I slid through the mists to Jadal Cai’s original fugitive destination, Larr. We knew the name now, courtesy of the Machine. A few seconds later, Alushex appeared beside me and nodded, Machine-granted coordinates fresh in his head.

The Hex had dressed for the occasion, which didn’t surprise me. This was the same person I’d spent years with on the murder floor listening to versal fashion trends from while I’d been learning to be a truck. The outfit had taken him one second to source and thirty minutes to put on even with my assistance and had involved several false starts with the layers. By the time we were done, he looked like an elegant iridescent gourd.

I managed to avoid it in this instance by virtue of being the car.

I held open a door for him and waited until he settled in before joining the airborne traffic. “What are we looking for?”

Alushex retrieved the latest wad of writing papers from his pocket, lifting his mask for visibility. [Two things,] he wrote. [A versal travel hub, and the signal of the local Rein.]

“And how do we find them?”

[That is,] Alushex wrote, [possibly the saddest thing I’ve ever heard out of the mouth of a Chapel agent.]

“Not as sad as wasting an entire slip of paper to say it,” I retorted.

My temporary boss narrowed his eyes. He pointed in a random direction and gestured for me to head towards it. I took the roundabout way using legitimate traffic intersections, and a couple of sneaky manoeuvres as the pointing became more specific. Eventually Alushex gestured for me to stop in front of a surprisingly well-kept street-level alley. Tiles paved the road lit with glowing lights, and similar elongated lamps sent trickle effects sliding down building corners.

“I’ll wait,” I said.

Alushex lowered his mask and stepped out of the car, trailing fabric all over the glossy pavement. The restyle went a long way. Heads still swivelled towards him from passersby on the street, but the glances were far more in his favour. He took it in stride, aiming for the nearest door up a spiralling flight of stairs.

I watched, mildly amused, as he realised it was locked by implant, checked under the nearest glowing banister and pulled out a hidden data stick. It of course unlocked the door. He then disappeared inside for several minutes while I tested what passed for my radio, eventually emerged from the door again and settled back in the car. It was harder to tell through the mask, but I thought he seemed pleased.

“Well?” I asked, taking off again.

[Network confirmed,] he wrote with a nod. [Not an extensive one, but it’s there.]

Now we knew how Jadal Cai had been getting around, although I doubted the connection extended to the Black Waste. “In there? It seemed a little… underwhelming.”

[That was a transit point to the network,] he elaborated, lifting the mask again. [The main hub is probably nowhere near here. But that was easy. Finding the Rein’s signal will be harder.]

“Because he might be dead.”

[Actually, as you might recall, death doesn’t matter when it comes to Reins. That’s why they’re Reins.]

“I’m pretty sure it mattered to Jayden Loy,” I said.

Alushex gave my windscreen a calculating sideways glance.

“I’m onto something, aren’t I?” I questioned him. “It does matter. At least under the right circumstance.”

I was flying nowhere in particular, which on certain worlds would have concerned me, since my fuel translated to blood supply. This one let me run off ambient electricity in the atmosphere. It took off a lot of the pressure.

Sometimes I wished the Chapel worlds ran at a higher technology level. I wasn’t sure why they didn’t. For the most part, magic was useless for versal travel. But then, we were drowning in the exception.

I waited for Alushex to answer, only to find him grinning. [Turn on your radio,] he wrote.

“It’s not technically a radio,” I corrected him. “It’s a planet-wide comms relay jacked into the brains of every local on the planet, and messing with it seems like a bad idea. And no, I can’t use it to hack into anyone’s thoughts without a…” I trailed off lamely as I saw what he was holding up. “…password. Alushex, you’re a monster.”

I thought his smile faltered a little. I hadn’t meant it that seriously. But it passed a moment later. [Cycle through,] he instructed on a new slip.

I did so, running past channels for about thirty seconds until Alushex pointed the finger, and entered the password into the one indicated.

An eerie static took over my speakers.

It wasn’t just audio; I could feel the emptiness running through my system, cold and terrible. It sat there; a terrible non-presence filling my awareness – not just nothing, but the absence of something that should have been. I couldn’t speak through it, and didn’t like the way it pressed against more than just my thoughts. I wouldn’t have liked to be human right now.

There was no hint of where the origin might be. I let the deadness run for a few seconds before panicking and flipping past to an untainted channel, where thankfully my control was restored.

“Those,” I said firmly, “were the thoughts of a corpse. I am never doing that again. And we didn’t even get a signal.”

The Hex shrugged. [Worth a shot,] he scribbled rapidly. [I can get the signal, if there is one, from the Chapel. Plus this already gives us our confirmation. The local Rein is dead, and we have a Rein-killer on the loose. Who isn’t us. Good thing you did bring it to me.]

“Right,” I said, swerving abruptly out of the traffic. “I’m taking us back.”

