Home was one door away; a luxurious manse outfitted by Chapel automation. Moving location wasn’t too hard, though it did cost credit. Being chronically short on that, I still lived in Creed, the primary universe all recruits were dumped into for group bonding.

Even at the start, I hadn’t really fit in. Almost everyone else was there by design: either friends or family of existing members, or recruits selected for outstanding achievement. Every day, I found myself in the company of prodigies, former monarchs and children of mighty magicians. Realising they’d assume the same of me had been the source of no small discomfort.

But joining the Chapel meant leaving one’s old life behind. Some did it for the cause: saving countless lives. Some did it for the promise of immortality. Most did it for both, and the Chapel didn’t judge.

We came from all over the multiverse; worlds upon worlds, though the final pool was tiny. A few thousand from among trillions of the deserving, but the line had to be firmly drawn.

It came down to supply. To be part of the Chapel, one needed a Fate-aligned core. They were rare among an already limited resource, strictly reserved for new recruits. Secure one, and you became a prized asset no matter your past. History paled in the face of that thirst.

Plucked from my home and family, I’d been deposited into the kind of unimaginable luxury of which my fathers could only be proud. Unimaginable luxury – for me alone. Even now, twelve years later, I still didn't quite know what to do with it.

I’d been assigned a personal instructor for training, shown proof of reincarnation and its lingering good. It had lasted a year interspersed with service duty before my trial in the field. That part should have been easy – I was hardly squeamish, and Dus were assigned the easiest of targets – but I’d somehow failed again and again while the Chapel’s patience waned.

Eventually I’d realised my own core had been holding me back. It didn’t want me to kill, even to ultimately save lives. I’d been at its mercy. In the end, with the aid of countless experimentation and training exercises, the workaround had been to aim for a bystander it objected to dying more than the original target.

Like shooting a hostage, I had to demonstrate I meant business – and keep demonstrating. Trying to get Near Miss to do anything I wanted was like conducting a negotiation.

The infinite staircase deposited me at my study door. Alone. I walked past the indoor balcony overhanging my overflowing atrium, breathing in the flowers, and through the hall of running pools. I ignored the consumption gallery and its aesthetic arrangements of heated delicacies, although I was hungry, and exited onto my roof under its glass hemisphere.

It was currently raining outside, heavy splashes spattering intensely against the dome. Beyond the vague distortion they created, a caldera of vibrant mountains hung in a wide ring of greyish green around my estate. No other artificial structures lay within sight. Some days green orbs would dance across the clouds; an atmospheric quirk of naturally-occurring magic. Today, it was only grey.

I’d barely changed anything since moving in. I wasn’t exactly about to complain. Whenever I grew bored of rain, mountains and green, I had a built-in universal migrator that only required a door. Even with Near Miss wreaking its damage, I could usually build one out of something.

By the time anyone made it to Tri, they were already formidable. A single augment, even Defective, raised an operative well above the human baseline. The main danger to my health, other than occasional Reins wielding space mines, was me.

My low mattress sat under the highest point of the Dome, covered in fine self-cleaning fibres. I lay on my back on top of it, despite the daylight. It was always daylight in this part of the world. A single word would tint the dome’s opacity, but I wasn’t in the mood.

Instead, I stared at the water bouncing off above me.

“So,” I spoke aloud, feeling silly. “Here we are. It’s been a while since I’ve talked to you like this.”

The rain continued to patter down. Lacing my fingers together, I put my hands behind the base of my skull.

“I don’t know if there’s any point,” I continued. “You almost certainly can’t hear or understand me, and if you can, this all might be redundant. I don’t know anything about how this works. I barely know how you work, and I’ve been carrying you around for well over a decade. And maybe I know you less than I think.”

I sighed and closed my eyes, letting the sound of the rain take precedence over the visuals. “Did you hear my conversation with Imbertri? If you are an Arch, I’m not thrilled with you keeping me in the dark. But I don’t think you’ve ever liked me. I assume I only ended up with you so you could get away from someone you wanted to be attached to even less. Urgh, I feel like an idiot,” I muttered to myself at the end, then shook my head.

