"An hour. Paid in advance."
Suki Fang didn't look like someone asking for a favor. She looked like she was billing me for the privilege of her time. Her hand rested on the edge of the Iron Edge bulletin board, fingers tapping a rhythm that didn't match the nervous twitch in her left eye. The paper behind her fluttered in the draft from the ventilation shaft. A fresh notice. D-Rank Pending Assignment. The name typed in bold ink: *Suki Fang*. Not under Lyra Wren's old roster. Not attached to a senior mentor. Just floating there, unmoored, in the general pool of wanderers.
Two days since the funeral. Two days since the ground stopped shaking under my feet from the sheer weight of Lyra's absence.
I kept walking. My boots clicked on the polished stone floor, a sharp counterpoint to the low hum of the guild hall. I didn't stop. Stopping meant engaging. Engaging meant risk. Risk meant calculating the cost against a healing pool that was already bleeding dry.
"Vera."
She moved faster than I expected. A shadow detached itself from the wall and slid into my path. Suki blocked the corridor, arms crossed over her chest. She wore Lyra's old badge. It sat crooked on her tunic, the pin digging into fabric that hadn't been broken in yet.
"I said an hour," Suki repeated. Her voice cracked on the second syllable. She cleared her throat, hard. "Consultation. Medical review. Whatever you call it when you're charging double rates for standing still."
I stopped. I had to. The flow of traffic in the hall adjusted around us like water hitting a rock. Healers in gray tunics, enforcers in black armor, all of them glancing, assessing, moving on. No one intervened. In Iron Edge, you learned fast: if someone was blocking your path, they either had authority or they were desperate. Suki had neither. Which meant she was dangerous in a different way.
"I'm off rotation," I said. My voice came out flat. I kept my hands at my sides. My right hand felt cold. Always cold these days. "Book an appointment through the admin desk."
"The admin desk put me on the wanderer list," Suki said. She stepped closer. The smell of stale coffee and antiseptic clung to her clothes. "They say I need a sponsor to get back on a fixed roster. They say I need to prove I can handle the caseload Lyra left behind."
"That's not my department."
"It is if you want the files."
She reached into her pocket. Not for a weapon. For a fold of paper, thick and creased. She held it out, hovering it in the space between us. The edges were worn soft.
"Lyra's client list," Suki said. "Five years. Every D-rank she stabilized. Every imprint scan she filed. Every note she made before she..." She trailed off. The word *died* hung there, unsaid, heavy and ugly. "Before she stopped working."
I looked at the paper. Then I looked at Suki. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but dry. She wasn't crying. She was bargaining.
"Why me?" I asked.
"Because you were the last one to see her alive who isn't currently under investigation," Suki said. The words came out too fast, too rehearsed. "And because Kiran Vale told me you're the only one who doesn't treat D-ranks like disposable batteries."
Kiran. Of course. The web tightened another knot.
"I don't do charity," I said.
"Neither do I." Suki shoved the paper closer. "I'm not asking for free. I'm hiring you. Off the books. Cash. Or trade. I need you to run stability checks on the four kids Lyra was holding together. Twice a week. Non-duty hours. I can't do the deep scans yet. My resonance is still... fluctuating."
She flexed her hand. A faint, erratic shimmer of light pulsed around her fingers, then died. Uncontrolled. Unstable. Typical for someone who had just inherited a mentor's burden without the rank to support it. The guild system chewed people like her up and spat them out within a month. Unless they had help.
"And in exchange?" I asked.
"You get the list." Suki tapped the paper. "Full access. You can copy it. You can memorize it. You can burn it for all I care, once you've done the checks. But I need to know if these kids are going to crash like Lyra did. I need to know if whatever killed her is in their blood."
The air in the corridor seemed to drop ten degrees. My right hand went colder. I pressed it flat against my thigh, feeling the rough fabric of my trousers.
"Lyra died of an imprint rupture," I said. "Standard overload. Nothing infectious."
