To my boundless surprise, not only was Max present at his estate when we arrived that evening after leaving Cedric’s home, but we were also welcomed through the front gate after one of the guards returned to the main building and let him know who was here to see him. The carriages were pulled up the stone driveway and brought us to the doorstep of the Abdah family home.

“What an odd building,” Adrian commented.

The Abdahs weren’t interested in following the crowd when it came to the exterior design of their custom-built homestead. There were touches of their home culture hidden throughout, and the layout of the building eschewed the philosophy of three to four-story château that was a regular sight amongst the nobility. The Abdah home was spread outwards to utilise as much of the space available as possible.

“It’s certainly different from the usual Walserian style.”

Max was waiting for us by the front door.

“I didn’t expect to see you again so soon. It’s only been two days.”

“I was beside myself with a sense of grief that we ever had to part,” I joked.

Max didn’t get it; “Is she trying to make me laugh?”

Adrian nodded, “She does, sometimes.”

I struck that type of joke from my internal list and moved on.

“While it would be nice to say that we have no ulterior motives for visiting, a pressing matter has arisen that we’d like to speak with you about.”

Max sighed, “It’s about the Cedric situation, isn’t it? Come in.”

The reception room was similar to the outside in its uniqueness. A mixture of vibrant oranges and greens contrasted with earthy tones of beige and brown. The fixtures were made from unpainted wood. There were interesting pieces of abstract art on the walls and landscapes taken from the Abdah's home country across the sea.

“This is a very nice house,” I commented.

“Really? I thought it wouldn’t be to your taste,” Max responded.

“Seeing the same architectural features at every manor does grate on my nerves. I was starting to think that there wasn’t a single original idea among the nobility.”

“It’s not exactly original. There are houses like these all over where the other half of our family lives. They’re designed to make hot weather more tolerable during the summer. They also don’t like stairs very much.”

“I noticed.”

Max escorted us into one of the sitting rooms. We all gathered around a small table positioned near the front-facing window so that we could have a private chat about what was going on with Cedric.

“I’m amazed that Adrian worked up the courage to ask you for a favour,” Max laughed. He was obviously nervous about this meeting and was trying to break the ice with some levity.

“Don’t make me think about how to pay her back,” Adrian despaired.

“None of what we’ve done thus far has been stressful enough to demand payment,” I assured him, “All we did was poke around Cedric’s home for more information.”

Max frowned, “My Father isn’t home at the moment so there’ll be no grand dinner to worry about – but I’d still like to get to the point. Adrian already told me that he was worried about what Cedric was up to, did you find anything of note?”

Adrian took a deep breath, “Actually, we found out that your family is involved in his next project. You’re the only person who’s personally connected to us through him.”

“I don’t know about any kind of project. What was it called?”

“The Church Walk Regeneration Plan.”

Max’s eyes sharpened as a scant recollection of that name lingered in the back of his head.

“Muwah might have mentioned that once or twice recently,” Max revealed.

“Muwah?”

“My older brother. Our Father always tries to encourage us to get familiar with the business world through our own personal projects. Muwah and Odeh get a small cut of the revenue from our trading and shipping companies, under the provision that they use it to invest in new ventures. I’m not old enough for that yet.”

“The problem is that him getting involved in a business scheme isn’t solid evidence that he’s trying to off me. The only avenue we have at the moment is to ask you for hints about what this regeneration plan is.”

Max thought about it while we waited. He was straining to remember what his brother shared over dinner, or at random times of the day while he wasn’t paying him his full attention. Max and his brothers had a good relationship from what I could tell, but Max’s insecurities about his place in the family hierarchy meant that he didn’t enjoy listening to what they were working on.

“As far as I recall, a bunch of bigwigs are getting together and pooling their money for a big property project in that area. Muwah must be one of them. But he never shared any troubling dirt about it with me, and I don’t believe he’s ever said Cedric’s name in that context.”

Adrian groaned and leaned back in his seat, “Great. Another dead end.”

“Did you seriously expect me to know what your uncle is up to? I would have said so before. And before you ask – my brother doesn’t keep a bunch of work documents lying around the house.”

