I was escorted to the ground floor, where Frankfort and Veronica waited for me in the old office behind the front desk. They had a large pile of pilfered papers in front of them.

“Welt had a lovely little office built for himself on the upper floors. One of the only rooms in the entire tower with intact windows,” Frankfort revealed. The goons he placed on guard duty must have been happy to learn that.

Genta’s testimony combined with their intelligence, and documents pilfered from the various spaces being used in the tower, had given them a clearer view of where things were headed. Since we were all in the same boat – they had graciously decided to clue me in as well.

Frankfort was grave, “Ekkehard Van Walser is the one they’ve appointed to be the new King. He’s a flagrant opportunist – and was poorly regarded by the members of the main house for his cravenness. That says a lot, considering the usual strength of character on display from the royals. They should be announcing it tomorrow.”

“What kind of story have they concocted to justify that?”

“They have several. The border attack that they organized, the tensions building in parliament, and the recent chaos in the city. It’ll all become encompassed in a sweeping narrative about the previous King not doing enough to quell the disorder. The story is secondary so long as they obtain a monopoly on force, and I fear that they will.”

“Anything else?”

“There was also a document listing some of his conspirators. They must have missed it while trying to destroy the evidence. Jonas Rentree, Micah Greenblatt, Jerimiah Vincent, and some others. There aren’t many surprises, to be honest.”

“But it is instructive for our purposes. It shows how deeply he’s entangled himself with the government and high society. Some of those people would only choose to back him if they believed it was the winning side,” Veronica theorized.

“This is all sounding like horrible news,” I grumbled.

The ‘easiest’ way to handle this would be to knock off each person involved. I could handle that, although it wouldn’t be quick. I’d have to make plans for each target and bide my time to execute them. A window of opportunity didn’t come around every day.

“And I don’t imagine that the army reforms led to a mass exodus of monarchists from the command structure?” I added pessimistically.

“Oh no, not at all,” Frankfort chuckled, “They clung on for dear life until their knuckles turned white as a sheet. They were willing to compromise on many fronts – but military command was not one of them.”

To pile on more pressure - those demonic soldiers were the biggest pain in the ass imaginable. A single one, however untrained they were, posed a significant threat to someone as experienced as me. That gap was going to be even more stark versus the police and civil agencies that chose to stay loyal to the previous King. They could blow them away at the snap of a finger.

I turned to the man in the know; “Genta, please tell me that there’s an easy way to dispense of his new secret police.”

The look he pulled did not fill me with confidence. He thought about my ask for a moment before explaining what he understood about them.

“Those subjects are not invincible. They demonstrate increased durability and magical potential, and small-arms fire may prove ineffective, but they are still fundamentally human – with all of the same weaknesses and anatomical features.”

“What you’re suggesting is that cutting them or shooting them is not a fitting solution should we face them in a fight?”

“You could shoot and disable them, but that would require shattering their spinal column and separating their nervous system. It will be hard to do that shooting through their front, especially when their blood congeals so rapidly that it dampens the impact of any injury.”

That didn’t a damn lick of sense. How the hell did their blood congeal that fast? And how were they able to store it in the refrigerator without it becoming useless? He made it sound so simple – but there were a million questions about this Horr blood that he couldn’t answer. It didn’t follow any reasonable set of rules. I had to accept that not following rules was what they did though.

They existed in the Veil. That was a realm where the normal laws of physics did not apply, and where many dangerous and inhuman creatures resided. If they were capable of greater intelligence I was certain that they would find beings such as ourselves every bit as confounding. Maybe there was an intelligent resident hiding somewhere in there.

As for targeting their spines, that did make sense. Since the Horr blood was injected into their veins, it was more effective at protecting blood vessels, outside injuries, and ruptured organs. It didn’t matter if the veins in the spine burst, they couldn’t undo damage to the bones and nerves there. My nihility magic would be very effective at targeting those areas.

“How many of them did they make?”

Genta smiled nervously, “I think Sloan mentioned... two hundred? At least.”

