Some hours of subjective time later, I jumped through onto the beaches of Makiwa and flopped onto the sand, regardless of how filthy it made me. One stint in the Garrison’s cleaning lenses – according to Er Jid’s explanation – and it would all be back to pristine condition anyway.

Flinpen’s lime hair appeared above me, interrupting the nearest watery asteroid. A slice of it was visible through the gap in her face. “There’s a scout heading towards the Garrison,” she said in an urgent tone. “They left before I got your message.”

“I know,” I said flatly. “They’ve been and gone. It’s too late.”

I passed up the shattered augment fragments and registered the confusion on her face. “It’s from a dead agent,” I explained, handing it over. “They kill us and extract them. That’s how they’ve been repurposing World Slides. They’re all stolen. But I don’t think they want the cores.”

Flinpen looked from me to the broken crystal with justifiable concern. From her perspective, barely any time had passed and I'd completely changed my tune.

Amid a fair amount of internal self-beratement for not having taken the Garrison more seriously, I recounted my learnings and the dangers.

“That’s the mission done,” I finished up with some wishful thinking. “Figuring out the deal with World Slide. I don’t have to stay.”

My handler nodded slowly. “You don’t,” she said, “but you will. You said they’re tracking you via your recent infusion. Unless you can get rid of it, the assignment is now permanent.”

It stung, but she was right. A not insignificant part of me wondered if Near Miss had done it to finally remove me from all the killing. I tried not to think about the fact any tenure I'd have as a spy came with a looming shelf life. “At least tell me you got through to Alusept.”

“He says no. Unambiguously.”

“So you did get through to him.”

“Not directly. Fate delivered the message, and then only after I threatened to make a scene." Flinpen shrugged. "I don’t understand it either. I know it’s Alusept we’re discussing, but even he can’t be that self-conscious about his appearance. It has to be orders from higher up. But I’d better go. If the Garrison's tracking you, meeting anywhere is dangerous. Talking is dangerous. Leaving here in the Interstice could leave me open.”

“I won’t let that happen,” I said. “Near Miss –”

“Near Miss arguably caused that agent to die based on what you say. At the very least, you failed to protect them: the one thing a Near Miss does, Arch or no Arch.”

I pulled myself into an upright seat, wet sand trailing down my back. “It would have had its reasons. They aren’t usually clear right away.”

“It’s not a person, Lamutri! It’s a tool that rewrites Fate based on your understanding. One you can’t control.”

I opened my mouth and then closed it, realising the futility of the argument. No one would believe me, and positioning myself as crazy would only make it worse.

“It was a good report,” Flinpen acknowledged, softening after a bit. “I’m glad we’re working together. Let’s keep going."

"What happens now?" I asked. "We can't let the Garrison keep killing us, and I'm not convinced the third-tiers want us to know about it."

The Pen pursed her lips. "I'll put a team together myself. There's not a lot I can do if Fate determines it has to stay secret, but you and I made it this far. We have its favour."

I remembered Inyusol's recounting of the red lights on the Machine, and wasn't so certain.

Before I could respond, however, I felt Near Miss trigger.

“Hey,” said Imbertri, jumping down to the sand out of nowhere. She wore her usual work outfit, a practical bodysuit in a loose fit with her hair tied back in a heap. “Orders from the Machine. You two are next in line to –” She cut off and stared at me.

One person, I corrected my earlier assumption. One person would believe me.

Flinpen frowned at the sudden arrival. “What’s going on? Why are you here?”

“Quarantine?” I suggested blithely.

Imbertri’s eyes darted from me to Flinpen for the briefest of moments then back to me, and repeated this a few times rapidly. “What have you been doing?” she asked, drawing out the vowel.

“Infiltrating the rival House,” I said, ignoring Flinpen’s subtle motion of protest. “By the way, that was Near Miss bringing you here.”

“No, it was definitely the Machine. A third-tier kicked me out and told me to come here. Urgent mission.”

“Quarantine,” Flinpen and I stated in unison. The former folded her arms and sighed. “That makes six of us now, if you include Nysept. It’s spreading. Maybe it really is a plague.”

“It's Chapel decision-making," I countered. "Imbertri has nothing to do with Jadal Cai."

