After making the turn at the huge fused stalagmite, I come to a narrowing in the rock, just wide enough for me to squeeze through without losing any skin. After doing my best toothpaste impression, I come out in a little stone alcove. It’s clear that something sank through the ceiling here at some point - There’s a lot of downward verticality to the rock formations, and some broken rubble that’s sat unmoved for who knows how long. In the middle of the room is, as reports had indicated, what looks like part of an old bank. Most of it is smashed to pieces or ground up, but there’s some marble flooring and concrete wall still visible, and it leads to the mighty vault that has been so oft purported.

It’s partially sunken into the rock at a bit of an angle, but the door looks like it’s openable. In fact, it’s open right at this very moment. That’s useful, but it does make me wonder how practical it is as a fortification if you’re under attack by deranged Lowlifes. Money doesn’t really need to breathe, you see. But maybe Littlerock found a solution to that. Just like the plumbing solution he must’ve come up with. If he’d been shitting in an iron box for the last few years I’d have noticed after stepping off the train.

I’m standing in what looks like the entry hall of the old bank, or what’s left of it. Littlerock hasn’t made much effort in making this look like a habitation, but I can’t say I blame him. You’d need help, equipment, or a slab’s strength to shift a lot of this beautiful marble rubble. I can see where there might’ve been valuables here at one point. Copper wiring, crystal lamps, maybe a grand chandelier. All long since picked clean. This has to be pre-Charter - I can’t imagine a financial building this ornate ever being put up in Eight, let alone Thirteen.

Further in I come to some nailed-together wooden salvage where the bank’s offices probably used to be. Littlerock even made himself a door, of a kind. Inside, there’s evidence of a living space. It isn’t much, with the rocks and the walls staved in like they are, but it looks like he could light a lamp and read a book without being seen or attacked. Let’s see what we’ve got here.

Ground’s more even than it is outside, and it looks like Littlerock took advantage. Made himself some furniture out of reclaimed wood. Little table, a chair cinched with leather and synthetic stuffing. A long bench, some cabinets. All very troglodyte chic. Got himself a few lamps, filled with… hm. Some kind of clean-burning petroleum derivative or another. Expensive. A row or two of books. Littlerock doesn’t strike me as the reading type, but down here with no people and no electricity, I guess you need something to stop the worms from burrowing into your skull. Some old-school revisionist pre-Rec adventure books with elegant painted covers, depicting great feats of seafaring exploration and beating the shit out of elves. A few paperback volumes of CHACK SNIPESHOT - URBAN AVENGER, that knuckledragging Watch propaganda series. I can’t believe people actually read this pulpy-ass detective fiction shit - I’d rather gargle thumbtacks than subject myself to three hundred pages of one swollen testosteroid’s monologuing attempts at witty insight over Outer Ring corpses.

… Actually, come to think, maybe that isn’t entirely fair of me.

Porn, of course. Far be it from me to pillory a man over want of images of various genitalia and their myriad configurations. Mostly mundane, but some interesting variety. Didn’t think he was the type. Also a perplexing number of weepy-looking romance novels, but I guess it isn’t beyond belief that our dirty drug dealer would be guarding a lonely heart.

It doesn’t look like the Grandsons bothered to clean this place out. They deal in the finest elite-quality substances around, and probably rightly assumed that some gutter mage’s pile of pyrophoric thump and crunchy scrub wouldn’t be worth stealing. I doubt Littlerock’s cash stash amounts to much more than a few chips and a bubblegum wrapper. The paranoia of drug dealers should not be underestimated, however, and I have a feeling I might find something useful in his hidey hole.

Hmmmm. Scanning, scanning… if I were a Lowlife arcanist thumpmuncher, where would I hide my hide-ables? Somewhere very clever, where I think no one else is smart enough to check… not in the vault, that’d be the first place anyone would think I would be dumb enough to put them…

Actually, why don’t we check the dumb places before we give Littlerock too much credit. Dumbest possible place would be a loose floorboard under the chair, that’s the first damn place anyone with a half inch of basal ganglion would-

Aaaaaaand the floorboard comes up like it’s been buttered. Littlerock, baby, you’re killing me here. It’s like you want to be robbed.

