1

By the thirteenth day of rain, the city was keeping count— thirty two bodies and rising.

People were calling it the Drowning Summer. Summer rain is nothing like its winter sibling. The rain didn’t fall, it oozed from the sky, slow and heavy, drowning you inch by inch. The raindrops pounded straight down with no wind to direct them. The air was thick and humid, making it hard to breathe some days. Valderia, a city of almost ten million, felt like it was drowning and suffocating at the same time.

Sally Nairo held an umbrella low over her face, wading through the puddles of Vincent’s alley, deep in the heart of the RatHoles. She wore a long, dark trench coat, the collars pulled up to protect her face from the ricochets of fat rain drops. The curly main of her dark, untamable, hair was brushed back from her face. Despite her best efforts, the humidity made her hair look like a particularly aggressive tumbleweed. Her light brown eyes wandered around the asymmetrical architect of one of Verdalia’s most notorious slums: The RatHoles. A cul-de-sac of social mobility, the RatHoles was the last place any creature wanted to find themselves in, and it was the first place most poor migrants ended up in. Generational blunders had created a menagerie of shoddy towers, leaning flats, and misshapen tenements, hastily erected to pack in wave after wave of desperate migrants into a city that long ago burst its seams. The RatHoles was Verdalia’s sanctioned slum and home to the desperate and hopeless. The last time Nairo had been here she had found a Goblin gangster with his head almost torn off. That was nearly six months ago now, the memory of it lingering like the foul smells of The RatHoles’ mounting garbage heaps.

Nairo traversed through the empty slum, its residents hiding away from the rain. They were definitely watching her though. Nairo felt that creeping sensation on the back of her neck as unseen eyes followed her. She stepped out onto the broadway and saw a few signs of life. A couple of valiant vendors, still trying to scrape a few pennies, stood under shoddy stands in the rain. One of them, an olive skinned man with a greying beard, made eye contact with her. He didn’t attempt to sell her any of his questionable, and most likely very soggy, pies. He knew who she was. Most unfortunate denizens of the city’s most impoverished corners did. He nodded his head once in acknowledgement and then once again to direct her. Nairo nodded her thanks and continued down the broadway, the staccato rhythm of the pounding rain drowning everything else out.

Nairo saw her destination, the yellow police rope was always a sure sign that she was in the right place. She walked towards the rope, her pace remained calm, but her heart began to quicken. She felt that familiar thrill of excitement, the sniff of a new case, the undercurrent of apprehension, the fear of what she could be walking into. Nairo stopped at the police cordon and looked around the entrance to the grimey alley.

“Yes ma'am?” A portly officer in a poncho who had been hiding under the lip of one of the RatHoles’ wonky windows appeared at the rope.

“I’m Nairo,” she said.

"Oh, Sarge! ‘Pologies, didn’t recognise you.” They still insisted on calling her by her old title but at least this one didn’t try and salute her. “Come right through.”

He held up the rope so she could pass underneath it. Nairo stepped into the alleyway and immediately felt the presence of death. It wasn’t a taste, and it wasn’t a smell, the rain was far too heavy for such mundane senses to be at work; it was another sense. Something primal that had kept Humans alive for centuries. It itched at the corners of her subconscious, telling her to flee, to get away from danger, but Nairo had long ago learnt to quell that voice. She followed the officer, listening to him give his report like she still had stripes on her shoulder.

“Found her in the early hours, Marm,” he said. “It’s a madhouse at the moment, so the best we could do was secure the scene and wait for the detectives to arrive.”

“Who did they put on it?” Nairo asked.

“They sent Izla and Fisher.”

“Homicide?”

“Yeah, at first they thought it was, but only took ‘em a few minutes to decide she was just a dead junkie.”

“Another overdose?”

“Yes marm. Sixteenth one this week.”

“That many?” Nairo said, her eyes widening. The city was rife with the whispers of tainted Burn, but she didn’t realise it was that bad.

“Yes Marm, and those are just the ones we know about. Addicts are falling out all over the place, morgue’s starting to fill up, so we’ve been having to toss ‘em in one of the old meat warehouses to stop ‘em going bad before the coroner has a chance to do his work.”

“And this one?” Nairo asked.

“Same thing Marm, overdose. She looked like she was pretty much on the end of her string anyway. Poor thing,” the officer tutted.

“Why did you call me?”

“Well… we found this.” The officer pulled a clear bag out of his tunic and handed it over.

Nairo held her umbrella lower and looked at the bag. Inside was a crumpled, dog eared card that had yellowed with time. On it, in a faint scrawl that she recognised as her own handwriting, she saw her name and her station.

