Sophia didn't even blink. The asp wand flicked up and she tried to shoot from around knee high. Incisive saw it coming. Between the warning and her concrete-slow movement, he flicked it away with an outstretched foot.

“Glad to see I raised you right.” His voice was bone dry. “Why don’t you grill me on details of our childhood instead? Or ask what happened? You won’t win a fight.”

“You have no idea what I am capable of.” Her voice was deadly calm.

“Yeah, but why don’t you go ahead and list every fight I lost. Dad doesn't count.”

She hesitated a moment. “You tell me. You are the one answering questions, apparently.”

“I didn’t. Largely because I picked my fights carefully, and didn’t fight unless it was absolutely necessary and I was sure I could win. Eeh… except against Thierrie, but he was going to rape Vig, so call it an exception. Now, did I catch a shitload of beatings from Level One gangsters while I was out scavenging or running errands or whatever? Yes. But like with Mom and Dad, that was catching a beating, not a fight.” Truth kept the tone casual.

“Oh really? A real tough guy, eh?”

He gave her a crooked smile. “Didn’t you tell me once you thought I lost my cherry as both a virgin and a killer when I was about fourteen?”

“Did I?” She kept her face flat. He was mildly impressed.

“You did. It was after you and Vigor got in trouble for scrapping with those kids in your school, on account of you fucking their significant others. A habit I was happy to see you stopped, by the way. Clearly focusing on your schoolwork paid off.” He smiled. He was genuinely happy for her too. Her getting into the university of Jeon was a dream for both of them.

“Well, with such a long suspension, I was scared straight.”

“Nah, you can do better. Clearly as a top secret super spy, I researched your academic history. Discipline goes on your permanent record, and yours is clean.”

“Not clean-”

“If you graduated with a single black mark, it happened after I vanished. Vice-Principal whatshisname knew it was his ass if my sibs had any problems in school.”

She hesitated a moment there. “Actually, I always wondered what happened there.”

Truth smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. “How much do you know about the Starbrite Oath?”

“Same as everybody, I guess?”

“Notice the bit about obeying all local laws as may apply?”

“Sure.” She shrugged.

“For enough credits, Starbrite will sell you an indulgence. Terms and conditions apply, but you can literally spend money to exempt yourself from some of the terms of your oath for a limited period. I bought one. Offing a Level One D-Tier principal? I fucking overpayed. I could have caught his whole damn family with him, and still had change left over. And he knew it.”

She blinked at that. “You can just ignore laws with an indulgence?”

“I could ignore the part of my oath that made me obey the law. And that “obey the law” bit had… let us say… a very narrow interpretation. In that, it only applied in a narrow selection of circumstances.”

“Huh.” She seemed to be considering this. “And the consequences of breaking the law?”

“Would have been on me to deal with. But my usual C-Tier benefits would have applied, along with PMC privilege. Provided I was reasonably discreet, there would be no consequences to speak of.” His voice turned grim. Those privileges came with a damn high price.

“Ah. Makes sense. So. You are apparently my brother, who, for all his flaws, was downright doting and very protective of his siblings. And just… vanished… for five years. Or, as I was informed, in writing, by your boss, was dead.”

“Oh, that was nice of Clavegaugh, I guess.” Sounded off.

“I’m pretty sure it was a form letter.”

“There you go.” Truth nodded. THAT sounded more like it.

“So. You look good for a dead man. Not much like my brother. A bit meaty. But fit.”

“First of all, hurtful. Second, I got better.”

“Explain that.”

“So… I don’t think I ever told you how I broke through? I just came back in the middle of the night.”

“Yes.”

“You thought I had died.”

“Did we?” She asked, in a bare monotone.

“You did.”

“Oh.” To Truth’s pride and pain, she looked like she was shutting down more, not opening up more.

“Vig ever tell you what happened to Thierrie?”

“No.”

Truth smiled painfully and laid out how he broke through, and what happened on the mission to the Free State. Her facade cracked a couple of times. To Truth’s irritation, it wasn’t any of the life or death things that did it.

“Wait, you are part Ghūl?” Sophia leaned in.

“Obviously not!”

“Actually, not so obvious.” She shook her head.

“I am almost nothing like them! The bits that are similar are… we are all human shaped.” Truth protested.

“Yes, but one of the few things we do understand about the Ghūl is that they are not the bodies they wear.” That threw Truth for a minute.

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“The bodies they wear?”

“Yes!” Her face lit up. “As best we can tell, they are unique spiritual beings. They process the bodies somehow to make them resistant to magic, and then insert a “Ghūl” into them. What that means specifically is still being debated.”

“I would think anything that makes a person magically resistant would be a major study priority!”

“Oh it is. It really, really is.” She nodded fervently. “It’s just that getting materials is a little difficult and results have been frustratingly slow.”

“How slow? I mean, Ghūl have been around forever, as far as I know.”

“Actually no, they are comparatively new on this planet. Sub one thousand years, is our best guess. And not… evenly distributed, for lack of a better term. We don’t have good census numbers for equally obvious reasons, but basically, they don’t turn up without a good environment for them to thrive in.”

Truth smiled crookedly. “And since they thrive in Jeon, what does that say about us?”

“Nothing good.” Sophia grinned back. “Any theories about why you have this connection with them.”

