Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Death by the Seaside

Day 1, Thursday 

“…It’s a fucking mess. A couple of teenagers found a body in Martinaise late last night in the fishing village across the canal. Mid-thirties, no confirmation of ID, but he looks too goddamn expensive to be from around here. Details match a missing person report placed for Jake Nelly - a Coalition official who disappeared last night.”

Kim nods, marking a few lines in his notebook.

Great. Just what you need, a potential murder of a Coalition officer in Martinaise, where you and Harry barely managed to prevent an all-out war just six months ago.

He must be important, if a few hours' lapse was enough to trigger a missing person report.

The dark circles under Kim’s eyes have deepened over the past months. He knew, of course, how stretched thin Precinct 41 was, but still underestimated the weight of the caseload. Still, he stands straight, rigid. His posture doesn’t betray any exhaustion.

Harry, on the other hand, looks like death warmed over. He hums.

“Any signs of violence?”

“Nothing obvious, the kids said there was no blood anywhere. We’ll need confirmation on the cause of death before this fucking escalates into anything we don’t want. Do you have any other questions?”

Jean Vicquemare glares at Harry as if he’ll snap his neck if he dares to ask.

Harry doesn’t.

Jean nods.

“Okay. I'll get this over with now. This will be a joint investigation with Precinct 84. They’re claiming jurisdiction since Jake Nelly was staying at a hotel in Les Jardin.”

Kim raises an eyebrow. Precinct 84 - that’s Revachol East. They oversee the relatively well-off districts of Les Jardin and Saint-Batiste.

“It’s surprising they want to take this at all. When is the last time they had a murder investigation on their hands?”

Jean smirks.

“Never. And… they don’t. Want to take this case, that is. They’re not sending us their normal detectives. They’re sending the ECU instead.”

Kim feels his stomach sink.

“Ah, of course.”

Harry looks blank, but Chester cuts in, chortling, before Kim can elaborate.

“No way. The ECU? They’re sending in those binoclards to help? What are they gonna do, stick a probe up the corpse's ass?”

Officer Judit Minot sighs, and turns towards Harry.

“The Entroponetics Crime Unit is a special unit within Precinct 84. They specialize in Pale-related crimes.”

“Honestly, that sounds pretty fucking cool.”

Jean snorts and mutters something derogatory under his breath.

Kim cuts in.

“As you know, detective, the RCM relies heavily on donations. The ECU is the brainchild of Bryce Joncain. You may recognize him as the billionaire obsessed with the ... erm… potential benefits of harnessing the Pale, especially for anti-aging.”

Lieutenant Caine Morvail of the ECU nods, face schooled into a look of deliberate neutrality. He’s yet again being told off by Captain Smith of Precinct 84 for being too flagrantly derisive of Joncain and his tinctures, all of which happen to include a generous dose of whiskey.

‘I don’t give a fuck how stupid he is, Morvail,” Smith says, clicking his pen. “As long as he keeps writing our checks, we shut our mouths and listen.”

Jean interrupts

“It’s a fucking vanity project. That unit is a joke and an insult. Even with that new machine those binoclards keep talking about.”

“Machine?”

Jean waves his hand dismissively. “ZA/UM, or whatever they call it. It’s early stage, but they say they can use it to access memories. As if a corpse’s rotting brain can get us anything useful. Anyway. I don’t want to waste any more time. Let’s go examine the fucking body and let the idiots at the ECU run as many ‘psychological autopsies’ as they want afterwards.”

No one had bothered to cover up the corpse on the beach.

White male, mid thirties. Decomposition rate suggests death eight hours ago at most.

No signs of struggle.

Crisp white button up, navy slacks, navy tie, brown dress shoes, brown leather belt.

Wallet, but no ID.

“He looks peaceful.”

Harry hovers behind Kim, intently staring into the corpse’s face.

Recovering alcoholic, drug addict, and former amnesiac who was born in a military hospital where people usually go to die. Prone to emotional outbursts and nonsensical political beliefs. Unable to maintain stable personal relationships. On bad mornings, you fight the urge to beat your own head bloody against the sink.

People like you leave good men dead on the beach for the RCM to find.

He shakes the thought away, crouches next to the body. It grounds him, somehow.

“Kim, I’m going to move him.”

Carefully, almost tenderly, Harry moves the body slightly to the side. A small, leather bound planner lies beneath the right arm.

Inside, in neat blue ballpoint:

JAKE NELLY.

“There’s the confirm on the identity.”

Harry brushes Jake’s mousey brown hair to the side, pries open a closed eyelid. Pale, cornflower blue. His face is aggressively unremarkable. His height is average.

He looks like he would blend in effortlessly, anywhere. The perfect bureaucrat.

“This is fucking weird.”

Kim raises an eyebrow.

“This bougie Moralintern guy was staying at a first class hotel all the way in Les Jardin, but what? Comes to this fishing village in the middle of nowhere, has a heart attack, and dies without a struggle?”

Harry gestures at Jake’s lifeless face. There is no sign of any pain or worry.

Kim hums.

“Yes, it is strange he’d come all the way here. But we won’t know anything until his body’s taken to processing.”

He stares at the faint smile on Jake’s lips and frowns.

“…Though, you have a point. He looks too peaceful.”

They bag the body easily. Load it into the back of Kim’s Kineema.

Kim wipes at his brow, and smiles.

"That was good work."

Harry flips through his papers, meticulously checks through the boxes on the field autopsy report.

"Learned from the best. Kim Kitsuragi-style."

Harry’s words are dry, but something in his chest goes warm with pride. It's one thing to throw your life away and turn your back on yourself; it's a hundred times more embarrassing to trudge back and pick up the pieces. But in this moment, he convinces himself that he might save his life, or at least salvage what’s left of it.

"Kitsuragi-style? This is all just standard procedure, but I appreciate the ass-kissing."

Harry stumbles on the uneven sand, nudges Kim's shoulder.

"Didn't puke over the body this time. Revachol's lucky it has real men like us to do the job."

Kim barely manages to hold back a laugh. That, he thinks, was the most homosexual fucking thing he's heard in his life.

"And what would you know about real men, detective?"

Harry suddenly flushes, self-conscious.

During sleepless nights, Kim circles this question. What does it mean, really, to be a good man when one’s loyalty is pledged to the Coalition, and beyond that, to the Moralintern? It's a matter of protocol, chain-of-command - goodness defined by those above.

He knows now that this doesn't hold. What he sees with his own two eyes will have to do.

Harry du Bois.

Sniffer dog. Will pry open anything that's closed - containers and people. (Also, eats anything.)

Smells like fruity chewing gum, but never apricot.

Voice - gravelly, but not harsh.

Smile, when genuine, is small and uncertain. (Otherwise, leans towards grotesque.)

Kim leans against the car and rifles through the agenda. His finger drifts, then hovers over Tuesday - two days ago. These bullets have all been striked-out.

• Anita Gavaro (First Revachol Bank) 1:20 PM, Le Pavilion Bistro - Meeting canceled. Withdrawing from fund.
• Jacques Dieumont (Jamrock Investment Group) 3:00 PM, Office in North Jamrock- Meeting canceled. Needs liquidity.
• Louis Marquette (Marquette Family Office) 8:00 PM, Kedra Dragon Restaurant- Meeting canceled. Not answering calls.

Then, there’s Wednesday, yesterday.

• Guy Allard (EATE)- spoke on phone, wants to go ahead.

And Thursday, today.

• Alik Gim (EATE) 3:00 PM, Intermont Hotel room 5A.

The Intermont Hotel - a towering, gleaming white marble five star hotel built in Les Jardin right along the coast. It’s well loved by the Moralintern and businessmen alike.

Kim checks his watch.

“Perfect, we’ll make it there in time to pay Alik a visit and run an initial interview.”

It never gets easier, delivering the news.

Harry forces a smile and gestures at Kim to board the vehicle first.

“After you, detective.”

In the ocean view master suite at the Intermont Hotel, Alik Gim wakes to the stench of vomit. She blinks and gazes at the white ceiling and white walls.

A white sepulcher, with two corpses rotting side by side.

See? Your Graadian Realism degree isn't so useless after all.

She’s a pretty, doll-like thing, with large wide set eyes, a button nose, and rosebud lips. She’s Seolite, which is rare in Revachol, even rarer than it was in Sur-la-Clef. She’s in her late twenties, but can pass for much younger.

She pushes her long, lank hair away from her face. It’s the same shade as the chestnut Mont Blanc pastries they sell at the overpriced patisserie around the corner, wrapped in striped pink and white paper and dusted with powdered sugar.

Abner, your tall, blonde, broad shouldered father once sat you down at fifteen years old and explained that black hair makes you stick out in Sur-la-Clef. He dyed it in the bathroom, working the chemicals in carefully. It’s good dye, he said. Not the cheap shit from the kiosk. When he finished, he sighed, his sharp features softening. It didn’t come out like the sunny yellow color on the box. You two still didn’t look alike, not even close. A middling, indecisive shade between brown and blonde. Coffee ice cream - that’s what Rene had called it. He smiled and played with a strand, twirling his elegant fingers.

“You know, it’s such a coincidence...You and Etienne match perfectly.”

Etienne Meijer-Lavoisier, head of the Energy and Trade division of the Coalition government. Former petroleum chemist, three times elected, loved both by the socially liberal and the austere banker class. How had he met Rene? Officially, at a garden cafe. In reality? In the toilet stall at the Vertige nightclub.

Right now, he's at the Pavilion Restaurant, seated at his favorite table in the corner for brunch. The restaurant was established within the Vermillion Circle, the conference center of Sur-la-Clef, where overpowered people like to gather. He sits with his legs crossed. Mid fifties, polished, impeccably dressed. His hair is too pale to be brown, too brown to be blonde - the same color as yours.

He clicks his pen, and his dove gray eyes scan over his schedule - he checks each date three times. He glances over the mediocre, overpriced menu and frowns at the obscene price of the lobster and pear salad. It's because, he thinks, it still takes long, much too long to transport pears through the Pale.

He'll have to give Villedrouin a call, make a visit to Revachol himself, at this rate, to ensure EATE can still salvage things, before they become untenable.

He has learned that the thing about both pears and bodies is that they bruise - they rot, and money cannot stop it.

Alik turns her head towards corpse number two. Ashe Brettson’s matted, shaggy black jacket reeks of Commodore Red, so she kicks it off the bed. His vomit has seeped into the sheets, blending into the leftover bright red powder from last night’s fun to create pink soggy lumps on the pillow.

Cherry speed, from the Samara Republic. What was it Brettson had said yesterday? That Entroponauts do it in the Pale, to fake some courage? Yes, it was a sort of fucked-up intervention. He always said she did too much Blue Madeleine - she has to take tons of it, it barely works for her. He was trying to wean her off one poison for another.

She barely listened before popping one in her mouth, feeling the bittersweet fizz against her tongue. Brettson had yelped, “Wait! Start with half! Aliiiiik!”

He might try to snort those chunks again, once he’s desperate enough.

She reaches over to comb her fingers through his disheveled, greasy black hair. The texture is soft, and comforting, like a cat’s fur.

Brettson stirs, and reaches for her, soft and needy. He clings to her like a child, his bony hips digging into her skin. He’s stark naked - he must have overheated last night and kicked off his black jeans. A cloying, lactonic scent envelops her, like condensed milk on the verge of spoiling.

A bit of his vomit smears on her cheek, but she doesn’t pull away.

“Sorry.”

He licks it off, then stares blearily at the ornate tray that had tipped over on the bed and spilled cherry speed, cigarette butts, and a filthy glass pipe over the sheets. Bottles of Commodore Red litter the floor.

That’s the silver engraved tray you paid 600 reál for. You had honestly forgot you bought it in the first place.

That’s the wonder of purchase power.

“Fuck,” Brettson whines. “… what a mess.”

“At least you didn’t piss the bed like you did yesterday.”

“That wasn’t piss, Alik. I spilled water. Water.”

“No, it was piss. That’s why the cleaning lady hates us.”

Not too much, though. Not when she sees that thick envelope filled with money you left her.

Brettson scowls, his voice a soft mewl. “You’re being mean.”

The corner of Alik’s mouth curls up in a fleeting smirk, and doesn’t quite disappear when the phone on the small, round coffee table begins to ring. She picks it up. Murmurs she understands. That she’ll speak to them.

So, Jake’s dead.

It should sadden you more than this, you know. He was really nice to you.

...You really don't know how to react. You don't know how to say it out loud.

She dresses quickly: a dress with a loose ribbon around the neck, pink satin flats.

“The RCM are heading over. You can stay in bed, I’ll speak to them outside.”

Brettson yawns, nods groggily. He has absolutely no interest in why they're coming - he knows he'll be safe, that he'll be taken care of. He then bristles.

“So, you’re really not going to mention it, then?”

“Mention what?”

“It’s not funny. It’s your fault, Alik, that we kissed yesterday.”

”You kissed me. How can it be my fault?”

“It’s your fucking fault because you had to give me NACRA yesterday.”

At this point, she and Brettson owe Saint-Batiste burnt offerings at every meal for the sheer amount of times NACRA pulled them back from death.

”And what does that have to do with anything?”

“You should have been paying attention and noticed that I was already high. But because you didn’t notice, because you were so off the rails and barely looking at me all night, even though I'm supposed to be your fucking girlfriend, I did an extra line I shouldn’t have.”

Boys who are girls who like girls to be boys

Who do boys like they're girls, who do girls like they're boys -

”Oh, come on. No one told you to grind those up and snort them. It’s not cocaine.”

“And when I woke up after you sprayed me, the first thing I saw was you.”

“Right.”

“And that’s why it’s your fault that I kissed you.”

She can’t help it. She starts to laugh. Brettson scowls, and chucks a pillow at her.

Look at the way he’s curled into himself. He notices, you know. Whenever your thoughts drift, and you float. When he’s talking to you but your mind is elsewhere.

With him.

…Thinking of that seaside apartment, of gentle laughter, of bony hands, a crooked wrist. He’s in the water, smiling, holding you close.

You grip his slender shoulders, and hear his soft, uneven breathing. Your future is an atrophied limb - you’re stranded here in the water.

Poor Brettson. Look at how he’s staring at the floor. It has to feel shitty, knowing someone doesn’t even care enough to listen to you. Quick. Cheer him up.

Tell him you’ve chosen to let go. That you’re going to live now. That you aren’t waiting for Rene's hand to reach out and pull you under, to where he is. Tell him this, and try to believe it.

Alik walks towards Brettson, and sits on the bed. He leans instinctively against her.

”Okay, I’ll be more attentive from now on.”

He gives her a small, kittenish smile, and holds her hand. She squeezes back.

Right on cue, the doorbell rings. She stands and walks towards the door.

“Don’t forget you’re my boyfriend, Alik.”

This is why you like him so much - you never know the kind of shit his junkie brain will come up with.

”I won’t forget.”

She opens the door.

Chapter Text

Death by the Seaside

Day 1, Thursday 

Harry gathers his resolve and raps his knuckles against door 5A of the Intermont Hotel.

You hope she doesn’t cry. You’re already imagining the uncomprehending eyes, the slow widening of the mouth, the disbelief.

"God, how did he die here of all places, in Martinaise?"

"He was so young, he had his whole life ahead of him-”

Stop. This doesn’t help you, to anticipate how bad it will hurt. It’s going to hurt anyway.

Hardy a beat passes before a voice murmurs from within. It’s bored, creaky - it reminds Harry of Klaasje, then of the teenage girl who manned the Frittte. 

“Coming.”

The door creaks open, and Alik Gim sticks her head out the doorway. Her voice doesn’t suit her. She’s as lovely and delicate as a music-box ballerina. She’s young, and can’t be past her twenties. But that’s what people used to say about Kim too, at least until his hairline started receding.

She’s Seolite, Harry realizes. He couldn’t tell at first within that second-long glance, due to her pink-ivory skin and light hair. There’s not even a hint of dark roots showing.

You wonder if there was ever a time when Kim considered it, too. Dying his hair, to blend in. To stop the stares, the mocking laughs, the stupid questions. Not that Alik looks like the type to have ever worried about something like that. You observe her careless slouch against the doorframe, the bored languidness about her. It’s the opposite of Kim’s perfect, calculated posture - his exoskeleton.

“Kitsuragi.” He once told you he considered changing it, something as essential as his name. He told you this as he held his single Astra to his lips after a particularly grueling day, the smoke curling around him like mist. You tried not to look too hard at his lips, the curve of his throat.

"Hi, officers. Jake’s office called. It’s horrible news, I can’t believe it."

Corporate, flat, automatic. If there was any grief there to begin with, it’s been neatly stored away.

Harry barely has time to note this before he notices the absolute wreckage of the room. It’s a complete shithole.

Empty glass bottles of Commodore Red roll on the floor. There’s a heavy tray that’s face down on the bed, red pills roll across the sheets and carpet. There are pink, chunky streaks across the pillow. There’s a used up bottle of of NACRA under the bed.

WHAT A WASTE OF SWEET, SWEET NARCOTICS!

Harry forces the thought away, then realizes his partner is frowning slightly, gaze fixated not on the wreckage, but straight on him.

Yes, you’ve both seen worse than this. You’ve lived worse than this.

Kim doesn’t say a word, but he knows what Harry’s thinking. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t have to - his small nod says enough. That Harry’s here now, that it’s fine. That he’s been sober for six months straight, and can keep going.

And it helps. Harry clears this throat, steadies himself. As Kim introduces them both to Alik, explains that they’re here to ask some questions, Harry stares intently at the wreckage.

There’s only one surface in the room that hasn’t been infected. The coffee table in the corner is bizzarely pristine.

On top of it, a neatly arranged stack of papers, dense with text, charts, numbers highlighted in color-coded grids. 

An orange prescription bottle - medical, not fun.

Harry catches movement coming from the bed. A figure stirs beneath the sheets, groggily blinking at them. Dark, mussed hair. Bleary-eyed and petulant and gorgeous.

For a second, Harry isn’t sure if he’s looking at a man or a woman. Then, the figure shifts, and the sheet slips from the figure’s shoulder, revealing the sharp lines of his collarbones, the pale expanse of his softly curved waist. His pouty mouth curves into a sleepy smile.

Um.

Kim clears this throat, and Harry realizes he’s been gawking back and forth between Alik and the boy in the bed for several seconds now. The lieutenant’s eyes are narrowed, his shoulders tense. He’s annoyed. 

In room #28 of the Capeside Apartments in Rue de Saint-Ghislaine, a young man peels an orange. The inside of his mouth tastes like ash, he has no appetite. The loaf of bread on his counter has gone stale.  He squints at the textbook in front of him, his exam on Metahemeralism Portrayed Through Art is tomorrow at 9:00. He’s attended only three lectures this entire semester.

His Sunday Friend hasn’t visited in months now. He pretends it doesn’t bother him. Even though he’s so lonely, and everything feels so painful sometimes. But it’s alright. He has his art, and he can live on bread and oranges. He thinks of the mural that the Gendarme had painted on the cracking wall near the pier, and a small smile tugs at his lips. His mouth silently shapes out the words. SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL IS GOING TO HAPPEN.

Yes. Your smoker friend’s face was hollow and gaunt. His wrists brittle, ankles fawn-thin, voice lilting and sleepy. Eyes feline and knowing, teeth sharp. You know, deep down, that he won't finish his art degree. That he probably won’t even live to see forty. His drugs, his cigarettes, one of his many weekend "friends" turning violent - one of the above will do him in.

Maybe that’s what the Sunday Friend liked about him. That marred, decaying quality, the same eroticism that cheap perfume and smudged masacara hold. The sordid sort of sexiness that exists only in the eyes of sad prostitutes. It makes you fucking depressed. And it pisses you off so much that you want to break something. It isn’t fair, he deserves so much better…

But this pair in front of you is sexy too. They have that polystyrene sexiness of electricity, washing machines, health insurance, tax exemptions. The sexiness of the first world. 

Hey, you should ask them if they’ll let you join them. If they need a third.

…No. You should definitely not do that.

Alik smiles - she doesn’t make any mention of Harry’s leering. She makes a vague gesture towards the mess behind her. 

“You know how it is. The maid’ll be here soon. Let’s talk downstairs - the business center in the lobby should be empty."

Kim nods. "Let’s go."

Alik takes a seat, crossing one leg over the other. She leans on the armrest - even her slouching comes off as elegant. 

Harry gets straight to the point.

"So, wanna explain the pills rolling around in your room?"

Alik barely reacts. She only tilts her head slightly, considering the question.

"I got my head done," she says casually. "When I was young."

Harry blinks.

Huh?

Kim leans forward slightly, shooting Harry a look before addressing Alik. "By that, do you mean Pale exposure cognitive therapy?"

"To induce memory loss. That’s right."

"It’s common," Kim says, eyes flicking toward Harry in silent warning. "Some families do it when they adopt. They say it helps children adjust."

Abner wouldn’t settle for anything less than a blank slate. A girl that knew him, and only ever knew him, one he could love unconditionally.

Harry nods, though he looks slightly perturbed. It doesn’t explain anything about her other drugs, the recreational kind, but he skips straight to the point.

"How did you know Jake?"

"We were supposed to meet today," she says. "EATE and the Coalition government work together quite a bit. Jake was asking for an update on the Standard Resource Fund."

Harry frowns. "And he was found in a fishing village in Martinaise?"

"Which is odd," Alik muses. "Our clients in Revachol all live in Les Jardin or La Delta."

“When was the last time you spoke to him?”

Alik doesn’t even hesitate. “Last week Monday. I asked him if he liked the numbers.”

"The numbers?"

Alik digs in her pocket, shows them her Sur-la-Clef passport, and the work visa that’s been tucked inside.

"I’m here with EATE to meet high-net-worth clients and financial institutions in Revachol. Investors looking to get in on the EATE Standard Resource Fund XXV. Exploratory trade routes through the Pale, that sort of thing. Upper double-digit returns."

Harry raises a brow. "Looks like EATE and the Moralintern are still tight, huh? Ever since Sur-la-Clef gave EATE a hundred-year monopoly on interisolary trade way back ago?"

A hundred-year contact to pillage, burn, rape.

EATE, the Economic Alliance of Trade and Energy, was once even more powerful than it currently is. Once a quasi-government of its own, it possessed the right to declare war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, establish colonies.

A joint-stock kingdom that stretched across the Semenine Islands, the archipelagos off of Saramiriza, dotted colonies in Katla.

You know that Kim hopes your hatred for the Moralintern isn’t about to get you two reported. You accusing the Sunday Friend of murder and flipping him off last time was bad enough.

"Sure are," Alik says breezily.

