Chapter Text
17 SYDENSTAR 19:50
JRUSAR
ORYM AND WILL’S HOME
There was just enough room in the kitchen for the two men—a half-elf and a halfling—and their two dozen pot-plants, which had been arranged carefully on shelves and windowsills and the top of the fridge according to their sunlight requirements. The men moved through the space with an ease born of habit and a close, lingering attention for one another to clear the small dinner table, stash leftovers in the fridge, fill the sink, and clean the counters; the only thing that gave them pause was one another, when they stopped to graze a loving hand over a shoulder or hip, or place a kiss on smiling lips.
The half-elf dropped the dishes and cutlery into the foaming kitchen sink. He took a moment to roll the sleeves of his button-up past his elbows before plunging in after them, grabbing up one of the plates that had settled at the bottom and taking a scrubbing brush to it with vigour.
‘All I’m saying,’ he insisted, not for the first time, ‘is that if you keep bringing plants home, we aren’t going to have room for anything else.’
‘Not this again.’
‘Yes, this again,’ he scolded. ‘It’s becoming a serious problem!’
‘You’re exaggerating -’
‘Exaggerate?’ He flicked suds at the other man—a halfling, though one wouldn’t guess it from his features, which were as delicate as any elf. ‘I’m serious, Orym! The kitchen is turning into a greenhouse, the porch is overrun, and we barely have room in the bathroom to actually, y’know, take a bath.’ With one hand, he passed the clean dish over to his husband for drying; with the other, he jabbed a pointing finger at the insulting plants.
Standing on a foot stool pulled up to the kitchen counter, Orym took the plate and wiped over it with a tea towel.
‘You hate baths,’ he pointed out.
‘I don’t hate—’
‘Will. Come on. You haven’t used it once in the whole time we’ve lived here.’
‘That’s not the point.’
‘Make your point then, sergeant,’ he teased.
‘My point is that maybe I’d like to have room to move around in my house and not have to watch out for little creepers everywhere. And the ivy tickles me. I swear it’s alive—and before you say of course it’s alive, it’s a plant, I mean properly alive. Like it knows where I am. Don’t laugh at me,’ Will complained when Orym did exactly that.
Orym leaned his hip against the counter as he waited for the next plate to dry and listened to his husband’s ranting with a fond smile. He watched him without looking for anything in particular, only enjoying the view.
Will was handsome in a quiet sort of way—didn’t have the kind of face that stood out from the crowd but here, in their home, Orym was certain there had never been a more beautiful man.
Dark hair hung longer than he’d ever worn it, just past his ears, and his dark brows were solid and square, lending his expressions a sternness at odds with how sweet his family knew him to be. A lock of that dark hair swung out from behind his ear to dangle in front of his eyes; he tried once, twice, to toss it back without using his hands but finally gave in, sliding the strand back into place with wet fingers. With the hair out of the way, Orym had a perfect view of his face. It was long and thin with a nose to match and under the kitchen lights his brown skin was gold. And his eyes. They were the richest brown Orym had ever seen, deep and dark enough to conceal anything he was feeling. Not that it mattered. Will’s hands said plenty, moving almost as fast as his mouth did; the man talked like a water spout, every thought spilling freely and bubbling over with laughter and good humour.
‘Orym?’
He blinked. Realised that Will had finished his rant and was waiting for his response, expectant.
‘What do you want me to say?’
‘That you won’t bring back any more plants. And! You’ll empty the shed like you promised.’
‘Is that all?’
‘That’s all.’
Orym pretended to think it over. When his husband rolled his eyes and began to huff, Orym laughed.
‘Fine, fine. I can do that. No more plants.’
‘Thank you, thank you. This, my love,’ Will said, sidling closer to set two wet hands on Orym’s hips, ‘is the year we finally turn the shed into a greenhouse. And you—’ He kissed Orym sweetly, ‘—can take all these plants out of my house.’ He kissed Orym less sweetly, like he could persuade him not to argue.
Orym smiled into the kiss. Pressed his hand to the small of Will’s back to keep him close.
‘I’m keeping the windowsill ferns.’
‘…I can live with that. Any other objections, Agent Hopper?’
‘Not at this time, Sergeant Hopper.’
Orym let him lift him up onto the countertop, pulled his husband in for a hotter kiss; they both groaned, lips barely brushing together, when his phone went off. Orym patted Will’s chest and pulled the offending device from his pocket. Checking the screen—MAU—he grimaced. Will glanced down at it as well and, with a resigned smile, stepped away.
