For a while, we looked at the girl. The girl looked at us. Nobody dared speak — perhaps there were simply no words that could convey the emotions brewing in the chests of those who were present.

“—Wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait — that’s a naked kid. You can see everything — everything’s on display! Gods, cut the cameras — we can’t let anybody see this!”

Wiz was the first to scream. When he confirmed what he was seeing, he jumped back and covered his eyes with his arms, as though he was looking at a blinding explosion.

In response, Sier furiously gestured to the sword sticking out of the girl’s chest and the blood pooling onto the ground, screaming, “That’s what you’re worried about?!”

Tapio and Jaxl came through a personal Raven Gate to confirm what happened with their own eyes. By then, our group had the collective decency to throw a cloak over the girl and offer a cup of tea, which was still untouched when we finished informing the newcomers about what happened.

“Look on the bright side,” Jaxl said. “We’ll get more information out of a living creature than some reconnaissance devices. Problem solved, right?”

“Most people would find it quite hard to continue living with a sword stuck in their heart,” Tapio observed. He took a seat in front of the girl, who regarded him with only the slightest twitch of her frozen eyes.

For a kidnapee, she was remarkably well mannered. Though she refused to answer any of our questions, she sat patiently and made small-talk instead, offering colourful passing commentary on the night’s weather and how nice the city looks at this time of year and how she wouldn’t recommend corpse-train hopping to anybody who valued comfort in transportation.

No one had the heart to take her up on it.

“The mercenaries’ employers,” the girl said in a dead, monotone voice. She looked at Jaxl and Tapio, then tilted her head. “It is a pleasure. Somewhat. What is your offer?”

“Information, first and foremost,” Tapio said. “If you’re searching for something, we may be able to provide an answer.”

“A plausibility.” She looked to the side, processing the thought. “No. Insufficient. Cannot proceed.”

“Tell us exactly what you want, then, and we’ll do our best to accommodate. Most of us are better diplomats and speakers than killers.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Jaxl.

“I am. Now, Miss — could you please explain how you managed to get onto a dimensional-warping war train without getting shredded by the weapon systems or spaghettified by Rosentears?”

The girl looked around, as though making sure she had all of our attention. Then she said, “I cannot die.”

If she didn’t have anybody’s attention before, she did now. Elias and Wiz looked especially concerned about the declaration; I saw the former’s grip tighten around the handle of his mechanical blade.

“I am Grimm. These are the marks of my curse.”

Across her pale body, luminous blue cracks woven into a circuit-like pattern came into view. On her left hip burned a bright sigil that looked something like a shattered cross surrounded by thorns; the blood dripping from her open wounds instantly froze into shark spikes, completing her near-instantaneous transformation into a ghastly wraith of ice.

In turn, the atmosphere between us froze. Nobody was smiling anymore — their hands crept towards their respective weapons.

“You have a Stigmata,” Tapio said, one of the three present to have no discernable reaction. “An extensively developed one, at that.”

“The name matters not,” Grimm said. “A curse is a curse. I wish for freedom.” The tiniest flicker of emotion came as she looked down at her marked hands. “I wish to die. Seek the final key. Whitelight. Don’t care how.” Her tiny hands clenched into fists. Then slowly, with the care of a surgeon, she placed her hand on the hilt embedded in her chest and stared at Tapio. “Another group found me. Invited me to cooperate. Can you offer more?”

“What was the group’s name?” Tapio asked.

“The Four Rings.” She gestured with her shoulder to the broken city outside. “This way, avoid Oracles. Remain hidden.” She shivered. “Never again.”

Tapio folded his hands on the table. For some reason, his eyes were already smiling — his mouth was pulled back in a cautious smirk, hinting at a plan already in the making.

A flick and snap produced a silver coin hidden away in Tapio’s sleeve, but it was done with such swiftness it may have been conjured from thin air to an ordinary observer. “Do you know what this is?” he asked, rolling the coin between his knuckles.

“Money,” Grimm said. She followed the coin with her eyes, giving Tapio a strange look when it came to rest in between his thumb and index.

“Correct,” Tapio said, “Yet also incorrect.”

The coin flew. What came back down was a dagger, long and twisted like a spiral.

“This coin is many things, if you learn how it works.”

A pistol. A pair of tongs. A screwdriver. A handaxe. A short flail. A hammer.

Back to a coin.

“This is what we’re offering: the elegant way forward.” Tapio placed the coin on the counter and slid it over, crown side up. “The Four Rings move without being seen. They have many enemies, and many weaknesses. Not the smartest way to go. We hide in plain sight. There’s nowhere we can’t go, nothing we can’t touch. You work with us, and you get to stop running from your own shadow.”

