The morning briefing was already underway when I slipped into the back of the Iron Edge common room. The air smelled of stale coffee and damp gear. My face was on. My right hand was in my pocket, fingers resting against the cool metal of the medkit Sol had pressed into my palm weeks ago. I still had not thrown it away. I had stopped asking myself why.
Lucian Voss stood at the front, not behind the podium where Guild Master Kessler usually held court, but off to the side, leaning against a wall-mounted equipment rack. His posture was relaxed, but his eyes tracked the room. He was Silver Peak, not Iron Edge, but his presence here for a cross-guild update had become a regular courtesy. A liaison, not a commander. That distinction mattered.
"—confirmed through the Hunter's Association bulletin yesterday evening," he was saying, his voice carrying without effort. "Two separate cases of suspected Imprint Degeneration Syndrome, both within Dark Flame's active roster. A C-rank archer and a C-rank shield. Symptoms are progressing atypically fast."
A low murmur rippled through the room. Imprint Degeneration was the boogeyman of our world — slow, irreversible erosion of the energy that defined us. It was supposed to be rare. Hearing it had struck two high-rankers in the same guild sent a visible chill through the assembled.
I kept my breathing even. My face was a mask I had glued on hours ago and forgotten to remove. It was a good mask. It had held through worse.
"The Association is urging all guilds to conduct voluntary screenings," Lucian continued. He didn't look at me. "And to review any recent joint operations or contact with Dark Flame personnel. Standard precaution. The cause is unknown, but the pattern suggests an environmental trigger or a localized strain. Be aware of your own Imprint stability. Report any fluctuations, however minor."
He pushed off from the rack, signaling the end of the formal update. Guild Master Kessler stepped forward to take over, launching into the day's patrol assignments. I let the words wash over me, a stream of sector grids and team rotations. My internal count was running parallel to his speech.
*Dean Holt: Day 18 since initial decay application. Estimated absorption: 12%. Sol Mercer: Day 15. Estimated absorption: 8%.*
The numbers were projections, based on the delayed activation parameters I'd set. The system in my head—the cold, clinical interface that had manifested after Ana died—gave me percentages, not feelings. It was a ledger. I checked it constantly.
"Blackwell."
I didn't startle. I turned my head slowly, meeting Lucian's gaze. He had approached without sound, now standing a respectful three feet away, his hands loose at his sides.
"Voss," I acknowledged.
"A word?" He gestured with a slight tilt of his head toward the hallway outside the common room.
I nodded and followed him out. The corridor was quieter, lit by the pale morning light filtering through high, narrow windows. He stopped near a bulletin board plastered with old mission notices and safety protocols.
"You spent three years with Dark Flame," he said. It wasn't a question.
"I did."
"In your time there, did you ever see anything like this? Early-stage degeneration? Clusters of cases?"
His tone was professional, genuinely inquisitive. This was the danger of Lucian Voss. He didn't ask questions to trap you; he asked because he actually wanted to know. The honesty was more disarming than any accusation.
I let a fraction of concern touch my features — the kind any healer would show. "IDS is rare. I saw the aftermath once. A retired A-rank hunter from Celestial Balance. It was… advanced." The old healer who treated that case had said something I had filed and never returned to: *we saw worse in the winter of '85. No one wrote that down.* He had not elaborated. "But a cluster? No." I paused, choosing my next words the way I would set a bone. "What I did see was chronic over-deployment. Dark Flame's operational tempo is brutal. My monthly healing load was triple a standard guild. Chronic Imprint fatigue was commonplace. If you want a catalyst, that's a plausible one. The body can only compensate for so long before it quits."
Clinical. A redirect, not a denial. *Look at the culture, not the individuals.* A perfect deflection, woven with enough truth to hold weight. Truth made the best fabric for lies. Nothing else held dye.
Lucian watched me for a moment longer than was comfortable. He wasn't doing it to intimidate; he was absorbing the answer, weighing it. His left hand held a stylus cap, rolling it slowly between his thumb and forefinger.
"Triple the healing load," he repeated, not writing it down. He never took notes in front of you. "That would leave a paper trail. Procurement records, supply requisitions."
"It would," I agreed. "The demand was why I was recruited. My efficiency ratings were high." A bland, factual statement. *Efficiency.* That was the word I had built my disguise around.
The stylus cap stopped moving. He had decided something. "The Association's bulletin will likely trigger an audit. Dark Flame won't welcome it. If their operational records support what you're saying, it becomes a guild liability issue, not a medical mystery." He paused. "Thank you, Vera. That's useful context."
He used my first name. Deliberately. A marker — I could not yet tell if it was trust or a flag being driven into the ground next to my foot.
