The chair was too low. I adjusted my posture, letting my spine settle against the cold metal backrest. The table between us was empty except for two open files and a recording crystal pulsing with a soft blue light.
The man across from me wore the silver pin of the Hunter's Association. B-rank. Analyst specialization: Imprint-related pathologies. He hadn't given his name.
"Vera Blackwell." His voice was neutral, a tool for measuring reactions. "You've been assigned to the Iron Edge eastern logistics outpost for the past three weeks."
"Yes."
"During that period, you treated Guild Member Dean Holt for what was logged as a routine inflammation response."
"Correct."
He slid the first file toward me. A holographic scan hovered above the page—Dean Holt's Imprint network, the vibrant gold lattice now speckled with dull grey patches. The decay pattern was subtle. Elegant. It looked exactly like chronic overexposure.
"Your report noted standard tissue fatigue," the analyst said. "But the follow-up scan from the morgue shows advanced, systemic degradation. The kind that usually takes months to develop."
I kept my eyes on the scan. Not on his face. "I'm an E-rank healer. My scanner's resolution is calibrated for field triage, not forensic analysis."
"Understood." He didn't push. He opened the second file. Sol Mercer's face stared up from a medical intake form. "You also participated in a joint patrol with Silver Peak eleven days ago. You treated C-rank Archer Sol Mercer for a superficial arm injury."
"I provided stabilization. He was transferred to a licensed facility for full assessment."
"The facility's report indicates an 'atypical tissue response' in the same arm. Cause undetermined." The analyst steepled his fingers. "Two individuals. Both with recent contact with you. Both presenting with Imprint degradation that doesn't match their injury history."
The room's air filtration system hummed. I counted the cycles. Three. Four.
"You're a healer," he said. The shift was almost imperceptible. Not an accusation. An invitation. "From a professional standpoint—setting aside rank, setting aside what any scanner might have missed—what does your experience tell you about these cases?"
The question was a trap. A beautifully constructed one.
If I played ignorant, I'd look incompetent or deliberately obstructive. If I offered a theory too precise, I'd reveal knowledge I shouldn't have. He wasn't asking what I did. He was asking how I thought.
I let my gaze drift back to Dean Holt's scan. Let my right hand rest flat on my thigh. The cold was a steady anchor.
"Dean Holt spent seven years stationed at the eastern perimeter," I said. My voice was calm. Clinical. The voice of a junior healer reciting a textbook. "The outpost's shielding is rated for intermittent Imprint radiation, not continuous exposure. His duty logs show he volunteered for double shifts every third week. That's not fatigue. That's cumulative poisoning."
The analyst's pen moved. A single note.
I continued. "Sol Mercer's primary weapon is a recurve bow channeled through a C-rank amplification crystal. His combat style relies on rapid, successive draws. High-frequency Imprint output without adequate cooldown cycles creates micro-fractures in the energy channels. The body compensates by overdrawing from the core lattice. The degradation would manifest first in the primary limb. It would look irregular because it's a compounded stress injury, not a single trauma."
I paused. Let the explanation hang in the air between us.
"Both cases," I said, "are consistent with institutional neglect. Not malice."
The analyst looked up. His eyes were grey. Unreadable. "Institutional neglect."
"Dark Flame pushes its frontline members beyond safe thresholds. Dean Holt was expendable. Sol Mercer is valuable, so they'll keep using him until he breaks." I tilted my head slightly. A healer's thoughtful gesture. "If the Association is concerned about a pattern, I'd recommend auditing Dark Flame's duty schedules and equipment maintenance logs. Especially for high-output combatants."
The pen stopped moving.
He leaned back. The chair creaked. "You're suggesting this is a guild-level occupational hazard."
"I'm suggesting that when people are treated as equipment, their Imprints fail like equipment." I kept my tone flat. Factual. "It's not mysterious. It's accounting."
The recording crystal pulsed. Blue. Blue. Blue.
He closed Sol Mercer's file. Then Dean Holt's. The gesture was final. "Your insight is noted, Healer Blackwell. Thank you for your time."
I stood. My movements were smooth. Unhurried. "Will there be a follow-up?"
"Not from this office." He offered a thin, professional smile. "The Association appreciates cooperation."
I nodded. Turned. My right hand stayed at my side, fingers loose.
The door hissed shut behind me.