“Hundred percent wrong,” the Tri in question stated, causing my eyebrows to lift in surprise. “He’s why I’m here. I've been briefed. They’ve found him. He’s alive, he’s jumping to unnetworked universes, and he’s targeting Reins. It’s my assignment to kill him.”

That. That was what justified an agent’s death, apparently. A distraction to prevent my absence from being noticed during this mission. All of this had started with Jadal Cai, and Near Miss kept leading me back to him. I glanced at Flinpen, who stared back with a worried frown.

“It took three of us going all out to take him down before,” the Pen explained. “Two at second-tier. And it didn’t work.”

“That just means you overlooked something,” Imbertri responded casually to her senior. “That’ll be why I’m here. If there’s something to be found, I’ll see it.”

“Oh? Then what’s the solution to all our problems?” I asked, unable to help myself.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Imbertri turned an unimpressed face on me. “Asking the challenging questions today. Your turn. What’s your name?”

Flinpen snorted.

“I’m… not entirely sure,” I acknowledged with a hint of shame, finally rising to my feet. Air whistled through me. “We’re currently going with Lamutri. But why are you here, specifically?”

“Because according to the Chapel, apparently you can find the target. This overrules all other missions.”

The Machine and its intelligence couldn't? That hadn't been an issue previously. And none of my augments were geared towards finding things. “But how would I –”

An absurd thought hit me, and I summoned the Garrison database to run a search for Jadal Cai. As expected, no entry appeared, to an inexplicable accompanying sense of relief.

For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to me that the Garrison might recruit Reins. Er Jid’s immediate dismissal of Two as a candidate – and the way the Garrison marked their status with sigils – had instilled the distinct impression of importance and separation. But Er had been following a Rein in the GIA. It wouldn't have been a coincidence.

Imbertri’s brow furrowed. “What is that?” she asked, peering at the database with me. She moved to look over my shoulder at the interface existing entirely outside physical space, which was disconcerting to say the least.

“Garrison intel. They’re trying to chart everything. If Jadal Cai was a House member, he’d show up here.”

“But they’re specifically charting Reins,” Imbertri said matter-of-factly, immediately making the connection. “We know that from the sigils. So why isn’t he a member?”

“Because they’re not members. They’re more like…” I reached for the right word. “A commodity. The Garrison trades in knowledge and information. Maybe that information includes the people destined to overthrow universal threats. He also might just be uncharted. Most of the multiverse isn’t.”

“So, is there trade information available in these charts?” Imbertri asked.

I hadn’t checked. After a bit of fiddling and zooming out more than I thought possible, I succeeded in bringing up the multiversal map and stabbed at a random pre-death universe.

“Yes, there,” said Imbertri, somehow managing to point clearly at a location that didn’t exist in real space. I shot her an incredulous look but followed her finger to a section of the entry conceptually designated ‘Trade’.

Flinpen shook her head at us, eyebrows raised. “I guess I’m sitting this one out. I’ll keep watch. If anyone comes through after Lamutri, I'll slice them in half.”

“Great!” said Imbertri. “What does it say?”

“Nothing,” I replied, homing in. “No trade.” I flicked back out with a movement of my wrist.

There were a few other general categories listed in the universe's entry, most of which hadn’t been filled out. It didn’t look like Garrison explorers spent enough time on each world to provide detailed descriptions, only lingering long enough to grab the absolute basics.

[Geography,] I skimmed briefly. [History. Economics. Politics. Culture. Magic and Technology. Seeds.]

My attention caught on the last one, and I zoomed in.

The section only contained one word, the same as on the main profile. ‘Ready’.

It finally clicked. “That’s what they call them,” I muttered loud enough for Flinpen to hear. “Jadal Cai is a Seed.”

“Makes perfect sense,” said the Pen. “That’s exactly what they are, at least pre-death. We take them, plant them and make sure they grow.”

“Cool,” Imbertri said. “When’s the harvest?”

“There’s a whole category dedicated to them,” I continued on, raising a few more random examples on a slight tangent. “Given equal importance to other versal information. More than, since it appears near the sigils in the Vein. They keep marking Reinless universes ‘Seed’. Like the verb. Like they’re planting them.”

