With the knowledge in hand that the assassins were utilising hallucinogenic compounds to mentally condition their servants, Veronica departed to perform some good old-fashioned casework. WISA would press Michael for more information and then slap him with murder charges, so long as they took long enough to stay well out of her way it didn’t impact her investigation.

Being a WISA agent offered a lot of legal powers that most citizens would be shocked to learn about. A protective information gathering order was just one of many different tools that an agent had at their disposal.

For example, the concept of a ‘warrant’ was a relatively recent legal invention, at least when compared to the long and dark history of Walser’s secret police. A WISA agent had free rein to order any individual or company to open their personal property for a search, and refusal was as good as refusing a real warrant issued by a court. Not a smart idea if one wanted to avoid being fined heavily or found in legal contempt.

However, Veronica didn’t have to dispense one of those informal warrants to get what she wanted. She was already well acquainted with the biggest legal drug suppliers in the city. Medical compounds and other substances were imported from abroad, or from further South, and then dispensed through a logistical network that was large enough to make her head spin.

There were stringent legal requirements for tracking where those goods went and what they were being used for. The criminal gangs in Walser’s urban areas also avoided tangling with those types of drugs, focusing instead on ones that could be sourced locally and used recreationally. There was a brief outbreak of painkillers being abused after the Civil War, but those numbers plummeted after a widespread intervention campaign that focused on assisting veterans.

So, if she were in the shoes of a monarchist trying to slip some under the noses of the authorities, the fastest route to do that would be to register a new medical company in the city and start buying them. Veronica could spot a shell company from a mile away. To their credit – the monarchists weren’t that stupid.

Veronica’s credit only went so far though. It might have been enough to keep her from scrying the list of newly formed companies from the past year or two for any that looked suspect, but it was actually much easier for her to cross-reference her personal list of known collaborators with news articles and business papers filed at the local business administration office.

As luck would have it, Benedict Rentree had purchased a local private practice in that time period – and suddenly their financial reports were stating that the formerly small doctors were now purchasing a significantly higher quantity of goods required for running the business. He certainly didn’t let the recent death of his distant relation slow him down any...

Veronica checked out the place as soon as she could that very day – but there was nothing unusual about the premises. A steady stream of customers and employees came and went as they always did. There was even a little sign in the window stating they were under new ownership.

Benedict Rentree was not known for his interest in the healthcare industry, but he was known for being one of the most virulent monarchists amongst an already fanatical group. He would often use his clout to espouse his pro-monarchy opinions in whatever newspaper was mad enough to take him on as a guest column writer.

Veronica was overly familiar with all of this type. Staring at incident reports and intelligence notes was enough to drive a woman insane, but it did make names stick out in the mind when they cropped up again. Benedict was funnelling drugs from his new clinic into the hands of the killers. That was her working theory.

Veronica bit the bullet and flashed her badge to the receptionist, asking to see the person in charge of the clinic. All it took was an authoritative-sounding explanation of her reason for being there to get a pass. She was promptly escorted up the stairs and into a small office where the lead Doctor was finishing some paperwork of his own.

“There’s a policewoman here to see you, Doctor.”

“I hope it’s not for anything that I’ve done lately,” he joked.

Veronica adopted a serious persona and asked a series of simple questions. They were all easy for him to answer. Had he seen any reports of things going missing from the clinic lately? What did he think of the new owners? Were they planning on expanding outwards and acquiring more?

Leading him down that path led to some very revealing information. The discretion required by their scheme meant that the Doctor in charge of the clinic had no idea what he was saying. From his perspective, Rentree had merely purchased a small commercial lot in a nearby area to store more medicine.

Under the guise of some vague questioning, she quickly got what she wanted to hear, and the Doctor thought nothing of it, the good authority-fearing man that he was. Veronica thanked him for his time and left within the hour to find out where this new clinic was supposed to be.

It took some effort. Despite the Doctor giving her an address, it was obvious that he hadn’t actually visited the building despite having that information. Veronica was led on a wild goose chase as she observed several featureless brick boxes that were supposedly the business premises she was looking for. None of them seemed to be open to the public.

There weren’t any workers in the area either. All of the buildings were being used as storage space. Veronica decided not to waste any more time and investigate in a more unorthodox manner. Once she was happy that she had the correct doorway – she picked the lock by raking it. Security was awful despite the large quantity of valuable goods inside of them.

But the answer was simple. The other buildings were storing non-valuable materials. They were owned by local construction firms and other manual labour-driven businesses. Bricks, cement, timber – not the type of thing that a criminal would want to steal. They were heavy, cheap and difficult to justify risking jail time for.

