It had been a shit idea. The right thing to do would have been to follow the wounded ganger on the spot instead of letting her escape. What if she got into a vehicle? No, vehicles were controlled very tightly in Fifteen. Gangers just couldn’t be seen above ground or they would have a fleet of drones on their asses in less time it took to say “Police state”. Nestra should have still taken the risk and followed, even if that meant losing access to evidence. She would have had the Discover more novels on NovelHub - your gateway to endless stories. It was done. The trail of blood was still relatively fresh but Nestra wasn’t. Her arm ached, a sore feeling that persisted long past what she was used to in a society with ready access to painkillers. Although the wound was almost closed now, it was exhausting. The pain weighed on her overtaxed mind like the constant clang of a bell, stealing her attention away. She grit her teeth and took a deep breath. The tunnel here smelled stale with the coppery scent of the wounded aug’s lifeforce still potent after more than half a day. She followed it. She could see it as well, like a fading arrow. The rust-colored track led deeper into the bowels of District Fifteen past the lit track tunnels and into mazes of maintenance and storage rooms. The tracks didn’t seem to follow any strict direction either. Once, they made a small detour through a pump system hangar. The blood flow also fell into a trickle there, but there was a large, crimson shoulder print against a manual control panel. Nestra’s quarry had made a stop to staunch the bleeding here. Perhaps also to make sure she wasn’t pursued. She was weakening. Nestra shook her head then winced. The trail was old. This was not a hunt. She had to calm down. Maybe lie down for a second and… no. No. She had to finish this. The wounded aug left the maze almost a kilometer down the line, close to Threshold’s kaiju wall. The purge had hit the place the hardest here where one of the gangs had made its stronghold. Nestra had to push through debris and collapsed rooms to find the surface. Bloody handprints made the task easy. She ended up near a half-destroyed building at the edge of a large crater. The smell of fire still haunted the place, with molten plastic and twisted steel beams hanging over the precipice in a forest of rotting limbs. She would have missed the steel door were it not for yet another bloody spot on the wall nearby. Nestra’s quarry had leaned there, perhaps waiting for someone to open the gate. This was it. Her destination. Her black box beeped to warn her about cameras. Better to take a small detour. She moved around the devastated street to avoid being seen. She would not be recognized, of course, but glitchy cameras and guards on alert mixed poorly, especially since the open ground would make her visible for entire seconds. Her path led her around and to the heart of the dead battlefield. This part of the city was an absolute wreck. Perhaps it had been a hive of villainy before the purge, but now it was an empty grave. Scorched husks of tents and stalls lined the ravaged streets. Not a single wall stood that didn’t bear bullet impacts and half-erased graffiti, all that remained of a defiant faction’s struggle against Threshold’s all-encompassing authority. Casings still littered the asphalt for all the good it had done the gangers. Nestra shook her head. Fucking idiots. Fucking dead idiots now. “Mazingwe, what the fuck are you on about? I’m a simple girl that likes swinging her sword. If I were a gleam I’d be swinging it too and if I couldn’t swing I’d just end it. It’s that simple. I don’t give a shit about politics, respect or hierarchy beyond the basics because it won’t give me what I want, which is, as I said before, swinging my damn sword. Don’t try to overcomplicate me. I know what I am.” “You may have surprising depths to your character.” “Nah. I’ll never be a genius and I’ll never be a leader. I accepted that long ago and gleam powers wouldn’t have changed my brain anyway.” “Hmmm. You seem to be in a good place. I see no cause to push you right now.” “Would a donut convince you to go ahead with my tests?” “Bribery? Sign me up.” And so Nestra did the damn tests. The donut was freaking amazing but Mazingwe refused to say where he got it. There was some very basic weight lifting but most were reflex tests, and once she turned when Mazingwe flashed his aura and he later made a note. “Well, I have confirmed that you have… slightly superhuman capabilities,” he finished. Nestra nodded. She knew that already. While demon Nestra’s progress was massive, human Nestra only benefitted from a fraction of her true strength but a fraction of a shit ton of strength was still quite respectable. “As expected, you knew this but elected not to piece of information with me, just as you elected not to tell me you were doing much better. Even though I am your practitioner.” Nestra frowned as they sat back at the man’s office. He didn’t offer another donut. “Dr Mazingwe, no one sends messages