In the hidden space below the floor, we’ve got exactly what you’d expect. Few bricks of… wow, the absolute filthiest thump I have ever seen in my life. This shit’s so yellow it’s almost brown. It’s probably 45% industrial cleaning solvent and birdshit by weight and almost certainly catches fire if exposed to direct sunlight. At least I know Littlerock wasn’t grooving to his own tunes down here - if he was, his bones would still be smoldering in that corner a few months after the fact.

I put a brick of it in my pocket. Look, this shit’s a chemical hazard and it won’t kill me, alright? Better off with me than in the hands of some unsuspecting Sec Nineteen teenager where it’d otherwise end up. I can’t afford the kinds of stims that people in fancy suits buy, and who knows, this awful shit might come in handy if sleep slips off the menu anytime soon. I don’t even know why I’m justifying myself to you, you’re a hypothetical abstraction of my own thought process anyway. Take it up with my legal team.

Alongside this are some bricks of scrub so cheap and crunchy it would probably be better and cheaper to just smoke mulch. You’d get laryngitis from sniffing this thorny shit, let alone lighting it up. Next to these, some money. Stack of red chips, smaller stack of yellows. Not much more than change, frankly. Hard on the streets for an independent scraper like Littlerock, I guess.

Hm… something here doesn’t add up, now that I think of it. There’s not enough space down here for him to be growing this shitty scrub himself, and he can’t be cooking this miserable thump either - the walls aren’t melted enough. He’s getting this stuff from some sweaty discount chem shack in Sector Nineteen, I bet. He has a supplier. Which means he almost certainly has records. Dealers come in all stripes, some blurrier than others, but I have yet to meet one that didn’t keep a book of some kind. The richer ones can keep that data in a cortical implant of some kind, or a data engine, but Littlerock is no cyborg and there’s no electricity down here. I bet my lungs he’s got a book, he can’t be dumb enough to think he’s smart enough to keep all his deals in the air.

You could be more cunning than I thought, Littlerock. Keep the shit and the pocket change up front, somewhere painfully obvious. Any snoops or raiders find it, they’re satisfied, and they move on. Meanwhile the important stuff, the reserves and the documents, are somewhere else. It’s what I would do. It’s like we’re brothers through time, you and me.

The vault. Has to be. I don’t think the human brain is psychologically capable of resisting the notion that important things would have to be kept in a vault.

I cross the quiet stone room and squeeze myself through the gap in the massive steel door.

It’s even quieter in here, and even darker. And it was already silent and black. I can almost hear the blood moving through my body.

It’s not a huge room, and there are some cut brackets where some cage or bar fixtures might have been in the past. Blank floor. Walls to the left and right are covered in those old timey drawer-type safe deposit boxes people used to use before genetic keys were invented.

There’s an irregularity in the floor over in one corner. I get a little closer.

Then I get a little closer, because at first I’m not sure what I’m seeing. But when it makes sense, it hits like a bus.

Toilet seat. Ha.

This is actually pretty clever. It looks like… yeah, he must’ve used his fire to gradually melt a hole all the way down through the vault and a bit further into the stone, where the shaft connects to either some kind of aboveground drainage pipe or a natural water flow. I can hear the current from up here, very quietly running by. Kind of ingenious. I wonder how he knew there was running water down there. Maybe he knows a hydromancer. Or maybe he just started digging out of sheer desperation.

Bed pushed all the way into the corner, as far from the door as possible. Interesting. Not the lap of luxury, but he somehow managed to get a mattress down here, which is impressive in its own way. Not made (why would it be), blankets thin but numerous to combat the damp chill of the underground. Another firelit lamp and a stack of readables within arm’s reach.

Specs called me a lonely fucker. When I find Littlerock I’m probably going to give him a hug.

There aren’t many places you could hide things in here. Unless you count the hundreds of safe deposit boxes, of course. I’m trying to ignore them, because I don’t want to manually check every single goddamn one of them. But I think I’m going to have to. Pretty smart, actually. Hide your treasures behind the one thing people hate about as much as great personal danger - tedium.

… Or not. Littlerock’s made it too easy. One set at arm-height by the bed has a padlock on it. None of the rest do. You’re about 85% crafty, Littlerock. Almost there.