Shortly after tipping Alushex onto another crowded street, I followed him back to his office dripping a cloud of the discarded notes he’d left in my interior. The quiet room’s water features made a stark contrast to the hectic bustle and overpopulation of the previous world.

[Bad news,] the Hex wrote, holding up a note as he collapsed back into his chair. All the signs of vitality he’d displayed on our jaunt had once again been drained from his body. Psychological, not physical – second-tier status would take care of the latter. [We’re definitely in trouble, and so is Flinq. As is anyone who touched this mess. I’m going to have to put together a team. And the Septs will need to know.] He didn’t look thrilled about this.

“If you hurry, you might be able to quarantine the last universe you sent me to,” I suggested as he removed the Larric headdress. “Final Super Dokki World.” The name was still ridiculous. “We were in the countryside. Jadal Cai can’t have been close to any versal transit.”

[Noted. I’ve got a lot to look into,] Alushex said. [You’re free to go,] he added on a separate scrap. As an afterthought he snapped his fingers, and all the hair he’d painstakingly flattened for the headdress sprang back into sudden place. I was impressed despite myself.

I frowned. “Just like that? And with my pay?”

Alushex nodded. [You completed your mission,] he wrote. [That’s where we part ways.]

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It was how things worked in the Chapel, interaction limited between tiers. That my old friend had accompanied me on an excursion at all was a measure of the seriousness of the situation. Even within the same tier, Fate dictated a great deal, splitting us up into narrow groups. The Chapel’s many benefits were tempered by being told where to go and what to do, never knowing how many of our decisions were truly our own.

It was still an easy decision.

Troubled, I emerged onto the infinite staircase and ran a hand over its timber balustrade.

I hadn’t bothered to mention the obvious: that the chances of me accidentally running into Jadal Cai twice in a trillion-world multiverse should have been essentially zero. It wasn’t an accident. Part of Alushex’s investigation would be figuring out how and why. If it were me, I’d be starting with the source of the faulty job I’d been assigned. Just based on his reaction, I didn’t think it had been Alushex.

It must have been on my mind, or Near Miss’s, because opening the door for home instead took me to the Machine room.

Inyusol was still on shift and appeared understandably bored, but snapped to professional attention at my entrance.

“I’m not here for a job,” I opened with. “Question: How far back can you trigger Think Again?”

“No more than about ten minutes, fortunate one,” the new recruit answered. His eyes flicked back up towards me. “Why?”

It wasn’t unexpected and also told me where his core sat on the power scale, not that that stopped it being impressive. It was far too late to fix any of our problems with Jadal Cai, but it had been from the start. That made me feel a little better, though not by much.

“Nothing right now,” I handwaved it. “But I’m glad I’m meeting up with you before every mission. On that note, I hope they let you out for some exercise soon.”

Inyusol bowed. “I appreciate you coming to see me,” he said unexpectedly, and I felt bad. The visit hadn’t been intentional.

“You only have to put up with it for a year,” I consoled him, having done it for two. “Which seems like a long time now, but the blink of an eye in the long run.”

If I made it that far. With Chapel repercussions looming on one side and Jadal Cai on the other, longevity felt increasingly like a scarce resource. Not mentioning the continual efforts of Near Miss to do the opposite of what it was supposed to.

I waved goodbye and headed home, tempted to go for a walk. Clearing the air with Alushex had taken the edge off the panic, but it was still very much there. Bashing through universes would be a good way to calm down and clear my mind, as well as being an effective source of entertainment. But instead I headed out to the Chapel city.

Pew was more of a village, really, mostly populated by Sols in training and second-tiers assigned to instruction. The more budget-conscious Dus and Tris – or those of us who weren’t as efficient at our missions – also tended to stay, and a handful of senior operatives who liked to socialise.

My house was nowhere nearby – might have been halfway across the continent for all I knew – but I only had to ask. The entire world ran off Fate; a whole universe-sized version of the infinite staircase. Ludicrous excess in the hands of a few.

I’d tried to hold onto my concept of relativity over such things in my first few years, but I didn’t live in a normal society anymore. ‘Normal’ at all held increasingly less meaning, with what I’d always taken for granted being untrue on most of the worlds out there. The Chapel wasn’t even the most utopian. It was just the only one that carried over between universes.

Most of the streets were quiet and domed off due to the rain. Through the glass, a few people strolled along a parallel promenade on their way to the city’s central square. The buildings were beautiful here, all smooth stone and glass, but it always felt lonely. Pew was a place of transience, where operatives came and went after a few short years to move on to other things. There were other Chapel worlds, most of which I’d visited, but among the multiverse they were spread thin. Due to supply limitations, their population stayed mostly the same.

But where there were worlds, there were people. Far fewer intelligent species than I would have believed, although they were there. But humans and our variants? We were everywhere. There should have been barren worlds, alien worlds, worlds with only creatures. And they did exist. But by far and large, humans dominated. But of course, the Chapel’s whole purpose was killing Reins, who were always human. Of course we’d be drawn there.

