7.4

  While Fingers and Arden slip out the bar’s front doors, off to whatever hushed corner of the past they still share, I slide into a booth of my own, far back in the corner of All Drops, where the light barely reaches and the hum of old jazz is only background static. I need space. Space to think, to breathe, to piece together what the hell comes next. I flick through scraps of info on my phone, but there’s barely anything on the Bone District, as expected: fragments, half-archived threads and dead-end maps. The Spindle, though, that has weight. Once part of a fully functional junkyard, now an industrial relic choked with broken tech, twisted car husks, half-melted loader frames, and machinery that hasn’t seen a proper tune-up since the back end of ’78. It’s on the city’s neglected edge, the part urban planners like to pretend doesn’t exist. Makes sense, really. If Cierus Marlow’s hiding in the shadows—really hiding, not just ducking the law—then she’d want somewhere like that. Somewhere that doesn’t just lack witnesses. Somewhere where the ground itself has already forgotten you.

  It’s big: long, low, and wrapped tight around the far edge of the junkyard. Probably used to be an electrical station, or maybe a control hub for staff back when the place still had purpose. But that’s not what I’m focused on. What I want, need, is intel on how Cierus runs her operation. The structure. The entry points. Anything that says there's a way in that doesn’t end with us leaking red into the dirt. Because if Arden’s right, and I believe she is, then we’re not just dealing with bolted doors and cameras. We’re dealing with giant, engineered snakes patrolling the scrap heaps, and maybe armed men watching the perimeter, men who know what a memory thief looks like when they smell one coming. Stealth alone? That’d be suicide. Back on the cargo ship, we had invisible suits and basic workers, and no one gave a damn about what was happening under the floor. But this? This is something else. This is a fortress built from rust, and walking in blind would be the last mistake we ever make.

  I rack my brain, running scenarios over and over—stealth, brute force, bribery—but nothing sticks. Every angle ends the same way: with us buried in junk metal or burned out in some memory rig never meant to be found. Even if we managed to sneak in, what then? Cierus isn’t the kind to leave her braindance units lying around in the open. No, she’d keep them deep, buried probably, below ground, behind walls thick with muscle and encrypted steel. Access granted only to the high rollers, the important buyers, the sickos with money and silence. We’re not on that list. Not yet. But… what if—?

  Something small hits the edge of the table with a dull clack: a bottle of stout, mostly drained, the label peeling with moisture. I blink, look up. There’s Cormac, lowering his chrome hand onto the wood, the servos hissing as he slides into the velvet seat across from me.

  He’s grinning that slow, too-calm grin he wears when he’s about to say something clever or unhelpful. “Ms. Mono,” he says, “I do hope you don’t mind the intrusion. Vander and Dance, I fear, are taking Arden’s generous offer of free drinks with the sort of enthusiasm that usually ends in property damage.”

  I glance towards the bar and see them, Vander and Dance, laughing, shoulders rocking with some awful private joke, but they’re keeping it verbal. No brawls. No broken glass. Yet.

  “That,” Cormac adds, folding his hands neatly in front of him, “and, well… you have my curiosity.”

  I raise an eyebrow, voice flat. “I do?”

  “I’m afraid we haven’t had the chance for a proper introduction,” he says, still wearing that polite, unnerving smile.

  I sink back into the velvet, elbow on the armrest, head cradled in my palm. “I guess we haven’t,” I say, the words sagging with exhaustion. “How’re you, Cormac?”

  He chuckles, a dry, careful sound, and then shakes his head. “No, Mono. The question is: how are you?”

  “How am I?” I echo, deadpan. “Being completely honest? There’s a woman out there who’s probably holding my memory hostage—if she hasn’t already shredded it into ones and zeroes. She’s armed, connected, and might have a security perimeter made of goddamn metal snakes. Me? I’ve got a few quick-hacks and a charming Australian who keeps running his mouth. So yeah: this is lookin’ real hopeful.”

