When observed from across the waterway, the South Bank was a tantalizing sight. There were the mysterious clusters of towers, the glittering rooftops, the nighttime music, the signs blinking with flirtatious fervor. Sometimes there were even fireworks. But those beacons were not to be pursued lightly. The unprepared would find themselves baited into a devious trap. The ground level of the Bank was a winding labyrinth of alleys, cobbled paths and single-lane streets of meandering direction and purpose. The whole district was laid over uneven ground, and flat paths suddenly lurched into stairways and ramps and shady underpasses. The up-close sights and sounds only served to disorient travellers further.

In times less savory, those years he loathed to recall, Sao had wandered the maze for the very reason that he could lose himself in it. There had been other reasons, later, but that had been the first.

A local himself, Rai was familiar enough with the area to know he should not try to navigate in with a car. They parked at a shopping mall some blocks away and walked the remaining distance.

The shop fronts were wall-to-wall, vying over one another for attention with blistering lights, heavy window displays, odors of barbecue or baking or alcohol, and mismatched music. The few that didn’t put on a show leaned fully in the opposite direction; painted black and curtained, utter blanks save for a nameplate, which inevitably read something ambiguous like The Globe or Room 201. These were fascinating in their own right for the secrets - or shame - that was implied. Though real estate was limited (and bumpy, and confusing) the offerings scaled vertically; look up and there were more of the signs, more of the packed shop displays, more of the blacked out windows, going storeys and storeys above, nearly blotting out the sky.

You might not always find what you were looking for, Sao thought, breathing in the sensory onslaught, but you’d find something. Something tasty, somewhere willing to take you.

He certainly had. This had been something of a second home for him, after he’d escaped his first family’s grasp.

But sanctuary was just as easily made as lost. Businesses came and went. His old favorite noodle joint was gone, as was the consignment shop he’d used to frequent, replaced with strangers. Spirited, welcoming strangers, but strangers nonetheless.

And what was not lost in a timely fashion tended to sour. The Rock Pool was still open.

“I didn’t even think about it. That’s the logo from the napkin we found in Hazel’s room,” Rai said, as they came up under the glowing red sign.

“The same napkins were in Orchid’s cosmetics bag as well.”

“Nice work.”

Don’t thank me yet. Sao just smiled.

They entered one of the narrowest elevators Sao had ever seen and rode to the sixth floor. Stepping out, they found themselves in the Rock Pool’s long, thin miniature golf course, a stretch of unnaturally bright turf under an uncovered ceiling gridded with rusted pipes. Islands of stone mulch separated the courses, sprouted with spiky lime-colored ferns, and unconvincing palm trees wound with neon piping. Walls painted with a garish maroon sunset rounded out the spectacle.

The only windows were a tiny set of two by the elevator where they had come in. There was no natural lighting in the interior areas. To enter the Rock Pool was to step into the utterly artificial.

And Rai was intrigued. He was hopping around the golf course as if he were scoping his next swing.

Sao continued on to the restaurant ahead of him.

In the dining room, the walls shifted to a shade of dark blue. Tables topped with checkerboard patterns sat empty, in no particular arrangement. There was one large counter which fronted a bar area and a door - presumably to the kitchen. The sign above it - yet more neon - spelled out Diner.

“Good morning,” Sao called to the sole staff member behind the counter. Someone he didn’t recognize.

The tidy young man didn’t recognize him either.

“I’m with the investigator. I called earlier,” Sao said. He was speaking too low, too quick - he cleared his throat as Rai sidled up to the counter next to him. “I believe I requested security tapes and a booking list…”

“Right. Booking records should have been forwarded to your email, but from what I checked, the names you gave weren’t on there. It happens if the customer was a walk-in.” The man dipped his head. “And… I’m sorry. The security camera system’s been down for… a long time.”

“The manager whom I spoke to said the same. It’s all right. I was, however, hoping to talk to someone who is familiar with your regulars, of the past six months or so, if possible. The same manager said there was somebody in this morning who may be able to help.”

“Today? Right now it's just me and… oh, you must mean the other guy.” The young bartender pushed open the door behind him, called in ‘they’re here,’ and twirled back with a fresh smile. “Can I get you anything while you wait?”

“A coffee,” Rai said. Sao abstained from ordering. The atmosphere of the place had always made him feel vaguely queasy. The imitation greenery, the harsh patterns, obtrusive neon…

They weren’t left waiting long. A broad-shouldered figure pushed his way through the kitchen doors, hauling out a tray full of damp cutlery. The metallic clatter was tremendous. “Morning, gentlemen.”

