#whichonenext

As darkness crept across the plain, Irid set down the shovel.  He gave light to his hovel and watched it burn to ash, borne away by hungry winds to some charnel treasury.

His long shadow fell into one of the two fresh graves at his back as he followed the retreating light, carrying a weight which was not that of the guns on his belt. Somewhere beyond this desert of diamond dust lay Amadeus’ freshest nidus, and Irid would find it.

He kept mere paces ahead of the roiling edge of the Dream at his back, sandaled feet whispering over the glittering dunes, fine grains dimly gold in the fading light of the Hellsun. He passed fronds of crystal and steel, their blossoms like pink and inflamed eyes that followed his back, swaying in a breeze scented by jasmine and a hint of sulphur.

You will die, because of this

Irid clenched his jaw and refused to answer the voice that wheedled at his back.

You have earned this, all is your fault

The red-brick domes of a caravanserai squatted upon the sands ahead, and his stride lengthened. A serpent, vast and iridescent blue, flew sinuously from the darkness high above and curved Wildward.

All this suffering is graven on your essence

“I know,” Irid said softly, but did not slow.

Come to us, Irid, and rest…

“Come to me,” he said, “and I will find a heart to stop.”

They laughed; shattering glass and strangled songbirds. He knew they would. He knew also that they would soon bore, and find another wanderer to prey upon.

A caged imp, rotund and blank eyed, crackled alight in an orb of glass bars that dangled from a beam between two domes at the edge of the waystation. More followed, scattered across the caravanserai, and the curious low of an electric cello sounded from the largest structure. The Dream rolled over the corona of the lights like oil on water, leaving the site untouched in a bubble of luminescence, and the darkness stretched for eternity in all directions.

Truly, Irid did not fear the Nightmares or the Groundskeepers or other servants of the umbral lords, but had no stomach for riddles or gunplay now. Instead he pushed open the doors of The Hollow Cactus and scanned the room; the soft ash carpeting the floor, the sandstone blocks that served as table and benches. The band played a slow and layered melody, and the other Demons kept to themselves at their tables, in their corners. Those seated at a bar of living wood seemed the most sociable, chatting quietly. A hulking red-scaled femme in shepherd’s robes, a sinewy silver mechanic with lamp-like eyes, a stool apart.

Irid settled at the end of the bar, and waited to be served.

“Drink or tales?” the barthing said, gliding smoothly over, cleaning a glass with two hands while the other two settled on the counter.

“A drink, please,” Irid replied, a polite glance into the single large eye on their face.

The barthing looked askance at the other patrons, vast blue iris rolling.

“Have some good tales,” it said, hesitant, filling a shotglass with liquid light.

“I have no jurisdiction,” Irid said, face hardening.

The barthing nodded, passing him his drink. Irid left a coin on the counter, and contemplated the contents of his glass. Outside, the Dark howled and sang, and the band played louder.

“Hey, join us for a drink?”

Irid looked without moving his head; the silver-fleshed mechanic holding up a fluted glass, the muscular pilgrim or shepherd watching his response with slightly widened eyes, hastened breathing. Though the Law had abandoned him, still his policeman’s sense was potent - a harmless pair of locals. He raised his glass, slid from his seat, and took the stool between them.

“I’m Pelos Quick,” said the mechanic, tipping his hat though it rested, politely, on the counter beside him, “and they’re Sagacious O,” he added, gesturing to the other Demon.

O nodded, a mumbled hello between their diminutive tusks.

“I am Irid,” Irid replied, “and nothing more.”

His drinking companions exchanged a look.

“There must be a story behind that,” said Pelos, pointedly looking at the guns Irid wore.

Irid nodded, “but it is short and dull. I would much rather know what brings a sage and technician to this place so far from any shrines or workshops.”

Sagacious O boomed a laugh at that, slapping a meaty hand on the counter such that the seats shook gently and the barthing glared, briefly.

“I am no sage, Irid,” they said, leaning back to adjust their decolletage in suggestive fashion, “merely a traveler widely mistaken for one.”

“Forgive my assumption,” Irid said, sipping his drink. The light burned pleasantly down his throat and some dim echo of divinity rolled faintly through his body. He would play along.

“Nothing to forgive,” they said, “I cannot speak for my friend, but I am just following a herd wherever it may go. Eternity beckons, and so I follow.”