“We found it in her hand. She must have been holding it when she died.”

Nairo clenched her jaw. She forced her hand not to tremble.

“Did yer know ‘er, Sarge?” The officer asked as they approached the body.

The corpse had been covered with a sheet. The rain had soaked the covering, displaying the grim outline of the body. The officer bent down and rolled back the sheet, revealing an emaciated, sore riddled face.

“Yes,” Nairo whispered. “Her name was Sarita, she was a prostitute, I met her six months ago.”

Nairo looked down at Sarita’s face, even in death she had found no peace. Her face was twisted in a grimace of pain. Her eyes were wide and vividly red. Her cracked lips were parted in a cry of agony. She looked thinner than the last time Nairo had seen her. Her skin was even more pallid and sickly than Nairo remembered. Sarita had already been deep in the stranglehold of her addiction when Nairo had met her whilst on the hunt for the stolen Diamond. It looked like her demons had finally gotten her.

“Sarita,” the officer noted. “Do you have a surname?”

“No,” Nairo said. “I’m sure she had been picked up by the police before. If you run her name she should come up.”

“Yeah, that’s a good shout.” The officer placed the cover back over Sarita’s face and stood up. “Thanks for that Sarge, it’ll make life a lot easier when we process her if we can put a name down. Got so many Janes and Johns as it is.”

Nairo nodded.

“Just… don’t leave her alone here,” Nairo said to the officer. “She doesn’t deserve to feed the rats.”

“I won’t marm.” And now the officer did salute her.

Nairo nodded politely and walked away, her heart heavy.

It was a long, sluggish cab ride back up North to Little Kang. Nairo sat in the back of the carriage, staring listlessly out at the rain soaked city. Verdalia wasn’t a city that enjoyed rain. It had become sluggish and worn down by the endless deluge. The normally bustling streets were empty save a few unfortunate souls, huddling under battered umbrellas, hurrying back and forth. But the traffic was endless. Heavy rain did something to drivers. It made them suddenly incompetent and insane at the same time. The roads were being constantly clogged by upturned carriages because their riders tried to force their horse through a puddle, which turned out to be a pothole as deep as a Gnome. People’s tempers frayed. Fist fights broke out up and down the Broadways. Everybody was in a hurry to get out of the rain, but no one had the sense to navigate the swamped streets properly.

Nairo watched a man huddled under a scrap of blanket, shivering in the rain, looking as miserable as a creature could. He was sitting on the pavement with a melting scrap of cardboard that must have once had a desperate plea for alms on it. It was a wilted lump now, much like the man that sat beside it. He was a Burner. Nairo could see that from fifty yards away. The drug problem in the city only worsened the deeper into the food crisis they went. An empty belly is easier to deal with if you have a vein full of Burn. The toxic brown sludge was tearing through the city, leaving a trail of destroyed lives and corpses in its wake. This recent explosion of overdoses was only the tip of the spear. Burn had been causing misery long before that. Now though, it was on everyone’s lips when they weren’t moaning about the rain. And it wasn’t just desperate junkies dying anymore. It turned out creatures from both ends, and every point in between, of the social spectrum found solace in the temporary escape of Burn. Overdoses were being reported everywhere. From the slums, to the boroughs, to the academies, and even out in the fields that were full of nothing but mansions and fathomless wealth. It turned out the Bad Batch, as the whispers were calling it, was the great equaliser amongst creatures rich and poor. The children of the wealthy and the poor alike were dying, and the city was gripped in fear of it.

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The cab trundled its way up through Colway’s Pass and onto Makin’s Broadway, the nightlife epicentre of the city. The Broadway was a sprawl of theatres, cabarets, bars, and dance clubs, and even during the day would be alive with the buzz of revelry. Today, under the heavy cloak of grey clouds, the atmosphere was sombre. No music was being played and black banners were hung on every light post.

“What are the black banners for?” Nairo called through the hatch to her driver.

“Makins’ is in mourning, miss,” the cabbie shouted back.

“Because of that actress who died?”

“Aye ma'am. Lana LaRue, gosh, she was something special ma’am,” the cabbie said wistfully. “I actually got to meet her when she was touring the offices. Never seen a more graceful creature in all me life. Spellbinding was wot the papers called her.”

“Is she the one who overdosed?” Nairo asked.

“Yes ma'am. Terrible thing this Burn. Robbed Verdalia of a real treasure.” The cabbie’s voice sounded thick with grief.

