CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE - POROUS MANSE

Entering the house was as simple as going through the unlocked kitchen door. Silence all around. Ideally, she'd have a gas mask on the creature, something to... no, it was a silly idea, trying to disguise it as a normal human. A second of observation would prove that wrong. Nothing about the creature was normal. Still. Marana had dispersed the guards. Reserved the second floor. And now, she was waiting at the door of the kitchen, keeping a lookout. Her eyes immediately widened at the sight of the creature, and she slipped her gas mask on without a word. Tanner followed her as she left, dragging the mutant behind her, feeding her little treats of contaminated ash. Remarkable, how... enduring contamination could be, once you got it in sufficient quantities. Pervaded so much of the body that even burning couldn't wholly remove it. Either way. Her glove was almost wholly stained grey at this point, coated with stuff even that rasping tongue couldn't get out. She'd probably surrender the glove to the mutant, when she was done with it. Either that, or burning. No other option. She stole through the mansion like a thief, following Marana's passage. The older woman had no shoes on, and her feet were absolutely noiseless. The mutant had an eerie silence, an animal silence, the sort of absence that characterised an animal right before it pounced. She could see it moving, saw those four-jointed fingers resting on the floor, but never did she hear a single whisper, no matter how strongly her body told her she should.

Unease festered. And she felt clumsy with her movements, ungainly with her sounds. Even her breathing felt too loud. Yan-Lam had been instructed to run interference for the upstairs of the house. If someone was there, waiting to have a meeting of some sort, then she was to leave a certain candle burning, and... extinguished. Safe. Canima never left his office anyway, and had sent away his assistants. There was no-one up there but him, planning things out. Like Tanner during the depths of her investigation. There was no-one he could truly trust, no-one he could confide in... for a second, she felt a flash of sympathy for the obstructive old man. Secretive, irritating, frightening, but... not without sympathetic qualities. Kept her eyes locked on Marana as she went along, just to remind herself that she wasn't alone with this creature, that she had... someone. Canima didn't. In a way, she thought Vyuli didn't, surrounded as he was by violent criminals. And Tom-Tom definitely didn't, if Lyur had been able to get her to blunder so badly without anyone to stop her. Hell, most of the town was probably achingly lonely. Families either non-existent or left behind in civilised areas. A colony devoted to regulating every form of interaction.

Gods, never realised how lonely this place must be. Probably because she... usually quite liked those sort of conditions, with isolation, regulated social encounters, plenty of work, all that business. But when catastrophes began to crawl over the horizon like woodlice from beneath a cupboard... well. She found herself grateful for Marana, Yan-Lam, and Bayai. Even if she was a poor friend, she... liked having them around.

The study door opened smoothly for them.

And they entered into the warm interior, with the crackling fire, the rich carpet, the familiar piles of ledgers that had become strangely constant companions through all of this - solid data that grounded all the madness. Tanner slipped in, breathing heavily through her gas mask... and Yan-Lam backed away immediately from the door that she'd opened, eyes wide at the sight of the unhooded mutant. The teeth, the fluid joints, the eyes, the horns, the eyes... she slipped her own gas mask on immediately, the thing almost comically large on her head. Tanner gave no pleasantries, no questions after her health. Had to get on with it. She paused in the centre of the waiting room... and screwed the top back onto the urn.

For a moment, the mutant was more concerned with getting scraps of ash from her gloves. The low rasp of an unnatural tongue against hardened leather entered the air for a moment, hanging heavily between all of them... and then slowed... and then ceased.

The mutant had finished her meal.

Now she wanted more.

The creature slowly... slowly...

Stood up.

Always been capable. Just liked the reduced profile of all-fours, the stability of it. And when she stood to her full height, the tattered remnants of a blue silk dress fluttering about her muscled frame... she came up to Tanner's neck. Taller than Marana by far. And the mutant stared into Tanner's eyes, completely silent. No emotion visible. But the question was obvious.

Where's the rest.

