A face meant for movies stared back at me from the medicine cabinet mirror, striking and beautiful but with a hard look I recognized from the streets. This was the man whose gaze you avoided on the subway, the hardened triad killer on his way to work, the cop you prayed didn't show up to a call. Then, after an Acting roll, it transformed back into James Li; its eyes gaining a reassuring confidence, its lips quirking up with an easy smile.

"You're alright," I said to the reflection. "Yeah. You'll be better tomorrow."

Maria did a double take when I exited Mugisha's cramped bathroom, almost half-annoyed by my appearance. I understood where she was coming from; I was suddenly fresh and clean while she was decidedly not. After sticking my head under the faucet and running a wet rag across my body, my 8 Dice in Presence and a mild reality-bending Special Feat had done the rest, leaving me dashingly dirtied at very worst. Even my joggers, which were in tatters, hung off my legs in a way that could have conceivably been an intentional albeit bold fashion choice. The sneakers were ruined, though. I had burned the pair until I could be sure there was no blood soaked in the threads and left them in the trash; there was simply no saving them. But ignoring that I was now barefoot, shirtless, and in ruined pants, I didn't look much different from when we'd met on the street.

Maria, on the other hand, was still coated in the dense smoke she had burst into, smelling of the several hundred herbal grenades I'd set off. A thick caking of ash clung to her sweat-damp uniform and legs, particularly heavy where the splashes of muck and blood had been. With a dull buzzing sensation in my head, I noted the gooey droplet of possibly melted flesh on her bike helmet and realized that chunks of my enemies must have plastered the ceiling before dripping down onto her.

Maria didn't question my sudden cleanliness, but I watched the fact get shelved neatly away for another time. She'd always had a keen intellect; I'd argued once that she was too smart by far for the BHPD. She had, in turn, said that I was too smart to be doing half the shit I did, but that didn't stop me either.

My ex-girlfriend turned friendly neighborhood bike cop was being stoic, but I could see the simmering anxiety in her body language, invisible unless you knew her well. Maria was erroneously concerned for me – it was strange and nostalgic to see over three years after our breakup.

"Someone left you a change of clothes in the backroom," she said, deliberately flicking her eyes in the direction of the camera in the corner of the ceiling.

Her unuttered request was to be wary of what was said, but I had a better idea. I started pinching my fingers, using the motion to guide my Qi as I telekinetically severed the little wires poking out the backs of the many cameras in the room one by one. The snipping sounds caught Maria's attention, her eyes flickering between my hand and the cameras – this, too, would be filed away for later.

"I take it the old man didn't stick around?"

"If he did, I can't find him," said Maria, scowling at one of the walls.

She was looking for a secret entrance, having noticed, as I had after the fight, that the office/preparation room was slightly narrower than both the front shop and the backmost storage room. And despite the fact that we could still hear the churning of the generator in the basement, there were no obvious ways down. Nor had there been cellar doors in the alley or a little door next to the entrance that would have led to stairs up. It was possible the entrances to both were in one of the buildings to the side, but considering the cyberpunk corpse still plugged into the computer system, I doubted it. Still, that plausible deniability worked as a good first line of defense against searches by law enforcement. She would need a warrant to do more than look around.

Not that it would matter in this case – Maria wasn't even inspecting the correct wall. For all her intelligence and talent for observation, the cop hadn't grown up with a thief father or spent several years on elaborate stage sets. My money was on a small hatch hidden under one of the room's wider refrigerators, which would probably be on rails to allow for quiet exit and entry. I hadn't rolled for Investigation, but it felt intuitive enough. You just needed to think like a criminal or a set designer, and the logic followed; it was much easier to hide a hatch and a space between the floor joists than it was to conceal a full Scooby-doo style door panel.

"It's probably for the best," I said, not terribly invested in her investigation. There were a lot of feelings and thoughts fighting for a place at the forefront of my mind, and none of them included a desire to reveal the badly beaten Mugisha's secrets to the police. "He probably went off to get medical treatment. Man was in a bad way."