"Will there be anything else?" I asked.
"No. Your patrol sector is the eastern perimeter today. Kessler just announced it. Stay sharp." With a final nod, he turned and walked down the hall, his footsteps echoing faintly.
I stood there for a count of five, letting the mask settle back into place. Then I moved toward the gear lockers to kit up for patrol. The interaction had gone as well as it could have. He'd accepted the explanation. The seed was planted: Dark Flame's own brutality was the culprit. It was elegant. It was also a lie, and Lucian Voss was a man who valued truth. The dissonance would bother him eventually. I had bought time, not resolution.
The eastern perimeter patrol was a mind-numbing loop of reinforced fencing, scanner pylons, and scrubland. My partner was a taciturn D-rank hunter named Rourke who communicated in grunts and spent most of the four-hour shift staring at the horizon through binoculars.
It gave me space to calculate.
I triggered the internal display. Lines of cool, blue text superimposed themselves over my vision, visible only to me.
**[Decay Absorption (Remote)]**
**Target: Dean Holt (C-Rank Shield)**
**Status: Active. Imprint energy dissipation ongoing.**
**Estimated Absorption: 12.3%**
**Manifestation: Shield duration reduced by ~37%. Reported symptoms: fatigue, minor tremor in dominant hand.**
**Target: Sol Mercer (C-Rank Archer)**
**Status: Active. Imprint energy dissipation ongoing.**
**Estimated Absorption: 8.7%**
**Manifestation: Marksmanship precision degraded. Reported symptoms: unexplained weakness in draw arm, loss of fine control.**
**Aggregate Progress: 34% of energy required for E → D breakthrough.**
Thirty-four percent. The energy siphoned from their decaying Imprints was slowly, inexorably filling a reservoir within me. When it reached one hundred percent, my public rank would have the fuel to advance from E to D. It was the cover story for my growth, a plausible reason for a lowly healer to climb the guild ladder. The cost was etched into their flesh, their futures.
I did not need to be near them. The decay was a timed charge. I had set it. I had walked away. It worked in the background now, silent and inevitable — a poison with a perfect delay, and my fingerprints nowhere on the glass.
Rourke grunted, pointing toward a flicker on the perimeter motion sensor. A desert hare. He lowered his binoculars, looking bored. I nodded and continued walking, my boots crunching on the gravel path.
Sol Mercer's face flashed in my mind. Not as he was now, but as he'd been in the corridor weeks ago, pressing the medkit into my hand. *"If things get bad."* His easy smile hadn't reached his eyes. There had been a tension there, a question he wasn't asking. Did he suspect? Or was he just feeling the first, inexplicable tremors of the collapse I'd engineered?
I pushed the thought down. Sentiment was a luxury the plan did not budget for. He was number five. He had stood in that training yard three years ago, laughing while the others called me Battery. He had carried Gideon's messages. His complicity had been passive. Comfortable. Which was still a kind of complicity — the most common kind, and the easiest to collect.
The patrol ended without incident. I logged the clean sweep at the outpost terminal, handed in my sensor pack, and caught the transport back to Iron Edge's main compound. The common room was empty now, save for a cleaner mopping the floors. The scent of disinfectant was sharp.
I went to my dormitory, a small, single-occupancy room on the third floor. It was spartan: a bed, a desk, a narrow wardrobe, a terminal jack. The window looked out over the training yards. I locked the door behind me.
The silence was a physical presence. I shrugged off my jacket, hanging it on the back of the chair. The weight in the right pocket shifted. The medkit. I took it out, holding the small, sealed packet in my palm. It was standard issue, containing a mild stimulant and a coagulant booster. Useful for field emergencies. Why was I still carrying it?
I placed the packet on the desk, next to the terminal. Then I woke the screen and logged into the guild network with probationary credentials. Limited access. I pulled up the Hunter's Association notice Lucian had mentioned.
There it was, dry and official. *"Alert: Suspected Cluster of Imprint Degeneration Syndrome. Guild: Dark Flame. Affected: One (1) C-rank combatant, Archery specialization. One (1) B-rank combatant, Shield specialization. Symptoms include rapid degradation of specialization-specific fine control and output stability. Cause under investigation. All guilds advised to monitor personnel for similar signs."*
They hadn't named names, but the specializations made it clear. Sol and Dean. The Association was involved now. That added a layer of scrutiny I hadn't fully anticipated. Audits. Questions. Licensed healers poking at the decaying Imprints with calibrated scanners.
My secondary Imprint trace — the discordant frequency nested inside my healing signature — was only detectable if someone was looking for anomalies. A standard check would not flag it. A dedicated IDS investigation, with a calibrated scanner on me as part of a contact trace, would.
