Cynthia climbed onto the roof and ran to join the fight again. They would attack him in two directions at once. And they would fail, of course. But the experience would teach them something. At the very least, that there was no point in getting picky about your allies when you were facing a bigger threat.

Or at least that was what should have happened, but it stopped.

Not Cynthia, the fight, all the training. Not by his decision. He wasn't going to change his mind at the last second. His earpiece rang.

So Sylvester let go of one of Ryan's hands, and lifted it to the appropriate ear to answer the call. Seeing that something was happening, Ryan pulled back. It was a shame, but anyway, you had to have priorities. He could try again some other time.

"This is Agent Sylvester. Yes. Yes, all right. We happen to be close."

He cut the call.

Cynthia had stopped too, of course, or else by now he'd have the barrel of one of her revolvers against his forehead. In any case...

"What happened?" she asked.

"Someone died."

"Only one person?"

"Yes, as far as we know. Weird, huh?"

"Is it that weird?" Ryan asked.

"As you know from your own experience, at birth the Lunar Remnants have no will of their own, they are like animals. And when they grow up, well, they're not like you. They can't go back to normal. Live in society. So even then they don't have much choice."

"Yeah. Right."

"Well," Sylvester said as he turned away, "lessons for later, I'll bore you with details if you want. Now let's get going."

Sylvester started running towards the edge of the roof. Without knowing it, he had accelerated the path that Cynthia was supposed to take a moment ago, although it didn't matter because she had already retraced it with the intention of smashing his face in, anyway, such is life.

When he reached the edge, he jumped.

He slid down the fire escape into the damp alley. It had been raining hard until recently, so the alleys and rooftops were still pretty slick. Which they had found out dangerously just as they had started, when Cynthia had nearly fallen from a fourth floor and said goodbye to everything.

The other two took the same path. A little slower, but they arrived safely.

Sylvester and Cynthia pulled their cubes out of their jackets, tossing them on the ground and unfolding them. Every agent was given one of these bikes.

“What do I do?” Ryan protested. There was always an exception that proved the rule. Besides, more than an agent, as much as he was on his way to do one's job, he was a prisoner.

“Let him ride with you," Sylvester said, more to mess with his partner than anything else. He did have a sense of humor.

“Huh? Not a chance. Boss. Why not with you?”

For one thing, he thought it was hilarious.

Sylvester shrugged.

“Well, come on. Mount up."

So he did, and they shot off toward the location of the crime.

Still, he had to admit it was frustrating. He'd been on the verge of succeeding. Not that he'd wanted to help the scientists with that particular experiment. It had seemed unnecessarily dangerous to him, with no apparent benefit, and even now he thought that.

But what happened inside a laboratory was another thing; field work was quite another.

There was no time to train him. If Ryan wanted to survive in this world, he had to learn to use the powers of a Lunar Remnant. Otherwise he would just end up in the stomach of some other creature even worse than him.

And maybe he would anyway, but then at least he'd have a chance.

***

In the alleyway there wasn't even the remnants left. They had already been cleaned up. The only thing that remained as evidence of the crime was a large bloodstain.

The greatest trace of what had happened even when the victim's pieces had been in the alley. According to what he had been told, he had been reduced to mush to such an extent that they hadn't yet been able to identify him.

“So, what do you think?" Cynthia asked at last.

“If it was the work of a Lunar Remnant, we would have witnesses, and he certainly wouldn't have been the only victim. But if this was done by humans, how?"

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“Maybe it wasn't done by humans, but it wasn't done by those monsters either," Ryan said.

“Explain."

“We may not be completely finished with Andrew's work. That's what I'm talking about. I don't want to think about it, even though I'm in deep shit, at least I was consoled by the thought that I had done one thing right. But..."

“You don't need to make that face. I told you, there are no witnesses. There's no way nobody saw one of those things."

“What if it was invisible?"

It was a ridiculously simple answer, like a child pulling out a everything proof shield in an imagination-filled playground fight.

But he couldn't dismiss it, because it was possible. Maybe not likely, but possible.

“Okay. That... that could be it."

He couldn't even say Andrew's creations weren't intelligent. He knew they were. They had let him go, after all, once he'd released them. At least they had understood what he had done on some level, so the idea of one of them killing a single person here, unseen, and then leaving without creating more of a stir...

The motive was also important and they didn't know it yet, but it was possible.

“It doesn't have to be Andrew's operation," Sylvester said. Not to comfort Ryan. He wasn't as openly hostile as his partner, but he wasn't too interested in the man's feelings either. He was thinking out loud. And mostly he was saying it for himself. It would be a pain if the mission he had thought was over had actually just started all over again. "It might be someone doing similar experiments. Or one of his experiments has escaped and is now out there, whatever it is.

“Whatever it is, it's our thing," Cynthia said. "That's good enough for me. I felt like blowing someone's head off, anyway, let off some steam.