This was security through obscurity. They were storing the drugs in an unsecured warehouse in a poorer area of the city because it was supposedly a bad idea. Nobody in their right mind would suggest doing so if the clinic was on the up and up. If they were attempting to hide a relay point between a legitimate Doctor’s office and an illegal assassin’s coven, then it was a different story.

The door opened and a rush of dust was kicked up. Veronica covered her nose and mouth while stepping through. The interior of the building was not a buffet of visual delights either. It was a dark, cramped space filled with as many boxes as could realistically fit.

Veronica used her trained eye to sort through the various crates. She plunged deeper into the building, moving them aside so that she could uncover what lay within the depths. It was clear that this property wasn’t being used for anything but storage.

Each box had a label stuck to it. A vast majority of the drugs inside the warehouse were common remedies that the office would dispense regularly to a large number of customers. There were also other non-perishable supplies like bandages and splints.

What did catch her eye was a crate without any markings at all. There was a patch of white residue where the label had been removed. She pulled the lid aside and checked what was contained within.

Ferdinol.

Veronica smiled, “There’s my hallucinogen...”

Ferdinol was an old painkiller that fell out of use with newer, cheaper and more effective options. It was derived from a classical Walserian remedy. The strongest and most well-known property of ferdinol was its ability to make the subject incredibly suggestive. It also could be stored in a room-temperature area without spoiling.

Some WISA agents swore by using ferdinol during their interrogations, although Veronica believed that it made them more likely to spout a load of nonsense. It was much better when used to direct someone to take a physical action. Combine it with a compound that stoked increased levels of aggression and you’d create an effect like the one that afflicted Michael during his incarceration.

Veronica closed it again and checked the crates that surrounded it for other unlabelled ones. The small storage space was stuffed full of crates upon crates of the stuff, more than any clinic would realistically need before they expired. She was struck fearful by the potential scale of the operation they were running.

“They must have hundreds and hundreds of those people, ready to kill on command.”

They wouldn’t need to drug all of them. Monarchists were being radicalized at an increasingly untenable pace. Finding enough of them to act as a personal army would not be difficult with their resources.

“Hey! Who’s in there?”

Veronica slammed the box shut and dusted off her dress. She navigated her way back through the maze and found a man wearing coveralls waiting by the door for her. He was there to pick up one of the boxes and deliver it to the clinic.

“You, do you work for the clinic?” Veronica asked.

“Why the heck are you asking me questions lady? Did you break into here? I’m gonna’ get the cop from the station and turn you in.”

She silenced his complaints by showing him her badge.

“I’m asking the questions. Do you work here?”

He leaned in to get a closer look at the badge. For a person on the street it was impossible to tell the difference between a regular detective’s badge and the one that the WISA agents used, but there were small marks that distinguished them and made police officers crap their briefs at the sign of it. They were technically meant to operate in secret even as a public agency.

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“Who are you?” he asked again.

“It says right there. I’m Officer Gladwell. I’ve been investigating a recent case, and I’d appreciate your cooperation. A few questions and I’ll be out of your hair post haste.”

Veronica could see the subtle ways in which his face twisted. He was starting to panic internally. The twitch in his brow, the dilation of his eyes, and the frown teasing the corners of his mouth. He had a terrible poker face. She could read him like an open book.

“I really can’t answer any of your questions, Ma’am.”

Veronica escorted the man out into the yard, but stuck close to the door so that they could have some shelter from the rain that was coming down.

“Does the clinic use Ferdinol as a painkiller these days? I thought that they moved on to more economical alternatives.”

He shook his head, “They always take a lot of pride in doing things the old way. Head Doctor over there still thinks it’s the best painkiller on the market.”

Veronica made sure that he knew she was not convinced by that cover story. She hummed under her breath and gave him an impatient glare.

“Interesting. I suppose there is value in sticking to what you’re familiar with – but it appears to me that you have amounts of the stuff far in excess of what a small clinic would use.”

He quickly tried to close the door on her line of questioning; “I wouldn’t know. They pay me to carry boxes, not figure out how much medicine they need.”

Veronica wasn’t sure if it was the rain or a bead of cold sweat running down the side of his face. He was not comfortable with where this conversation was going. She kept silent for a painfully long period to belabour the point.

“What’s your name?”

“My name?” he muttered, “Harry.”

