Sao had not known what weight he had been carrying until the day he was able to foist it off, take a deep breath and at last think to himself, yes, today is a good day. Like reaching the end of a tightrope, it was finally safe to glance back over the precarious path behind them. As a bonus, summer had found some last-minute grace and was seeing itself out. Birds and clouds and pedestrians were out in force. The sky was so blue you could swim in it.

He looked at it out the window - the blinds up for the first time in weeks - and felt a pleasant wave of deja vu.

It was hard to be upset. Even with Rai suspended. Fin missing.

“It’s unbelievable,” he told Rai. “I thought for sure it was going to pour too, after yesterday’s smog.”

“We’ve had days like this. It always gets hot again.” Rai mashed up the copious toppings of his rice bowl with a spoon. “You know, it’s kinda lucky Fin fell in with the group before this year. Homeless while it’s the hottest summer in a century - good thing he had someone looking out for him.”

Fin was now a wanted man for the attempted murder of Aquila. Free had been right, the confessional call to the police was not only made, but recorded. All public alerts excluded the fact that Aquila had been injected with a substance that saved her life, possibly by the man himself. No, reports simply said the culprit was dangerous ex-military, absent of any specifics. This allowed a certain drug to go unmentioned.

“And thankfully Hazel went straight to the hospital herself. If she had gotten cops to take her, they would have nailed me for working on the case during my suspension…” Rai paused for a moment to chew a bite of his lunch. “Cole says they’re all getting along. Hazel and Jasmine might even be clean of the drug now. After a little more observation, they’ll be allowed to leave.”

Rai had been blurting out comments on the case at random, as casual as he could manage, all day.

As a distraction, they ordered a late lunch from a newly opened shop, only a few streets away. Deliberating over the menu took them half an hour. The place specialized in fresh fish and other raw foods on rice. The bowls were split into colorful sections - a corner of red fish, a triangle of glassy green seaweed, bright yellow radish - like stained glass medallions. They (and the leaflets) glowed with life and freshness. Sao ate his avocados and brown rice and felt like the picture of health.

Rai crunched down another spoonful of his mixture. Sao wasn’t sure how Rai’s combination of raw salmon and octopus (under a heap of mayonnaise) had ended up so crispy. “Fin’s been in hiding for almost a decade,” Rai rambled on. “He’s good at lying low. He even managed to avoid having his picture taken by four very public online personalities.”

“It’s interesting, isn’t it? Their content was always under complete control. Even their-” Sao chewed his rice. “Their last batch of posts. There was a plan behind those. They were always more calculating than we expected.”

Rai peeled up a slab of glistening salmon. “Maya hid the fact that she had any fish. Bettas. And an arowana - you heard that too, right? Those things are gigantic.” He ate his piece of fish.

Sao took his word for it. He wasn’t in the mood to check Neocam. What he was in the mood for was to look out the window.

“Sorry about the shit movie the other night,” Rai said.

“Oh, I had a good time. A fantastic nap.”

“I didn’t think it would be that bad.”

“I wouldn’t be able to make a much better selection.” Sao laughed. “I don’t watch a lot of television. I don’t make it to the end of any show - I tend to fall asleep.”

“You were expecting headshots.”

“I’ll manage expectations in the future. But they’re ubiquitous with zombie films, aren’t they? Even I know that. Burst heads and biting.” Sao turned a piece of avocado into smeary pulp. “Funny to be able to say now that movie zombies aren’t realistic. Although, since those representations existed far before the drug, perhaps it’s our modern friends who aren’t living up to the hype.”

“I’m not huge on zombie flicks myself. Some people say they’re fantasies made up by and for nuts who want an excuse to shoot and maim other human beings.”

“Aha!” Sao said. “So the film the other day was commentary? The zombies looked like ordinary, even attractive people, and so the cast had to orchestrate some convoluted drama to rationalize going after them… in all, life with zombies is more dull and uncomfortable than a real danger.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Rai said.

Despite his sporadic meandering back to talking about the case, Sao was tempted to say Rai was looking happier now he was suspended than he had all week. He was disallowed from pursuing new leads, meaning he wasn’t poring over the videos and court documents and notebooks all week trying to dredge up further hidden meaning.

The notebooks, however, were still perched on his desk in a pile. Sapphire’s collection dwarfed the others.

Sapphire. The only one well and truly lost. Ashes in a garden down South. Although in retrospect, there was no way they could have saved her. She had died weeks before the others. Before Hazel had even set eyes on Fin in that dumpster, before Fin had thought to touch the leftover pills of E34, put in his care by the volunteers who had been spirited away almost ten years ago.

What was there to do?

Looking at the pile of notebooks, he wondered what Sapphire would do, if she had survived or otherwise remained with them. She was the most like him, Hazel had said, perhaps to wind him up. Probably she’d be overwhelmed. She was already overwhelmed, he thought, looking at her outsized pile of diaries. Being a pillar for so many, she crumbled.

Diary sizes weren’t a measure of woes, though, he reminded himself. Hazel hadn’t kept one, and she’d made a genuine attempt on her life too.

A breeze blew through the open window and swept his worries away.

