CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR - VAPOUR HALO, UNTRIED BLOSSOMS

Tom-Tom was lodging at the inn of the Bloodied-Hero. The same place she'd been heading to on the night she was interrogated, and the whole damn avalanche had started, if Tanner's memory-room was still accurate. It was a... well, she could see why Tom-Tom liked it. Not because it was an inn full of... fish and elaborate barricades and a strict 'no-father' policy, but just because it was cosy. Despite the name, it was probably one of the homeliest of the inns. The entire place smelled very strongly of ginger and cloves, and a huge copper pot of wine was heating slowly, assorted spices bobbing around gently in the shimmering red matter. There was the omnipresent cast-iron decoration, but the innkeeper had decorated it with an elaborate tea-cosy, embroidered with flowers, birds, all the things she didn't associate with the cartel. Like he was embarrassed at the ugly thing, and wanted something slightly prettier. An instinct she found highly sympathetic. The innkeeper, though, was one of those people who didn't wear his personality on his sleeve - he had the inn to do that for him. He was hairy beyond belief, with arms carpeted in black, wiry strands, a head that seemed to have a mane of similar hue, and eyebrows that were making a spirited attempt to reach across the counter and poke her in the chest. His face was strangely ape-like, all exaggerated features and excessive wrinkles, reinforced by a decent layer of muscle.

Odd chap. But good taste in wine. And Tanner was severely tempted to ask for some, just... well, to forget what she'd just done. Didn't, of course. It wouldn't work. Not unless she drank the whole pot in a few gulps - something she knew she was capable of, had known since she drained Marana's half-bottle with no great effort. Always how it worked. Set a precedent, and it all became so very much easier. The greatest shame had been overcome, the first reaction overpowered. Victory over one's own better nature. Politely disagreeing with Herxiel for the moment, sin wasn't the grease and unpleasant matter that built up around the engines of the soul, sin was a being of the possible. Sin was a being of precedent. Every deed one ever did was devoured by this creature, which grew fatter and stronger with each bite it took. Feed it insults given, feed it anger expressed, feed it apologies withheld. Nothing could ever be taken back, nothing truly retracted. At its best, you learned the face of this creature and learned how to stay away, how to use it to magnify shame, discourage approaching the same extremes.

At its worst, it could be that final push. The past pushing the present over the edge of a cliff, condemning the future evermore.

Either way.

The innkeeper glowered. And Tanner kept her face consciously flat, still wrestling with her own mind.

"I need to speak with Pyulmila. Or Tom-Tom. However you know her."

Disliked using both of her names, felt like she was insulting her in some way. But it showed familiarity. And to her relief, the innkeeper did blink in mild surprise. Good, thrown him off his rhythm. Presumably that was a good thing. His voice emerged in a low rumble, his lips barely moving.

"Not here."

Tanner didn't react for a moment. And her voice was as level as could be.

"She is. I need to speak with her about a matter of some importance. It doesn't relate to her father, to what she's currently doing. It relates to my own investigation."

"Told you. Not here."

Tanner could shove him aside and go upstairs. It wouldn't be hard. Not remotely hard. She'd seen two grown men fighting and had been able to end it with a single swing of her bag, there'd been no thought to it, not a second of hesitation. The instinct to hesitate in such situations had been sandblasted out of her by days and days of stress, and more incidents of violence than she usually saw in a year. They'd done this to her. All of them. She'd used to be so restrained, and now...

Now she was going to keep being restrained, because this fellow was perfectly nice, and he had a tea cosy covering up his cast iron badge of allegiance. Which, in her mind, was emblematic of civility. Plus, taking care of Tom-Tom, someone that was... hardly well-liked around here. Tanner kept her voice steady, gentle, reasonable.

"I need to speak with her. It's deeply urgent, and if I can't speak with her, I'll need to obtain information from someone else. Her father, for instance."

A tiny stiffening of his back. Barely perceptible. But there.

"All I need is information. I don't need her to do anything, most likely, nor do I need her to promise anything. If she'd rather I get that information from her father, or her old colleagues, I'll have to comply. But-"

Footsteps.

Yep.

Been listening in. Of course she had.