Tanner clutched the urn tightly. It was screwed shut, but... she needed a better of dealing with it. Quietly, she reached for her truncheon, and drew it out. Did nothing else. Go on. Make the calculations. The mutant's eyes flickered around, examining everything she could. The room, the other inhabitants, the urn, the truncheon, Tanner... never glanced at something twice. She leaned closer, though. Leaned in, and took a deep sniff at Tanner's gas mask. Not just that. The horns around her neck, they... they twitched, like antennae. Tasting the air, reading the environment. Understanding everything that deserved being understood. Her lips slowly drew back from her teeth, revealing... gods, she had more than one row of them. All hooked. Like fishing hooks - designed to pierce and hold, to never let the prey go, where every struggle dug the hook in deeper. Only way to escape was to snap the line, to voluntarily worsen the pain and hope that freedom lay on the other side of the ordeal. If this creature bit her, she'd never let go until she had her meal, or she was dead. And there was no line to break. A bead of sweat trickled down the back of her neck, and the mutant immediately circled around, leaning closer... sniffing, sniffing... no, circled back around. Tanner could see the gears turning behind those ruptured pupils. Tanner had ceased to provide the ash. But the hunger of the mutant wasn't sated. It never would be. So, where was the next meal coming from? Was Tanner contaminated, hm? Could the mutant devour her instead, or scrape ash from her skin?

Evidently not. So, ash gone. Tanner not worth eating. What now?

Get the ash back.

The creature made no outward motions of aggression. But Tanner could taste it in the air. The iron-scented breath of someone with the mind of a murderer. This creature would kill her, if it thought there was a good reason. A single hand reached out, tentative, heading for the urn... Tanner drew it back, and raised the truncheon a little. The leash around her wrist tightened slightly as the creature flexed, preparing for a fight. If she wouldn't give the ash back, then she needed to be compelled to do so.

The creature pulled against the leash. Tanner heard Marana intake breath with a low hiss, too tense to unclench her teeth.

Tanner pulled back, feeling a hint of adrenaline burst into her blood, warmer and stronger than the half-bottle of wine. A sharp snap of focus and purpose, compared to the low-simmering coal that had long-since gone out. Not once did she break eye contact. Mutants weren't animals, they didn't associate eye contact with aggression. So many behaviours in animals and humans were social things. Expressions. Eye contact. Body language. So much was designed for interrelation, and were done automatically. Tanner was bad with expressions, bad with eye contact, bad with body language - made her seem off-putting and stoic, according to Vyuli. Mutants weren't like her. It wasn't that they didn't understand these things. They simply saw no use. They weren't social, they were a species of cannibals, their prime food source was always going to be squabbled over. No friends, only temporary allies. So why bother developing means of communicating peaceful intent, when there would never be peace? Why bother with signs of aggression, when they were always aggressive?

Go on. Calculate.

It was figuring out if it could kill her. If it was worth the rest of the ash. The truncheon, her size, the force she was applying on the leash. Consider all the above. Consider that the mutant was in her territory, with two others. The calculations filtered through...

And she stopped pulling on the leash.

Stared blankly at Tanner, red hair seemed to glow in the dim light from the fireplace. Figuring out the next course of action. Ash was inaccessible. Tanner was both inedible and too tough to fight without losing more than she gained. Head back to the other mutant, go back to the stalemate? Hm. Would need to go through the colony, without Tanner acting as potential protection - if the mutant could figure out that concept.

It sniffed.

And dropped to all fours again. Head pressed against the carpet. Sniffing a few more times, her horn-antennae twitching nervously. Maybe she'd stop, maybe she'd find nothing...

She was moving.

And thus, Tanner's plan came together.