“Harry. I understand that you might be worried about speaking with a good officer of the law unprompted, but you shouldn’t be! I only have your best interest at heart. So I hope you appreciate how disappointed I am at these little whites lies you keep telling me.”

The hammer dropped, as did his face, Harry was in a very tough spot indeed.

“I already said what I know. You can check the papers. They order this stuff from a legit importer across town. All the paperwork is clean, and they’re not selling it on to gang members or addicts, or anything like that.”

“The man I spoke with a few hours ago has a different perspective on where all of this ferdinol is going. He was doped to the gills with it, and the clinic you’re working for was bought a few months ago by Mister Rentree, and at the same time it started importing more ferdinol than it could ever hope to use.”

The walls were closing in and Harry knew he was stuck in the middle of them. He was going to be crushed if he didn’t tell her what she wanted, but that came with it’s own risks. Harry wasn’t being paid a special wage for keeping his mouth shut. His arrangement with the clinic was all stick and no carrot. With that in mind, he tried to play on her sense of mercy.

He held up his hands, “T-They said if I told anyone, they’d kill me.”

“I can do a lot worse than that,” Veronica warned, “It’s your choice. Tell the truth, or get locked up in a cell for obstruction of justice. Where are they taking this ferdinol?”

The threat of incarceration finally motivated him to speak,

“The Old Paxton Slaughterhouse on the edge of town, on the corner of Weller Road. It’s a twenty-minute trip from here! When I started working for ‘em, they took us over there to make the first delivery, but after that, they stopped asking us to do it. They brought in somebody else.”

“Somebody else? They swing by and grab a few crates of the stuff?”

“That’s right. I swear. I don’t know anything more than that.”

“When did they threaten you?”

“After they stopped us from running the route. They had a proper argument about it, said that we weren’t allowed to run it, and if we talked to anyone else about what happened they’d bury us six feet under.”

Veronica stepped away and allowed him to breathe again.

“This better be the unfiltered truth, Harry. If it’s not, I’ll be down here again with a real warrant, and we’ll be taking every crate of this stuff out of here and keeping it locked down.”

The threat was implicit but real. Harry could stake his life on the authenticity of his statements, or stake his life on being held responsible for their drug supply going missing. There was only one answer to give.

“It’s true. I swear on my bloody life it is.”

Veronica nodded, “Alright then. You can go back to what you were doing.”

Harry averted his eyes and turned back to the door.

“One more thing - I suggest you go and find a new job.”

Veronica didn’t stick around to hear his response.

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

The Paxton Slaughterhouse on the corner of Weller Road was not the type of haunt that Veronica would visit willingly. It was an ugly metal box parked in the middle of a developing residential district – surrounded on all sides by tall fencing that did nothing to beautify the area.

Emblazoned on a piece of rusted red metal was the name and logo of the company that owned the building. Paxton was a large food processing company that had factories and facilities across the country. Once upon a time this Paxton Slaughterhouse would have been in the countryside, away from any homes and in a prime location to accept live animals from the nearby farming villages.

The rapid urbanization of the East Coast’s twin cities put a stop to all of that. The ever-increasing demands of new residents, who wanted homes and services, meant that the area was rapidly being swamped by places designed for people to live in. A slaughterhouse was the antithesis of that. They were loud, smelly and unpleasant.

They pre-empted the complaints and shuttered active work at the site, moving the entire production line further away from the city. They never bothered to remove the branding from it though, and attempts to find a new purpose for the site were consistently beset by issues.

It still enjoyed some separation from the surrounding homes. It rested at the end of a winding dirt road that was connected to the cobbled artery that travelled through the area. It was clumsily placed in the middle of a big empty field, and only the minimum efforts to keep the grass from overgrowing had been made.

Butchering a cow here would be problematic – but it was a discrete place for activities that weren’t as loud or foul-smelling as industrial-scale animal slaughter. Veronica stalked around the outer edge of the main building in search of any signs of human activity. Fresh cart tracks could still be seen trailing through the dirt. There were no workers present at the building from what she could see.

In fact, they’d even left one of the doors open. Veronica tried every door until she found one that they had forgotten to close in their haste. It led through into one of the loading areas, and from there she could access any part of the building. She drew her pistol and started to slowly progress through the utility area.

It was going to have to be a thorough search of every room she could find. She had no expectations of finding any evidence, but it was standard practice to exhaust every possible angle before moving on.

Point of interest number one; a small table that was placed against the wall by the office on the right. There were empty bottles of booze, an ashtray filled with rubbish, and a set of playing cards left splayed across the surface. Someone had been here recently.