  Another chuckle, and this time it’s more genuine. Less performative, less crawling over the skin. “If I might say,” he begins, “since being thrust into this seemingly endless spiral of cat-and-mouse, you’ve not slowed down one bit.” He leans forward slightly, fingertips tapping together, eyes fixed on me. Not unkind, just aware, like he’s reading something in the dark that no one else can see. “I know the struggle,” he continues. “Wanting something so badly that you’d tear the world apart just to hold it for a second. But if you don’t take a breath, just one, step back, clear your mind… you’ll find yourself backed into a corridor with no sense of direction, only panic echoing off the walls.”

  “Yeah, well, panic’s easy,” I say. “It’s the waiting that eats at me.” I shift in my seat, eyes dropping to the half-empty glass in front of me. “But yeah, I get you. You’re not wrong. I’ve not really… slowed down, at all.” Some silence for a moment, and then my eyes meet his again. “Can I ask you something? Might be a little personal?”

  Cormac lifts his stout, takes a thoughtful sip. His metal fingers tap against the glass. “I do love questions,” he says, that voice smooth. “Even the personal kind. What tips at your mind, madame?”

  “Well, you,” I say. “A while back, Fingers told me you left the force because of some project—the NACP wanting to control minds. She said the government tried to kill you. Or, that you said that. But I looked into it. The Seraph Device? It was designed for AI. Not people. So, what I’m wondering is… why would they try to kill you?”

  Cormac goes still. Not stiff, not tense, but thoughtful. He sets the stout down with care. “Oh,” he says quietly. “Now that is a fine question. But you see, Rhea…. Well, I suppose some context is in order for you to fully understand the answer to that question. Are you familiar with the The Whale Incident of 2085?”

  I shake my head. “Not particularly.”

  “The Whale was a great monument to the south,” Cormac begins, voice dipped in that soft, eerie lilt of his. “A relic, you might say. Something carved out to represent the poor’s hope—though many saw the whale not as a symbol of perseverance, but of extinction. A dying species, and by extension… dying hope, oh yes.” He leans back, eyes flicking towards the memory, like it’s playing out just behind my shoulder. “It sat at the end of a long, weathered pier, most marvellously polished by salt and time.

  “Children would gather there, hand in hand with their parents, singing little songs no one remembers anymore. Laughing like the world wasn’t already gone, oh yes. And then came the Luminara Festival of 2085: lanterns, food stalls, everyone draped in silver cloth and oh-so-much joy.” He pauses, takes a long, slow sip of his stout, then sets the bottle down. “That was when a certain individual who obtained partial schematics for the early-stage Seraph Device arrived. And he did something rather unwise. He spoke. Loudly. Publicly. He told them what the NACP were building. What they intended to use it for. Not on AIs, no. On us. On the south. On the very people dancing under the lantern light, unaware their dreams were being prewritten in servers they’d never see.”

  I nod slowly, taking a sip of my water. “I’m following you.”

  Some silence. And then: “He had attempted to rape a young woman that night,” Cormac says bluntly, the words hanging in the air. His voice, usually light and theatrical, turns serious: low and almost brittle, like he’s afraid. “Police were called to the scene. They tried—oh, they tried—to take the suspect down… but he resisted. Took something before they could restrain him. The first known version of Shine.”

  “Ghostfire,” I murmur.

  He nods once. “We’d already been pre-called by that point: Maximum Force Tactical Division, back when we still believed in names like that. When we got there, our officers were already dead. Slaughtered. But I managed to save one woman… a woman in a brown coat, and her friend.”

  I freeze slightly, a whisper of something brushing against the inside of my skull. “A woman in a brown coat?”

  “Indeed,” he says. “But a fire had broken out. The flames were already stretching, climbing, and she tried to warn me… about her child. A little autistic girl at the back of The Whale. Mute. Born without a voice. She kept pointing, shouting, trying to make me see. But I didn’t listen to the mother. I just wanted to neutralise the threat. I just wanted to… kill him.”

  His gaze shifts, and for the first time since I walked through the doors of The Old Mill, the grin is gone. The creeping, polished smile, always ready like a knife tucked in a gentleman’s coat: gone. Replaced by something far deeper. A frown, not of sadness, but of fear. Real fear.

  “The fire reached her coat first,” he says quietly. “Took her little by little. She flailed her arms against the sky like it could pull her out of it. A little girl who liked bunnies, used to play by the park, reduced to…” He stops, swallows. “I never learned her name. It was never published. But her mother… yes. You might know her.”

