I took a sip of my coffee, ignoring the condescending stare Garlan gave me.

“It’s not my job, Mec. I’m a diplomat, trying to help these delegations with Seed,” Garlan said.

“And I heard from the Sept that you’re training to be the next Blesser. They seem to think highly of you.”

“Which is exactly why I can’t go hunting a rogue. It’s too risky and you know it. They needed someone strong-willed like you to do that. And if you can’t, well, like I said, I would be happy to shift you to Sevens.”

I did my best to keep my stare calm, not red-hot like I wanted it to be. To save my Gold image, I covered my face by taking a drink from my rescued, cooling cup of coffee. “There’s something else. He should have had to kill those police officers to get out.”

“First you nearly hit me with the table because he killed and now you’re disappointed he didn’t?” Garlan said. “Are you sure you shouldn’t have become a Red, Mec?”

“That’s not what I meant. Shane didn’t escape because he fought his way out. But all the exits were blocked.”

Garlan shrugged. “So he found another way.”

I held the cup of coffee in my hand but stopped before drinking it, no longer wanting to taste the contents. I shook my head. “He couldn’t. The train yard had three ways out.” I listed the ways on three fingers. “One, through the police. Two, through me. Three, through ten inches of concrete. I didn’t fight him, and I have yet to find the Red who could do the last part easily.” I paused, trying not to look angrily into the black liquid swirling in my cup.

“You didn’t mention that the police officers were not killed, the third option,” Garlan said. “I am getting tired of this, Mec, and I have work to do so—”

“How many?” I asked.

“Excuse me?”

“How many came before me? I should have figured it out before, why the Sept gave me this assignment, why the police seemed so apathetic toward me, why no one seemed surprised about a Prophet looking for Shane. How many Prophets have died trying to find Shane?”

Garlan laughed. She practically clapped her hands she found my question so humorous. “Oh, they really didn’t tell you anything did they? Just pointed at a bad man and told you to stop him.”

“Are you questioning the Sept’s judgment?”

“From my point, no. Shane is a political boil on the part of the Prophets and has caused irritation to my and other pursuits. That is why seven other Prophets have been sent to deal with him. All of course, failed.”

“Why? From what the Sept told me, Shane’s not that powerful.”

“No, he isn’t. Two Red and White Mother-dwellers were already in Prosperity when Shane started killing chemical-enhancer pushers without permission. They had to undergo psychological therapy for weeks after their first encounter with him directly. Then came a Gold from Sevens and a White from Prosperity itself. Both left without reason, as did the final Sevens Red they sent to kill him. He was adamant in his refusal to complete the mission. But that’s how Reds are, much too involved with their emotions.”

“They lived?” I asked.

“I don’t know the details, Mec, no one does. Maybe they thought to send you because your inexperience is a deterrent to subjectivity. Maybe they thought your prowess at self-healing would make you better able to face Shane. Maybe a young Verlander’s sense of justice was the only thing the Sept hadn’t already tried. Either way, are you ready to be sent back to Sevens? I’m sure the Sept already has your replacement lined up. I hear they have five Reds gunning to execute justice on this embarrassing member of their color.”

Garlan smiled as she added, “It will be humorous to see how long that passion lasts, and who will replace their fervor.”

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I twitched, containing the urge to leap out of my seat again. “No. I’m not giving up on this.” I stood, and set down a coin to tip the waitress who’d brought me my now cold coffee. “And I have a good idea where to start looking.”

I hadn’t spoken to him since right after the scene at the power plant. I’d exchanged a few words, only a few, with him then. I asked if he’d seen Shane at all. He’d said no, and wondered if I’d actually seen Shane at the power plant or mistook him for a chemical-enhancer-pumped Dreg. It was the silence of him and the other officers, more than anything, that made me know without a doubt that I had the right man.

Detective Donnegan paused on the wet, dark street corner to light a thin gumbush stick. As he walked, a thick cloud of yellow wafted around him, mixing with the grey-hued fog. His thick trench coat flapped with the movement of his short legs. I couldn’t tell if he had his revolver on him or not.