"Mm. Maybe. Go get dressed. I'd like a word," she said, using her most compassionate tone of command. Maria had all sorts of ways of telling you what to do.

"I am on a date right now, you know," I grumbled.

I half-expected her to look irritated or jealous, but if anything, she seemed relieved that I wouldn't be alone tonight. Ridiculous, but I suppose it was better than the alternative. "I'll be quick."

"Eh, fine. Hood theaters usually start late on Friday nights anyway. They sometimes don't, though, so…" I trailed off intentionally, letting her know in so many words that I reserved the right to leave if she took too long.

"I'll be quick," she repeated. "Please."

I left Maria to do cop stuff on her belt radio, mentally committing to wait no more than five minutes. It was nothing against the woman, but I was aching to cuddle up between Shania and Aminah in the dark, climate-controlled comfort of a movie theater. All the chaos in my head would quiet down once I could get back to the girls and our date.

Once in the storage room, I disabled the cameras by clenching my fist and crushing them into crumpled little balls with Qi. These had to have been how Grady the cyborg saw through my stealth Stance. I was speculating, but I couldn't see any other options, and the lag in the camera feed would explain his helplessness once I was on him. The reason I'd rolled unopposed to attack him was that his brain hadn't registered I was there yet. Or something like that, at least – I'd gained some Electronics, but there was a vast ocean between my new competence and the cutting-edge world of cybernetics. Well-to-do civilians had access to advanced prosthetic limbs, but implants like those of the hacker were extraordinarily expensive and rare in the West, usually reserved for the military or PMCs. Tariffs and understandable fears of data security and terrorism had paralyzed the transhumanism trend in America. For as short-sighted as the government usually was, you didn't have to be a genius to look at the ultraviolence proliferating across Asia to recognize the need for caution. Not to give them too much credit, as soon as a domestic tech giant properly entered the market, I was sure we'd be as cooked as anywhere else.

Robert had left me a full outfit folded nicely on top of a box by the door; no shirt, but it had a sweater, pants, and loafers. I slipped on the handmade sweater, striped with gorgeous red and black traditional African patterns, and resolved to keep it intact for as long as I could, it instantly becoming one of the nicest things I owned. The pants, basically capris on me, were red linen and the loafers, black snakeskin with decorative brass buttons, oozed steez. In a display of ludicrous politeness, the injured Robert had cleaned the shoes prior to leaving for medical treatment, something I only noticed because of a few thin lines of dust he'd missed.

I rubbed the dust between my thumb and forefinger – it had developed that grimy sticky quality it could get after years of neglect. From that and the aesthetic, I pictured this whole outfit having been put aside for emergencies sometime in the 90s or late 80s. Though granted, the man could have just had vintage tastes and a particularly dirty closet.

Something about the age and coloration of the outfit felt relevant to my broader situation in Harbor Hill, but my brain couldn't finish the thought. That damn mental buzzing was back. The neuroelectric fire starter was clicking, but the gas wouldn't ignite. Red stitch-work on black snakeskin – no, not snake, alligator. Black-dyed alligator leather, red pants, and a red-and-black sweater…gang colors or a tasteful commitment to fashion from an otherwise unassuming man?

"James!"

"Huh?" I jumped a little, surprised that I hadn't noticed Maria enter the room. "What are you wearing?"

Maria was in only a black sports bra and matching boy shorts, her short-cut brown hair dripping slightly from her own hobo shower in the bathroom sink and a crucifix dangling from her neck. She'd done her best to wipe herself clean, but there were still gray streaks of soot here and there. Her body had leaned down since we'd dated, the abs and contours of the muscles visible under an almost non-existent layer of fat, her veins casting shadows in the overhead fluorescent lighting. She looked like a boxer moments before a title fight, almost unnaturally fit.