When the governor had died, there'd been a mutated cat - clearly mutated - nearby, eating a scrap of something. A mutant, unless it was in the rare category of being young and not too affected in the brain, would only hunger for contaminated matter. So, where had this mutant found that matter? It was a long shot - all of this was, and she had other angles to explore if necessary. So, a mutant had found a decent-sized chunk of contaminated matter near the governor's body. It'd been red, too - not a fish, not something that might have just been accidentally brought in. Her memory-room's acuity serving her loyally once again, preserving the memory in precise detail. So, reviewing the evidence: the governor's body had been moved, the condition of his coat and so on were inconsistent, his dress sense was askew. Meaning, he'd died, and then he'd been dressed in clothes from his own wardrobe. She could assume that the clothes had been taken beforehand as preparation for the murder, that they were taken away and he was dressed at whatever location he'd been murdered in, but Sister Halima had warned her to start with the simplest solution, then work outwards to complexity. Gods, she wished she could explain this to Yan-Lam instead of remaining silent for the sake of security, the girl would appreciate the logic. Presumably.

So. Assume the simplest solution - he was murdered in the house, and someone dressed him up to make it seem like he'd been wandering about outdoors, then placed his body in the town. Distancing him from the mansion. The mansion had tunnels which led to the outside, far enough that Dyen could be smuggled from a cell in the mansion to the cold-house labyrinths, where he was safe with the cartel. It wasn't illogical, then, that the governor could be removed from this place without anyone seeing. Remaining underground all the while, using routes designed for their secrecy. The killer had, in this simplest solution, murdered him, raided his wardrobe, then smuggled out the body through the tunnels. And while outside, a mutant had conveniently found a piece of contaminated matter at that exact moment, and based on the size, hadn't been working away at it for long. Canima wasn't talking, he wouldn't reveal something like this if he knew anything, because... well, if he hadn't thus far, why start now?

So, she had to find the place where the governor died. And while it was a long-shot... contamination could only be cleared out with fire, with a hell of a lot of time. Little hints could always linger. A detector had only so much precision or sensitivity, it was best used while in the open air. But a mutant...?

A mutant's evolution was always directed towards gathering more contamination, processing more contamination, and surviving long enough to do so. That was their purpose, and they specialised heavily in it.

It was a long shot. A hunch of startlingly weak foundation. But she had an idea. And damn it, the colony might collapse tomorrow, she had nothing better to do than this.

The mutant sniffed around, not nibbling at anything, not... ah, there she went. Towards the study, almost dragging Tanner. Marana followed, pistol in hand. Could be a trap, after all, the mutant separating them and then killing them one by one - good move to follow. Tanner braced her truncheon just in case of any funny business...

The creature entered the study, still on all-fours, clambering over the carpet, sniffing at the desk... and it froze.

Stared at the floor.

And started to explore the boards with long, eerily flexible fingers.

She'd found something. She'd found something.

Tanner glanced around... called to Yan-Lam to fetch something. The chambermaid trotted off while Marana took her job guarding the door from intruders at Tanner's command - no complaint, and her eyes were bright with temporary sobriety. Fear shocking her out of her reveries. The mutant was trying to get below the floorboards. Oh, gods, oh... she should've... the keys, the desk, the governor had left his entire desk unlocked, maybe he'd been in this place when he died, that was why he'd not locked them up. A very weak piece of evidence on its own, but in context, with the mutant girl sniffing around the ground like a pig hunting for truffles, nails sinking into the carpet as she explored the possibility of tunnelling... oh, she was immediately growing a little discouraged, seeing it as too much effort. Tanner unscrewed the urn and idly fed her a little more ash, and the mutant gladly lapped it up, though cautiously, expecting some sort of trick. None. It was a genuine reward.

Yan-Lam returned.

A heavy hammer in hand. The heaviest in the mansion, a proper sledgehammer. The girl struggled under its weight... and her eyes were locked on the mutant, still gorging herself on toxic ashes. Stared... gods, she must be feeling something odd, looking at someone with such distinctly Rekidan features - red hair, a certain facial structure - twisted in something... abnormal. A sudden flicker of something odd ran through Tanner. The blue silk dress, the fact that she was here... this girl had probably been a noble. This girl, or someone like her, had once owned Yan-Lam's ancestors. Maybe not her father, but definitely her grandfather or grandmother. Owned Tal-Sar, too. And here she was, dress in tatters, gnawing at ash for a hint of advantage in the endless mutant race to nowhere and nothing.