Kim flips through Jake’s planner. "His meetings kept getting canceled. Do you know anything about that?"

Alik barely glances at the pages when he hands them over.

"Things are tense in Revachol after the Wild Pines incident," she says lightly. "It’s standard, they’re always the first to flake."

Harry folds his arms. "And what exactly was Jake’s job?"

"Keeping our bosses and clients happy. That’s my job, too."

"Do you know anyone who would want to harm him?"

Alik raises her eyebrows.

“Harm him? You're investigating this as a murder?”

Kim cuts in. “Answer the question, please.”

Alik, once again dead-eyed, shrugs.

"Maybe someone in Revachol? Someone who hates the Moralintern? But, honestly? It would have been a waste of a political statement.”

She sighs, plays with her hair. "He wrote press releases for a living.”

"And who knew him best? What about Guy Allard, the guy he spoke to on Wednesday?"

A quick smile curls Alik’s lips.

Guy Allard. Caramel-haired, long-legged, handsome. Used to paying for everything with his golden smile.

But that’s not why she likes him. There’s a genuine sweetness under Guy’s designer shirts and cognac-and-cannelé-scented perfume and expensive gambling habit. Does he know anything about EATE’s return metrics? Development targets? The price of petrol, ornery labor negotiations, aerostatic transportation regulations?

No.

Does he know how to charm and flirt and turn wary investors into lifelong EATE addicts?

Yes. He’s a corporate SUPERSTAR.

“Guy Allard? He’s my manager. No, they didn't speak outside of work. Jake used to say Guy was too careless. You know, showing up to meetings late and hungover and all of that. But the clients love him.”

Alik stares at her shoes for a second.

"Honestly, officers," she says. “I don’t think anyone knew him that well. He didn’t talk about himself much. He was always the first one in, and the last one out. He was really dedicated to his job. I wouldn’t be surprised if his heart just… gave out."

“…"

“He was a very nice guy.”

Rain beats against the windshield of the Kineema. The city outside blurs into a streak of wet asphalt and peeling billboards advertising top-shelf liquor, imported butter, and fine art insurance - beautiful solutions for beautiful problems they don't have.

Kim’s fingers flex against the wheel. "That wasn’t very helpful," he mutters.

Harry leans against the passenger door, eyes half-lidded as he watches the rain distort the world outside. “She knew we were coming, Kim - the whole thing was rattled off a corporate script. Precinct 84 told the Moralintern about our investigation before we even got to her door."

His jaw twitches. "Bureaucratic bullshit."

Kim studies his partner’s reflection in the rain-streaked window. "Listen," he says, voice measured. "We didn’t get much, but we did get something. We know what Jake was working on. We know both EATE and the Moralintern were afraid of investors pulling out. And...there is also Guy Allard, Alik's boss. We could talk to him, ask him what he and Jake discussed."

Harry smiles a little. “Yeah, the one she said rolled in drunk all the time and would piss Jake off. Sounds some kind of a superstar to me.”

Kim smirks. "Wouldn’t be my first time meeting one."

The rain patters on.

For a while, neither of them speaks. The streets slide by, slick with water, oily puddles reflecting the glow of distant halogen lights.

"Maybe he’ll know what Jake was doing in that village," Harry says.

Kim raises an eyebrow. “Do you really think he’d talk?

Harry shrugs. "Maybe not. But Alik - she doesn’t give a fuck, Kim. Not about her hotel fees, her job, Jake’s death, her life. That’s why I don’t think she has anything to hide. If anyone’s gonna slip, it’s the guy who thrives on being liked."

This admission is a little painful for you. Hits a bit too close to home.

Kim sighs. “He may certainly talk more, maybe slip up. That is, if we can find him.”

"We’ll find him," Harry says.

The rain keeps falling. The station isn't far now.

The Processing Unit floor smells of antiseptic, cold metal, and dust.

The fluorescent lights buzz faintly overhead, casting a sickly glow on the room’s tiled floors and steel gurneys.

Harry and Kim step in, only to find they aren’t alone.

Standing next to Jake’s covered body are the two detectives from Precinct 84’s ECU.

Harry whispers to Kim, “Where are the entroponaut suits? The Pale latitutde compressors?” Kim shoots him a withering look, but honestly, he also expected something different. Maybe lab coats? Glasses? But Caine Morvail and Hineira Kenana just look like two typical underslept RCM officers.

Caine, the older of the two, is in his early forties. Tall, pale, angular, and hollow-cheeked, with elegant lips drawn into a thin line. His dark, slightly wavy hair is swept to the side - a few strands are starting to go silver. He's dressed in a dark wool coat, charcoal pressed slacks, and dark oxfords. Expensive clothes, yet worn. 

Hineira is very young, in her early twenties. She’s broad-shouldered and stands beside Caine, arms crossed. Her messy, thick hair is pulled into a ponytail. She has dark skin, large, long-lashed brown eyes lined with electric blue liner, a bulbous nose, full lips. She's taller than Kim, exactly as tall as Harry, and just barely shorter than Caine.

There is a jade pendant around her neck. The stone has been hand-carved to depict a small, humanoid symbol. Gleaming eyes made of shells are embedded on a tilting head. Its knees are bent so that its feet touch.

Hei-tiki. Whenua heirlooms that are passed down from generation to generation.

There’s a tightness to Hineira’s mouth, like she doesn’t fully approve of what is about to happen but isn’t going to say it outright.

Caine barely looks up as Harry and Kim approach. Instead, he gestures toward a small iron box on the gurney beside Jake’s body. White letters stamped onto its surface read: ZA/UM.

“I assume you’re familiar with it,” Caine says coolly, withdrawing a laminated permit from his coat. “Lieutenant Caine Morvail. Here is my permit for ZA/UM utilization.”

Kim inspects the badge. Morvail’s forty two years old, has only been at the RCM for a couple years. Newer than most at his level, yet already holding a permit for something like this.

There is something faintly derisive in his voice. “It appears Precinct 41’s Processing Unit has already conducted the autopsy,” Caine says. “And the official cause of death falls under the convenient umbrella of heart failure. Jake’s official medical records had him as perfectly healthy with no underlying conditions. Captain Smith over at Precinct 84 is happy to rule this a heart attack. Case closed.”

Kim can see Harry’s jaw tense.

Yet, Caine is still talking. “The only thing out of the ordinary was the presence of entroponic expansum in his blood. And traces in his nasal cavity.”

Harry’s head whips up.

The rules of the world were once explained to you by an Ultraliberal atop a gleaming yacht.

“Imagine a grey coronal mist, cold vapour, marked by spores of an opportunistic microorganism, a mould that's adapted to grow at the edge of the unrest.”

Joyce’s eyes had gleamed.

Those were the disco eyes of a full blown addict, baby.

“It’s a kind of mold,” Harry says. “Grows at the edge of the Pale.”

Caine gives a small nod.

“In powdered form, they call it Blue Madeleine,” Caine says. “A recreational drug for the wealthy. It allows users to drift through memories as they please. It’s an unstable drug. The destructive nature of the Pale makes every dose a gamble.”

“The level in Jake’s blood,” Hineira explains, “wasn’t high enough to be considered a typical lethal dose. But it could’ve overwhelmed his system.”

Jake Nelly, a drug addict? Apparently, boring people do drugs, too.

Harry’s gaze flickers back to the ZA/UM device.

Caine follows Harry's eyes. “Yes. The mold, refined to a chemical level, is also what powers the machine. But Blue Madeleine is volatile, unstable. You can't narrow down whose memories you'll experience. The ZA/UM system allows for concentrated memory extraction through direct intravenous use.”

Kim squints at the machine doubtfully. “And you’re saying it can still work on a corpse?”

Caine gives a small, almost imperceptible shrug.

“Memory quality corrodes after death. What’s more, the Blue Madeleine he ingested will have addled them even further. But they’re still usable.”

The hairs on the back of Kim’s neck raise as Caine’s gaze lingers on Harry for a second too long.

With the faintest smirk, Caine says, “I already conducted the initial psychological autopsy. But given your legendary reputation, perhaps you might offer some valuable insight.”

Harry’s face remains frozen, but Kim bristles. Caine had clearly heard things about Harry. About his past, his habits.

Hineira hesitates. “Detective Morvail,” she says carefully. “Detective Du Bois doesn’t have a permit.”

“I’ll authorize it,” Caine says. “And besides, the laws are quite murky when it comes to using the device on corpses. Mr. Nelly here doesn’t exactly have any legal rights.”

There is a quiet rustling as Hineira opens the box, hands steady despite her earlier reluctance. She pulls out yellow tubes with hanging cannulas with methodical precision and inserts one of them in the back of Jake’s head, straight into the brain stem. Out of habit, she pulls out a black cuff and slides it around Jake’s arm, then pumps on the bellows-like device attached to it until it squeezes around his rigid wrist.

“Oops,” she snorts, a little embarrassed. “Forgot, he doesn’t have any blood pressure.”

She turns towards Harry, the other yellow tube in hand.

“No.”

Kim’s voice is firm, cutting through the room.

The other three detectives turn towards him. Kim takes a step towards Harry, lowering his voice so that only he can hear. “Detective. May I remind you that you’ve only just suffered a psychotic break after which you lost all your memories? And that perhaps, it may not be the wisest idea to damage yourself any further?”

Harry looks at him like a sad-eyed basset hound. “Yes.”

Kim glares. “Besides, you don’t need another substance in your system. You know how addictive the Pale can be.”

Somewhere, on the Roundabout North, a Pale-addled elderly lorry driver sits on the back of her vehicle, lost in her amber world of summer afternoons, silver screens, soft ice cream, Gabriel Buenguerro’s smile.

Harry’s mouth parts slightly. “I know Kim, but..."

“Harry."

It slips out without Kim realizing it.

Harry meets Kim’s eyes. Holds them. “You have to trust me.”

Kim’s stomach twists. A beat passes. He then exhales sharply and steps back, spine rigid.

Hineira pulls the yellow rubber hose taut around Harry’s arm. His bicep tenses as she finds a vein, then slides the needle in.

He gasps. The world around him unravels, folds into itself. And then, he’s inside.

The coastline is the first thing Harry sees. He feels the salty spray against his skin, sees the hazy glow of Martinaise in the distance.

And he feels it, what Jake felt: Peace. Acceptance. A quiet, heartbreaking kind of beauty.

A lump forms in his throat.

Then, more of Jake’s memories surge through his cortex.

What looks like a drug den, dimly lit. Chartreuse carpeting, red velvet armchairs. Red silk wallpaper. Caramel hair, designer tie. It’s Guy Allard, goddamn him and his gambling addiction and his insistence on agreeing to meet this client here of all places. He’s pressing something in Jake’s hand. NACRA spray. For just in case I have too much fun, he says, eyes sparkling. 

Then:

A jumbled, towering pile of what looks like clothes, books, furniture, jewelry. The worn wooden floorboards creak under his feet. He can see gray waves and pale sand out of the window. He must be in one of the abandoned houses out on the coast.

The vignettes come too fast, too strong.

Harry reaches his hand, tries to cry out.

Then, he blacks out.

Harry sputters awake, carbonated bubbles stinging his sinuses.

"Drink."

Caine presses the bottle of FizzUp™ against Harry’s lips, tilting it just enough to make him swallow. It spills into Harry’s mutton chops, dribbles onto his horrendous tie.

The rush of saccharine, artificial honeydew melon cuts through the static in your head and the world comes back in steady beats, like a metronome.

Tick - the harsh, fluorescent lighting

Tick - the uncomfortable plastic chair pressing against your back

Tick - the blue veins on Caine’s pale, bony hand

Tick - Kim.

Kim, who’s standing nearby, arms crossed tight, shoulders rigid. You give him a nod to let him know you’re back. That you’re alright.

He lets out a barely audible sigh of relief.

Harry lets out a shaky breath and sits up.

"I saw a traphouse," he rasps. "Guy Allard was there. He was trying to give Jake NACRA, but he wouldn’t take it, kept pushing it away. They were there to meet a client, talk to him about the fund," He swallows. "Then, I saw the fishing village. Piles of random stuff. Objects stacked up in a mess, almost like storage, maybe?"

Caine writes this all down in his ledger.

“Good. Very good. I made out the traphouse too,” Caine says. “Though I was able to discern the name. There was a sign outside the building. ‘Woland’s’.”

Harry blinks.

You know the place. A neon club in Boogie Street, with a 70 reál cover charge for men. The crowd leans younger, it’s the type of place that would turn you away from the door. Well… you know they’d turn you away since it’s happened before. You’d drunkenly yelled at the bouncer that this was fascism. He rolled his eyes, said ‘Glory to Revakhol” in an ironic drawl.

Caine’s tone remains cold, detached. “It’s a well-known nightclub, but there’s likely a basement underneath it being repurposed as a Blue Madeleine den.”

He closes the metal lid of the ZA/UM machine with a sharp click. “Good job on catching Allard there with him. I wasn’t able to make that out. This is why multiple users for ZA/UM are useful, we pick up different things, though the memory degrades with each use. He's useless now."

Harry stares at Jake's closed eyes, the pale lavender of his eyelids. There's a runny, pinkish-gray substance now dripping out of one of his ears.  

"...I’ll put out a warrant for Allard. We can hit Woland’s tomorrow when you’re feeling better, detective - they’ll open tomorrow at 22:00. I will ask whether Precinct 41 has officers they can send to inspect the shacks in the fishing village tonight in the meantime.”

Caine hesitates slightly near the doorway, then looks over his shoulder. “Twenty six seconds. That’s how long you lasted. Not shabby, Detective Du Bois.”

He gives a short look towards Kim before he exits. “Detective Kenana can drive you both home. I wouldn’t recommend you driving, even witnessing the machine in action tends to make people lose their appetites…”

But Kim doesn’t look at him. Instead, he turns to Harry, whose thick fingers are still loosely curled around the half empty bottle of FizzUp™.

When Harry speaks, his voice is quiet.

“Makes sense why Blue Madeleine is so fucking addictive.”

Kim feels something tighten in his chest. Because he knows, he fucking knows.

Harry’s thinking about her - the way Blue Madeleine would let him drown in memories of Dora forever. It’s right there: a hazy, apricot-scented world of golden afternoons and blonde hair waiting with white, soft arms. 

And for a second, Kim can’t bring himself to breathe.

But Harry swallows, shakes his head. This big, burly, loud animal of a man suddenly seems as fragile as a field mouse.

“But I don’t want it,” Harry murmurs, voice barely there. “I don’t want to spend my life there, with her.” His fingers grip the glass bottle tighter. “My work’s here, with you. Closing cases.”

Something in Kim aches.

He clears his throat, trying to push down the sudden heat glowing behind his ribs. He arranges his expression into something neutral. “Wise choice, detective.”

Harry makes a soft sound. A weak laugh.

Kim crouches to loop an arm around Harry’s back and help him up. The solid weight of Harry sags against him, his body heat pressing into Kim's side for just a second too long. Kim stares straight ahead. But it's unbearable. 

You need to focus. You do not need to think about how easy it would be to just… lean into him. To just let your body want what it wants.  

Stop.

He swallows hard and shoves the feeling down, packs it into a little box at the back of his mind where it can die quietly.

You spent your lifetime doing this, pushing any hint of longing away. You’ve poured your attention into work, into corpses and field autopsies and paperwork.

You can’t be busy all the time.

The loneliness still catches you off guard - on a lazy Saturday afternoon, on another holiday spent alone.

It will kill you one day.

"Alright," Kim mutters. "Let's get moving."

Chapter Text

Death by the Seaside

Day 1, Thursday 

Hineira glances into the backseat, one hand lazily draped over the wheel. “Harry, you’re starting to look better.”

She feels comfortable calling you that. She’ll stick to calling Kim "Lieutenant Kitsuragi" for now, though.

Harry, still slouched against the seat, throws her a huge thumbs up. “Told you. I’m indestructible, a machine.”

Kim, gripping the handle above the passenger seat door, barely registers their banter. He’s focusing solely on the way Hineira is taking turns far too aggressively, cutting lanes, hitting curbs. It's no way to treat his beautiful vehicle. 

Harry rubs his face - some color is starting to return. “I used the Volta do Mar technique, kept reciting that Insulindian Miracle poem in my head. It’s what I immediately went to, knew it by heart from school.”

Nulla sarà cambiato della luce!

Colori come grigio e marrone

Tutti stampati uno sull’altro

Trovai un vuoto

Una macchia Bianca

Gli altri guardarono

“Che bella giornata! Che bel tempo!”

Ma sentii la rotativa.

Hineira snorts. “For a poem about finding a new isola, it’s pretty depressing.”

Harry grins. “Depression is part of my mental architecture, baby," He taps his temple. “Blue fucking banisters.”

Hineira rolls her electric blue-lined eyes, but she’s still smiling. “The most effective Volta do Mar isn’t something fed to you in school. It should be a leitmotif, something unique to you.”

She then turns her head towards Kim, who’s still trying his hardest not to wrench the wheel from her grasp. “What about you, detective? What’s your Volta do Mar?”

Harry grins a shit-eating grin. “It’s gotta be Speedfreaks FM, Kim. The entire channel.”

Kim can’t help it - he cracks a smile.

In the spring of ‘49, Kim and Dom were trailing a suspect - a sequence killer who liked to pick his targets off of large public events - sporting events, parties, concerts.

Dom was his partner. His pair of Eyes.

They settled in the plush velvet scenes, the air thick with perfume and cigarette smoke. They listened to a sole singer on stage, backed by an orchestra. Kim turned his face towards Eyes, expecting to share a smirk, a mean little jab shared at the expense of the singer and her lugubrious wailing. Can you believe this shit?

But Eyes was transfixed, dark eyes shining, breathing soft and uneven. As if he didn’t want to make the slightest noise for fear of drowning out the music. Kim felt it then, in that moment. Something terrifying. Something beautiful.

He tried his hardest to distract himself. Among the winding of the violins, his brain started humming its own nonsensical monotone. He thought of the latest headlines. The latest crashes in the Tip Top Tournée. A bank defaulter in Oranje confessing, a Vesperian countess eloping with a dancer. 

He thought of the unsolved cases in his ledger, and spent the rest of the concert recalling other people's desires - the things they stole, lied, and murdered for. He couldn’t face his own.

Eyes smelled like hyacinths that night. He smelled like hyacinths a week later too, when he died.

Kim lets out a breath. “The standard Volta do Mar mantra suffices. I’m not one for dramatics, you know? Now, please, Detective Kenana - give me the goddamn wheel.”

Hineira laughs and changes lanes, honking loudly before parking on the street. She and Kim trade seats and he suddenly feels much better.

"Most people don’t last as long as you did using the ZA/UM machine," she says to Harry. “They all pass out in under 5 seconds, that’s why we’re the only unit that even takes the risk of using it. Morvail said only people with extreme physical endurance can access it for that long. Or, well -” she smirks, glancing at Harry in the rearview mirror. “People who’ve taken a shitload of drugs before and juiced up their tolerance.”

Harry manages to give her a sleazy grin, but his eyes betray it - a deep shame.

Hineira catches it. To Kim’s relief, she doesn’t press further.

Good.

"Morvail’s passed out from it, too. Like...more than once," she muses. "Not that he’d ever admit it. He’s a workhorse, the guy pulls hundred-hour weeks, gets yanked into every major Precinct 84 case, not that he ever gets credit it for it. Unofficially, he’s got the highest solve rate in the Precinct in his two years here, and it's not even close.”

Harry let out a small whistle. “Goddamn.”

Hineira speaks more quietly. It’s clear she’s testing the waters.

She’s about to reveal a secret, but not to expose her Lieutenant.

It’s to expose you two.

“Caine was part of the guerilla forces against the Coalition occupation. He joined the AIR in his twenties.”

He was a scrawny child born in ‘09 in the Burnt-Out-Quarter, two years after the fall of the Commune of Revachol. Caine's parents had hopes of him pursuing a medical degree due to his sharp mind, but he only dreamt of one thing: joining the AIR.

Army for an Independent Revachol, an offshoot of the original Insulindian Citizens Militia. 

The 20s were a shit era, even by Revachol standards. A failed privatization scheme plunged the city into poverty. Gang warfare consumed West Revachol. The Burnt-Out-Quarter suffered especially under La Putra Madre, which ruled both the district and Precinct 21. To this day, everyone knows RCM officers in Precinct 21 are nothing but La Putra Madre's puppets.

Then came the 30s. Money flowed freely—the golden hand of the market proved its ineffability. While you were shaking like a machine in sweaty disco clubs, Caine was throwing explosives. He joined the AIR in '31 with his friends Dorothy and Hughes, long past the army's heyday as guerrilla resistance faded across Revachol. It was here he was trained in explosives, interrogation, and torture.

In '33—the same year you joined the RCM—he was promoted to the Harts, an elite eight-member AIR unit. They specialized in car bombings, sheltering revolutionaries, orchestrating targeted attacks on Coalition forces.

But Caine's true talent lay in rooting out spies within the AIR, crushing every counter-intelligence effort. The RCM grew desperate as their undercover officers were identified and eliminated before they could destroy the army from within. They gave him a name, spoken with equal hatred and grudging respect: "Comrade Fucking Mullen."

Of the Harts, he alone survives. Dorothy lost her hands in an explosives accident. Hughes took sixteen bullets.  

Precinct 21's RCM officers captured Comrade Fucking Mullen in '38. For eleven months, they tortured him in their basement. They took his spleen. His left hand still never fully closes, the fingers crushed too many times beneath steel-toed boots. Still, he kept every secret.

The inside of the car is silent.

“They let him go in ‘40, after AIR officially surrendered,” Hineira says quietly. “Precinct 21 held onto him as an ‘independent consultant’ for years, though, all while treating him like dogshit. Precinct 84 finally poached him in ‘49, they knew it didn’t make sense 21 was suddenly clearing all those cases.”

Harry sighs. “Bunch of pigs throwing their weight around. But it checks out - in the end, the RCM's just the Coalition’s bitch.”

Hineira nods. It appears Harry has passed some sort of test with flying colors. She turns towards Kim, expectantly.

Kim calmly adjusts his glasses. “The people of Precinct 84 are lucky to have you, Detective Kenana.”  

Coward, he thinks of himself. 

You’re such a fucking coward, Kim Kitsuragi.

She opens her mouth to reply, but Kim turns onto a side street, pulling up in front of a modest, weather-worn house. The lights inside are still on.

She unbuckles her seatbelt and cracks the door open with a small smile. "Thank you, Lieutenant."