The man they’d come to meet had dark, short hair, roughly chopped. He was muscular, tightly packed into a plain black ensemble, which in its simplicity emphasized how much larger he was than the three others gathered before (the more accurate description might be under) him. He had a deep voice but he seemed to be forcing a higher pitch - Sao assumed to sound friendlier, but the result was less than settling. This newcomer beamed at his visitors, aiming his sickle of a grin at Sao first. When he did, a patch that might have been a bruise or birthmark on the right side of his face creased, forming a sharp, dark dimple, more distinctive than the one on his left. A striking visage, almost literally so; Sao felt he’d been struck over the head with a crowbar.

It was the eyes that were really halting. They were a distinct pink-amethyst shade but unpolished, drowned. They did not shine. In contrast to his harsh voice and incisive smile, his gaze was jarringly lax, with heavy eyelids drooping under thick brows. Worst of all, though, was that said gaze was torturously familiar. Sao scoured his memory. Eyes were a window to the soul, so went the saying. This was a soul, if not a face, that he’d met before.

“Well, well. What do we have here? A familiar face,” the man said, reading his mind. Sao was jerked from his contemplations, sent scrambling for a response. Before he could humiliate himself, he realized the man was speaking to Rai. “We’ve met, Investigator,” the man went on. “I doubt if you remember, but it was in the burbs, a little West…”

He waited for Rai to answer. Rai didn’t seem keen to, but when it was clear the man could wait forever, he grunted, unfolded his arms.

“Of course I remember you, Cas. How could I forget? It’s… interesting to see you again, here.” Rai had taken off his gloves and held his glowing hand out for a shake.

The younger bartender excused himself to the kitchen. Cas waved his colleague off, continuing to smile toothily at Rai’s hand. But he didn’t move to accept the shake.

“Still not up for it?” Rai retracted his hands, but kept them on display. The gloves disappeared into his pockets. “I get that we didn’t part on the best of terms, but I didn’t think you’d hold a grudge. Well, I guess a shake’s not necessary for today.”

Cas’s smile seemed carved in. “My hands aren’t clean at the moment, so it’s really for the better. And who do we have here?” He tilted his head toward Sao.

“My assistant. He won’t shake my hand either, believe it or not. He has a condition.”

“What a coincidence. He’s taught you some tolerance, then.” Cas laughed. “A good quality to have, Investigator. Have you ever worked in the service industry before? A lot of my work is just that. Tolerating whatever the hell people come up with.”

“You’ve been working here long?”

“On and off for years. I know the owners. I took a pretty long break, came back a little over a year ago. Last-last winter? Oh, maybe this will help - it was shortly after you tried to pin me for that conspiracy theory involving my friend. A hell of a welcome back to town that was.” Another laugh, harsh and quick. “I hope you don’t mind if I finish with these while we talk.” Without waiting for confirmation, he began rifling through the tray of freshly washed utensils, separating knives from forks and spoons.

“What exactly do you do here?”

“Endure.” Cas held up a knife in one hand, a fork in the other. “This. Cleanup, kitchen prep. Whatever needs doing. When it gets busy I get to be the bouncer.”

“You’re here a lot, then.”

“You can skip the dramatic foreshadowing, I’ve seen it before from you,” Cas said. “You want to know if I’ve seen some persons of interest and as you were probably told, this place has a high staff turnover so I’m your best bet for the dates you’ve got in mind. And I’d say I’m pretty good with faces.” He looked from Rai to Sao. “Though you’ll probably make your own judgment, hm?”

“Okay, then. If you’re in such a hurry.” Rai went for his phone.

“Oh, I like the attention. I’d think it was you two who don’t have time to waste.” Cas’s look lingered on Sao lazily before returning to his work. All the spoons were whipped up in two swift motions and stowed into some unseen space under the counter.

“We’re admittedly at a bit of a standstill with this case, so we appreciate your help,” Sao said.

“Lay it on me, then.” Cas smiled broadly at him and went fishing for knives. “You remind me of someone. I just can’t put my finger on it.”

Sao tried to smile. “I get that sometimes.”

“Here.” Rai slapped the phone down with a metallic crack.

“Hey, careful, I just wiped the damn thing down,” Cas whined with his artificial shrillness.

“These girls, according to the photos they posted, came here at least six times in the last year. We want to know if you’ve seen them, what they were doing, if they were with anyone.”

“‘We’?” Cas said, pinning Sao with the corner of his eye.

“Why are you looking at him?” Rai said.

“To see if there were any more questions from the collective. He’s the one who called ahead. Are you two partners?”

“He’s my assistant.”

“Oh, of course. Someone to do the grunt work,” Cas’s smile grew wider. The distracting off-color patch of skin on his cheek was folding in on itself too smoothly, like a sheet of latex. Was it makeup?

