He took the chair in front of the desk, draping his coat over its back. I was surprised that he sat down so easily. He was taller and broader than me, with a ragged scar along his jawline that said he’d been in a fair few scraps himself, and most Outscape cops would take any opportunity to puff themselves up like a peacock, to intimidate and bully and threaten simply because they believed they could. “Sit,” he said lightly. “I’m not here to arrest you. I understand from your record doing so is a dangerous prospect for my health.”

“You’re an idiot if you think I killed him,” I said. “Are you an idiot?”

“Then you must have another option in mind. Unless you think you can tell me that he died naturally.”

“Is that how it is? You need a scapegoat, you need a name to lock up or string up or beat up. It doesn’t have to be the right name, it just has to sound right enough that no one will care to look much farther.” I spun my chair around and sat down, leaning back far enough to kick a foot up on my desk. “You want me to be that name? You want me to take the fall for Chesnes? You’ll have to look a little farther.”

He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out, not a miniature spiral notebook like I’d expected, the type upon which a thousand invented crimes had been recorded and prosecuted, but a thin sharp needle. It shone in the light. He spun it twice in the air like a conductor’s baton before he jabbed it into the pad of his thumb, a drop of blood welling up. “I did not say you were much suspected, Hexel,” he continued conversationally. “You are just the top of a very short list and above you still is a very large cloud of unknowns. That you assumed more was-”

“Hold on,” I said. “What are you doing?”

“What, this?”

“Yeah. You’re free to cut yourself open as much as you’d like, but I don’t like the bloodstains. So explain.”

He plucked the needle out, an inch of it now stained dark and dripping. “You didn’t shake my hand. Not that you need to, I am not some stickler for formality,” he added upon seeing my expression, the disbelief that even in the Outscape there were people who would turn to self-mutilation over so small a slight, “but I think it will illustrate the point better.” And he held out his non-bloodied hand to me.

I looked at it. I shrugged. “Let’s see what you’ve got,” I said, and took it.

It was like having a knife run through my palm when he gripped my hand. It wasn’t a burning pain, it wasn’t an icy pain, it wasn’t slick and wet, and it wasn’t dry and wrenching. It was just pain in its barest form, and I stood it for perhaps four seconds. Then I wrenched free of the handshake and took a step back, checking to make sure I hadn’t started bleeding. “You will survive,” Conjager said, “and there is no harm done.”

“Your nightmare. Physical pain. Is that it?” I supposed I should be grateful that it required physical contact as well. If he’d had that sort of hurt pouring off of him I didn’t think I could have stood this conversation. “Guess everyone’s scared of it.

“Mm-hmm. I am sure you know, Hexel, that nightmares rarely fear one another. The anxiety and terror and the hurt that is inflicted upon a sleeper, upon you, is…deadened for us. And for nothing is that more true than our own nightmares. Kit Chesnes would not feel as though he were falling even if he climbed Thorne Tower and threw himself from its spire. Alexis Itoya wears a blindfold, is constantly ensconced in darkness, yet sees the world in perfect light. And I…” He forced the tip of the needle deep into his finger again, his expression never wavering. “I do not feel the pain.”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“And so you’re doing that just to prove you can?”

“No. I am searching to know what it feels like. It is irresponsible to act otherwise.”

“Have you tried a foot cramp? Cause let me tell you-”

He shook his head. “I don’t need your jokes. It is a delicate balance, for injury will incapacitate me like anyone else regardless of whether I feel it. But that is not what we’re here for, Hexel. A man is dead.”

“Been that way for a couple days now.”

I couldn’t look away from the needle. It must have been piercing the muscle by now, scratching against bone, and still he shifted it from side to side like it was nothing. “Look,” he said. “You’ve clearly been pursuing the case already—Itoya and Usher can attest to that much. We are working towards the same ends. We both want to figure out who and what killed Chesnes and see them brought to justice. If you know something, you would do well to share it with me. And I think you do know something, so don’t pretend otherwise.”

“You make some reasonable arguments,” I said. “But I don’t believe you want anything as nice as justice. So the question is, why does Drakon think this is the way to go about it? Why’s he trying to play nice with me?”

“I’m here on the city’s behalf.”

“One and the same. Drakon owns the city and he probably owns you.”

“The city was here before Drakon, and it will be here after him,” he said, and there was a strange edge to his voice. Maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe he was the one guy they kept around as an example of someone who believed in all that ‘law and order’ crap just to demonstrate it still existed. Maybe he really did mean everything he told me. “I serve the city.”

“Sure, then. But that’s not enough. You can’t tell me everyone you work with is as squeaky honest as you claim to be. You can’t tell me everyone you work with, everyone you submit your reports to, isn’t seven kinds of corrupt like I know they are. And then where am I going to find myself, Conjager, but back down in the gutters and alleyways with Drakon? One bad apple spoils the barrel, and the Outscape’s force is so rotten it may as well be cider.” I stood. “I work alone, because I’m the only person I know for sure I can trust.”

He stood as well, but his eyes darted behind me, to the door to my living space where Robin hid. “And there’s no one else?”

There was no way he’d seen her. She’d only been at the window for a second or two, and even then she was barely tall enough to see out of it. “No.”

“Because you arrived in the Outscape in a very particular way,” he said. “You must have. And Chesnes’s death looks similar. Usher this morning was telling me about the chemicals he’d found in Chesnes’ bloodstream, how they were more potent than anything he’d seen before. You cannot fault me for wondering if perhaps Chesnes’ death had a similar result, too.”

If I looked behind me I’d be lost. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re just trying to get a rise out of me.”

“Just a theory, nothing more.” He moved to the door. “If you change your mind, if you decide it’s better to make allies than enemies, then you can find me at the precinct. And since I’ve seen your arrest record, I know you can find your way there.” He gave me a two-finger salute as he departed, and I couldn’t tell if he was serious about it or simply mocking me.

I closed the door behind him, perhaps harder than I had a right to. I went back to my desk and began to drag the chair away from the door. “I don’t know what we’re going to do about you, Robin,” I started to say. “Suspicions are already too high. Everyone knows something’s up even if they don’t know what it is, and I can only deter them for so long when-”

There was a knock at the door. I grumbled and went back to it. “If you forgot something I’m not giving it back,” I said. “And if you’re coming back because you think I’m somehow more amenable now, let me tell you it’s-” I pulled the door open with a huff- “not…happening…”

It wasn’t Conjager who’d come back at all. It was Leonid Drakon, and he didn’t look happy.