The woman trotted downstairs nervously, glancing from side to side as she went. Looked like she'd barely slept, but... there was a very slightly manic glint to her eyes that caught Tanner's attention. Every other time they'd met, Tanner had thought she had odd eyes. Preferred moving them to moving her head. Always made her look furtive and strange. Now, though... there was a sheen. And Tanner realised just how much duplicity usually lived there, how much submissive fear. Terrified of letting her act slip away, terrified of being find out, terrified of her father... now it was being overwhelmed by something quite different. Something that alarmed Tanner a little. Her voice was rapid and slightly higher than usual.

"What? What do you want?"

Tanner set down her bag.

"Could we talk in your room?"

"...fine. Thanks for trying to stop her, appreciated."

The innkeeper grunted, and Tanner nodded politely before following Tom-Tom upstairs to her current lodging. Small room, floral pattern on the sheets, an ashtray bursting with cigarettes burned down to the narrowest possible point, every scrap of smoke taken out of them. The bed was perfectly made, save for an indent where it seemed like Tom-Tom had been sitting all night. Hadn't slept. Put Tanner in the odd position of being the person who was better rested than someone else. The woman sat in the little indent, and refused to meet Tanner's eyes. Just stared dead ahead and clutched her own knees, waiting for whatever she was going to say. Anticipating her, like one did a natural disaster.

How impolite.

"I need to ask about the tunnels."

The eyes flicked up, and glared down Tanner's own. Defiance masking dread. Still the same Tom-Tom, she'd just committed to something, and that kept her... well, when there was no backing out, there was no way to go but forwards. No matter how painful it might be.

"You said this had nothing to do with my father, Tanner."

"It doesn't. But you... understand the tunnels, I presume. You can navigate through them."

"I'm not going back."

"I don't need you to-"

"And I'm not mapping them. No mapping, no going back, nothing. Can't betray my father. Can't. If I do, he'll kill me. You know he will. Please, just... don't make me betray him like that, it's bad enough as it is."

Tanner waited patiently until she seemed to settle down, flushing in embarrassment at her own words.

"I don't need maps, or guidance, or any sensitive information relating to the cartel's activities."

"Why do you call them the cartel?"

Tanner blinked.

"...well, a cartel is an arrangement between groups or people that... is intended to promote a mutual interest, typically by restraining competition. Felt appropriate."

"Why not cult? Why not gang? There's other words."

"Marana called them a cartel, once. Not even your group specifically, she was referring to... anyway."

"...Marana called them something, and now we're just the cartel."

"Who do you call yourselves?"

"The thing."

Tanner's face was very flat.

"The thing?"

"It's a euphemism. You 'talk to the boys', you 'head out for a bit', you 'do our sort of thing'. We don't have a name. Father never liked the idea, said it was stupid, they'd never had a name in Nalser, didn't want one now. Said... taking a name meant we were thinking like foreigners. Didn't like that."

She was rambling. The manic look in her eyes was only brightening. Tanner pushed through, hoping something remained on the other side of this.

"I don't need anything that would be too compromising. The tunnel network is old, I know that much. Dating to when the city existed. I need to know how far that network extends, if there's any hazards. How deep is it safe to go?"

Unexpected question, clearly. Tom-Tom clearly had to ponder this, clarity returning for a moment as she was forced to express a little rational thought.

"...how deep?"

"Yes. Has anyone ever... experienced an accident?"

She shrugged.

"Sure. Sometimes. Listen, this doesn't go beyond us, alright?"

"I'll... certainly keep it confidential, you won't be mentioned as a source in my judgements."

"Oh, wonderful. Wonderful. Very reassured. What exactly do I get out of this, Tanner?"

Didn't like her using her first name. This was an interrogation, not a social call. Call her judge, or even big lady, like some annoying people did. It made her feel like she wasn't here, someone else was, someone nicely mechanical and perfectly professional. Not a person, just a role, an empty skin filled with pine needles and ball bearings. Well.

"I was there when you were speaking last night."

Tom-Tom froze.

"You shouldn't be telling people about the mutants."

Tom-Tom's hands clasped onto her knees so tightly that her knuckles turned as white as the boundless dunes outside. Her voice was very low indeed.

"They deserve to know."