Cas settled an elbow on the counter, a knife dangling from his fingers. “Oh-kay, let’s see. Six times in twelve months, was it? You should have told me that beforehand, I thought you meant they were daily or weekly regulars. It’s a real gamble, for anyone to have caught them at more exact times.”

“Might as well put your memory on trial. And we didn’t want to scare you off with the odds,” Rai said. A little too daringly, Sao thought.

“Cocky,” Cas whistled. “For someone who self-admits to being at a standstill. What involvement do these women have in your case, if I may ask?”

“Victims and potential victims. Can’t say much more.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I’m not sure what I have to say is good news but, this little lady-” he tapped Jasmine with the back of his knife. “I actually do recognize her. Unless that shade of hair dye has blown up among the kids without my noticing, I’ve definitely seen her around - pretty often, too. I’d say I saw her at least once a month. Ah - and the graying one here-” The handle slid to Hazel’s face. “She tagged along, nine times out of ten. Oop - should that be four times out of five? This tall redhead, I think I’ve seen her. The last… I’m not so certain. The blonde’s a little familiar, she might have come alone at some point - but nothing stands out about her - could have been someone else.”

“The two you’re sure of, then,” Rai said. “What did they do?”

“I didn’t exactly hover over them. It wasn’t always the two of them, they usually had some others with them, but I can’t pick out if it’s these girls precisely. The reason I remember them, aside from the hair - they hopped into the arcade room whenever it was unoccupied.”

Sao glanced toward the back of the room, caught himself, and brought his eyes back to the counter. Rai didn’t see him do it. Cas did.

“See that installation, behind the table in the corner? It looks like a vintage refrigerator, but pull out the hitch and push the door in and…” Cas twirled the knife. “Secret room. You can go check it out, if you want. Nobody’s in there at the moment.”

Rai did so. The door opened with a pneumatic hiss, like a real fridge seal, revealing a low-ceilinged, bright blue interior. The blip of arcade machines fluttered out, and Rai disappeared into the room. Sao watched it all from his spot at the counter.

He could hear his blood beating in his ears.

“Not interested?” Cas asked.

“I don’t want to rush him,” Sao said.

“Seems like you’ve been here before.”

“A long time ago. I was pleasantly surprised to see you’re still open.”

Cas hummed an inscrutable response, and began storing away the knives. It was simultaneously enthralling and sickening to watch his hands whip carelessly through the sharpened steel like a dealer shuffling cards. As the blades flashed, Sao churned through his memories. The eyes, the motions, the sounds; all brought him right at the precipice of recognition…

The shove he needed came like a freighter.

With a knife already hanging from the fingers of one hand, Cas drew out a second with his free hand. He inspected the edge, and located something Sao could only imagine disagreed with him. He clicked his tongue and smirked, a deep, vicious twist of the mouth that paralyzed Sao mid-breath. And then Cas brought the knives together and scraped - no, slashed - the tiny offense off. The shriek of metal on metal was mind-rending; Sao felt he was being compressed, that he’d burst into tears.

Cas brought the knives together three bloodcurdling times. Then, only then, satisfied with his work, he tossed them both into a receptacle under the counter. As he reached for another knife, he caught Sao’s eye, and the snare tightened. Sao finally knew who he was looking at.

Rai dashed out of the false refrigerator. “What the fuck was that noise?”

“Stubborn chunk of cheese was stuck to one of the knives. I got it off. I should really rewash it, but you won’t tell, will you?”

“What?” Rai collapsed onto one of the circular red barstools. “I’m not a health inspector.”

Cas was treated to one of Rai’s most corrosive stares, and took it with a grin.

“Now that you’ve seen the secret arcade, you can understand why a couple of teen girls might like it. Privacy, with a little drama. Unfortunately, while someone’s in there, I can’t exactly keep an eye on them from across the room. But they weren’t always lucky enough to snag it.” Cas filed away the last of the knives and regarded the last of the lot, the spoons, with some boredom. “There was one meeting that stood out to me a little, earlier this month. Again, due to the little lilac-head here. She came in with the goth, and a few other friends. The arcade was booked out so they sat at a table, and she was red-faced bawling. Just inconsolable. The others started out agitated but became sullen after a while.”

“Why? Did you hear what they were discussing?”

“Nope. Alright: maybe they clammed up because of me. I dropped by their table with tissues. The young bartender suggested it, a considerate guy. Me, maybe I was feeling a little nosy.” Cas shrugged. “They all became hushed. She was just whimpering at the others not to do ‘it’. Or maybe it was ‘I can’t do it?’ They were already deep into whatever topic they’d come in with. I couldn’t make heads or tails of what they were talking about.”