“Listen,” I continued after a moment. “You obviously don’t want me to hit second-tier. Is it because you don’t want me giving the kill orders? Trying to prevent a slide into further moral decline?”

There was, of course, no answer.

I felt suddenly aware of the beat of the recently-refreshed heart in my chest. “And the alterations. All these Defects you've made. Why? Are you trying to bring down the Chapel one augment at a time? Or do you have it in specifically for me and Imbertri? Either way, it won’t work. You can’t even mess things up effectively.” I sneered at it behind my eyes. “All you are is mediocre.”

The rain poured steadily onto the roof over my head, and I sighed. I didn’t really mean the words, and had a hunch Near Miss knew my mind.

“So what is it you want me to do? Stay killing Reins forever? No one leaves the Chapel. And I don’t want to, either.”

I didn’t even know where I’d go. There were plenty of worlds that would take me, but none that held any real meaning. Except my old home, and it wasn’t somewhere I wanted to be. It felt like I was still looking for something, but what higher calling could there be than the one I’d already stumbled into?

“This advancement is important to me,” I appealed at last. “I’d be able to keep the same friends for more than a few years. I’d be spending less time on assignments and hopefully learning more about why they’re necessary. Why we can’t just tell the Reins the truth, without having to pretend at divine emissaries. That always seemed like someone’s bad decision. But I can’t change anything if I’m stuck at the bottom forever. And if you care so much about pacifism, you should want the same. You can’t go against Fate, we both know that. You can only influence it from within.”

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All this time working around Defects was slowly turning me insane, and I was coming to realise I wasn’t actually tired. The more I aimed for relaxation, the more it evaded my body. You couldn’t have someone look you in the eye claiming you possessed an Arch and fall asleep easily. And that was putting aside the mess in the Black Waste.

I snapped out of it and rolled out of bed again. No point in trying to force something that clearly wouldn’t happen. Might as well follow up on unfinished business.

World Slide triggered at the door, and I reached into the beckoning versal fog. Being here made me feel a little better despite the inherent loneliness. In a way, the Interstice was the ultimate freedom, no matter how tied down I happened to be elsewhere. A second, an hour or a hundred years – I had as much time as I needed.

The smear that had followed me from the Black Waste was long gone, but I remembered where it had been. “Please cooperate,” I muttered under my breath. The words came out as an eerie, elongated moan in the warped logistics of the place. It was better not to get caught up in factors like time or space while in the Interstice. Trying only made it easier to lose one's way by distracting from the details that actually mattered.

I thought I had the right destination. Pushing through to the other side, I found myself stepping onto a bustling city street. Three different-coloured moons could be seen hanging between glittering towers in the sky, which meant there were probably more. A highly advanced world, by the looks of it, which, depending on the local laws, could be hazardous for my continued health. They often had some form of blanket surveillance in place.

It didn’t help that I stuck out like a sore thumb. I wore my typical Chapel attire, a simple layered tunic and trousers in blue and matching yellow, though it had been partially turned to patchwork by the repanel. By contrast, the local fashion seemed to be variations of flowing robes in various crystalline metallics with jewelled masks and curling headdresses. The more I looked, the less certain I became they were masks at all and not heavy cybernetics. Probably not far off the ‘brains in jars’ stage on this one.

It was probably too soon for Gear Shift. Elegant cars took off and landed in soft whirrs at ground level, with most of the traffic buzzing through the sky. Not really the best place for conversation. I tapped a random passer-by on the shoulder and recalled my hand immediately at their recoil of disgust.

“What do you want?” the bystander asked in a voice as androgynous as their appearance, mask turning to the mop of unruly hair I hadn’t thought to comb. They were already edging further away.

“Anything unusual happen here in the last couple of days?”

“How would I know?” they asked, shuddered, and used it as an excuse to exit the conversation. Hurriedly. I was already receiving dirty looks from the others around me, no doubt breaking some local taboo or three.

This was probably a fool’s errand. I wasn’t equipped for investigating. I’d be better off heading back and bringing Imbertri with me, except I doubted she’d appreciate my company right now.