Nairo sat back and looked out of the window. As they passed the Umbry Theatre, one of the largest and most exclusive theatres in the city, a small group of mourners braved the rain. They were huddled around a large canvas of a strikingly beautiful young woman. The picture was so full of life it burst from the canvas. She had bouncy dark curls, a button nose that was almost too cute to be real, dazzling blue eyes, and a charming smile that seemed obscene in the grey, rain stricken street. Her cabbie slowed down to a respectful canter and, despite the rain, took off his cap and held it to his chest in respect. Lana LaRue wasn’t the first death, but she was certainly the most high profile. The entertainment industry was being rocked by overdoses. It turned out the glitz and glamour of showbiz had been hiding a much darker reality. Nairo remembered reading about LaRue’s death. She was some darling of the stage, a once in a generation beauty, found dead in her dressing room. The whole city had been aghast. Nairo watched the weeping mourners and couldn’t help but feel the injustice of it. Not a soul would care about Sarita. Her body would be thrown in the meat warehouse with the rest of the dead junkies. Just another faceless victim of the city's endless cruelty.

They swept through the East End, glimpsing the belching towers of the Foundries, and then straight into the Gnommish North of the city. Since Nairo had started working up North she had come to learn more about the Gnomes, and they were fascinatingly curious. Fastidious, polite, and reserved, Gnomes were the most inaccessible of the species. They kept themselves to themselves. They shopped almost exclusively at Gnommish establishments, they bought homes from each other, they spoke Gnommish at all times, and they had a deep suspicion of outsiders. She had been on this side of the city for six months now, and she was still treated with suspicion, never hostility, but she was not welcome. The Gnomes were secretive little creatures, and they didn’t mind you knowing they didn’t trust you. The cab finally made its way to Little Kang, the vibrant, buzzing centre of Gnommish society in Verdalia. Little Kang, named after the capital of the Gnomish Empire, was Nairo’s favourite place in the entire city. It crackled with an electric energy that was unmatched anywhere in the city. Life moved at a breakneck pace here but was still remarkably civilised and organised. Gnomes were the masters of commerce and nowhere was that more evident than in Little Kang. Everything a creature could want was sold, marketed, shipped, and stored somewhere in the labyrinthine alleys and markets of Little Kang. Every inch was monopolised, commercialised, and occupied by a vendor, store, bar, or club. The Gnomes were masters of magick in their own way. While the Elves mastered the ephemeral arts of Magick, the Gnomes had mastered nature itself. They could grow things no other creature was capable of and cultivate plants in a way that was shockingly beautiful. Little Kang wasn’t illuminated by glowstones like the rest of the city. Instead, it was covered in luminous mushrooms that hung and grew everywhere, spreading a neon light across Little Kang. The colours danced and glowed in a way that captivated the eye, both beautiful and efficient. Everywhere plants Nairo struggled to even describe, let alone identify, grew and wound their way around buildings and shopfronts until they became one symbiotic living organism. Little Kang always smelt of fresh flowers, exotic fruits, and fresh grass, which was more than welcome after the stench of the RatHoles.

Nairo thanked the cabbie, paid her fare, and quickly ran up the steps to her new office, a gift from the leader of the Goblin mafia, Sam’Sun Chaw’drak, for freeing him from his false arrest. Even though Nairo baulked at the idea of accepting gifts from one of the most notorious Villains in the entire city, she had to admit the office was a definite improvement over their previous one. It was a red brick building, unusual in Little Kang, and had once been a small factory that produced shoes. There was even still some of the old machinery still lining the walls, gathering dust and rusting quietly. Nairo opened the heavy, bloodwood door and felt relief to finally be out of the rain. She hung her black trench coat on the hook with her umbrella and then shook out her mane of damp hair. It was warm, and she could smell tobacco.

“Take your boots off! Don’t you be dripping on the hardwood! I’ve just mopped!” a thin, reedy voice shouted from the kitchenette.

“Yes Mrs. Paper,” Nairo replied, kicking off her boots and leaving them on the mat.

“Are you hungry, dear?” Mrs. Paper appeared at the doorway.

Mrs. Paper was, to put it politely, more prune than person. She was almost an entire head shorter than Nairo, age bowing her back and curling up her shoulders. Her hair was thin and white as snow, and her wrinkles were so deep it was more accurate to describe them as folds. She blinked up at Nairo and gave her something that resembled a warm smile.

“No thank you, Mrs. Paper, but I would love a cup of tea if the kettle’s on.”