Flinpen paced back over, leaving a fresh trail of bootprints that quickly filled up with water. “You think they’re making them?”

“Well, we aren’t.” I hesitated a moment. “We aren’t, right?”

She shook her head. “Reins are the great unexplained mystery of versal continuity,” the second-tier answered. “But if the House of Function is creating them, we need to be its friend. Or steal its secrets. Both, ideally.”

“Alright,” Imbertri interjected. “What does Jadal’s universe say? Maybe it will tell us something.”

Drawing on the memories of my visit, I channelled my experience into a search for the Black Waste, not really expecting anything to come of it. To my surprise, however, it did. In the zoomed-out versal chart, the universe sat in an unmapped block with no other entries around it; what Er Jid had labelled the ‘dark’ side. Zooming out more revealed it at the centre. I zoomed back in for a second check. The exact centre.

Either it happened to be coincidentally close, or I'd just found the multiverse's second pole.

The entry for the universe was even shorter than usual, with no details on threat, status, or level of technology.

[Destroyed,] the description simply read.

Its name in the construct also wasn’t the Black Waste.

It was the Empire.

“Odd,” Imbertri understated over my shoulder.

I felt a sudden shiver in the balmy air.

“It’s not odd,” I said. “It’s part of the Garrison. Or the Garrison’s part of it.”

Flinpen looked between us. “What are you talking about?”

“The Garrison is the remnant of an older Empire that went through some kind of cataclysm,” I recalled Er Jid’s explanations. “According to their database, it’s the Black Waste. They're the same.”

It was too much of a coincidence for it not to be.

“That tracks. It’s a post-apocalypse. I knew these two events would end up being related.”

Her words were light and unconcerned in a manner I found surreal, as if we hadn't just discovered something of momentous and calamitous import. A House with its own Rein – or perhaps one who had managed to find it – in a state of near-total destruction. Why would a Rein be there, and what secrets had he stumbled across?

“So your new buddies are responsible for the Rein-killer?” Imbertri asked.

“I don’t see how,” I answered, gesturing back at the map. “They can’t reach this part of the multiverse, and the cataclysm happened thousands of years ago.”

“But there’s a Rein in it.”

“Yes. Although not anymore.”

“There’s definitely some history there,” theorised Flinpen. She glanced warily to the sides as if Garrison hunters were about to come pouring out of the aether. “Maybe he holds some kind of grudge against them, and all of this rampage is vengeance.”

It had been a while since Near Miss had provided its distraction, and I was also starting to worry about time. Any moment now, Er Jid could be done with her wraith-murdering debrief. “In any case, it doesn't look like I can find his current location through the database,” I said, collapsing it with a flick. It had been worth a try. Well worth it. “What’s the mission deadline?” I asked Imbertri.

“Yesterday. So we're it.”

“We can do it,” said Flinpen. “You’re ready and equipped, and Lamutri and I are stronger than the last time we tried this. Halve on its own should be enough to kill the target on sight.”

“Unless he has any tricks,” Imbertri qualified.

“Last time he was well-equipped,” Flinpen declared. “I expect the same again. More so, now that he knows we’re after him. In his position, I’d invest in protection. But unless he’s found a universe suited to holing up in, he’ll be limited to using technology. And we know he’s moving. Just don’t rely on me using Long Game to bail us out.”

“Oh, we’ll win,” Imbertri replied with a grin. “And we’ll find him. We have Near Miss.”

“You’re not going to make it a bet?” I queried.

“Don’t need to.”

Flinpen folded her arms. “Not you, too. Pray tell how Lamutri’s famously erratic core is supposed to operate outside its skillset.”

“Because it’s been busy upgrading itself, him and me any chance it gets,” Imbertri responded, surprising me. “It’s probably also tampered with you without you realising it.”

“It had better not be.” The corners of Flinpen’s lips tightened. “I have a strategy.”

“And who came up with it?” Imbertri asked.

“Me.”

I made a note to ask Imbertri what she knew about Arches when we had a spare moment. There couldn’t have been many examples to draw on for information, or people who knew the answers.

“I’m not as confident as Imbertri,” I said, holding a hand out to each of them, “but I have something to show you. I think we can do this.”