And neither of them knew. The mutant had no mind for things of that sort. And Yan-Lam had never been taught about her family's history. A pointed act of severance, a final death knell for the city of Rekida. Like Tanner's own ink-and-paper self - the shadow of Rekida was dying, day by day, memory by memory. Soon, no-one would know what happened here, and those who managed to escape it would have their final victory. Even this mutant... one day, her hair might fall out, or turn a different colour. Her face would be mottled with mutations. Her dress would succumb to rot. And she would be unrecognisable as a Rekidan.

Tanner nudged the mutant aside, and Yan-Lam backed away from it, still staring at the hair and the dress. Realising what it was, even if only to a minimal degree.

Tanner hefted the hammer.

Leaned back.

Braced her torso...

And swung.

The floorboards snapped immediately, others groaning. Splinters flew like spines, needles fired by a creature desperate to protect itself.

Again.

More floorboards bursting apart, a growing rent in the floor, an eye, a splinter-toothed mouth, a gaping wound. The mutant barely paid attention, content to eat in the corner, while Yan-Lam put her hands over her ears and watched with unrestrained awe.

Again.

Her muscles were pure and perfect, she had nothing but this, and adrenaline flowed through her from top to bottom. The floor snapped... and a shower of sparks emerged. Tanner froze. Sparks? What was... oh ho. Metal. Mechanisms. A sudden thought - crumbs, was this theurgic, or... no, no, looked mundane, no glowing, no oddness. The hourglass-device in the governor's safe seemed unrelated, then. She crouched down, examining the wreck...

Trapdoor. Mechanical. Meant to retract smoothly. Concealed by the carpet, which hid any distortions. And if she followed... yes, the actual opening would be hidden by the desk. The door could be locked, and almost all business happened outside of this place, meaning that no-one would be around long enough to notice any irregularities. Even herself, she'd had free reign of the place, and only recently had really worked in the office, rather than the waiting room. Cunning. She gestured for another tool - a crowbar. Wedged it into the metal, and hauled, her muscles seemed... well, she'd heard of muscles screaming, but her muscles seemed to purr under her skin, smoothly contracting and relaxing, operating exactly as they were meant to.

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Relieved at being put into the binary state of success or failure. No long-term thought, just victory over the immediate goal. Pleasingly clarifying - the snow had been nice, the cold had been equally sharpening, but this was something else entirely. Hoo.

Kept wrenching until she had a hole... and as if on cue, the mutant licked her fingers clean, and scuttled downwards as if this was just a regular day. The certainty of an animal following her instincts. Tanner watched as she vanished into the dark, her movements silent, but her nose always sniffing away for contamination. Quietly, Tanner followed, once the hole was large enough to receive her. No, wait - candle. Needed one. She licked her lips slightly, dry from lack of use.

"...could you fetch me a candle, please?"

Yan-Lam was frozen in place, and Tanner could see Marana struggling to peer from her position guarding the main door.

"A candle, Yan-Lam?"

The girl murmured to herself, not quite aware.

"He was... hiding this?"

"It'd seem so."

A pause.

"...explains the small office, I suppose."

"Explains why he always locked the door while he was working. Didn't want people bursting in."

Quite. The girl blinked, coming back to herself, and hurried away without saying another word. Returned with a candle, lit and flickering, and Tanner descended below with only a small nod of thanks. Almost didn't feel right, talking too much. Not in the presence of a mutant. Tanner kept her truncheon close, ready for anything... the passage down was long and straight, involving a steep thing that seemed closer to a ladder than a set of stairs. Must be leading through the walls themselves, descending deeper into the earth, below even the cellars. Eerie, and not particularly pleasant, given the straining sounds the ladder made when Tanner rested her weight on it. And at the bottom... a small passage, hewn in the rock of the foundations, the same durable stuff that allowed this landscape to be riddled with tunnels. A door at the end, open where the mutant had pushed it. Tanner followed cautiously, truncheon ready...

The governor's secret chamber.

And at first glance, she knew he'd been murdered in here.

