Thirty-three days after the imperial ambassador’s murder.

Thi district, ground, Radaar, 7:58pm.

The sun tinged red, glaring through the gaps between jutting slabs of concrete, glass, and metal – the towering skyscrapers that dotted the Thi distract. Devan stepped through the entrance of the ground-undersurface transit station – a small building domed by a glass roof. Holographic projections of the news crawled across the drab white walls. At the centre stood a hexagonal hole where the lift’s platform would arrive in a few minutes. Looking down into the shadowed beyond, the pit felt bottomless, a trap that would ensnare the curious or the stupid, and forever hold them in its decrepit clutches.

“We picked a good time.” Raid’s gaze crossed the interior of the building. No one else was here. “There’ll be more people come evening when the fun starts down there.”

Devan barely registered the words. Their trip to Castwick’s hotel had given them more questions than answers. Not from the woman herself, no, she had gone missing long before their arrival. They could have learned everything with one call. A wasted trip. And the clock was ticking.

His gaze headed westward, up the Tower of Gardens to the massive platform at its peak, where they had left Mannock and Wicker, and his eyes lingered there. The tower looked more menacing outlined with a red glow, especially now that he could observe it in its entirety. Hopefully the issues with the other highborn amount to nothing.

“Don’t space out on me,” Raid said. “This morning was fine because our hotel was in a quieter district, but that won’t be the case now. The undersurface ain’t a forgiving place.”

“I can handle myself just fine.”

“Sure, but you won’t expect some shivering coward to pull a gun at you or stab you in the back. People down there will do anything to climb up the power ladder. Greed can be just as strong as fear.”

The quiet stretched on.

Devan took out his comm and called Mannock. No answer. He thrust the device into his pocket. They had agreed to report the situation in the evening. The sun was very clearly setting right now. What was she doing?

“You doing alright with the Gift?” Raid asked.

Devan raised his hand. The flows of power swirled in his arm, conjoining, and unravelling to form various shapes. His body offered more resistance than it should have, but not enough to impede his use of the Gift. He unravelled the spell construct. Just this much wouldn’t make his body suffer any harm. Still, it’d be best if he refrained from using the Gift for a while.

“Nothing to worry about,” he said.

“Alright.”

More silence. “I never got to ask,” Devan said. “What happened to the kids? Kalz and Less.”

“They were with the other hostages. You probably didn’t see them in all the chaos.”

“I see. I’m glad.”

The awkward pause lasted longer this time.

When the lift arrived, Devan stepped onto it briskly. He glanced at the busy streets. The ground layer enticed him even more now, pulling at him as if he would lose something important by leaving.

Holograms of a countdown surrounded the platform. Ten. Nine. Eight… With a muted hum, the lift began its descent.

Devan pulled out his comm again. No missed calls or messages.

“I didn’t get to tell you before.” Raid rubbed the back of his head. “You saved me and my crew – my family. That’s a hell of a lot to put on a tab. Not sure how long I’ll be paying you back.”

Devan turned to look at him; really look at him. Despite Raid’s past in the military, he had thought of the man as just another criminal, if a capable one at that; someone who cared about themselves first and money second. Was that true? First Kalz and Less, saving the hostages, and now this – little interaction as the two had had, Raid was far from the mould.

Family, Devan thought. The ghostfarers had been a means to an end. If he adhered to the Pact, then he should detain them as soon as his mission was over. Now, he wasn’t so sure. Michael’s face flashed before his eyes. If Raid respected and cared enough for his crew to call them family, then… Devan shook his head. There was too much on his plate already. Complicated matters would have to wait. Why isn’t that woman answering?

“You’re worried,” Raid said.

“The person who can tell us most about the ambassador has gone missing.” Devan crumpled the piece of paper in his pocket. Two things were crossed on it now. One left. “I’m here to stop a war, not watch it start.”

“No, I meant something more immediate. I meant the lass. You should be happier than you get to run the show now. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“Of course, it is.”

“And yet you don’t think so anymore.”

Didn’t he? Working without outside interference was how Devan preferred to work. Mannock was still there – a source of information for when he needed her or her connections. Whatever held her up in the oversurface, it would be good if it lasted. He checked his comm again. Nothing new.

Raid shook his head. “How people don’t know themselves… You really are just like him.”

“Your friend?”

“He also liked to have everything under control.”

“Smart man,” Devan said. “Variables are best kept under close watch.”

“Variables like the lass?” Raid asked, smirking.

Devan frowned. How is she related to this? His comm rang.

“Well?” Mannock asked as soon as the call connected, her face that of impatience.

Devan raised a brow at her. She had the gall to make that face when she was the one they were waiting on? He had half a mind to tell her off for every minute he’d spent waiting.