“I see why the mistake is made,” Irid said, and O smiled.

“For my part,” said Pelos, eagerly, “I was working at a scrapyard beyond the dunes Inward of here when I saw a craft of some kind descend in flames in the desert, and I plan to salvage it.”

“A risk, to leave a safe haven to compete for salvage in the wilderness,” Irid opined.

“That is what I said,” O agreed, “every Gremlin for days will be descending on it, to say nothing of the survivors.”

Pelos waved a dismissive hand, “I can handle a few Gremlins, I’m sure. But…” He gave Irid a sly look, “perhaps a capable warrior would take a cut of my earnings to assist.”

Irid nodded, “I am sure such mercenaries abound in this place.”

Pelos frowned, “they do, but I question their mettle - to have a former Lawkeeper aid me-”

The golden gunman fixed Pelos with a penetrating stare, but did not move from his seat, did not speak a word.

O placed a hand on his shoulder, “forgive Pelos; circumspection is not among his talents.”

Irid was as a statue, hard metal edges and unyielding stance - but he relaxed, and took another sip.

“There is nothing to forgive in an honest error,” he said. “Where next are you bound?”

The mechanic said nothing, curling on his stool.

“I go Inward from here, as the herd have settled on that side of the caravanserai to wait out the Dreamfall,” O said, “I expect Pelos will follow me some of the way, for his prize lies in roughly that path.”

Irid nodded, “then we shall be companions for a span; I go toward Pandemonium.”

O set their jaw and drank deeply of their bubbling tankard, scents of brimstone wafting free as the crust broke.

“Fortuitous or portentous, we are so committed,” they said, raising their brows at Pelos.

“So it is,” said Pelos, disgruntled, wrapping slender fingers around a glass of something clear and sweet.

“May the Principles turn their gaze from us,” Irid intoned, holding up his glass.

A solemn toast, as the band wound down, and Irid felt a terrible awareness turn briefly upon them as a shiver up his spine.

He hoped they were yet beneath further notice.

Excusing himself, Irid left the bar and listened to the sand under his feet, glanced at the roiling shadows just beyond the dome of light. Here and there tendrils reached down where the lamps couldn’t overlap, whispering and leering with many mouths, many eyes. He ignored them, and found a vacant cell - one of the small, hive-shaped domes where visitors could sleep or find privacy.

Irid made himself comfortable on the cool silks and linens, intending to pass the remaining darkness in sleep, bathed in the gentle glow of stolen moonlight woven into the ceiling.. It was not long before O brushed aside the curtain and stood in the entrance, their robes whispering open. Supine, Irid inclined his head, and saw the taut, dark plain of their abdomen, the muscular lines of their thighs.

“May I?” O asked, voice a low rumble.

Guilt and desire warred briefly on Irid’s face, mercifully obscured by angle and light, before he replied: “You too may sleep, if you wish,” he said, as he lay back.

Silence. Susurrus of fabric. “Another time,” O said, softly, and left Irid alone.

When the shadow had been driven out by the light of the Hellsun, Irid rose and stretched, then went out to sit in the light and clean his guns. The desert sparkled painfully, and he did not envy those Demons of other Circles who would be blinded to look upon it. In the distance the Ur-City was visible again, rising to meet itself.

Amadeus never acts wholly alone, lest he be made a target, Irid thought, he covets power but shuns the cost. If he is not now in Pandemonium, I will find him there.

He met O and Pelos at the gate on the far side of the caravanserai; the Breaker offered him a skewer of meat which he accepted gratefully. “Someone’s pissed off your friends,” Pelos said, gesturing with an empty hand at a domed hut where the light of the Hellsun shone through the walls as if they were nothing. From their perch on a dune, overlooking the herd of waking aurochs, O glanced back at the approaching pair.

“Escaped mortals,” they said, “fleeing whatever damnation they stumbled into.”

“Idiot,” hissed Pelos, and stomped up to join O.

“A moment,” said Irid, as Pelos gestured expansively at O and mouthed ‘I told you so’.

He went to the hut, and pushed the curtain aside to look more clearly upon the dozen or so mortals within. Already most were near death, blood draining away in rivulets or violent gouts, the stink of death heavy in the thick air. But one, Irid saw, managed to raise her head and stare at him defiantly.

“Kill us,” she rasped, “let us die free and clean.”

Irid shook his head, “it is already too late.”