“On any kind of sane, biological level? Nope. On a wild-ass theory pulled together from my deeply weird experiences of the last year? Baptism.”

That got him a blank look.

“Eh?”

“Baptism. I think that whatever was in that “tonic” made me just enough of a Ghūl to pass muster, and when I… basically coated myself with their shattered bodies, I was baptized, and when I destroyed their birthing vats, I was baptized a second time.”

“But… why would that have any effect?” Sophia cocked her head to one side.

“Because I don’t think what they did to me, or I did to myself, is active on this level of reality. I think it’s a higher level function. That, and they seem to be related to the Nephilim somehow, and so are we. So there is that.”

Sophia went very still again. “Why do you think we are related to the Nephilim?”

“Eeeh. I met one of their hybrids, and-”

“Wait, there are Human-Nephilim Hybrids on this planet?” She was suddenly agitated.

“Yes? At least one big family of them?”

“How? Why?!”

“The usual way, I assume. And as for why, they are playing for the world after the collapse.”

There was a pause. Truth could see the moment Sophia’s brain caught up with her ears.

“The what now?”

“The collapse? Of magic?”

She sagged. “Oh that old conspiracy theory.”

Truth shook his head. “It’s not a conspiracy theory. I have guarded high level conferences, multi-national conferences involving senior bureaucrats, where they were discussing how to handle the coming crop failures. They talked about the collapse in very specific terms. The Temple of Siphios acknowledges it, as does the Church of Praeger. Jeon and Starbrite keep it locked down, but they are prepping too. All the aristo families know and are prepping, and like I said, the Nephilim are too.”

Sophia rocked back in her chair. Her eyes darted back and forth. It looked like she was remembering something, or some things.

“Connecting dots?”

“Yes.” Her answer was short. Truth shrugged. Fair enough, really. The end of the world was pretty shocking. Well, not strictly the end of the world, but functionally. She looked up at him, glaring.

“Why are you here? Now?”

“Because I’m hurting. Because I built my whole life around you guys, and you were always the one thing that made all the… everything… worthwhile. And because you didn’t let me finish explaining how I came back to life, and you didn’t ask the most important question.”

“More important than the secret of your resurrection?”

“Yes. How I died.”

Twenty minutes later, Sophia was staring at the wall. Truth waited patiently, then impatiently, then started looking at the door.

“When do your roommates get back?”

“Who knows?”

“Sophia…”

“Oh shut up for a minute.” She didn’t mutter, but her mind was obviously elsewhere.

He waited a little longer. “Got anything to read here?” She waved at a low bookcase of textbooks and journals.

“I was thinking more… cheap romance novels, mysteries, thrillers, that kind of thing.” He was entirely willing to admit that he didn’t even understand the titles of these publications, and had no illusions about the contents.

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Ew.”

“What “Ew,” they are great!”

“I don’t think there is a single original concept in any of them, let alone useful information.”

“Aha! That’s where you are wrong. I have relied on romance novels a lot.”

“For what? Disappointing women?”

Truth felt that one land, but pressed on. “First, no, my girlfriend laughed at the lines, and they kept me from saying dumb things. So that’s a clean win. Second, they give me personas to imitate, and it is AMAZING how much people believe in them.”

“I wish I didn’t believe you.”

Truth looked over at her, catching her eyes. “Do you believe me?”

She closed her eyes and leaned back on the sofa. “I don’t know. Maybe. Five years. And they weren’t… very nice years.”

The way she said it tore up his guts. “Can you tell me about it.”

“I don’t want to. A teenage orphan, even with a great pension and a guaranteed C-Tier job waiting for them, does not have a nice time. Harmony tried to step up, and he did a pretty good job, but you were the only one who could ever keep Vig under any kind of control. And Harmony is… doing fine, I guess, but I see less and less of him every year. And Vig said he was dropping out of sight for a long while, and he did just that, so who knows what happened to him.”

“Oh I know. He joined a revolutionary cell. I saw him up north. Didn’t say hi, the timing was bad.” Truth said with forced casualness. It got him a wild stare.

“He is doing what?”

“Certified revolutionary, yeah. Not great, not terrible. I’d rate his performance as barely passing, honestly, but my standards are pretty strict.”

“Yes, I, too, am concerned about my brother’s professional qualifications and standards as a fucking terrorist who will be caught and executed!” She hissed.

“Err. Valid.” Truth had neglected to mention what he was doing in Jeon, hadn’t he…

“So… what now? What exactly are you doing in Jeon?”

Well. Fuck.

“Looking for the Shattervoid girl, and if at all possible, murdering the shit out of the System Astrologica.”

“In Harban?”

“Where else would the system be?” Truth shrugged, though he agreed with Sophia.

“Under the biggest rock in the deepest trench in the middle of the ocean? Because Starbrite is Level Nine, and Starbrite, so he doesn't have to give a shit about little things like “cost” or “practicality.”

Truth immediately felt vindicated. “I one hundred percent agree! But nobody has been able to run down the System, so here I am.”

“What do you mean, run it down?”

“Nobody has the faintest damn idea where it is.”

Sophia nodded, then looked up at the ceiling. Then back at Truth, and gave him a weird look. “You said that you don’t think the Ghūl operate on this level of reality?”

“Well, some part of them, yeah.”

“What if the System worked the same way?”