It wasn't a gore-slicked nightmare. But there were signs. A table with its previous contents fallen nearby, flung free by some sort of impact. A spray of blood across the floor, small droplets of dull brown matter. The mutant had scuttled to a corner, where she was sniffing around curiously. Tanner raised her candle, getting a better look... gods. She'd been right about the ledgers - they were needlessly obfuscating. The illusion of transparency, with the actual goal being to make it easy to hide everything away from anyone who didn't have days and days to spend going over everything with a fine-toothed comb, never sleeping or eating during the process. She'd wondered how the governor had ever managed to work with that kind of arrangement. Well. The chamber supplied an answer. All around were files with indigo covers, leather-bound books of astounding thickness and plainness. The migration files for each colonist. The simply arranged catalogues of every little going-on. All she was missing were the missing pages from the migration ledger, and she'd have every last bureaucratic secret spelled out in front of her. So... why had those files been in his safe upstairs? Why hadn't he just worked down here?

...the stairs. The ladder. He was old. His body was probably less flexible than it used to be. Quite possible that he had to take things with him, just so he could reference them later. Couldn't afford to traipse up and down and up and down all day whenever he needed something.

And that thought represented itself in the quality of this place - it was a proper office, really. Not a dingy pit at all, nor a glorified storage cabinet, this was a place to work. No wonder the desk had been oddly empty, this was where actual business happened. There was an old-fashioned card table in lieu of a desk, and more card tables scattered around to serve as receptacles for the endless papers. Bookshelves heaving with files. Warm lights scattered around, unlit and dusty from lack of use. A floor of dark wood, richly varnished and gleaming slightly in her candlelight. The ceiling was dark, yes, but punctuated with small vents. Could see how that would work - the mansion had drainpipes and whatnot, easy enough to conceal ventilation with them. Seemed to be carrying rain, but was in fact keeping this place properly aired out. It felt... cosy, for lack of a better word. Sturdy metal heater in the centre, little comforts scattered around - an ornate samovar, a set of engravings of various city scenes, an old-fashioned gun mounted on the wall, scarred from use in battle... the office above was nothing, this was the real deal. And if she ignored the little droplets of blood, the slight mess, the... ah. She could see it on the wall.

The governor's death mask.

Pounded into the stone over and over and over until he'd died. Staining it with matter that had remained preserved in the cold. A half-moon of red and brown matter, with a few strands of hair mixed in for good measure. The circle where his eye had been, where the bone had been shattered by repeated impacts... it seemed to stare at her with no small amount of judgement.

Took you long enough.

Tanner stood very still indeed, struggling to tear her eyes away from the greasy mark with the accusing un-eye. The mutant was still snuffling around, and slowly, carefully, Tanner started to search. Migration files, check. Catalogues of everything, check. And if she looked under this filing cabinet... right, the keys to the governor's desk. Fallen from his pockets during his death, rolled under here, and the person who'd removed him hadn't managed to find them, or had simply forgotten they existed. Sloppy. She pocketed them regardless of how useful they might be, and kept looking around.

Within a few minutes, she had the sum of the place.

And she had no evidence of a killer.

How had the killer gotten inside? How had... surely there must be another tunnel of some sort, another...

The mutant was snuffling. Proving her worth once again, validating Tanner's violation of the law. She was hunting under cupboards, under tables, peering quietly at everything she could. She had the delicate movements of an animal, too - that strange facility which allowed cats to jump around without breaking anything, or for dogs to bound across whole rooms without knocking a single vase off a single table. Not all animals, but the polite ones. She didn't seem to move anything if she didn't need to, and Tanner felt an irrational surge of envy for that kind of delicacy. Well. Might as well let her work. Had the ashes, in case she needed another bribe. But the ashes would be unnecessary, as it turned out - she was eager to hunt, practically ignored Tanner completely, even slithering close enough to touch at one point without so much as a sidelong glance.

Go on. Hunt.

Yan-Lam poked her head down, eyes wide behind her gas mask. Marana followed suit, claiming that she'd blocked up the door with a chair to stop anyone getting in. All three of them watched the mutant girl work away, sniffling and snuffling, even licking a few things to make sure there was no sustenance. The remains of the governor held her interest for only a second - no contamination to devour. Yet her resolve to search never diminished, not once. Tanner stared...