Never mind. There wasn’t enough magic in the world’s atmosphere to kill that many of them.

“For goodness sake. I may as well leap from the nearest cliff-face and save everyone’s time and effort,” I complained, “Where in the good name of the Goddess did they find two hundred willing subjects for this?”

“It’s rather distressing. The diluted blood showed some type of healing properties – so they pitched it to a variety of monarchist-leaning individuals who were suffering from terminal health conditions. If they die, which they did occasionally, Sloan would assure them that it was a result of poor luck on their part and that taking the injections was better than not.”

Combine that with the fanatics he was already in contact with and a few mercenaries willing to do it for cash, and you could hit two hundred. A new private army that could exercise an outsized level of military force despite their relatively small number.

“Did you see that happen personally?” Frankfort inquired.

“Not personally. They’d already completed recruiting all the people they needed, but these hallways don’t do a very good job of keeping conversations contained. I heard Sloan speaking at length about a variety of subjects, all of which were the type of turn one’s stomach. He’s surely the type of unscrupulous man that Welt would seek out.”

Genta did not look pleased to recant some of that information to us, and he was putting it into politer terms than Sloan ever would have. There was probably a mass grave somewhere nearby with all of the dead subjects piled up, end to end. They wouldn’t want that getting out.

He wiped his forehead with a napkin, “Well – my most morbid suggestion for dealing with them is to wait. The blood flows effectively through the body when diluted, but it still gets stuck on the inside of the arteries and valves. When it builds to a certain point, that congelation will starve their body of oxygenated blood and kill them...”

“And how long does it take for someone to die from that?” I asked.

“A few months if they’re lucky. A week if they’re not.”

Veronica shook her head and slammed the door on that idea.

“Even a week is far too long. Welt will have accounted for that and dispatched them to places where they can cause the most damage in the shortest amount of time. If he gains full control over the military, then he will no longer have need of them. Did he not say where he was going?”

“They made certain that I was out of earshot when they discussed their plans. All I know is that they moved into the city.”

“They must have taken residence with one of his supporters who lives near the Palace. He can keep his head down and direct what they’re doing from the front.”

Frankfort grabbed a pencil and started to make notes, “I know where some of those individuals live from previous investigations. We can start there.”

I nodded; “I’ll leave that to you two. I’m going back to make sure that the others haven’t stumbled down the nearest cliff while my back was turned.”

I was genuinely worried about leaving Samantha and the others alone in enemy territory for long. My paranoia was getting intense, banging against the inside of my skull and demanding that I locate them as soon as possible. They didn’t stop me when I stepped out of the lobby and headed back towards the stairs.

Claude was waiting for me, posed up against the wall like one of the hard-boiled detectives he loved to read about in the pulp novels he wasted his allowance on. He stepped out into the corridor and blocked my path with a smirk on his face.

“Well, well, well! Look who’s back.”

“You look very satisfied for a boy who was given all of the answers by somebody else,” I groaned.

“Hey! I was one of the first people who sniffed out who you really were! Professor Prier’s death? I always knew that you had something to do with it.”

“And was that based on solid evidence? Or were you merely casting assertions at me based on your own prejudices?”

“My Dad would say that I’ve got a good instinct for spotting guilty parties.”

“I hope in the name of all that’s good that he applies more process to his investigations than you do.”

He narrowed his gaze and his focus, pushing past my barbs and trying to grasp at some unknowable further truth; “Samantha told me a lot about you.”

“Did she?”

Claude tried to put on a tough-guy detective façade, but there was a huge gulf between the imaginary confrontation in his head and the one he was now walking into by speaking with me alone.

“I’m not sure if I believe all of it, but Samantha would rather ‘roll around in pig muck’ than lie to her friends, her words. In the end, my takeaway was that all of this stuff had been implanted into your head via hypnotic suggestions.”

“Hypnotism?” I scoffed on instinct. On second thought, it was probably more believable in a world with magic. Adrian had a time-travelling watch in his possession – so was hypnotism really a bridge too far?

Stolen story; please report.