The exposure clock, which had been theoretical, gained a concrete weight. Not *if* someone looked. *When.*
I closed the bulletin. My hands were steady. I placed them flat on the desk, palms down. The right one was cooler, always. The channel.
I needed to accelerate. The plan required Dean Holt to be resolved before the investigation closed in. Sol Mercer's timeline was secondary, but the pressure was now on both fronts. I called up the internal display again.
**Aggregate Progress: 34%.**
Too slow. The decay was working, but the energy harvest was a trickle. A D-rank breakthrough required a massive influx. I had two active sources. I needed to consider activating a third. But the list… the remaining names were higher risk. Zack Stroud was an A-rank assassin, actively hunting for anomalies like me. Moira Sable was an A-rank mage, rarely seen outside Dark Flame's fortified headquarters. Gideon Roarke was S-rank, the guild master, and utterly out of reach for now.
Patience. The plan was built on patience. But patience was a commodity that was running out.
I stood and walked to the window. The training yards were empty in the late afternoon light. Beyond the compound walls, the city of Ash Valley sprawled, a jagged silhouette against the darkening sky. Somewhere out there, Dean Holt was feeling his shield sputter and fail. Somewhere, Sol Mercer was missing a shot he could have made blindfolded a month ago.
My reflection in the glass was pale, features drawn. I looked tired. I *was* tired. The constant calculation, the vigilance, the weight of the ledger—it was a drain that no amount of sleep could fix.
A vibration against my thigh made me freeze.
It was my personal comm — cheap, unregistered, and used for nothing and no one. It should not have been vibrating. I pulled it out slowly. The screen glowed in the dim room.
A message. Unknown number.
**You did something.**
Three words. No question mark. A statement of fact, delivered by someone who already knew the answer.
The right hand that was always cold went colder. The rest of me went still. The way a patient goes still when the monitor starts making the sound it is not supposed to make.
Who?
Dean Holt, sensing the source of his decay? Unlikely. He was a shield, not an investigator.
Sol Mercer, finally connecting the dots?
Kiran Vale, testing me?
Lucian Voss, following a hunch?
A Dark Flame operative?
The sender knew. Or suspected. Enough to send this. It wasn't an accusation broadcast to the guild or the Association. It was a private ping. A probe.
I analyzed the message like a toxin. "You did something." Broad. Could refer to anything. But the timing, right after the Association bulletin, right after my return from patrol… it wasn't coincidence.
This was a threat. A silent one. Someone was watching. Someone who knew my actions weren't what they seemed.
My training took over. Do not react. Do not engage. Delete and disengage.
My thumb moved over the screen. I deleted the message. Then I powered the comm off completely, removing the battery for good measure. I placed the inert pieces on the desk beside Sol's medkit.
The room was silent again, but the silence was different now. It was charged, listening.
I had been careful. Impossibly careful. The decay was designed to mimic natural degradation — no extraneous signature, no puncture, no bruise. My movements were accounted for. My alibis were solid.
And yet.
Someone had seen. Or inferred. The list had four remaining names. The circle of danger was wider. It included anyone who had learned to look at a healer the way a healer looks at a patient.
I returned to the window. The first lights of the city were beginning to wink on in the distance. A normal evening was unfolding for thousands of people. For me, the landscape had just shifted. An unseen player had entered the game. Their identity, their motives, their evidence—all unknowns.
The hook was set, and it was in me.
I had planned for guild scrutiny, for Association audits, for the eventual collapse of my disguise. I had not planned for a ghost in the machine, a voice from a blocked number that knew enough to say *you did something*.
The next move was theirs. I had to wait. While I waited, the decay would continue. The aggregate percentage would climb. The clock on my exposure would fall. The three numbers ran on three different speeds, and only one of them was on my side.
I left the comm in pieces on the desk. I would acquire a new one tomorrow, through different channels. For now, the only thing to do was to continue. To act normal. To be Vera Blackwell, efficient E-rank healer, concerned about the news, focused on her patrols.
I lay down on the bed, boots still on, and stared at the ceiling. In the dark, the numbers of my internal display glowed behind my eyelids.
**Aggregate Progress: 34%.**
A long way to go. A very short time to get there.
Somewhere in the city, a phone that had sent a message to a dead line sat silent. Whoever held it was waiting too. The game had a second player now — and they had opened with my name.
---
── Author's Note ──
100 Power Stones by Sunday = bonus chapter next week. No padding. No filler.
If you want to see the next cure turn into a knife, vote tells me you're here.
Rank climb = editor notices = more Vera.