"Is that what the report says?" Suki's gaze locked onto mine. "Because that's not what I saw. And I think you know that."
She was right. I did know. But knowing and saying were two different things. One got you paid. The other got you dead.
I looked at the paper again. Five years of data. Names. Frequencies. Patterns. If Lyra had been tracking something—someone—before the end, it would be in there. It was a treasure map. It was also a trap. Dark Flame didn't leave loose ends. Zack Stroud didn't leave witnesses. If this list was real, it was dangerous. If it was fake, it was a test.
Suki didn't know which one it was. That made her useful. And vulnerable.
"Two checks," I said. "Trial period. If the kids are stable, I walk. If they're not, we renegotiate."
Suki let out a breath she must have been holding since the bulletin board. Her shoulders dropped an inch. "Deal. Coffee? There's a table free in the corner."
We sat. The guild café was loud, a cacophony of clattering cups and low conversations. Healers comparing notes. Enforcers bragging about rift clears. The noise was a shield. No one listened to us.
Suki unfolded the paper on the table. It was a ledger, handwritten in Lyra's cramped script. Rows of names. Dates. Imprint resonance frequencies. Notes in the margins: *Stable*, *Fluctuating*, *Monitor*.
"Here," Suki said, turning to the first page. "These are the active cases. The ones I inherited."
I scanned the list. Six names.
Two I recognized immediately. *Jory*. *Mina*. Both had appeared in the procurement logs I'd skimmed months ago, buying low-grade stabilizers from the gray market. They were on the edge, barely holding on.
Four I didn't know.
My eyes caught on the fourth name. *Ren*.
The entry was different. The ink was darker, fresher. The resonance frequency listed next to it wasn't a standard D-rank spread. It was tight. Compressed. B-rank signature, but labeled as a D-rank patient. And the affiliation column didn't say *Iron Edge* or *Unaffiliated*. It said *Silver Peak Liaison*.
Ren.
I'd never seen the name on a rotation schedule. I'd never heard it in the break room. A B-rank operating under D-rank cover, attached to Lyra's private caseload? That didn't make sense. Unless Lyra wasn't just healing kids. Unless she was hiding someone.
Or unless someone was hiding inside her work.
My pulse didn't race. It didn't need to. My mind did the running for me. *Ren*. A ghost in the machine. If this was a trap, it was a sophisticated one. If it was real, it was a lead I hadn't expected to find on a piece of paper in a coffee shop.
I didn't write the name down. Writing it down made it real. Made it a target. I just let my eyes linger on it for a second longer than the others, burning the spelling into my memory. *R-E-N*.
"And this one?" I asked, tapping the name with a fingernail. I kept my tone casual. Bored, even.
Suki glanced at it. "Oh. Ren. Yeah. Lyra picked that one up about three months ago. Said it was a special referral. Never saw the patient. Just handled the paperwork and the supply drops."
"Special referral from who?"
"She didn't say." Suki frowned, tracing the line of text. "Actually, she got weird about it. Wouldn't let me file the logs. Kept the physical copies in her private drawer. I only found this because I had to break the lock after..." She stopped. Swallowed. "After she was gone."
"Convenient," I said.
"It's suspicious," Suki corrected. "That's why I'm showing you. If Lyra was onto something, Ren is the key. Or the lock. I don't know which."
I leaned back. The chair creaked. My right hand was numb now, the cold spreading up my wrist. I tucked it under the table, out of sight.
"I'll take the job," I said. "Start tomorrow. Send me the locations."
Suki nodded, relief washing over her face. She began to gather the papers, stacking them neatly. "Thank you, Vera. Really. I... I didn't know who else to ask. Everyone else thinks I'm just filling a seat until they find a real C-rank to take over."
"They're wrong," I said. It wasn't comfort. It was fact. Suki was here. Lyra was dead. The seat was filled. That was how the world worked.
