The second-best option was simple legwork. It wasn’t like this was Freel’s first time hunting for someone. People tended to act like there was some mystery to it, but there really wasn’t. They knew for a fact that their target had been to the neighbourhood around the Black Rail, and he’d somehow known where to find their little group, so he must have asked around. He also hadn’t really dressed like a local, and that always drew some attention.

The only real complication was that a lot of folks who would have been around to see him last early evening weren’t out and about yet. But some were.

The work Freel did grew contacts, and so he asked at dives, eateries, entertainment avenues, and brothels. The sort of places the stranger might have expected to find them. A couple of hours of that earned them basically nothing. The main issue was the time of day, but Freel was also encountering the annoying reality that he didn’t have much of a description to work with. Nothing really stood out about the man in black, appearance-wise. And he sure as shit wasn’t going to add “beat up four guys by himself last night” to his questions.

A single eatery employee claimed to have seen the guy, and to have heard him ask about Freel’s group, but that had been in the middle of a busy shift, and the girl had nothing for them.

It was time to aim lower, and so Freel and Kreb sought out the dealers. Illegal drug distribution was, after all, a pyramid of suppliers. The pyramid that descended from the Little Nest was actually quite short, but it was also wide: The domination of high-rises gave each petty little group of dealers plenty of customers without having to argue much over territory.

Their first stop was in the gloom between four of the high-rises; a slightly jagged plus-sign of streets, where those too poor even for the slumbox apartments had set up crude houses wherever space allowed. Addiction was as ever present as the smells. Some were just slumped over in doorways or gutters, riding high, while others propositioned pedestrians to pay for the next fix.

The leader of the local gang, if one wanted to be generous with the term, was at a place that could with equal generosity be called a bar.

“Yeah, he came here,” the man said, in between sips of his early day drink. “Dark clothes and hair, kind of intense? He was here.”

“And?” Freel asked.

“And what?”

The man continued with his drink. A trash-collecting robot passed by. It looked partially composed of trash itself, and was louder than a machine the size of a small car had any right to be. Freel had to wait until it was some distance away.

“And give me something, man. I want to find this guy.”

The petty dealer shrugged.

“Didn’t give anything away, other than deny being a cop. And tell my girl here to not get any closer to his back.”

The man pointed at a Kapadian woman sitting at a different table. Like all of that subtype she was a box-shaped meat beast, like someone had taken a Nihunian and squashed her down to average height.

“She was behind him, you see,” the dealer continued. “Just keeping an eye out, as she does. But he knew, without turning his head. Real calm about it, too. I almost liked him.”

He laughed a little.

“No mention of transport, allies, weapons… anything like that?” Freel asked.

“No. Not that I noted. But then, I am a drinker.”

“You don’t say. But what did you say? To him?”

The man shrugged.

“There was nothing I could say. I don’t know your daily schedule. But… uh… speaking of schedule… when is it going to get back in order?”

“What?” Freel said.

“Oh, you hadn’t heard?”

# # #

Half an hour later, Yules and Dunton had joined Freel and Kreb, and they were standing before the burnt remains of the Little Nest.

“Shit,” Yules said.

“Yeah,” Freel said.

The place had been chosen for being out of sight, but a half-crazy homeless woman had described a blaze that had lit the evening up like noon. The blaze had obviously burned very hot, judging by all the melted metal, but not very long, judging by the fact that the walls themselves were mostly intact. But everything inside was done for, and so was the roof. The Emergency Response had spared two drones, who had blasted the oxygen away from the blaze, before returning to their ports. And that had been that. Not even a police investigation. Not in a toilet like this.

The gate in the fence had been left open, so Freel just walked in. The boys followed.

“So… no way this is a coincidence, right?” Yules said. “The timing, I mean?”

“No way,” Freel said.

He half-expected there to be heat in the ashes, but they’d had well over half a turn of the clock to cool down. The interior wasn’t completely reduced to slag, not with the short amount of time the blaze had lived. But it didn’t take more than a quick glance around to know that nothing of any worth would be salvaged out of this mess. Local wretches would pull away scraps of metal to sell, but the drug operation was done for. The half-cooked shri had provided the fuel, after all.

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There were no skeletons in sight.

“So… who wants to tell the boss?” Freel sighed.

“Oh, you’re the leader of this little group,” Kreb said. “Or did you forget?”

# # #

The high-rise was on the western tip of Crescent, far away from the slums and well into the fancier part of town. It was younger than the apartment buildings, shinier and darker, and while it was just as tall, and balanced on the edge of the Great Gorge, it was considerably slimmer, and fairly isolated from its neighbours.

Freel touched the Dragon down on a landing pad, sighed, then stepped out. He was greeted by an android in a nice, shiny suit. It wasn’t a true AI, just programmed to react in set ways to a particular number of scenarios. Freel stuck to the script, said his name, and then walked alongside it to the small rooftop enclosure. The android was, of course, recording the whole encounter, and reporting it.

Freel could never put his finger on why exactly he disliked it so much. But once again he felt it: An overwhelming desire to push it off the roof, and down that immense drop to the floor of the Gorge.

