George arranged the last of the power cells on the shelf, stepped back to evaluate its work with the grave satisfaction of a craftsman, and then apparently decided the second one from the left was slightly off and adjusted it.
"Seven contractors," Cael said. "That's the part you led with."
"Yes."
He leaned against the counter with his arms folded and looked at the comms unit the way he looked at a hollow entrance when he was mapping it: methodically, without rushing, with the specific patience of someone who had learned that the shape of a thing was more informative than any individual detail.
"Walk me through it. From the beginning."
"From the beginning is a long walk, dear."
"Then start closer. The hollow."
A pause. The sound of something being set down on a desk somewhere he couldn't place.
"The hollow is in District 9. Boundary-adjacent, which you'll be familiar with. It formed approximately fourteen months ago off what used to be the old Ouyang freight corridor, which means it opened in a space that already had significant structural complexity underneath it. Basements, sub-basements, maintenance channels. The hollow formed around all of that and made it worse."
"How much worse?"
"The Carrot data on it is complicated. The upper geometry has been mappable in thirty-six hour windows since it stabilised. Below the second sector, the geometry shifts faster than standard mapping cycles can track."
"How far below the second sector is the engine?"
Another pause, slightly longer.
"Third sector."
Cael said nothing. He was doing the arithmetic, which she would know, and so she waited.
Third sector of a hollow with unstable sub-geometry meant operating below the reliable Carrot threshold. It meant the map you went in with and the map you needed to come out with would not be the same map.
It meant reading the hollow in real time rather than following pre-charted routes, which was survivable for people who had spent enough time in enough different hollows to develop the instincts for it, and it was not survivable for people who hadn't.
Seven contractors hadn't come back. He thought about the arithmetic of that.
"What grade is the engine?"
"S-rank."
He looked at George, who had found a second shelf to evaluate and was doing so with identical seriousness. He looked at the window.
A man was walking past with a crate of produce on his shoulder, the ordinary weight of an ordinary District 9 morning moving at its ordinary pace, indifferent to the conversation happening inside the cluttered appliance shop.
"S-rank engines don't end up in third-sector hollow geometry by accident."
"No."
"How did it get there?"
"The previous owner took it in."
"Into a hollow?"
"Yes… Into a hollow."
"With an S-rank W-engine."
"Yes."
"Why?"
The Fixer was quiet for a moment in the way that meant she was deciding how much of the answer was relevant to him and how much of it was noise by her definition.
"The previous owner was a courier. They went into the hollow on a separate commission entirely, and they brought the engine with them for reasons the client hasn't fully explained and I haven't been able to independently verify."
"Haven't been able to, or haven't tried to?"
"Does the distinction matter to you?"
"It might."
"Then let's say I've tried to and what I found wasn't sufficient to change the commission terms. The engine is there. The client wants it back. That's the shape of it."
The shape of it. He turned the phrase over. She used it when she was being precise without being complete, which he had also identified approximately six months in. The shape of a thing was not the thing. The shape of a thing was the outline, the silhouette, the dimensions you could infer from what was visible without being told what was inside.
She knows more than she's saying. She always knows more than she's saying. The question is whether the part she's not saying would change my answer.
He decided to find the edge of it.
"The seven. What were they like?"
"In what sense?"
"Experience. Background. Were they good?"
The Fixer took her time with this one.
"Variable. The first two were what I'd call mid-range. Capable enough for standard deep runs, not experienced enough for unstable geometry. I should have screened more carefully. I didn't." A beat, small and precise. "The third had better credentials. Former auxiliary contractor for a licensed proxy firm. Left on good terms. Solid record."
"And the others?"
"Progressively more experienced. By contractor five I was sourcing people with five-plus years of documented deep hollow work. Contractor six had more hollow hours than anyone currently on my active list." She paused. "Contractor seven I would have described, prior to sending them, as one of the better deep-run operatives available in the outer ring."
The shop was very quiet for a moment.
"And none of them came back."
"Well there's one… Contractor five made it to the third sector boundary. Her locator went dark there. The others stopped transmitting earlier. No one got eyes on the engine."
"So the geometry is the problem."
"The geometry is a problem. I'm not certain it's the only one."
Cael went still.
"Say that again."
"The geometry is genuinely dangerous. I'm not dismissing that. But seven contractors is a number that makes me look at variables other than difficulty. Good people die in bad hollows. Seven good people in the same hollow gives me a different kind of pause."
"You think something's in there."
"I think something's in there that the Carrot data isn't capturing. Which could be a creature. Could be a structural anomaly that's more severe than the surface scans suggest. Could be something else."
"Something else."
"I don't speculate past what I can support. I'm telling you the number concerns me for reasons beyond the obvious."
He pushed off the counter and moved to the window, looked out at the boundary markers blinking their patient amber at the edge of the district.
Beyond them, invisible from here but logged in his mental geography of the outer ring, somewhere in the tangle of what the Ouyang freight corridor used to be, a hollow was doing whatever a hollow did when nobody was watching it.