This late at night, the Trains District was covered in fog, the moisture in the atmosphere clinging to the countless dust particles in the air and making the night almost alive with mist and warped lights. I trailed the detective through the thin crowd, my helmet tucked under my arm and covered in a cloth, making it look like a poorly covered package.

A yellow streetlight, its dust-covered steel pole half hidden by the fog, lighted his way as he went deep into the heart of the under-developed apartment complexes. They shot up a dozen or so stories, their formerly brown bricks stained with the black and yellow of acid rain and the night fog. A few windows had lights peeking out from the few buildings that had working electricity.

As I walked about thirty meters behind the detective, I felt confident the sounds of the night hide my position behind him. I brushed by a man in the crowd and felt a slight tug on my helmet. It took only a bit of concentration to shoot a tiny amount of energy through the helmet and knock the would-be thief’s hands off my blessed weapon.

His eyes wide in horror at what he’d attempted to do, the man raced off the opposite direction, thankfully not screaming as I continued to follow Donnegan through the thinning crowd.

That encounter surprised me. It had been said that a pickpocket on Prosperity would use a thin needle with a paralytic tip. If you were lucky, you were just stunned long enough for the thief to grab valuables without difficulty. Most of the time the paralytic caused traumatic heart failure, the muscles relaxing after hours of the victim standing still in the street.

This time, no such needle was used. And the look of fear on the man after I caught him, the way he didn’t reach for a concealed weapon… I forced the thought out of my mind so I could focus on following Donnegan.

For about a half hour I followed him. At every dark street corner, at every gathering of pimps and chemical-enhancer pushers, Donnegan would stop and look around as he lit a thin gumbush stick. I would have to stop as well, ducking in a narrow alley or behind an over-filled dumpster. The detective’s eyes would always go to the pimps and pushers, as if he were weighing them.

About two in the morning Prosperity time, the detective had already smoked a pack of gumbush sticks. I had to extend my distance to a little over fifty meters as the crowd of people had dwindled to almost nothing. As we approached a small, brick-street courtyard in between two high-rise, low-income apartment buildings, Donnegan came to a sudden stop behind a broken streetlight.

There was a slit of an alley near me, and I casually walked into it, kneeling beside a dust and grease-caked dumpster, watching Donnegan smoke. Across the courtyard, beside the unlit doorway to the apartment building, stood a blue leather-coated pimp. He was handing out little parchment packets to the nearly naked women standing loosely around him. The way he looked around at all times, you could swear he thought he was being watched, despite the lack of any obvious observers.

The look straightened the hairs on the back of my neck.

“Hey, hey,” I heard a choked voice ask beside me. I turned and saw that it was a disheveled man, black dust all over him and the ragged blanket he’d been sleeping on. “You got the time?”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a coin, showing it to him before I tossed it his direction. The man picked up the coin, examined it, bit it, and examined it again.

“You got the time?” he repeated, shaking the coin at me.

“Two-twenty,” I said in a harsh whisper, wondering how a bum so disheveled had survived in an alley like this.

“You got the time?”

“Two-twenty.” I was trying to watch Donnegan, noticing how he kept glancing across the courtyard at the pimp. I heard the smack of flesh against flesh as the pimp landed a punch on the woman next to him. She fell to the ground and dropped the packet she’d been handed, clutching her eye.

Donnegan dropped his gumbush stick and stamped it out.

“You got the time?” the man next to me repeated.

Donnegan walked across the street.

“Shh,” I warned.

“You got the time?”

Halfway across the courtyard, Donnegan reached into his coat, pulled out his revolver, and shot the pimp. The single blast echoed through the courtyard as the pimp fell over screaming and cursing.

“Got the time,” the homeless man mumbled as he turned over and went back to sleep.

The girls who’d been standing around the pimp screamed in terror and ran, still clutching the chemical-enhancers he’d handed them. I watched in silence as Donnegan walked up to the wounded pusher. The man was still moving, bleeding on the dirty sidewalk, and put a hand up for mercy.

The gun blast echoed through the streets of the Trains District, and the pimp dropped his hand.