Maria had finally done it – she'd crossed the line between a talented amateur and a real fighter, someone too strong to exist outside the Martial World. At some point, when you were good enough, you would be inevitably drawn into the Underworld as though the weight of your martial arts was pulling on the threads of fate as a planet might space-time. Not that the phenomenon was truly supernatural, but ours was a chaotic Earth. Maybe you'd go a decade minding your own business before three guys tried to mug you and your wife one day, and then, bam! Congratulations, you're in the Martial World, caught in the cycle of violence just like the rest of us freaks and psychos. However, what was happening here was very intentional. Maria had hammered her body into this shape with regular Hard Training, living on the edge of serious injury for years, a fact written on every taut inch of her.

Good for her. Life had to have been hell, working a long, demanding job and then training on top of it. If she kept this up for long enough, she'd develop Qi, though the timing of that could differ radically from person to person. Mathew Kingsman, my mother's senior-most student of twenty years, lived under similar circumstances and was only beginning to access his Qi network now, in his forties. Matt was a longshoreman instead of a cop, but I'd argue that was worse. They were always scrapping down on the docks. The regular need to beat ass kept a lot of those jobs from being automated away.

"Don't get any ideas – my clothes are drying. The smell was getting to me, and I wasn't going to sit in it for another three hours."

I bit back all of my many reasonable complaints about the BHPD; she'd heard them all before anyway, and this was the longest we'd gone without fighting in years. "Three hours? There's no way they're still going to take that long to show up, right?"

Maria disguised her own displeasure for her colleagues by turning away, kicking out the brick propping open the back door and locking it. "Someone'll probably be by before then, in maybe an hour or so. I asked if you were alright earlier, by the way, while you were lost in your loafers."

"Thanks, but I'm good – just admiring my new fit. Hey, you don't happen to remember what colors the kids playing dice in the alley were repping, do you?"

Maria pursed her lips and stared intently at my face before shaking her head with a sigh.

"You look like half the guys that show up to slam poetry night at the Orb-Weaver. People are going to think you're one of those girls' Chinese uncle." Damn, I was hoping she hadn't noticed the two teen girls earlier; she'd be needling me with this until the end of time. I should have assumed Maria would clock them even while angrily biking away. "Also, purple, white, and black – what those kids were wearing. Prince fans, I assume." At my confused look, she added, "Purple Rain, James? We used to listen to it all the time."

"Oh, right." I smirked. "In my defense, I remember being fairly preoccupied anytime you put on Prince."

She rolled her eyes. "Nice. Real classy. And turn your phone off if you haven't. Those things have new vulnerabilities every week."

I reached down to the pile of trash that was my joggers and pulled what remained of my phone from the pocket. Shrapnel had destroyed the back entirely, a piece of ceramic jar still half embedded inside. "Way ahead of you. Going to start framing these things – think this might be my fourth in a week. I'll be the first person to develop telepathy out of spite pretty soon."

Maria nodded tersely at the fancy brick and scanned the room for any cameras I'd missed, making sure we were theoretically unsurveilled before she continued. I held back a groan; I didn't know if I could handle whatever serious discussion she was setting us up for.

"I," she started slowly, "want to apologize to you, but I don't know where to begin." I let out an involuntary, harsh laugh. She glared and crossed her arms. "Is this funny to you?"

I waved a hand apologetically. "My bad, my bad. It's just, it sounded like you asked me to turn my phone off so no one could hear you say sorry."

"Oh." The heat in her voice left her, and she relaxed, giving me a rare look of chagrin. "And what if I did? Maybe I didn't want to leave you with a recording."

I slipped into the loafers. They were as comfortable as they were stylish, if slightly small for my feet. "If it helps, I also owe you an apology. My opinions on your choice of career haven't changed, but I didn't need to be such an asshole about it at the time. At some point, I switched from trying to convince you to just being a dick."