And the creature came to a stop.

Reached cautiously to a filing cabinet... drew out the drawer with fingers that became eerily human-like for a moment...

And yanked something that had been caught in the hinge.

A scrap of red cloth. Red.

Red.

The same as the thing the mutant cat had been chewing.

The mutant girl, here in the present, sniffed at the thing, and promptly gave it a few tentative licks... the subsequent opening of her mouth told Tanner all she needed to know, and she promptly opened the urn. The cloth was dropped. The mutant scuttled over, and received a bribe of tremendous proportions. At this rate, she'd have gone through the urn before the night was out. Lantha giving herself to the colony, body and mind. Tanner picked her way around the mutant greedily stuffing her face, and picked up the cloth with her gloves, refusing to touch it with her bare skin. Anything a mutant wanted to eat was probably unsanitary. The cloth was small, fitting easily into the palm of her hand. Ragged where it had been torn off by a slamming door, and generally in very poor condition. Stained heavily, threadbare at points... this wasn't something that was treated with the utmost respect. That being said, the cloth wasn't... poor. She looked over at Marana, who was examining some of the files.

"Can you..."

The woman immediately plucked it away, examining it carefully. Tanner winced at how she made... contact with it, no gloves. And she'd seen the mutant nibbling at it...

"Hm. Good cloth, very good cloth. Shame about the condition, really. Looks... wool, I'd think, and high-grade. Soft to the touch, very fine strands... this is the sort of thing I'd expect to see on a fashionable coat, really."

Tanner took it back carefully, examining... no, just wool, by her eyes. Fine... hm. Hm. And contaminated. She glanced at the mutant, who was still enjoying her ash. The blue silk dress. Idly, she wondered if she was dealing with something similar, a mutant still wearing the scraps of its old clothing, attacking and killing the governor... in his secret chamber. In a place only accessible via his office. There was, in all honesty, no reason for him to allow a giant mutant down here, no reason the mutant would get inside in the first place, and no reason it should escape. The deposition of the governor's body in the colony was too deliberate, much too... human. Idle thoughts occurred to her, more complex solutions than the one in front of her - when the simplest solution failed, then expand, then elaborate, and never before. Hm.

Hm.

So, how did the mutant get in?

From here, she could see one entrance and exit. But that was impossible, unless the mutant in question was... beyond clever. Possible, certainly. Possible that the governor had been killed by one of the approaching mutants. An incredibly clever one, going ahead of the others to infiltrate and assassinate. Didn't explain the movement of the body, but one thing at a time. Or, maybe, a mutant was... led here, allowed to attack and kill him. A mutant would create unusual wounds, after all, maybe that was a priority. Question being, of course, why would a mutant attack an unmutated man? She started to look around the walls. This was a secret chamber, maybe they were more... free about where secret mechanisms were, keeping them displayed more prominently. Maybe there was another tunnel leading to this place... the mutant girl was poking around the walls too, having a look for something, though she wasn't sure what. Her meal of ash was finished, and she wasn't bugging Tanner for more, so... what did she smell? Tanner hummed.

"You two. Could you... start to remove all the files from the bookcases and cabinets? I don't want to disturb them."

"Yes, miss."

"Of course, darling."

Took a few minutes for the first to be cleared. And once it was, once she was sure she wasn't damaging vital evidence... she put her shoulder to the wood and heaved, shoving the heavy thing out of the way with the sort of ease that might've once been surprising, but now she was more... comfortable with the limits of her strength. And a bookcase, heavy as it might be, was well within those limits. Nothing but wall behind it, though.

"Nothing. Come on. Let's deal with the others."

Yan-Lam's voice came out in a squeak.

"Miss? I think-"

"Oh. Right."