“Were they approached by anyone, that day or any other?”

“Nobody intruded on them that day except me. And I said I couldn’t always keep an eye on them, but a group of young ladies during happy hour? There were a couple moments where men tried their luck, of course.” Cas paused - not for consideration, but to make them wait. “I do remember one specific day, a handful of teenage boys coming up to them while they were eating one evening - no tables in the arcade room, see. The boys wanted photos, if I remember, made a big to-do. They recognized one of the girls, an online celebrity. It wasn’t the purple girl, nor her friend - they stood off to the side for most of it. Call me out of touch - the celebrity of the day didn’t stick in my mind…”

“Fine. Did you ever see them with any sort of medicine, medication?”

A raised brow from Cas. “What sort of medicine?”

“Pills, liquid, powder. Anything at all.”

“We have painkillers and antacids on-site. I suppose someone could have given them a few, though it wouldn’t have been me. Was there an illness I should be aware of?” He shuffled a handful of forks. “Or could it be that you’re talking about recreational substances?”

“What did you see to indicate either of those things?”

“Oops, I shouldn’t have asked, then. Nothing at all.”

Rai drew a short, tight breath. “How big were their gatherings, at the times you saw them?”

“I’d be willing to guess four, but that picture you showed me skews the memory a little. It was more than the two of them, for sure.”

“So the crying incident happened a month ago,” Rai muttered, and jerked his head toward Sao. “Hey, you got the picture of the fifth girl?”

No response. Rai lowered his voice. “Sao. You doing okay?”

“Hello-o-o -” Cas loomed his hand close to Sao’s face - and snapped his fingers. Sao smelled smoke and fell back, reeling. “See?” Cas said. “You’re fine.”

Rai grit his teeth. His half-raised fist dropped to the table. “Hands to yourself, Cas. I said he has a skin condition...”

“Skin, huh? You didn’t say that. Okay, okay, chill - I didn’t touch him.”

“Sorry,” Sao said. He smiled reflexively and went for his phone. “It’s been a busy week.”

Inwardly, he shook himself. For everyone’s sake, he had to get his priorities in order. Cas, Rai, his own addled brain, swaggering drunk on things dredged up from a distant past - they were irrelevant. He could fix himself later. He wasn’t the one decapitated. Orchid. Hazel and Jasmine. The mysterious Maya. He cleared his mental stack, bringing the right cards to the top. Sapphire’s photo.

Sao opened the Neocam app, and went for the ‘favorites’ menu on his own profile.

The list was empty.

Had he dreamt up the notion that the photo was saved there? He’d come out of a dream and into a nightmare, it seemed. He returned to Jasmine’s profile and began scrolling. Cas and Rai watched him all the while; Cas with his unwavering blade of a smile, Rai with that infuriating moon-faced gaze of concern.

It felt like an eternity, then he hit the bottom. Jasmine’s first visible post was that of a butterfly, more crudely drawn than her later works. He must have missed what he was looking for.

Back up, up, up. Like a diver hungering for oxygen. No - more cautiously, vigilantly - and he still didn’t see it. In fact, he didn’t see any photos of the Rock Pool on Jasmine’s profile at all. Back down, then - slowly this time. He read each of the captions as he went.

The botanical gardens.

Special fall latte

I tried drawing a bearded iris

Pizza dinner

This was the place in her history where the photo of Sapphire had been, Sao was sure. But there were just two photos now, both nearly identical to the one Rai had been showing. No standalone of Sapphire.

His mouth must have been gaping like a goldfish’s.

“I’ll find it,” Rai said, quietly, wedging one hand out of his glove.

Even Cas’s bravado had come unstuck, ever so slightly. He’d taken a step back to give them some air, but the whiff of a predatory beast remained as he surveyed the fumbling marks in front of him. “Do you two need a minute to, whatever you’d call it, reconvene?”

“Nah,” Rai said, his head down. “Stay. I’ll get to you in a minute.”

Sao couldn’t bring himself to look at Rai. He desperately needed to apologize, only not in front of their current observer. Rai wasn’t looking at him either. The neon all around the counter seemed to be closing in, buzzing like a blanket of flies, sound and afterimages chasing him even with eyes shut. He wanted to press cushions over his ears and put his head down. But not in front of Cas. There was simply no refuge to be had here.

Least of all Neocam. The indecipherable, dismally modern hell that was Neocam. Where Rai was now drowning in his stead. But he was not insane - the photo was gone.

I am sane. I don’t like this. I need to tell him I’m sorry.