“Spit on you then, Demon.”

“If you would live,” Irid said, “then you must walk in my shadow.”

He did not wait for an answer, and returned to his traveling companions.

“Ready, then?” Pelos asked, irritably.

Irid shrugged and started walking, sandals in his pack that he might enjoy the warm sands. Both his companions wore smoked glasses to protect themselves from the light. In silence, O watched the herd trundling ahead of them, and Irid suspected a mild resentment held their tongue. Pelos grew more amicable as the trek wore on.

“I’ve never seen mortals dying like that,” he said, rolling a coin from finger to finger with nervous energy.

Irid’s lip curled in disgust, “they are not dying, though they might wish otherwise. The Red Curse would kill them, if they returned to their own realm. Their very cells would split and atrophy, their organs deliquescent within them. But here they will be remade.”

“Into what?”

“Seedbeds,” Irid said.

“Still… conscious?” Pelos asked, aghast.

“Such is the fate of all mortals.”

“When I served Baron Giltbrand of the Ravening Spire, he was fond of hammering dissidents into quarrels for his beloved ballistae.”

Irid said nothing; at least a mortal would be granted the succour of madness sooner rather than later, but a Demon would suffer such a prison until the universe died again.

“I might have remained in his service, but my fear proved greater than my faith in his judgement,” Pelos admitted. Irid chose to feign deafness.

“We are followed,” O said, atop a great black stone protruding from the sands, looking back over the heads of Irid and Pelos.

“I know,” said the Lightbringer, as Pelos rolled his eyes.

A dozen paces behind, wasted and bleeding, arms outstretched as if to keep balance, a crude blindfold across her eyes, the defiant human walked carefully in Irid’s shadow where the light of the Hellsun would not fall out of respect for his station.

As they crested the dune and passed the black stone, they saw shining fragments scattered across the desert, casting shadows like sinister oases. The remnants of a flying warbarge. “Finally,” Pelos said, folding back a hand to reveal the rifle within. “Shall we?”

Jac felt the rain on her hat like a thousand drumming fingers. Harsh white neons cast the towering city blocks in monochrome and illuminated nothing. She recognized nothing of the street; no helpful annotations or navigational overlays flickered across the bare concrete and slick black road. No signs distinguished one window from another, no graffiti marked territory, no music droned from clubs or dens. It dawned on her that there weren’t even any alleys.

Her service weapon felt too heavy to carry. Her boots filled with rainwater.

The city would be washed away. Something looming up behind her, something with too many eyes, would make it so.

“Good morning, Detective Hobbes.”

She woke drenched in sweat, eyes wide and staring at the blank ceiling of her flat. Her morning feeds crawled from the edge of vision, lambent text on the off-white plaster. She blinked, banishing it, sitting up and reaching for water on her bedside table.

“The time is eight AM exactly,” the Municipal Information System said inside her head. “The rain is scheduled to continue for one more hour, and will resume at 2PM."

Civic Centre calls it Sally; all in the push for a ‘friendlier Califresco.’

Jac toyed with disabling the wake-up as she hauled herself out of bed and into the shower. On the other hand, she didn’t want another snide little reprimand about ‘governmental unity’ and ‘encouraging metrics.’ She wondered if uptower folks got the same pressure, or if they even noticed, so accustomed to a steady stream of ads they must be.

She switched to audio feed while getting dressed.

“...brief public disturbance in Such’s Square ably contained by Galathi Inc.’s new deterrent drones…”

Jac cast the coroner's’ intake list on the back wall, banished it again when the schedule section filled up with the word ‘incineration’. Ably contained, she frowned, buckling on her holster.

“...manual drive required between Grand and Fifth as installation of new guidance lines continues. Commuters should expect some delays and be prepared to work from your vehicles...”

“...solute disgrace, Jordan, an absolute disgrace, it really is tampering with the Lord’s design when the mind is so perfect and sacred…”

“SO HUNGRY YOU COULD JUST EAT SOMEONE?! COME ON OVER TO THE PULLED PIG; GENUINE CLONED HUMAN MEAT…”

“...expecting the Keymaker probe to arrive on Yrva next month, but scientists are still unsure if mana obeys the same laws on other planets…”

Jac killed the feed, switched to Dispatch, and stepped out of her flat into the bare beige hallway. The identical doors stretching along the walls always inspired a feeling akin to vertigo. Lewisham insisted she needed her entoptics recalibrated. The door locked behind her; the lift opened ahead of her and automatically selected parking. Her car was already running when she reached it, driver’s door popping gently ajar for her convenience.