“Got some good news and some bad news. Mostly bad,” Raid said. “The address is right, Castwick stayed in the apartment. Bad news is that she’s been gone for a month, give or take.”

“And it just so happens to be close to when my father died. I swear, if that woman did anything to him…”

“All we know is that she’s disappeared,” Devan said, curbing his irritation. “We’ll learn the truth when we find her.”

“Then that should be the priority,” Mannock said. “And by the Ascendants that woman better have a good alibi when I get my hands on her.”

“Could ask a fixer to locate her,” Raid said. “Worked with enough in the past to know their services are top-notch. If they’re paid right, that is. You, lass, got the money for that.”

“If they’re as good as you say, that fixer might figure out what we’re doing. Not a problem on its own, but if he sells the information…” Devan turned to Mannock. “Would the highborn go after us because of you?”

“They would.”

“Can’t avoid all risks,” Raid said. “We’re four people – two, really – and that won’t get us far.”

“Your butler mentioned highborn Trianos. What about him?” Devan asked.

“Uncle would know a lot, but I’m not keen on visiting him right now. Not before the party. I still have much to prepare.”

“Care to elaborate?” Devan asked.

“Highborn business. Keep to your investigation, and yes, that is an order. Mannock out.” The call ended.

Devan rolled the crumpled piece of paper sitting in his pocket. The crime scene was the last thing he and Raid could investigate. “How do we know a fixer won’t just sell us out. Better yet, how do you know he’ll even have any information?”

“You don’t know much about them, do you?” Raid chuckled. “Figures, you’re not the type to go skulking around the undersurface after all. Rep is everything to a fixer. They start losing it and you bet they’ll be offed by some new hotshot.”

“That doesn’t explain the bigger question. Going to City Security and using Mannock’s influence might net us results faster.”

“If Castwick were on the ground, yes. She wouldn’t have even disappeared then. No one escapes City Security. Not unless they go under. Down there? That’s a fixer’s domain. If anyone knows, it’s them.”

Was the exposure worth it? If Raid was right, finding Castwick in the undersurface would be near impossible without Devan’s Sight. An ability he couldn’t use now that he was working with others. A fixer was their best bet. But the timeframe shortens. We need to finish this before the highborn join the game.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Hesitating now might allow Castiwck to slip away – if she had been involved in the murder in some way. If not, there was also the chance the killer would try to silence her, assuming they hadn’t already. Was she worth it? We’re grasping at straws…

Devan let out a long breath. “Crime scene first. Then we’ll go to your fixer.”

***

As the lift crossed the halfway point, glimpses of the undersurface spooked in through the gaps in the lift shaft where the metal plates had been removed. The city sprawled through the gloom, glimmering in the vibrancy of neon signs. The colours faded as the distance from the centre increased, tall skyscrapers replaced by shoddy houses in droves – deformed half-crescents that occupied either side of the crevasse. Only diaphanous patches of mist hung about the outer layers of the city now, but come morning, the white veil would cover all of it.

The platform slowed down to a halt. The corridor beyond the metal gate leading out of the room curved away into two paths, both lined with shops adorned with glittering neon signs. Straight ahead, a bridge connected this side of the second floor with the one across. Above the bridge, a jumble of lights and holograms drifted through the air along with advertisement drones. The large station stretched far both left and right, the people in the distance reduced to nail heads. Staircases leading down to the ground floor repeated with every bridge.

Devan leaned on the glass railing, watching the bustle of the single road crossing the length of the station. People seethed around indicator boards, but smaller knots of three-to-four stood by newsboards closer to the middle. The patter of footsteps, the clamour of conversation, the echoing mechanical voice of advertisements, and the rumble of trains, they all filled the clean air. It was as if the station was a pocket of the ground layer thrust down into the dreary undersurface. No person had the countenance of despair. At worst it would be weariness or frustration, and the people’s garments stood somewhere between the undersurface and ground standards.

Raid tapped him lightly on the shoulder. “I’ll buy us the tickets. You keep watch for when a train going near our district will come.” He took off towards one of the counters that stood at the foot of the stairs.

Devan headed to the newsboards. Their flickering screens contained the map of the train network. The board worked slow, the touch screen needing several seconds at times to switch between what it was showing, but he managed to get to the list of trains and their routes. Just below the oblong screen was a slot for connecting a phone, used for downloading information from the net. Devan ignored it completely. Skimming through the list of trains, he found the one leading close to their hotel. Twenty minutes until arrival.

Two newsboards away, a young man dressed in a grey suit planted his hands on his head, yelling and cursing as he stared at the mess of letters on the projection screen coming from his phone.

God knew how many viruses had been downloaded with whatever else he had tried to get from the undersurface network. Natural selection at work, Devan thought.