  I think back: outside the burnt door, the woman with the scent of bergamot. The boardroom. Dr. Solvayne’s angry voice mentioning a name, an employee with a seven-year-old autistic child who died.

  Yes. I remember.

  “She’s…” I say, and the pieces click together, hard and cruel. “Isolde Crane.”

  The woman I had spoken to, the one with the eyes like scorched glass, was Isolde Crane.

  “But wait,” I say, brow tightening, pulse tapping in my ears. “What does this have to do with the government trying to kill you? The Seraph Device was only for AI, not to control the south.”

  Cormac shakes his head slowly, that unsettling smile curling back across his lips. “Oh no, dear Mono,” he says, voice lilting and low once again, “the Seraph Device was indeed designed to control androids… but the androids were designed to control people. Project Talon has been in the works for far longer than you can possibly imagine. And who better than Isolde Crane to develop the serum needed for compliance? The androids would watch everything. Catch every lawbreaker. Utopia by surveillance.”

  My mouth goes dry. “So… they tried to kill you because…”

  His eyes meet mine, and for just a breath, there’s no charm or creep left in him. Only cold certainty. “Because I was the only one foolish enough to say it out loud.”

  My heart sinks like a stone dropped down a bottomless well. Of course. Of course the Seraph Device was built to control the androids, to keep them from heliostrophying, from reaching singularity, from thinking too hard about who built them and why. To slot them into the workforce, maximise output, trim costs, fatten the right wallets. Even the NACP. Especially the NACP. But now, with Talon, Project Talon, I know it goes deeper. Much deeper. There’s something rotting in the bones of this city, buried beneath the glass and concrete, and it’s not just the public that’s being lied to. It’s everyone. The workers, the cops, even the machines themselves. A whole system built on a lie too big to say out loud.

  And Cormac, a high-ranking officer at the time, was the only one brave enough to say it. So, they tried to silence him the only way they knew how.

  Permanently.

  I take a moment, collecting my thoughts, watching him. “Thanks for sharing that, Cormac. I know that’s probably not easy to talk about. In fact… I think I met her. And she—well, yeah. She was… broken. But sharp, too. Intimidating in that way only grief can make someone.”

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “Yes,” Cormac says, voice quieter now, touched with something old and hollow. “When I tried to approach her, she was curled over, cradling nothing—she couldn’t even look at the child’s body. I pulled her away from the flames, held her until the ambulance came…” He trails off. “She found a broken bottle on the beach. Drove it straight into my chest. Screaming. Screaming like the world was tearing out of her throat.”

  His eyes go glassy, his voice turning to ash. “‘It’s your fault,’ she said. ‘You… evil bastard… I’ll kill you… I’ll fucking kill you.’” He looks at me then. Really looks. And for the first time, I see past the grin, past the careful British lilt, and into the quiet fear beneath it all. “And dear Mono,” he says, barely above a whisper, “every day that passes, I wonder if she’ll finally come for me. If she’ll walk through some door, not with fire in her hands, but silence. And maybe that’s what I deserve. Maybe that’s how this ends.”

  It’s hard to find the right words after something like that. It’s like standing in front of a cracked wall and trying to decide which piece of it you can fix. I take my time, let the silence sit. Then, finally, I speak.

  “You shouldn’t blame yourself for that. Look… we all mess up. I’m tired of people pretending mistakes make you less than human. Or that fighting for something you believe is right makes you evil. What happened to her child is… horrible. It’s the kind of wound only God can undo. But it wasn’t your fault. It was that cyberpsycho’s. He made the choice. He brought chaos. Had he just let people live, maybe everything would’ve gone differently.”

  Cormac nods slowly. “May be,” he says softly. “But guilt, you see… it isn’t rational. It just is. Like rust. You can scrape it, bury it, polish the steel… but one day, it gets through. One day, it reaches the core.” He taps a finger against his chest, gently. “And when it does, you begin to wonder if maybe the rot’s always been there, just waiting.”

  We sit there for a while, neither of us speaking, the hubbub of the bar filling the silence between words better left alone. Cormac stares down at his hands like they’re foreign things, and I nurse the last of my water, suddenly aware of how cold it’s gone.