Seven people. Not rookies. Not careless. Seven people who knew what they were doing went in and stayed in.
She's right that the number is a different kind of problem.
"The rate," he said. "What are we talking?"
"High."
"I need a number."
"I know you do. I'm choosing the order in which I give you information and the rate isn't next."
He turned from the window.
"What's next?"
"The Carrot situation. Because it's different from your standard commission and you should understand it before we discuss payment."
"Different how?"
"The upper geometry, first and second sector, I can supply you a fresh Carrot on. Same as always. Thirty-six hour window, reliable for that portion of the hollow."
"And the third sector?"
"The Hollow Investigative Association's mapping capability degrades past the second sector threshold, the navigation starts to desync at that point. Their data doesn't reach reliably. Which means the Carrot I can give you covers two-thirds of the job and then it stops."
"So I'd be going in with half a map."
"Two-thirds of a map."
"Even better! Two-thirds of a map and no data on the sector where seven people disappeared... Great…"
"Yes."
"And you're surprised none of them made it?"
"I'm not surprised. I'm troubled. There's a distinction." Another pause. "The HIA is aware of the third-sector mapping problem. They claim they're improving deep-hollow mapping. Nobody in the outer ring's or the city seen it yet."
"Is there any options to licensed proxies?" Cael said.
"No. None of them is useful enough, not even Shepherd. And right now I can get you two sectors. After that you're on your own."
He let that sit for a moment.
The Carrot system was the thing that had changed hollow raiding most substantially in the past several years, and the thing the outer ring talked about most bitterly when it was honest.
Licensed proxies and investigators, the ones with HIA credentials and corporate backing, had access to Carrot data that covered hollows more comprehensively and updated more frequently.
Unlicensed contractors like Cael sourced Carrots through fixers, through black market data channels, through informal networks that ran on favours and credit. They got what they could get, which was usually enough for standard runs and was, in this case, specifically not enough for the job being described.
The HIA publicly described the Carrot access gap as a licensing incentive. The outer ring described it as the Bureau deciding that people who couldn't afford credentials could afford to die without current information. Both descriptions were accurate, depending on where you stood.
"The rate," he said again. "Now."
"High enough that I'll say it once and I won't negotiate it. The client understands what they're asking for and they're paying accordingly."
She told him the number.
He was quiet for a moment.
"That's not high," he said. "That's a different category entirely."
"Yes."
"That's the kind of number that makes a person ask why the client hasn't hired a licensed firm to go in with proper Carrot coverage or a team. Enough to pay off some of that debt of yours."
"Was that nessesary?"
"Hey look. Blame your old man for that pit he dug. Remember that I'm the one who giving you the proper opportunity, dear."
"Anywho, Why get links with you when licensed channels already exist?"
"The client says they've tried licensed channels. Two firms, both with professional teams and deep-coverage Carrots. Both firms assessed the hollow, reviewed the geometry data, and declined the commission."
Cael absorbed that.
"Licensed firms with full teams and better map coverage looked at this hollow and said no?"
"That's what I was told."
"And the client came to you."
"Yep, the client came to me. Which should tell you something about either the client's options or their judgement, and I leave it to you to determine which, dear."
He walked back to the counter slowly, thinking through the shape of it the way she'd offered it to him: a hollow in sub-geometry nobody could properly chart, an engine that had survived seven retrieval attempts by staying exactly where it was, a client who had burned through its legitimate options and was now sourcing through a backstreet fixer in the outer ring. Licensed firms said no. Seven unlicensed contractors said yes and didn't come back.
And she's bringing it to me. Which means she thinks I have something the other seven didn't.
Or she's desperate enough that she's running out of other options. Which I'm going to assume isn't it.
Or both. Those aren't mutually exclusive.
"What do you think I have that the others didn't?" he asked.
"I think you're going to say that's a flattering question and then answer it yourself."
"Humour me."
"You have your father's instincts."
He said nothing.
"The third sector is going to require someone who can navigate without data. I don't know if that's sufficient. I won't tell you it is. I'm telling you it's the closest thing to an advantage I've found after seven attempts, and I wanted you to have it as information rather than as a pitch."
"That's a very precise way of pitching something."
"I don't pitch. I inform. What you do with information is your business."
George had moved from the shelves to the counter and was now sorting the previous capacitor tray a second time, apparently for the pleasure of it. The shop bell hadn't rung once. The amber markers blinked on outside.
"If I go in and I don't come back," Cael said, "you'll have sent eight."
"Yes."
"Does that bother you?"
The signal processing ran for a moment. Underneath it, or through it, or possibly just in his imagination, something shifted that wasn't static.
"It would bother me considerably more than it has with the previous seven. Which isn't something I'm saying to flatter you. It's a statement of operational preference."
"Operational preference."
"You're the only contractor currently on my active list that I don't lose sleep recalibrating for. Replacing you would be an extended project. I'd rather not begin it."
He almost smiled. Not quite. He filed it in the same place he filed everything she said that was useful without being explicit, which was a category that had been filling steadily for two years.