Tanner said nothing.

"Please don't tell him. He'll kill me."

"You'd be safest if you came with me. I could shelter you in the mansion, you wouldn't-"

"He'd see that as a hostage."

"But you said he'll kill you anyway if-"

Tom-Tom looked up, and said nothing at all. Just stared. The message was clear. Don't tell him. Don't point out my contradictions. If you agree, I'll talk.

Tanner nodded.

The woman with two names sighed.

"Fine. Yes, there's problems in the tunnels. They're old. I mean, not that many collapses, really... father actually got someone to examine them, surveyor came up to do some colonial work, father bribed him to do an extra job."

A pause. A slight flinch. Tanner could imagine what would happen to an outsider who looked upon the cartel's inner sanctum. Probably thrown off the boat on the way back south, if he was lucky.

"He found that... the tunnels were very, very stable. Foundation stone in the walls, keeps them going. Problem wasn't that, it was... uh... the word was 'tectonic', I think. Two problems. Earth moves around anyway. Tunnels are well-built, but they can twist, sometimes they get strained... you can tell when it's happening, means some tunnels are a bit wonky. Adjust pretty well, though. The other problem was the underground river."

Tanner removed some papers, writing everything down with detached smoothness, repetition soothing her mind. The woman opposite warmed to her theme, speaking faster, more animatedly,

"See, the mutants came in, way I heard it, invaded the city, killed everyone inside, and I mean everyone, drilled right down in the middle, tapped into a river. Kind that just builds up and up and up, see. Doesn't leach upwards, foundation stone stops it, that's why people build cities on top of these deposits. No contamination. But the river just stays there, doesn't really drain properly, not quick. So... mutants drilled down, and had a field day. Used it to grow bigger. Only way to make the big, the nasty mutants is to have a huge amount of pure contamination, nothing inside it or diluting it. And the stuff under cities is the purest around."

She licked her lips, voice growing hoarse - worn out from last night, straining to go on without breaking.

"So... turns out, draining it was bad for the earth around it. They drained most. I suppose they didn't drain it all, or they'd have... I don't know, I don't think they'd be coming back. But all that pressure going away meant the soil sagged a bit, corridors got all messed up. Surveyor said that he was asked to come up by the governor to examine that sort of thing, make sure that things weren't too unstable for the surface. Said that, broadly, just stay out of some places. Go out there, and you just had... total collapses, no point building, no point exploring."

Tanner hummed thoughtfully.

"Would some of those places be-"

"Around where you ran out, yes. Guess that's probably why that place is so dangerous, right? Governor always said it was, and not like there's anything out there in the winter anyway."

Why bother going to the snow-blasted wasteland anyway if there wasn't a very good reason to. The non-existent frozen rivers were just the cherry on top of an already dangerous cake. So... the governor had told everyone to steer clear. The surveyor had found the ground was deeply unstable. Was that it? Just... unstable ground, maybe that resulted in steam fissures? Why had Canima told her to head out there to have a look? Oh, gods, was he just trying to get her to sod off and die in the cold, get out of his hair for good? That'd be... a terribly clumsy way of doing it, really. Too clumsy. Even for someone experiencing as much stress as himself, what with losing his friend, getting an ultimatum, having to deal with mutants incoming, and whatever this mysterious secret was.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

"What else was this surveyor doing? Why did the governor bring him up?"

Tom-Tom shrugged vaguely.

"Think he was just... looking around, really. Making sure the soil was fine."

"Nothing in the hills, nothing to do with mining...?"

"Don't think so."

Tanner blinked.

"That was all? Have you... experienced any major problems with the soil?"

"Personally? No, not really."

The colony wasn't terribly old, but... it was old enough that these problems, if they existed, should've already been readily apparent, right? And the Great War, the draining of the river, that'd been years beforehand. Surely the problems would've already emerged, there wouldn't be a need for a surveyor, especially not if he was giving such... seemingly vague information. Why bring a specialist out temporarily unless you very much needed one, especially for a place like this where everything took weeks to arrive and probably cost a pretty penny to ship out? Plus, from what Tanner knew about this sort of thing, contractors brought out for this sort of job, where no other job could be done in the meantime, would insist on extra payment for all the work they were missing. A single bit of surveying could work out to months of pay as they went to and from the colony.