He pointed to us observers and said, “We’re all working to retrieve Whitelight before they can do something terrible with it. And as far as I’m aware, we’re the only ones who can pull the job off.”

Grimm stared hard at Tapio, narrowing her eyes. “Words cannot fool me. Deceived too many times.”

“Then watch. We’re all veterans of the Frontier here. We know how things work. That’s why we can help you get to your destination faster than anybody else — we’ve been forged in flames hotter than hell, colder than the Abyss above.”

Tapio smiled a knowing smile, practically emanating false bravado. He was lying with such conviction that even I felt a little moved; all I could hope for was that it would have the same effect on Grimm.

“Now,” he said, “Give us a chance, and we’ll blow your godsdamned mind — literally, if that’s what you really want.”

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

While Tapio negotiated with his private contacts with Grimm at his side, the rest of us twiddled our thumbs and chattered amongst ourselves. Jaxl joined our congregation then, handing out cold beers to those willing to partake.

“See?” Wiz said, raising his can in a toast. “Upfront payment and an after-job beer. That's how you do a negotiation and contract. That coot talks too much.”

“He would make a decent negotiator,” Sier added. She hesitated to crack open a cold one, but relented and slammed back a long gulp. “Feh! Decent at best. I’ve got wordsmiths and proctors on payroll that could roll him. Hell, I could’ve probably made a better argument.”

“Usually, arguments only work on the rational. People who can think clearly.” When Wiz was sure Grimm had her back turned, he leaned forward and lowered his voice. “That… thing has a Stigmata.” Then he looked at Jaxl and asked, “Did you know about this?”

“If I knew that there was as big as a walking corpse with reality-warping superpowers on that freight, I would’ve done this part myself,” Jaxl replied, shrugging. “A lucky coincidence, I suppose.”

“Your definition of luck is strange,” Elias said. “She is closer to a ticking time bomb than a reliable ally. A bomb that will now explode in our laps.”

“Time bombs are an entertainment cliche,” Wiz said. “Be like me and just detonate the damned things. Don’t give people a warning — that’s too much time.”

“We’re not all wanted terrorists,” Elias said, throwing a glare Wiz's way.

“It’s a hypothetical,” Wiz replied, waving him off. “Bombs are too expensive. You know the market price for a bit of kaboom putty? It’s nuts, man.”

A faint smile cracked Jaxl’s scaled expression as he watched the bickering. “Don’t worry too much about it,” he said. “This Whitelight job is a zero sum game. More cards in our hand, the less for our opponents. We’re all drawing from the same deck here, y’see.”

Wiz looked at Owl, who was performing maintenance on her rifle beside me. “...Even the cards coated with anthrax?”

“You just need gloves to handle those ones. Disposable gloves. Or a condom.”

Wiz snickered. Less amused was Sier, who suddenly stood up and staggered about, amber beer sloshing from the lip of her second can. The red flush on her cheeks burned two shades brighter as she pointed at Jaxl and said, “Don’t you dare. You have no right to disparage others — Grimm hasn’t even done anything yet! How can you draw a conclusion that quickly?”

Everybody present except for Owl looked at Sier, suddenly silent. Wiz placed his can on the ground and leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees, and said, “I know you could probably hire the best assassins to go murder me, so I’m going to be very polite right now.” A pause for effect. “Do you know what Stigmatas are?”

“Of course,” Sier replied. She sat back down and crossed her legs, as though challenging the notion. “They’re powers that exist outside of known sorceries. Rare, powerful, and utterly incomprehensible.”

“Partially correct. What else?”

“What do you mean, what else?”

“Those who own Stigmata aren’t normal,” Wiz explained. “They’re the farthest from normal you can get. Their formation comes from some part of the mind we can’t understand — their minds are so broken that normal people like us couldn’t possibly understand what’s going through their heads. This isn't an exaggeration — do you know what the Oracle’s recommended procedure to deal with a Stigmata is?”

Sier narrowed her gaze. “Go on, explain it if you’re so sma—”

“When they lose control, we let them burn themselves out. Then we kill them, if they haven’t self-destructed by then. This isn’t some funny ‘lalilulelo I’m whacky and quirky and everybody loves me’ insanity business. These people, they’re beyond lost. They’re fucking gone. We’ve been dealing with this for three hundred years, longer than any of us have been alive. Three-fucking-hundred.” Wiz scowled, picking up his can and taking a long drink. “If they bear a Stigmata, it’s already too late. The best we can do is hope they don’t blow up somewhere far away from us.”

Sier’s eyes widened. Her can, once raised in righteous fury, fell with her arm and came to rest in her lap. “Oh.”

“Sorry about that,” Wiz quickly added, covering his embarrassment with a chuckle. “I’ve done a lot of research on it in my free time. This is some real strong shit — people like to tell me I talk too much for my own good.”