She bolts out of the car, running toward the house. The front door swings open before she even passes the gate. A little girl, no older than ten, tumbles out, shrieking “Tuākana!”. A teenage boy leans against the doorway, arms crossed, smirking even as his eyes sparkle.

Harry and Kim watch as Hineira hugs her cousins close.

This is Tin Alley, probably the poorest part of Les Jardin. A neglected community of immigrants and their descendants. The jagged-tooth skyline of concrete and corrugated roofing looms behind her.

Twenty years ago, these residents threw molotov cocktails at INSURCOM soldiers, bandaged wounds, watched gas seep through the streets, fire rain from the sky. Thirty percent of the neighborhood was bombed into oblivion.

Today, the same people who made her an orphan pay her bills. Her broad shoulders are backlit by sodium lights. She is built like she has spent a lifetime carrying others on her back.

Two years ago, the residents of Tin Alley organized a protest against Saint-Batiste for dumping chemicals in the water supply, water that conveniently was rerouted miles away from the district straight into their neighborhood.

Precinct 84 deployed all eighty of its officers to hose them, pepper-spray them, gas the streets until residents were left on their knees, suffocating. Only the ECU stayed behind.  

Hineira cried until her face was bright red. Shouted in the face of her lieutenant, who, cold and white as snow, didn’t move a muscle.

“How? How the fuck do you live like this?”

“Pride’s a useless thing,” Caine had told her, his words dismissive. "You wouldn’t be an orphan if your parents had less of it.”

But his voice was soft, and he held her closely.

Chapter Text

Death by the Seaside

Day 2, Friday

“…All I’m saying is, just because it’s a traphouse doesn’t mean it has to look like a traphouse. Those armchairs are hideous, without them I’d come here more often.”

The chartresuse carpet is marred with dark stains. In the center of the room are plush red velvet armchairs soiled with streaks of blue powder. A barefoot young woman claps her yellow soles, rocking back and forth. An off-tune trumpet stutters, then repeats. The noise seems to come from nowhere, then grows loud enough to surround the room.

At the roulette table tands Guy Allard. Caramel-haired, long-legged, and smiling. Glowing under the flickering lights like a debauched angel. He’s clad in a spotless Pegasus Black suit. A woman draped on his shoulder slinks away resentfully when Harry joins him.

"You know,” Harry drawls, bottle of Commodore Red in hand. "This whole thing could have been a lot fucking easier if EATE told me they’d send you to the station tomorrow. I had to track you all the way down here."

After she left you, you told yourself it was just to take the edge off, just to push through one more day. You repeated this lie - day after day, year after year, until you drowned yourself in ethanol. You let it fill you up, and hollow you out.

You’ll say today was an exception. That it was for the case, to can-open Guy Allard, to solve Jake’s death because the search at the fishing village turned up nothing, because there are zero other leads. That it was to piece something together, so that one more fucking thing in this world would make sense to you again.

But you know the truth. And Kim, the one man who still believed in you, will watch you ruin yourself again.

Guy’s eyes slide over the white halogen mark on Harry’s jacket. He smiles. He has never feared the RCM in his life.

“They didn't even call me about the warrant,” he complains. “Can you believe that? I could’ve been arrested!” He tilts his head back, and drains the rest of his cocktail. He offers a genuinely contrite smile. “I’m really sorry you had to go through the trouble.”

Harry grins like a piece of shit.

“Good thing we’re both degenerate good-for-nothings and I found you here, huh?”

Day 1, Thursday

Brettson is curled up by the door like a bristling cat when Alik comes back up the elevator.

Even when pissed, his face is too pretty for a man, too delicate to be called anything other than beautiful. His eyes are big, gray, slightly droopy and don’t ever quite focus. His pink lips are full and pouty, and his porcelain skin is only marred by the dark shadows underneath his eyes. His arms are crossed, knees drawn up, dark fringe falling into his eyes as he glares at the hallway carpet. The maids had locked him out again while cleaning the room.

“Sorry, the detectives had a lot of questions.”

He doesn’t look up, and strides inside without a word. She doesn’t say anything, there’s nothing to say. He barely waited thirty minutes - they both know why he’s actually in a mood. He hates anything that reminds him that she’s the guest from Sur-la-Clef with the money, and he’s just trash she picked up off the street. There’s no way to acknowledge it without making it worse, so she doesn’t.

Instead, she settles at the coffee table. Flips open the leather-bound hotel stationery folder - heavy, cream colored sheet. Embossed with the hotel logo. She twirls a pen between her fingers as she dials the long, international number for Guy’s office.

He had you put some numbers together on Tuesday.

“Maybe a little higher, Alik?”

“Hm, maybe just a little punchier?”

“No, he won’t come in on that. What happens if you toggle leverage? Up, way, way up. Only, we don’t show that.”

“Perfect!”

The numbers in front of you were wrong. Very very wrong, in the way only projections are allowed to be. You hastily marked the report, “for illustrative purposes only” in four-point font.

Maybe Guy found some idiot in Revachol willing to believe in these, someone to plug up the losses from the clients you’ve been bleeding. Someone he couldn’t tell you about.

He doesn’t keep client notes anywhere on him, only a calendar in his room. He says it's for “security reasons” but you know it’s because he loses things too easily. He once told you he had a place here, somewhere in the “real” part of Revachol out west, away from the tourists.

It takes a long time for the international line to go through. She stretches her legs under the table, listening to the quiet, mechanical ring on the other end. Finally -

“Mr. Guy Allard’s office.”

Alik smiles faintly. “Hey, Louette. It’s Alik. I know it’s late there,” Her voice is warm, casual. “I won’t keep you long. Just need to find and wake Guy up, we’re about to run late for a meeting. I know he has his own place here, away from the hotels?”

A small pause. “Hi, Alik. He has a place in Martinaise. The Capeside Apartments in Rue de Saint-Ghislaine.”

Alik notes it down neatly.

“You’re a star. Thanks, Louette.”

She now dials another long international line - an address in Mirova. The line clicks. A pause. Then, a voice.

“Klein speaking.”

“Mr. Klein, good evening. It’s Alik.”

“Alik! To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I just wanted to check in,” she says lightly. “We wanted to give the confirmation that everything’s set on our end. We received the the eighty million reál from your account.”

“Amazing. Thank you for the confirmation.”

“And one more thing, Mr. Klein. I wanted to inform you… there’s been tragic news. Jake Nelly, the Coalition official who’s been working with you, has passed.”

A brief, calibrating silence.

“Ah,” Klein says finally, his voice appropriately solemn. “That’s… a real tragedy.”

“Yes,” Alik agrees. “They’re saying it was a heart attack. These things happen. We’ll be issuing a public statement sometime tomorrow.”

Another pause. And there it is. The faintest trace of relief in Klein’s voice, like something settling into place.

“That’s good to hear,” Klein says, more relaxed now. “So, I take it -”

“You’re solely our client again,” Alik confirms cheerfully. “Just mine and Guy’s. It should simplify things.”

Klein exhales. “Very good. Thank you, Alik.”

A door shutting, cleanly.

Alik hangs up, then turns her head towards Brettson, who was listening with idle curiosity, one leg dangling over the arm of the couch.

“From the way he spoke,” Brettson mutters, flipping through a magazine, “it sounded like he’s glad Jake’s gone.”

Alik smirks. “Jake put him through hell during the verification process. Though that comes with the territory when you work in the defense industry, I guess.”

That’s one way of putting it.

Your friend Mr. Klein there produces 41% of all anti-personnel missiles in EPIS.

Brettson rolls his eyes. “You mean Jake didn’t let war criminals just waltz in like EATE wants.”

Alik reaches out, tucks a few wayward strands of Brettson's hair behind his ear. He nuzzles her hand, shamelessly.

“Jake was really into paperwork.”

The taxi ride to Martinaise is endless. The city becomes dicier with every passing street - structures of steel and glass transform into half-sunken tenements, cratered roads, real estate projects abandoned mid-construction. War still looms here, the past left unburied.

“We’re here,” the driver mutters, his voice tight with unease. “Hurry up. People here, they reek. Full of drunkards and prostitutes. Fucking degenerates, someone needs to raze this all to the ground, clean it up.”

He shoots a glance at Brettson through the rearview mirror, a mix of disdain and something else. It isn’t just disgust at the lacy see-through top and skintight leather pants he's wearing. He doesn’t want to acknowledge it, but his eyes keep darting to Brettson’s lean form.

Brettson glares, and is about to snap something cutting when Alik smiles, and hands over an extra bank note with a murmured thanks.

The driver stops complaining.

Outside, an old woman empties a bucket of filthy water.

“I have a friend who lives here. I just need to check in on them.”

The woman scoffs.

“Doubt anyone you know would live here.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised. Guy Allard, 29B?”

A long pause. Then, with a slow shake of her head, the woman hands her a key.

The hallways are dimly lit and lined with stained walls that smell of mildew and distant seawater. They climb the stairs, the railing rusty beneath their hands. The balcony stretches long and narrow.

Brettson spots him first.

A young man, leaning against the balcony, cigarette dangling lazily from his fingers. The orange ember flares briefly as he inhales, the glow casting his face in flickering shadow. He’s lean, long-limbed, his shirt is unbuttoned to reveal collarbones sharp as knives. He regards them with the pent-up stillness of a stray cat. Watchful, ready to slip away at the first sign of trouble.

Alik stares.

No. It’s not him.

Stop it.

The key she’s been holding clatters against the floor.

The smoker tilts his head slightly, now studying her with a gentler curiosity than before. His lips part, just the faintest edge of a soft smile forming. With a smooth, graceful motion, he picks the key up and drops it back in her hand.

Rene was tall, and lean. Hollow faced, long lashed. His head would tilt ever so slightly downward, always lost in thought. He was the only student majoring in Graadian Realism - he was a few years older, and much wiser.

He approached first, asked softly if you had anywhere to stay. If you’d like to room with him. He felt compelled to take you under his wing - the dead eyed Seolite girl who takes two pills a day, to keep the past away. He never heard of Pale exposure cognitive therapy before, but it sounded sort of fucked up and terrifying to him. When you switched your major to his, your father stared at you like you grew a second head. “Isn’t that only for queers and socialists?” You assured him Rene was the former, and he sighed.

You two read passages aloud, tried and failed to get through Sixteen Days in Coldest April. You eventually found out Rene was Queer AND Socialist (sorry, dad). So you'd sit cross-legged on the floor with him, painting slogans you vaguely sympathized with. Higher wages for laborers. Sex workers are workers. End housing discrimination. Sure, why the hell not? He'd laugh at your lopsided lettering, call it offensive to the cause. He was always warm. Gentle, soft-spoken, relentlessly kind.

Here’s a fun fact for you, Corpo. You found something good in this beautiful world. You alone had it. And you lost it forever.

"…You were staring at him," Brettson hisses, voice too sharp in the otherwise silent room. He clings onto her, hands clasped tight around her elbow. "Who the hell was he? Are you cheating on me?!”

“He just looked like someone I knew, that’s all. Where’d you get that top? You look so cute."

“It's yours. And what do you mean, are you saying you're thinking about your ex?!”

You’re never alone now, you’re with him and nobody knows.

Inside, the contrast is jarring - designer suitcases lined up against peeling wallpaper, luxury shoes tossed carelessly on greasy linoleum.

Brettson starts rustling through Guy's clothes, his fingers trailing across the rich, expensive fabrics.

“Come on, Bretty - those are Guy’s,” Alik says mildly. “We can go shopping later.”

She quickly finds what she’s looking for - Guy’s calendar, tucked away among a pile of clutter. Wednesday. The Cardinal. 11:00 at Woland’s.

The Cardinal. No wonder Guy didn’t mention any of this.

Caran Papon comes from old, old Revachol family money. He financed the RCM during the 20 and 30s, poured funds into surveillance programs and weapons and officers. He said he wouldn't stop until all of the AIR were hanging off the lampposts for public display.

“Looted goods, Alik,” Charles Villedrouin once warned you. “Stolen art, furniture, jewelry - all from the RCM. Too many red flags. Tell Guy he must be cautious.”

You saw something like this before, when you were young, for thirty reál at the Sur-la-Clef Central Museum. Piles of jewelry, clothing, shoes, furniture displayed behind anti-reflective glass. Things stripped from prisoners, the misguided, misled Revacholians who still hoped for freedom. The right to self-immolate and build their fabled Communism.

History is so important to be seen in galleries, to be displayed in a neat box, where atavism and atrocities belong.

So that we reflect. So that we remember. So that we know things are different now, here in the present.

"Woland’s, huh? That’s where we first met, you know. The nightclub." Brettson smiles. His earlier annoyance melts away. He presses his face into Alik’s neck with a softness that catches her off guard. “When you became my boyfriend.”

You like his soft hair, kitten stare, cartoon eyes and cigarettes.

You can still hear his slurred words, the pathetic sob story about his asshole landlord, the way he begged you for a cigarette. You saw the black bruises on his skinny arms, took his squishy white hand and bought a carton of Astra Lux cigarettes. Then, a lighter (he didn't have one). Then, a lollipop (he was hungry). Then, of course, he followed you back to the hotel, past the discos and casinos and the cars and the bars and the stars and the pin-up starlets.

...So, Graadian literature major. Here is your term final. Exam question one. Does all of this make you Etienne? Him Rene? You Villedrouin and him whoever Villedrouin's got here in Revachol, like Guy always gossips about?

"That's right. I got lucky, huh?"

Day 2, Friday

Guy starts a lazy game, calling out roulette bets from the comfort of his seat.

“Twenty on red. Fifty on black.”

Then, sighs.

“I’m being horrible. Jake’s dead and I’m here boring you to death. It’s never fun to watch someone else gamble, is it?”

He leans forward.

"Jake and I were just here Wednesday night. We made one more last-ditch effort to save the fundraise. The client came from Revachol old money. Far-right fanatic against moral degeneracy or whatever. Everyone calls him the Cardinal, since he’s such a bigot."

He scoffs, half-laughing at the absurdity.

"I knew him from here, actually. Covered my gambling losses a few times - he was always pretty nice about that. Jake gave me shit for it, though. Bitching on and on about know your investor laws and anti-money-laundering procedures as if EATE gives a shit the way we’re bleeding Revacholian investors.”

"But you convinced him?” Harry asks, tone casual.

Of course he convinced him! He's a SUPERSTAR!

Guy grins.

“I didn’t ask permission. I had Alik, darling girl, cook up some numbers. And it worked. Got his attention, no problem. So I called Jake on Wednesday, told him I had an off-the-books meeting set up. He didn’t like it, but hell, Villedrouin was up his ass about it saying too many eyes are on our fund. That if we missed our target, the market will panic, and there goes EPIS, price stability this, price stability that. Also, I really fucking need my bonus this year, Coppo. I’m in the red, like… really in the red.”

“So, you and Jake meet the Cardinal here, at this shithole to discuss terms. Did anything unusual happen?"

“I mean, he was awful. As soon as he realized Jake was sent from the Coalition, he started going on and on about how they went too soft. That real Revacholian patriots want the right to purge the filth from their own country. He’s one of those fucking racists who’ve never opened a book in their life.”

He was taught about equal opportunity in classrooms with central air conditioning, beneath banners about kindness and tolerance and responsibility, while outside his gated community district, outside Sur-la-Clef, in some inconsequential part of the world, Coalition warships sent mercenaries to wipe out villages and crush children under rubble.

“…I kept trying to steer it away, you know? Bring up human rights and shit but he wouldn’t shut the fuck up. At some point, Jake had the nerve to tell me to shut up. Isn't that so callous? He was being a fucking dick out of nowhere.”

"Uh-huh.”

"Restorative justice is so important," Guy continues. "Anyway. The Cardinal said something about how he didn’t have the liquidity, but had hard assets he could pledge instead. Said he had no trust in interisolary banking."

Guy sneers slightly.

"Definitely a racist."

Harry nods slowly, the pieces starting to fall into place. "He’s hiding something," he murmurs. "Something even the Coalition keeps an eye on."

You think of what you saw through the ZA/UM machine - the heap of broken images. Spoils of war.

"Exactly," Guy agrees, then leans in with a slight grimace. "But Jake eventually said he was willing to consider an exception. Like I said, Villedrouin was blowing up his phone every day and even Meijer-Lavoisier from Energy and Trade was sending letters. So Jake told the Cardinal we’d take a look at the collateral that night. Then, we started taking Blue Madeleine right after. Just to loosen up."

He makes a face, clearly recalling something unpleasant.

"I don’t love it, you know? It's a toss-up. Why take that when cherry speed’s right there? Sometimes you get good memories, sometimes you get bad ones, sometimes your own and what's the fun in that? I ended up with memories of a farmer in Lo-Manthang, of all things. Rice paddies and mosquito bites. Riveting stuff."

"And the Cardinal?"

"Lost in fascist wonderland," Guy says, rolling his eyes. "Was going on and on about the suzerain, how he’d serve him forever. Real charming. But Jake…Jake didn’t look right after that. Whatever the hell he saw, it freaked him out. He got up, dropped everything. Told the Cardinal to cut the bullshit and show him what he had.”

Day 1, Thursday

“And how bad is it?”

Etienne fiddles with his gold-rimmed glasses, its bridge has left pink marks on his nose. The navy suit he’s wearing has been tailored for the slight paunch around his middle. He’s still composed, collected, but he’s become a little brittle recently. Alik can tell that the crow’s feet around his eyes have deepened in the past few years. Rene's disappearance hit him hard, too. 

She shrugs. “Funded the RCM death squads in the 20’s to '30s. A lot of people ended up tortured in basements because of him."

She’d sent Brettson back to the hotel an hour ago. Told him it would be boring. She didn’t want him to see this part. 

"Of course," Etienne mutters. "And let me guess - he has no liquidity. Wonderful." 

Charles shoots Etienne a sharp look. "We must make ze best of current circumstances." 

Seven years ago, Etienne read the reports from Yeesut with shaking hands. Massive civilian casualties, typical for Oranjese military operations. But it had to be done, now was the time to be hawkish. EPIS’ work had to continue - for the sake of interisolary transportation, fuel supremacy, energy security, price stability. He would later appear on radio shows, fundraise for medical aid to the region, speak carefully about the need for restraint. Discipline. He felt like a good person, a reasonable person for doing this. Truthfully, even now, anything he ever does in office is reverse-engineered so that he can feel this way.

Yet he would wake up every morning and witness hard evidence of the most abject things human beings could do to one another. And he began to notice it - that there was a disconnect, a dissociation between two things. A chasm between what was happening, and continued to happen, ceaselessly, and the way his own body felt - unencumbered, as if there was no weight to the lungs in his chest.

They do not have to wait for long here, amongst the sand and broken glass. 

The Cardinal waves from afar. He looks younger than he is - eyes fevered and bulging, hair silver and wavy, face relatively unlined and animated. He smells of rosewater and incense. His cigar never leaves his mouth, never stops burning.

“Thank you, thank you for coming all the way here, from Sur-la-Clef!”

Charles shakes his head, gives a tight smile.

“There was a misunderstanding last night. I'm confident we all want to...*passer l'éponge*."

The Cardinal snorts. “Jake Nelly? He threw a fucking fit."

Alik and Etienne exchange brief glances. That doesn't sound like the Jake Nelly they knew. 

But Charles nods. Smiles apologetically. Repeatedly assures the Cardinal it was all just a miscommunication.

Still, the Cardinal continues to rant.   

"...He shouted all types of dirty words. Butcher, parasite, murderer. Said he would never take blood money like mine. Though, I understand where the fear may come from. Everyone has the right to be scared."

"...things in Sur-la-Clef are different. In your country, there is a paradox. You are all highly educated, your country tops the Human Development and Freedom index, your countrymen possess refrigerators and packaged ice cream and electronic can openers and such,”

“...and yet, debate, social debate, is very rare. There is stasis rather than energy. It is certainly not energy conducive to change…”

“...the thing is, you do not understand, cannot understand. None of you know how it was before - parasites everywhere, even in the best of families, even amongst the aristocrats who have lived in Revachol for centuries...”

“…we had to clean the streets, purify everything.”

Day 2, Friday

"And?" Harry asks.

"Jake went outside with him. Told me to stay here. That’s the last time I saw him. Then, I woke up Thursday afternoon, hungover as hell, and heard the news. That Jake was missing... and then, that he was found dead. That Alik was handling the account."

Suddenly, Guy pulls out a small see-through bag, holds it up with a little grin.

“Anyways. Wanna feel good, Coppo?”

Harry stares at the small red pills in Guy’s hand.

SUPERSTARS DO SPEED! THAT IS THE FIRST RULE OF SUPERSTARDOM!

THIS IS HARDCORE!

Guy grins wider, and slides off the armchair. He drops to his knees, lines the pills up on Harry’s thigh - three red rubies in a sea of dark wool. They're brittle, and crumble into fine red powder when Guy slides his credit card through them, arranges everything into an even line.

He rolls up a bank note and leans in - a practiced, fluid motion. He gasps, and squeezes his eyes shut, throwing his head back, jerky and mesmerizing. His lightning-bright eyes flick back to Harry. A loopy chemical smile tugs at the corners of his lips.

He’s heavy-lidded, and he looks… God, he looks drugged. So devastatingly beautiful.

So vulnerable and open and sweet for you.

Body moving automatically, Harry wets his thumb, and scrapes it across the red powder left on his trousers. Guy’s lips part obediently and he lets Harry push his thumb into his mouth, skim against the smooth ridges of his round milk-white teeth, smearing the powder over his pink gums.

Guy moans softly, sucks on Harry's thumb.

“Fuck.” Harry groans before he can stop himself, arousal pooling tight in the pit of his stomach. “You’re fucking beautiful.”

Guy responds by popping another pill in his mouth and crunching down without hesitation. He slides onto the armchair, braces himself with one arm, kisses Harry hard. His mouth’s been soaking all night in sugary cocktails, he tastes like cherry pie. His tongue hits Harry's, and the saccharine fizz begins to build.

It doesn’t take long - pure liquid ecstasy floods your blood brain barrier. There’s too much pleasure to keep track of. It grows and bursts and grows again. It drips like overripe fruit, sending syrupy juice running down your cortex.

Harry lets his hands roam through the caramel-colored hair, along the sharp jaw, the slender throat. Guy’s breathing quickens, and he gasps against Harry’s mouth. “Oh my god. It’s good, so good,” he cries, voice weak. He straddles Harry and grinds slowly into his lap, fills his ear with his filthy moans.

He’s good at it. Who taught this corporate pig how to move like a pornstar?

He begins to fumble with the pocket on his blazer and flashes Harry a dazed grin.

Is he - is he looking for a condom?

Wait. Are you really serious?

You're going to fuck Guy Allard?