"You were an asshole," she said sharply. "But you weren't wrong. Looking back, it feels ridiculous to think it would matter to the department that I was dating a vigilante. Every cop spouse is either running a low-level grift or is, at the very least, drunk driving on the regular. It's a sick joke."

Something about an apologetic Maria made me feel uncomfortable – it was too discordant, like seeing your dad cry. "For the record, dumping me to join the historically corrupt Black Harbor Police Department is still the shittiest thing someone's done to me, and that includes multiple attempts on my life."

"Thanks, James," she said dryly. "You really know how to rub salt in the wound."

"You didn't let me finish. I was going to say, putting resentment aside, there's a big difference between me burning down a Triad warehouse and some cop wife running red lights. I gotta think it would come to a breaking point for the department at some point. No matter what I think of your dream job, I shouldn't have asked you to choose between me and it."

She barked a bitter laugh. "See, that's where you're wrong. You're more popular than me. You burning that moonshining operation down earned you a lot of fans in the force, whereas drunk driving is one of those topics we all avoid bringing up."

"The BHPD knows about that, huh? Shit."

"Everyone knows about that. You were seen glowing gold and fleeing from the burning building, idiot. It's the talk of the neighborhood."

"Ah. I was hoping the storm would have—"

"Stopped people from noticing the fire tornado? The one that punched a hole through the clouds?"

"Weren't you in the middle of apologizing to me?"

Maria smirked and took a seat on the big box the clothes had been left atop. I joined her, sitting close enough that I could feel her warmth through my sweater and pants. She surprised me by scooching over and leaning her still-damp head against my shoulder.

We sat in silence for a short while. I knew that I ought to get back to Aminah and Shania soon, and I was sure Maria had her own duties to attend to, but there was an unspoken agreement between us at that moment. We both needed the breather.

"Sorry, you're on a date. I'm being the bitch ex-girlfriend right now," she said after a minute or so. Despite her words, her head stayed firmly planted where it was.

I took her hand, interlacing our fingers together. "You shot a man for me; think you've earned the privilege."

"You could have taken him." A familiar pride in her voice made my heart flutter – a conditioned response that I couldn't help, I told myself.

"Thanks," I said softly. "Clean shot though, very badass."

Maria turned and rested her chin on my shoulder, face close enough that her breath warmed my neck and chin. There was an air of playful smugness about her that I realized I might have missed a bit.

"Those fucked up scars on your back, they from that moonshining operation?"

"Yeah, like 'em?"

"They're a fucking jumpscare. What gave them to you? The whispers and gossip around Chinatown is that you fought a 'curse'."

"It's a…long story."

Maria effortlessly picked up on the source of my hesitation. "Not sure I'll believe you? Don't worry about it. What's that line from Hamlet, 'There's more in this world, Horatio?' I've been feeling that hard since I started patrolling."

"There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy," I corrected automatically.

She rolled her eyes. "Always forget you're a theater kid."

"You read philosophy in your free time, you dweeb. You're the last person I want to hear that from."

"I write it now too, or write essays in response, at least, got a newsletter and everything. The systematic introspection has been really helping me develop my mind-spirit connection as a martial artist – you know, if I had to sell it to a jock, fighting-autist." She winced dramatically. "God, what was I thinking? I can't believe I dated a jock theater kid; those are the absolute worst."

"Wrong, nothing's worse than a jock chess guy. Unless you were talking about theater kids, in which case it's the sad boy hybrid. But let me reiterate, you literally have a philosophy newsletter, one of the most annoying hobbies I can think of."

She smiled and flicked me painlessly in the chest. "What, it's a good newsletter. People seem to be enjoying the discussion – people with PhDs and constitutional lawyers. You want to read it?"

"No."

Maria laughed. There was a heavy pause. Three years ago, this would have been the moment in the conversation when she'd have said, 'I love you,' and gone for a kiss.

"You know, the irony isn't lost on me that we spent all that time arguing about how our futures were incompatible and now we're here, together. In this same, weird situation."