In short - not remotely worth it.

So what had he been doing?

Tom-Tom spoke suddenly.

"Wait, wait, I remember. I think. The surveyor was doing some drilling, remember that much. Drilling, surveying..."

"Drilling what?"

"Hole."

Tanner was a pinnacle of patience.

"A hole serving what purpose, exactly?"

"No clue. Probably examining the soil. I mean, he was just a surveyor, even father didn't think he was very important. He was right about the tunnels, go down too far and they became very unstable, not that we sent many people down. So, why doubt him about the rest?"

Complacency. A willingness to dismiss people if they weren't immediately relevant. The surveyor had been here for a very clear reason, but the cartel had just... placidly ignored him. Maybe this was in the early days when things were still more delicate, when there were multiple cartels competing with one another. Or, maybe it was a product of regular old ignorance, or, there was some internal difficulty going on which made the cartel willing to overlook this. Either way, they'd made a mistake. No, no, they'd... well, there was no point going out to the snow fields in the first place, not during the winter. Nothing to hunt, nothing to find, nowhere to go. So they never saw the steam fissures. So, they had reason to suspect the surveyor of anything odd. If Tanner hadn't gone out there herself, found the governor's words to be lies, heard a confirmation of the importance of the steam by Canima (if vaguely)... if she wasn't already primed for suspicion on this issue, she might've missed it herself. Not like it was very well-represented in the ledgers, would be very easy to just leave out.

To the cartel's credit, it would be easy to overlook this sort of thing.

"And... do you know where this drilling was going on?"

"Out in the snow fields, I suppose. Don't know for sure where."

Damn. Hm, could consult the ledgers, see... oh, she was an idiot. Total pillock. She had the governor's own ledgers at her disposal, the clear ones, likely devoid of the same level of censorship as everything else. Not designed to be obscured, not like the others. Could use those easily enough.

"Thank you, Tom-Tom. That'll be all."

Tom-Tom twitched.

"...you're still calling me that?"

Tanner blinked.

"Would you prefer Pyulmila?"

"...don't know. Either."

Tanner stared at her for a few moments, figuring out what to say. Tom-Tom looked back, and frankly, Tanner found it hard to see very many thoughts behind those eyes. More of... inclinations, chaotic and unrestrained, floating around in an impenetrable brainpan which resisted all forms of moderation or intrusion. No more ideas entering, and definitely no ideas generating organically. No, no, that was terrifically mean, and not befitting of a judge. Tanner reviewed her notes in silence, just trying to give herself a chance to think, to come up with more questions, any kind of response...

Nothing.

With a polite nod, she stood, nodded again, and turned for the door.

"...do you hate me?"

Tanner paused.

"Well..."

"I mean it. Do you hate me? I understand if you do. Cocked everything up."

"Lyur pushed you into elements of it. He confessed a great deal."

"Still. I promise, I didn't mean for anyone to die."

Tanner didn't say anything. She didn't... know what to say, really. Never did. Tom-Tom was just staring at her incessantly, like... like she saw something Tanner didn't. Seeing the slot in her life-history that Tanner conveniently happened to occupy, the motifs she satisfied. Something was shivering in her. Something that she didn't understand, and that deeply alarmed her. Tom-Tom was here in front of her, not... not even apologising, just saying she never meant to do anything. Not accepting responsibility, not really. Tanner felt a swell of anger, just for a second. If she grabbed Tom-Tom now, she could have her hauled up for manslaughter, among a whole litany of crimes related to... criminal activities, conspiracies, all that business. By all rights, Tom-Tom should be judged, because a girl had lost her father, a family had lost a son, Tyer... he had a sister and a lover, both of whom were now alone, Myunhen had been hung, people had died because she cocked up so catastrophically. Being tempted by someone else into being a criminal was... barely an amelioration, she was still performing criminal acts without someone threatening her into doing them. Her life had never been at risk. If she ignored Lyur, she'd have just kept on going, her life uninterrupted and unimpeded. And while the governor might've died, so many people would still live. So very many.

The world seemed to shiver around her.

A shimmer passed over the walls, like a heat haze. A haze that didn't fade, not really.

