"Are you quite alright, sir?"

Lowe looked up at the solid form of the young man in the uniform of a Security Service . He was happy to testify to that solidity, having just run straight into him as he rounded a corner in a full-blown panic.

Scrambling to his feet, Lowe turned around, peering back down the dark corridor. His relief was almost overwhelming - and a tinge of embarrassment crept in - as he realised no looming threat was stalking behind him.

"Sir?"

The expression was rapidly changing from 'confused-bemusement-at-being-bumped-into' to 'wishing-there-was-someone-else-around-to-cope-with-a-clearly-hysterical-senior-officer'. In response, Lowe tried to get a handle on his emotions. "Yes, sorry. I just got a little turned around down there. I didn't want to risk getting locked in!"

The young man's eyes were drawn to Lowe's hand, which was conspicuously smoking as an unlaunched Slugger, and a thin coating of necrotic slime fought to win the race to disintegrate bones and flesh. Lowe dismissed his offensive Skill and poured even more mana into Roll with the Punches to counteract the extensive damage. "I don't suppose you have a hanky, do you? I seem to have got something on my hand."

Hesitantly, the reached into his pocket and withdrew a reasonably clean square of cloth."Of course, sir."

The moment Lowe accepted the gift and wiped away the last residues of the necrotic slime, his mind suddenly cleared: it was literally the difference between being trapped in a haunted oubliette and standing in a bright meadow. He turned to look back at the way he had so recently come and saw only a well-lit, common-or-garden corridor with various rooms leading from it. Heads were being popped through doorways to know the cause of the shrieking, foot-pounding kerfuffle that had just blundered past.

"Nothing to see here; please go back to your . . . museuming," he said, smiling and absent-mindedly passing the soiled handkerchief back to the . The young man, in horror, held the blood and slime-soaked thing between thumb and forefinger and triggered a Skill that instantly reduced it to ash.

Lowe's mind, though, was racing. Had the slime caused his perceptions to become nightmarish? Was what he had just experienced a vivid hallucination rather than reality? Remembering he had tried to use Grid View when being hunted underneath the museum, Lowe tried to bring up his most recent memories. But no. It was like there was a thick coating of vaseline across the lens of his vision. In fact, he had no clear remembrance of anything since he had stepped out of the room which had held the body.

"Inspector Lowe, I presume?"

He was brought back to the immediate present by the appearance of the outstretched hand of a wizened little man he had read an awful lot about. "Director Nuroon, thank you for taking the time to speak to me."

Lowe shook the proferred hand, trying to style out that Roll with the Punches had not entirely managed to recover bone and sinew with skin.

"Constable, I don't suppose you have another spare hanky for the Director, do you?"

*

After cleaning himself down, Nuroon led the way back to his own office, and Lowe could not help but notice that what had seemed like a labyrinth from a horror story was far more navigatable than he had just experienced. As they walked, he saw none of the bizarre or grotesque exhibits that had surrounded him on his solo journey. If, as now seemed likely, the necrotic slime had some sort of psychotropic effect, when exactly had it got on him? He had initially assumed it was from when he had touched the pedestal on which the candle stood, but he had been seeing some pretty creepy shit sometime before then.

Had Penarth spiked him in some way? And if so, why? And was the answer anything more significant than: 'the man is a colossal twat'?

"I do not wish to be rude, Inspector, but it is quite unusual for people not to pay attention to me when I speak. Have you got somewhere you would rather be?"

"My apologies, Director. I was just thinking back to the state of that young man's body. I understand it was you who first discovered it?"

"Indeed. Indeed. A terrible thing to have happened. And in my museum of all places. Terrible. Simply terrible."

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

There was something about the way Nuroon said that which made Lowe wonder whether the Director's sorrow was less for the death of the and more at the disruption to the museum's operation.

"What was the cause of you being in the office?"

A dark frown passed over Nuroon's face. He doesn't like having to account for his actions, Lowe thought. Well, he will love having a murder investigation running around him. Seeing the momentary fury on the man's face at the benign question, Lowe could quite understand how pressure had been brought on Wyst to drop the original case. Then, the tumultuous anger cleared, and Nuroon was all sweetness and light again. "There was a small maintenance matter I wished to discuss with Martha. Naturally, I would expect to find her in her office."

"And you did not?"

"Clearly not."

"And you were surprised to find the body there?"