My eyes darted to the feet of the towers where various doors encircled the bases. One or two, adorned with intricate ornamentation, looked like they had a chance at being shopfronts. I approached the nearest, dodging elegant pedestrians who swerved out of my way, and pushed past the extended curls of its scintillating signs. Wares hung in dangling display inside, suspended from jewelled cords in the ceiling. As far as I could tell, the items for sale comprised many tiny glowing orbs, similar to augments in their raw form.

Peripheral movement drew my attention away from the goods towards what I actually wanted: a witness.

“Can I help you?” the shopkeeper asked. Their tone indicated they rather wouldn’t. They wore the same style of robes and headdress as the others, with the differences being in the subtleties of design. I was having trouble distinguishing between people here; not yet attuned to the difference. Which was good. Anyone coming through from elsewhere ought to be as memorable as I.

That, or Near Miss had brought me to the wrong universe again and I was setting myself on a wild goose chase.

“Did anything unusual happen here recently?” I repeated my earlier question. “Anyone… different come through? Maybe a little like me?”

The shopkeeper lifted their chin. “Yes,” they said, not sounding thrilled about it. “Two days ago. Someone like you strangled a person to death there on the street.” They didn’t seem especially torn up about it.

Not the wrong universe, then. “Where did they go? What did they look like?”

“Like you.” For the rest of the reply, the shopkeeper raised one hand and pointed it into the airborne traffic streams.

Well, that was my trail gone.

“How much like me?” I echoed, holding a tuft of my fringe between thumb and forefinger to illustrate. “What colour hair? Were they wearing an eyepatch?”

Reins had almost exclusively dark hair, Jadal Cai no exception.

“Yes, an eyepatch. Like you.” The reply was curt. I was less convinced than before. It belatedly occurred to me they might not have had eyes or hair under the mask, and possibly wouldn't know what they were. I was fairly sure the shopkeeper was struggling with foreign cultural identifiers as I much as I was with theirs. Mainly I was under the impression they didn’t trust me not to commit a follow-up murder.

Given who they were speaking to, I couldn’t really be angry.

“And the death?” I asked. “Who did they kill?”

The subsequent agitation told me I’d hit the limit of my welcome. “Am I supposed to know the identity of everyone on the street?” the shopkeeper exclaimed. “If you’re not here to make a purchase, I’d respectfully ask you to leave.”

“Fine,” I said, moving towards the exit as pseudo-augments glittered around me. They weren't the same; too small, with a different quality to the glow. The beat quickened in my chest nonetheless, and for an odd moment I hesitated, frozen between strides.

The shopkeeper stepped towards me.

I was faster. Barely registering what I was doing, I snapped one of the orbs from its dangling cord, sending jewels scattering everywhere, and legged it out from under the jewelled display. Before the shopkeeper had even finished processing his reaction, I reached the door and triggered World Slide on the way out.

Prize grasped in my palm, I slid back to the safety of my house a universe away, landing back under the dome with a slight thud. The stolen orb glittered in my curled fingers, trailing sparkling cable behind it. I peeled them open to reveal my acquisition.

In the stronger light, I could confirm it wasn’t an augment. It did resemble one, but the glow came from technology rather than magic, rattling around the casing when shaken. Trying to absorb this would be a choking hazard. I groaned and tossed the whole thing across the room, then wiped at my forehead in private shame.

I was grasping at shadows.

My conversation with Imbertri hadn’t changed anything except to increase my frustration. If Near Miss was an Arch, the only way to prove it would be to purchase the upgrade anyway. If it didn’t work, then I’d know for certain. And be right back where I’d started, only with more debt and questions.

There was the consultation Sajjpen was looking into. I’d have to content myself with that.

In the meantime, the only new lead I had on the fugitive from the Black Waste was a penchant for murder, which didn’t teach me much there, either.

If it was Jadal Cai, he was showing his colours early. Normally it took Reins until after death to start slaughtering everything that stood in their way, but the tendency presumably came from somewhere. Whatever irregularity affected him could possibly have tripped the reflex out of its dormancy.

Restlessness still gnawed at me. I made up my mind to walk it off in one of the universes I considered both attractive and safe, and the plans were promptly shattered. The culprit being a Chapel summons, its distinctive callsign lighting up in my mind.

Another job. More than ever, I needed the pay.