‘Answer it. I’ll finish the dishes.’
‘You sure?’
‘Of course.’
Orym slid down from the counter top and strode into the little office on the other side of the kitchen wall.
‘This is Agent Hopper.’
He listened intently, green eyes going distant. Locked onto some place far beyond these warm walls. After a moment, he rubbed a hand across his face and sighed quietly enough that the agent on the other end of the line couldn’t hear; his eyes cut over to his husband pulling the plug and wiping his sudsy hands with the tea towel.
‘Yes. Send it through, I’ll look over it now. Yes, that’s right. No, I’ll contact the rest of the team. Thank you, good night.’
On the desk, the fax machine began to whir and chatter.
Orym stepped to the doorway of the kitchen, looking up at his husband with a grave look.
‘Will…’
‘Someone needs your help.’
‘I’m sorry. Date night -‘
‘Happens every week,’ Will told him, a crooked smile tugging at his lips. ‘Go. Be a hero.’
It didn’t take long to collect his things; he had a go-bag ready at the foot of his bed at all hours and a fresh outfit washed and folded into the wardrobe. Orym changed into it—not the suit and tie he had always expected to be wearing growing up, but a green tee tucked into muted grey combat trousers. From the safe in the wardrobe, he removed his Smeltborne buckler and shortsword—both made of a lightweight metal that clipped comfortably onto the frame on his back—and a NDI standard issue pistol, which slotted into the holster on his side. Around his neck, Orym hung a simple gold chain with his engagement and wedding rings.
Will had the file collected in a manilla folder for him when he emerged and a thermos of hot green tea, the blend Will’s sister had put together for when they needed something to stay awake on late nights and stakeouts. It tasted like grass, mostly, but it did keep him awake.
Will bent low to kiss Orym again, fingers curled around the collar of his shirt.
‘Be safe.’ He kept his tone level but his eyes burned. ‘Come home to me.’
‘Always.’
KROOK HOUSE
The gym in the basement of the Krook House was dim and cramped and reeked of sweat. The walls were concrete, which made it freezing in winter and sweltering in summer, and the exposed pipes running overhead had an annoying tendency to drip. The gym had a handful of old machines lined up against one wall, a row of punching bags hanging from the other, and a huge flat mat at the back with a sparring square marked out on it in duct tape. All of which was to say that there were better gyms out there—almost any gym would be cleaner, brighter, and Ashton had even heard of one the neighbourhood over that put cucumber bits in chilled water for its patrons—but Ashton liked this one.
He’d been coming to the place since he got to this city fresh out of training; at first because it was convenient when he was renting an apartment upstairs and now because…well. Too many reasons to count. It suited his purposes just fine. No one cared who he was in a place like this. No one cared what he looked like among the ranks of bigger, scarier, weirder folk that worked out here.
Normally, Ashton would pick a bag and work up a sweat. They liked the way the bags crunched under their fists, the impact solid, satisfying. There was nothing difficult about that kind of workout—they just had to hit it until they ran out of steam or the bag broke.
Tonight, though…
A hand-drawn sign tacked up on the door read
CLOSED
CLSOED 4 CLASS
and Ashton was barely resisting the decade-squashed impulse to smoke as he eyed the folk who’d turned up.
A real mixed bag, even for this place: two literal children arrived first—a reiloran who’d given him a stink-eye, and a bomordo that tried in vain to hide his broader frame behind the stick of a girl; an uniya chick, a musician, who Ashton guessed from her wariness and the big bag she’d brought along was sleeping rough; an old-as-fuck eisfurra with featherless arms and a stiffness to his joints that had Ashton’s arm creaking in sympathy; and last to show up, just as Ashton stood from his squat to get their attention, was a handful of gutterpunks, all crusty battlejackets and combat boots.
Their leader, a half-orc, glanced around the room. Her tongue nudged at a piercing in her cheek.
‘Heard this was a fight club or somethin’.’ Shrewd yellow eyes lingered on the kids and the old man.
‘Or something,’ Ashton agreed. They swung one arm across their chest, caught it in a lazy stretch.
The punk eyed him. Ashton stared right back. He knew what he looked like—or, what he didn’t look like. If these kids—and the old guy—had turned up to the self defence class expecting some kind of slick NDI human-in-a-suit agent, well. He couldn’t be further from it.