Right here?

In PUBLIC?

"Baby," Harry slurs. He’s dizzy, the world is spinning, and Guy keeps sliding precariously backwards, too fucked up to sit upright. "You’re gonna fall off." For a second, Kim’s face flashes across Harry’s mind. So he pulls Guy in gently, kisses him on the temple.

Ah, but Kim wouldn’t like that. He wouldn’t let you treat him like that, like he’s something that’s fragile.

“Damn it, detective,” Kim would growl, hand clutching the front of your shirt. You’d hear his labored breathing - each sigh would sear against the shell of your ear.

He’d wrap his legs around your waist, dig his heels into your back hard enough to bruise - a reprimand. A command.

“I’m not going to break.”

Day 1, Thursday

Marble sculptures, glittering jewels, mink coats, rare wines.

Military uniforms, old rifles that don’t work.

Radios, satin sheets, wooden cabinets, porcelain, heirlooms, lipstick.

A tarnished mirror, a scratched up desk, children’s shoes, worn and dusty.

Etienne’s mouth purses into a thin line.

Everything worth anything in life is hard and durable, he thinks. Not like people, who are soft, with bones that break and organs that rot.

After all, what does he have left of him? He remembers the way Rene smiled, told him about the books he was reading, the novel he wanted to write. His uneven, shallow breathing - lungs pitch black from his constant cigarettes. His cold feet, bony hands, smooth voice. The sweetness of his cries, sheets drenched with sweat, the bruises he left all over him, apologized over and over for. It's all useless now. Worth less than nothing. History scatters over time like decaying film.

All Etienne has left are the posters. Demand Humane Conditions. Feed your Workers. It just feels like a cruel joke.

Alik tilts her head, assesses the pile.

Truthfully, she doesn't care very much. EATE could blow up tomorrow and she wouldn’t bat an eye. But she has a sort of sick interest in the elegant contortions of capital, all the ways money can be bent back upon itself and force-fed its own body.

"Easily twenty million réal. Maybe more. Could be worth much more if we’re willing to move it right, sell to the right people - memorabilia collectors, that sort of thing. War fetishists.”

Etienne turns to her, aghast.

"For god’s sake, Alik, must you describe it that way?"

Charles cuts in, starting to become impatient.

"Etienne, you are aware EATE has made exceptions for this sort of collateral before. If we process it right, authorize it, they can bring him into ze fund. Think of ze price stabilité, we cannot allow things to spiral."

Charles once told Etienne that he never regretted a single decision in his life. “I don’t see ze point in it,” he said cheerfully, rolling the stiff conference chair back under the desk. “What’s done is done, I’m sure all of us thought we were doing the right thing, in that moment.”

He also said he didn’t understand greed. Didn’t understand envy. “There is no need for that,” he promptly answered. “There is plenty for everyone!”

But when Charles had said he never felt grief, Etienne had pressed him, insisted that he had to be wrong. “Not even for a week, a day? An afternoon?”

“Mon Dieu. An entire afternoon?”

Etienne lets out a slow, exhausted breath. "So it’s my call."

"It’s your call," Alik agrees.

The Cardinal watches the three of them, and waits.

There must be another committee, Etienne thinks. Somewhere, in some conference room, a real meeting will be led by the real experts who are capable of making the real decisions.

Because it can’t just be him. It can’t just be this.

He hesitates, just a fraction of a second, but then nods, resigned.

"I’m signed off.”

EATE sends its transport within the hour, everything is boxed and loaded.

“It’s cruel of you, Alik,” Etienne mutters, glaring at the blue steel cargo containers.

"You do a good job acting like I’m hysterical, like I’m just overreacting, but I’m not. I’m right to worry when you don’t answer my calls, when you only think to contact me for this - “

He suddenly stops, then looks away - lips pursed, his trimmed eyebrows knit. He is tired, he is trying very hard not to cry.

“Etienne -”

The words collapse in her throat, and all at once, Alik feels like a little girl again.

The sea breeze tangles through their milk coffee hair.

They watch the aerostatic ascend, higher, higher, a dark shape in sky. 

Day 2, Friday

”Oops.”

Harry’s eyes fly open. Guy is slack in his arms, deathly pale. His hand is clutching his chest.

“Oh, fuck. How many did you take?”

“Three pieces,” Guy lies. He then laughs, breathlessly. “This is what makes me shine, Coppo. If I get too fucked up, there's NACRA in my pocket - use it if you need to.”

He sounds entirely too used to asking strangers to resuscitate him.

Harry glances at the empty plastic bag abandoned on the carpet.

This crazy motherfucker took ten pills of cherry speed.

“Oh my god.”

Guy tips backwards, falling off the armchair. His head hits the plush carpet with a dull thud. A neurochemical storm ravages his body. His brain is pumping so much pleasure, too much pleasure that his body cannot react, barraged by wave after wave of ecstasy.

He cannot speak, his vision is gone. He’s neither alive nor dead, he knows nothing. He looks into the heart of light, the silence. It calls to him, paws at him, whispers at him to give his body over.

His brain allows one half-formed thought to pass: whether this is what the Pale looks like, feels like.

All memory disintegrating, all sense of self dissolving.

Harry fumbles with the NACRA spray in his hand, tries to unscrew the cap but he’s slowed by alcohol, made clumsy by the speed.

The bottle keeps slipping from his hand.

Get a fucking grip.

He jerks Guy’s head back, shoots the spray up his nose.

Nothing happens for a second.

Then, tears spring to Guy’s eyes, his breaths come in sharp gasps. He rolls over and retches - the vomit comes up looking like blood.

He weakly clings to Harry’s sleeve like a lifeline.  

Harry holds him tight. Somehow, it feels like everything will disintegrate, disappear if he doesn't, so he holds tight, then tighter, his fingers are now knotted so tightly in Guy's pretty hair that they're turning purple. 

He thinks of Guy's glittering laugh, Guy's long legs leaning against the roulette table. The wheel spinning, spinning. He once thought life would eventually deal him something good if he just kept playing. That as long as he had that in mind, he’d be able to make it.  

But you don’t believe in that so much anymore. And so you got angry, you forgave everybody, you gave up, you got drunk.

The door slams open.

Kim stands there, accompanied by Caine.

Caine sets his jaw.

He knew you’d be able to crack Guy Allard open. He also knew of your history with substance abuse, that he’d be sending you into the lion’s den, that you'd be undoing six months of hard-earned painful sobriety. He tells himself he isn’t responsible for any of this. 

“Time to go,” Kim says, his voice flat, his eyes flicking between Harry and Guy. “We can continue questioning Mr. Allard at the station.”

His gaze lingers on the red streaks on Harry’s trousers, the bottle of NACRA in his hand. The shot glasses clinking around their feet. 

“Kim, I- “

“Stand up, detective."

Harry obeys.

“How you choose to interrogate suspects is none of my business.”

Harry’s hands shake. 

“And neither is your personal life.”

Chapter Text

Death by the Seaside 

Day 3, Saturday

Part 1: Always

The station is dead silent. It’s three in the morning. The fluorescent white light in the interrogation room casts harsh shadows over Guy’s face. His caramel hair is mussed, he’s barely able to keep his bloodshot eyes open. His slim fingers tremble as they rest on the metal table - one of his nails has split right down the middle.

But he’s still very good looking.

“Look,” he implores Kim, trying for an easy smile.

A shiny gold coin he tries to buy everything with.

“I got carried away, had too much fun. You know how it is. That guy saved my life.” His smile widens, sunshiny and sweet. “None of this is a big deal.”

It grates on you. The entitlement, the syrupy sincerity. You can tell he’s never faced any consequences in his life. This is just his natural self, to be carefree and charming.

“Mr. Allard, thank you for your cooperation. You can gather your things at the front desk,” Kim says flatly. “You can leave.”

Guy exhales, stands unsteadily. He glances over at Harry as he walks out, gives him a little wink. A look that says look at us, getting away with all of this.

You think for one venomous second that maybe they really are one and the same. Even though you know this isn’t really true.

“God fucking damn it.”

Jean rounds towards Harry the moment the door swings shut. “You fucking idiot. Do you know how bad things would have been if he died? Headline: rich Sur-la-Clef bastard fucks around with cop, overdoses. This entire station would have been put down like a dog - “

“Fuck off.”

“No, you fuck off!” Jean shouts back. “What the fuck were you thinking? We said go interview Allard, not fuck him! Do you really have such little self control that you can’t keep your dick in your pants around a fucking witness?!”

Kim holds up a hand, shakes his head. “Officer, that’s enough.”

Jean scowls. “I warned you, Lieutenant Kitsuragi. I told you I’ve known this bastard for a decade, that it would go nowhere. That he makes all sorts of promises and breaks them. Sobriety? What a joke…” He storms off.

He’s hurting. He thought that this time, it really could last. Six months was better than he ever wished for.

Harry stares at his shoes. As soon as the door swings shut behind Jean, he turns to Kim.

“I know what you’re going to say.”

“Do you, detective? Because I still don’t think you understand how badly you fucked up.”

Harry exhales sharply, rubs a hand down his mutton chops.

“I do, Kim. I do, alright? I shouldn’t have - ”

Kim scoffs. “You shouldn’t have, what? Gotten high with a witness? Shouldn’t have completely destroyed any credibility you had left?”

Harry grabs his arm as Kim heads for the door. Kim tries to shrug him off, but Harry holds on to his wrist tight.

Kim can smell the chemical sweetness of Harry’s breath, can see how the cherry speed has stained the inside of his lips, his tongue. He quickly averts his eyes.

“I told you, it was for the case. He told me everything, about the Cardinal, how the Moralintern’s in on it too. We have a lead. I’m a fucking crime-solving superstar.”

Ah. Here come the delusions of grandeur.

You haven’t heard those in a while.

Kim interrupts, voice sharp. “These are all things Mr. Allard readily recounted here in the station. Want to explain to me why exactly you thought it was necessary to approach things the way you did? You can’t. Because it wasn’t for the case.”

You’re making this personal.

As you berate him, your mind wanders back to the filthy carpet, the rolling shot glasses on the floor.

Back to watching him stroke Guy’s hair like he was some precious, weak thing. To seeing him gently tilt Guy’s head back to stop the blood dripping from his nose.

You were pissed, but you were also worried sick - you demanded he turn the pills over, tell you how much he took. He said the pills were all gone (the fucking idiot Guy Allard took every single one). He also said he didn’t take anything directly. Just whatever half-dissolved pills the useless pretty boy had on his tongue.

When they kissed.

The guilt-stricken look on Harry’s face told you all you needed to know.

He enjoyed it.

“I fucked up. I know I did. I was drunk, I was high, I wasn’t thinking. It was a mistake. A huge, fucking stupid - ” Harry’s voice catches. “You won’t ever see me that way again.”

Kim’s jaw tightens, a muscle in his cheek twitching.

You can’t stand it. Always the same self-pity, the weakness, the vulnerability.

As if he thinks self-flagellation makes everything okay again.

As if there’s some fucked up contract that states as long as he loathes himself enough, you have to forgive him every time. 

Harry’s pleading weakens, trails off. “Fuck, would you say something?”

“What do you want me to say? That it’s fine? That it doesn’t matter? That we’ll all cover for you again?”

“Fuck, Kim, I said I was sorry -”

“And that’s supposed to fix everything?” Kim snaps. “You got high with a witness. You compromised a case. And now you want…what? For me to pat you on the back and say it’s all okay? That we can just forget about it?”

You remember the way he leered at Alik, at the sleepy boy in her room. And before them, there was Klaasje. The smoker on the balcony. All young, pretty things half his age.

You told yourself your annoyance was due to his unprofessionalism, that you didn’t care what he found attractive or not.

When will you stop lying to yourself?

Kim’s voice drops lower. Lethal and quiet. “Though I suppose you’re used to forgiveness, aren’t you? You can fuck up - kiss witnesses, cross lines, abuse your badge, and still walk right back through these doors every time, clean slate.”

Not matter how badly he fucks up, no matter what a mess he makes, he never stops being Revacholian.

He shakes his head. “But I don’t get to make mistakes, detective. I don’t get to fuck up, not when everyone already questions whether or not I belong here, not when they’re all jumping at the chance to prove their gut instincts correct. You are welcome to ruin your personal life however you want, with anyone you want. But keep your shit away from the case.”

Harry grits his teeth, he’s breathing hard. “What the fuck is this? You’re acting like we haven’t been through hell together, like we’re just fucking coworkers.”

“That’s what we are, detective. We are officers of the RCM, our role is to solve crimes. Everything else is irrelevant.”

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” Harry snaps, defensive. “I brought you here, I brought you over from that shithole precinct 57-”

“May I remind you, detective, that I made lieutenant on my own merits, long before I met you.” Kim’s voice is monotone with fury. “I have two decades of RCM experience, 102 cases under my belt. There's a good chance I'll die in the line of duty here, so don’t you fucking dare insinuate my career would be nothing without your help.”

“That’s not what I fucking - god, why do you have to be like this?”

Harry’s stomach churns. Everything is going wrong, so wrong.

And then, he makes it worse.

“I wasn’t even thinking about him,” he blurts.

Kim stares. “Excuse me?”

Harry swallows. “When I kissed Guy.” His voice is hoarse. He forces himself to hold his gaze even though his ribs feel like they’re collapsing in. “I wasn’t thinking about him.”

A silence.

For Harry, silence has always been the worst thing in the world.

“Say something. For fuck’s sake, please just say something.”

Kim finally speaks. “It’s best if I don’t, Harry,” he says, quietly.

And that answer gives Harry too much hope to just let it go.

“Just say it, Kim. Whatever it is.”

Kim sighs, more shakily than he’d like. “You’re important to me. I tell you things that I wouldn’t tell anyone else, that I don’t have anyone else to talk to about.”

This man knows more about you than anyone else in the world does.

He knows you smoke a single cigarette a night - a tiny indulgence you allow yourself.

He knows that you get excited over Tip Top racing, Speedfreaks FM, crossword puzzles, Wirral tournaments. The type of shit you're too embarrassed to tell anyone else about. 

He knows you’d put your life on the line to save his. And you know he’d do the same.

Harry hangs on to every word. He realizes he hasn’t been breathing this entire time.

“But you have your own baggage to deal with.” Kim gives in to a helpless, humorless laugh. “And word would travel, fast, especially in this station. Even if…even if I wanted this to work, we couldn’t, not here.”

“What are you saying?” Harry says. “I’m not asking you to - I’m not trying to wreck your career.”

“Then why did you tell me this?”

Harry cards a hand through his hair, gestures haplessly. “I don’t know! It just… it just came out.”

Kim scoffs. “You just say whatever you want, don’t you detective? With no regard for the consequences.”

He’s selfish. So fucking selfish.

Harry’s head snaps up. “What do you want me to say? You want me to beg? To tell you how fucking terrified I am? Look, Kim, you’re not my fucking savior. You’re not a saint, I don’t need you to rescue me. You’re just all I’ve fucking got, I just need you to be here, it’s fucking unthinkable to think of you not being here next to me.”

He’s all you’ve got, too.

“You’re my friend, Kim. Whatever we are, we’re not coworkers.”

In a strained, quiet voice, Kim says, “Yes. Friends,” before falling silent.

You weren’t born with this level of discipline, you weren’t always this optimized and cold. You built that for yourself through toil and gritted teeth and sweat.

Until now, you thought you lost an integral part of yourself in the process: the soft, animal part of you that wants what it wants. If you say anything more, at this rate, you’ll really give in, gladly lose everything for him.

You’re Kim Kitsuragi, you’re a fucking RCM officer. Be a professional, for god’s sake.

“I’ll see you in the morning, detective. Try to get at least a few hours of sleep,” Kim says. His smile is small. Resigned.

Harry’s face weakens in relief. He realizes Kim isn’t walking out on him. That he’ll still be here, next to him. That’s all he needs.

“Yeah. I’ll see you in the morning.”

You are a four times decorated lieutenant of the RCM. You have no life, no friends, no purpose outside of this title.

It’s been years since you’ve felt the softness of another person’s skin. Every night, you sleep alone.

Never. You must never seek more than this. Do you remember how you felt when you saw Eyes laid out in his coffin? The last time you wanted more - it almost killed you inside.

Stay alone - live with your pain.

Part 2: Never

The door clicks open, and Charles steps into the dim apartment, already shrugging off his coat. "Work has been relentless," he says. "Everyone’s demanding something." Not one mention of the several months long absence. 

The smoker’s fingers brush the handle of the suitcase, and before Charles can protest, he pops it open and begins rifling through the contents.

"Careful," Charles says sharply as the smoker boredly tosses the clipped paperwork and binders aside.

The sternness is mostly for show. You know he likes it when you’re carefree like this. He thinks you look too sad sometimes.

The smoker smiles, pulls out a button up shirt and holds it up against his frame. "I see you’ve been shopping without me," he teases, smoothing the fabric over his chest. "This is gorgeous."

Charles’ annoyance softens into something indulgent, almost fond. He takes the shirt, drapes it over the smoker’s slender shoulders. Cream with blue stripes, the fabric thick and luxurious. "Here," Charles says. "Let’s see how it looks on you."

The smoker’s gentle smile wavers a little, but he begins to button the shirt up. His fingers suddenly feel clumsy. Charles notices immediately. "Let me," he says, his voice soft, and he deftly closes the pearl buttons.

You know his name, he doesn’t know yours. He said something about it being hard to pronounce, hard to remember. All those Kedran syllables - too foreign for him. 

It doesn’t bother you. Not really.

Charles hums contemplatively, then picks out a maroon tie. He loops it around the smoker’s long neck, knots it perfectly. Then come the trousers, the lingering hands on the waist. He fastens a belt around him, the leather rich and buttery. Then kneels to tie a pair of loafers on his feet. "One last touch," Charles says, slipping off his own suit jacket and draping it over the smoker’s shoulders. He steps back, gestures towards the mirror. "*Voila*. Come here, you. Have a look."

The shirt is too large, the shoes loose. But for a fleeting moment, the smoker looks halfway passable as someone who might work in one of Charles’ offices, someone who might sit in a glass building in Oranje or Sur-la-Clef. Someone who doesn’t fuck men twice his age for a living.

Charles’ laughter fades. The two of them stare at the mirror, and the amusement drains from the room as reality sets in.

It’s grotesque, isn’t it? Mocking, even. No matter how well the clothes fit, you’re not someone who belongs in his world. People like you don't receive shirts like this as gifts. And he doesn't find you attractive right now at all, pretending to be pure, to be snow, when he comes all the way here for your trashy perfume. For the way your mascara runs, all sordid and slutty down your face, when he pins you down.  

Charles gently leads him back to the bed, pulls out a box from his suitcase. He opens it, reveals a set of lingerie. The logo says Pegasus Black. It’s luxurious, revealing, seductive. A costume. One for this little play they’re both starring in. The smoker takes the box, fawns over the gift, puts it on for Charles, twirls the black lace in between his fingers.

He sees the hurt in your eyes. You hate how well he can read you now, after all the time you’ve spent together. 

He presses a soft kiss on your wrist, and you almost cry.

"I’ll buy you a shirt next time," Charles murmurs. He looks genuinely sorry. “I just didn’t expect you to want to wear something so… *ennuyeux*.”

"I just want to look good for you," the smoker says lightly, then adds with a playful smirk, "I could always put the tie back on if you’re into office roleplay."

Charles rolls his eyes with affection, and he’s smiling again when the smoker playfully pulls him down onto the bed, begins to undress him.

"I’m tired," Charles says softly, stroking his hair. "I don’t need anything from you tonight."

He nods, swallowing the lump in his throat.

Charles cups his face, tilts his chin up. "It’s because I’m tired," he repeats quietly, "not because of anything else." He runs his thumb tenderly over a slender cheekbone, the rosy lips.

The smoker smiles faintly. “Less work for me, then.”

You know he’s lying to you, to spare your feelings.

It unsettled Charles to see you dressed that way. To consider you as a person, not the *exotique*, barely legal- (ha, barely legal? Please, what are you now, twenty six, twenty seven? And yes, we're talking about now, not when you two first met. You haven't been barely legal in a while, darling) - fine, student rent boy that exists in his head. 

It was better for him when you were just a pleasant weekend, something he didn’t have to think about very hard. And you once delighted in it too, didn't you? You liked being wanted, being desired, being worshipped on a pedestal. Until you got too greedy, too lonely. You can feel it, how all of this is hurtling towards the end.

You idiot.

Charles’ thumb brushes under his eye, catches a tear.

He flinches, make a small, embarrassed sound that might be an apology. Or a laugh.

You don't remember the last time you cried.  

Charles just holds him a little tighter. "Please don't cry. Sleep, *mon lapin*. You look exhausted."

You will wake up to an envelope placed on the table. It will be five times the usual amount. He will leave the shirt for you draped on the mirror. He will never return.

You showed him too much of yourself. 

You think about the girl and boy who were loitering about the apartment the other day. Shining side by side, blinking their starry eyes.

Your gaze caught on the boy. On his porcelain skin, the way his slim body still held on to the fleshy softness of youth. No bony wrists. No marred lungs, little coughs you do your best to hide. And you felt it. That same, ugly feeling you get when you see the newest, brightest young things at the clubs. The ones who still have time to make better choices, who haven’t yet learned the price of things.

You remember him clinging to her like a spoiled kitten, whining until she finally held him back. Him purring contentedly. A creature of relentless hunger and need, one who demands love. One who isn't content to feed on scraps like you do.

You both despised and envied him.

Chapter Text

Death by the Seaside

Day 4, Sunday 

For Precinct 41, working on a Sunday isn’t rare. For Jean, it hasn’t been rare for a long time.

His eyes linger on Caine, who’s hunched over his temporary desk, gingerly wiping the blood dripping from his nose with the back of his wrist.

It’s not the first time the bastard’s bled today. He had been using the ZA/UM all morning on a dead body that washed up on the coast. Another waste of time, a busywork assignment from Captain Smith.

Drunkard walked into canal. Drowned.

An insight that surely wasn’t worth the hundreds of cells in Caine’s head that the machine probably popped like bubble wrap.

Caine reads Guy’s interview over and over again - the details inscribed in Kim’s neat handwriting.

He wishes he could have pried open the Cardinal’s mind, seen what kind of filth lay inside. But nothing about him showed up in their database.

Years of generous donations earn you at least that courtesy from the RCM.

Of course it does.

Caine absentmindedly plays with his pill crusher, rolls it between his spidery fingers. He’s still staring at it when the door opens.

The doctor had been hounding him. You need to take them, Morvail. You’re killing yourself, you need something to stabilize your neurochemicals.