It’s one of those heavy Strongarm brand dial locks. I know from some of my sneaky pals that Strongarms are some of the toughest locks in the business. Expensive, but made of ultra-hard proprietary alloys and with mechanisms tighter than Rimegold’s rectum. You can’t even get through these with bolt cutters - their jaws dull on the special metal. An ordinary 500-cred gate lock I could probably tear off with my bare hands, but this is going to need specialist equipment. Probably a few dozen pounds of it, with valves and tanks and extremely high temperatures. Which I may have neglected to bring.

The new weight on my back distracts me suddenly, like it’s trying to get my attention.

Oh… but I do have specialist equipment. Very, very specialist.

I break the snap straps on my chest with one hand on the titanic sword’s haft. The weight comes off my shoulders and I pull the weapon around, lying in my arms like a pliant maiden. Or a sleeping crocodile.

Hmm. I could leave the scabbard on and just try smashing it. The Librarian said the stone casing was enchanted. But that runs the risk of me accidentally jamming the lock into itself or warping the frame of the deposit box. Then I’d really be in a pickle.

Alright then. Out you come, missy.

I unsnap the securing holds around the crossguard, get a grip, and gently slide the six foot long greatsword out of its snug, stony home. With my free hand I gingerly set the scabbard up against the wall, and come back to the blade with both hands.

Even in the absolutely lightless air beneath the earth, this feather gleams like the priceless treasure, the elegantly lethal artifact it is. It’s throwing off so much light that I shut my night vision off for a moment just to check something. Okay. It’s not glowing, it’s just reflecting and scattering the infrared radiation so much that it’s hard to tell the difference. Even in the gray-green low-resolution monochrome of night vision, it’s breathtaking - it’s like it has a queenly disdain of the darkness around it. And still as heavy as royalty too. I bring it up in front of me, arms out, trying to get a feel for the distance between the knife-like tip of the feather blade and the lock.

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It’s a big lock, but I’m not a swordsman. If this thing has the cutting power the Librarian says it does, I’m still running a risk of destroying stuff inside the locker if I’m not careful. I should take some practice swings before winding up, calibrate my aim.

I step forward and hover the tip of the feather over the imposing manacle-like padlock. Then I let it fall, trying to rest it on top of the lock and test whether I’ve got the right angle.

The feather’s edge bites clean into the metal of the lock like it’s made out of warm cheese.

I give the sword a little tug, but it’s stuck in there a bit and I have to put a little extra mustard on it to get it free.

I take a second to grab my jaw off the floor. It didn’t cut all the way through, only got like a half inch into the lock’s band, but I did not swing the sword at all. I just lowered it down. This thing cut through a security-grade titanium alloy without trying. Holy shit. I might have to play around a little bit while I’m down here and out of sight, this is fucking unbelievable.

After a solidifying breath of air, I stance up again, blade tip a little higher this time. Then I chop, putting my legs and back into it this time.

The lock bursts off its bracket with a ringing PING! and clangs to the ground. Twice. Because there’s two fucking halves of it now.

Very gingerly and respectfully, I hold the hundred-pound blade out and away from me with my right hand while I kneel and inspect the shredded lock.

I turn my night vision off for a second again.

The inner edge of the lock’s fatal wound is glowing orange.

I stand and gently bring the sword’s flat to rest on my palm, so I can inspect its edge. Nothing. Looks exactly the same. These… well it looks exactly like a fucking huge feather. These wisps and barbs and sweeping thin spokes of not-metal that make up the blade’s edge look as delicate and fragile as glass, but there’s absolutely no damage to indicate that it was just mashed through a dozen-pound banking-quality lock mechanism.

I lift the blade up and inspect my palm. It’s bleeding. Not a ton, but very slightly, a few pinpricks where some stray crystal feather barbs along the flat must have dug into my skin. I didn’t even feel it.

Alright, ma’am. I think I’m onto your game. May I have this dance?

Both hands on, I wind all the way back, and smash the beautiful greatsword into the wall of deposit boxes like a rainbow sledgehammer.

There’s a deafening SCREECH of tearing metal, and the sword comes to a dead stop. I let go of it. It’s stuck in the wall, the broadest part of the blade sunk at least five inches in.

I do not think I am responsible enough to have a weapon like this.

Hand on grip, I have to jerk to get the thing out of the mess of ripped metal, and it comes free with another, more satisfied squeal. I just look at the thing. Very carefully, like regarding it too fondly will cut my eyes.