to their doctor telling them they’re doing fine.” “And yet I recall asking you to keep in touch last time.” He seemed a little annoyed. “You are angry. Is that why you didn’t shake my hand and ate the first donut in front of me without offering any?” “I cannot express my annoyance in a clearer manner without overstepping the bonds of courtesy.” “That was petty. Buuuuut you have always been good and… I suppose you’re right. I should have told you. Sorry.” “I accept your apologies, and acknowledge that the wounded beast only sees its own pain.” “What does that even mean?” “You are a bitch when you’re hurting.” “OOF! What happened to the bonds of courtesy?” “I ran out of patience and allowed myself a little folly. Since there are no witnesses.” “You are a dangerous man, doctor.” “Oh,” the high gleam said, “you have no idea.” On the way out, Nestra asked the secretary where that accursed doctor got his donuts. “Oh he makes them himself. I understand he doesn’t even use a machine for that.” Talk about VIP treatment. Nestra parked right next to the building she’d infiltrated the night before. The light of the day gave it and its surroundings no quarter. Where night had left some doubt this place could be redeemed, now it appeared as the dead husk it was. Most structures were either collapsed or on their way to be, and those that still stood had been gutted by fire, bullets, or both. This entire place was a lost cause. By contrast, the tech hover van and the few cruisers present were beacons of order and cleanliness. Nestra found Shinoda by the main gate, drinking miso soup from a thermos. The wind carried hints of umami to her nostrils. She appreciated the nice change from the stench of voided bowels and old blood. It bothered her much more when she was in human form. “Detective Shinoda. I have a gift for you.” “Also, miso soup? I figured you for an instant noodle kind of guy.” The detective cast a shameful glance towards the nearest trash bin set up for the day. Probably where he had disposed of the evidence. “Ah, very astute of you, Palladian-san. I fear I never learned to cook.” “There is still time. Anyway, the gift?” “Douzo. Lead the way.” Nestra opened the trunk of her car which caused Shinoda to whistle. She had her own rifle there in a black box along with a few other goodies she kept there for the big game. Shinoda hesitated to pick his weapon when she presented it to him. “Rush order. Got it in time.” “You have been deputized. Kim cleared it this morning, or so she said by mail. This is very much above ground. Hell, I even got a grant for it.” What Nestra didn’t say was that Kim’s budget barely covered the gun, and it didn’t cover the ammo. That was fine for now but she sure as hell hoped she would keep the loot from her next raids. “Palladian-san. This is a sawn-off shotgun.” “Tut tut tut this is a ‘Last Ditch’ monster-killer gun. It was designed to look . Note the compact frame. You can unfortunately only chamber and shoot one flechette at a time. Got you five mana-charged ones in case we meet some really large hindrance.” “This might even stop a D-class beast!” “If you land the shot, it can. I also got you ordinary bullets for augs. Should stop most of them in their tracks.” “What are they made of? Titanium?” “Palladian-san, chotto, you are joking too much.” Nestra frowned. The old man was pissing her off. “Look, detective, I never joke about weapons and survival. This is the realm of gleams and heavily augmented gangers. Feel free to stick to your peashooter and maybe next time, I’m not here and a wired goon will gore you while laughing because you can’t pierce through their defenses. Or you can shut up and accept my gift so maybe you stay alive a little longer. This wasn’t exactly easy to find, wakatta ka?” “Ah, you are correct. I receive this weapon with gratitude, Palladian-san. Perhaps my previous work has made me too unused to the violence of this place.” He sighed then touched his chest. “The most dangerous encounter I had in the past five years was being threatened with a kitchen knife by a scared widow.” “Not to worry Palladian-san. To be fair, she had previously killed her husband, so I was indeed in danger. In any case, let me show you the inside. You have seen the file I sent, yes?” “I did. And there was something I noticed…” “Come on, let’s get in first.” The steel door demon Nestra had ignored because doors were for scrubs stood wide open. A few techs milled about next to body bags, having finished their own part of the work. A few more officers stood at the corners of the building with weapons out while uncontrolled, fizzling mana betrayed the presence of at least one low gleam. Kim wasn’t taking any chances. Despite some fresh air flow, Nestra was almost overwhelmed by how much the place stank. It wasn’t just the fading scent of dead bodies. An acrid aroma of unwashed bodies permeated the air, clinging to the yellow isolating tarps on the walls. A team of techs devoted their attention to one of the weapons workshops though Nestra wasn’t sure