Stigmatas. A mark of the doomed.

Nina classified my wind-based abilities as a Stigmata. I wasn’t sure how much grounding that had, but after listening to Wiz’s outburst, I found my attention drifting to Owl.

Was I insane? Was she insane? I finally gained a glimpse into her true power: she had the ability to stop time. The doctor she visited told her she couldn’t use sorceries; I didn’t know what else to contribute her power to, or if it was comparable to my ability to control wind, but I didn’t notice any markings around Owl’s body when I healed her. But I couldn’t see into her mind.

I could’ve used Samson’s Cognito Art to check, but I wasn’t sure if I should. What is madness? Was I allowed to determine who was and wasn’t insane? Who defines what and what isn’t normal? I was a creature that had only recently emerged and saw the surface once more, yet I still hadn’t seen the sun.

The sun was part of the natural world. The sun and the moon. Two join into one to create day and night, the cycle of life. Burning bright. Dark days, darker nights. There was no sun here. No light.

Where was the light?

My heart was missing. Where was my soul? I couldn’t feel anything.

This world. This world was strange. There was nothing to keep me — the crisp yet pungent odor of strong beer, the sting of fresh blood, the clean air of an abandoned city, the gently falling snow against my skin, the warmth of another’s presence, the sensation of being embraced and loved — the things I should’ve felt weren’t there.

It was empty.

In this confusing world, I just wanted to be myself. But did I know who I was?

I was a normal person. Normal as they come. Normal with a university degree, normal with a 9-5 job with a planned retirement from 65 to 80, death at 90 to 100 to 127 — but what now? Was I still normal? I had to be normal. Even though I was trapped in a drone, I was normal. I had to be normal. But could I be sure?

I didn’t know.

I didn’t know.

I didn’t know.

Something wasn’t right.

I—

I didn’t know, so I decided to analyze Owl from the outside before taking any further action.

This entire conversation, Owl had no discernable reaction to the conversation; not heart rate, facial expressions, nor muscle movement. She continued to work away at her rifle, cleaning bores and bolts that were already polished to a near mirror sheen.

Even when Tapio negotiated clearance to return to Hadron without surveillance, her eyes were still vacant and unfocused. She was seeing everything that was going on and moving with the flow of the group, but not once was I sure that she was around for any of it.

The Raven Gate that took us back to Hadron dumped us directly in front of an unmarked staircase containing two vending machines — one for freshly cooked food, one for energy and mental health supplements. Three flights of stairs led to a barely furnished office that doubled as a barracks; there was a reception area, a common room with two beige sofas and a fridge, individual offices, and closet-sized bedrooms crammed together in whatever free space was left over.

“All of you will be staying here for the duration of the job,” Tapio said, passing out sets of keys. “You’re registered as the Eightfold Pact Company — it was the Sevenfold Pact, but I made a last minute addendum while I was on the line. I’ve arranged for your belongings to be moved already; expect them to be in your rooms.”

“The Eightfold Pact,” Jaxl said, grinning. “Sounds like an old-timey band of heroes.”

“Shame you’ve got the entirely wrong people,” Wiz said.

“Well, you work with what you’re given.”

Owl called it a night right away, mumbling a half-hearted excuse and walking away towards her new bedroom. For some reason, I felt compelled to chase her — even though I knew I would miss out on all the conversations that would arise between our new comrades.

As much as I wished to learn more about the people around us, I found myself moving following Owl; some strange force that wasn’t my own will possessed me and kept chasing after her shadow.

Blood in the water.

She was like me, wasn’t she?

And suddenly, everything made sense.

More. I had to see more. I couldn’t touch Grimm — she was too strong for me, but I could still reach Owl. She was right there, defenseless and barely lucid.

This was my time to strike. I was tired of waiting.

Stigmatas. A mark of the doomed.

When two stories, two flames, two lives meet, only the strongest will survive and move forward. These were the rules of this forsaken world.

Therefore, it was only natural to hunt before I could be hunted myself.

I was so hungry. So thirsty.

Denied for so long.

Depraved. Starving. Scratching out my throat. Clawing out my eyes. I needed—

Owl fainted the moment she hit the bed. I followed, looming over her barely conscious body. Her neck was thin and slender — her veins bulge slightly underneath her skin, wires of blue and black that gently pulsated with the tune of her heart.

I knew what I had to do.

Was she alive like the rest of us? She was marked with a Stigmata — she tried so hard to hide it, but I was wiser. I knew. I hadn’t seen it yet, but I knew. There was no other explanation.

My mechanical claws opened her skin. My wind peeled it back and exposed what was underneath. My eyes dismantled her body and mind.

And so, I cut until I found the object of my desires — the only thing that could give me the answers I’ve been waiting so long for.