But he always goes a little too long without them. He’s still afraid, like a child, to take the pills whole. And he hates the bitterness in his mouth when the pills are crushed.

“Caine,” Hineira gawks. “You look like shit.”

Hineira snatches the crusher from his hands and grinds the pills with easy familiarity. She glares at Caine like a hawk until he reluctantly swallows, chases it quickly with a carton of apple juice.

“Quid pro quo, Caine. I need a favor.”

Caine exhales. "I always let you do what you want."

And it’s true. He lets her do whatever she’s interested in - dig up old records in the archives, poke the bodies around in Processing, stick her nose in the cases he’s pulled into. She has more freedom than most, a wider rope than he ever gives anyone else.

Jean almost admires it, the trust these two officers share with one another.

Almost.

Hineira leans against his desk, ebullient. “So…Smith wants me on a case. I know, it’s crazy. I can’t believe it. It’s a bank robbery, more than six hundred million reál missing. I called up Precinct 57, thought we may as well use their resources since it matches a string of crimes in their district, could be expansion of operations.”

“You take shortcuts to everything,” Caine murmurs.

Hineira grins. “Well, the thing is…they did arrest someone. Matches the description of time, place, appearance.” She pauses. “They want to bring out the ZA/UM.”

Caine closes his eyes for a second, digs his knuckles into his temple. Hineira notices the tiny flecks of silver there. She’s never noticed it before.

“Fine. When do I head over?”

“I want to do it,” Hineira says quickly. “You’re not feeling well.”

He looks up at her, something sharp in his eyes. “I’m perfectly capable.”

She crosses her arms. “I don’t want to be useless, Caine. I want to actually learn this shit.”

“You aren’t ready.”

Hineira’s eyes flash. "Okay, but maybe I want to actually help people? Not waste my time on cases that go nowhere. We’re keeping the Death by the Seaside case open as a favor to the Moralintern, we all know it.”

Caine squeezes the bridge of his nose. The headache is clearly killing him, but his voice remains steady. Cold. “Everything comes with strings. If you pull too hard, they’ll snap.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be a puppet,” she shoots back. “I would’ve joined Precinct 21 if I did.”

“It’s not as if you’ll do anything to save anyone here, so do lay off the moralizing.” His voice turns soft, mocking. “What do you think will happen after you catch the thief? You’ll make him return the money? To the First Revachol Bank, the one we all benefit from so much?”

Jean grits his teeth as he listens.

So, pain turns Caine cruel.

That’s something he can relate to.

Hineira plants her hands on his desk, leans forward. “Why won’t you let me use the ZA/UM? You think I’m a fuck up,” she presses. “That I can’t control it. But I can. You’re just scared of me fucking up the ECU’s reputation, the myth of the legendary Comrade Fucking Mullen.”

Silence stretches between them.

Then Caine says, very quietly, “Is it so hard to imagine that I care about you?”

Hineira’s breath hitches.

“Just let her try, what’s the harm?”

Jean heads towards Caine’s desk, mug of coffee in hand. This is about to turn into a full on father-daughter bitchfest and he is not in the mood. “You look like shit, Morvail, and not to mention, you owe me one. I need you here at 41.”

Caine hesitates. Then, sighs. He gives Hineira the smallest of nods.

She runs out the door, machine in hand.

"I don’t owe you anything," Caine murmurs, rubbing his temples. "I only gave you what you asked for - a witness. I assumed Du Bois would have a drink or two, not get high out of his mind and seduce Guy Allard. I doubt that was an unreasonable assumption on my end, Detective Vicquemare."

“You should’ve known he’d relapse and raise hell," Jean says flatly.

Caine glances up, eyes sharp. "Not everyone is as greedy as he is. So open about what he wants, despite the consequences." His voice dips lower. "Who knows how long Kitsuragi will stick around."

Oh, he shouldn't be so fucking sure of that. Jean recalls the screaming fits, broken glass, the bruises on his cheek. The way he kept returning to Harry, like a beaten dog, each time. Because he was Harry's shitkid, and Harry was his. 

Jean lets out a bitter laugh. "You’d be surprised at how long people do what they shouldn’t. Anyways. What’s Kenana so pissed off about?"

"Captain Smith announced this morning that everything’s pointing towards an overdose, that perhaps Jake was sensitive to Blue Madeleine. He said we were spending too many hours and officers on this case. I suppose people are worth less every day. Even ones from the Coalition."

Jean snorts.

"But then," Caine continues, "Meijer-Lavoisier, head of Energy and Trade, phones in an hour later and asks him to keep the investigation open. He’s in there with Du Bois and Kitsuragi right now.”

Jean barks out a sharp laugh. "This is bullshit. At this point, there’s no one, nothing that would make sense. Maybe some fucking bum on the shore who hates the Coalition caved Jake’s head in, only, again, there’s no fucking mark anywhere on the body.” His voice turns bitter, mocking. "All of sudden, people are interested in murders that happen in Martinaise?"

Caine exhales slowly, fingers tapping once more on his desk. "Only idiots believe things happen all of a sudden. There’s a reason they’re looking so hard. I just don’t know what."

Jean scoffs. "Ha ha, okay, Comrade Fucking Mullen," he mutters sarcastically.

Still, as he stands, he leaves the coffee on Caine’s desk. “You look like you’re going to keel over. You don’t have to upstage Harry as the most eyesore-inducing bastard on the floor, you know.”

Etienne smooths down the lapels of his tailored suit, his gold-rimmed glasses catching the light for a brief second before he lowers his gaze. He looks a little frazzled - distracted, but not lost. There’s still a sharpness in his eyes, a measured control in the way he carries himself. He's middle aged, elegant in the well-preserved sense; he has the sort of bland handsomeness that comes from half-assed morning jogs, the occasional salmon sperm facial, discreet botox injections. 

"The ECU is an incredibly prescient division," he says. "It will be very useful one day. I requested an audience with them, but they told me to speak to you two instead. That your units are collaborating?"

He continues, voice lowering slightly. "I obviously didn’t want to speak to Caine, given his past with the AIR. It would be…insensitive for me to request his presence, considering the transaction I just helped oversee. But of course, I understand you already know all about it."

Harry’s jaw twitches. Etienne presses on.

"It was regrettable, truly regrettable," he says. "But necessary. Not just for the fund - for you, me, everyone."

Harry groans, dragging a hand down his face. "If you fucking say it was necessary for Price Stabilité…”

Etienne waves a hand, shakes his head. "No, not exactly." He adjusts his glasses. "It relates more to entropy. You see, I think of entropy every single day. I head the Energy and Trade division of the Coalition government. At the risk of boring you, my work spans everything. Energy is the unit of life, after all."

Harry sighs. "Fucking hell, here comes the lecture." 

"As a consequence," Etienne continues smoothly, ignoring him, "I often work with the other branches of government. I understand you already met my colleague Villedrouin over at Price Stabilité."

"Yes. He’s pretty difficult to forget, I've tried."

Harry could swear he sees the corner of Etienne’s mouth twitch, his eyes widen very slightly in tacit agreement. But the moment is fleeting, and Etienne presses on.

”Energy is the capacity for doing work. Not only invested labor, but a generalized physical act of producing change in opposition to forces that resist it. Energy conversions are the very basis of life, of evolution. Modern history can be seen as a sequence of transitions to new energy sources. And the modern world the cumulative result of their conversions. Simply put, energy is the only truly universal currency."

He pauses before continuing, voice quieter. "And yet all energy conversions result in dissipated, low temperature heat. No energy is lost, but its ability to perform work is gone."

He leans back slightly. "That is entropy. That is where the problem lies. We live in a world surrounded by spent energy. Spent ideas. A graveyard of the past." His voice drops lower. "The Pale."

Eventually, most of the Entroponauts sent to venture the Pale are erased by it. They march in armed with their million-reál machines that whisper sequences of large and larger prime numbers to carve paths through the Nothing, emit signals that spike, then stutter, then disappear in the thick.

The Pale seeps through all apertures, spills dead static and impotence. 

Harry frowns. "So what is your job, exactly?"

"My job," Etienne says, "is to work against this slow death of Elysium. Collaborating with EATE is a significant part of it - supporting their efforts to carve routes through the Pale to ensure the flow of commerce, to defeat it with Pale latitude compressors that force structure to something that lacks it.”

Silence again.

Harry exhales sharply. "So? how the hell is any of this relevant?"

Etienne smooths a hand down his sleeve. "Now, detectives. I understand there’s resentment between our parties. But I can assure you the Cardinal has nothing to do with Jake’s death."

Harry narrows his eyes. "And what makes you so sure?" 

"He’s a fundamentally lazy man obsessed with the past," Etienne says simply. "He’s not trying to change the present, he’s dormant. Even his latest action, him trying to buy his way into the fund, is nothing more than an effort to relive his past crusades. Nothing new."

Kim clears his throat. “Mr. Meijer-Lavoisier, what do you know of the deceased?"

"Jake Nelly was a bright man," Etienne says. "Worked mostly under Villedrouin. But he grew up here, in West Revachol. He was adopted out of a Dolorian orphanage in Faubourg at ten. Like many adopted children, he was put on Pale exposure cognitive therapy - which is even more reason the Blue Madeleine shouldn’t have had that much of an effect on him, since his system was already well used to its chemical effects.”

Born in Revachol? People born here don’t end up as Coalition lackeys. He must have been something special. A striver from birth . 

Kim frowns. "And why was this missing from his medical records? The psychotherapy drugs didn’t show up in the autopsy, either."

Etienne shakes his head. "The chemical properties are similar to Blue Madeleine. The two are indistinguishable even in official reports. And as much as society has progressed, there is still a certain…stigma around Pale exposure therapy." He quickly rushes to reassure them. “Not that it should be considered shameful, of course.” 

Harry rubs his temple. "So what, exactly, are you suggesting?"

Etienne hesitates, exhales. "I have a theory," he says carefully. "You’ll think I’m positively insane, but I need you to hear me out." He meets their gazes. "I believe the circumstances of Jake’s death are Pale-related. That this is an isolated entroponetic event. That is why I want you to keep looking into this."

Kim blinks. "Pale-related?"

Etienne nods. "Yes. And I have a precedent." His fingers tap nervously against the table. "I once knew a young man named Rene. A mutual friend between me and Alik - you’ve both spoken to her. He was her roommate back in Sur-la-Clef, in a town called Saint Gallo. And he…"

He stops, then sighs shakily. "He disappeared, left no trace behind. And I get the same feeling about this case as I had back then - something that's impossible to describe to you, detectives, but it’s as if I can sense it in the atmosphere, the same terrible taste in the air. Flavorless, and cold.”

The room goes still.

Kim frowns. "And the police?"

"They didn’t want to look into it." Etienne presses on, words turning inelegant and rushed. "You see, he worked in the red-light district. Completely harmless, I assure you, but he had the sort of undesirable profile that they didn’t find worth investigating," His voice dips lower. "But the things he said before he disappeared…"

He looks down at the table. "He could feel the emptiness growing inside of him, he told me. A hole at the center of him - dissolving everything." He exhales shakily. "I wasn’t there for him. It frightened me, the things he was saying. I thought…maybe if he got some rest, if he just left it alone, he’d be fine."

The worst part was how he wouldn’t even cry out. The way he would just fold. A frightened fawn, weak-legged, eyes wide, hunched over himself. The outlines of people and things are thin, and fragile, he said. They stretch, then snap. 

Ambiguity and uncertainty drove Etienne into a rage. Never outright, never directly - only through cold eyes and tight smiles. He used to take Alik aside, speak to himself through the guise of comforting her.  

“He's gone insane, completely insane."

"He isn't like you, who found a job, something productive to work towards. None of his talents found an outlet, and it has all ended up in his face, his legs, his ass. He sells himself, for money, even though I provide everything."

" Does he even know how many strings I pulled to keep him out of the reaches of the Moralintern? To erase his name from the Stelcore mess, keep him safe? He's ungrateful, like a child." 

“…But the RCM is different, I am sure of it. You will be able to find things the police back in Sur-la-Clef couldn’t.”

Harry scoffs, but Etienne politely protests. “I promise you, it’s not a matter of funding or resources.”

“What makes you all such dogshit cops?”

Etienne blanches, then laughs uncertainly. “We do have decent qualities of our own. We’re cultured, for one thing - we read Graadian novels, collect Kedran ceramics. But if we were in charge of policing this place, the solve rate would be in the negatives,” his voice trails off. “It’s not in our nature to look at the ugly things, I suppose.”

They prefer to suffocate on their own beauty.

Kim studies him. "Mr. Meijer-Lavoisier. Are you sure this isn’t just you trying to make sense of a senseless disappearance?"

Etienne is quiet for a long time. Then, finally speaks. "No,” His voice is firm. "At this point, it sounds awful, but I wish they’d dug up a corpse."

There is a canal in Saint Gallo - a stream of brown water that flows out to the sea. When the weather turns warmer, green sprouts awaken, stirred by spring rain. Rats drag their slimy bellies through the thawing dirt, over the vegetation on the bank. Sniffing, chewing. And digging, digging, digging.

He hopes that one day, with their yellowed nails, they will coax a strange white blossom to bloom. Teeth, its petals. Long lovely tibia, its stalk. Pieces of skull, its roots.

Etienne takes off his glasses, rubs the bridge of his nose. "I am not here to speak to you as a member of the Moralintern, detectives. I am not here in any official capacity - my call to Captain Smith was a favor, not an order."

"Rene has devoured my mind. If there is even the slightest chance this case can help me discern what happen to him, I must take it. So gentlemen, please. Was there anything, anything at all about Jake’s behavior that was unusual? Anything that could point towards any evidence of Pale manifestation?”

His gaze is that of a madman, one who rolls regrets like pearls in his head. He told the truth - he's not speaking to you as a representative from the Coalition. He's speaking to you as a pathetic coward: man to man, heart to heart.

He wants to die. You don't even have the heart to tell him he should fucking try. That maybe both of you should just fucking try.

Harry speaks slowly. "Guy did mention that whatever Jake saw after he took the Blue Madeleine, it freaked him out. It wasn’t the normal junkie shit.” 

Etienne straightens. "Good." His eyes gleam. "This is a very good start.”

Kim sighs, exasperated. "Are both of you insane? First of all, we know Blue Madeleine is a gamble - no one knows whose memories they’ll end up with, there’s no guarantee Jake even experienced his own. Second, I see no evidence connecting a missing persons case from years ago to the death of a public service officer in the present. May I remind you, Mr. Meijier-Lavoisier, that Jake’s corpse is currently laying on a gurney down at the Processing Unit? That he didn’t just dissolve into the Pale, like you seem to believe Rene did? There’s nothing here to investigate.”

Etienne shakes his head. "What would shock Jake, a man who’s been repressing his past his entire life, more than his own memories? What else would cause him to act so erratically, to jeopardize his deal with the Cardinal?“

Kim exhales sharply, turns towards Harry. "How exactly would we even start investigating something like this? We aren’t hunting for a suspect, or a murder weapon.”

Harry thinks for a moment, then finally speaks. "Look. I don't investigate things just because the Moralintern tells me to. There's something here, I can feel it. We can check out the orphanage - we'll find something there.”

Etienne smiles faintly. "I’m sure something will come up." His voice drops lower. "The past has a way of resurfacing. That is why, for this case, you must spiral inwards, detectives. Find this memory of Jake's and you will find the source of the Pale - the exit wound.”

Little does Etienne Meijer-Lavoisier know he’s speaking to a man who was once brought to his knees by the scent of artificial apricots. One who's crawled back to the life that he swore he wouldn't live in. You know all too well the horror of the past, the debilitating force of memories. It was Kim, wasn’t it? The one who pulled you out, resuscitated you, brought you back to life. Pressed water to your lips - the sweetest thing you’ve ever tasted.

Did you know that a human being can disappear into vapor? Seafoam, floating on the tide of the past. 

Hold on to him tight, Harry-boy. You’ll drown otherwise.

The magnet train hurtles through the Pale towards Sur-la-Clef, vibrating slightly as it cuts across space that isn’t space at all. Outside, nothing. Not even darkness - just the concept of something that had once been. No horizon. No sky. Just an absence that stretches forever. 

Inside the cabin, Brettson clings to Alik like a child. His thin fingers curl into her sleeve, his breath warm against her shoulder. He won’t look at the windows, won’t lift his head. He’s all bare collarbones and visible ribs, shaking and cold. 

Other patrons in the cabin keep glancing their way and Etienne’s body goes rigid with mortification. They probably think he’s some sort of sleazy official, that Brettson is the discount rent boy he picked up on Boogie Street, that Alik is his prissy personal assistant slash mistress; that this is all some sordid little arrangement held together by taxpayer money.

“Tell me,” he says, voice hushed. “Was it absolutely necessary to bring him with you, Alik?”

“Come on,” she coaxes Brettson, stretching out her legs. “It’s just the Pale. It’s nothing. Literally.”

He makes a strangled noise of protest and curls up closer, his lips brushing against the hollow of her throat. Painfully pretty, always begging to be touched, to be held, to be played with. And for a second, she has a mean thought. 

He’s just like some kind of toy. Squish it, and he makes a cute little squeak.

“You should see those Pale latitude compressors they use now," she says. "They take billions of reál to manufacture.” She stops, sneers. “That’s a thought, isn’t it? You throw enough money at something, and the world will bend around you.”

Etienne's hassled face softens. They always comfort him - her wry words and dead-man eyes. He folds his newspaper, tells them a small anecdote about the Weiss-Wiesemann coefficient. He swears he's met a billionaire once, in Ozonne, so rich he reflects light like a prism.

"The laws of physics begin to bend around 0.96," he says. "And back then I was being paid even less."

The story is so ridiculous that Brettson slowly disentangles himself from Alik and laughs. Etienne begins to smile, until the train jolts upwards sharply from sudden turbulence. Brettson immediately whimpers and plants his face into Etienne’s lapel, while Etienne gazes into the distance with a haggard, ashen calm.

Alik rolls her eyes, grasps Etienne’s clammy hand in hers. 

But inside, she doesn’t believe a word she just said, doesn't trust in her own snarling swagger. God knows she thinks about the Pale more than she wants to.

There had been a time, long ago, when she thought Rene was the softest person she knew- the gentlest. A delicate, wilting thing. His voice always small, his hands always cold. He was polite and quiet, and it was easy to mistake him for passive.

But Rene changed things. Everything about him was transformation, as if whatever he touched set off some sort of chain reaction.

His body, his name had never felt like his own - so he changed them.

The world around him was cruel - so he wanted to change that too.

Alik joined EATE straight out of university. At the same time, Rene threw himself into activism with an intensity that bordered on desperation. He founded the Reagents: a small collective of radicals, Infra-Materialists, factory workers, sex workers, and vagrants.

Etienne had tolerated Rene’s activism when he found it cute and harmless. He loved the Saint Gallo Youth soup kitchens and food drives. He had smiled - paternal and condescending. “I love how passionate you get about these things. You have such a kind heart.”

And it was as if, all at once, Rene knew Etienne found his work trivial. He always gave too much thought to Etienne's opinions, no matter how much he pretended not to.

You will never tell Etienne this, you know it will break his heart, really do him in this time.

There was a time when he'd try to pick fights with you - raid your room and dump out all the drugs, find you catatonic and still in your sheets, shake your shoulders and scream in your face.

Why yell, Etienne? you'd say. I'm not going to fight. You lay there, palms upturned - praying for the Blue Madeleine to kick in, desolate that it never really did.

He sat by your bed, put his head in his hands, and cried. That's the problem, Alik, he said.

Officially, the turning point had been Stelcore.

The corporation called itself a "disaster capitalist” enterprise during its earning calls -  the type that set up clean energy factories back home while thriving on catastrophe abroad - in Semenine, Kedra, Sao. War, famine, natural disasters—all opportunities, all exploited. They were always there, ready to strike real estate deals, acquire infrastructure contracts, swallow cheap foreign labor. Their ties to the Moralintern granted them ironclad legal protections.

They were one of those companies not to fuck with. Rene’s friends started turning up dead. Lorry accidents. Drownings. Drug overdoses. 

You honestly didn't see much of a conspiracy at first. It didn't help all of the Reagents were from the most vulnerable, the most marginalized corners of society. It sounds bad to say out loud, but they were just the type of people who tended to end up dead. They didn't have a high-ranking Coalition bureaucrat looking out for them. 

But Rene was inconsolable, convinced all of it was his fault - that he instigated everything by bringing the Reagents together, by being overly ambitious, by choosing Stelcore of all companies to fuck with.

I want to erase myself from everything, he said, head in his hands. I want none of this to have happened.

After that, something inside him began to decay.

It started with the headaches. The first time she saw it happen, they were at home, preparing dinner. She remembers their bare feet on the kitchen linoleum, the courgettes he was slicing for stew.

His hands suddenly spasmed. The knife slipped from his grip. She caught his arm before he could collapse. His skin was ice-cold. He just shook, violently, barely keeping himself upright, his fingers curling into the fabric of her sleeve, eyes blown wide in that blank, stricken terror.

He kept gripping her arms desperately, incomprehensibly begging her to stay together - as if she were disintegrating in front of him and he was doing all he could to keep her in one piece.

And the episodes kept returning. It’s growing inside of me, he kept saying.

Something slides around in his body - his pelvis shifts, his muscles rearrange to form a birthing canal, a viscous fluid flows deep in the cavity behind his hips. And in the center of it all, a creature writhes - blind and malformed, lacking both shape and voice, unable to scream, to conceive of screaming. A creature invisible and imperceptible, born to destroy the margins between persons and things and memory and desire. Until everything blends together into something shapeless and unrecognizable, until all there is and ever was, around everyone and everything forever, is nothingness. Dead data. Stagnant air. 

How fragile we all are, Rene thinks. How insufficient. 

He laughed. Breathless, strange. "It's like I’m.. like I’m pregnant with it," he said. "You’d think all this gender dysphoria stuff is behind me, I'm too fucking old for this.”

You hadn’t even known he was trans until then, you never pieced it together. You thought for years that he had diabetes whenever he asked you, apologetic smile on his face, to inject him with a syringe very morning.

Yeah. You were - still are - kind of fucking stupid.

Etienne was driven to his wits end. He kept carting Rene to hospital after hospital, begging the doctors to fix him. They took scan after scan, checking for everything - stomach cancer, uterine tumors, ovarian disease. Nothing. He just needs rest, the doctors said. He’s exhausted, hysterical.

This continued for months until one night, Rene had curled up next to Alik, held her hand. She rubbed his crooked wrist, the one that never healed right - he always found that comforting.