The hallway was long and sterile. White walls, white floor, the kind of lighting that made everything look faintly unreal. I walked. One step. Another. The sound of my boots was swallowed by the acoustic panels.
A tenth of a percent gone. Just for sitting in a room and telling lies.
No. Not gone. Invested.
I reached the intersection. The main corridor stretched left toward the exit atrium. Right led deeper into the administrative wing. I went left.
Voices echoed from an open doorway ahead. Two Association clerks, leaning against a filing cabinet.
"—whole batch flagged for review," one was saying. "Dark Flame's going to have to answer for the shielding gaps at that outpost. The family's already filed a negligence claim."
The other clerk whistled low. "Gideon Roarke isn't going to like that."
"He shouldn't have cut corners on perimeter shielding. The analyst's report just confirmed it."
I passed them. Neither looked up.
My chest was tight. A familiar, cold pressure. Not fear. Something sharper. The satisfaction of a trap springing shut on the wrong target.
The exit doors were twenty paces away. Fifteen.
A door on my right opened.
A woman stepped out. A-rank pins on her collar. An amplifier's sigil—interlocking circles. Her hair was the color of old copper, pulled into a severe knot. Her eyes swept the hallway, passed over me without recognition, and settled on the clerk's station.
Lyra Wren.
Fourth on the list.
She nodded to the clerks. A polite, distant acknowledgment. Then she turned, her stride brisk and purposeful, and walked away in the opposite direction.
She didn't look back.
I kept walking. My smile was a small, private thing. A reflex.
Not yet.
She's for next season.
The atrium was crowded. Hunters from half a dozen guilds milled around the mission boards, their voices layering into a dull roar. I moved through them like a stone through water. No eye contact. No pauses.
The sunlight outside was harsh. I blinked. Let my vision adjust.
My pocket vibrated.
I pulled out the comm crystal. Lucian's ID glowed on the surface. I almost didn't answer. My thumb hovered over the dismiss rune.
I tapped accept.
"Vera." His voice was calm. Too calm. "Where are you?"
"Association headquarters. Just finished an inquiry."
A beat of silence. "Voluntary?"
"They phrased it as a request."
"I see." Another pause. I could hear background noise—the clatter of a guild hall, someone shouting about supply manifests. "The inquiry was about Dean Holt."
"And Sol Mercer."
The silence this time was longer. Heavier. "What did you tell them?"
"The truth." I started walking. The street was busy. A cargo skimmer rumbled past, kicking up dust. "From a healer's perspective."
"And from your perspective?"
I stopped at a crosswalk. The signal was red. "My perspective is that Dark Flame has a systemic problem. The Association seems to agree."
He let out a breath. It might have been a laugh. "You turned their investigation into a guild audit."
"I answered their questions."
"You redirected them." His tone shifted. The professional calm cracked, just for a second. "That's either very clever or very dangerous."
The light turned green. I crossed. "It's done."
"It's not done." The background noise faded. He'd moved somewhere quieter. "The analyst you spoke with—B-rank, specializes in degenerative Imprint conditions. He doesn't close cases. He follows threads."
"There's no thread to follow."
"There's you." His words were quiet. Deliberate. "You were the common element. Now you're the expert witness. That puts you on his radar in a different way."
I turned down a side street. The buildings here were older, their facades stained with decades of exhaust. "Is that a warning?"
"It's an observation." He paused. "Do you need one?"
I didn't answer. The medication packet in my pocket felt suddenly heavy. A lump of folded plastic and foil.
"Vera."
"I'm here."
"Be careful." He said it like it was a technical instruction. A calibration note. "The Association isn't your enemy. But it's not your ally, either. It's a machine. And you just fed it a new set of parameters."
"I'll keep that in mind."
The connection ended.
I slid the crystal back into my pocket. My fingers brushed against the medication packet. I didn't pull it out.
My apartment was six blocks away. I took the long route.
The alley behind the recycler station was empty. I stopped. Leaned against the wall. The brick was rough through the fabric of my jacket.
I counted my breaths. Ten. Twenty.
The tightness in my chest didn't ease.
I'd done it. I'd walked into an Association inquiry and walked out with the investigation pointed squarely at Dark Flame. I'd used their own assumptions like levers. It was clean. Efficient.
So why did my right hand feel like ice?
