Evalyn’s original hypothesis of the whereabouts of a Beak in Sidos City was bleak but realistic. Although one of the more progressive regions, the city still harboured remnant resentment for Spirits. Ten years wasn’t enough to do away with that.

But it started to set in on Evalyn that Kuarel Farehn was likely far from a victim of hate crime. Any merit in attacking him did not come from who he was but instead from what he was capable of doing.

Taking several back alleys and side streets to minimise visibility, they emerged from cover into Pearson Avenue, and Evalyn was greeted with a site she could not truthfully say surprised her. Each warehouse along the endless avenue was a medium-scale manufacturing plant, and parts for small-scale Higher Order Armour units were being manufactured in every single one, just as Elvera had warned.

Armour plating, bipedal movement systems, cabins, and engine frames. It was a hotbed for the most sought-after technology on the continent. 14 Pearson Avenue, Kurael’s official place of employment, was a rifle manufacturing plant. The type of rifle that shot bullets the length of Evalyn’s head, for use exclusively by the units. This was Kurael’s valuable, valuable speciality. It was no wonder he never told his mother of his profession.

Evalyn marched her way through the large open doors of the warehouse and spotted the manager’s cabin that sat high above the assembly lines. Workers fitting barrels to chambers, polishing bolts, and furnishing guns stared at the two as Evalyn stormed up to the office, dragging Iris behind her.

By the third knock, a large, moustached man answered the door, his eyes barely peeking out from under his horribly unkempt unibrow.

“Appointment?”

“Detective Inspector Pergol Harlep. Sidos Metropolitan Police,” she spat as she violently produced her proof of operation.

“Wow, wow. Calm down; I get it! You have questions. Come inside.”

It was only then that Evalyn registered the racket of the assembly floor. She could barely hear herself think, let alone the manager. Reluctantly she composed herself and stepped into the cabin.

“What’s with the child?”

“Police academy.”

“That young?”

“I’ve come to run routine check-ups of your lead workers’ whereabouts and working conditions. Your chief engineers on this project are a top priority to the state.”

“I…I don’t recall investigations like that.”

Evalyn crossed her arms impatiently, her boots tapping the coffee-stained carpet in a quiet but noticeably impatient beat. She scanned outside the window of the cabin. The assembly line workers were in no position to see her, and no windows matched their elevation. Still, she shifted her feet to avoid the full view of the window.

“New state protocol. What you’re manufacturing here is extremely valuable, after all.”

“Are you looking for anyone in particular?”

“Not necessarily, anyone with specific qualifications, not just muscle. My Geverdian counterparts are also looking for detailed information regarding the state of their expatriates.”

“I…I can look into it….”

“Thank you very much,” Evalyn feigned. The man turned his back to her, but her gaze was unrelenting. Kurael was possibly someone with intimate knowledge of Higher Order weapon systems, and Evalyn already had the hunch something was amiss. Not giving her real name was simple caution in case the man was a sympathiser, or the room was bugged.

As the manager passed his desk, Evalyn caught him subtly brushing against a handheld radio, turning its transmission on.

“So, are you looking for anyone in particular?”

“A general list will be fine, along with their attendance, et cetera.”

As the man’s back was turned towards the shelf on the far side of the room, Evalyn dipped a hand into her trench coat and found her suppressor. She unholstered her pistol, screwing the attachment on underneath her jacket.

“Why the sudden change in protocol? We’ve always been a weapons manufacturer. Some of the boys here worked on The Citadel project years ago.”

“Oh, you know. There’s been a rise in S.H.I.A. activity recently.”

The man was visibly irked—a horrible actor.

“Iris, get behind me,” Evalyn whispered, and the child obeyed.

Evalyn produced her pistol and shot the handheld radio, destroying it. The only sound between the suppressor and the subsonic bullet was the click of the slide racking another round. She stepped forward, each step sending the man further into the bookshelf as paper after paper flew out of his flailing hands. She pinned him to the wall, her silencer against his jaw.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“Assuming you had to turn on a radio, I’m guessing this room isn’t bugged?”

The man shook his head desperately.

“I asked a fucking question,” she muttered. The man shook his head violently, the silencer block growing sticky from the sweat on his neck.

“I’m going to ask now, and know it’s no use lying to me because I will hurt you more than those bastards ever will. You gave him to someone; else, you would’ve mentioned a missing worker sooner. Who has Kuarel Farehn?”

“S-S-S-S-S.H.I.A. They have him. They have all of them,” he blurted.

“All of whom?”

“A-a-a-a-anyone who can design those things. Put them…put them together.”

“And this has been going on for a month?”

“Longer…”

“Where?”

“A warehouse h-here in the city…they control….”

“Delfare manufacturing?”

“Y-yes! That one!”

Without warning, Evalyn struck the man’s temple with the butt of her gun, allowing him to flop to the floor unconscious.

“Iris, pass me that rag over there before he wakes up.”

Iris’s small feet pattered as she did what she was told. Not a complete stranger to violence, she was oddly in tune with it. Evalyn undid the man’s belt and fastened it tightly around his hands.

“We can’t let him contact his friends while we’re gone,” she said as Iris passed her the rag. She fastened it as tightly as she could around the man’s mouth before turning to her.