Her father had hated that, but it’d saved Jac’s life at least twice.

On the road, she enabled automatic and fished for a cigarette. The sleek blue-black vehicle smoothly joined the Civic lane and carried her across town. The city blocks towered up to the thick, black clouds and the rain came down like bullets from heaven. The roads were narrow valleys amid concrete cliffs.

Citizens and blacklines crowded the pavements and underpasses. Drones for advertising and drones for security drifted overhead like glowing, bloated ticks. The rain was like the surface of an oil-slick, a riot of colour from the neons on every shopfront, the holoprojections and spotlights.

The smoke curling from Jac’s nostrils was whisked away by discreet vents in the ceiling. She half-watched it, devoting more attention to the words sliding down her windshield. Robbery in Vinter; owners aren’t insured for an investigation. Assault at Wilmund and Cross; victim paid on the spot for full prosecution. A raft of illegal weapon discharges which meant a turf war had turned into a massacre. Jac made a note to look into that later - someone on the force got paid for that. She may not be able to catch them for it, but at least she would know.

The Precinct’s shutters rolled up to admit her car. Jac climbed out and watched it get added to the stack below, stubbing out her smoke and tossing it on her way through the inner door.

Desk Sergeant Mahoney, rail thin with hunched shoulders and a quietly mean streak, barely glanced up as she passed. An assistant civic prosecutor hustled paperwork to the Captain's office, and a few uniforms chatted with coffee cups steaming in their hands.

“Hey, Hobbes.”

Jac paused at the door to The Pen as a skinny guy, a lurid blue-glass gem where a left eye should have been, strode toward her.

“Mornin’ sir,” she replied, and let the door close, standing back to wait for him.

“Don’t fuck about, Hobbes,” he snapped, as if the rod up his ass spoke for him, “don’t pretend you can’t feel the heat. This is a very simple question - were you at Cuveil Street last night?”

Hobbes folded her arms and pursed her lips, pulling up the station alerts. A riot, according to official sources, but she knew better.

“No, sir.”

“I know you disable your tracker when you’re off-duty, Hobbes. Don’t repeat history.”

Tensing, she held herself still and passed him her cached location data; never left her flat.

“Good, then it’s your turn,” said DCI Slater, turning on his heel.

“My turn?” Hobbes half-shouted after him, “you had to tell me that personally?” she added, but he was already boarding the lift at the end of the hall.

Jac swore under her breath and entered The Pen, where a dozen good detectives were slowly turning into comfortable desk jockeys who would later turn into the kind of pricks who make superintendent. She mumbled hellos on her way through the dull beige cubicles to her desk. By the time she sat down, her neural spike had wirelessly booted her terminal and logged in, at which point the actual device became largely irrelevant. Jac felt better about a physical keyboard for reports than letting the software in her head sneakily edit her entries for better optics.

Immediately all her casework was pushed offscreen and out of her feed by a pulsing orange box marked PRIORITY ASSIGNMENT.

Gang violence at Cuveil Street just after the nightly storm started. At least a three dead according to the census data, and that was already entered into the report. Jac smiled, brittle and mirthless; the actual bodycount was likely higher. It would take an hour to resolve, and a lifetime to forget.

She rolled her chair into the aisle and called over the nearest cube wall. “Campbell, are you busy?”

Campbell looked up with the expression of someone relieved not to have been caught browsing skin at the office.

“Will I regret saying no?” They replied, bioplastic eyebrows cycling from businesslike black to playful silver. Campbell claimed that they were a necessary tool for communication, but Jac always suspected that was one implant the willowy detective chose out of vanity.

“Strike broken on Cuveil last night,” she replied, lips curling bitterly, “I’m the rubberstamp and I’d like some company.”

“This is a favour, then…”

“If returning it involves the phrase ‘plus one’, save it for lunch,” Jac said, rolling her eyes and enabling her remote link as she stood to put her coat back on.

“Deal. I’m driving,” Campbell said, and followed her to the carpool.