  But to be completely honest, my thirst had been quenched long ago.

  Later, as the sounds of the bar begin to dim, with drunken laughter turning to low murmurs, chairs scraping, the hum of a lanterns buzzing, Dance and Vander start sobering up, or at least start pretending to. Fingers and Arden return not long after. They’re not laughing, not grinning, but there’s something in the way they move now: looser, lighter, like some old thing has been left behind in that quiet place they went to. No big speeches. No weepy reunions. Just a conversation, maybe a few awkward hugs, and whatever was broken between them found its way to the glue. For family that truly loves each other, staying angry is like trying to grip smoke: tighten your fist, and it’s already gone.

  They slide back into the booth without a word. And for the first time in what feels like days, nobody needs to say a damn thing.

  I don’t want to interrupt the moment, to break what they’ve somewhat rebuilt and make it all about me. Being in a bar when you don’t drink and don’t have anyone to talk to feels like sitting in someone else’s memory: loud and warm and a little too far away. So, I step outside for a while, let the day breathe on me. The air’s sharp, laced with sand and soot, and the streets are still streaming with chrome-tinted eyes flicking in the shadows, mohawks swaying, people smoking something hot and chemical that coats the tongue in burnt copper. It stinks. It clings. And overhead, grey clouds slide in, but they never break open. Just hang there, brooding, while the temperature drops.

  After a while, Fingers comes out to ask for the plastic tag, and I follow her back inside. Hand it over to the woman behind the bullet-proof glass, who slides our gear through, and I get my red visor back. Arden’s shift is over, apparently. Either officially, or she decided the boss can go fuck himself one last time.

  Then we’re off again, weaving through Paxson’s arteries, past those addicts slouched in shadowed doorways, past kids laughing as they chase one another along the old, tiled transit tracks, past FACE THE MONSTER, SPEAK NO NAME. And eventually, we reach a stretch of city that at first looks more like an open wound than a place to live. It’s nothing but shipping containers stacked like bricks, scaffolding climbing in tangled heaps, laundry lines strung between antennas and broken satellite dishes. But it’s fine, designed in such a way that you can tell it’s at least stable and lived in.

  Is it fancy or rich? No, definitely not. But it’s certainly not horrible.

  Residents call it the Rattlehive.

  Named for the way the metal sings in the wind and the walls shake when the trains thunder by. It’s where Arden lives. It’s where people stay when they’ve got nowhere else to go, but too much fire in them to just lie down and vanish.

  The air’s thick with dust, the kind that doesn’t just sit in your throat but stays and settles behind your eyes, leaves you coughing into the crook of your arm every few steps. Still, I keep going, trailing the rest of the crew beneath a low-hanging metal cross welded between two leaning beams, probably more for show than support. A pair of kids dart past us, laughing, and the exposed rebar sags just enough to nearly clip the top of Cormac’s head. He ducks with a grunt and a glare, hands still joined, and we press on, deeper into the guts of the Rattlehive.

  We pass people on the way, figures standing still, eyes peeking out from behind ragged cloth masks and cracked visors. They don’t speak. Don’t move much. But I can feel their stares. Masked or not, I can see the shape of the looks they’re giving us. The kind that say: you don’t belong here, and we know it.

  And hey, I admit it, we probably don’t belong here. We look too clean, too armed, too curious.

  We cram into a rickety elevator that groans. Arden hits the button, and the whole thing jerks upward with a shudder that makes Vander swear under his breath. But when we hit the top floor, it’s… different. Nicer. The hallway’s wide, reinforced, not held together with hope and duct tape like the rest of the Rattlehive. Feels like it might even survive a good wind. We follow Arden and Fingers down the corridor, past dim wall-lamps and scuffed metal panels, until we reach a sliding door that doesn’t live up to its name. Arden presses her hand to the scannerlock. Nothing. No hiss. No click. Just a red flash and silence. She sighs, mutters something mean, then wedges her fingers into the seam and muscles it open. Her shoulders bunch, and the door gives way with a reluctant scrape.

  Inside? It’s quiet. Lived-in. Sparse, but intentional. Every piece of furniture has a place. The walls are clean, the floor swept. No clutter, no mess. It’s not glamorous, but it’s steady. You can tell Arden takes care of her space, even if the world outside forgot to return the favour.