I tried a new approach, “Is your brother a large investor in the project?”

“It’s a lot of money, but not enough to make him an important voice in the inner circle. He’s going along for the ride and hoping that he makes off with a big profit. No offence to him, but he’s never been one for reading too heavily into the fine print.”

“They plan to buy up all the property around Church Walk and demolish the place, as far as I can tell. I suspect that it will not be as simple as described to people like your brother.”

“Why not? Money seems to cure all ills.”

“Money is the problem. A lot of the residents in Church Walk live there because they can easily access the factories nearby. A lot of them work in those factories, and they’ll be resistant to giving up their homes because of it. They could get a good profit from selling on, but is it in their best interest if it causes them to lose their jobs?”

Housing in the city was becoming extremely competitive. A lot was being built, but the demand was still outstripping the supply, and the homes built outside of the city centre were less convenient when it came to waking up early in the morning for a long shift. There was also their emotional investment in the house. They will have been passed down through multiple generations, with most living family members still occupying it together.

Max wavered back and forth, “That may be true but the list of names is surely enough to brute force their way into success. They have a significant amount of capital to throw around.”

“Not if they want to make the biggest profit possible,” I countered, “They won’t want to pay any more than they can get away with. It’ll be a series of long and arduous negotiations with each property owner. Not to mention the public outcry should they choose to demolish a historic building. There are churches there that are hundreds of years old.”

They weren’t in amazing shape – but that was nothing a little restoration work couldn’t fix.

“My uncle has no patience for that sort of thing. He wants results as soon as possible and doesn’t like it when there are obstacles. The apple didn’t fall too far from the tree for him or my father, or for me,” Adrian complained.

“I highly doubt that your short temper is inherited.”

“Whatever,” he said dismissively.

“I could try to ask Muwah about the project later. He’ll be more than happy to tell me whatever I want.”

“Are you two close?” I queried.

Max looked sour, “Ah. I suppose you could say that. I’d describe Muwah as... enthused.”

That was a polite way of saying ‘an overeager pain in the ass.’ Having an excitable Labrador of an older brother served our purposes just fine. He’d sink his teeth into any opportunity to spend time with Maxwell. What could possibly attract him more than the chance to induct him into what he was working on? Even better – there was no reason for him to suspect wrongdoing by Max.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

It was low-risk and potentially high reward. There was no reason to turn it down.

Adrian moved in for the kill, “I hate to ask so many favours of you, but would it be too much to ask for you to speak with Muwah about the project? I’m not expecting any important dirt from him, but it could be helpful to us in the future.”

Max swayed from side to side as he tried to balance out the two sides of the issue. A small part of him did want to help Adrian, and it wasn’t a huge challenge to simply speak with his brother. On the other hand, Adrian was starting to rely on him for a variety of different problems. The two had engaged in several lengthy, private discussions about his well-being back at the academy. Was now the time to put his foot down and deliver some tough love?

“I’ll try, but I’m not on board with each and every idea you two cook up. Maria, you have a terrible habit of getting into trouble.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I griped.

I would have loved to have stayed away from this dilemma and relaxed for a while. The pragmatic part of my brain wouldn’t let me. If I let the clock tick up while standing idly by, it was possible that a story-important character like Adrian could get killed.

This stuff was already far afield of what happened in the game. Theodore Van Walser was a non-factor at this point despite being one of the primary antagonists. That meant I couldn’t rely on my knowledge of the game to ease me through what was happening. It was maddening how different the course of events became if Maria simply stayed out of Samantha’s way. She really was the cause of all of her problems.

“I only want to know some more about the project,” Adrian said, “I don’t see any other path to take if not for this one.”

Max rolled his eyes and relented, “Sure would be helpful if you could simply report him to the police...”

“They’re not going to take me seriously without any evidence.”

“I can ask Muwah about it. I still don’t see how this will help you figure out if your uncle is trying to bury you in a shallow grave.”

“Do you have to put it in those dire terms?”

“Yes. Yes I do.”

He was in no position to look a gift horse in the mouth, and so the agreement was made.

----------------------------------------

“Any luck locating Agent Jones?”