With ironic relief, he recalled forming that triptych of thoughts, in nearly exact same phrasing and order, at an earlier point in his life. A sick serendipity. That time, that place, those sights - there had been real terror, and real pain, red stinking blood. In comparison, today’s whirlwind of mistakes, neon and Neocam and kitchen utensils, were nothing more than a minor mishap. He’d lived through so much worse.

He wasn’t what mattered here.

Sao reluctantly fell into Cas’s shady gaze again, and managed to pull together the words, “I’ll be right back. Restroom.”

With a slightly tilted head, Cas locked him there with silence. Made him wait, enjoying the tension. Finally, Cas responded. “Don’t look at me. I’m not your boss.”

—

As he crossed the golf course back to the elevator, rode the claustrophobic carriage down, and descended the steep slope back to what approximated the main road, Sao was formulating an apology. The sympathy and sorrow he’d felt for Rai the day before came pouring back and he was prepared to blow out all the stops, get it all off his chest and maybe even preemptively admit to what he knew of Cas. He owed Cas nothing. He’d feel worse keeping those memories festering in himself, he knew…

But Rai pulled the rug from under him. “Sorry for putting you on the spot.”

“Ah — no, actually I —”

Rai shook his head and trudged ahead. Sweating and stooped, bodies pressed near the walls in an effort to hide in the stingy strip of shade, Sao felt they’d been subjected to a walk of shame.

“But man, talk about bad timing.” Rai’s habitual agitation had recovered. “The fucking posts are being deleted!”

“Thank goodness you saw it too. I wasn’t sure if I was missing something in a panic…”

“Jasmine’s photos of the place are almost entirely wiped out. Hazel’s older ones are gone too. The hell is going on?” Rai put his phone away and yanked his gloves back on so hard Sao thought they’d rip open at the fingertips. “And I never got my damn coffee.”

“Just as well. There are better places for coffee around here.”

There was one coming up now; a shop that was little more than a tiny sliding window over a literal hole in the wall. No seating, a few inches of counter space, and an extremely limited menu. In this area, all the most delicious offerings came from nondescript storefronts such as these. The sweat-coated barista took their order without a word.

Rai took the lid off his iced coffee to more easily dump it down his throat. Half the cup was gone in an instant. He gnashed his teeth on an ice cube. “What luck we got to look maximally incompetent in front of that motherfucker.”

“You knew him. Cas, that is.”

“If that is his real name.”

Chewing his straw, Sao assessed this statement. “I take it he was involved in a police case?”

“You could say that. A domestic dispute, a couple on north Judgment street, you know, the military rich folks’ enclave - it was a supposed murder, but long story short, the victim resurfaced at the last minute. Not a cross word from anybody. A happy ending. Just a misunderstanding. All the blood at the wife’s disappearance? Just a little fetish play.”

“Everyone has their secrets…”

“I’d have stomached it better if it wasn’t backed up by a particular friend of the family...” Ice cracking. “That being Cas.”

“So he was a witness.”

“Again: according to him. Problem was the family had no prior connection with him, anyone resembling him. He just came out of nowhere, this guy who knew everything and was longtime bosom buddies with everyone; I felt like I was going nuts.”

“Maybe their relation to him was private. Seeing as he knew of their… bedroom affairs.”

Silhouetted by the midday sun, Rai looked like an effigy burnt. “You sound so damn sensible.”

“Knowing the woman turned up in the end gives me a perspective you couldn’t have had at the time.”

“I guess. But like I said, the couple wasn’t a sticking point. It’s Cas. He just loves talking in circles, questioning questions. I got the feeling he was stirring shit up, for fun, maybe to throw me off — never mind.” Rai polished off his drink and crossed the street, under the blast of sunlight, to throw his cup in a trash can. “This was four months before you started in the office. My assistant at the time was completely useless.”

“Come back into the shade.”

In bravery or self-loathing, Rai stayed in the sun. “Maybe you got a better handle on the guy than I could.”

An invitation. Now’s your chance. Get it out.

“He did come across as rather obnoxious.”

“Yeah. He just acts so… familiar. So damn touchy.”

He knows. He already knows, but he won’t ask, because he doesn’t want to push.

Sao sighed. “But I’ll admit the disappearance of the photos shook me up. I couldn’t quite focus.”

Coward.

“I just don’t think he has reason to be lying about seeing the girls or not,” Sao said. “Your story, of him being privy to the intimate lives of the weird and wealthy, was actually a relief. If he’s got connections at such high levels, what business would he have interfering with the lives of some troubled online personalities?”

He was being scrutinized. The direct sunlight had turned Rai’s face a raging red. He wondered if Rai wanted to knock him out; shut him up. He was quite close to just flinging himself down the slope. He thought of Sapphire, facing down her fall, her irreversible choice. At the time, it probably seemed like it would set her free.