Wanted to lash out. Not sure what she'd do.

She felt lethal. She felt tight, her muscles bunching over bones until the bones seemed liable to snap under the pressure. Her back ached with tension. Her jaw was straining against every muscle that held it in place, kept it shut, kept her face as flat as could be. Kept imagining... imagining dogs. Junkyard dogs. Hunched over the bone piles, gnawing at them, stomachs dragging on the ground like swollen blisters, like pregnant sacs, swollen by hunger. Gnawing with blunted teeth, eyes bulging sightlessly from sockets. Imagined if a dog had been raised on nothing but the junkyard, treasured every scrap of gristle. Would it dream of meat? Just the shade of it, an evolutionary dream, red mists, glittering yellow fat, the ideal and essence. The first primal forms of the world, before experience could shape them like stone into a sculpture. Kept imagining the underground corridors of twice-dead flesh. A knife in the dark. Dead, cold eyes that made a mockery of law and reason and her. Hunting in the snow. The mutant. The mutant with ruptured eyes. She would outlive empires if she was clever enough, lucky enough. She would outlive Tanner, and Fidelizh, and every god riding on Tanner's back. Those ruptured eyes, in them the death of history.

Tom-Tom stared at her. Eyes manic with weariness and... other things.

Tanner was terrified. Angry. Paranoid. Terrified again. Her mind was migrating like a snow-crane lost from the flock, lured by steam. Vagrant snow-crane mind.

The paper before her seemed blank. Had she ever been writing?

Stop it. You're just a bit funny. You'll get better. Deep breath.

She'd endured this much. A judge would be expected to endure a little further. And... well, she'd almost died out in the snow after the tunnels, seen shadows crawling on the horizon. Just experiencing a flicker of that. Would pass. Must pass.

The shimmering on the walls stopped. The dancing images faded. Back again.

Tom-Tom stared at her, hands gripping her knees, back hunched as if she was bearing a great load. A second later, she broke eye contact, and her eyes dropped down to the bed, where they remained. A low voice emerged.

"Yeah."

A pause. The woman let out a long sigh.

"Yeah."

And that was all.

* * *

The mansion was... refreshingly familiar. Tanner warmed her hands by a freshly stoked fire, then got back to work in silence. Yan-Lam was nearby, but... Tanner didn't need her. Not now. She had a very precise idea of what needed to be found, and looked for it with the smoothness of someone well-accustomed to these stacks of papers. The governor's files were... ludicrously clear and concise. The sort of thing she expected from a well-oiled bureaucracy, not that impossible lists of meaningless numbers that made up the others. Idly, she noted that he'd... goodness, he used an automatic quill for these. Could tell from some of the angles of the letters, the clarity of the font. She imagined the governor hunched in that dark, comfortable study beneath the earth, surrounded by hidden tunnels that contained the thing that would one day kill him, scribbling away much as she had. And she was about to enter those same tunnels. The governor settled onto her back, digging invisible fingers through her flesh, coiling around her spine, locking her into a position of responsibility and duty. Trying to infuse her with all the certainty he'd had, or she thought he'd had. Couldn't imagine someone doing all the things he'd done without a hell of a lot of certainty, that was for sure. An almost delirious quantity of self-belief.

That, at least, didn't make it over. She remained as doubtful as ever.

There were, indeed, lists of contractors. Clear, no referencing needed. Lists of theurgists, engineers, doctors specialised in something necessary, random individuals who just had to do small, highly refined jobs. Not many, admittedly. Easy enough to search. Checking the dates... there. Surveyor from Fidelizh, brought out for... surveying. Ground work, making sure nothing was about to collapse. Just as Tom-Tom had said. But there was some cross-referencing to... ah. Requisitions from work crews. A few labourers brought out to help him with his duties, to transport some of the heavier machinery. But when she cross-referenced the labourers with the migration records... temporary. Very temporary. All of them came in just a month or so before the surveyor, like a gentleman sending ahead his impedimenta to meet him, be it luggage, be it family, be it workers. The gap was sufficient that, if she didn't have a very good knowledge of how the archives worked, she wouldn't have noticed, wouldn't even have found it worthwhile to check. Sleepless nights and sunless days paying off. Few months after the surveyor was done, they went back with a regular old transport. So... requisition for a work crew from the city. Duration of time was fairly narrow. Purpose was... vague. Might be hauling luggage, might be setting up drilling equipment.