He whispered in her ear that the last Reagent died last night. Lea Durand, twenty eight years old. Cannery worker during the day, stripper at night. Strangled, then mangled by a supposed client. They could only identify her by her glass platform heels, where she had carved her initials on the bottom. She liked debating Infra-Materialism, laughing at mawkish poetry, shitting on Rene’s taste in men. 

This is what I do, Alik, he said. I throw things off balance, make horrible things happen. I change things. 

That’s what I am.

And I can’t stop.

He started crying, wiped at his face as she held him close. He eventually calmed down, enough to link their hands together and give a watery laugh that tickled her ear.

“You don’t open yourself up to me, darling. I show you all the ugly parts of me, but you never show me yours.”

He was gone the next morning. No note. No trace.

It was as if he disappeared into thin air.

Alik stares out of the cabin window, peers into the white heart of nothing. A chill runs down her shoulder - she can feel the world growing colder. 

Well, here's to Rene. This is what he wanted, isn't it? For you to show him everything so clearly.

How you're trashing your life like it's a hotel room. Jacking up valuations on dead children's shoes for a paycheck. Doing cherry speed with that squeak-toy of a boy just because you're lonely. Now that you've shown him all of yourself - all of the filth underneath - he has to come back.

Until then, without him, life is just a lullaby. Everything will flow. Even though you lie through your teeth to Etienne that you're working very hard at not thinking that way - that you're trying harder to make things matter.

A few hours from now, Guy Allard will call from the hospital in the dead of night. He will be quiet and sweet and sorry. He will promise, for the fourth time, that he's going to try to turn his life around - maybe try out that luxury rehab center down in Ozonne.

She will feel as if she has to tell him something, something very important: that she understands the reason why he makes bets he can't remember, why he still keeps playing anyway. That she too has seen where the nothing begins. That they are the same. 

But today, in the first class cabin of the Interisolary North-Bound Express Magnet Train, Alik wordlessly tightens her hold on Etienne’s hand. Their two Mont-Blanc aux marrons colored heads press in a knot.

At this point - several years later, with the privilege of hindsight - there are many things they would like to say.

It's kinder to let each other live, instead.

Chapter Text

Death by the Seaside 

Day 5, Monday

Kretz Bakalarz sits in his room. He looks older than the thirty four in his medical records. His hair, skin, and teeth are all the same sickly shade of flax. Everything in the room is white: the walls, the bed, the standard-issue asylum gown.

Kim reads from his file. “Kretz Bakalarz. Schoolteacher at Saint-Batiste Intermediary School for five years. Murdered your own student - Merle Vargova, twelve.”

He'd read the 84th's case packet with his jaw clenched . Kretz had moved Merle to the front row of his classroom, kept her after school to wipe down the chalkboard, fold the chairs. She tapped chalk from the erasers as he pawed at her hair, smiling. And every teacher, every administrator close enough to see what was going on had shrugged it off, said she’s a hideous little thing, how could there be anything inappropriate going on here? It burns like acid inside Kim’s chest.

Funny enough, it was still inappropriate enough that when she turned up in the stairwell with her neck snapped, everyone knew exactly where to point. “Those motherfuckers,” Harry had said, crumpling the file. He’d never admit it, but Kim was grateful for the unprofessionalism. He realizes he needs Harry to say the things he himself can't. 

“It seems you managed to get life imprisonment instead of the chaise by pleading insanity,” Kim says, closing his folder. “But we aren't here to talk about that. We’re going even further back - to the Sisters of Compassion Orphanage. Back to Jake Nelly.”

Harry stands nearby, leaning against the wall. When he wants to be, he's downright terrifying, he bores his bloodshot eyes through Kretz’s head. But his thoughts are far from the case.

He's thinking of Kim’s lean arms, the curve of his lips. That’s the thing about confession - you can't lie to yourself again. 

He’s never considered himself a homosexual. He knows he needs to feel things and he needs things to feel good. So, yes - he likes that he can leer at anyone, man or woman, like slabs of meat. He likes that he can think about the smoker on the balcony and jerk off to the memory of his soft laugh. He likes when a man like Guy Allard rolls around and he can gnaw on bone and pull hair like an animal, high on nitrates.

He wants to punch Guy’s face, then let Guy punch him back so they’re even. He wants to complain of a bruised jaw for years. No love - just sex, biology, atavistic attraction. Nothing to do with the homosexual underground, or what his pre-Martinaise self once so eloquently called the whole fag thing.   

There’s a night you barely remember. Jean fetched you from some bar that threw you out. He was too exhausted to yell as he drove you home. In your gratefulness, you leaned over and spewed your hot Commodore Red breath in his face, all spit and affection, until your tongue was in his mouth, your teeth tearing at his lips. He made a small squeak like a mouse, clawed at your face - toward him or away, you don't recall. You pulled away, lips wet, said you were fucking hammered, threw up all over his lap.

He stopped in front of your apartment, you couldn’t see his expression.

“No, shit. Get out.”

But it only takes one look at Kim for Harry to know himself better than he ever has in forty-four years. He no longer wants to get mean, to bite bloody gouges. He wants to hold Kim’s face when he cries. He wants to kiss his forehead, for Kim to kiss him back. He wants Kim to look into his eyes and love him. He wants the love to be so big that it dazes him.

He wants to start his whole life over again.

He wants to promise he’d do it right this time.

You just can’t get enough, can you? Love already did you in, and you’re begging for more. A one-man death cult worshipping annihilation.

His thoughts are interrupted by a hoarse laugh.

“Jake Nelly? Detectives, some mornings I wake up and don’t even remember my own name, let alone things from decades ago.”

Hineira folds her hands, and leans in. The light glints off her hei-tiki necklace - gleaming eyes staring. Kretz has to look away, the bright green of it hurts him, disrupts this white room, the snowed-in lull of his mind.

“You seem lucid enoughm Mr. Bakalarz, considering these doctors fry your brains every morning before breakfast. The orphanage closed ten years ago, we're one of the few people who know that's where Jake grew up."

She gestures casually towards the wall, where a single sentence scrawled in black paint disrupts the sheer blankness of the room.

EVERYTHING IS IN A ZONE OF IMMINENT ENTROPONETIC COLLAPSE

“You’re a fan of entroponetics?”

Kretz lets out a dry laugh. “No. I don’t write it because I believe it, sweetheart. The words are burned into my head. They never leave me...”

“Yeah, it happens." Hineira snorts. "God knows I think of the crap my ex used to say. But you’re in luck, Mr. Bakalarz, you won’t have to remember a thing - we’ll do it for you.”

She opens the ZA/UM case, pulls out a yellow tube and expertly inserts it into Kretz’s arm. He doesn't resist, eyes roaming over her blue-lined eyes, her full mouth. His mouth stretches into a crooked grin. “If only you were the one to find me back then. That beast broke my nose, three ribs while handcuffing me.”

She snaps the black cuff around his bicep. “If I found you, we’d be shoving this cannula into your rotting corpse.” She spools the other yellow tube in her hand and is about to insert the needle in her forearm when Caine interrupts.

"You already used the device yesterday. Our station policy limits ZA/UM exposure to twice monthly, Detective Kenana.”

Hineria scoffs. “Yeah, except you used it all morning. This memory is years old, it’s gonna take forever to find. You already look like you’re going to fall over. Hand me a cigarette, and I’ll be fine.”

Caine’s mouth draws into a thin line. He crosses his arms, stays silent. But she’s right. He’s even paler than usual, his nervous system a crackling raw wire.

Harry fishes a cigarette out, lights it before handing it to Hineira. “For you, Detective. You’ll kill it.”

She takes it while trying to be nonchalant, to hide the smile that’s forming around her lips. It’s clear that Caine, for all his protectiveness, is stingy with both praise and validation.

So, Kim does feel a little guilty when he cuts in. “I’ll do it.”

Harry turns to stare towards Kim.

“I grew up in an orphanage too. I don’t know the exact mechanisms, but having this commonality should speed retrieval, no?”

No one but Harry looks at Kim closely enough to notice his reluctance. They only see the strait-laced lieutenant, not the child underneath.

Orphan Kim is all knobby knees. Orphan Kim has a fifth sense for predicting violence before it happens, is good at dodging punches. His childhood had been simple. Either you made life hell for others, or they made it hell for you. Scrawny and nearsighted, he didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter. But that was the lesson, and he learnt it quicker than most. And to adapt, he learned to be polite, to be controlled, to be better. He couldn’t befriend the other children, so he put his faith in the adults - hoping they would see his obedience, his studiousness, and stick up for him. And still, it hadn’t been enough. They saw straight through him.

Caine hesitates, then nods. He tries and fails not to look grateful, and briskly snatches the cigarette out of Hineria’s mouth. “Yes, Detective Kitsuragi - you have a point. Similar experiences can ease retrieval, and reduce strain.” He fiddles with his watch. “I’ll set this for thirty seconds, no longer.”

Harry’s mouth parts slightly. “So, you’re saying it’s still dangerous?"

Kim throws Harry's words back to him, a little smug. “You have to trust me.”

Caine glances between them, then takes the yellow hose from Hineira. “We’ll bring him back. Don’t worry.”

With that, he slides the needle carefully in Kim’s arm.

And instantly, it’s as if Kretz’s scalp peels open, displaying the soft brain inside. Technicolor images transmit shockwaves down Kim's teeth, sending scent and taste and texture flooding into his cortex. Then, he doesn’t know how, but he finds it. In the burnt wreckage of Kretz’s mind, a pair of golden eyes turn and look straight at him, sizzling like a tiger's.

Kretz is nine, and he is in love with Gloria Ines. 

She isn’t what adults call pretty. Sister Katarina calls her an ugly little thing - all matted red hair and scrawny limbs. She doesn’t have Anna’s pink ivory skin, Flora’s blonde braids. Her eggshell-colored limbs are always covered in dirt and bruises. But her eyes are a striking shade of golden brown - like a gemstone. 

She's the smartest girl in the orphanage. Kretz even thinks she may be the smartest person in the world, though the teachers prefer Jake with his quiet manners and textbook answers. The same way Gloria shines bright, too bright to look at, Jake seems almost faded: pale skin, watercolor blue eyes. Next to Gloria, he blends into the background, a silent doll she drags around. 

Kretz loves how Gloria argues, doesn’t even bother raising her hands during their lessons. Whether it’s history, math, or literature, she takes everything apart like a clock, pries it open and picks out all the faulty gears, puts the pieces back together to make something new. Kretz can ace his poetry quizzes - but Jake’s always there with his perfect scores, while Gloria laughs like God and rattles entire stanzas from memory, replacing little words here and there to change the whole meaning. She twists and fold her tests into white paper flowers and lines them on her desk - a May Bell Queen.

She’s different. They all know it, and loathe and admire her for it.

Gloria’s favorite topic is: the end of the world. At recess, the children gather around her, half-jeering, half-afraid. Jake sits reliably by her side, holds her books for her as she gestures around with violent vigor.

“The Pale is made of the past,” she says. “Everything we throw away is piled up there, abandoned. As time passes, the pile gets bigger and bigger, until it spreads everywhere and destroys everything around it. Everything is in a zone of imminent entroponetic collapse.”

“So you’re saying the world will end, then?” Kretz asks, laughing.

“Yes, Gloria, when? Are we all going to die?” Flora fiddles with her golden hair, nervous. 

Gloria's eyes narrow, she smirks.

“That’s right, and I dunno when for sure, only that it’ll definitely happen while we’re alive. The Pale is going to eat you, me, the world, everything.”

Jake smiles, rolls a blade of grass between his fingers. “Kretz, at least this means you don’t have to study for that history final.” He takes Gloria’s hand. He softly says he’s hungry. Asks, can they can go and find something to eat? Always gentle, always asking for permission.

But Kretz doesn’t want her talking about the Pale with Jake. He wants to see Gloria in kitten heels. He wants to spin her around in the courtyard, wants to kiss her chapped lips, wants the sound and impact of their feet hitting the cobblestones when they’ll run out of the orphanage and leave this place behind.

One day, the man from Sur-la-Clef visits. Charles Villedrouin. He smiles at the front of the classroom and says he works for the Coalition and is here to assess socioeconomic conditions. He hands out glossy pamphlets with smiling cartoon animals. The children promptly fold them into paper airplanes and throw them at each other. The Sisters giggle and ask where he is from - they know he can only be from somewhere far away from here.

His clothes, his face, everything about him is utterly bland and standard and *ennuyeux*. And yet, it all looks somehow elegant on him. Kretz doesn’t like him - his too-white teeth, his too-white shirt, the condescending, stilted way he speaks. 

Jake catches Charles' eye immediately - the good grades, the even better manners.

“Would you like to leave this place?”

Kretz is hurrying from the bathroom, fingers still soapy, when he quietly ducks behind the door. Everyone else is out for recess.

Jake and Charles sit on the stairwell. It’s comical to see Charles like this, stooping like a child, knees up, expensive suit jacket crumpled. Above their heads, Her Innocence Dolores Dei gleams - her silvery face lit bright by the afternoon sun, terrible eyes shining. 

“Where would I go?”

“With a family I know. They are good people, from Sur-la-Clef. You’d live ze sort of life you couldn’t even dream of here. It would be *super*.”

“Gloria,” Jake says, quietly. “She’s the smarter one. She should come with me.”

Charles smiles. It isn’t cruel, but it isn’t kind either. “She wouldn’t do well out there,” he says. “And you two make each other sharper. You cut each other. Sometimes…” He adjusts his cuff. “Sometimes, I think it's better to let go.”

She’s bright but burns too hot, Charles means. She’s uncontainable, and I won't let her ruin you too.

Jake doesn’t answer, he doesn’t have to. Charles sees it in his eyes.

“I’ll come back,” he says. “When ze paperwork is done.”

For weeks, the orphanage buzzes with excitement. Adoption is a rare event here. The children crowd around Jake as he shows them the latest gift from Charles. It’s a small stuffed rabbit, white and fluffy.

“He gives me things,” Jake says. “A watch. Weird Franconigerian figurines. This. I think he wants me to look after them.”

Gloria scoffs. “He wants you to be soft, to be gentle,” she murmurs, “They always do that. They rip out your teeth and your claws.”

Jake stays silent, his fingers rub against the rabbit’s ears.

“Men like Charles,” she says, low and steady, “they think they own the world. They walk in here, laughing at this shithole we live in, looking at us like we’re something to be bought. Chosen or left behind.”

Kretz and the rest of the children grow quiet, listen to Gloria speak.

“And we know which one I am. Which one the rest of us are,” Her eyes blaze. “You know, I’m glad he picked you. Even if he’s not going to bother saving anyone else.”

It’s cruel, even for her. Anna starts to cry, and Kretz feels a cold unease creep up on his shoulders. For the first time, they all understand. They're unwanted.

Jake hands Gloria the rabbit, folds his hands over hers. She spits that she doesn’t want it, but Jake shakes his head. In a small voice, he says that he doesn’t want her to forget him. She blinks hard, snatches the doll by its ears, storms up to her room.

The paperwork is sorted. The day soon comes. He and Gloria stand in the courtyard, awkward and cold. She holds the stuffed rabbit in her arms and refuses to look at his eyes. Jake stares at his shoes.

“Hey binoclard!” Kretz pelts a stone. It misses Gloria and scrapes Jake’s cheek. He’s flanked by the other children - Anna, Flora, and the biggest boys in their year - Lukas and Hanz.

Their eyes are blown black with anger. They reek of dirty hair and adrenaline - the stench of orphans and cornered animals. 

“You never shut up about how the Pale,” Kretz drawls, kicking at the gravel under his feet, “So we thought, what if we feed you to it?”

Anna smirks. “Human sacrifice.”

More rocks hurl through the air.

Jake steps in front of Gloria, his eyes flash in rare anger. “Cut it out.”

But Gloria shoves him aside. Jake starts to argue, to walk back towards her, then stops.

She has the talent of getting under people’s skins, driving them mad, bringing out all the ugly things.

He is tired suddenly, he tells himself to sit back for once and watch her ruin her life. Maybe it will teach her a lesson for her own good.

His arms fall back limply to his side. Lukas and Hanz grab Gloria by her skinny shoulders and shove her towards the latrine, kicking and screaming. 

Anna and Flora squeal and pinch their noses as Kretz stomps at the wooden platform of the outhouse, widens the hole to expose the foul-smelling pit below. A literal shithole - so deep, so dark, that Kretz can’t see the bottom.

“We’re not unwanted,” Kretz pants. “It’s only you, you’re a curse. The rest of us are fine. They’ll choose us.”

For the first time, Gloria’s eyes widen. She’s scared.

Anna cackles. “Do it, Kretz!”

Jake’s mouth opens slightly and he steps forward, but it’s too late.

Hanz and Lukas throw Gloria down the gap. Kretz lifts the rabbit from the ground, tenderly brushes the grass from its fur , and flings it down after her. He doesn’t hear Gloria hit the bottom, was there even a splash, a scream? The only noise in his head is the roar of blood rushing through his brain.

They stand for what seems like hours. Motionless, listening for a sound that never comes. 

“Are you ready to leave?”

Charles opens and strides towards Jake, smiling. He doesn’t notice Hanz and Lukas dripping with sweat, Kretz panting, Anna and Flora biting their nails, or the fact that Gloria is nowhere to be seen. He always had eyes for Jake alone - the only toy in the charity shop that caught his attention.

“Jake, is something wrong?” He’s too polite to comment on the terrible smell in the air.

Jake stares at Charles, and Kretz knows exactly what he’s thinking. Show Charles the shithole, ask for help, save Gloria, and then he will see Jake for the filth he is, realize that he’s just the same as the rest of them - insects, crawling in the dirt.

No Mont Blanc aux Marrons, light and sweet.

No tickets to the theater, satin sheets and warm bathwater, too.

No more Sur-la-Clef, where every day becomes more joyful, and these small comforts compound into a life worth living.

“I’m ready. Let’s go.”

Jake’s hand slips into Charles’. He tightens his grip on the long fingers - white, and soft, so soft. Charles flinches a little at the sudden closeness, then smiles and squeezes back. He opens the gate, and leads Jake out.

Neither of them look back.

The timer beeps, sharp and insistent, and Kim hurtles back to the present. His head spins. The rotting stench of the latrine pervades the white room. Harry grips his arm, eyes wide.

Kretz is trembling in his chair, he hides his face with his hands.

“Oh god… her eyes…. I’ll never forget her eyes…”

“You left her in the fucking pit?!”

“No! I…” Tears stripe Kretz’s sallow cheeks. “…I loved her. I left her there for an hour at most. I dropped a rope, begged her to climb up, screamed until I lost my voice. But she wouldn’t answer, and I couldn’t see her down there, in that darkness…”

Harry gently helps Kim to his feet, eases him aside as Hineria steps in.

“…We went to the adults the next morning," Kretz says. "They tore the outhouse down and opened the entire cistern. I still remember the stench.”

“And?" Hineira pushes. "Was she dead?”

“No,” Kretz whispers. “She wasn’t there. She vanished completely, they couldn’t even find her damn rabbit,” He sobs openly now, tears dripping on his lap. “Gloria…oh, Gloria…Merle’s hair was close, could get me half-hard, but I knew her lips wouldn’t taste the same. Her mouth was soft, too soft, and so I reached out and snapped her stupid, skinny neck…”

Kim’s face darkens, and he’s about to lunge when Harry holds him back.

“Take it easy.”

Hineria manages to hold back her shudder and continues. “Good, keep going. Think, has Jake ever attempted to contact the orphanage again, to find her?”

Kretz bares his chipped teeth. “That bastard left us all to drown in the mud."

Here in the mud, the Cardinal is bored. He longs for the days when he felt like a god, sending families to the RCM’s abattoirs. Now, he has to settle for less, rant to the pretty maid about murderous immigrants and homosexuals, live comfortably off whatever dividends he'll receive from the EATE Standard Resource Fund XXV. He will die wealthy, and alone. 

Here, an art student stares at the term paper held between his nicotine stained fingers. A+. He’s perhaps the only student at the Revachol École des Arts who understands what the hell Metahemeralism is. He'll finally graduate. It should fill him with joy, but the finality of it frightens him. This dream was special to him, well-cultivated. The rest have long wrinkled and gone black, rotting at his feet. 

Here, Etienne Meijer-Lavoisier after much careful deliberation decides to cut off all aid meant for Tien-en. It's election season after all, and austerity just polls better these days. People will starve to death because of this, the famine is bad this year. But he forces himself to turn his gaze away, he doesn’t associate himself with what’s happening. It takes great moral courage, great civic commitment to compartmentalize so effectively, under such distracting circumstances.

Kretz is sobbing once again, snot glistening on his chin. “Why did she have to love him, and not me? I would have stayed with her forever.”

Kim meets Kretz's filmy eyes. “You hurt her, maybe even killed her - how can you call that love?”

“Oh, Detective. Hurting, loving, they’re the same thing," He keeps talking, and Kim wants him to stop. Feels the urge to clamp a hand over that yellow mouth. “That’s why he didn’t step in when we circled her like rabid dogs. He was incapable of hurting anything, so he was incapable of loving anything. He betrayed her with his softness.”

Three weeks earlier

Jake Nelly's doorbell rings. He turned thirty five last month and lives on the top floor of The Combray - a luxury apartment conveniently located just outside the Vermillion Circle, minutes away from his office. It’s also close to the Pavilion Restaurant, where he often orders overpriced takeout like the fig salad he’s eating now. He has the best Sur-la-Clef has to offer.

But there was a rare error in the kitchen and the chefs have included slices of rare steak - bright red and bloody. He pushes it to the side with his fork, tries to eat around the pink leaves. Charles always jokes that Jake’s culinary tastes offend him. Mon dieu. Heaven forbid you eat something with actual flavor.

Jake opens the door, fork still in his mouth. A single package awaits, crudely wrapped in newspaper and duct tape. Still, he’s careful with the wrapping, it’s in his nature to be methodical. He slowly uncovers a stuffed rabbit. A drop of blood falls from his fork and hits its furry face.

Even after two decades, a single glance is enough. He's on his knees, clutching his head, agonizing pain throbbing behind his eyes. Somewhere deep inside, he recognizes the toy that Charles gifted him, which he gave to Gloria, which was thrown into the gaping maw of the monster slumbering in the cistern. 

That same part of himself leans forward and listens carefully, waiting in both terror and breathless delight to hear her footsteps in the hall, her childish, mocking little voice echo in elevator bank E. Her dusty-soled feet would track mud all over the marble tiles. Oh, God. What a bright, clean pain he feels when he hears only silence. 