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

I leaned my head against the concrete wall behind us and looked at the full shelves of imported dried herbs and the odd office product, and then down, at my handknit unc-sweater with its ornate African patterns. I must have looked like a rare Chinese member of the Nation of Islam. "O day and night, but this is wondrous strange," I quoted with a sigh. "What are we doing here, Maria? Bike cops don't patrol Harbor Hill. Why have you chosen this quixotic quest of yours?"

"Would you believe I know what I'm doing?"

"Okay. Sure."

She gave me a skeptical look. "Just like that? I thought you'd push back more."

I shrugged. "Not like you would have listened anyway. Besides, I was hoping the faith might be reciprocated."

Maria chuckled. "The only way you'll believe I know what I'm doing is if I believe you know what you're doing. Now that sounds more like you."

"Your words, not mine. But, I mean…"

"Ha. Fine, it's a deal. I won't pick at your ridiculous life decisions if you don't pick at mine. I'd rather die than quit, and you're just as stubborn as I am."

"True." The thought of Maria dying young was viscerally unpleasant, but she was a warrior, and it was the life she'd chosen for herself. I had to respect it. "So, now that's out of the way, why did you ask me to turn my phone off?"

"Right, sorry, I said I'd be quick." Maria slid slightly away and let go of my hand, switching into a more professional mode. The bra and panties somewhat ruined the image, but I wasn't complaining. She crossed her legs under her and started cracking her knuckles – one of her tells that she was nervous. "This isn't a sob story—I genuinely think it makes sense for us to team up—but I saw some shit that I know you'd want to deal with, too, the most fucked up thing I've ever encountered in my life."

"Shoot."

She nodded. "Right. So, I've been trying to figure out ways to deal with the rot in the BHPD since I joined."

"Naturally."

"Yeah. But it's not been easy, and here's where I'll give you your flowers—I've concluded that it is impossible to do from just within the department. There are bidirectional forces at play here; yes, corrupt cops are soliciting bribes, but there are also major criminal actors bribing, blackmailing, and pressuring what would otherwise be 'good' or at least non-dirty cops to conform to the status quo. We can't deal with the problem unless we deal with both sides."

I raised an eyebrow. "What are you proposing, Maria? You've seen firsthand what it means to 'deal' with problems in the Martial World," I said, gesturing to the closed door between us and the dead Grady.

She grimaced; this sort of compromise from her would have been unthinkable for the Maria I'd dated. "I know. Hear me out; I'm getting to it. Lots of people kill investigations in Black Harbor, right? There's so much noise and it's so routine that I'm willing to bet that there are orgs covering up crimes that aren't even related to them; they just don't want the heat near their own shit, or there are cops that are so used to covering for gangs that they kill things during paperwork without being asked. And, of course, the atmosphere rewards laziness and shoddy protocol, which means that those become the norm. What it all works out to - or what I had thought it worked out to, was that it would be impossible for me to find a single source for the worst of it, that I'd be tirelessly taking it day by day for the rest of my life."

"But there were times," she continued, "where the entirety of the department moved like a well-oiled machine to kill a story. I wasn't on the gang task force or homicide division, but I'd see it happen here and there – never had a name or a clue as to the common factor, though. So, obviously, I started trying to follow the money. Who is the richest person in Black Harbor, James? Do you know?"

I shrugged. "The Cunningham family still owns Cunningham Electric outright, don't they? I guess them probably."

"Not even close. They're just provincial billionaires. Think bigger."

"I've got places to be, Maria. Can we skip past the guessing game?" I sighed. "I don't know, is it a shipping magnate? They can't all be overseas. Or maybe the Lavender Rail people – that shit's been a monopoly."

"Closer, but you're off by orders of magnitude. Those are people whose wealth can be fathomed and theoretically calculated on paper. You could, if you were good enough, look at Siannon Cunningham's assets and debts and arrive at an approximation of what she's worth. No, this is someone whose wealth fluctuates by billions every second, to whom money and resources are intangible fictions to enthrall the masses. His name is Garrett Evans, the board president of the Evans Group." She paused dramatically, waiting for my reaction.