“You sound very... well adjusted," Ryan said.

Cynthia gave him a murderous look, but, to his surprise, that's all it amounted to. Anyway, it was better or, instead of a secret agent, he would start to feel like a teacher taking care of children who did nothing but fight for the slightest excuse.

“You're going to have to hold your breath for the moment because we still don't know where to start. “That was all he said, in the end.

Sylvester reached out a hand towards the huge bloodstain, but didn't reach out to touch it. Bad idea, it would contaminate the crime scene, yes, all of it. Even though they had already cleaned up and surely collected samples. It didn't matter. He dropped his hand.

“No secret skills that might help with this?" Cynthia asked.

“You know I don't. I read you everything."

“Okay."

Wisely, Ryan chose to keep his big mouth shut.

Sylvester put a hand to the back of his head, scratching. A very casual, unprofessional gesture, but who was watching him? His subordinate and a prisoner.

“I don't even know why I was called in. I don't like to leave things unfinished, but everything points to this being a dead end."

Anyway, at least he could try so they wouldn't say later that he had given up too quickly.

Sylvester doubted he would find anything that the cops and the syndicate investigators had missed in any way, nothing revolutionary and definitely nothing that would lead him straight to the culprit, at least.

But as he had said, he could at least take a step forward so it couldn't be said that he hadn't tried.

It was the least he could do, surely.

So he set about it. First of all, he dragged a couple of trash cans to the side.

“Nothing."

Well, the dumpsters closest to a crime scene was the most obvious place to take a look, despite the fact that the criminal clearly hadn't gone out of his way to hide what he'd done. And he hadn't expected to find anything anyway.

Sylvester had been glad that his teammates hadn't started fighting like children. He thought, moreover, that they would be too distracted searching. Big mistake. As soon as Ryan opened his mouth, he knew it would end in an argument before he even processed the first word.

“I don't even know where to start. Put someone in front of me to beat up and I'm your man. But discovering things that others have overlooked? That's a different matter.”

“Maybe you're bad at it. Or maybe you act blind when you want to," Cynthia said.

Sylvester didn't like that too much either. Protecting Andrew, even if only for a few months, he should have seen some signs. And looked the other way.

It wasn't a good thing, but it wasn't a deliberately cruel thing.

For whatever reason he hadn't known the truth, and he had turned against the man as soon as the truth was shoved in his face. That was good enough for Sylvester.

Clearly not enough for his partner, but sooner or later she'd have to find a way to work it out. She should be able to understand that even if Ryan was the worst piece of garbage in the history of mankind, he was now also the person who was hiding the only chance to save it.

Sylvester had been fighting for years, but only to prolong the inevitable. Finally, thanks to him, he had a way to stop this within reach.

It was too valuable to throw away, whoever he was. Or however he was.

Sylvester had faith that his partner would understand in time. He just hoped it would be soon. He wouldn't put up with watching them bicker like children for long.

"I don't... Whatever."

"Whatever?"

"Say what you want. I deserve it all and more, I know it."

Maybe those had been the right words, maybe Cynthia realized that this wasn't the time. In any case, silence returned to the alley. They could continue searching in peace for the time being.

They searched the alley for quite a while. For any clue, any small trace, even if it was a strand of fallen, wet, trampled hair. Anything to be able to say that the time hadn't been wasted, it had been worth it.

Unfortunately they didn't find shit.

"Well, I guess it's time to throw in the towel."

He hadn't paid much attention to the clock, but Sylvester was sure that enough time had passed to give up hope of finding anything. He knew it instinctively. Not everything had to do with his powers.

"We ended the training early for nothing. You must be frustrated."

Cynthia said the most obvious thing in the world, who knows why.

"I'll be damned, but what can you do?" He shrugged. There was nothing more to say, duty was duty. Any adult understood that at least.

But it didn't mean he had to like it.

It didn't mean, but there was nothing to do here.

No one had the right to complain. Some would anyway, as if he could or should figure it all out on his own, but he'd already done all he could.

They climbed onto the motorcycles, which rested at the end of the alley, and set off back to base.

There, perhaps, they could continue the training. Though admittedly, he wasn't in the mood for anything right now. More importantly, an uncomfortable feeling was beginning to grow deep in his heart for no apparent reason, like a poisonous plant spreading its roots, clinging to life even though it only brought evil into the world.

A feeling as if this had only just begun.

A feeling as if an end was near. He wasn't sure if it was the end of Cynthia, of the hope Ryan represented, of himself, or of humanity. It was even possible it was all of those things at once.

In any case, "something" was coming.

And no matter how much he told himself it was meaningless, that it was nothing more than a stupid, vague feeling, it still held a strange power over him. He trusted his instincts. Maybe it wasn't something irrational or inexplicable, but a detail he had processed without realizing it and therefore couldn't yet put into words.

Something that meant the end.