The problem with mass-produced unmarked cars is that, sooner or later, people know what a silver-gray sedan is doing in the neighbourhood. Jac busied herself with official census data for the blocks around Cuveil while Campbell hummed along to their tailored playlist. Distinctly lower class area, right near the slums, with a registered civilian population in the low hundreds. Which meant at least twice that in blacklines, the unregistered criminal class; no rights, no records, no civic services. She ran a quick scan of the citizens in the area, rifling through their lives like a dispassionate god; an affair in that apartment, chronic anxiety there, the thousand small moments those people liked to believe were private. One office clerk’s behavioural record was flagged with moderate-high suicide likelihood, but the police software precluded any intervention: she wasn’t insured for emergency services to care.

The rest of the Redlines were safe and well-behaved, holed up in their apartments or away at work to avoid the inevitable police investigation at the intersection.

“This was WavTec again, right?” Campbell asked aloud, though they both knew the answer.

“Yeah,” Jac replied, “I mean, probably. They’ve got a history of employee mistreatment and they’re right around the corner.”

“Ah, ah, ah,” Campbell wagged a finger, letting the autopilot compensate for inattention, “You mean ‘minor persistent morale deficit ‘“

Jac snorted, “Employee Gratitude Shortfall.”

“That was last year’s rhetoric.”

“Hm,” Jac grunted, staring out the window, “flagged as a gang skirmish, so I guess someone had a legitimate grievance this time around.”

“Or enough money for a lawyer.”

“You have any informants locally?”

“Ha,” Campbell exclaimed, “you actually want to treat this like a real investigation?”

“I want,” Jac smirked, looking over at them, “to make Slater work overtime.”

Campbell shook their head, “you’re gonna find contraband in your desk one of these days.”

“Yeah, yeah, runs in the family,” Jac replied, looking away with a dismissive wave of the hand.

“Sorry,” Campbell said, and went back to manual drive.

“The dead are buried, Campbell, I wouldn’t get bunched up about it.”

The car rolled smoothly to a halt a few inches from the police tape, beyond which a pair of uniformed officers slouched against the wall of an apartment block with half-eaten burgers in hand. A pair of vans waited on the opposite of the intersection; competing sanitation companies bidding for the cleanup. The two detectives climbed out of the vehicle, Campbell pressing their lips into a thin line as they approached the uniforms.

“Really, guys?”

The taller of the two took a bite of his burger, the shorter shrugged; “Already been ‘round with the scent control stuff, so if you just don’t look you can keep your lunch down.”

“This is lunch?” Campbell went on, “it’s not even midday.”

“Oooh,” the shorter cop turned to her partner, “you hear that, Dave? Detective I-Get-A-Regular-Shift think we’re slacking off.”

“Must be nice to to start work after sunrise,” the taller agreed, talking around a mouthful of artificial beef.and Pretty Bready™ bun.

“You wanna talk to our manager, or is that just your haircut?” the short cop continued.

Jac ignored them and crouched under the tape, walking a slow circuit of the intersection. The smell was gone, but the bodies were pale and rigid, faces mostly frozen in screams. The rain had washed most of the blood away, left the corpses soaking, their open mouths full of water.

She made notes as she went, adding them to her internal memory.

Three dead citizens, Redlines still broadcasting flat vitals.

Thirty other bodies, strewn across the wide intersection, dressed in a mix of cheap office attire and outsider fashions.

She crouched beside the body of a boy who can't have been much past eighteen, a neat hole from a beamcaster in his temple and dyed hair wilting out of a styled fan. A fresh tattoo resembling a Seizers Legion tag stood out on his arm; Jac pulled on a glove and ran her thumb over it. It smeared a little, would’ve bled if he’d still been alive. Applied post mortem, like the shiny new gun clenched in his hand.

Knowing what to expect, she checked it for a chip and found none, nor any ammunition. Anything but the manufacturer would be scrubbed from the body of the weapon.

Jac stood and put her hands on her hips, knitting her brows as she looked around at the corpses again. A few more identical weapons wrapped in bloodless fingers, corpses lying atop each other like they tripped over the fallen before joining them. Her frown deepened and she took a few steps forward, stepped over a pair of bodies, two steps more, pausing at a stack of three corpses.

Campbell strolled over to join her, looking queasy.

“Ready to stamp this and go?”

Jac shook her head, “not just yet - can you pull any drone recordings?”

“Sure. gizza minute or two,” Campbell said, tilting their head, “you hoping to find something specific?”