Tanner spooned out a bit more ash, and gave it to the slightly hostile-looking creature in the ragged dress. See, there was something - you couldn't get a mutant to kill an unmutated man, not unless the mutant in question was deeply aberrant. She could barely bribe this thing to not fight her, and follow her from place to place. There was no loyalty, she couldn't give an order if she tried, she was just getting her to follow her natural instincts in a place where Tanner wanted her to. Nothing more. Couldn't get her attack anyone, certainly. An idle thought about throwing contamination on someone in its purest form then waiting for the inevitable was raised and dismissed in a second. A mutant would rather just lick it off, rather than devour if they had to. And the governor was a veteran, he'd know that. Would just remain still and wait for the ordeal to end.

Another bookcase emptied. Another bookcase moved. Another bare wall seen and dismissed.

There were no hidden switches she could see, no mechanisms. If they found a bookcase that refused to move, they were in luck. But another came, and another went. Nothing.

Not many remaining.

They kept working at it, and...

And by the fifth, they found something.

A stretch of wall, hidden behind a cabinet. No switches, nothing of the sort.

But... but there was something up with this wall. Something distinctly wrong.

The mortar was too fresh. Some of the bricks seemed... slightly uneven.

As if someone had broken through the wall, and the wall had subsequently been repaired.

By who? And why?

Her sledgehammer could answer none of these questions, but it could still answer something. She barely gave the others a little warning before she was swinging at the thing, pounding at the stone with relentless vigour, all weariness and hunger completely forgotten. One, two, three, four... again, one, two, three, four, moving her body like a piston, something exceedingly regular, defined by limits far beyond human endurance, defined by metal. She hammered away, and...

And there she was.

Another hole. And the mutant, once more, was eager to investigate, scenting something. Tanner was glad for her gas mask as the creature bounded, ripping at the stone eagerly... widening the darkness.

There was a tunnel behind the wall. The mutant had entered through the tunnel... no, no, wait. Don't just assume it was a mutant. The wounds were aberrant, yes. But all they had was cloth. A contaminated cloth, maybe from the Great War. It wasn't unusual, they had scavengers in some of the old ruined cities up here who had to sent everything through decontamination before it could go home, there were fine artefacts that had to be basically abandoned or sealed in vaults because contamination had seeped too deeply to be removed. Maybe someone wearing a contaminated piece of clothing had entered, killed the governor, and left. Repairing the wall behind them. And moving a cabinet to hide it... which would only work if they could move through solid matter. Sealed from the outside. Or the wall had been sealed, and the cabinet moved afterwards - accomplice on the inside? Or...

Dammit. The more she found out, the more confused she became.

Knew who might know, though.

And she had suspicions about... well, a great deal. But nothing on motive. Never a single damn thing on motive.

The hole was wide enough for the creature to scuttle through, and scuttle she did, snuffling along the ground eagerly... hunting for...

She stopped.

Boulders.

Quite a lot of them, actually. Even from here, Tanner could see them. The tunnel was... odd. Smooth in some places, harsh in others. Like... no, no, she could see the distinction. There was an original tunnel, maybe one of the old ones that Rekida loved building. This tunnel had then been breached, so that a rougher tunnel could be hewn, leading directly to the governor's secret chamber. Or the other way around, but the former seemed more likely. Wall comes down, killer emerges, retreats. Later, sealed up and concealed. And... boulders collapsed. Blocking off the tunnel completely. The collapse happened... right. Happened inside the original tunnel. Brought down the whole thing, really - like a clogged artery. Getting inside would be a concerted mining effort, really, would take quite a few people. No idea how hard it was tunnelling out, though. Gods, had there been a team involved in the assassination?

The mutant pawed around at the boulders, no emotion on her malformed face... but Tanner could sense her annoyance. She could smell something good on the other side, and was being prevented from hunting it by these damn rocks. Once she was satisfied that there was no moving the rocks in her current shape, she started to snuffle around for leavings... the walls seemed to interest her, and she gladly licked a little, mostly with robotic efficiency. Not a feeding frenzy, just a quiet, bored ingestion of matter as her hunger demanded.

Nothing more.

Tanner stared in disappointment. Hoped for... something.