But... drilling equipment, that'd be hard to bring up... shipping logs made no mention of it. So, local requisition. No forms for that she could see, but, if she checked the facilities that had the right equipment, then had a look at production statistics broken down to the smallest possible increment, she could just about... right there. The drills were taken then, there was a noticeable dip as the workers had to make do with less equipment, and then bang. Back up to normal, within normal margins of error. Coincidence, possibly, but it was a start. So, heading out... then, snap it into a timetable she was building of when he requisitioned people... and there, when he applied for expenses, indicating periods when he returned home... ah-ha. He'd gone out and come back a few times in the period when the drilling equipment was taken. Little trips to survey the landscape, then to handle it, then heading back, and... check the gate logs, and gods this was easier, there was more information here than she knew what to do with...

This felt almost innocent. This felt like... she was back at the start of the investigation, just trying to do her job, committed to her work, no thoughts of extinction, no thoughts of cartels, just trying to find a murderer. That was it. Now she was dealing with more. The longer things went on, the more complex they became, the more everyone was lashed together by the same net of intrigue, misery and complication. It was like they were all getting contaminated. Most colonies did end up contaminated, had to be burned down. Hinterland colonies weren't built over permanent deposits of foundation stone, so eventually the soil turned rotten, the fields turned carnivorous, the walls of houses festered and the bodies of animals could decay without a single carrion bird coming to eat them. Terrified of the contamination. When no more birds could be seen in the sky, when no insects chirruped at night, then it was a lost cause. Had to burn it all down and run. It wasn't a matter of inviting the mutation, just a matter of lasting as long as possible before running away and hunkering down where it was safe and sterile. Wait for the prospectors to find another likely site.

But when there was plenty of foundation stone to keep them safe... well, only thing to contaminate was each other.

Her vision wavered a little, strained by weariness and stress... and for a second she thought she could see... see people as they were.

People were floral.

When alone, they hardened into spores, into seedlings, the tiny droplets of pollen that could float easily on the breeze. Drifted in isolation. Found their way to new places. And sprouted. Sprouted in greater and greater numbers, more and more and more of them. A field of human flowers, petals like tongues, stalks like neck-veins, with ruby-red haemolymph pulsing sluggishly through every frond and feeler. They grew, and grew... and their roots expanded, long roots of bone and keratin, reaching around one another, embracing, forming a perfect carpet of living matter, stretching over uncountable miles...

Then they started to grow too much. The taller flowers starved the smaller flowers of sunlight. Bone-roots wrapped around the neck-veins of stalks and choked them, pollen filled the air and made it harder to breathe, petals spread so far and so wide that they left no sight of dirt behind them, allowed no other life in their wake. Strong roots delved deeper, thirsty for more water, and other roots spread wider, devouring yet more landscape. Aquifers drained as roots with mouths plunged into them, rivers turned jaundice yellow with pollen dust, and when rains came not a single drop passed through the hungering carpet of fleshly petals. Growing on great beds of bone, killing the trees and drinking the air, living in great blazes of white heat from an unfiltered sun. Glistening gelatin, undifferentiated flesh, lingering in great heaps where the flowers crushed themselves together in briars too great to imagine. Strange aberrants and mutants and failed prototypes lingering amongst the field, things that chewed at the roots of others and yearned for things other than the sun or the water, and the others bound so tightly all they could see was the marching passage of toothy roots, fangs like lampreys, petals glistening with black oil and hissing sibilantly into the stagnant air that shimmered...

Eventually it all had to burn. Turn it to ash, fertiliser for the next batch. To crush it down to coal in the dark places of the world. Or simply to let it rot and for new things to grow on the great brown plains. And more spores would emerge from the wreckage, to seek newer places. Buoyed by the wildfires that consumed their parents.

Alone once again.