“Enjoy your visit,” it said through the speaker that was its only facial feature.

“No, I don’t think so,” he mumbled as he descended the stairs, to the top floor.

He wondered if the long distance between the only roof access and the boss’s office was a case of bad design, indifference, or if it was a pointed statement. After all, what kind of important person was overly accessible?

There was no clear answer to be had. Freel just strode along a wide, high-ceilinged hallway, all made of black, man-made marble, and wondered how this would go. There were balconies along the way, but Freel had never had cause, or permission, to find the doors and stairs that led up to them. For all he knew, they might simply be decorative.

For a stretch, the black walls were exchanged for transparent ones that played swirling colours. Beyond that was a huge hall dominated by a forest of marble pillars, illuminated by slowly twisting lights in the ceiling.

It all felt like a huge waste of space, but then the boss liked to impress guests. He actually only owned the top five floors of the building, but he liked to hide that fact, both from others and sort of from himself, by running it on its own separate power and security system.

Freel finally reached the damned heart of the place, near the north-west corner. The main doors, thin slices of marble over plastics, were flanked by two of the private security jokers.

“Freel,” one of them said, with a stiffness no doubt borrowed from the local police style.

“Guard,” Freel said back. “I’m expected, and you damn well know it.”

He didn’t slow down or waste further words. He just pushed the doors open, and walked past some mini-hallways before entering the office. It was a lavish affair, all warm, dark colours, and heavily decorated with animal pelts. Supposedly each one had been slain by hunters, on distant, savage worlds, and so each one was unique.

On a leather-bound chair, hovering just a bit off the floor, was a man in early middle age, clad in luscious purple from neck to toe.

“And there he is,” Boss Jakino said stiffly.

Freel looked over his own shoulder.

“Who?” he asked.

“Get over here.”

Freel did cross the distance, and used those few seconds to take yet another full look about the office. It would have made a luxurious home for most people.

“So…”

Jakino clasped his hands, with his elbows up on the armrests.

“The Little Nest is gone.”

“Very gone,” Freel said.

“Talk.”

“We hadn’t found any witnesses to the event itself before I came over here. But it seems that the fire happened shortly before… before the Black Rail. I’m willing to bet the guy in black made his first stop there. I happened to mention to Sulli where I was going. So I guess he took Sulli and his boys apart, got the information, then started the fire.”

“And you said there were no corpses?” Jakino said.

“No corpses that we could find through a casual search. I put out feelers for Sulli. He has some answering to do. And as for the other guy…”

Jakino had a talent for expressing displeasure with minimal facial movements, and he was putting those abilities to work. Freel hated it.

“I sent Yules to talk to someone I know. She keeps drones floating around much of that territory, stores logs, and charges for the privilege of finding something specific. We’ll see if she can’t put us on the trail.”

“So you have two leads to chase.”

“Three, once the cops abandon that neutron bomb lead.”

“Hmm.”

Jakino thought for a couple of seconds.

“So, you’re simply on top of things, are you?”

Freel stared back.

“I like to think that I am.”

“Oh, good. Because this is personal now for ME as well. The Little Nest isn’t a crippling loss, but it is still a loss. A loss of MY money. I’ll get another one set up somewhere, but good hiding spots tend to be taken. Get this guy, Freel.”

Freel wondered if the man had ever gotten into fights in whatever business school he’d been dropped off at as a child. He wondered if he had any idea what a lust for revenge felt like.

“I intend to, boss. Trust me on that one.”

He rubbed the injection site on his head.

“Hm.”

Jakino lowered the chair down, shut it off, and stood up.

“Walk with me. Let’s do a little refresher.”

Freel didn’t need a refresher. He knew perfectly well what this was about. But people like Jakino… they liked to talk.

They took the short route. Jakino moved one of the pelts aside and pressed his palm against a spot on the wall that looked exactly like any other. It accepted Jakino’s DNA, and opened one of the secret doors. They walked through a narrow, dim corridor, around a bend, and to a viewing room. On the other side of a large window was a meeting room with a large table, and more cushy chairs. To anyone on the other side of the window it simply looked like more wall.

“In two days I will sit in there with some very important people,” Jakino said. “People from other major cities, offworld outfits… and the Devil Star Cartel.”

“I know,” Freel said, and tried to not be too snappish about it.

Over there, a few metres away, a bunch of rich, connected bastards in suits would be discussing large-scale enterprises with a magnificent view of the Great Gorge. And Freel would be working in the gutter.

“The Devil Star Cartel,” Jakino repeated, with added emphasis. “I am trying to put together something truly big here. I have sat down with Red Eyes himself. This is NOT the time for unpredictable complications.”

“I know. Boss.”

This time Jakino couldn’t possibly miss Freel’s tone, and the boss treated him to another stiff glare.

“Two days, Freel,” he said, after letting the silence stretch on into discomfort. “Clean this mess up in two days. Make up for this embarrassment. Reputation is not to be squandered. Don’t make it my job to answer difficult questions at the meeting that will make a reality out of all my ambitions.”

He held up a finger.

“You’ve been useful, Freel. But remember: You are replaceable.”