He scanned the crowd, the nameless silhouettes and featureless faces gaining detail as his gaze landed on them. They became vague again moments later as his eyes drifted away. Nothing should happen, but a sense of unease had been there ever since they failed to locate Castwick.

Raid nodded to the clerk in farewell.

Among the shapes moving about at the edge of sight, a scrawny, ragged-faced man stood out. Scurrying through the throng as if chased, he snapped his head to the left and right, observing everyone with an anxious stare. He hadn’t noticed Raid. At four steps distance between them, Devan realised they would collide.

The scrawny man bounced off Raid’s muscular body and fell to the ground. His eyes went to Raid’s face, down to his thick arms, and then to the holstered pistol hanging at his hip.

Scrambling backwards on all fours, the man fell again as his hands slipped. “N-no! D-don’t hurt me, please! I-it’s n-not my fault, d-don’t come near me, d-d-don’t! P-please… they made me do it.” He held his trembling arms in front of his face, eyes shut tightly, and face scrunched in a grimace.

This isn’t good. The man was attracting too much attention. Knots of intrigued people formed a crowd nearby.

“Calm down,” Raid said. “Whoever you think we are, we aren’t them.”

“I stuck to the turf,” the man said. “Stuck to it all the time, but they got me, t-they b-b-bound me and d-dragged me away… A-all t-those k-knives, they said they’d use them, use all those s-sharp and b-big knives to c-cut me, bit by bit, they said, and the b-bones, they’d b-break the bones. It’s not my fault, I had to talk, had to survive, you understand don’t you, yes, I had to survive… all those h-horrible things. I didn’t b-b-betray the creed, no, no, I didn’t, I just survived, yes, just survived, you understand me, don’t you?”

Raid took a step away from him, hands raised in the air.

“N-no, you’re going to tell the b-boss, aren’t you, you are, you are going to him, no, you can’t, I won’t survive then, please, you can’t, I survived until now, you can’t.”

Five men that had been standing around the station and watching the crowd headed this way, hands hovering over their pistols. Damn it all, Devan thought.

The look in the man’s eyes changed. “You can’t… You can’t! No, I won’t let you!” He scrambled to his feet, stumbling as he bolted in the opposite direction from Raid. “Rising Sun! T-they’re from Rising Sun!” His voice echoed through the station.

Raid cursed.

The five men that had been approaching took out their guns.

Devan lunged into a roll behind the nearest indicator board, dodging the gunfire that followed. Glancing to the other side, he saw Raid had done the same.

The other people in the station had bolted at the sight of drawn guns, most having left, but the rest – the stragglers – had hidden in various places throughout the area. One skinny man in rags crouched behind a metal planter next to the indicator board where Devan was. He held his hands over his head, flinching and trembling at every shot.

Devan had no time to worry about him. He pressed his back against the metal, keeping close to the edge. No enemies would come from his left; Raid would prevent it or shout a warning. Or the skinny man would.

Having crossed the gap, the man now crouched at the other edge of the indicator board.

The roars of gunfire paused on Devan’s side. He leaned out and fired back. Two shots. Back and forth. Back and forth. He swung back behind cover, the magazine now empty. Tossing the side of his coat back, he reached for a spare at the back of his belt and pressed the release button on his gun.

There was no sound of shots slamming against the board.

As the empty case slid out the pistol, the skinny man took a stumbling step towards Devan, then another. His eyes gleamed with greed, hands on a gun that shook with every motion. “G-Glory to t-the Night!”

Devan’s gaze darted to the gun: faulty Sting series; high recoil; poor accuracy. The man was in range, but too excited. Devan slipped the knife from its sheath at his thigh and threw it at the charging man.

Slow on the trigger, the man flinched at the glinting edge of steel coming for him. He shut his eyes. The knife struck his upper arm. His finger twitched; the gun fired far off the mark. Then he doubled over in pain.

Devan slipped a new magazine into his pistol, then kicked the one held by the other man away. Grabbing him by the arm, Devan pulled him to the edge of the indicator board, then shoved him out, keeping the man between himself and the enemy.

The enemies fired.

The man shook as bullets mushroomed to a halt inside his torso, but Devan’s grip kept him from falling. Now out of cover, the two enemies were easy targets. The first one – a bald man – stood perfectly in Devan’s sights.

Bang.

The bullet hit before the man could react. The second one tried to roll behind a nearby planter, but Devan wouldn’t miss such an obvious move.

Bang.

The man fell prone to the floor, blood dripping from the side of his chest.

Devan wrenched the knife out of the skinny man’s arm, then tossed the body away as he moved back behind cover. A cowardly person waiting to stab you in the back, was it?