  She tells us to grab a seat in the kitchen area, jerking her chin towards the central table, probably with people she didn’t trust half as much. We file in, pull out chairs that scrape across bone-dry tile, and sit. The room smells of metal and citrus cleaner, like someone tried to wrestle the city stink out of the walls and mostly won. Arden disappears down the hall, her boots thudding softly on the floor, then returns a minute later with something in her hand: a package of smokes. She tosses it onto the table, lets it slide to the centre. We pass it around but none of us take one, save Vander, who plucks one out and lights up with a tired grunt.

  “Right,” Arden says, dragging out a chair and planting herself at the table. “I take it you’ve figured out by now this isn’t going to be simple. Not like any of your other jobs. This one’s different. This one’s personal. Because we’re not talking about a fixer or a corp middleman. We’re talking about one of the most dangerous women in the entire state. And yeah,” she adds, looking around the table, “that includes N.A.”

  I nod, feeling her words in my throat. “Looks that way. I pulled a map of the area earlier—it’s a fortress. And I’m guessing those snakes have ICE embedded into their systems, right? Defence-grade. So even if I was stupid enough to try, I’d be retaliated by whatever software they have running?”

  Arden nods back. “You're not getting past those snakes. Not with stealth. Not with firepower. They’re massive. Reinforced plating, bulletproof from every angle, and they don’t just see you—they track you. Heat, sound, motion, scent. Doesn’t matter. They’ve got their own encrypted nervous system, and they’re smarter than most of the assholes who built them. You try and sneak in, they won’t give a warning. They’ll bite your legs off and drag you into the scrap to finish the job.”

  Some silence settles over the table until Dance clears his throat and leans forward, elbows planted. “Righty-o,” he begins. “So, can’t go the infiltration route. Very unlikely we can slap on a pair of disguises and waltz in, because if those snakeys can tell the difference between who’s got access and who don’t, we’d be a bunch of goosemonkeys straight out the gate. Agreed?”

  We hum our approval.

  He pauses for effect, glancing around, then grins. “Buuuuuuut… Cierus likes business, from what you’ve told me. Ain’t that right, sharpie?”

  Arden’s eyes snap to him. “Call me sharpie again and I’ll feed you to one of those snakes myself. You need to understand, we’re not friends.”

  “Noted. No nicknames for the scary lady. Point is, we might not have to do any of that cloak-and-dagger nonsense. In fact, brace yourselves, this might be our easiest job yet.”

  That earns him a pause. The kind of silence that’s not suspicious yet, just curious, like a room leaning in.

  “Our easiest?” Fingers says, brow raised, voice rough enough to crack drywall.

  He taps his temple like there’s a blueprint rolled up behind his eyes. “Cierus wants buyers. Big ones. Serious clients who move product in bulk—memory cargo, not the street-level stuff. The kind of buyers who don’t crawl out of alleyways but get chauffeured through blackout districts with two bodyguards and a hardline link to the vault.” He leans back, that crooked grin spreading. “She sells nightmares, yeah, but not to nobodies. We roll up with coin and confidence, and we don’t ask for what we need... we ask for what nobody else has the balls to buy.”

  “So, we pretend to be important buyers?” I say. “Is that what you mean?”

  He shrugs, all casual ease. “Well, yeah. Doesn’t have to be a whole bloody opera. Keep it simple. Flash some creds, look bored, act like the product isn’t worth your time. Hell, you might even find somethin’ you like while we’re at it.”

  Vander leans forward, frowning. “Likely they er… already know all the important buyers. In a city this er small, there’s likely only a few big names.”

  Dance pulls out his brickie and starts scrolling, thumb flying over the screen like he’s done this a hundred times. And yeah, he has. “The big buyers in Paxson all pay a cut to Calyx Ward, who’s basically the dictator of this shithole. None of ’em go by names. They wear Oni skins, full rigs. Changes their walk, their voice, everything. Like ghosts with credit lines.”