No, she had enough. She had enough. The tunnel. The underground study. And she knew who had to go under scrutiny next. And for once...

She thought she had the evidence for it.

...no, no. Not just evidence.

Willpower.

Something in her had been straining for a while. A kind of... of desperation, maybe. The walk in the snow had clarified it. She wasn't doubting the law, but she was... she only had so long to live, if her reckoning was correct. So many had died already, so many may yet die in the days to come, she could easily be part of their number. And she'd been kidnapped, almost killed by gas, almost killed by that old man, almost killed by cold, and she had knowledge in her that ached to hold onto. She was stressed, strained, worn around the edges. Old fears dwindled. New fears rose to take their place. And old restraints...

She could feel one restraint in particular weakening. Just one.

A bit of paralysing respect that she always showed to certain people, because being remotely free with her thoughts or actions around them was to spell disaster.

The Erlize, in particular.

"I need to talk to Mr. Canima. If you can, bring these files up. Don't ask for help, but... be careful. Don't fall, don't break the ladder."

Marana snorted.

"I'll ignore that last comment."

Yan-Lam smiled faintly, and asked a question in a soft tone of voice.

"Do you think he killed him?"

"I don't know."

"And... what about her?"

Tanner paused. Considered the problem.

Had a fairly easy solution.

"She'll come upstairs with me. I'll open a window for her, and if she has nothing else to do here, she'll just run. Won't want her fellow to get any advantageous mutations before she gets back."

Nice thing about mutants. No real grudges. This one would just leave once she had no reason to stay. Probably would forget about Tanner by tomorrow morning.

...this morning, more likely. Hour was growing late.

Evidence had been assembled. The governor's death was due to someone entering this place from a tunnel, a tunnel which was collapsed afterwards, potentially to stop pursuers, potentially to stop future assassins (if the authorities had done it). Only one person in this mansion would definitely know about this chamber. There were massive discrepancies in terms of resources siphoned from the colony, maybe some had gone to the chamber and the mechanisms around it, but this place was years and years old - the discrepancies had never stopped. There were ancient tunnels all around Rekida. The killer had worn a contaminated article of clothing made from fine material, maybe something from the city, something plundered from a preserved wardrobe. The tunnel here would require a team to dig, not a single person. It had been sealed up from the outside, implying someone inside the mansion had helped cover this all up, willingly. The frozen rivers outside the colony were lies, but there were vents which released steam, and presumably these only erupted in winter - during summer, people could wander freely out there, they'd have noticed. And, as always...

Mr. Canima was hiding something.

Mr. Canima stood at the heart of this. He knew more than he let on, and he hid more than he ever should.

All this time, and if she'd had a sledgehammer and the right knowledge, she could've shortened this whole investigation, found every relevant file, pieced together every prevailing trend and conspiratorial pattern. The governor had engineered a colony designed to function with him, or his allies, and with his death, with Canima's silence... no wonder things were going poorly around here.

The mutant slithered out, bored with the tunnel and its dead end. Glancing around, eager for more ash.

Idly, Tanner thought about leading her upstairs. Using her as a kind of... hound, intimidating Canima into obedience.

...wouldn't work. And would be deeply illegal - using dogs for intimidation in order to extract a confession was very much against the law. And dogs, believe it or not, were less intimidating than mutants. So presumably a mutant was even more illegal.

That being said.

The temptation was powerful indeed.

Yan-Lam, gas mask turning her face curiously elephantine, came closer. And murmured:

"Do you think... the people who did this, they..."

"I don't think it was the cartel."

The girl hummed disappointedly, sidling off to deal with more files. Marana replaced her immediately.

"You take care of yourself, my lovely ostrich, won't you?"

"I'll do my best."

"Oh, actually..."

She drew out a long, pearl-handled comb from her pocket, handing it over lazily.

"Your hair will be awful when you take off your gas mask. At least try and tame it."

"...thank you, Marana."

Pearl-handled brush in her pocket. Truncheon in her hand. Urn of ashes under her arm. Mutant bound to a leash around her wrist. Gas mask over her face.

Ready for a night on the town, she was.