Shots began slamming against Raid’s cover again.

Devan looked up to the top of the indicator board. A chance to change the flow of the fight. Can’t draw attention to myself. He holstered his pistol, sheathed the knife, and took the second one out, hooking his finger through the ring at its hilt. He jumped. Grabbing the top of the board and kicking against the flat side, he thrust himself up and over the top.

The three enemies hiding behind the set of benches were in plain sight. The one still crouching, dark-haired and with a red bandana wrapped around his head, was reloading his pistol. The second one, a man with a short, brown mohawk, got up to his feet and shot at the edge of Raid’s cover. The third, a spiky-haired man, cocked his pistol.

The knife danced as Devan slipped it off his finger and into his hand. He swung his arm with a flourish and the knife zoomed towards the crouching man’s head.

The dark-haired man lurched from the impact, dropping his gun on the ground with a clang before he himself thumped down.

As Devan fell back behind cover, he glimpsed the man with a mohawk turning to look at his ally. A fatal mistake. When Devan landed on the ground, he heard a shot – Raid’s. Indeed, the man hadn’t wasted the opportunity.

“Ah, finally.” Raid sighed, then boldly got out of cover.

The last member of the gang, the man with spiky red hair, nearly jumped in shock when he saw Raid approaching. He raised his pistol to fire. A gunshot rang. Not his. The spiky-haired man’s pistol flew out of his hand, knocked away by the bullet. The second shot landed straight on his forehead.

Devan nodded at Raid. “Impressive.”

“Just something I’ve picked up over the years.” Raid holstered his pistol.

A few people dashed past Devan, two of them desperately digging for something in their pockets. As he and Raid exited into the familiar gloomy undersurface, there was a glint of metal followed by a sharp rattle. The two men in grey coats fumbled with their keys, trying to start their motorcycles. Raid fired a shot at one of them, hitting the leg. The man fell to the ground in wails and howls.

Raid ran up to him and snatched the keys. “They’ll be on our heels soon. Can you shoot from a bike?”

Before Devan could answer, a shot thundered through the air, passing between him and Raid. A barrier sprang up to shield them, the flows of power jolting into place in Devan’s left arm. Raid jumped on the bike. Devan did the same a moment later.

“Hurry!” Devan said. The flows comprising the spell construct quivered, resisting his control. “More will—”

A bullet punched through his barrier and struck him in the shoulder. Groaning, he clutched it and the barrier broke. Raid pressed the acceleration and the motorcycle zoomed towards the streets.

***

The bike careened through the wide streets, narrowly avoiding enemy fire. Raid had said the border between Sun and Night turf was just half a minute away. They’re not slowing down, Devan thought. More of Night’s men had joined the chase. They would catch up soon.

Summoning a trickle of the Gift, he tried to move the flows into his healthy arm, but just as they began to form, the other arm drew them towards it like a magnet. A thousand needles stabbed Devan’s arm following the power’s wake. He gritted his teeth and tried twisting the flows into a construct he could use, but they roiled jerkily out of control, only causing more pain. Blood trickled from his nose.

“Stop that!” Raid shouted through the rumble of the engines.

“They’ll catch—urgh! They’ll catch us if I don’t do anything!”

“Just trust me!”

The symbols on banners and those painted on the buildings changed. This was no longer Night’s turf, but the enemies still didn’t slow down.

Devan swivelled his head to look at the pursuers. They had gotten closer. The thought of using the Gift came again, but there was a bigger chance he’d do nothing but injure himself. Raid took a sharp turn. Their bodies almost touched the ground.

Devan tightened his grip around Raid’s torso. “Why did—”

Sounds of gunfire thundered through the street they had just left. The other gang had joined the fight. Devan took another look behind just in time to see some of the enemies had slipped past and were still chasing them.

Four turns later, Raid hit the breaks in front of an open shop of some sort. “Off, quickly!”

Devan did, and Raid pulled the bike inside, then slammed the button that would lower the shutter door.

A man wearing a shabby trench coat stood before them, staring at them in shock. “What do you think you’re—”

Raid pointing a pistol at him. “You a doctor?” He pressed his ear against the metal door.

“I am,” the man said, raising his hands in the air.

“Great.” Raid nodded his pistol towards Devan. “Then you can fix him. Name’s Raid. You?”

The man frowned. How could he not, all things considered? Lowering his arms, he cast a studying look at Devan, his eyes settling on the shoulder wound. “I understand your situation, but if you’re using my clinic, at least keep whoever’s chasing you out. I don’t want trouble.”

“Sure thing,” Raid said. “Never said your name though.”

“Shay.”

NOTES:

Secretary

Crime scene

Ambassador’s house

The ambassador was violent prior to his death. He went out to drink every night.