First, he was a genasi, not human. Second, he wasn’t in a suit; baggy rust-red cargo joggers tucked into combat boots, and a black singlet hugged tight across their chest and the flat plane of their belly. He had a long coat but wasn’t wearing it, not in the sweltering heat of this pit, so everyone could see the lattice of gold scars that cracked up the jade-green stone of his left arm and shoulder. They didn’t bother to hide it. Not much point when they had a crater the size of a fist cracking open his skull a few centimetres above his left ear. It was filled with what looked like glass slag but that didn’t exactly make it any less obvious. Every now and again, a strange light moved under the glass surface. It was indistinct, like an image that had been reflected and reflected and reflected so many times between the crystal surfaces of his skull that it had lost all form; all that was left was a ripple of grey-blue light.
‘Nope! No. Hold your horses - it’s not a fight club!’ Milo was quick to deny.
They were also not the NDI agent anyone was expecting. A weedy fellow—human, lanky like a pipe cleaner and with a shock of electric blue hair. Instead of workout clothes, they wore a mechanic’s jumpsuit, a pair of coke-bottle glasses, and a cheery smile.
‘It’s a self-defense class! I asked Ashton—Agent Greymoore—to teach us a couple of moves that’ll boost our confidence and maybe help out a bit in a pinch but of course the best course of action in a fight is what?’ They waited, expectant for the class to chorus an answer. When none was forthcoming, Milo sighed. ‘To run away.’
‘I’m not a coward.’
Ashton had expected something like that. He’d expected it to come from one of the punks though; instead, he locked eyes with the reilora kid. He grinned at her.
‘Wanna demonstrate for the class, red?’
Her bormodo buddy clung at her arm with both sets of hands. After a whispered conversation, the girl peeled his hands away and strode up to join Ashton on the mat. She was tall for a kid, almost up to his shoulder, and the kind of thin that made him want to do something dumb like ask when was the last time she’d had a square meal, and who was looking after her.
‘What’s your name?’
Big sharklike-eyes squinted up at Ashton, suspicious. ‘None of your business.’
‘It’s Asha,’ the bormodo kid said, shuffling to the front of the class. Not because he wanted to; it looked like he didn’t want to be very far from his friend. He spoke with an accent that made every word softer, rounder, and after every few words, air whistled out through a gap between his teeth. The big pair of hands curled around his belly while the smaller set fiddled nervously with a button on his shirt. ‘I’m Kelito.’
‘Kel,’ Asha hissed. ‘Rule number one! Don’t tell people our names!’
‘Oh. Right. Sorry, Asha—I mean. Sorry. Um.’
Ashton ignored their bickering. ‘I’m Ashton. You know how to throw a punch?’
‘Obviously.’
It felt like bluster but Ashton had learned years ago not to underestimate people. Even kids.
‘Alright,’ he shrugged. ‘Let’s see it.’
It wasn’t a bad punch and he said as much. Asha squirmed at the gruff praise, ducking her head, so Ashton followed up with instructions on how not to break her wrist.
When everyone gathered close to watch, Ashton grabbed their typical assistant - Milo - to help him demonstrate. He pointed out the places to aim for that would deter anyone but the most serious attackers, and give people reason to think twice about messing with them ever again. They were only a short way into the lesson—each of them set up at a punching bag—when a familiar ringtone cut through the grunts of effort and Milo’s words of encouragement.
Ashton stepped away with a ‘Harder, Kel! That’s it’ and dug through their duffle to find their work phone.
‘Greymoore,’ they answered, stepping away from curious ears.
‘We’re being called in on a case.’
‘Where?’
‘North. Sapiro Haven - you know it?’
Ashton grunted. ‘Heard of it. Never been. How bad?’
‘Four dead, one missing. I know it’s your day off but—‘
‘I’ll be there. Twenty minutes.’ Ashton caught a whiff of themself when they bent to pick up the duffel. ‘Oh man. Make that thirty.’
‘You have thirty,’ Hopper agreed, tone distracted. Through the line, Ashton heard the beep of a lock, a door opening and closing. ‘Don’t come to headquarters—meet me at the Academy instead.’
Ashton hung up on his, shoving his phone into the pocket of his pants.
‘Milo—‘
‘You’ve gotta go,’ they said, with a bouncing nod. ‘Totally. I’ve got this, don’t worry about a thing.’