I couldn’t guess how much Samantha had told Claude of the story. It was possible that he would start to think that she had some kind of self-importance problem if she revealed that the Goddess was involved with us.

“It’s a promising field of research and debate! There are a dozen thinkers and scientists who are looking into it as we speak.”

“And who do you suppose hypnotized me?”

“The Sturmläufer.”

“Claude, there’s a real, in-the-flesh intelligence officer in the lobby over there, and she’s been working for the government and royal family for decades. She already told us that there was no such thing.”

“I’m just using their name as a rhetorical example!” Claude pled, “WISA, the Sturmläufer, whatever they want to call themselves – they have a long and sordid history of recruiting children to be deep cover agents. Hypnotism would be the most efficient way to train them in the art of killing.”

“It certainly is no art that I’ve ever heard of. So your theory is that they brainwashed me, trained me to kill, and then dispatched me to the Academy to keep a close eye on all of those influential children?”

“Doesn’t that make the most sense? Of course, the nobles would want their children protected. The future of their empires relies on succession.”

“Naturally. There’s only one problem with your theory. Why would they elect to kidnap and train a noble girl to do that? My Father is an extremely important, affluent and influential man. It would be more understandable if they took a young child without a family, like my Mother.”

He tapped the side of his head, “That’s the genius of it! A regular street urchin couldn’t earn a place at the Royal Academy. In order to ensure that they could protect all of the nobles and their interests, they trained a noble to do it all while perfectly blending into their environment.”

My brow quirked. I was surprised that Claude had thought that far ahead, parrying my counter-argument with rhetoric that allowed his theory to stand. Normally he would fold like a house of cards the moment I started poking holes in his narrative. In his eyes – this was a likelier story than Samantha and I being blessed by a mythical religious Goddess.

Claude did not speak openly about faith or his apparent lack of it. It was still taboo to openly question the existence of the Goddess. Recent events have given me a fresh perspective on the issue, but forcing people to accept her existence without solid evidence was still foolish.

Organized religious worship was not an aspect of modern Walserian society. There were a lot of coalescing reasons for that being the case. Despite this, belief in the Goddess was still overwhelmingly the most popular creed. It made me ponder if such an outcome would have been possible in an alternate version of Earth’s history, for a religion to lose its form yet continue on regardless.

I supposed that anything was possible when it came to the minds of men. Why would they give up their religious beliefs for the lack of a dedicated place of worship?

“I see no reason to argue with you at length about this. The most important parts of the tale have already been revealed to you. I care not for how you rationalize them within your mind.”

“I’m only here to make sure that you don’t hurt Samantha or Max.”

“Honestly, you think too highly of yourself. What would you do if I planned to harm them?”

“I’d try to stop you.”

This was the same problem as with Adrian. Neither of them seemed to get that they would only be hurting themselves by behaving this way. They wouldn’t prove instrumental in saving the day. They would march happily into a dangerous situation where they were ill-suited to be and get killed.

Was it so hard for them to value their lives as more than sacrificial chips to play when our hand wasn’t looking good? Claude had been holding me up for so long that Adrian wandered up the stairs to see what the conversation was all about.

“What are you two doing?”

“Nothing,” I said, “Claude wanted to have a word with me.”

Some buyer's remorse spread throughout the group. Saying you want to come along before being confronted by a violent gunfight would make any normal person baulk at going any further. Now that Adrian had been made modest by the actions of his father, Claude was the sole source of worthless bravado from my circle of acquaintances.

“I don’t like standing around in this place. Maybe going out there and burying them really will make me feel better,” he murmured.

It was a haunting environment. A desolate, brutalist structure where all of the comfort had long since been stripped away. Sound travelled far and the howl of the wind outside was your only consistent companion. In that lull during the conversation, something caught my ear. I could hear footsteps approaching from behind.

Adrian was still standing at the top of the stairs, while Claude was with me in the middle of the hallway. I turned to face the source of the noise and felt my heart skip a beat. Standing there with his shoulders hunched and his teeth bared was a pale-skinned man with one arm held outstretched.