No wonder she was having trouble making inroads with other cops; all that philosophy had her talking like a coffeeshop revolutionary. "Never heard of him."

"Isn't that insane? James Li, Black Harbor's uber townie, doesn't know that there's a company trading with trillions of dollars in assets in the city, most of which is controlled by one man? Oil and gas companies advertise for some godforsaken reason, but we've never seen an Evans Group billboard in the city they were founded in. Does that make sense to you?"

I tapped my wrist where a watch would be if I owned one. "Okay, I'm following along, but again, Maria—"

"Yes, I know, on a date." She did another scan of the room for anything that could be listening and leaned in closer, dropping her voice low. "The Evans Group controls most of the major pension funds in the city, including the BHPD union's. That was how I first heard of them, but it was all I could get. After exhaustive digging, I found some signs that they might have been laundering money for organized criminals in the Eighties, but by the Nineties, they had so many subsidiaries and overseas shell companies that you'd need a team of accountants to track anything."

I quirked my head; there was still a solid static fuzz over my thoughts, but this was ringing a bell. "Wait, Evans, is he about six-foot-two and well-built, with white hair and an ornate cane?"

Maria sucked in a breath and leaned forward. "You've seen him? That's huge; he rarely leaves his Greenbelt mansion, been that way for decades."

"At the Kingfisher's opening dinner, the Crane's new fortress downtown. He appeared to react to my gaze, which should have been virtually impossible at the time. For most mortals at least; I've got this new Stance. So far it's only been bested by Iron-Crutch Li, the legendary Daoist Immortal, and the dead cyborg a room over."

"Shit, that all but confirms my worst-case scenario. Even with everything I had found, I couldn't be entirely sure; the man is practically a ghost. There was literally nothing I could find that pointed to the Evans Group having anything to do with the day-to-day corruption in the force. If it hadn't been for McFadden—"

"The mayor?" I said skeptically. Gerald McFadden, billionaire car dealer, was the city's newest ever-smiling tyrant. I distrusted him out of principle – I mean the man sold used cars, for God's sake. What were we doing, people? "He actually did something good?"

"No, but he made enough waves that I finally got a half-decent look at what was beneath the surface. I've been curious about the state of Harbor Hill for a while. The murder rates been biblical here for as long as we've been alive, but when I joined up, I learned we borderline didn't have anyone working the neighborhood – administration being reluctant to send officers into danger, I figured, a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. BHPD doesn't send cops to Harbor Hill because it's too dangerous, and Harbor Hill stays too dangerous for cops because none of us patrol it."

I had very differing opinions on what having two fat donut-chewing fucks posted up in a squad car on the corner did for a neighborhood, but I kept them to myself.

"Then McFadden wins the mayoral race off the back of promising to direct resources from wealthier neighborhoods into poorer ones, and suddenly there's this gold rush of labor fraud. Every other cop is supposedly getting paid overtime and hazard pay patrolling the Hill, meanwhile I'm seeing them post pictures from the craps table. Extremely annoying, but I'm a rookie thinking to myself, well, eventually, they'll have to actually follow through on this, right? The mayor's office is going to throw a fit once they realize how bad they're being swindled. So, I leave it alone, focus on what I can do."

She continued, growing more heated. I could tell this rant had been bubbling inside her for a minute. "Then a year passes, and what do you know, response time averages are way down in the Hill, and positive police interactions are way up. McFadden's plan is an unambiguous success, or at least, someone is spending serious money and manhours making it look that way. And it's smooth; everything about the cover-up is just working, from the top brass all the way down to volunteer dispatch. What I used to only see on occasion is happening en-masse, every day."

"Which is why you volunteered for this crazy beat."