"Extremely."

"So, you opened the door to your senior colleague's office, and instead of her, you saw the melted remains of one of your junior staff members. Is that correct?"

Nuroon pushed back in his chair and held his fingers before his mouth in a steepled gesture Lowe instinctively associated with supreme wankery. "Inspector, I wish to be honest with you. Can I?"

"No. I much prefer it when people tell outrageous lies. It keeps me in business."

The Director pressed on as if Lowe had not spoken. He assumed this was the man's usual way of conversing. "I have spoken to the Mayor about this . . . investigation, and we are both of a mind that it would be best if we treated it as an internal matter. It seems clear to me that what has occurred is a simple matter of a collegiate disagreement that has got out of hand. Martha and . . . I'm sorry, I cannot recall the young man's name."

"Harker. Josap Harker," Lowe supplied brightly. "Son of Geraldine and Horace Harker. He has - or, I suppose, 'had' - worked for you for the last three years."

"Well, a lot of people work for me," Nuroon said airly, "where was I? Ah, yes. As I was saying, it seems clear to me that Martha and this Harker have had an academic disagreement and . . . "

"And she covered him in necrotic slime, murdering him in the most agonising and painful way imaginable? You get a lot of that in academia, do you, Director?"

"You would be surprised, Inspector. You would be surprised." Nuroon suddenly leaned forward, pressing both hands to the side of the desk, and lowered his voice. The effect was quite predatory. "I have to tell you, I am not wild about your tone, Inspector."

"And I'm not cockahoop about yours, Director. A man is dead, and a woman is missing. I cannot conceive why you would think this is an 'internal' matter rather than one that is under the purview of the Security Services. Or are you so used to unexplained deaths in this building that such an event has become somewhat mundane?"

"You are speaking of the unfortunate accident of last month."

"Am I?"

"You will, of course, know I have no memory of that."

"Having wiped your memory just before my colleague arrived to question you."

"A colleague who, I am pleased to say, quickly learned his place in things. An example I would encourage you to follow."

"Oh, I think you are going to find that, in all manner of things, I tend not to follow the crowd. To a fault, actually. You should read my latest appraisal: 'does not do what the fuck he is told.' I had a little plaque made and everything."

The two men stared at each other for a tense moment. Lowe thought the Director triggered a couple of Skills in the silence, but he had no idea what they were intended to do. Once upon a time, he had been in possession of a handy little Skill of his own that would have identified any active or passive techniques a suspect - because he realised this man was definitely a suspect - happened to use when being questioned.

His Classtration had removed that, of course. He missed it right now.

"Are you going to be a problem, Inspector?"

"I don't know. Director. What I do know is that I'm going to find out who killed Josap Harker, where your has gone and - and I'm not bragging here, I really am quite good at this - I'm probably going to unravel what the fuck happened here last month at the same time. Now, you tell me. Would you see any of that as being a problem?"

"How is Arebella Telut?"

Before he even realised what he was doing, Lowe had activated Slugger and crashed his hand through the Director's desk, splintering it into kindling. "Don't even fucking go there with that shit. It's been tried before, and I'm sure you will have heard how that turned out for all concerned. Come for me as much as you like - I'm built for it, and I accept it comes with the territory - but if I even sense you thinking her name again, what happened in the Celestial Temple will feel like an unexpected visit from Oulian the Birthday Fairy compared to what I will bring down on this fucking museum."

Nuroon glanced at the wreckage of his desk and then back up to meet Lowe's steely expression. "It is good to know where we both stand on this matter." He clicked his tongue, and a precisely located spot of time unspooled backwards until the desk was repaired.

"If we are in the 'making threats' stage of our relationship, I feel I should respond in kind. I don't care what happened to Barker . . . "

"Harker," Lowe corrected automatically.

Nuroon simply carried on. "Neither am I much bothered about the whereabouts of Martha Culloden. This is an internationally renowned facility, and I am sure I can replace her with someone of equal, if not higher, competence before the end of the week. But I do care about the efficient running of this museum and, what is more, the Mayor agrees with me on that point. Your . . . investigation, should you insist on progressing, will not interfere with that. I will not threaten you with consequences because I do not make threats. I do, however, promise you that if you are the cause of any disruption whatsoever, you will regret it. And for the rest of your life. Now, do you have any other questions for me, or shall we call it a day?"