Because if that wasn’t the explanation, where was everyone else?

Just off the side of the square sat a narrow two-storey boutique capped in its own glass dome. Warm light filtered out through its door. I entered and joined the small huddle of browsing customers, keeping to myself to avoid conversation. I wanted some time to think.

Rows of augments radiated down at me from their spheres; a mind-boggling fortune of treasure condensed into a mere few rooms. They rested on stands on the shelves, unbarred. I could pick them up if I wanted. Each glowing orb was accompanied by a small calligraphic description, and any one of them would push me to second-tier.

It was, of course, an illusion. Not the augments themselves, which were as real as my face, but the ease with which they could be stolen.

Theft would be to limited benefit, anyway. The body – only Reins had souls – had a limit. A human body could handle exactly ten, no more. Absorption was impossible after that, the magic inert, even with augments focused on surpassing limits.

Taking them all at once was also a bad idea, not that anyone had the money. Rumour had it agents had tried and been instantly killed. A variant of that rumour suggested something worse.

The augments here had been arbitrarily categorised at the proprietor’s discretion. The Sol responsible sat with her elbows propped up on the shop’s tiny counter, engaged in spirited discussion with one of the other visitors. Better than the Machine room, but she’d have her eventual turn.

I didn’t find what I was looking for downstairs, and meandered up the spiral staircase. Protection and restoration-themed augments sat in an alcove under the low end of the dome, and I ducked in to see what had changed.

My recent frontrunner, Vehicle Repair, had been taken. I was a little dismayed. There were stronger augments out there, but it was relevant and cheap. I supposed there were other agents who used vehicles for protection, or who jumped at the first thing they could afford. Any augment was a good augment as long as it wasn’t a Defect.

A variety of biological restoratives were still available, though none that were particularly powerful. Those went fast. The moment one came in, it would be snapped up immediately. Resistances were another popular pick, but often not relevant to me. I could also see it being a trap: They were good enough in their element it was easy to crave more, until becoming a walking pile of resistances with no room left for utility.

I stared at the selection until my eyes started seeing patterns on the shelves. A moment later, I realised they weren’t my imagination. Glassy designs were creeping into the shop’s plain ledges, changing them before my eyes.

“Trouble deciding?” a woman’s voice asked behind me. It wasn’t the proprietor. I hadn’t noticed her come in.

She was perched on the central chair rest wearing a summer dress; red-haired, legs crossed and arms at rest. She was unfamiliar and, I assumed, a Hex, based on the rows of multicoloured eyes down her arms and face and the subtle flickering in and out of reality. In many universes, including mine, she’d have been attacked on sight. It was no surprise why Alushex had adopted his strategy.

I nodded. The entire second storey of the building had turned into what looked like stained glass in deep, vibrant colours. I could see the shapes of customers moving through it a little down towards my feet. “This will all be different by the time I can afford anything, anyway.”

“You’re a Tri, correct?” said the woman. She uncrossed her legs and leant forward. “You’ve got time. All else fails, you can leave it up to Fate. I hear it’s good at that.”

“I’d rather not,” I said. “It hasn’t typically worked out well for me.”

“Well, that’s no good,” she replied. “Being as we’re its designated warriors and all. If something is disrupting that relationship, you should probably look at why.”

“We kill Reins,” I said, somewhat jadedly. “And I wasn’t designated.”

“Are you sure? Because from where I’m sitting, I’m not getting that picture.”

“Three Defects would say otherwise.”

“Ooh, three! And that isn’t telling?”

I studied her as best I could. It was difficult to read her expression, and the stained glass kept distracting me. Movement shifted in the depths of the glass along the ridges of the shelves and the dome of the ceiling. It wasn’t just the other customers. “Not really.”

The Hex raised her arms in a peace offering. There were more eyes on their undersides. “Okay. I won’t tell you what to do. But you should probably make up your mind about whose side you’re on, because your window is getting smaller.”

What? Where had that come from? “What’s that supposed to –”

And she was gone.

In the warmth of the boutique, stained glass already fading back into regular glass and stone, my blood ran cold.

I could recognise a warning, infuriatingly cryptic as it might be. The Chapel had spoken. But ‘choose a side’? Who in Fate’s name did they think I was going to pick? Jadal Cai?

Under it, I secretly felt relieved. A warning meant it wasn’t the end for me yet. But it didn’t change the fact that none of it had been up to me. Something was going wrong further up the line.

Soured on the idea of browsing more, I left via the door and out into the multiverse, pointedly not letting Fate decide for me. I stamped in and out of half a dozen buildings, ignoring whoever I bumped into, and only realised after the sixth that all of them had taken me exactly where I’d intended to be.

My anger died abruptly. I stood in the middle of a courtyard walkway featuring an elegant red tree, where a servant with a broom in a white uniform had stopped brushing to stare at me. I strolled past him at a more sedate pace, skipped universes and immediately found myself plunging into a toxic lake.

Never mind, then.