She knew this was nonsense. An attempt at philosophy from someone who was bad at it. But... so long around this place. Seeing more and more people dragged in, changed, killed, the whole atmosphere soaking in conspiracy, it just... she wondered how any human could deal with it. It was the same feeling she had when Eygi managed to just... pop out and immediately find friends, arrange a place to eat in moments, engage in flawless conversation without a second's delay. Basic incomprehension of how person could do that, consistently and perfectly. How did she never get tired? How did she get people to depend on her so much? How did she manage timing? Who'd tuned the clockwork of her soul to such a precise rhythm?

And how did someone manage to... be in a place like this, surrounded by intrigue, everyone plotting and lying, everything twisting... she felt like she was going mad. The light of the snow had stabbed into her eyes, and now it lurked in the cones, making things shimmer, making insects crawl over everything. It felt like she was surrounded not by humans, but by something which wore human skin, but was purely designed to... to do whatever this was. The functions of a machine she didn't understand. Her heart beat faster. Her skin prickled with sweat. And for a moment she saw these flesh-flowers pushing through the floorboards, saw them clambering over the windows to steal the sun, saw them reaching downwards to gnaw at snow... heard them singing out there in the endless glittering dunes, too bright for her to look at for long. Fields of red and pink and air sluggish with yellow pollen and walls heaving as flowers swelled under the wallpaper, tongue-petals lapping at the air, buds shaped like eyes forming and staring at her blindly, a feeling of something crawling under her skin...

She needed to stop.

Governor on her back. Mother on her back. Father on her back. Lodge on her back. Black networks of witchcraft. Gods and gods and gods and gods. The cape, imagine the cape, imgining it forming a membrane like the tail of tadpole, imagine it filling with haemolymph and hardening, imagine it bristling with buffalo fur. Imagine it as her hide. Remove it, and she was skinless and raw. With it, she was complete.

Expectation. Restraint. A wasp is most beautiful in amber, and an eel is most beautiful when infused with purpose.

Her stomach had a quick spasm. But she ignored it.

Turned her attention back to the sterile pages, ignoring the feeling of something slithering over her skin, like the flowers were still here, roots spreading to nibble gently at her with manifold teeth, eye-buds staring at the snow and jerking with insect agonies, the grey watery matter of the brain foaming up like sap and dripping down to her skin where it lay like leeches or slugs or the issue of organic rot and when she squinted she saw the shadow of ruptured pupils at the corner-.

Stop it. Right now. Right. Now.

She was just going peculiar. Just going peculiar. Stress and... snow-blindness. Once she was done, she would be normal, all this would drain, it would become a strange object in her memory-room, to file away so she could focus on obeying orders until she was cold and peaceful in the ground. Maybe a week from now. Two, at most. No more thought. No more being. All deeds resolved. All debts paid. Her ledger balanced and closed.

Took a moment, but reality resumed. And she felt normal. Mostly. Tired, hungry, stressed, and so far beyond home...

Work, idiot.

Right... right. Right. The papers. Her quill flew, click-click-click, working away to compile everything. Gate guards. Gate guards observed them coming and going... correlated then up, and... ah. Well. This worked. Everything matched up. Labourers noted as leaving, surveyor noted as leaving, coming back every so often, likely to deliver a report of some kind... there was a paper trail here that proved he was out there, he was going there and back and there and back. Visiting something more than a temporary work-crew, this was a construction effort. And... there it was. The discrepancy. The requisition for a work-crew ended on a certain date. The gate logs recorded these labourers returning.

But the production numbers at facilities where drilling equipment had been taken were still low. Everywhere the labourers were requisitioned from was still low. And if she checked the expense reports... the surveyor was still requesting the same amount of money that he did when operating a work crew in the snow fields.

Someone didn't want anyone to know in the future that the work going on out there took longer than a week or so. It took closer to a month, if she followed the discrepancy to its conclusion.

More than just drilling out a core from the ground to examine the soil. Much, much more.

She drew out a map... marked out the snow field, the forbidden area during the nastier parts of winter. Rest of the year, fine. Winter... never. Yan-Lam brought her more tea, and she drank a cup in a single gulp. Closer, closer... timetable-wise. Assume the surveyor had to walk there and back. Put together some rudimentary calculations, figure out how fast a man could walk, and how long it'd take to get back to the colony. Then, assume he wouldn't want to be away from his work for very long. So, that reduced the area he could've gone to. Range of choices diminished. Now, assume that if he was going to do anything, he'd want to do it far beyond the city walls - harder to say exactly how far this would be, but she could make an estimate. Remove open spaces, assume he'd be working near hills - sheltered from prying eyes and from the elements. Plus, this was where she remembered the steam vent being, though she couldn't be exact.