But he doesn't know this yet. For now, all he knows is that for some reason, he cannot stand to look at the blood, to be confronted by the snowy white rabbit all reproachful and wounded. The red hurts him, its vividness seems to suck all the oxygen from the room, sink its into his lungs.

His heart pounds rapidly as he dials Charles. He doesn’t have to wait long.

“Jake?”

“Charles, it’s the headaches again.” Jake's voice is shaky, he hasn’t had one in decades. “There was a package morning, a toy rabbit -”

Charles pauses for a very long time. He remembers the soft toy he had picked out all those years ago. And along comes the memories of the petting zoos, dog parks, all the tricks to coax a little life out of Jake. But Jake would always hang back, just a little. He couldn’t see the value in rabbits or other fluffy pets. For a long time, he only saw vermin, meat. Charles never reprimanded him for it - you have to be careful what you say around children. They remember things forever. 

He finally speaks. “Listen to me. Take your medication - twice the usual dose. Then call your doctor, do you hear me? See her immediately.”

Jake nods before remembering Charle's can't see him. "I will." 

“And ze lapin, put it away. I’ll come fetch it tonight, throw it out.” 

Jake exhales. “What could be this important?”

On his eleventh birthday, two months post Pale exposure therapy, Jake had said he couldn't remember the orphanage. That the name Gloria didn't mean anything to him at all. And Charles laughed. He couldn't be happier. He asked Jake if he'd learned to break hearts all on his own.

"I didn't teach you that." 

Charles cuts over him. “Enough. It’s a waste of your time to ponder these things, to endanger your health, and for what? Memories of a boy who doesn’t exist anymore.”

His voice hardens. “It's because of the EATE fundraise in Revachol, isn’t it? They’re floundering and now come asking the government for help. I knew it wasn’t a good idea for you to get involved in that mess but no, you insisted.”

“I didn’t mean to make you worry," Jake sighs. "I’m heading there in a few days. I’ll be fine.”

"Take your medicine, I mean it -"

"Yes, Charles."

"And if anything else happens-"

"I'll call you. Thanks, Charles." 

After a few more assurances, he hangs up. 

He hovers over the orange bottle, the bright blue pills. And without knowing exactly why, he closes his hand and then withdraws it altogether.

He slides the toy rabbit under his bed. He’ll tell Charles later that he threw it away. He cannot bear to think of it abandoned, discarded alone in some rubbish bin. He crouches, peers into the shadow, and meets its beaded eyes.

He feels like an idiot, but he smiles, speaks to it, voice softer than anything in the world.

“Don’t worry. I’ll never let you go.”

Chapter Text

Death by the Seaside

Day 5, Monday

Once again, they find themselves back where everything started - by the seaside. For a few minutes they walk the coast, passing pylons and talking about this and that: about how Kretz’s memories didn’t give them much besides confirming Jake was a little weasel, about Villedrouin, how he was there with Jake from the very beginning, about how they should just close the case already - heart attack, clean and simple, about whether they should give Etienne a ring, tell him about Gloria’s disappearance, at least to give the poor bastard something.

The truth is, Harry’s still stuck on it. He knows he won’t convince Kim, but he can feel that there’s something there - a millimeter wide hole in the world where Gloria disappeared. 

Kim walks towards the rusty payphone near the defunct fishing market and digs in his pocket for the long international line Etienne had left them. Meanwhile, Harry braces himself and takes a deep breath.

“I know you’re tough and all,” he says. “But I just wanted to, you know, make sure you were okay. You mentioned you grew up in an orphanage. Caine said using the ZA/UM can dig some of that old shit up.”

“Did you seriously have me drive us to the beach to talk about this?”

Kim stops in his tracks, but he doesn’t look as annoyed as Harry expected. He looks faintly amused, if anything.

“Out here," Harry says, "there’s no way for you to distract yourself. Unless you plan on interrogating that seagull over there.”

“I still have my notebook on me, detective. I could still interrogate it if I wanted to.”

Kim turns towards the shoreline, his back to Harry as he lights a cigarette, and shields it from the wind with a hand.

“They always hated me,” he says flatly. “The teachers at the orphanage. Always said I was dirty underneath - that they saw everything.”

“Saw what?”

“The resentment. The others made my life hell. I never lashed out, never made a fuss. But they saw how angry I was, and that was enough. I was bad.”

He sighs, runs a hand through his hair. “The same way everyone thought Gloria was bad, I suppose.”

Then, Kim turns away. “Do you pity me?”

In the dying light, he looks sickeningly beautiful - that face, both tender and sneering.

He’ll die if you pity him.

Kim continues, not waiting for a reply. He’s too scared to hear it.

“We both know there are worse things in the world. Like the fact that these so-called adults were negligent enough to let a bunch of kids torment a girl to death.”

He chalks Gloria’s “disappearance” up to carelessness, a half-assed search. He’s certain her corpse still rests there, in the muck. 

Harry shakes his head. “Of all the worst ways to die…”

“Yes. Drowning in human shit has to be far up there.”

Kim tries for a dry laugh, but it comes out small and choked. There’s nothing funny about this, not even in a dark way.

”I…I’m sorry, detective. It’s been a difficult week.” 

And then Harry’s immediately by his side. He takes Kim's face gently, their eyes meeting for a split second before he pulls him in close, shoving Kim's face into the dusty wool of his shoulder, locking them in a vice-like embrace.

The cigarette flies out of Kim’s hand and fizzles out in the sand.  

There's a shiver between Kim's shoulder blades, an ache deep in his chest. 

“...Sorry," Harry murmurs,."I forgot you can’t stand me anymore.”

Kim snorts, voice muffled. He’s grateful Harry can’t see him now, can’t tell his throat is closing up.

“With how you’ve been acting, do you really blame me?”

Harry grimaces. “I get it, eye for an eye, but you hit back a lot fucking harder.”

“Because you lied. You said you would try to get better. I saw Allard on the floor, and knowing you, I thought you’d overdosed too - that you'd drop dead any second - “

“You’re blaming it on the speed, but that’s not why you shut me out.” Harry says, quietly.

“Fine, then. Let’s talk about what you did after. It was fucking selfish of you, Harry. You know that, right?”

“I know.”

Kim exhales shakily, he suddenly feels winded. “Especially because… goddamn it. What were you thinking? That in a couple days, I’d just forget what you said? That I’d be all better?”

“Kim, I -”

“You didn’t even stop to think that I-" Kim’s voice strains like a wounded animal before he swallows hard. “That I’m still going to fucking want you.”

Logically, you knew that he could never say it back. But you weren’t looking. You never noticed his eyes following you this whole time - adoring and jealous and hungry. The kind of hunger that makes his teeth ache.

Harry stays silent, and for a second, Kim wonders if he’s crying. His eyes were red earlier - the color that they get when he thinks or drinks too much. Kim wonders if he’s going to have to sigh and apologize and take it all back before Harry spirals into yet another self-destructive, self-loathing implosion.

But he no longer has it in him to be generous, to be kind, because Harry’s in his veins, the thoughtless fuck. He’s crawled into his body, settled into his battered bones, everywhere in every way.

He always falls for the superstar types. Their disco-junkie grins, the petrol in their eyes.  

But then Harry speaks. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

His trembling hand cards gently through Kim's hair, and Kim feels it - that hot panic flashing through him, the fight-or-flight urge to drop everything and run.

But even though his chest pounds and he feels unbearably heavy in Harry’s arms, he stays. For a just a second. Then a little while. Then longer.

His hand accidentally brushes against Harry’s wrist. He instinctively apologizes, then feels stupid for doing so. But Harry doesn’t reply. Without hesitation, he drops his embrace, takes Kim’s cold hand into both of his, and starts to gently warm the back of it.

With a weary, drooping motion, Kim buries his head into Harry’s shoulder and sighs.

For a while, neither of them speak. The waves shine bright and iridescent, reflecting the blue, gold, and orange sky -bright as neon.

He’s not the type to think in metaphors, but Kim vaguely thinks he could almost drink it with lime, like tequila sunset. He scratches the thought, then genuinely hopes to god Harry’s never desperate enough to drink seawater. 

Harry finally breaks the silence. 

“For the record, I don’t pity you,” he murmurs. “I mean, you made lieutenant, everyone in the RCM respects you. You work murder cases instead of pushing papers - you’ve done pretty well for yourself. God knows there’re bastards out there with worse lives. You really want to be Etienne, instead? Comrade Fucking Mullen? One of those bums in the fishing village?”

Kim shakes his head against Harry’s shoulder, his words are muffled. “I suppose not.”

Harry keeps going. “When I first met you, I was a mess - even more than I am now. Woke up in a neighborhood I didn’t recognize, no idea how I got there, no idea what my name was. And there you were.”

He laughs softly. “The only guy I had to rely on. And you - you were so damn put together. The coolest.”

Kim turns his head slightly, looks at Harry. There's a strange, unreadable look in his eyes.

Harry shrugs. “And that’s why I don’t pity you.”

For a while, neither of them speak.

Harry awkwardly clears his throat, rubs the back of his neck. “Uh, shit. Sorry. I know you don’t like this kind of thing - I’ll stop.”

Even nervous and flushed, Harry still has the same sad dog smile, the one Kim likes so much more than the usual shit-eating grin. His tie is loose, and he’s here standing in front of Kim, looking at him like he wants to kiss him.

Kim has to force himself to glance away, and shake his head. “How did you get to be so aggravatingly likeable, Detective?”

That's Harry du Bois for you. He fire walks through life, aims straight into the heart of it - bleeding, screaming, wanting more. And you stand there and watch, transfixed, until he owns the air you breathe, until every look he gives you burns through your soul. 

Harry grins. He is about to answer when a man’s voice cuts through - fragmented and fraying, coming in crackling whispers through the phone.

Entroponetic crosstalk - words looping forever in the ether.

“I dreamt I coughed up things from the sea yesterday. Strings of kelp, and tiny pearls. Maybe that’s where I lived, a long time ago.”

Charles doesn’t have time for this. Most people and their worries aren’t particularly additive to his life - not even Jake’s. Not when the price of pears has skyrocketed as they rot in their cold transport containers.

It’s like Mejier-Lavoisier always says. It takes too long, much too long, to transport fresh fruit through the Pale. Lo Manthang exports approximately 8 million metric tons of pears annually, accounting for 55% of all production. Any logistical delay in interisolary transport is catastrophic.

At least pears are a luxury product, what worries him more is the price of staples - bread, milk, corn, the jewels of the hypermarket. The price of staple goods must be finely controlled, kept strictly within the +/- 0.4 bps volatility target EPIS had set this year. Commerce must flow. 

But the lights are off. The magnet train to Revachol leaves tomorrow afternoon, and Jake’s bags still aren’t packed - his Sur-la-Clef passport sits facedown on the nightstand.

He’s still damp from a shower, hugging his knees close. “When I was a kid,” he murmurs, “I think I hurt one of my friends. Actually, it was a bunch of the kids in the orphanage, together.”

Charles turns from him and scoffs. He starts pulling shirts from Jake’s closet, throwing them into the open suitcase. “I told you, stop dwelling on your past. What use is it now to-”

“She kept telling us the world would end. They thought that if we got rid of her, it wouldn’t happen, and I… I just went along with it. There was a pit latrine out in the courtyard, and we shoved her in.”

“*Mon dieu*. A pit latrine, in the ‘30s?”

“Sometimes I wonder if we killed her.”

Silence.

Charles is quiet, his eyes restless and preoccupied behind the wide, black-framed glasses. His face is slightly sunburnt from his latest trip to Semenine, he still smells like neroli and sunshine.

Jake can’t tell what he’s thinking. 

“Can you say something? Charles-”

“Just what,” Charles asks, “is it that you want me to say?”

Jake fiddles with his eyelashes, plucks at them - a nervous tic.

He has such pale eyes, Charles realizes. Light to the point of being clear. Like bottled water, saliva, panes of glass. Colorless. 

“I’m scared that maybe she drowned. That maybe the pit was full."

He thinks of the stuffed rabbit hiding underneath his bed and imagines it soiled and smeared with shit. It’s too much. He gags, hand flying to his mouth.

Charles is immediately by his side, clutching his shoulders.

“Do you hear the filth you’re saying?” he hisses. “I brought you here and made you refined, but you open your mouth and prove you’re nothing better than gutter trash.”

Jake doesn’t react, his eyes fix somewhere above Charles’s shoulder. His breaths come in shallow gasps, and his forearms are red where his nails have dug in, left gouges. He bites down hard on his already bloodied lip.

Charles stares at that pallid, torn mouth and silently curses the damned stuffed rabbit that appeared out of nowhere - a cruel joke, maybe, from one of Jake’s old classmates. A stupid toy that dug up all these ugly things.

Jake’s eyes - wide, paranoid - shift to meet his. Whether from premonition or instinct, it suddenly dawns on him how strange Charles' initial reaction was, how muted. He slowly begins to back away, shaking with terror. 

“Don’t,” he gasps. “Don’t come near me!”

“What -”

“You think I’m a liability. You’re scared I’ll go to the press, tell them you saw the way we lived and turned away.”

“Turned away? I’m a board member of Humanox -”

“Because of your - of everyone’s negligence, a girl died -”

Charles laughs, harsh and derisive. “That’s absurd.“

“They’ll start digging deeper, you know. They’ll find them - one near every EPIS conference. That boy in Co Hoi whose face you split open, the one in Siigay you strangled. There’s one in Revachol too, isn’t there? Have you killed him, too?“

The majority of economic gains over the past three decades have accrued to EPIS-aligned nations such as Sur-la-Clef, Oranje, Messina, Graad. The micro-loan packages you approve won’t change this material fact of inequality, regardless of how you torture the data for your year-in-review keynotes.

The purpose of a system is what it does - it can run itself for thousands of years.

The implications are endless for men like you. You like them dark and delicate. You've learned to be careful over the years, but a few broke along the way - that’s just how it gets when the sex turns cruel. You were given the power. You will make them bleed.

Jake had spotted the red flecks on your cuffs and handed you a new jacket to change into. ‘We can still make it to the Humanitarian Alliance for Developing Nations Conference’, he said. ‘Traffic is light today.’ 

He put up with a lot of things for you. It was hard for him. 

Charles smiles - too wide, too white. "You know as well as I do that EPIS takes its responsibility for fostering economic development extremely seriously. Just last month, we implemented programs to promote high employment and reduce poverty in developing nations - " 

Jake shakes his head and laughs, a little hysterically. "What are you saying?" 

"- EPIS-originated organizations like Humanox remain committed to advocating for shared prosperity while keeping a transparent dialogue with the public. We target scalable, quantifiable metrics such as life expectancy, vaccination rates, and -"  

"No, Charles, what are you - I work for the Institute of Price Stability too! I'm literally in your department - "

"-Our efforts to collaborate with ze private sector have been *super* in encouraging labor market participation across all demographics and promoting healthy, controlled financial competition-"  

"Charles, please! Can you just talk to me like a human being?!"  

For once in his life, Charles shuts up. The only sound in the room is Jake's shallow breathing. 

Then, Charles steps closer, voice lowering.

“How did you know I was the one to please back then? The one who could save you?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “You knew because you wanted to live.”

“Stay away - “

Charles holds Jake’s face in his hands, brushes the damp hair from his eyes.

“Look at me.”

Your eyes are blue - the color of the sky in the early months, when it’s faultless and starless and Coalition aerostatics seem to float in the air like balloons. You wanted Jake to float through life, to live so lightly that nothing could touch him. But it all returns to nothing. It all comes tumbling down. 

“I told you," Charles murmurs. "I can be your father. Or your teacher, or your friend. Whatever you want.”

Jake shakes his head, face still nestled between Charles’ hands. “No. You’re a monster. A sex tourist who feeds on desperate, starving -“

“If you can’t believe in me, then just what can you go on believing in?”

He doesn’t need Jake to see the good in him, not when it’s the bad things that got him this far. He’s confident that he can persuade him. Just like he always persuades him.

“Trust in me.” 

For a moment, the room is completely quiet. Then Jake’s breath hitches, and he weakly lays his head on Charles’ chest and begins to cry.

Charles instinctively stiffens. He's never seen Jake cry, not even as a child, and he suddenly finds himself unable to look at Jake's face, unable to look at him at all. He touches him, begins to slowly stroke Jake’s hair - sweetly, gently - all while keeping his gaze on the wall opposite him, heart pounding. There's a slight tremor somewhere along the curve of his wrists. He hides it well.  

See? You’re sweet, so sweet. Tenderness comes naturally to you. Affection is an easy thing to give. 

But it’s no good, it isn’t enough. Jake needs Charles to hold him tight like a child. Needs him to look at him, and only him, with enough affection that he’ll know that Charles can't lie and can't hurt him. Maybe even slip, in the heat of it, and tell him he loves him, that he’s sorry for frightening him, that he’ll never let him go.

With a nervous twitch of his head, a soft moan, he presses his slack lips to Charles’ throat, nuzzles against him like an animal in heat - warm, washed-out hair, fine eyebrows knit, face aflame.

Pale hands slide darkly towards the buttons on Charles' shirt and begin to undo them. 

You once had this thing just for yourself - the one pure thing in this world. And after all you ever gave and he ever gave, after all the toys and therapy appointments and imported soaps and new pencils still in the box and the endless pills he gagged on - after all of that - he throws himself at you like he’s some third-world useless slut, asking you to save him.

Can you believe you kept it living for so long inside of you, before it was cut out like offal? That for a moment, there was hope?  

You misunderstood from the very beginning. You just believed what you wanted to believe.

“…The Cardinal….I said he couldn’t come into the fund… he’s a monster.”

“Do you… any idea… you’ve done?! Your job is to find investors, not serve as moral arbiter…ungrateful… why did you try so hard...throw your life away anyways-" 

Harry’s head whips up when he hears the familiar voice - tight and clipped through static.

He mouths: Villedrouin.

Which means the other voice must be -

“It’s Jake Nelly,” Kim breathes. He begins furiously transcribing what he can make out through the distortion.

“…maybe you should’ve left me there.”

A beat.

“What would you have done? Died in some factory accident? Drank yourself to death by twenty seven? Is that what you think you deserved?”

Silence hums. Then -

“ I stopped taking the pills…. three weeks...”

The line crackles violently.

“You…you what? You’re lying-”

“I’m not. And I just… four grams … Blue Madeleine.”

“Sale merde! You can’t just stop….I told you, over and over…this isn’t something you- you know the risks - No wonder you thrive there. The place is just like you…crass, backwards… filthy. You won’t accept change, won’t let anything go, even when you’re holding nothing but shit in your hand.”

A glitch cuts through.

“… it’s all going to be over soon...I called because….I’d like to think… you still care about…I don’t want to fight anymore.”

“What? What are you saying? Don’t hang - you don’t get to -”

“I’m grateful. Really. But… can’t save me…”

“…stay on … line….don’t…Jake!”

Static swells. Then, the connection clears.

“She’ll be here soon. I have to go now, okay?”

The line drops. Harry and Kim stare at each other.

There’s an acidic taste in the air - the dark red of trees and corroded metal.

Autumn and rust, terrible and lovely.  

“He said he quit his Pale exposure cognitive therapy medication,” Harry murmurs. 

“I caught that too.”

“And he talked about taking Blue Madeleine with Guy and the Cardinal, back at Woland’s.”

“He said it in on the phone - four grams, a decent amount,” Kim adds.

“That can’t be good, right? Withdrawal, then a fuck-ton of Blue Madeleine out of nowhere?”

Kim’s eyes narrow. He nods slowly. “Correct. Villedrouin mentioned it on the phone, that it was dangerous - ”

“-and possibly lethal?”

“So. Psychogenic shock from Blue Madeleine, leading to heart failure.” He pauses. “We should call the station, let them know.”

“He mentioned he was waiting for her.”

Gloria Ines.

A chill runs down Kim’s spine. “The Blue Madeleine probably burned through his brain. He was likely having trouble telling the past from the present.”

…But Jake sounded so sure. 

“Villedrouin knew this whole time, let us run around in circles.”

“Typical - fucking obstructionist...” 

Kim sighs, massages his eyes under his glasses. "The Moralintern won’t be pleased when we rule this as a drug-related death.” 

At this point, Charles has been waiting for the ball to drop for days. He knows the Human Can Opener is on the case, that you have an aggravating talent for never leaving any threads loose. But it will still hurt him, will still kill him a little to see the words Jake Nelly: Drug Overdose printed on official RCM paper. 

Harry studies Kim. “Did they seem close? In Kretz’s memory, I mean.”

Kim thinks of Jake’s small hand gripping Charles’, the fond yet distant look in Charles’ eyes.

“I think they were both trying to pretend they were the same.”

Jake stares blankly at the canine tooth lying wet in his palm. Red slime coats the white porcelain veneer and the discolored, jagged nub underneath. His face throbs from where Charles struck him -  a vivid bruise already forming.

Charles stands over him, pinpoint-eyed and pale with rage. He wants to blow out Jake’s brains with a cattle gun, peel those eyelashes off one by one, cave the skull in, strangle that white throat and destroy him with his own hands.

Instead, he watches Jake fold his legs into an unsteady kneel. 

“I need you.“ The voice is all wrong - too soft, too young. “Don’t leave me.”

They drilled his teeth down and glued on fake ones. He’s a doll, no matter how many cracks appear, you’ll fix him up again. Plastic head empty, wind-up mouth hopelessly passive and agreeable.

“If you leave me," he says, "just what am I supposed to do?” 

Thirty five, gap-toothed, and crying - your bunny, your darling boy who can’t do anything on his own.

Charles can’t speak, not yet. He knows it will hurt. There’s a strange tightness in his chest - hate, then remorse. He shifts - his oxfords scrape against creamy marble. Specks of blood stain the polished leather, the hand-sewn detailing.

You gaze out the floor-to-ceiling window. Outside, glass skyscrapers stand like ranks of stupas. The delicate steelwork trembles ever so slightly in the wind. Out Pavilion's patio, guests clink glasses of pink champagne over a spread of oysters.

You’ll sit and rot here, resenting each year spent in stagnant luxury. You miss the crumbling tenements in Revachol, the asphalt motorways, diesel and gasoline, that sweet boy’s tacky perfume - jasmine and clover.

You can still smell him when you close your eyes - it comes right over. He moves up, then down, he does what you like, he makes all sorts of vulgar sounds. 

Without a word, he slides a foot between Jake’s knees, coaxes the legs to separate. He might as well do it anyway.

He fights the urge to vomit. 

We’re nothing, you think. Look at us. We've hit rock bottom, we’re worthless.

You wonder what the precise moment was when you doomed each other’s lives. Maybe it was the first time you met him.

