A spindly spider hung loosely on a thread, brazenly spinning its cobwebs in the space between the roof tile and the wall. It crawled its way over to a dead fly caught in its web and sank its fangs into its body.
Qing Tian Yi stared blankly at the spider, her mind quickly flitting between doubt and conviction. An enforcer dressed in a dull blue uniform brushed past Qing Tian Yi as he rushed through the doors of the enforcers’ headquarters, swaying from side to side as he tried to balance the huge pile of documents in his hands. A few moments later, another enforcer left the compound in the company of several carpenters and stonemasons.
Tian Yi took a deep breath and walked past the gates into the tiny but bustling courtyard. Even though she hadn’t been here in months and the place was far busier than usual, she felt oddly at home. Tian Yi made her way to the main building and walked down its narrow corridors, the large space partitioned into numerous tiny cubicles and offices where enforcers usually sat hunched over shoddy wooden tables writing and filing tedious reports.
Today, however, the office was a scene of utter pandemonium. Enforcers with dark circles under their eyes yelled instructions at each other across the cubicles at the top of their lungs, stray pieces of paper overflowed every table and covered the ground, while a few people were so motionless under the piles of paperwork it was hard to tell if they were awake or sleeping.
Tian Yi shuffled her way through the mess, carefully avoiding an enforcer who had fallen asleep on the ground. Between the chaos and the crowd, no one noticed her as she slipped her way down the corridor until at last, she arrived before a set of large wooden doors. The paint on the door had peeled so much it was hard to tell if its original color was a ghastly shade of green or a pale, sickly brown. The doors would have appeared somewhat grand if they weren’t hemmed in between two smaller doors leading to other offices on each side.
The doors were already slightly ajar, but Tian Yi knocked anyway.
“Come in,” came a gruff reply, the speaker trying their best but failing to hide the exasperation in their voice.
Tian Yi pushed the doors open and was greeted with the familiar sight of her husband’s office. Other than the horrible mess of paperwork, the tobacco pipe and the ashtray (her husband didn’t smoke), everything appeared to be where they were supposed to be as if nothing had changed.
The round face of the man sitting behind the desk did nothing to hide his stern disposition. However, the perpetual knot on his forehead loosened into one of confused surprise when he looked up from the document he was reading.
“Tian Yi, what are you doing here?” asked Yue Ran.
For a brief moment, Tian Yi wondered if she should do this, or if she was being paranoid and that she was coming unraveled in her grief. However, as she stood there in her late husband’s office, she knew deep down that she was doing the right thing.
“I have something I need to discuss with you,” she said.
The frown returned to Yue Ran’s round face, but he quickly placed two fingers on his forehead and rubbed it away.
“Please, have a seat,” he said, “What is it? I’m sorry if I sound a little impatient. You know what the situation is like. I don’t have enough hands to do everything that needs doing, but I’ll do my best to help you.”
Tian Yi moved a stack of papers away to reveal a creaky old chair. She sat on it and pulled out a neatly organized file from her bag which she placed firmly on the table, to Yue Ran’s confusion.
“What is this?” he asked as he took the file and started flipping through its contents.
“Testimonials and witness statements from the relatives of eight of the victims.”
“Victims?” Yue Ran asked with a puzzled look.
“Eight people that died mysteriously in the middle of the night of acute organ failure in the span of three months.”
The widow and the captain of the enforcers stayed silent as he read through the rest of the file. Finally, after several minutes, he looked up and asked, “You got all this by yourself?”
Tian Yi nodded.
Yue Ran was quiet for a moment. He then looked into her eyes and said, “You said victims. By victims, are you implying that these incidents were not naturally-occurring deaths?”
Tian Yi nodded again and asked, “Were you aware of these cases?”
“Yes and in every case, neither the medical examiner nor the coroner have been able to explain it as anything other than a natural death. Our own sorcerers have examined them and found no magical causes. No curses, no ghosts, magic. We have no reason to suspect foul play.”
“And so you would chalk it up to coincidence? Eight victims, most of them young and healthy, dying one after another of unknown causes. At the very least, this should be considered a public health problem. You know as well as I do that this warrants an investigation by the enforcers at the very least, but by all accounts, the enforcers seem to have done nothing but collect the bodies.”
Tian Yi locked eyes with the captain. Finally, the large man looked away and sighed.
“Tian Yi, why are you doing this?” he asked.
Tian Yi knew why he was asking. She wondered the same thing at times, if pursuing all this was just a way for her to pursue the memory of her husband. However, an unwavering answer burned in her heart.
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“Because this concerns me as much as you. It concerns everyone. Every wife, every husband and every child that has had someone taken from them deserves an answer. You’re not blind, Yue Ran, you know this is something that has to be addressed.”
Tian Yi stared a hole into the captain’s face. Yue Ran’s face softened with unwilling resignation as he explained, “Between the mines, the city and the recent rise in misdemeanors and disorderly behavior since the announcement of rationing, we are stretched far too thin to pursue a case with no probable cause. Even if we assume these incidents to be connected, we have no idea where to start. There is nothing that connects the victims—”
“Then find something! Use the resources you have! Start questioning people!”
“That’s the problem. We don’t have enough resources—”
Just then, an enforcer burst into the room. She spoke in an urgent tone, “Sir.”
Yue Ran turned and asked, “What is it?”
“There’s a fire at Batu Langit and it’s spreading quick.”
The wooden chair let out a creak of relief as Yue Ran leaped to his feet.
“Tell Yan and Zahid to drop whatever they are working on and follow me. Do you know any water spells, Ira?”