THE DOME
The small yellow robot zipping down the halls was a familiar sight in the NDI. He was charmingly built, with a brilliant gold chassis that shone under the fluorescents, and big bright-blue lenses for eyes. Despite the fact that their mouth was only a little more complicated than a flap that opened and closed, it was abundantly clear that the little robot was beaming up at everyone he passed.
‘Hello!’
‘Smiley day!’
‘Hi there!’ he greeted them, his voicebox fitted with a bright, twanging accent.
In a tucked away corner of the NDI field office, behind two separate sealed doors that required complicated ever changing passwords, was “FCG’S Dome of Supreme Intelligence”. The name had been Ashton’s idea, as was the typed note taped to the second door.
FCG had argued that the dome wasn’t his, actually, it belonged to the NDI.
Ashton said that the NDI was free to take down the sign if anyone ever came to check up on it but until that happened, it wasn’t like anyone else could use the space. If it was anyone’s, it was FCG’s.
That was…almost true.
The Dome setup was unique in the sense that one had to be a robot—preferably an aeormaton (the preferred term)—to use it. Other constructs and possibly technogored people could hook up to his system, hypothetically; really, anyone who could attach at the rootsync and not have their brain melted. But even then, they would have a pretty hard time getting through his security. That wasn’t a brag—he wasn’t good at bragging yet, though Ashton had encouraged them to try. It was just that FCG was very, very good at what he did.
The Dome had been a human-operated technology analysis centre first but they’d retrofitted it with state-of-the-art and beyond-state-of-the-art tech to suit his purposes. The first thing to go had been the ergonomic office chair. Instead, there was a shallow inset in the floor that FCG wheeled into, sinking down onto his wheel. With a press of a blue button, the rootsync cable popped out from a nearby console and he connected it to a port in his side.
It zapped a little, as always, as the connection hummed to life.
The zap didn’t hurt. He wasn’t designed to feel pain. Similarly, the feeling of the Dome coming to life around him wasn’t pleasure, exactly, but from their research, they thought it was the next best thing. It felt like his brain was lighting up and as the room filled with the dull blue warmth of his screens, so too did the core burning inside his chest.
A hemisphere of screens blinked awake around and above him. Electricity buzzed between them. Searches FCG had left overnight blipped up onto the screen—COMPLETE, COMPLETE, SEARCHING—and communications and reports he’d been asked to compile. Code scrolled in the background of a handful of screens, surveillance videos on others. And anywhere an image appeared of a crime or murder, a pleasant picture was never far behind. FCG had a fondness for artistic baking—cakes shaped like battlebeasts and icing-drenched cookies.
He had just settled in when the phone on his desk rang.
FCG answered with a click of a button.
‘Smiley day, go for Giese!’
‘Good, you’re active. Are you at the office?’
‘Yessir! The Dome is up and running. What do you need?’
‘The team is due in Sapiro Haven ASAP. Contact the airship to let them know where we are headed. ETA is an hour from now. Agent Greymoore and I are on our way to the Academy—‘
‘To pick up Professor Eshteross?’ FCG pulled up the details on the Sapiro Haven case—he hadn’t seen it yet, Agent Temult must have sent it through after he powered down—and had just begun to read when he realised Agent Hopper was purposefully silent. ‘Sir?’
‘How do you know about Professor Eshteross?’
‘I…er…’
‘Mister Giese, I don’t have to remind you that you aren’t permitted to read confidential reports, do I?’
‘No, sir.’ Damn his voicebox for sounding so guilty.
There was a moment of damning silence—Agent Hopper would take him to task later, FCG knew—before his supervisor spoke again.
‘We will need all the information you can get about the case—the request should be in your inbox now. Have whatever you can find sent to the airship, we won’t be stopping in at the field office.’
‘Yessir.’
‘Temult will contact Sapiro PD to let them know we’re on our way but I need you to get started compiling whatever information they already have—data, stats, background on the victims and their family, surveillance of the abduction and disposal sites.’
‘Yessir, I will get right on that.’ FCG sent a bot to start compiling that email, and another to begin scraping the Sapiro PD files. It was faster than them sending him the access feeds. ‘Anything else?’
In a grave voice, Agent Hopper said, ‘We have less than a day before the next victim will be killed, if she hasn’t been already. When I say everything you can find, I mean everything.’
A tremble shuddered through FCG at the reminder. A life was on the line.