“Get down!”

I pulled Claude by his collar with such force that he almost tumbled onto the floor, dragging him with a loud squeal into the nearest doorway as the calamitous spell he was casting came our way. A deafening bang echoed, rattling the shattered glass windows and flinging shrapnel like a detonating fragmentation grenade. The miscellaneous waste left on the floor was deadly at that speed.

We fell through and onto the ground, barely missing the shockwave. The dust and debris filled the air and caused us both to cough. Where the hell had this asshole been hiding the entire time - was he on the damn toilet while all of his friends were getting killed?

Claude was having a panic attack. He slid down the wall and covered his head with his arms. I pulled my pistol and glanced back through the corridor, spotting the assassin hiding in one of the doorways, using the heavy concrete walls as cover. Shooting him wasn’t going to do any good from here – and I couldn’t accurately snap his spine in two at long range either.

“Holy shit! Holy shit!” Claude hissed.

Not helpful whatsoever!

“Claude, move your butt before he charges us!”

He wasn’t listening to me, and his ears were still ringing from the volume of the magical blast that he had fired out way. I had to be the one to take the initiative before he came barrelling through the door and killed us both. Easier said than done when he was on alert.

I fired two shots in his direction, forcing him back. He was concerned about getting injured – unlike the other lunatics who attacked the funeral.

“Adrian! Are you still alive over there?”

“Yes!” he yelled in return.

“Get down into the basement!”

He didn’t respond. I had to assume that he was going to follow my orders and get out of the way. Even being near one of these souped-up assassins was dangerous. The immense amount of collateral damage they caused meant that bystanders were in the blast zone even when they thought they were safe.

Another spell rocked the concrete and steel structure of the building. He was trying to blow his way through the wall to kill us. If it were a more sophisticated spell, then perhaps he would have succeeded. None of the assassins had formal magical training. That would require registering their name onto the list, and finding a tutor willing to do it under the table was almost impossible.

They relied on raw strength instead. The magic-infused Horr blood provided them with a battery that could dispense huge energy attacks that would kill any other person. A lot of that energy was dissipated into the air because they didn’t know how to narrow their focus and direct the blast. But even if they could find a mage willing to teach them – they would not know how to cast a spell like this, nor would they feel safe doing so.

I took the window of opportunity that presented itself to leave my hiding place, moving backwards through the hallway while firing back at the man around the corner. Still fearful of the agony that came with being struck with a bullet, he reacted as if each one had the potential to kill him. It was a natural instinct that took a lot of illicit drugs to suppress, and there were no bonus points for guessing what Welt did to the men who attacked the gang funeral.

I hid behind one of the old reception desks, waiting to hear his footsteps approaching my position. Veronica had undoubtedly heard the chaos unfolding, but the building was so large that it would take a minute to reach us, and that was enough time to be the difference between life and death.

I heard him. He was coming up on my position, but my diversionary tactics were proven ineffective. He summoned forth another great wave of magic and threw it into the room with me, tossing chairs, ripping them from the metal brackets in the floor, and flinging my lightweight body across the room and into a crumpled heap by the other exit.

I bit down on my tongue and tried not to indicate how much that hurt – which it did, very much so. He was quick to move up on me with his hands pointed at me like a pair of loaded guns.

“This one’s for the boys!”

More footsteps were converging on my position, but the person who came to my rescue was not Veronica or Frankfort. Adrian skidded around the corner with a pilfered shotgun clutched in his arms. He hoisted the heavy thing up into the air and switched off the safety, training his aim firmly on the man’s back.

Adrian, wide-eyed and carried entirely by circumstance, pulled the trigger of the stolen shotgun and fired a shell into the assassin’s back. Blood and smoke erupted from where the shot landed. He staggered forwards closer to me but stood back up and started to turn in his direction.

Adrian couldn’t move his legs. He hadn’t even killed the guy – yet he was now experiencing exactly what I warned him about earlier. The weight of shooting another human being was not one to be taken as a joke. In that second he was embroiled in an internal debate about whether it was a good idea to try and protect Claude and me by shooting at him.