I could kill lots and lots of things with this. The old man said it was exceptional, but now I’ve felt it. This thing goes through metal like I go through a buffet. I could even kill a Sentinel with this, if I got the drop on him from behind. If a standing swing sends this that far into structural steel, I bet with a running blow I could get through their enamelized plating. I’ve never been afraid of the Sentinels, precisely, but that’s because I know I’m strong enough to shove one over and fast enough to run away before they shoot me. Now… Not that I’ll do any of this, mind you, but the possibility is… comforting.

There’s a chance I could even survive a tussle with a Neutralizer if I have this with me. If they were stupid enough to get within sword-ing distance, I bet this could cut them. And if the sword can stop bullets like the Librarian said, maybe it could stop a Neutralizer’s electro-whip thing from slicing my body in half. Once. Before they just reposition with the speed of a blink and slice me from a different angle while I’m drunkenly trying to bring my hundred-pound sword around for another block.

Still, a few seconds is longer than most people live once a Neutralizer decides a death is in order. And I’ll take everything I can get, considering I’ve probably definitely certainly pissed at least a few of them off recently.

I put the sword back in its shiny stone scabbard and get it strapped on again. Later, my sweet. There’s business to be done.

Let’s see what Littlerock is so eager to protect.

One pulled drawer later, the answer is: Not much, apparently. A folder stuffed with documents and… oh. Oh my. I take it back.

It’s just credit chips. Blue ones. Maybe… fifty of them. I push the buttons on their sides. Each one lights up with a glowing red 100,000. Completely full, not a credit spent.

That’s… strange. This is a square five million credits. Not really a fortune per se, but definitely enough to pay for rent in some Outer Ring shithole for a few years. Not that very many places would rent to a guy like Littlerock anyway, but still. I check a few up front, in back, at the bottom of the stack. None of them have even a credit missing. The ones on the top of the stack even have a little dust on them.

Well, if Littlerock doesn’t want to spend his savings, maybe I could show him how it’s done.

My stupid greedy mitt freezes two inches from the stack of chips.

I’m not normally a thief. I know that doesn’t sound like the most glowing personal testimony ever, but I’m not a sterling guy. I can’t afford to be. I’m not trying to make excuses or anything, it’s just the facts. I’ve stolen. I’ve stolen stuff from people who paid me to do it, though I don’t take that kind of work often, because smash and grab is the dumbest way to steal and it’s the only strategy this body can really pull off. I’ve taken things from the people I’ve turned over to the Watch. Most of them are thieves or dealers, murderers at the worst. I don’t really feel bad skimming from the stockpiles of bad men who are on their way to the Sink anyway. And besides, the Watch would just do it anyway if they’d gotten there before me. It’s hypocritical, but it’s true, and it’s how I’ve done a lot of my surviving.

But… I dunno. Something about this is digging little hooks in the skin of my forearm. Pulling my hand away.

Fucking take that shit. Pay yourself. What’s this cat gonna do, expand his fucking business with this? Get a lease on a fucking kiosk? Hell, he’s probably dead anyway. Or if he isn’t, he might have gotten Horsebreaker killed. Why should he be sitting on this pile when you’re out there scraping? Take. That. Shit.

That’s a very convincing argument. But it’s not my money. I didn’t earn it. If Littlerock is alive, if I find him, and he comes home to find his cash gone, he might get desperate. He’d be in a corner. Maybe even worse than me.

So fucking what? You’re acting like this guy is your long-lost brother or something. He didn’t mean shit to anyone until he went missing, and even then, look at this place. Who’s missing him? All you’ve heard is people shitting on this guy. He’s a nobody who doesn’t deserve what he has. A tick on the neck of society. Take that shit and turn it into some good deeds, or I dunno, some fucking snacks or something, at least. It’s better than whatever he’d do with it. It’d be far from the first time you’ve ever taken money out of a dealer’s pocket. Why are you crying over it now?

I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel right. This guy hasn’t done anything but sell cheap drugs. He’s not a saint, but he’s not a monster either. It’s not my money.

You’re better than him. He’s just some gutter fuckabout. You’re Baulric the Beast. Use this money to get the fuck back out there and prove it to them.

… Who are you?

I’m you, oatmeal-brain.