“I wonder…” Sao felt his face melting in the heat. “If Cas saw them around a month ago, Sapphire’s suicide would have just happened, or been about to happen. Maybe he heard them discussing it. If Sapphire was there, maybe she was warning of it somehow. Or it was the others, someone becoming aggravated. A chain of influence. Jasmine was upset about something she or another felt they had to do.”

“If Jasmine was upset about a future event, then it’s possible they orchestrated their deaths. But the timing is real important then,” Rai said slowly, “Back to those deleted posts. I had to show Cas a selfie from Sapphire’s profile instead of the picture taken in the Rock Pool. Of course, she looks totally different in those and he said he was clueless. Easy to deny, since we don’t have a picture of her there…”

“I’m really sorry,” Sao said. At least he could get this small apology out of the way. “I didn’t save the photo I was supposed to be showing. I just never thought they would just vanish like that.”

“Neocam makes it tough to download anything. I only screenshotted one of the posts myself. But why were they deleted?” Rai chewed the thumb of his glove, sweat pouring down his temples. “One thing I can imagine at the moment; someone’s spamming in reports. Basically, admins would be removing the posts due to user complaints. People complain about everything, and without the account owners to fight back, it’s easier to sink the posts. Hazel’s haters in particular - I was wondering how long they’d wait after she was gone before trying to wipe her out.”

“But why only cull posts of Sapphire and the Rock Pool?”

“Are we sure it’s just those?”

“Fair point. I don’t know.” As Sao slowed, panting, Rai decided to pick up the pace. “Can they be retrieved like the live recordings?”

“The live recordings were everywhere because they were originally scraped up by fanatics to pass around as - you know - snuff films. Random photos of dinner gatherings probably didn’t get that kind of attention.” Rai paused, wiped sweat off his chin. “We can go through Neocam the company, but if it’s like the recordings, we are going to need a police order. I’ll push it, but I can smell the resistance already. Maybe the families will help, but… Hazel and Jasmine are dead, people kicking around their content after the fact isn’t going to be seen as an urgent corporate matter.”

“Is it not suspicious? It looks like a coverup.”

“You mean, are our army pals trying to keep attention off the fine eatery that is the Rock Pool? Could be.” Rai stopped dead before Sao could ask if he was joking. “If the army doesn’t want us seeing the pictures anymore, that’s the end of that.”

They had reached a stretch of deep, nearly-black shadow, cast by the mall under which Rai had parked.

“There’s one more way,” Rai said. “The Neocam app saves a record of browsed content to the cache. That’s the memory on our phones and computers, not online. It’s not something we can just look through arbitrarily by using a phone as intended. I don’t know how long that cache lasts - they always delete automatically, after a while - but I can see if there’s a tech person who can help us.”

“Hm.”

“Or I can look up how to do it myself. I did it once when I was in college, but bricked my phone in the process. Although, phones have changed a lot since then. Could be easier.”

In the muggy shade of the canopied parking lot, Rai’s beater came into view. They yanked the doors open and lumped themselves in. As his limbs regained awareness, Sao realized he was still holding his iced coffee, and it was still half-full. The ice was gone, though, and the cup had become lukewarm in his hand. Unfinished coffee was a crime bound to catch’s Rai’s eye.

“Are you feeling alright?” Rai asked.

He was asking it of the cup; he just couldn’t look away. Sao wanted to laugh.

“You didn’t look so hot back at the restaurant. Heatstroke cases are way up this week.” Rai started the ignition. “If you feel sick, I can drop you off at home. Get an early start on the weekend. I want to go home and take a long cold shower myself.”

“Yes, maybe I should turn in early today.” Sao rubbed his face. His hand came away caked in liquefied concealer. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

The question went unanswered.

They burst from the shade of the parking lot and back into the molten daylight.

“Well, if you feel like you’re going to barf, just say the word,” Rai said, a final attempt at reassurance.

Sao did manage to laugh a little at that. With the turbine air conditioning pressing him securely back in his chair, and he thought again of Cas, and juxtaposed the day’s events with a conversation he might soon be having. To speak of a rock and a hard, prickly place. No, no psyching himself out - difficult or not, he had to make that call. He owed Rai something for the day’s sabotage.

“Rai, don’t risk bricking your phone, at least, not yet. I think I know someone who can help.”

—

Sao set his phone on the glassy tabletop beside his long white chaise longue. The seat was ethereally plush; to lie on it was to be embraced in the wings of an angel. An angel willing him to rest his weary head, to forget the cruel sun outside and the call he’d have to make...