Veronica checked for written notes but found nothing.

She pressed forth onto the former factory floor. It was a large, mostly empty space. All of the stalls and machines, and whatever else the slaughterhouse used had been moved away a long time ago. What remained was a neglected conveyor belt straddling the middle of the room. Even years after it ceased operating the smell of blood was still strong. It was baked into the tiles and walls. The entire place smelt like iron.

Point of interest number two; there was a large, circular scorch mark on the floor in front of her. It was positioned beneath one of the windows in the roof, which would be opened to let fresh air into the building, and the stink out into the surrounding neighbourhood.

Veronica spoke to herself, “They were burning something. Documents?”

It wouldn’t be a shock. Criminal enterprises burnt incriminating documents all the time. If they were operating out of the slaughterhouse and felt pressure to move, then they would have had to have disposed of what was left before they did.

Veronica made the long tedious walk around the entire workspace, keeping her eyes firmly locked onto the ground so that she could search for other pieces of evidence. She eventually came across the pens where the live animals would be kept before their date with the reaper. They hadn’t been removed like the machines. They were sturdy metal frames embedded into the floor.

They were open, and there were signs that the previous residents were using them for something. She stepped through into it and found point of interest number three. A loud cracking noise jolted her nerves. Her foot had crushed an unseen glass vial to pieces. She reached into her pocket and donned her leather gloves.

Veronica knelt down and took one of the still-intact glass syringes into her palm, holding it up to what faint light came through the narrow windows in the roof. It was an empty Ferdinol needle. They all were. There were two dozen of them scattered onto the floor.

“Bring them here, drug them out of their minds, send them off to cause carnage...”

Morbid. Veronica put the syringe back down and dusted off her hands. They didn’t bother to clean up the mess once they decided to move. They must have felt that the trail wouldn’t lead back to them.

Her mind was putting together the pieces as she continued to stalk the empty halls. They couldn’t have used this place for long, it was more suitable as a front to smuggle the killers and the weapons they needed into the city. A staging area perhaps. Condition, modify and train them somewhere remote and bring them here so they could be given their instructions and deployed as needed.

There was that sinking feeling she hated.

Veronica suspected that this was bigger than Frankfort was ready to admit. This wasn’t a handful of assassins being prepared to kill a small number of targets. This was a template that they could replicate across the country. Outposts and safehouses where they could be stored, enraged using drugs, and then released to do their bidding.

They could exert large amounts of violent pressure on the government, all with the aim of restoring the monarchy to its full power. The King would never accept that type of poisoned chalice – but there were plenty of ambitious fools in his house who would gladly drink from it for a chance at momentary glory. A legacy defined by shearing the nation clean in two.

Benedict Rentree had to be apprehended and questioned as soon as possible.

She marched out of the pens and back onto the main floor. There was no time to waste. She had good cause to arrest Benedict and ask him why his clinic was shipping vials of drugs to an abandoned slaughterhouse.

But then she stopped.

Her nose crinkled. There was an awful smell emanating from a disposal chute at the end of the line.

The stench of it.

Veronica gagged. The rotting guts of disembowelled animal carcasses overpowered every bit of her composure, but it was so much worse than that. Putrid, foul - there weren’t words she could use to describe it. There was something else lurking in that disposal unit. Against her better judgment, she approached and unlatched it.

Peering out from the slurry was a face.

“Goddess above!” she hissed.

A human face.

Horribly burnt and scarred until nigh unrecognizable. His skin was charred coal black. His body had been awkwardly forced into the waste disposal and left to rot. Veronica slammed the lid shut and moved away as quickly as she could. She felt sick. The burn marks on the floor, they left him where he dropped and tried to burn the body.

Benedict was in for a world of trouble now.

Before she could reach the exit, she heard voices coming from outside.

“Are you sure you saw someone sneaking in here?”

“That’s what we’re here to watch out for,” a second voice replied.

“It’ll probably just be some homeless bum again.”

“And if it isn’t, he’s going to nail us to the bloody wall. Better safe than sorry.”

Veronica ducked into an alcove and concealed her body from view. The sliding door at the front of the loading bay opened, allowing light to flood into the area. A group of three men stood there and inspected the surroundings.

The third man laughed, “You know, I’d be happy if we did find a copper sticking their nose into this place. It means we haven’t wasted two days sitting in the dark with thumbs up our arses.”

“Cut the chatter. We’re meant to take ‘em by surprise, remember?”

The group went quiet, but if Veronica had her way – soon they’d be singing like a flock of canaries.