what they expected to find. Maybe they would get lucky and find proof Gidung had provided the equipment but she wouldn’t be holding her breath. In any case, people were mostly done here. Nestra had been wondering how she would find the drive without appearing too lucky, until she remembered the gangers never really built anything. “I looked at the picture of the crime scene and then I remembered something. This is a standard class 3 administrative building from the time humanity moved on the Threshold continent. They are all copy-pasted templates designed for convenience so I knew something was missing, and I found it.” Nestra sent Shinoda the blueprint. The wall safe Cleaver had used to hide his storage drive came with the building but it had been camouflaged. Shinoda quickly inspected the plan and came to the right conclusion. “Interesting. Very astute, Palladian-san. Great job.” He walked to the hidden spot and knocked. The telltale sound of a hidden compartment answered him. Nestra leaned against a pillar for what followed, which was an interesting mix of excitement and reprimands. “We were going to finish with this,” a tech assured Kim on his visor. “Finish? FINISH! What if the gangers hid an explosive in there? From now on, every inspection will begin with a wall check immediately after the area has been confirmed clear of hostiles, do I make myself clear?” “You are lucky to be alive. You are operating in a warzone. Do not forget that and change your protocols if you have to. I do not want to attend any more burials.” “Yes, Kim-Nim. We understand.” “See that you understand AND remember.” While the tech in charge got chewed up, another pair finished excitedly dismounting the entire safe door, revealing the soft, juicy secret inside. Nestra got a first good look at the drive. It was… a drive. A widely-available commercial one for people who didn’t want to store stuff on the cloud. Workers who went outside of the walls sometimes carried them to quickly transfer files. It even had a decorative little rabbit painted on the surface which gave Nestra a bit of a mental whiplash. She didn’t know what sort of horror was on there. “We need to transfer this to a specialist,” one of the techs said with bitter annoyance. “They’re all busy. We have already found an enormous amount of data. I just don’t know when we will get the results.” “Hold on,” Nestra said. “Do you perhaps know someone, Palladian-san?” “I know a girl, yeah. Let me just clear this up with Kim first.” “Got to say, I never expected to work for the rat squad,” Stib said on the call. “Yeah me neither. At least they let me keep my weapons.” “But not your honor. Hss! Hss!” “Stib, I have no honor.” “That’s just such a weird thing to say for a fencer. Anyway, I checked the data. It’s heavily encrypted.” “Buuuut you know me, I still got something for you! So, ok, the encryption? It’s a weird, really high level type that needs two data sets before you can access the decrypted stuff. It’s called a symbolon and it’s really, really high level shit, like top secret corpo projects or the military.” Nestra’s heart skipped a beat. She knew exactly what it meant. This wasn’t ganger property. They had taken something from Gidung. As to why they hadn’t used it yet, she wasn’t sure. Maybe they had to find the other half. “So yeah, you’ll never get anything complete unless you find the other half. Not even sure the city’s quantum computers could learn anything. Buuuuut there is a catch. It was never meant to be stored on a commercial drive. Someone opened it about… three weeks ago, with the other half, and the drive saved a page in the cache. I managed to recover it. Just, it doesn’t make sense to me. Here, sending it now.” Nestra shared the document with Shinoda. Her hopes that it would be a picture of the person responsible for the entire debacle holding a sign that said: ‘I did it! It was me all along nyeeeehehehehehehe!’ were promptly dashed. What Stib had sent her was a very dense table of numbers. “Those are automated measurements. The column on the left is the date. The next one is the location,” Nestra said. “Simplified longitude and latitude markings,” Shinoda explained. “They refer to locations in District Fifteen.” Nestra blushed a little. District Fifteen’s markers were part of the information packet Kim had sent her but… Nestra hadn’t been very diligent in learning them. It was just a pile of numbers and she’d had limited time. “What matters is the last line. I recognize the rest. Temperature, pressure, but what are… thetas?” “An abbreviation for thaums,” Nestra explained. This was her area of expertise after all. As a failed gleam. “It’s a measure of ambient mana. Not a very good one because it doesn’t work well with aspected mana, but still a good indicator nonetheless. The name is based on some twentieth century writer. Still a rather, ah, not widely accepted unit of measure.” “So…. someone was measuring ambient mana?” Stib asked. “And the gangers think it’s significant enough to be kept, possibly for blackmail.”