He contemplated the phone, and wondered if using it any more would overfill, overwrite, or otherwise harm the memory bank Rai had spoken of. Better not to test it.

He reached to the nearby shelving and pulled the landline telephone onto his lap, a smooth dome of metal with a delightfully long coil of wire leading to the handset. It reminded him of the phones back at the schoolhouse of his youth. One of the tutors, a pretty redhead with the most piercing blue eyes, had a friend in town and she’d stand at the phone in the front hall for hours talking to him or her, winding the coil over and over itself, spiraling the spiral, with a brightly painted fingernail.

Sao dialed a number and waited, clumsily flipping the coils in a paltry imitation of the redheaded tutor. Balancing the headset between his ear and shoulder, he grabbed the wire with both hands, like a brute.

He thought of Orchid’s slicing wire noose. How securely was it possible to tie something so thin? Perhaps there’d been some glue involved.

His wire was coated with plastic, and coiled, of course, which made his tying attempts difficult. Sao was familiar enough with the image of a hangman’s knot; the cylinder of rope with a little loose tail, but had no idea how one was made in practice. It was better he didn’t know and didn’t think about it too hard.

Nevertheless, he laid the wire (now an unwieldy jumble) on his lap and opened his laptop. He opened the video Rai had shared with him of Orchid’s intended final moments, and turned the volume up.

He tilted the screen upward a bit, too. For the prying eyes in the smoke detector to see.

When Orchid had finished her jump and began her wailing, and he’d made a passable attempt at a knot (if not exactly a noose) his call picked up.

“Turn that damn noise down,” snarled the voice on the other end.

“Good afternoon, Hro.”

“And what the hell did you do with the phone cord?”

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that.” Sao paused the video and closed the laptop. “I’m reviewing a recording from a case. A woman hanged herself with a wire noose which cut off her head, on a live feed. It was a gruesome happening on its own, but the strange thing was-”

“Yes, yes. The stripper popped a pill from an abandoned military experiment and became a talking head.”

Sao was surprised. “You know about this, then.”

“Was it meant to be some well-guarded secret? The whole thing happened on public streaming. The internet at large even knows the number of her hospital room.”

“Any insight on how she got the drug itself?”

“How should I know? The army’s never been short on bullshit stunts. They threw all that money and personnel at the project, and killed it like it was nothing. Wouldn’t be surprised if a lab goon who got fired fed it to a sickheaded girl, just for kicks.”

Sao sat back, letting the wire knot drop to the ground. “I didn’t think of that.” It was true enough. Hro’s cynicism didn’t rob him of imagination.

Hro had a distaste for police, soldiers, magic and often, it seemed, life in general. A sallow and guarded man, he rarely entered a conversation without a leading insult, if he was willing to converse at all. He was not a character even the most patient soul would want to associate with - and yet, most of the city was associated with him whether they liked it or not.

As the director of Chimera Corporation, which had grown to become the continent’s largest security tech producer and think tank under his watchful eye, Hro was rich, connected, and influential. His power in the region, Mainline being his hub, was unseeable yet unimpeachable in the way of the tide and skies, so pervasive was his touch in everyday life – all automated so as not to require he lift a finger. Chimera had eyes and ears all over the city, cameras and microphones and trackers willingly installed by its citizens as they were the best on the market, data conveniently given the option to be secured to the cloud. The only thing that could breach that security: the director and his closest circle, of course. And Hro being who he was, that circle was small, borderline nonexistent. Being the only one with full, unfettered awareness of the power of his systems, Hro had come to trust nobody.

Least of all Sao, a filthy cop or cop-hanger-on (even worse), spineless and sycophantic, to whom he was lending one of his finest apartments - packed with security cameras that would let Hro know if Sao invited in the wrong people, broke anything, touched anything wrongly. The loan was at the request of Hro’s brother, perhaps the only thing that could stop him when he was on a rampage; keep him from rampaging at all. It was this brother’s influence Sao would be banking on to stop Hro from coming to rip off his head if the call went sour.

Unlikely, as the task at hand would be inane to Hro. To Sao, it was impossible. That’s why Hro would eventually do it.

“Hro, what do you know about looking into a phone’s cache?”

A long pause, but he didn’t hang up. “Trying to sound clever, are we?”

“I’m wondering about the Neocam app, specifically.” Sao laid himself in the comforting embrace of the angelic lounger. He needed it. “You see, it’s still unclear how the woman and her friends may have obtained the drug. Aside from the drug itself their main connection was their heavy online presences. Something they posted might reveal how the zombifying pill made its way into civilian hands. I was trawling through their social profiles and found some photos of interest. But this morning, the posts were gone.”