The range was even narrower.

She hummed...

Realised what she had to do.

It... was annoying, to put it extremely mildly. Annoying to the point of... no, she'd need to be less subtle this time, nuts, she'd thrown away that ash, too... but if she'd kept it the mutant would literally never leave her alone.

There was an area out there which might well be over an emptied underground river. There was a massive drilling operation out there conducted in secrecy. Didn't take a genius to figure out what was going on, maybe. And if she factored in all the discrepancies in resources and equipment from the rest of the colony's existence... yeah, she could see the outlines of the secret crystallising, the thing Canima didn't want to reveal to her, no matter what.

Meaning, this place might well stink of contamination.

And if she came to think of it... maybe that was why Lantha had gone there. Nowhere else, nowhere more likely. Said she liked the heat, but why approach from that angle specifically to begin with?

Unless mutant instincts were making her want to go closer, infusing her with hunger she wasn't yet ready to recognise, ready to satisfy, ready to devote herself to. Final surrender, really. Giving up on the most basic impulses of hunger, converting to a new diet, an unnatural diet, looking at all the things evolution demanded she do and rejecting them wholesale.

Tanner, as much as she hated to admit it, needed her tracker dog. That awful, awful creature that had eaten ash from her glove and would gladly devour her own kind if it gave an advantage, with ruptured eyes and four-jointed fingers and a crown of antennae-antlers...

Might as well.

Tanner looked up at Yan-Lam. The girl was wide awake once more, shaking slightly - ah. Coffee. She'd downed a whole percolator of the stuff, just to stay awake. Not for long, at least. Once this was done, Tanner intended to tell her, politely, to go to sleep and stay in bed until she was completely human once again.

"...could you fetch me Sersa Bayai? I need to ask him for some help with something."

"Yes, miss. Is it... something to do with-"

"Almost. Almost. Just... have to go on a quick expedition out to the snow fields again. Need some advice. Need some help."

"If you like, I can-"

"No. No, it's fine. Just fetch him, or ask one of the soldiers to fetch him - don't go outside, the snow's too deep."

"Yes, miss."

A pause.

"...are you well, miss?"

Tanner looked up. She felt ragged. Raw. Lethal, in a sense. Felt like she was being flayed downwards. Not sure what lay underneath it all. The thing of sinful precedent was nibbling at her earlobe, parody of a Fidelizhi god. Snow-light danced in her corneas.

"I'm well."

And with that, she got to work getting into her protective gear.

No idea what she was about to find.

But she felt like she was close.

And good thing, too.

No idea how long her will to continue would hold out. Every muscle had a limit, and when it broke that limit, it was damaged, strained, even torn. But when it healed, it would be stronger. Same with injected drugs, to her understanding - she'd read a little on seeing Marana's condition. You found new veins, allowed old ones to recover, reinflate, deal with the damage inflicted by constant injections. Proper rotation could keep you going for some time without becoming a strung-out creature with a collapsing biology. Brains... brains were the same, too. But they didn't heal so quickly. Burn through the muscle fibres of the brain, send fire through those cerebral veins... and eventually they burst, collapsed, tore. And when they did, they didn't repair. You repaired a muscle by not using it, you repaired a vein by not injecting into it.

How could you stop thinking? How could you make your brain just... stop, for a while, to let it all heal again?

She could feel it now. The fire. The rushing chemical catastrophe. The slow inch towards collapse.

Twenty three, and she was not as resilient as she sometimes seemed. Large and powerful, but her brain was still mostly normal. Broke like everyone else's.

Stress. Just stress. Coward. Get over yourself, move on, work.

The muscle fibres of her brain were stretching.

No idea until something snapped.

Another cup of tea downed in a single unhesitating gulp.

And when Sersa Bayai came in, she only had one thing to say.

"I need you to help me refine some contamination."