“This is the perfect weather,” he sighed.

“For a nap?” Wiping rice and mayonnaise from his face, Rai went over to the sitting area to look outside. A family was passing by on the sidewalk below; a couple and a child in a stroller. They were taking their time, indulging in one other.

“It’s just reassuring, somehow. Makes me think the worst is over, at least for the time being.”

“If we’re talking weather, it literally is.” Rai adjusted a maladjusted blind, where the drawstring was tangled. “Other stuff? Pathetic fallacy.”

Sao kicked back in his chair, smiling. Rai’s tone made a little poetic technique sound like a brutal moral failing. “While I’m being fallacious, I’ll go ahead and believe that this respite is the skies finally taking pity on us.”

“Or lulling us into a false sense of security.” Rai faced the blue above apprehensively. “Well. I’m going to make some coffee.”

A full stomach, gracious skies, some coffee and all his transcripts complete. Sao thought he was, finally, mentally fortified to risk a look at Neocam.

—

BODY VIEWINGS AND BEYOND

Combined event

Celebrating death and life

Revealing secrets, reasons, mental health tips and the future of four Neocams

• 18:30 on 30 Aug

• Catch STREAMING from all 4 channels OR LIVE VENUE

• Live attendants will receive free refreshments. Filming welcome! DM account [3plus4alive] if interested!

• Themes (optional): black mourning, funeral flowers and undead. early halloween

• Warning: NOT for the faint of heart!!

“Body viewing? Halloween? Is this not in… somewhat poor taste?” Sao looked from Rai to the post. When he looked back, Rai was no longer at his shoulder.

“It’s the reveal. They’re going to do it.” Rai paced from one end of the office to the other. He was torn between ignoring the notice entirely or grabbing his keys and heading out - but to where?

“I’ll message them for details. It appears they’ve set up a specific new account for enquiries.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Rai had his phone out. “Did Cole let them post this? And how did it spread this fast?”

“All four of their accounts, as well as the new one, seem to have paid for promotions.” Sao began typing up a polite message to the required account. A virtual RSVP, he supposed. “There’s a lot of bewildered folks. Some saying it’s exploitive to use a dead person’s account...”

Rai stopped his tramping around. “Hate only makes the thing bigger. They’re about to name and shame the army, so ‘big’ is the goal. I knew this was the plan but – I didn’t think they were going for it this fast. And that they really could set something up this fast… fucking Hazel, she didn’t care what I said…”

“You think there will be retaliation?”

“Was I not clear to Cole? Was I not clear to her that she needed to wait?” Rai scraped at his scalp with his bare hand. The flickering blue light flying up and down his face made his complexion look sickly.

“I thought you were. I suppose she just likes being contrary.” Sao read over his half-finished message. “Once we get the venue, we can send some police there to stop the show.”

“If the person on the other end even wants to invite us.”

Sao finished up his message with a youthful (he hoped) pretty please. “Alert the police to ask for the venue for an invite themselves, perhaps.”

Rai collapsed onto the couch and laced his fingers together into a single blueish white mass. “She didn’t even wait to see if Fin might be tracked down or have something planned. Maybe she thinks Cas just took him out. Can’t blame her for that, the way Cas was talking.”

“Maybe Fin was never supposed to be involved in the end reveal. Fin would fear army retaliation more than anything.”

“But to go ahead without even telling him?” Rai paused, his jaw slack. “Shit. I think that’s it.”

“What is it?”

“It’s all public. By doing this, she is telling him. They both know the army might come after her. And the last time someone came after one of the girls…”

“... that’s when Fin turned up. Is she using Free’s tactics to draw him out?”

“Ugh. Kill yourself to get attention; kill yourself again to get your friend’s attention. It was cute before, but these kids have to stop throwing around their lives like this.”

Sao didn’t want to remind him that one ‘kid’, Orchid, was older than the both of them.

“Cas-Free-whatever was bad enough, and it turns out he wasn’t even an agent of the army. What’s gonna happen when some ops come in really intending to bury anything relating to E34?”

Sao refreshed the feed, quietly, but it seemed like Rai had reached the end of his tether and he was silent too. “An indie news outlet just posted they’d be at the event.” Sao looked up. “What should we do?”

All he got was that desolate, searching look.

—

Cole wasn’t answering his phone. Rai had resorted to pestering Cadmus for hospital updates.

“He’s in the middle of a meeting. He says he’ll check afterward.”

Sao tried Axelle’s number. Saint that she was, she went immediately to check the ward he’d been in but couldn’t locate him or his patients.

While she was telling him this, his phone pinged with a response.

An invitation.

“I can’t thank you enough, Axelle. Things have gotten very strange here.” He hung up and went to the hallway outside the front door, where Rai had found a much longer track to pace on, back and forth before the huge uncurtained window that looked over the cityscape.

The sky had gotten darker; the clouds had gathered into a thick gray blanket. It looked like a glower, it looked foreboding. It looked like any number of fallacies.

Chilly but somehow still sweating, Sao raked his hair back. “Forget Cole for now. I’ve got the address. It’s uptown. Fifteen minutes from the Rock Pool, actually…”

“Good.”