"Eventually, yes, when I got desperate enough, but I tried for other more sensible routes first. Unfortunately, by early on in my career, I—" She wobbled her head back and forth. "My principles," she corrected, "made me a known entity. My family kept me from getting shafted with traffic duty, but I wasn't allowed near anything that could give me a clue."

Maria's eyes unfocused, staring through me into the middle distance. She took a deep, calming breath. "Then…providence. God delivered me to the evidence I needed and lit a fire under me – pushed me to do what I had to do. It's why I'm asking for your help, why I'm compromising like this."

I frowned; this was more religious than she'd ever been in the past.

"One night, I'm stuck escorting a paramedic team responding to a heart failure at a luxury high-rise downtown when we hear this blood-curdling scream from the penthouse upstairs. I go to radio it in while running up the stairs, but – and this is going to sound crazy, but bear with me – it's dead, like no power, no static, nothing, and I swear, I can feel God or an angel, or some divine power, telling me to screw protocol and get my ass up there."

She shuddered, and her words took on a staccato rhythm, as though she was half hypnotized. "The penthouse was owned by a forensic accountant with a wife and two kids. When I get there, the door is thrown open, and he's crouched over his daughter's tutor, eating her, tearing through her flesh and bone like cotton candy while she twitches and gurgles. And his eyes, James, his eyes are these sick, green balls of pus with fucking maggots dripping out of them like tears. I empty my magazine into his skull, taking the top half completely off, and the body stands up and charges. I back up and get into the stairwell just fast enough to trap one of its arms between the steel door and the frame. It goes blindly for my throat and recoils when it grabs my crucifix necklace like it grabbed a flame. I start slamming the door with my shoulder, again and again, until I crush the flesh and bone and sever the arm. I can hear it trip and fall back, so I reload, throw the door open, and empty the magazine into its knees, all seventeen rounds. That's finally enough for the demon or whatever nightmare was piloting the corpse to leave the accountant and try to hop into me. I black out. All I remember is the void, floating, naked save for my crucifix, the only sounds I can hear are my own words, prayers. Then I snapped out of it; I wake up on my back, not having moved from where I'd fallen, with the sounds of dispatch coming in clear through my radio."

She paused, frozen, caught in that moment again.

Maria had inherited her father's machismo and aversion to emotional honesty. She'd always preferred to be treated like one of the boys. So, instead of reassurance, I went with, "Damn, that's fucked. I fought a Hungry Ghost at Bell Street – sorry, forgot to answer you earlier. Way worse than your thing. You woulda been pissing and shitting, probably."

She shot me a grateful look, before papering it over with an annoyed scowl. "Asshole. Anyway, the man ran one of the forensic accounting teams for Evans Group. I got to watch firsthand as the whole story and incident disappeared overnight – finally giving me my first real clue on who was pulling the strings. Four dead, cannibalized victims, two of them children," she snapped, "gone without a trace. It pulled it all together – showed me some identifiers that separated an Evans cover-up with the other sort. I noticed an unusual number happening in Harbor Hill, and the rest is history. So, are you in?"

"Am I in for what, woman? I know what I would do about the problem, but how the hell does this team-up work in your head? Keep in mind, I've got a million-dollar bounty on my head and am embroiled in a gang war already."

She crossed her arms. "That's not stopping you from having threesomes with high schoolers. Those girls are a little young for you, don't you think, James?"

"How did I know that would come up? Look, it's a simple question, Maria. Help me understand how the two of us are going to be applying bi-directional forces to this police corruption problem. If you were just asking me to go kill the guy, it would be one thing, but you aren't posted up in the Greenbelt with a sniper rifle; you're biking around Harbor Hill like a dipshit."

Maria smirked and swung her leg over mine, straddling me and wrapping her arms around my neck. I held myself back from a biting comment – it was absurd that she thought she could sway me with sexuality. She was hot, but I still had enough self-respect to not hook up with my ex.

"Trust me, James, I know exactly how best to use you in a tight situation." She emphasized her point by rocking her hips forward, teasing my now semi-erect cock through my pants.