Overhead, one of his screens flickered.
‘Yessir,’ he said again, very solemnly. ‘It’ll be on the airship before you are.’
DAYAL TRAINING ACADEMY
At this time of night, the halls of Dayal Training Academy were empty. Senior Special Agent Hopper and Special Agent Greymoore met no one else on their way through the warren of identical white halls. It had been some years since Agent Hopper had studied and trained there but very little had changed and he was confident as he led the way.
‘You sure about this, man? I mean really sure? Because I think it’s a bad idea. It’s not that I don’t like the guy, I’m sure he’s fine, and you know I respect the hell outta him, but he’s been on the bench for years - hell, he’s been on the damn shelf, Hop.’
‘You’ve made your opinion abundantly clear.’
‘But you’re not gonna listen.’
Orym stopped outside a dull green door. It was very much like every other dull green door they’d passed, the only difference was the brass numbers screwed above the door—in this case, 203. He didn’t reach for the knob immediately and when Ashton pulled their head out of the file he’d been handed, they met a stare so flat and so focused it put serious doubt in their mind that the man had ever smiled in his life.
‘No. I’m not. Agent Eshteross is an indispensable resource to us and to the NDI. And while I thank you for your opinion,’ Orym stressed the word again, mildly, ‘this is my team and I have been given authority to staff it as I see fit. But if you think you can’t control your temper while I collect them, I’ll ask you to stay out here.’
Ashton shook his head. Not in disagreement but in disbelief. Then, he frowned.
‘Wait - what do you mean them?’
‘Agent Eshteross and his teaching assistant. I believe you’re acquainted.’ It had to be a trick of the light because Hopper wasn’t a man who joked but for a split second, his green eyes seemed to glint with good humour. ‘Doctor Calloway?’
‘You have got to be kidding me.’
Hopper arched a brow. ‘What’s it going to be? In or out?’
With a gruff sigh, Ashton pushed past him and opened the door himself.
Room 203 was an auditorium, a large room with tiered lecture desk seating and a raised stage at the front for the lecturer to stand. The whole front wall was a surface for the presentation projected onto it. The image that greeted them was of a rocky beach, bright orange evidence markers placed around a covered body.
No one noticed the agents entering through the door at the back of the hall save the lecturer—an older orcish gentleman in gold-rim spectacles and a crisp brown suit—and his assistant—a gorgeous young woman, a faun, in a brilliantly colourful dress that on anyone else would be garish but on her was merely eccentric. And somewhat revealing. Doctor Calloway stood off to the side of the stage, half in shadow, but it was clear that the majority of the class was focused on her rather than Agent Eshteross.
It didn’t seem like he cared, but it would be wrong to assume he hadn’t noticed; he was simply more interested in lecturing for the few who were listening. Agent Eshteross’s voice was not booming but it filled every corner of the hall, measured, precise.
‘Who can tell me what a disposal site is? Yes, Mister Grieve.’
‘It is the place where a killer leaves the body of their victim.’
Eshteross glanced to another student. Raised a stern brow. ‘Your hand is up. You have a different definition, Miss Becke?’
‘A more specific one, sir. A disposal site is the area where a body, or body parts, are known to have been left. They might not necessarily have been left there by the killer - it could have been a partner or scapegoat - and the body parts might have moved or been moved after disposal.’
‘For what reason?’
‘Further attempts to hide the body? Or natural reasons, like bloating if the disposal is in water or animal interference.’
‘Very good. The killer, to repeat the term Mister Grieve and Miss Becke have used, is in fact known as the unsub or unknown subject. As future NDI field agents, this is the person, or persons, that you will be tracking, apprehending, and bringing to justice. The disposal site is one of the most information rich landscapes we have in the field of profiling—oh, thank you, doctor—’ Eshteross muttered, taking the slide clicker from Doctor Calloway as she passed it off to him. ‘Along with abductions sites, this is where we learn the most about our unsub. Who they are, behaviourally, magically, physically.’
As Eshteross continued his lecture, Doctor Calloway made her way to the stairs and up to the back of the hall where Agents Hopper and Greymoore had entered. Up close, she looked even younger than she’d seemed at a distance. Her features were subtly stretched, exaggerated in that fey manner: there was something uncanny to her beauty, close to looking human but not quite - the feral prick to her smile, the freckles more like dappled sunlight, the dangerously heady scent of her perfume. And of course, her apparent inhuman features. Ram horns curled outward from either side of her head but they had been largely hidden by the sheer volume of her sea-foam green hair. And her eyes…they were impossibly big and bright and shone, poisonously green.