She clasped Iris’s cheeks, staring deep into her eyes as if to drive the danger home.

“I’m going to take you somewhere safe. If my hunch is correct, then we’ve been seen together by that man in the grey coat. I don’t know how far up this goes, and I don’t know if they’ve gotten their hands on the police as well.”

“I don’t want to leave you…”

“I’ve got no choice, you understand? This isn’t something you’re ready for yet.”

“Where?”

“It’s not as homely, but there are people I trust there.”

Under the assumption that her work became risky and the police were not on her side, Evalyn Hardridge kept an array of small safehouses throughout several cities where she frequently conducted operations. Smaller safehouses were harder to find, but relatively indefensible in the case of an attack.

Old Chestrel manor was an oddity as it reversed the pros and cons. A large, eye-catching relic of a long-gone era of lords and ladies instead made up for its shortcomings in other ways. The winding hallways and myriad chambers meant that an intruder could not succeed in invading undetected. An attack would not work unless it was violent enough to wake the whole city.

Evalyn’s arduous game of hide and seek with an invisible enemy finally approached its end when she entered from the rear gates of the manor. Even in the taxi, neither her sidearm nor Iris’s wrist had left her grasp.

Each leg of her journey was marred by the presence of men in grey coats. Hidden amongst crowds or patrolling in police cars, Evalyn began to realise how omnipotent their presence was. S.H.I.A. may have tapped into that network, and the city was now watching her with its thousands of eyes. She could see them, feel them drilling into the back of her head.

She kicked down her old family prison’s back door and was flooded with an unsavoury nostalgia. The indulgent design of everything from the ceilings to the carpets held all the tastelessness of a seventeenth-century aristocrat. Not to mention that very entrance was where she had most often escaped to when avoiding disciplinary punishment.

For what offence she could never remember, all she could recall were the hideous paintings on the wall. A line of noble ancestors from one side of the room to the other circled the small table in the centre—nothing but an ashtray and a vase of flowers on it. Whoever sat there to smoke, gaze out to the garden or cry was eternally judged by those across the veil given life through painting.

“Oswald! If you’re still alive, get me a fucking telephone!”

A slight squeal from the hall yonder was the most immediate response to Evalyn’s brash entry. A small, young handmaiden with a dust feather firmly in her grasp timidly rounded the corner.

“Is Oswald still here?” Evalyn asked with no hesitation.

“Y-yes…but who might you be?”

However, the fiery woman paid her no heed as she dragged a child behind her further into the mansion, cursing the entire way.

“Oswald!”

“My lady, no need to shout my ears are perfectly fine.”

As if on autopilot, Evalyn rounded a final doorway into the main hall, lined with banister railings and red carpet. The ground floor was populated with antique furniture a collector would quite possibly kill for. The place was hundreds of years away from the grey block city it was situated on the outskirts of, and Evalyn found that its divorced nature from the city was its only redeemable trait. Besides that, the only thing she felt for the home she grew up in was bitterness.

A slender man swiftly managed his way down the far most flight of stairs, intent on serving his guests. His movements were so precise from years in the same manor it was as if his feet were attached to a set of automatic rails.

“I take it you have been well?”

“I would say that, but it seems I’ve gotten myself in hot water again.”

“With whom this time?”

“S.H.I.A. A missing person’s case I was involved with just so happened to connect to them. By the looks of it, they’ve got eyes all over the city. Fuck…now that I think about it, those two in the archive….”

The two inquisitive police officers in the immigration office had worn the same grey jackets. She had thought nothing of it, but if there really were sympathisers in the police as well…

“Tea?”

“No, a telephone, I already told you…get a cup for Iris.”

“Iris?”

“My ward. Keep her safe.”

“Safe, safe? Or safehouse safe.”

“I’ll let you know if I need the second one.”

“I understand, my lady. Patricia!”

“Yes, master!”

Another female voice from somewhere in the echoing chambers of the manner answered the old man’s calls promptly and without question. Almost as if this special nook of the world was the only place that bent to his will and only his will.

“A telephone for the young madam. Let the house know the manor’s owner is home.”

“Y-yes, master!”

The man turned his attention to Iris, his aged skin and greying hair contradicting his youthful movements. His gloved hands were firmly clasped together above the glimmering buttons of his black tuxedo.

“Tea?”

Evalyn noticed how Iris stood in silence. Thinking back, she had sat in the taxi wide-eyed and high on adrenaline the entire time. Evalyn’s anxiety had been infectious, and even now she looked as though her hair would begin to dissolve and go berserk at any moment. The little girl sank into the nearest chair, the ageing wood’s groaning sounding an awful lot like paper money being torn apart.

“Your telephone, madam!” chimed a woman as she almost silently stepped down the stairway towards Evalyn. The pleats of her skirt were louder than her footsteps, the mark of a professional handmaiden. Behind her, a trailing wire led to the phone in her hand, which she placed on a cigar table next to Iris.

Evalyn immediately got to dialling. Anyone in Sidosian authority she could not trust completely. That only left her with one drastic best bet.

“You have reached the Royal Geverdian Military Special Operations. Please state your business.”