It was a simple enough Shift. It was too dark for those ambling guards to see her up on the rooftop, so she was free to stand on the edge and really focus on the spot Fredrak had pointed out to her. She found herself there without issue, nestled up against one of the outer walls just as neither of the guards were near.

She strode over to the door the agent had selected, and since there was no point in attempting to listen at it she just got straight to business. Shifting past a door was never any issue; obviously there was going to be empty space right beyond it. She emerged into a dimly lit concrete hallway, with not much in the way of features and no people at all.

There were no alarms. Saketa waited for a little while to be sure that a silent one wasn’t drawing a security team her way, then sent a couple of pulses to Fredrak’s comm. He sent a couple of pulses back, and now Saketa simply waited. He had estimated how long it would take him and Ayna to scale the wall and make their way across the yard, and Saketa counted down the seconds until he sent another two pulses.

Then she waved the fob over a reader by the door, and the two of them walked in.

Ayna still had the scarf wrapped around her head, and Fredrak had his goggles on. He tapped the side of the frame and then stood still for a few seconds with the air of a man examining something closely.

“Right. I have the layout,” he whispered.

“Do you know where we should go?” Saketa asked.

“I have walls and doorways,” he said, and touched the lens. “Not markings. We will just have to forge ahead. Or rather, follow my hired specialist.”

“I am on it,” Ayna whispered, then moved on, alert and tense as a small prey animal. Which, on her homeworld, humans were.

The doors in their immediate area had been locked for the night, so the Dwyyk went to the end of the hallway, peeked around the corner, and then waved them over. As they came the girl grumbled something about clumsy, thumping feet.

“We are doing our best,” Saketa said.

“Just thinking out loud,” Ayna said.

“In that case you would have spoken your native language,” Saketa pointed out.

“Well, you’ve got me there. Now be quiet.”

It was a slow, careful advance. Saketa kept the sword scabbard unhooked from her belt and ready in her hand. She had no intention of slashing someone who might be up to nothing more sinister than working as nighttime security, but a sheathed sword still made for a decent club.

Ayna stopped at one door and declared that there was someone behind it, but besides that their first encounter happened by a stairwell. The Dwyyk gave a sudden signal to halt, and they did. A few seconds passed before Saketa heard echoing footsteps. Ayna kept her head cocked, listening intently. It became clear that the person was coming down to their level, but of course there was no way of knowing where they would head next.

Ayna glanced over her shoulder, down the length of the hallway, and gave them a signal to get out of sight. Then she herself gripped the outside of the doorframe, and between strong fingers and a lightweight body she climbed up and held herself to the wall above the door.

Saketa stepped into a doorway deep enough to hide several people and Fredrak joined her. He held the cane much the same way as she held the sword.

The footsteps entered into the hallway. There was no sign of them noticing a person clinging to the wall like some dark-clad, white-faced lizard. They just continued on, coming closer.

Saketa prepared to strike out. Ideally this would go smoothly, with no injuries sustained. Just a quick grab.

Don’t. Lose. Control. Not now, in this moment.

There was the opening of a door, and the footsteps vanished within. The door closed.

Smooth indeed, Saketa thought, and released a little bit of the tension.

“Come,” said the soft whisper, and they stepped back out into the hallway as Ayna dropped back down onto the floor.

The hallway ended in some sort of cargo room where a few people were apparently working, so after some quick, whispered planning they headed up. Ayna visibly cringed as the two of them moved up the loud, metal stairs like a pair of snails, but the building was still tranquil as they made it to the top.

“Security room,” Ayna whispered after peeking out at what awaited them.

“Perfect,” Fredrak replied.

“I could… Shift into it,” Saketa said hesitantly. “Put the dull side of my knife against…”

She trailed off.

“No need,” the agent told her. “Sometimes simple solutions are the best. Ayna, go check how many there are.”

The Dwyyk left for a few seconds, then returned and reported only a single guard sitting by the security room console.

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“Right.”

A silent communication passed between them, drawing on some previous conversation.

Ayna was the first out of the stairwell, followed by Fredrak, and Saketa settled for peeking out in case something went wrong.

It was all very simple, as Fredrak had said. The nearest part of the room was a sturdy door. Beyond that was a reinforced window. Ayna, her head still mostly hidden by the scarf, walked past the door, and then let herself trip. She banged into the window and flopped down on the floor.

The guard inside couldn’t have gotten more than a split-second glimpse of her. A few seconds passed in pregnant silence, and Saketa prepared a Shift. Then the door opened and the guard peered out. Fredrak lifted his cane and a puff of mist game out of the end of it. The puff hit the guard in the face and the man stared in seeming surprise for maybe two seconds before his balance began to wobble. He grunted, he mumbled, then fell up against the doorframe. His mumbles and gaze both lost all sense of awareness, and by the time he was clearly on his way to the floor Fredrak gripped the man and dragged him inside and lowered him down.