Hro sucked his teeth, a deeply unpleasant noise. “Sounds like they were deleted. Invading women’s privacy? I would have thought that was beneath you.”

“They were public to begin with.” Sao began trying to loosen the knot in the phone chord. “And the account owners are dead. They aren’t deleting these things of their own free will, to put it that way.”

“Defiling the dead, then.”

“I’m not the one reporting the posts. They were left by the owners, and I want to see them. I did see them, in fact. We really need to find out who’s responsible for feeding that sick girl the drugs, as you put it. You’re the only person I could think of who’d know how to deal with this.”

A bit of flattery rarely went astray when it came to Hro. There was some tapping from his end, indicating he was at his keyboard. Sao often wondered if he and Rai used the same brand - Hro’s keystrokes were just as loud. “Neocam, you said. They’re owned by Neovision. Chimera Corp has no say in their moderation or data handling. Did you ever think of going to them through the cops instead of through an irrelevant third party?”

“We’re trying, but it’s going to be slow. There’s some suspicion of military meddling being the cause of the deletions in the first place - some army interrogators came by the hospital this morning to see the beheading victim. They were very interested in where she might have gotten the drug. But they weren’t interested in helping her or the doctors find a way to… amend her condition.”

Another long pause, peppered with typing. “Victim?” Hro finally snorted. “I thought she beheaded herself.”

“You’re right. So about the phone cache, since that’s on the phone’s memory and not online-”

“Listen,” Hro hissed, silencing him. “I see what’s happened. That supervisor or some nearsighted friend of yours has put an easy-peasy sci-fi fantasy in your head, but this isn’t something you can just do on your own. And it’s not going to be a one-click and done pretty print-out job for me, either. What you’re asking me to do is take time out of my day to sift through your virtual trash. I’m guessing you didn’t just look at the hot dead girls’ pages; that’s going to add more trash to the pile.”

“You’re a lifesaver.”

“Fudging the data into something readable for you is going to take hours on top of that.”

“That’s absolutely fine.”

“We’re finally on the same page. I’m going to need your phone, then.”

“Excuse me?” The doorbell chimed. Sao stood, nearly sending the phone body tumbling to the floor. “Was that–”

“For a day or two. Got a problem? This is what you asked for. Would you rather take a shot at extracting the files yourself?”

“No, I–”

“Then hand it over. Quit fondling that wire and wasting all of our time.”

Sao laid the handset down on the lounger, and carried his cell phone to the locked door. As he undid the last in the trio of bolts, he realized his face wasn’t covered. He’d washed the melted mess all off after coming home.

But Hro’s unnaturally convenient courier, a figure of indeterminate gender and age with a low-brimmed cap, barely looked at him. They took his phone and pocketed it, into a vest that looked thicker than Rai or Sao’s daytime jackets, far too thick for the summer heat. Sao thanked them, profusely, to little reaction. He was mid-sentence when they thrust a small box into his hands and headed for the elevator.

Sao redid his locks, returned to the landline phone. Hro was rattling on about something. “- a replacement. Were you listening to any of that? Ugh.”

“Apologies. I just got back on the line.”

“What you got is a replacement phone. Bet you didn’t think of that, did you? Someone will give you back your piece of junk before Monday. You can keep the burner.”

He opened the box. There was his ‘burner’ as Hro so eloquently put it - a sleek new model that likely surpassed his own ‘junk’ in every specification. “You’re the most efficient person I know, Hro. That’s why you’re the boss.”

An icy pause. “I’m not your boss.”

The line went dead.

Unwinding the phone cord, Sao admired Hro’s sign off. Not your boss. A mite childish, but Hro was being honest. He’d accepted what seemed like a challenge from the military and a rival company via Sao, but Sao as a person held no worth to him, even as a laborer. Sao was more of an obligation, an unwelcome pet of his brother’s that he’d been asked to feed sometimes, keep an eye on. Make sure it didn’t kill itself.

He awakened his new phone and inspected its glossy screen that stretched to each of its neatly rounded edges, and the attached note with his new number. Sao was grateful. He was grateful that he and his wants were so minor they registered as nothing to Hro. He wouldn’t end up owing anything to Hro, even if he desperately wanted to, because Hro would never want anything he had to offer.

Unlike Rai. But despite the strain of the past week, he was grateful for Rai, too. Because what Rai requested of him was never obtrusive, not when borne on Rai’s own steam. The obligations Sao had been putting upon himself were entirely his own. And of course, Rai actually was his boss, and Sao had been given worse assignments. Present life would be very lonely without him.

Cas had also said he wasn’t Sao’s boss.

He tried hard not to spend his waking hours thinking of ‘Cas’.