I scrambled back to my feet and charged at him from behind, intent on taking advantage of the distraction that Adrian had caused. He was too slow to stop me from getting behind him and making a last-ditch effort to finish him off.

I pushed my palm against the back of his neck and summoned a burst of nihilistic energy. The bones and nerves in his neck were eviscerated, the molecules and atoms scattering to the four corners of the physical space we inhabited at such a high velocity that the explosion was invisible to the human eye.

His demonic blood was no match for the control centre of his body being severed. His neck lolled to one side and he crumbled to the floor, unable to move his arms or legs. Soon after that he stopped breathing and died.

Adrian was frozen – he was still aiming the shotgun in my direction.

“Point that somewhere else, please!”

His arms slackened and he finally relaxed his body. A look of distress emerged and he dumped the shell before discarding the gun onto the ground. He shivered, unable to look away from the bloodied corpse that was lying at my feet.

“Shit!”

He stomped the ground. His shot to the back was not the killing blow. It didn’t even slow him down, but that was an injury that he delivered to another person in a life or death situation, and that was enough to elicit a similar feeling in him to taking his life.

“I’m not gloating, but this is what I was warning you about.”

“I feel sick. You do this to all of these people?”

“If the situation arises, yes.”

Veronica and Frankfort soon arrived on the scene, with Veronica scowling at the sight of a previously unseen straggler.

“Where the bloody hell was this prick hiding?” she spat, “Was he on the toilet the whole time?”

I dusted myself off and tried to work out the kink in my leg, “I’m fine. I’m fine!”

I should have listened to Samantha. I couldn’t run anywhere near as fast as I usually could with my injury. That forced me into a bad position in the room and let him hit me with the spell. If I was the slightest bit faster – I could have hidden further in and avoided being caught in the blast.

There were almost two hundred of these assholes waiting for us...

I wasn’t a betting man, but those odds sounded pretty damn awful to me.

Adrian stared at him for a moment, recalling the many lessons we’d taken at the Academy. His anxiety about shooting another living person was supplanted with another thought, one that made him chill to the bone.

“Welt’s going to let these folks run rampant in the city? They could kill thousands of people! They already did that when they attacked that funeral. Ripped an entire street up stone by stone, brick by brick, and destroyed a row of houses.”

The atmosphere was grim.

“Not if we do something about it,” Veronica assured him, “Avoiding direct confrontation will be the best option for us. It’ll minimize exposure to these assassins and protect civilians from being caught in the fighting.”

“Are you any good at that?”

Veronica was less forthcoming about that, “Ah. While WISA agents are generally expected to act with subtlety, we were not meant to disguise ourselves and sneak into places without legal authority. We were ultimately officers of the law. Even before the place was reformed – I never got assigned to handling a dirty job like that. They thought I was too morally upright to ask.”

I leaned against a concrete pillar and stroked my chin. Those words sounded ominously familiar to my ear. A subtle approach, one which involved removing pieces of their command structure one by one, without them even noticing we were there. In short – they needed a hitman.

“I can do it,” I revealed.

“What?”

“I can do it. I can get into their presence and make the problem go away. You and Frankfort are extremely experienced in collecting information and sourcing equipment. We can use that. If you give me what I need, then we can start collapsing Welt’s command structure, and hopefully, the panic we cause will fray his coalition at the seams.”

Veronica shook her head; “I’m not putting you into that situation-”

“It doesn’t matter what you think, Veronica. You can agree or disagree but I’ll do it regardless. This entire country is going to go to hell if we let Welt get away with this, and there won’t be a safe corner for anyone to hide in when that comes to pass.”

The tension was so thick that you could cut it with a knife. Claude poked his head through the destroyed door to see what the argument was about, having regained his senses.

Frankfort sighed, “I’d be a rank hypocrite to decry using a young girl as an agent after my history with the agency – but my question is if you’re capable of handling that.”

I smiled, “Oh, don’t worry Ma’am. I’m very good at getting into places I shouldn’t be.”