No. I’ve never called myself the Beast. Other people call me that. That’s not who I am, that’s who other people think I am when I’ve had to wreck up their child porn studios and rape dens. Who the fuck are you?

There is a sensation of teeth.

I’m your better half, baby. The part of you that reaches for it. The one who bites and snaps. I crawled out of a pool of ancient filth millions of years ago just so you wouldn’t die of starvation or embarrassment. I’m the one keeping an eye out for the claws of others while you sit there thinking about computers or books or whatever garbage. I pump this disgusting barbecue sauce you call blood. I’m the only reason you can fucking sleep at night.

… No. I’m right here. I’ve never had halves. I’m me and that’s all. You are something else. A problem I don’t have time to solve right now. But I will. I’m looking through these documents. You fuck off so I can read.

You’re WEAK. This pathetic rubber-hearted shit is why you live in a fucking hole in the earth instead of somewhere beautiful, like a king deserves. You’re no hunter. You’re a fucking cow, a walleyed, brainless prey animal that does nothing but turn grass to shit and wait for the day it’ll finally be a feast for someone STRONGER and BRAVER than YOU COULD EVER-

I said fuck off.

A pressure that I didn’t know was there suddenly deflates out of my head.

It’s great that I have a magic sword and a way to get Electrofuck off my back. Those things are good. They might even compensate for what appears to be a powerfully incipient mental illness, in the brain of someone for whom illness is supposed to be impossible.

Why’s everything gotta be a fucking zero-sum game with me?

I’ll discuss this with someone later. I need some words to shove in my face. Maybe that will make my human brain do something.

At first, the contents of the folder are deceptively pedestrian. Bank statements. Tax forms. Some bills. They’ve all got Littlerock’s name on them, but they reference things that Littlerock definitely doesn’t have. Or doesn’t have anymore. These paint the picture of a pretty normal citizen. This person worked at… looks like an insurance company of some kind. As an adjuster. Evil, but normal everyday evil. The kind of evil you can’t even punch a guy for, because if you started you’d have to punch everyone in the city.

It’s almost like these were arranged in chronological order. Further in… some notices. One of these is a foreclosure. Seizures. Sprinkled throughout are medical bills, procedures and medications for someone called... Antha Littlerock.

So not all was well in the Littlerock household of old.

And one… I recognize this letter. I got one very similar to it, about fifteen years ago. It’s from the Brotherhood. Specifically, the Arcanist Evaluation and Registry Office. And there’s really only ever one reason why Mr. Everyday gets a letter from AERO.

Littlerock found his fire. Or, I guess, the fire found him. And his life started to burn down around him.

Change of employment on the tax forms soon after. Foundryman, what else. Change of address. Used to be Nine. Now it’s Fifteen, of course. More grist for Rediron’s mill. These bills start to go red, and it’s the medical ones that are the loudest. But the bank’s not quiet either. Here we have an application for a welfare program that’s supposed to subsidize the income of families with a disabled partner. Denied. Category Three Arcanists need not apply. Similar story with applications for low-income medical aid programs. Denied. No firebugs - the taxpayers have decided you are too hot an investment to touch.

And then…

A death certificate.

It’s smaller than most of the rest of the documents. And it’s very matter-of-fact. Black on white. Your wife is dead. Here’s your receipt. Have a nice day.

And there isn’t much after that, but a message from the insurance company that Littlerock used to have an office in before he was chosen by the gods. It’s a life policy payout. To the tune of five million credits.

Lucky fucker. It’s five million more than my dad ever got.

Oh… and in the back is a small, thin book. Black. I know what goes in black books. It’s a ledger, alright. After going through the entire thing, that’s all it is. Just transactions. All coded, obviously. Nothing about it stands out. Not a damn thing. It’s just repeating patterns of numbers, the equations of small, dirty people poisoning themselves for want of something that isn’t what they are. I pocket it. It’s meaningless now, but maybe I can get something out of it later.

I put the folder back and close the drawer. I’m not taking a guy’s dead wife money, no matter how much of a shit he might be. I don’t know what kind of woman Antha was, but she must’ve seen something in him. And he literally ran himself into the ground for her. I’m not touching that shit with an eleventy-thousand foot pole. Only a beast would do that.

… And fucking none of this tells me where Littlerock is or what happened to him. All it’s telling me is to feel worse for having not found him already.