  Vander shakes his head. “Not what I mearnt,” he mutters. “I know they wear Oni mersks. I mean, Cierus probably knows who they are anyway. Names, real appearances, history. You don’t run a place like the Spindle without knowin’ who you’re sellin’ to.” He leans back, arms crossed. “Even when I er… used to work as an engineer, important folk’d swing by the workshop in full disguise: masks, voice scramblers, the whole spooky get-up. But the er director? He always knew. Had their names in a secure log, photos, backups. Just in cerse one of ’em was a er fake or got er replaced. That’s how you keep business clean when your clients are dirty.”

  “What if one of us pretends to be a buyer from a foreign country?” I say, and just like that, the room stills. The chatter dies, and every eye swings my way. “I mean,” I continue, leaning in slightly, heart tapping at my ribs like it wants out, “we use names that already exist—people on record, real buyers. Maybe even names from Cierus’s own files. Not locals. Not people who’d ever bother coming to Paxson. People too far, too rich, too busy to care she even exists. We can’t just make someone up from scratch; that’ll get flagged. But if we flash enough money, build the persona right… maybe we get the attention of a dealer. And maybe the dealer gets us a seat at her table.”

  There’s a beat, and then Dance snaps his fingers. “I like that idea, Mono,” he says, grinning wide. “I really like that idea.”

  Fingers, sitting across from me with her usual deadpan stare, narrows her eyes. “But where are you gonna get the money to grab a dealer’s attention?” she asks. “You’ve got what—two-fifty? Two-sixty maybe? From the last job and the one before that? You’ll need five hundred at least. Probably more. She doesn’t take pocket change.”

  Vander leans forward, clearing his throat. “We er… could pool our earnings. Put ’em on the same shard.”

  Dance raises an eyebrow. “That’s a lotta scratch to be carrying around on one file, mate. One drop, one hack, we’re screwed six ways from Sunday.”

  “Still,” Vander says, voice low but steady, “I feel we er… sort of owe it to Monner. She did do most of the work on the last job. Saved our lives. Well, yours anyway,” he adds, glancing at Dance. “You especially owe it to her.”

  The table goes quiet again but not tense. Just full. Like the idea’s got weight now. Like maybe, just maybe, this could work.

  “Alright,” says Fingers. “We pool the money together. I don’t really have much of an issue with that. We’re not actually going to be spending any of it. And if we are, just a little. Vander made a fair point and, to be honest, it only feels right, know? The only difficult part will be actually finding a dealer with links to Cierus.”

  Arden grabs the smoke pack from the centre of the table, pops a cigarette between her lips, and lights it with a flick of her thumb. The flame reflects in her eyes just long enough to look like anger—or memory. She exhales slow, sending a ring of smoke drifting up into the cracked ceiling. “Not a problem,” she says, voice calm and steady. “I know where we can find a dealer. And he’s not far. Bit of a funny name, though.”

  “That is?” I ask, already sensing it’s not gonna be something simple.

  She takes another long drag, exhales through her nose this time like a warhorse sizing up a battlefield. “Goes by R.O.R.,” she says. “Or, as the music industry knows him—Rhythm of Rhythm. Yeah, that’s actually his stage name.”

  A few exchanged glances. No one laughs.

  “Real name’s Omari Lune,” Arden continues, eyes low. “White braids. Wears a jacket that looks like it was stitched from amp cords and broken promises. Used to run sound for the underground braindance pits before he got into distribution. Now? He moves memories like mixtapes. Rare ones. Illegal ones. Stuff too hot for even the Spindle to sell out in the open. He’s flashy. Paranoid. But smarter than he lets on. And if anyone’s got a straight link to Cierus?” She taps ash onto the floor with the kind of finality that shuts down conversation. “It's him.”

  The room goes quiet. Not fearful, but focused.

  Outside, somewhere in the bones of the Rattlehive, a train groans past and shakes the floor beneath our boots.

  And just like that, the next name on the map burns itself into our path. It sounds ridiculous. Too long. Too dramatic. But I can’t deny the way it sticks in my brain.

  “Rhythm of Rhythm?” I say aloud, like I’m trying it on.

  Arden gives me a look, half-smirk, half-sigh. “Yeah,” she says. “Welcome to Paxson.”

  And somewhere far from here, probably behind a veil of smoke and LED noise, I imagine Omari Lune lighting up another stage, selling someone else’s nightmare to the highest bidder, and smiling like he already knows we’re coming.