She favoured the agents with a smile and a bat of her lashes.
‘Hoping to sit in on the lecture, boys?’
‘Not tonight. Duty calls,’ Hopper denied. She pouted. He only smiled, unphased, and tilted his head toward Eshteross. ‘Will you get him for us? It’s time.’
Doctor Calloway brightened. ‘Really? Oh my. How exciting!’
Spinning on her heels, she fit two fingers into her mouth and blew a shrill whistle. Any head that hadn’t followed her initial progress up the stairs whipped around to face her—at the front of the room, Eshteross stopped his lecture.
‘Show’s over!’ she yelled down to him. ‘We’re leaving!’
Only someone who knew the man well—and who was also watching for his reaction—would note the slight tension that knotted his brow, the downward tick of his lips.
Agent Hopper filed it away diligently.
Agent Greymoore kept his face blank as clean slate. Whatever opinions he had on the man, Hopper had asked him to keep it to himself.
It took Eshteross a minute to dismiss the class and to pack up their things—his and Doctor Calloway’s. He carried them up the auditorium stairs in one arm. From the way he skipped every second step, it didn’t seem like he needed the cane hooked over his wrist.
‘Here you are, my dear,’ he murmured, handing over her computer and satchel. ‘Orym. Agent Greymoore. Good to see you both. My office is just down the hall. Follow me.’
‘Good to see you, Ariks, but we don’t have time for pleasantries.’
‘No, of course not. What’s the nature of the case?’
‘Missing women abducted in Sapiro Haven. Evidence of minor magic use in the abductions - they think it’s illusory,’ Doctor Calloway said. To Agent Greymoore’s look of surprise, she winked. ‘I have my sources.’
‘And the missings - still missing or deceased? Do we know if this is a serial abduction or murder yet?’
‘It’s a serial killer. All but the last missing has turned up dead. We’re headed there tonight to see if we can find her before—‘
Hopper paused for a moment as they arrived at Eshteross’s office. The man opened the door cautiously from the side and pressed it open until it hit the wall. Practiced eyes and paranoid ones caught the silver glint of wire strung across the doorway. Eshteross avoided it with ease and entered, clearing the room rapidly. Doctor Calloway seemed used to it because she sat herself on the corner of his desk with a bored cast to her face and started to fiddle with a dulled letter opener.
Greymoore shot a look to Hopper. See what I mean? the look said. See why I’m so fucking concerned?
Hopper ignored the look and its implications. He cleared his throat. ‘We’re headed there tonight. All hands on deck.’
‘Yes, yes, of course. I have some books, articles you can take on that region - that shelf over there. They might inform where the women are being held before they’re killed. And if you leave the file with me—‘
‘Ariks. When I say all hands on deck, I mean you’re coming with us.’
‘I’m what?’
‘We only have a few hours before the missing woman is killed,’ he said, quite gently. ‘We need you there. We need the whole team, Ariks.’
Lifting his head, Eshteross fixed Hopper with a calculating look. His square jaw chewed on a response. Black eyes glittered with a new light.
‘The Quorum?’
‘Requested you specifically.’
‘I see.’ Eshteross mulled it over a moment longer. He looked to Doctor Calloway, frowning. ‘You have a go-bag ready, Fearne?’
She nodded. ‘Always.’
Always? Agent Greymoore mouthed, face twisting with surprise. His reassessment of her wasn’t subtle, a quick up-and-down. Fearne caught their look of surprise; it seemed to delight her and she winked at them again.
‘Good, good,’ Eshteross muttered under his breath. ‘Oh, but what if -’
‘Ariks.’ Orym held his gaze. ‘One case. That’s all.’
‘One. Just one. Alright. Yes, of course. When do we leave?’
‘Right now.’
‘Now. Yes. No time to delay. Calloway! We need everything on that shelf and the components case too. You there - Greymoore - there’s a case of potions in the bottom desk drawer. We’ll need those as well.’ To Hopper, who came to help him with the weapons case tucked beneath boxes and boxes of files in the cupboard, he said, ‘How long does she have? You said a few hours?’
‘Half a day. Maybe a little more.’
Eshteross set his jaw grimly and nodded. ‘Well then. We’d best get started.’