“O’ course, dear. You go and rest yer bones and I’ll bring it out.” Mrs. Paper shuffled back into the kitchenette. “And ask that one if he wants one too.”

“I heard that!” a sarcastic voice shouted from the office.

“Good! Even if yer legs don’t work at least yer ears do!”

“Old bag,” she heard him grumble.

Nairo walked into their shared office and looked at her partner. Ridley was stretched out behind his desk, his feet up on the wood, a pipe in his hands. He was leaning so far back in his big, comfy chair that he was almost horizontal, blowing smoke rings into the air. Ridley was... maybe a touch older than Nairo, she wasn’t sure. He was taller, but not by much, and thinner. He was… handsome from certain angles but too scruffy to ever be called so. No matter what time of day or night, he always seemed to have the shadow of a beard growing in and his dirty blonde hair hadn’t seen a comb in many years. He had deep blue eyes, dark enough that they looked black in low light, and a constant, self-assured smirk that still gave Nairo the itch to smack him every now and again. He was wearing a long, plush, smoking gown that he had taken to wearing recently.

“How was your dead body?” he asked her after blowing another smoke ring.

“Dead,” Nairo replied, sitting down behind her own, much cleaner and smaller desk. “It was Sarita.”

Ridley cocked his head and that and then sighed.

“Shit. Another overdose?”

“Yeah. She looked… bad.”

“Always was gonna end that way with her,” Ridley said, scratching his scraggly beard. “Life of a Burner rarely ends any other way.”

“Police think it was another overdose.”

“Bad Batch claims another?”

“They reckon they’ve had sixteen this week alone.”

Ridley let out a low whistle.

“Conway must be up to his tits in it,” Ridley said. “I bet he wishes you didn’t get his job back for him now.”

Lieutenant Rod Conway was a formerly disgraced detective who had assisted Nairo and Ridley in their search for the missing Diamond six months ago. When they had met Conway he was already disgraced, demoted, and hidden away in the basement, working lost property. After a bit of tactical blackmail from Nairo and Ridley, he was reinstated as a full investigator and quickly worked his way back up to running a squad. Now, he was the new head of Drug Enforcement in Valderia.

“What a time to get a promotion,” Nairo agreed, accepting a warm cup of tea from the shaking hands of Mrs. Paper.

“Get yore feet off that desk! Was you raised in a barn?" Mrs. Paper snapped at Ridley.

“My desk, my feet, my office!” Ridley snapped back at her.

They glared at each other until Ridley finally gave up and slid his feet off the desk.

“Manners of a chimp,” Mrs. Paper tutted as she shuffled out of the room.

“One of these days…” Ridley muttered darkly, swinging his feet back up as soon as she was out of the room.

“Speaking of Conway, wanna hear something funny?” Ridley asked Nairo.

Nairo sighed, her cup paused at her lips.

“Is it actually funny?”

“Guess it depends on which side of the joke you’re on.”

“And which side am I on?”

“The funny side.”

Nairo nodded her head for him to proceed.

“Conway sent you a comms scroll while you were out. He wanted to know if there were any good officers you could recommend for his Drug Enforcement Squad.”

“What did you do?” Nairo said, narrowing her eyes suspiciously at him.

“Sent him a couple of recommendations.”

Nairo set her tea down and raised an eyebrow.

“Who?”

Ridley’s face broke out in a wide grin.

“Our mates.”

“You didn’t.”

“Yep. Timmy and Wally!”

“Edgewater and Washbottom!”

“Yeah!” Ridley cackled. “Wally Washbottom is now on the Drug Enforcement squad!”

“Why would you do that to Conway?”

“Dunno, been a slow morning,” Ridley said with a shrug.

Nairo shook her head and sipped her tea just as the doorbell rang.

“Oi! Get that!” Ridley shouted to Mrs. Paper.

“When did yore last slave die?”

“She hasn’t yet, unfortunately,” Ridley muttered to himself.

“We expecting anyone?” Nairo asked.

“No.”

“Oh dear, come in, what’s wrong sweetheart.” Nairo heard Mrs. Paper say, followed by the sound of sobbing.

Nairo looked at Ridley.

“Sounds like a case,” he said with an inappropriate grin on his face.

“Is Ridley here?” a female voice asked.

“He’s right in here, sweetie.”

Nairo saw the smile drop from Ridley’s face: he recognised the voice.

Mrs. Paper led a young woman in. She had short, dark hair, cut into a neat bob, her eyes were red-rimmed, and fresh tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Emily?” Ridley said, standing up.

“He’s dead, Ridley. They killed him... they killed my dad!”