Veronica shook her head and closed the door behind her, “No. There’s no sign of him anywhere. He’s not going to go back to the morgue with me keeping an eye on it. I decided to drop by and deliver the autopsy report by hand.”

She handed over a heavy folder to Ms Frankfort. Inside were the collective fruits of their effort in investigating the strange corpse. Veronica took a seat while her handler read through all of the information that was presented in the documents. It was formatted like a normal autopsy paper – but there were additional pages towards the end that they were forced to add as the situation developed.

“The coroner concluded that he died from a combination of stab and gunshot wounds.”

“Yes. The body was in such a state when he got his hands on it that he missed the stab wounds completely at first. It looks like the gang members he murdered were able to fight back to some extent. The bullet wounds were all caused by the two men he attacked afterwards.”

Frankfort had a troubled expression on her well-aged features. Gang violence was nothing new to WISA. The past few years had been the most peaceful she could remember in terms of gangs battling for supremacy, but the collapse of Tee’s Gang left something of a power vacuum down by the dockside. For now – the gangs weren’t openly at war with one another.

The man who killed the Church Walk group was not expressly affiliated with any of them. None of the other gangs claimed credit for it either. Her gut was telling her that it wasn’t a sudden spate of gang violence on the streets, but it was undeniable that the killer targeted them because of what they were wearing.

Once he was done killing that group – he then approached one of the houses on the road where they ended up and knocked on the door, before blowing it through with magic. Unfortunately for him, both of the people occupying that house were armed, legally at that.

He didn’t move to attack any of the other, more vulnerable witnesses on the street who watched the original fight. Frankfort believed that it meant something. Both of the armed men insisted that they simply watched through the window and did not speak to him. The attack was unprovoked as far as they were concerned.

The autopsy report got stranger and stranger the deeper she dived. Wounds that would have killed a normal person were shaken off like they were nothing. It was a laundry list of broken bones, perforated organs and torn muscle fibre. There was no means by which he could have remained in movement with the stab wounds he suffered.

Yet he did regardless. The man finished his attack by butchering the last gang member on the block and then launched a second offensive against a random house. The witness report given by the man who fatally shot him expressed a level of shock at how much tolerance for damage he bore. It took both men at close range firing a full magazine each to finally slow him down.

And who would benefit most from learning about that? The military. They’d love to have that ability for their soldiers. Bernard Jones was connected to them and always lobbied for their interests. It was an open secret around the WISA office.

There was nothing expressly forbidden about being a jingoist during his service, so long as it did not interfere with his day-to-day duties and the rightful application of the law. Bernard had overstepped that line and then some – and then disappeared into thin air once he caught wind of who was coming to give him an earful about it.

“This is starting to look complicated. Did the officers have anything to say about Bernard?”

“They only said that he appeared to be in a hurry. Panicked, red-faced – you know. There was no other essential information I could get from their stories. Bernard was only there for an hour or so, but what caught my eye was the timing. He was at the morgue far earlier than he should have been. He must have known the body was there before we did.”

“Either they sent him to secure the body for their own purposes, or he was a part of the plot the entire time and he was trying to destroy the evidence.”

Veronica nodded, “Yes. That seems reasonable.”

“I’ll have to lean on some of my contacts in the ministry of defence. What’s this page about a magical analysis?”

“All of the tests that John ran on the blood came up empty. John couldn’t suss out what it was supposed to be. Eventually, he ended up using a conduction machine they had lying around to see what kind of magical output it produced. He thought that the machine was broken, so I permitted him to call in an expert to perform a more traditional test.”

Frankfort exhaled, “Veronica...”

It was ill-advised to bring in outsiders when PIG was already in effect.

“I know. I know. But John had already conducted every single test he could think of. It was worth it. We were able to confirm our results using their methodology.”

“If that’s the case, then why is the entry here still inconclusive?”

“We got a result, but it elicits more questions than answers. According to the police magus who performed the test, it was the most conductive test material that he’d ever seen. It passed through with an imperceptible energy loss. In his words – if there was such a thing as a grade seven mage, he would be it.”