Ayna hurried inside and Saketa joined them, then closed the door. The guard room was small. It featured a couple of chairs, a small cabinet, a row of consoles, and a red door opposite the one they’d come through, and that was it.

“Right,” Fredrak said, and sat down by the consoles.

There was no need to break into anything, as the guard had left everything open. The agent’s first action was to check camera feeds for their immediate environment. They seemed to be fairly alone here, and so he moved on to look up employees. Velda Tyroya was indeed there, along with a few dozen other people, but there was no address and no contact information. Only a bank account.

They really are careful. The ideal company to go through for things that cannot stand the light of day.

There was plenty of footage to choose from, and he started with a quick check of the most recent, to be certain that they hadn’t been caught on any of it. Then he went through the rest of the current feeds, searching for Velda Tyroya. After about a minute or so it seemed clear that she wasn’t in the building.

“At least we know where everyone is,” Ayna pointed out.

“We do.”

“That one says ‘Break Room’,” Fredrak explained as he selected one particular option. He scrolled backwards, treating them to a sped-up scene of people walking backwards into a room, ejecting food from their mouths and onto plates, and then walking out backwards again. Eventually he hit pause and pointed at a particular figure.

“That’s her.”

He used the zoom function. Tyroya was a somewhat stocky woman with a round face. She kept her brown hair asymmetrical, but clearly put a lot of love into it.

With the woman found, Fredrak was able to track her backwards and forwards through the different feeds. He stopped at moments when she seemed to be talking. The footage had audio, but also an audio-to-text function, which Fredrak activated. He even set it to translate into Larin, for Saketa and Ayna’s sake. As a final touch he sped everything up a little.

Ayna was the first one to speak up.

“Hold on,” she said and pointed to a particular feed. “I caught the word ‘going’.”

It was Tyroya in what seemed to be an office, talking to a grey-haired man in the company’s logo jacket. Fredrak moved the recording to the start of the encounter, which was her passing by the office and poking in.

“I have finished the day,” her subtitles read.

“You have finished,” he replied. It was the predictably clunky dialogue of direct machine translation. “It is all good. What will you do now?”

“Now is time to celebrate,” Tyroya said with a grin. “I am going to enjoy.”

“Enjoy as usual?” he asked.

“You know it.” She checked the time. “Black Flower Hall in two hours. Will you come too?”

“Not this time. I am too busy. But you enjoy and smile.”

“I will.”

“The time stamp,” Fredrak said. “It is from a little over three hours ago.”

“Black Flower Hall?” Ayna said.

The agent turned to a different part of the console and entered the city’s public net. In seconds they had before them a street map with two glowing dots on it.

“Some kind dance hall, or concert hall, or some such,” he said. “And there are two of them...”

He checked each one in search of some difference, but they did indeed seem to be the same company, and both were currently open.

“Three hours?” Saketa said. “If we give her an hour or two to get ready, then she ought to still be there.”

“And it will take us about an hour to reach either on foot,” Fredrak said. “Twenty with a rail. Fifteen with a private taxi.”

“So we split up,” Saketa said. “I will take the southern one, you two take the one to the north.”

“This wouldn’t be an attempt to shake us, would it?” Ayna asked, and Saketa suspected she was only half-joking.

“If you prefer the southern one, then it makes no difference to me.”

Fredrak swivelled the chair around to face her.

“You said we shouldn’t risk facing that… the man you blame for the crash,” he said, “And-”

“And I meant it. Neither him nor his disciples.”

“And that is all well and good,” he said. “But Ayna and I have had time to get to know the city and its players a little bit. We have contacts. Even if you get something out of her about secret deliveries and special passengers, then I suspect you will still need us. Let us know if you find Tyroya. As I said, I have a mission to see through.”

“And I... feel I owe you,” Ayna said, looking like she didn’t quite know what to do with her own sincerity.

Saketa looked at each of them.

The red door opened, and in walked a man wearing a security uniform. He was saying something in the local tongue, but stopped short the moment he noticed them. Then he went for the hefty pistol at his hip, with speed and surety that spoke of decent training. Saketa bounded across the distance between them and caught his gun-arm before he could extend it.

She was able to bend his wrist enough to keep the weapon pointed at nothing, but he fought for control of the rest of the arm. For a breath or two they danced an old dance of joints, muscle and training, and then a puff from Fredrak’s cane hit the man in the face. The guard went through the same routine as his college, and Saketa took the chance to send the gun to the floor. Then she lowered him to the floor as the lights went out completely.

“Whew,” Ayna exhaled. “What was that he was saying?”

“Something about his bowels,” Fredrak told her.

Saketa took a closer look at the now-open doorway. It led to a bathroom.

“Right. It is our time to leave, I think.”

They made their way back to the stairwell, and Saketa found herself desperately hoping that this wasn’t all a great, big waste of time.