"This feels like cheating," I grumbled.

"Shut up." She ran her fingernails across my scalp, pausing at my temples, where she began to massage me gently. "You're going to do what you're wont to do, start fights, create chaos, burn down buildings—"

"I've burned down one building—"

"Except that you're going to do it to targets I'll point you at, like my trusty hound. Ah—" she stopped me from responding with a finger on my lips. "Don't worry, I know you'll be hitting your own targets as well. For those, you just have to keep me in the loop. The more crimes I see covered up, the better picture I'll have of who is dirty and who they're working for. We can piece this puzzle together, and it'll give me some much-needed clout and leverage in the department if I bag more guys like those mercenaries in the front."

I held her by the sides, running my thumbs across her abs and rolling a Sensuality + Martial Arts to titillate her, applying just the right pressure to call to mind some of our finest trysts. Two could play at this game. "Then what? You get your full corkboard with all the many dirty cops in Black Harbor strung up with their benefactors – what do we do then?"

Maria licked her lips. "Take it to the feds."

I laughed. "Come on, be serious."

She must have felt the same way at some level because she didn't push back. "We can figure it out when we get there then. Either way, you can't effect purposeful change to a system you don't understand."

I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the Latina tomboy sexpot on my lap, actively trying to influence me with her body. She hadn't proposed anything too crazy, but I could feel the desperation in her. Maria was traumatized by what she'd fought in that penthouse, and it had driven her to the point she was willing to call me, of all people, in to help her. That was a terrible start to this partnership.

But I didn't have much of a plan myself beyond beating the hell out of enough dudes that they got the message, and that was more of a half-baked idea than a valid strategy. I was more or less stalling until I could get the rest of the Party here to help. In the meantime, Maria would be a better ally than most. Plus, I should keep an eye on her; it wouldn't do to let my ex go full Lovecraft protagonist. She was already past the 'Ignore Obvious Deathtrap' stage and beginning to descend into the 'Moral Compromise' spiral. If I didn't intervene now, I might not get another chance in the future.

"Alright, I'm down. Mostly because it sounds like I'd be doing half of this anyway. Let's be real, I would have figured out the Evans connection soon enough. I'd already seen the guy at a Triad club."

> [Hidden Quest Complete]

>

> Make an ex an Ally.

>

> Reward: 15XP, +1 Insight, Gain Ally Maria Ramirez

She pressed her chest forward, molding her body to mine, and hummed contentedly. "I knew you'd come around," said Maria, her tone sultry and victorious. Her breath warmed my lips. "One last thing before I send you on your way then."

I quashed the small voice of reason in my mind reminding me that this was a mistake, and savored the feel of her warm brown skin under my palms. Her thighs felt powerful as they squeezed my hips.

"What's that?" I said, leaning ever so slightly forward.

"You're probably pretty pent up. A life-or-death situation will do that." Her hands drifted down to my chest. "I wouldn't want to send you back to your date on edge. You know what you should do?"

"I'm all ears."

Maria pushed off my chest and hopped onto her feet. "You should jerk off – Or else those blushing virgins won't know what to do with you."

I nodded to myself and sighed. "Ah. Of course."

She stretched out her back, arms above her, tantalizingly exposing all the contours of her abs. "I can't believe you're parading those two girls out in public. If you're going to be a degenerate, at least do it in private, James."

"It's because I called you a dumb bitch earlier, isn't it?"

"Want me to grab you some tissues?" Maria started to strut away, accentuating the sway of her perfect ass. "Trash can, maybe?"

"Jokes on you, woman. I think you're cuter when you're vindictive."

Maria blew me a kiss. "Bye, James. I'll be in touch with a secure number. Enjoy the fumbling hands and the feeling of teeth on your massive cock." And with that, she gave one last challenging smirk and slammed the door.

I grumbled and stood up, adjusting my pants a bit. She was right. I was pent up.

"Fucking, Maria."