The grades only went up to five, of course. The detective was stunned. He’d never seen a conductivity number like the one calculated at the morgue. They ran the test three more times with new samples and got the same outcome.

“Grade seven?” Frankfurt murmured, “Do you believe it relates to the incredible durability he demonstrated during the killings?”

“That seems to be the most likely explanation. There were marks on key arteries that suggest the killer had the ‘blood’ transferred into his body. A closer inspection of his heart showed signs of stress, but not enough to cause him to suffer a cardiac episode. These were the main notes taken by the coroner.”

This highly conductive blood was confounding. There were other alarming details too. The areas where the man was stabbed and shot during the rampage were already scabbed over when he was first taken into the theatre for study. The blood that he ingested would congeal over his wounds before his normal blood could do the job.

“The detective who performed the test theorized that the explosive magical strength he used to break into the house came from this source,” Veronica concluded, “Unless you’ve been able to find him in the mage database.”

Frankfort snapped the folder shut and shook her head.

“Grade four and five mages are a rare commodity. None of them match his description.”

Her face lightened up for a moment as she recalled an amusing anecdote from the search.

“I spotted a grade five in the records, and her description made me think that she was you for a second.”

Veronica clenched the arms of the chair and smiled, “Oh, how so?”

“Black hair, red eyes. I realized my mistake once I took in the other notes. She’s only thirteen.”

Veronica tried not to let the panic show on her face. Frankfort was brushing up against a fact that she would rather remain hidden. Was this a test? Frankfort was always thinking three steps ahead of everyone else. She rarely spoke without a firm reason. She silently rued her many hours of personal research into the old royal service in search of details about Maria.

She came up frustratingly empty. Those records were highly meticulous considering that they were not officially supposed to exist in the first place. Veronica was convinced that Maria never came into contact with WISA or the organization that preceded it. She was under Damian’s watchful eye the entire time. There was simply no timeframe in which that kind of training could be undertaken without him noticing.

So where, how and why had Maria learned to be like her? She was so desperate to know that her mind took her to odd places. Was it genetic? Had Maria somehow inherited an intimate knowledge of how to slice a man’s neck and shoot a gun?

Frankfort was staring. She felt a cold bead of sweat roll down the back of her neck.

“Maybe he’s in a lower grade category?” she offered.

Frankfort sighed, “It would take a huge amount of man-hours to search those categories. The best course of action will be to release a photo of the deceased and hope that someone comes forward to identify him.”

“And the potential for leaks?”

“Whoever wants that body already knows where he is. There’s no further harm that can be done in terms of releasing his face, but I am considering moving him to another location so that they cannot interfere with us again.”

“You’ll need to lift the PIG order. The code I gave them is BRH, fifty-two, seventeen.”

Frankfort jotted down the password on a small piece of paper. Veronica relaxed now that she was moving away from her queries into the mage registry.

“Well done. It’s a shame that we couldn’t find Bernard, but securing the body is an important first step in our investigation. I’ll assign someone else to watch the body. I want you to focus your energy on finding Bernard. You’re the most skilled when it comes to tracking fugitives.”

Veronica stood back up and bowed, “I’ll handle it.”

“And try not to rough him up too bad. We still need to hear his answers.”

“I promise. He’ll keep all of his teeth and his tongue.”

Since when had she earned a reputation that demanded that sort of instruction? Veronica turned and left before her exasperation started to shine through. Frankfort knew exactly how to annoy her during these business meetings.

This was problematic. Bernard went to ground as soon as he caught wind of what WISA was doing. He could have been halfway across the country by that point, hopping on the next train at the station and riding it for as long as he possibly could. Veronica was used to tracking people down under challenging circumstances, but Bernard was no amateur. He was a WISA agent well-versed in all of their usual strategies.

It would have been easier to exclude jingoists like him in the first place...

There was no use in complaining about it now. Veronica had a job to do and focusing on the job was what she was best at, so long as it didn’t involve her rebellious estranged daughter anyway. This job didn’t involve her. This was classic WISA politicking and backstabbing. The entire battle would be over before the public ever caught on to what was happening.

So why was she crossing her fingers?