“Shall I call the police?”

Rai kicked the door open and went to get his gloves and jacket. “Wait until we’re on the road.”

“Are you afraid they may have given us the wrong place?”

“No, I… there’s still time until the show starts.” It didn’t feel like much of an answer.

—

The reveal was to be held in a rental event space, on the third floor of a building that looked abandoned. Tiles were falling out and the name and number plate were chipped as to be unreadable. It was at the very edge of the South Bank district it shared with the Rock Pool, and overlooked the water. Across the channel, which rippled silver under the odd, leaden skies, they could see warm amber windows of The Tombola.

They came up outside the venue building, and wedged between parked trucks and vans, and a few more fashionable-looking rides - here for the show, Sao guessed. Parking was scarce.

Sao sent in the brief to HQ. Four women thought to be dead had escaped the hospital and were planning to appear at a public event. It was believed the attacker of two of them might return for them. It was considered wise to stop them for their own safety.

The woman on the other end took down his details, and said there were already people en route for a different case.

The words had Rai snap to attention right has he was bringing the car up to park on the uneven sidewalk. They lurched in their seats.

“May I ask what the other case is?” Sao asked. “We may be able to help. Or, avoid getting in their way…”

A wanted man had been spotted around the same district. An individual who was wanted for the murder (‘not attempted?’) of one Aquila G_____ in her home the previous week.

Sao said he’d keep an eye out, and to call back if there were any developments.

“This is bad,” Rai said, in tandem with the crunch of the parking brake.

“At least we’re here,” Sao said. Why was he always saying at least? Could he not admit things were indeed bad? No, he wouldn’t. “At least if they’re caught, we can try to follow the cops to wherever they’re taken. We can have a say.”

At least it was enough to get Rai on his way.

They stepped out onto the street and threaded their way between closely-packed cars, recycling bins and holes in the sidewalk. Sao heard music thudding from somewhere in the building. The bass and the dim light afforded by the sky made him feel numb, like he was in a dream or some other hazy unreality.

His phone chimed. The followup he got from the woman at police HQ only mystified him further.

“So nobody’s coming?”

The woman on the line was demure. “The situation is to be handled at our discretion. In the meantime, we advise you to return to your office. I’ll let you know if there are any further updates. Sorry.”

Sao hung up and stared at his phone. “All responses to this area have been canceled. Maybe Fin’s not here. But that doesn’t explain why our call was nixed…”

Rai was punching the elevator button repeatedly with a finger. Gathering around them were a selection of ghouls in masks and black. One of them had a rather elaborate layered lace dress with torn edges.

“Careful. Don’t wanna have to take the stairs,” laughed a pale-skinned teenager in a dusty black trenchcoat.

Rai let the guests into the elevator first and was silent until they reached the third floor. They emerged into a short-ceilinged hall cloaked in black curtains. The curtains were of a thick felt-like material, and did not billow but undulated like muscles under dark flesh. Sao felt they were being pushed along the dark, airless gullet of some huge monster.

Rai hung back as the excited newcomers dispersed into the crowd ahead.

At the end of the hall was a crescent-shaped balcony going around the perimeter of the room, a sector of which was laid with ‘refreshments’. These were mostly canned soda and what Sao recognized as supermarket-prepared fruit and meat platters. On the other portion of the balcony was seating, and the half moon ended with rickety stairs to the floor below where there was more seating, more supermarket goodies, and a little stage at the edge of the enclosure.

It was a very tight, dark space, but to great effect; it amplified the crowd, pushed them together and into a single view. There were a hundred attendees or so, but roaming in the narrow passages, every corner a shifting shadow, it felt like you were surrounded by thousands, above and below. Two level’s worth of people could view the stage. A healthy number of revelers already had cameras out to announce their presence to their friends or to the world. There were teens in torn clothing and piercings, and some furred and LED-lit costumes that would have been excessive even for Halloween. At the same time there were also a handful of guests roaming about in white tees who had foregone the dress code altogether, and a few who looked so finely clothed they could have fit in at an opera house.

Those who didn’t care bore the DNA of Orchid’s audience, most likely. Jasmine and Maya might not have gone for the monster masks, themselves. But there was something unified about them; being forced to see the crowd all at once. All melted together into one huge, dark, tireless shape.

Closer to the stage, he saw what looked like two professional film crews.

“A canceled emergency notice,” Rai mumbled, popping open and sniffing a can of soda. “That’s bad. We need to move.”

Back to that perplexing news. Rai sounded so sure it meant failure. Had it happened before? Not to Sao directly, but there was a lingering memory of one such occasion, from what felt like many nights ago... “Like the Tiger General. What did you say it was, their wanted persons notice? When the descriptors were forcibly recalled.” Sao felt the blood drain from his face. “You don’t think…?”

“Not many entities that could make the police roll over this fast. I’m pretty sure the army’s found out about Fin and the party. They’re coming to handle this personally.” Rai motioned him toward the stairs.

“What would they do that would be so different from, police?”

“Same thing they’ve done with E34 for ten years. Try to cover it up.”