They lie in silence afterwards - limp and motionless in this room that reeks. 

Jake’s head lolls to the side, lilac-ringed eyes dazed - not in the wrecked, fucked-out way that boy in Martinaise looks when he lights his cigarette in bed, but empty, like a dead fish on land.

His hand plays with Charles’ hair, twisting the blonde strands idly. “…such a brute,” he mumbles. “Look what you've done to me.”

He could have been somebody. He was so clean once. Now his breath stinks of blood and he looks like a whore.

"Don’t worry." Charles’ voice is soft. Almost kind, like an apology. “Just keep taking your medicine. You’ll forget everything again, I promise.”

And live happily ever after. 

“No one remembers anything,” he murmurs. “The past changes every time someone opens their mouth.” Then, with a faint, rueful smile, “I don’t even remember her - the girl you were talking about.”

“That doesn’t change what happened.”

I did everything right, Charles thinks. I have done everything I can. I tried.

He desperately needs Jake to understand this.

“…I don't know what it is you want,” is all he can muster. “But whatever you want from me, I'll give it to you."

A wan twitch of the mouth, a blood-black gap.

“You know," Jake says. "I used to think you knew everything."  

Charles reaches over, gently shuts those vacant eyes. He flinches when Jake leans into his hand - a dying pet seeking warmth.

The factory smog in the air makes Charles’ head spin, as does the chaotic shouting of the children surrounding him with their identical hard faces, their sweaty, sticky palms grasping for sweets and spare centims. He's tempted to turn around and return to his room at the Intermont Hotel, away from these children that fight each other for food, that still use a outdoor pit latrine in the courtyard like fucking pigs in a pen, that bite and snarl and call each other all sorts of vulgar, outdated things.

He was wondering where he could phone for a cab when he saw him.

Mousey brown hair. A forgettable face. See-through eyes. A boy who looked as though he'd lived his whole life submerged in the ocean, bleeding out color. Charles knew from that half-second glance that a place like Revachol would crush someone like him - a creature so pathetic and weak.

Charles was already halfway across the hallway when the boy’s eyes flickered towards his. And suddenly, he knew that he’d be by this boy’s side for a long, long time - to listen to the things he wouldn't tell anyone else, to hold his hand when he was afraid, to take him out of this place, to show him the world and all of the bright and beautiful things in it.

Maybe he could start over, maybe he could go back to the very beginning.

Bon sang, c’est peut-être le premier jour de sa vie.

Maybe this is the first day of his life.

He had once dutifully read the Entroponetic Research Center's quarterly reports from Graad. After today, he will stop paying attention to the measurements, the incremental certainty of their collective death. If nothing can save them - not men or money or machines - if things will fall apart and nothing will hold, not even the closest thing he's ever felt to love, they might as well let everything crumble to dust.

The Pale will be here - here for everyone.

Every paper that you read will say: Today’s our lucky day.

Yes, it really, really, really, will happen. 

So when the days they seem to fall through you - well, just let them go.

Let it all go, he thinks.

There isn’t a single person here who deserves to live.

Chapter Text

As expected, Jake Nelly’s case enters bureaucratic limbo for several weeks. When his official cause of death is quietly revised to the anti-climatic and tragic two word statement “heart attack”, everyone agrees it’s just one of those things that was bound to happen.

“I’m not happy about it,” Jean insists, playing at righteous annoyance despite the relief that he can stop pretending to give a fuck about the dead man from the Moralintern. “They just have to have their fingers in everything, don’t they?”

All references to the Dolorian orphanage in Revachol, the missing orphan girl Gloria Ines, the Blue Madeleine den at the basement in Woland’s are redacted, then deleted altogether from the RCM’s database.

Jake leaves people’s collective consciousness the same way he once tended to enter it - unobtrusively. His death doesn’t seem to fully register, as if his body was never solid enough to rot and leave a stench.

Despite everything, Etienne is grateful, and insists on phoning Harry personally to tell him that the RCM’s help was instrumental.

“His money went to his adoptive parents,” Etienne muses, “But he left all of his other belongings for Charles.”

Charles Villedrouin remains at the Institute of Price Stabilité preaching uniform capital order and fiscal moderation as he will, Harry thinks bitterly, for the rest of his life.

Among Jake’s possessions are the photographs he took during his trips abroad - pastel, sun-bleached memories of beaches and regional cuisines and many, many shots of Charles. Of him speaking into the microphone at a panel in Fond de l'Air, sunburnt with a straw hat on in Croyant-Morain, awkwardly posing with a fish the tour guide in Meteo had shoved in his hands. Of spring showers, pale lashes catching the sunlight, wet arms full of blue forget-me-nots, blonde hair soaked black.

Etienne says wryly, “Charles said he didn’t want them. He asked me what use it is to keep all these photographs of himself.”

One glance at the postcards was enough for Etienne to know that somewhere in the ruins of that wretched man, Jake alone had recognized something that he understood, had found something to love. He knows that Charles, too, in that single second, saw this through Jake’s eyes, before folding the photograph in two and deciding he never wanted to feel such a disgusting thing again.

He wonders if fundamentally, they are all the same - sacks of flesh holding wet bones and misshapen organs who only want to eat, fuck, kill, and grasp.

Maybe they really are all condemned to the same, mediocre cruelty.

The death of Dolores Dei was never about power or politics. Call it need, necessity, fear. Humanity looked beyond her glowing lungs and grasped for chaos, suffering, sorrow, blood instead.

Freedom and violence and transformation, rushing to no end and no knowledge of end.

A flame colored paradise.

In Bourse, the financial capital of Sur-la-Clef, numbers spin wildly on the giant split-flap boards of the stock exchange. Updated entroponetic metrics were released from Graad this morning - the Pale had advanced by an average of 5 feet across all fronts, making several interisolary transport routes owned by EATE virtually unusable. EATE’s stock is in free fall, phones ring all day in the bullpen and go answered.

Guy sends Alik home early, says there is no point in sticking around for the rest of the day . He grins, flutters his hand vaguely like a large, pale butterfly. “It’s all made up anyway, isn’t it?”

His handsome face looks sharper than usual and there’s a sort of mechanical fear in his bloodshot eyes. She stares at the state of his bruised fingers - brittle nails split and oozing like raspberry jam, and suddenly whatever little fun that can be squeezed out of life doesn’t seem like an option to her at all. She wonders what the point of all this really is. 

Several hours later, she finds herself at Etienne’s house, lazing by his outdoor pool where everything is good. Brettson sprawls on the tiled floor and flips through the bright, glossy pages of Paradox B, the only magazine he reads.

“Alik, did you know that you can fight the Pale back?”

She doesn’t even look up, her eyes are closed behind her pink plastic sunglasses. “Are you talking about cherry speed again?” 

Brettson scowls, smacks her ankle gently with the rolled-up magazine. “Nooo. I’m talking about infra-materialism.”

In the Capeside Apartments in Rue de Saint-Ghislaine, a young man smiles into one hand, fiddles with a wirrâl token with the other. He’s playing as what the board game calls a welkin - ethereal and pretty and “fucking useless with low HP”, according to Cindy. She looks back and forth between the welkin’s character sheet and his face and scoffs at the unmistakable resemblance. They are about an hour into their game, meaning Steban has reached the point of his lecture where he’s talking about how Nilsen's followers were reportedly able to have sex for eight hours straight. All hope of staying composed is lost when the smoker and Cindy side-eye each other and burst into laughter - little snickers that escalate into teary eyes and wheezing. “I wish you’d take this more seriously,” Steban says, miffed, as Ulixes nods stiffly next to him. “There’s nothing funny about infra-materialism.”

"No,” the smoker agrees, “it’s beautiful.”

“…it’s this theory that ideas generate plasma - like a kind of superpower. This Ignus Nilsen guy from Vaasa wrote a whole manifesto about it.”

Etienne shifts in his pool lounger and a faint smile tugs at his lips. Even he can’t help but find Brettson more endearing than he has any right to be. These days, a weight seems to be lifted from his shoulders despite the endless press conferences and meetings. It softens his face, makes him more handsome. Alik can see why Rene fell for him .

The police had discovered something two days ago - human remains dredged up from the bottom of the river Duras, only a mile away from the apartment Alik and Rene shared. Alik was immediately able to identify Rene’s ring at the morgue. Thankfully, Etienne didn’t cry. He just stared at the white bones on the table - a little stunned, and very sad, but mostly relieved. It only made sense that the Moralintern got to him in the end, too. There was only so much he could do to protect him.

After those detectives from Revachol had phoned in and told Etienne about that little girl who vanished in Faubourg, Alik could see it all ahead of her - how Etienne would obsessively dig into this random orphan’s death, how he’d spend late nights gathering newspaper clippings, how he'd force himself to ride those magnet trains he's so terrified of to measure the goddamn soil quality of what's now just an empty plot - all to look for entroponetic activity he’d never find.

“I hope you really did drown in shit, you little bitch”, she found herself thinking as she mailed the ring to the station, nestled between a folded-up thousand reál check. She couldn’t recall feeling this hateful, this alive in her life. “Disappear if you want to, die if you want to die so badly, but leave Etienne -”

Etienne Meijer-Lavoisier, a man who eats imported Mirovan chocolates in bed. A man who’s half-Oranjese from his mother’s side - the same side where he gets his poffjertes recipe and nagging. A man with useless politics and even more useless ideals. A man with dove-gray eyes and coffee ice cream hair identical to hers who, despite the fancy speeches and euphemisms and dependence on the world’s collective resignation to the lesser of necessary evils, believes in what she believes: nothing.

She rested her forehead on the cold metal of the mailbox. She spoke to Gloria, wherever she was, as if they were just two little girls in a sandbox fighting over a doll.

“Please don’t torture this pathetic, stupid man.”

“You studied this commie shit in school, didn’t you?” Brettson says, pressing his sharp chin into Alik’s knee. “You should know all about this.”

“I studied Graadian Realism,” she corrects. “Labor rights and potatoes, none of this plasma stuff.”

Brettson reaches up with both arms and yanks a hand each from Alik and Etienne, swings their arms side to side.

“We’re generating sooooo much plasma right now. The Pale is doomed.”

Etienne looks up over his glasses. “Infra-materialism didn’t stop the communards from getting creamed at the Bay of Revachol.”

They say the communards tried to generate enough plasma with the sheer force of their collective minds to destroy Coalition Warship Debutante. They stood hand in hand, imagined crushing the airship between their fingers.

Obviously, they were killed by artillery shelling before anything happened. (Not that anything ever would have.)

“But it might next time,” Brettson says, now pressing their hands together, staring intently at their fingers, interlinked. “The point is you don’t stop trying.”

Guy calls that evening, chatters three thousand miles a minute into her ear about how EATE’s rival firm, Suraco, reached out offering to poach him and Alik. “Great pay,” he says. “Huge bonuses, and we’ll be doing the exact same thing. Revachol’s done for, we all know that, but there’s money in Katla, people there love wildcat Pale exploration.” She smiles wanly, softly agrees. Sounds good, Guy. No, really, I think it sounds good. I’m not just saying it.

She has started to see Rene in her dreams. After weeks of experimentation, she has discovered that Blue Madeleine doesn’t encourage his visits and in fact, seems to stop them altogether. Knowing him, it’s probably on purpose.

She is lucky tonight and he sits by her bed, takes her hand. She can tell even through the darkness of the room, the drowsy haze clinging to her brain, that he’s smiling.

“That was nice of you, what you did for Etienne.”

“I’m a nice girl.”

He laughs, nestles his face into her shoulder. He pulls back just enough to look up at her with a little smirk.

“Gloria would disagree. I have no idea what you said to her, but I bet it was good.”

She smiles, tries to commit his long lashes, his sad eyes to memory.

They’re interrupted by the phone - its tinny ringing threatens to bring her to the surface, where life is, with every second. But she stays stubbornly in the sheets, tightens her grip on Rene’s fingers. She knows it’s Guy again, probably high on six lines of cherry speed and eager to negotiate on her behalf, wanting to know her preference on cash versus stock compensation and bonus expectations and health insurance requirements as if she gives a fuck.

Rene tilts his head. “Listen to that," he murmurs. “Imagine loving life so much all you want is to consume more and have the best of it.”

“I thought you hated corporate greed,” Alik says. “Mindless consumers.”

“That’s politics, darling. What I want for you is different.”

She shifts closer, buries her head into the hollow of his throat. “Where were you?” she says after a while.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs. His voice is soft, wobbly. “I had to be sure first.”

“About what?”

“That you’d want to live again.”

She doesn’t reply.

“Honestly, it was about time, Alik,” his smile turns sharper, a little snarky. “You couldn’t even really commit to the drug thing, it was all a bit forced, don’t you think? Inhaling all that Blue Madeleine but never smoking because it’s unhealthy.”

His bony arms wrap around her, and he holds her close. He's warm and smells just like he always did - blackcurrant and rose gardens and cheap cigarettes.

“What changed your mind?” he asks, voice tickling her ear.

“I don’t know.” Alik admits finally, as the morning light begins to seep through the curtains.

She wonders to herself, why does she keep playing? 

The answer is as simple as it is a cop out: “Why not?”

"Sorry," she says after a while. “That’s really all I can come up with, sometimes.”

His fingers tighten around hers.

"Hold on to me," Rene says, quietly.

When she wakes, she will answer the phone and tell Guy to be as aggressive as possible on every single line of the contract. Bonus, salary, insurance - I want it all, then more, maxed out, hardcore.

She will take the same two blue pills she always does and then she and he will take a slightly different walk in the morning, step into a slightly different glass office building, and play this stupid game all over again.

Rolling the dice, drawing their cards. Hanging on, getting ahead, flowing by, perfect days, until the day they die.

Jake finds her sitting on the sand, knees drawn up to her chest.

“I got it,” he says, breathlessly. “The rabbit. The one I gave you. Gloria, I thought you - thank god you’re still alive.”

She’s still ten years old, her hair is still pretty and red, her eyes still flicker like pale fire.

“You were there with the Cardinal, I think - I could hear you speaking through my mouth. I never yelled at anyone like that in my life.”

“You were a toy,” she hisses. “I needed to bring you here to stop him. And it was easy.”

Her small fists twist into the hem of her dress.

“I’ve been here this entire time. I left my body and became nothing but a soul. I watched what happened for years and years.”

Her arms folder tighter around her legs. “I had a gift,” she snaps, her voice shaking. “I could’ve saved you all, this whole stupid world. But they weren’t ready for me. So they killed me. And you - ” her lips tremble and she bites down, hard. “You just stood there and watched.”

UN JOUR JE SERAI DE RETOUR PRÉS DE TOI.

One day, they will be ready. One day, she will return to their side.

Jake slowly approaches her like she’s a wounded bird and carefully drops to sit by her side.

“I should let you all die,” she snarls, spitefully. “I should tear this world apart, let the Pale swallow everything. There’s nothing here worth saving anymore.”

He doesn’t reply, doesn’t try to argue back.

“Gloria,” he says after a while. “Do you think you could ever forgive me?”

And it’s the same voice as before, the one that belongs to ten-year old Jake Nelly who was always trailing behind her - sweet and kind and trusting.

She turns her eyes away but whispers, “Yes.”

Jake nods, folds back gently onto his elbows, as if returning to earth. They both know it will all be over soon.

“But you and the Coalition, you broke everything. The Pale is growing faster than ever. We’re running out of time. And that stupid bitch, Alik, she might still ruin everything.”

Jake shakes his head, eyelids heavy. “Maybe. Maybe not.” His breath is thin, voice dreamy. “But it doesn’t matter what happens to the transaction. There’s always time.”

“There’s not,” she argues, but it comes out too soft, too scared. “In twenty two years, this will all be gone.”

In twenty two years, an atom will be split in Revachol. For one heavenly second, it will feel like love - warmth, hot skin, the gentle touch of a hand. Heaven is a line of dying lights - glowing yellow filaments that dim into virgin white. And  past that - nothing. 

Gloria can see his chest rising - slower, then slower. Breathing fast, she moves towards him without meaning to, closes the short distance to his side. Her palms, rough and burning, meet his. His skin is cold, and so soft that it’s like she’s holding water in her hands.

This man sitting beside her is only the rusted-over, fading, withered imitation of the boy she had loved so long ago, and her heart has long been sewn up. But a single glance at his face - the colorless eyes, the pale lips, the gray-tinged forehead that’s just starting to line - is enough to tear at the threads.

A soft laugh, a weak squeeze of the hand.

“Twenty two years? Then everything’s still possible…”

Everything is possible for this world.

"Well," Kim says, "I guess that’s that."

They stand on the rooftop railing of the Precinct’s domed roof. The motorway rumbles somewhere beneath them and the evening sky overhead is made of fire and gunmetal.

Harry takes out a thermos and pours himself a cup of black coffee. After leeching off Caine’s cheap coffee until he and Hineira cleared their temporary desks and moved back to Precinct 84, he now blows his paycheck on imported beans and tells people coffee is his new thing.

Kim reminds himself that this is miles better than the alternative, and that the cross look on Jean’s face and Judit’s earnestly supportive remarks are worth it every time.

“That’s that,” Harry says, fumbling in his pockets for sugar cubes.

“Honestly, I thought Etienne would take it much harder,” says Kim, carefully. “The same way I assumed you would.”

"Did you?" asks Harry, grimacing at the bitter taste. “About the Moralintern meddling like they always do? Or about the lack of entroponetic phenomena?”

A small smile. “Both.”

"It’s fucking bullshit," Harry admits. "But still, we did our due diligence on this. We know more about Jake than anyone else in the world. That he did what he could to stop the Cardinal. That’s more important than-”

A sudden cold rush of wind splashes the contents of his cup all over his collar. Kim turns towards him worriedly, but Harry gives him a thumbs up. It’s so brutally windy up here that the coffee is already lukewarm.

"More important than?” Kim leads.

Harry sighs, thinks for a moment. He doesn’t even bother reaching for his ledger, doesn’t need his case notes and never has, really. This is a man with voices in his head that solve crimes and encourage him to off himself in equal measure.

“So, I was thinking about them,” he says slowly, handing his thermos to Kim, “about those disappearances - Rene and Gloria.”

Kim takes a tiny sip of coffee. "Yes. The so-called isolated entroponetic events."

“Yeah," says Harry, smiling. It still amuses him, how little respect Kim gives Etienne and his theories. “How Rene lost his mind, kept saying he could feel an emptiness growing inside of him.”

Kim raises his eyebrows. "So says Etienne, his former lover. It’s rather convenient for him, don’t you think? To take what sounds like untreated depression and attribute it to some freak entroponetic event?”

A dull clink, the sound of liquid spilling on the floor.

Harry gapes at Kim. “Lover?”

Kim tries to hide his smirk, and fails. “Yes, Etienne and Rene. I’m sorry, I thought it was obvious.”

“Obvious? How the fuck did you -”

“But I interrupted you. Please continue, detective.”

"I - fine. Anyway, Rene’s falling apart, Etienne doesn’t know what to do about it, and then he vanishes into thin air. Maybe you’re right and it was depression, but either way, I think the point was that he wanted to disappear.”

“Wanted to?”

Harry pauses, as if he’s afraid Kim will stop listening the second he veers into mambo jambo territory. But it’s unnecessary - Kim is staring, transfixed.

"Accepting the Pale means letting things rest. Standing in place, being too gone to move. Say someone were to be so stuck, to hate themself so much they want to disappear. To make it so they never existed in the first place.”

Rene had a theory, an idea of how to disappear. He’d have to grow less and less attached to life, he decided. Until the marrow started to leech from his bone, until his skin became more and more see-through, shade after shade.

Kim feels the blood freezing in his veins.

“And I know what that feels like," murmurs Harry quietly. “It’s cold, and -” a lurid grin suddenly tears through his face, instinctive and defensive.

“Think about Gloria,” he continues, teeth still bared. “The other kids hated her, and Jake…well, he didn’t fucking help at all. So in that split second, right before she hit the bottom of that pit, say that she wanted to take herself out of her life, everyone’s life.”

He turns his head to gaze at his partner’s face. To anyone else, Kim would appear blank, stoic. But Harry instantly recognizes the sadness in him, too - a faint bitterness, tinged with battered pride.

“And that’s the thing about Jake. In the end, he - ”

“Yes?" Kim says softly, and he shifts so he’s right next to Harry, leans into him a little so their shoulders graze. And it helps, as it always does.

“After taking the Blue Madeleine, Jake probably remembered everything. He knew he had nothing left,” Harry shakes his head. “And no one.”

“Yes,” Kim murmurs quietly. “Villedrouin was the one close relationship he had. And that became strained the moment the fundraise started to fail.”

“But still, there was a body. He didn’t disappear like Rene or Gloria did,” Harry meets Kim’s eyes. Holds them. "I think he managed to grab on, and decided to come back.”

“And if that guy,” continues Harry. “If even that broken motherfucker had enough of a reason to return, then maybe there’s hope for the rest of us.”

You, Harry Du Bois, were once one of eight children - wild, rabid dogs running through the streets of North Jamrock and Faubourg, getting high on glue and tagging crumbling walls with neon spray paint. There will be speeding disasters on the motorway and charred bodies found in housing block incinerators and too many drug overdoses in alleys, but the Fifteenth Indotribe is running, running. You are going to live forever, you are going to rule the world.

Maybe you didn’t fuck up by deciding to give it another go, Harry-boy. 

“Then I should thank you,” Kim murmurs.

“Thank me?”

“I’m glad you chose to exist.”

The lieutenant’s words ring through your bones and for a moment you are back on that beach where the rotting docks poke out of the waves like jagged teeth, the sky glows orange, and you can taste the salty, acrid tang of the ocean on your tongue.

Only this time, you would tighten your grip around Kim’s shoulders and lean forward and kiss him. And somewhere behind Kim’s chapped lips, his open mouth, you’d hear a muffled laugh. The most beautiful sound in the world.

The dream doesn’t go far beyond that - Harry won’t let it. Instead, he gazes out into the skyline. Something about the dying light on the horizon makes him want to cry.

He once told Kim out of some fit of impulse that sunsets made him want to hang himself, and Kim had actually laughed - that rare, unguarded sound.

“I always found the evening to be the best part of the day, detective. You’ve done your day’s work. Now you can light a cigarette and enjoy what remains of it.”

You still have some hours today, and then many days after that. And some years, though those are fewer.

You still have some hope.

And even though a lump begins to form in Harry’s throat, he waits until the wind dries his eyes and then begins to walk to the rooftop entrance, towards whatever briefing they’re supposed to be at next.

“Me, too,” he says. And he means it.