Suki stood up. She adjusted Lyra's badge again, trying to straighten the pin. It still sat crooked.
"One more thing," she said. She paused, hand hovering over the stack of papers. She looked at me, really looked at me, with an intensity that made the hair on the back of my neck prickle. "Lyra. The last three weeks. She was... off. Jumpy. Checking the doors. Burning notes."
Suki leaned in, lowering her voice. "I thought it was just the stress of the new assignments. Overuse syndrome. But you're a doctor. You saw her. Did you notice anything? Medically?"
I met her gaze. I didn't blink. "Without a full medical history and a post-mortem toxicology report, speculation is unprofessional," I said. The standard line. The safe line.
Suki held my eyes for a beat. Then she nodded, once. Sharp. "Right. Of course. Standard protocol."
She turned to go. She took two steps away from the table, merging back into the flow of the café. Then she stopped. Turned back.
"Oh," she said, as if it had just occurred to her. As if it was an afterthought. "Almost forgot. A guy named Kael stopped by the desk last week. B-rank. Asked for you specifically."
My spine stiffened. Just a fraction. Enough that I felt it.
"Kael?" I asked. The name meant nothing. No face. No file. No memory.
"Yeah," Suki said. "Said he wanted to book a routine maintenance session. Regular therapy. He left a contact chip, but the receptionist lost it in the shuffle." She shrugged. "Weird, right? Usually, people book through the system. He insisted on finding you personally."
She waited. Watching my face.
I kept my expression blank. "Did he say why?"
"Just that he heard you were good with 'complex cases'." Suki grinned, a thin, humorless stretch of lips. "Flattery gets you everywhere, I guess. Anyway, thought you should know. In case you want to follow up."
She didn't wait for a response. She turned and walked away, disappearing into the crowd of gray tunics and black armor.
I sat alone at the table. The noise of the café roared around me, but it felt distant. Muffled.
*Kael*. *Ren*.
Two names. Two variables I hadn't accounted for.
Lyra's list wasn't just a record of patients. It was a message. Or a warning.
I looked down at my right hand. It lay flat on the table now, pale against the dark wood. The cold had reached my elbow.
I picked up the copy of the list Suki had given me—the duplicate page with the six names. I ran my thumb over the name *Ren*. The ink was slightly raised. Fresh.
If Kael was asking for me, he knew something. If Ren was hiding in Lyra's files, they were important.
And if Suki was the one delivering this information, she was either the most helpful ally I'd ever found, or the bait in a trap so deep I wouldn't see the bottom until I hit it.
I folded the paper. Slid it into my pocket.
My healing pool sat at 67.4%. Enough for a few more checks. Enough for a little more digging.
But the numbers were dropping. And the names were piling up.
I stood up. The chair scraped against the floor, a harsh sound that cut through the ambient noise. A few heads turned. I ignored them.
I had two new patients to check. Two new names to investigate.
And a B-rank named Kael who was looking for me.
I walked toward the exit, my hand still cold, my mind already running the scenarios. Exit route one: the main hall. Exit route two: the service corridor behind the kitchens.
I chose the service corridor.
Just as I reached the door, the intercom crackled overhead. The voice was distorted, static-laced, but the words were clear.
*"Attention all D-rank personnel. Mandatory assembly in Sector Four. Immediate rollover of caseloads due to administrative review."*
I stopped. Hand on the door handle.
Administrative review.
They were shuffling the deck. Again.
Suki's new status. Lyra's old files. A mysterious B-rank asking for me.
Someone was moving pieces on the board. And I wasn't sure if I was the player or the piece being taken.
I pushed the door open and stepped into the shadows of the corridor.
Behind me, the café noise faded. Ahead, the darkness waited.
And in my pocket, the name *Ren* burned like a coal.
I hadn't even asked Suki if *Kael* was a first name or a last.
And she hadn't offered to tell me.
*Your Power Stone is Vera's knife. Keep it sharp.*