlds. "That'll keep me afloat for a while."

I'm making a lot of assumptions. Even if I hadn't been forced to put my life on hold in order to save it, the case had looked like an unworkable one. And sure, I was still owed my upfront fee, but Rochare has promised a reward to the detective who found the Destroyer; he hasn't said anything about a reward for the detective that tells him he's out of luck. That, and factoring in repairs to my office and home...

For the first time, I let myself register that this job might not just be the last one I do gratis, but the last one that I do at all. And suddenly, the air inside the car feels suffocating.

Andy makes a sharp turn to avoid another cluster of traffic, and I slide in my seat a little.

"An optimist, then. That's something else we have in common."

The more I talk to him, the less I'm sure whether he's trying to bait me into a response or not. But right now, talking sounds good. It gives my mind something to focus on other than how much worse my prospects are than they were twenty-four hours ago. "You think so?"

If he's bothered by my even keel, he gives no indication that I can detect. He just focuses on driving. "Yeah," he says. "Well - that and the, uh..." he gives me an up-down in an entirely different fashion to the one he gave me yesterday. "The fact that each of us changed our genders."

It's the first thing he's said that has actually, properly surprised me. It must be obvious, because he laughs, and it's like the bark of a stray animal playing in a park.

"Wondering how I knew?"

I won't deny it.

"Only a little."

Every smile that I have seen cross Andy's face has had a wicked element to it; not this one. It is unexpectedly soft, and I see, in that moment, how he and Rose could possibly be related.

"I dunno how to describe it, exactly," he says. One of those phrases that is both illuminating and utterly unhelpful. "It's like- a tingle, in the back of my skull. Or maybe in, like, my soul." He reaches up and puts one of his hands behind his head, wiggling his fingers so that they look like spider's legs. They crest over his scalp and bounce off of his hair. "But it's like, when someone's like me, I can just... I just know."

Perhaps the only thing more galling than the fact that he isn't deducting so much as flying by the seat of his trousers is the fact that he has managed to fly exactly into the correct conclusion. Because he is correct; it is as he says. And how did he discover this information? Did he make observations, the way that I observed his scars? No. He just recognises something inside himself in me.

It's unbearably saccharine. It makes me want a cigarette, and, given that I was supposed to have quit two months ago, that's saying something.

I am forced to settle for pulling down the window of the car, letting the wind blow through. It whips up my hair, and threatens to ruin my already messy ponytail, but it's fresher than the interior, so I take a grateful gulp of it.

"How'd your parents take it?" Andy asks me, over the low roar of the wind, because we're apparently not done talking about the looming, benevolent spectre of what we have in common. "That their little man wasn't actually a man?"

A shrug rolls my shoulders back before I can give it much conscious thought. For all that I lived through it, it's an old story now, and it's largely one that happened to someone else. "I was young," I explain. "My mother was always the sort of person to bury herself in her preconceived notions, but when there was less time to create those notions in the first place..." I run my fingers along the rest in the door. Like I'm the water, and it's the river bed. "I remember her exasperation. I also remember her organising a raid and coming back with a massive supply of blockers for me."

"A raid?"

"That's Tethys for you."

"No kidding." I can feel Andy's gaze on me, even though I'm still not turned to face him. "Looks like they worked."

"A little too well."

In the privacy of my own mind, I remark - not for the first time - that it would've been nice to let myself grow another inch or two. But then, I let the feeling fall through my hands like the waters of my home moon, because there are better things to dwell upon than unchangables from decades past, and because I still need to turn the question around on Andy. I turn physically, too. My hair still whips in the wind.

"And yours?"

Andy leans back in his seat. "Truth? That was, like, the one thing that they never gave me grief over." He begins rapping the tips of his fingers against the wheel he's holding; patterning out a drum beat like he's trying to create a backing track for the memory that's unfurling behind his eyes. "I got shit from them about everything else I ever damn well did. Not that, though. It was like: 'Ananyā! A young woman of your station must look more respectable! You are shaming the seven generations that came before, rah rah' 'I'm not a woman, mama and papa, I am a man! And my name is Anand!' 'Well, Anand, a young man of your station must look more respectable because your slovenliness is bringing shame upon seven generations of your ancestors, blah blaaaah'." He sighs like a work saur that has decided it can't stand to pull its load for a second longer. "Never fuckin' cared, either of them. But that one time was when their not caring actually worked out just fine by me."

He hauls himself out of his own reverie as he hauls the wheel to the side. I slide around again. From behind us, I heard Max exclaim something, and I realise how close I'd come to forgetting that he was there altogether.

"Take a right here," he advises, as Andy pulls up a nice-looking street. Every window is clean, and all the rubbish has been collected and cleared. The trees here aren't the sturdy trunks that've grown up in other parts of Invictus, almost in spite of the environment; these are smaller, neatly trimmed and much more vibrant. Soft petals dot their branches in a display of colour that would turn the stomach of any cynic, and I look away.

Even before Max points out the mansion to Andy, I recognise it. In the lights of day and clarity, I can see that it is a washed-out, pale building. Its walls are ghostly, its windows are either clear or curtained with white sheets, and the path that leads up to it is beige sand and gravel. Only the dark blue of the roof provides any contrast against the day's bright sky.

Seeing it reminds me of how all of the people that Pandemonium's Bane failed to save were people that nobody could miss. Their homes, if they had any place to call home, were nowhere nearly as extravagant as this. Ms. Gallardo, whoever she is, is an outlier, and it only deepens my disdain for the idea of her.

We pull up as close as we can to the door, which in practice means that we pull up some distance away from it. Unlike the Pandemonium's Bane headquarters, the fence around this place is tall, and cloaked in polished sheen. There is no open entrance; the gate is padlocked and chained. It's not a welcoming sight, but I can't imagine that it's trying to be.

Max steps out of the car almost before it stops moving, adjusting his jacket and the free flows of his hair as he stands up. I notice that he leaves the shotgun in the back seat. Myself and Andy are quick to follow. By the time I've come round the side of the car, there is a man in a well-pressed, well-fitted, utterly plain suit on the other side of the bars. He is saying something to Max.

"-enter without an invitation."

"I understand," says Max. "However, this is not a social call. We must speak to Hera of the House of Gallardo on an urgent matter."

The man, evidently a steward or butler, looks as though he's about to argue further, but Max is quick to whip an ID out from his pockets. Whatever else it might say, it evidently identifies him as an important enough member of the Bulwark, because the man in the suit is quick to begin unlocking the entrance.

"And-?" he gestures to Andy and I.

"We're with him." Andy folds his arms like he anticipates being challenged. He isn't.

The gate opens with a rattle like skeletal fingers down ribs. I remember the chaos of the night before - of being grabbed by the big robot - and my jaw sets firmly in place. There is every chance that those horrors are going to come here, the same way that they came to me. That they might take someone else, the same way they tried to take me. I feel my disdain waning in the face of my empathy, and my fear.

My faithful Yut has three bullets left in its chambers. My palms are sweaty underneath the glare of the sun and the weight of my borrowed jacket, and I can feel tiny energy fields between my fingers as they pass each other by; strangers linked together by forces that go beyond themselves.

We all wind up the gravel path. Like a river, flowing in reverse; another unnatural thing about it all. The suited man brings us to the door, withdraws a key from his pocket, and unlocks what he needs to before pushing both doors open with just a hint of flourish.

Behind the doors, as if waiting for us, is the shape of a woman. The woman that we are here for.

Her name, I remember, is Hera. And I know, as soon as I see her, that my problems are only just beginning.