I pushed off the wall. Kept walking.
The apartment door recognized my Imprint signature and clicked open. The room inside was dark. I didn't turn on the light.
I went to the sink. Ran the water until it was cold. Cupped my hands. Drank.
The window showed a slice of the city—tower lights beginning to glow as the sun dipped below the skyline. Another day gone.
I opened my personal log. The screen's blue light was the only illumination in the room.
**Entry 12.**
**Inquiry completed. Association focus shifted to Dark Flame operational standards. No suspicion retained.**
**Lyra Wren sighted. No engagement.**
**Pool: 98.7%.**
I stared at the number. It hadn't changed. Not really. A fraction of a percent, maybe. Too small to measure.
But it would change. Every step cost. Every lie cost more.
I closed the log.
The list was on the wall beside the window. Four names remained. I'd drawn no lines through them. No marks. Just four lines of text on a cheap display board.
Zack Stroud.
Moira Sable.
Gideon Roarke.
And the fourth. The one I hadn't written. The one I was still piecing together from transfer records and mission logs and the empty space where Ana's file should have been.
I touched the board. The surface was cool.
"Soon," I said. To no one. To the room. To the ghost in the brown jacket who never answered.
My comm crystal vibrated again.
Not Lucian this time. An unknown ID. The message was text only.
*Your analysis was impressive. We should talk. —K.*
Kiran Vale.
I deleted the message. The crystal went dark.
I didn't move. The city's lights blinked. A skimmer passed overhead, its engines a fading whine.
The room was very quiet.
I could still see the analyst's grey eyes. The way he'd watched me. Not with suspicion. With curiosity. Like I was a puzzle he'd just realized had more pieces than he'd counted.
He'd let me go today.
But he'd remember.
I turned from the window. Went to the small closet. My gear was stacked neatly on the shelf. I took out the scanner. Ran a diagnostic. The readout glowed green. All functions nominal.
I set it back.
My right hand ached. A deep, bone-level cold. I flexed the fingers. Watched them move in the dim light.
No tremor. Steady.
Always steady.
I lay down on the cot. Stared at the ceiling. The sounds of the city filtered through the window—distant horns, the hum of infrastructure, the endless background noise of a world that didn't stop.
I closed my eyes.
Saw Dean Holt's grey-speckled Imprint scan. Saw Sol Mercer's file. Saw Lyra Wren's copper hair as she walked away.
Four names.
Four pieces left.
The cold in my hand spread. Up my wrist. A slow, familiar creep.
I didn't fight it. I let it come. Let it settle.
When I opened my eyes again, the room was dark. The city's glow painted faint stripes across the ceiling.
I sat up. Reached for the comm crystal.
The unknown ID was still in the deletion log. I could reconstruct it. Seven digits. A Venish prefix.
I didn't.
Instead, I pulled up the mission board. Scrolled through the available postings. Iron Edge had a new rotation opening at the northern border outpost. High risk. High Imprint radiation. They were offering hazard pay.
I bookmarked it.
Then I stood. Went back to the window.
The fourth name. The one not written.
I knew who it was. I'd known since I pulled Ana's erased transfer request from the archive's backup cache. The signature at the bottom wasn't a forgery. It was real.
The person who'd authorized Ana's final mission. The person who'd sent her into the dark with no backup, no extraction plan, and a target that didn't exist.
That name wasn't on my list.
It was on the Association's payroll.
And the analyst with the grey eyes—
My comm crystal lit up. A priority alert. Association seal.
I opened it.
*Healer Blackwell. Your testimony has been forwarded to the Dark Flame oversight committee. Your presence is requested at a preliminary hearing in 48 hours. Please acknowledge receipt.*
I stared at the message.
They weren't just investigating Dark Flame.
They were making me part of the process.
I typed a single word. *Acknowledged.*
The screen went dark.
Outside, a siren wailed. Getting closer. Then fading.
I stayed at the window. Watching the lights. Counting them.
The cold in my hand was now a solid thing. A weight.
I'd wanted the investigation pointed away from me.
I hadn't considered what it would mean to stand at the tip of the spear.
---
The hearing notice glowed on the crystal long after I set it down, a tiny beacon in the dark room—and I wondered, for the first time, who was really holding the leash.
*Vote if this chapter hurt. Vote harder if it hurt the right people.*