The woman gave a little shrug.
“Good enough,” said Yue Ran as he snatched his coat off the rack.
Before he rushed out of the door, he turned to Tian Yi and said, “I’m sorry, but we can continue this conversation at another time.”
Tian Yi broke into a sprint to keep up with the large man’s stride. She said calmly, “I’m coming with you.”
The captain looked at her, slightly annoyed.
“It’s a fire, right? The more people to help the better,” said Tian Yi. Of course, she also knew it would be hard to find another opportunity to talk to the captain again.
——————————————————————————————
By the time the enforcers arrived on the scene, the inferno had already consumed three buildings. The poor construction materials of the shacks nearby were the only thing that kept the fire contained.
A crowd was gathered around the fire, murmuring amongst themselves as smoke blackened the tall ceiling of the cave. A dozen people had formed a bucket brigade, hauling buckets of water from the nearest well and passing it to the front, where a few brave souls dumped them desperately and pointlessly into the roaring fire.
Yue Ran approached a well-dressed man who seemed to be leading the firefighting effort. The man was yelling instructions at the people while passing a bucket of water to the next person in line.
“Imam Arif,” he addressed the man in Malay, bowing as he did so.
The imam turned to look at him, before letting out a frustrated cry, “You’re finally here! Hurry up and put out the fire!”
The captain gestured at his enforcers and they immediately went to work. Yan and Zahid, both men in their thirties, started reciting their spells.
It took several minutes, but Zahid was the first to finish. He recited his spell in a tongue that Tian Yi had never heard before, completely unlike the usual Taoist spells. As he finished his spell, the closest flame was suddenly quenched, leaving only a black, smoldering piece of charcoal. One item at a time, the fires all over the building were slowly put out, as if someone was physically grabbing them and snuffing out the flame.
Tian Yi saw the imam wince slightly at the sight of Zahid’s magic.
Yan completed his spell soon after. Water was drawn out of thin air and gathered into a ball in the sky. Finally, once it had acquired sufficient volume, it dropped onto the building. There was a loud sizzle and a burst of steam.
There were still two more buildings to go. The two enforcers rushed away to put everything out. Meanwhile, Tian Yi approached the survivors of the incident, several women, children and workers covered in soot and tried to see if she could help them in any way. However, she kept a close eye on the captain and listened carefully to what they were talking about.
“Are there any casualties, Imam?”
The imam dropped his bucket and shook his head as he said, “No living ones, at least, but we had to leave a few bodies in there. I’ll have to talk to their families.”
He nodded at the funeral house. Malay people bury their dead. To cremate the body was disrespectful to the dead and went against Muslim teachings.
Yue Ran let out a quiet breath of relief before he asked, “How did this happen?”
Imam Arif shook his head and said, “No idea. The fire started from the funeral house, which is quite unlikely. We don’t cremate any bodies, so they don’t keep a stove in there. There are a few oil lamps, but nothing that should be able to cause such a huge fire.”
Yue Ran nodded grimly as he replied, “Never underestimate how fast a fire can spread. We’ll take a look and try and figure it why it happened so we can prevent something like this from happening again.”
He trudged into the still-steaming ruins of the funeral house with Ira in tow. The two of them started examining the rubble in hopes of reconstructing the incident.
Tian Yi helped a lady bandage a wound on her arm, carefully washing all the soot away from the flesh before she wrapped everything up. A boy she had sent out to get drinking water returned and she immediately passed the water around to anyone who needed it. The imam turned around and started fussing over the survivors as well.
Soon, Tian Yi didn’t have much else to do as others took over the job of consoling the survivors. She stood there idly, but she couldn’t help but feel like something was off about the whole situation. A fire of this size was extremely rare in the Undercity, as buildings down here made much more use of stone. Could this really have been an accident?
She turned to look at the crowd and something immediately stood out to her. The crowd consisted mostly of Malays, with only a few Chinese and Indian people peering here and there. Batu Langit was one of the seven districts under direct management of the Malay Union, after all. However, of the few Chinese people there, there was one particular man behaving very strangely.
While most of the crowd was either murmuring about the fire, marveling over the damage or slowly walking away disinterestedly, this man was staring straight at the enforcers in the funeral house without blinking an eye. He seemed to be all alone as well. Tian Yi slowly walked away from the crowd and toward the enforcers, keeping the man in the corner of her eye as she did so.
As she walked up to Yue Ran, he looked down and frowned. Tian Yi said in a soft voice, “Don’t turn back and look, but there’s a man in the crowd who’s been staring at you all the whole time. He’s wearing a white singlet and brown pants. He might be your man.”
The captain nodded and immediately ignored her advice. He turned around and quickly spotted the person in question. He broke into a semi-sprint as he made his way to the suspicious man.
Panic flashed across the man’s face and he shoved the crowd aside and turned around to run. The crowd groaned and pushed back against him, but it only served to hide the man’s movements as he slipped away.
There was still a considerable distance between Yue Ran and the man, while the entire crowd stood in his way. For a moment, it seemed like the culprit would get away.
Yue Ran muttered under his breath. A dull yellow gleam flickered across his body. Then, a loud ‘boom’ echoed through the cave. Two black marks were seared into the ground as the captain of the enforcers leaped into the air.
He looked down and immediately found the man who was trying to get away. There was another loud bang as two fiery explosions went off behind the captain’s back. His large and round silhouette catapulted at the enemy on the ground.
The earth rumbled.
When the smoke cleared, the captain of the enforcers was kneeling on one knee, the enemy’s head pinned between the ground and his large, meaty hand.