Eastern Scientia Outskirts — Night
Six miles sounded shorter when someone said it indoors. Levi had decided that sometime around mile four. Scientia's electric lights had disappeared behind them nearly an hour ago, replaced by moonlight and the occasional distant glow of industrial furnaces. The paved roads disappeared shortly afterward. Now there was mud, and plenty of it. Levi stepped over a fallen branch.
"She couldn't have hidden her secret laboratory somewhere with a train?"
Lily kept pace behind him.
"It isn't her laboratory," Lily said, checking the folded map. "She gave us a key to Kestrel's facility."
"Usually the person carrying the key gets blamed for the building."
"You have it now. Should I blame you?"
"Possession is nine-tenths of the law."
"That isn't how Five Points property law works."
Levi looked over his shoulder.
"You really did learn everything at that academy."
"Some of us were educated."
"Some of us had childhoods."
Lily's expression changed. Levi immediately looked forward.
"...That sounded funnier before I said it."
"Consider thinking first."
"I'll put it on the list."
The old maintenance road continued through the trees. Or what remained of it. Roots had broken through portions of the stone. Grass grew between the wheel tracks. Rusted electrical poles leaned along one side, their wires long since removed. Nobody had maintained this route in years, but someone had used it recently. Levi stopped.
"What did you see?" Lily asked, nearly walking into him.
He crouched beside wheel impressions in the mud. They were too narrow and shallow for a wagon. He ran two fingers along one track.
"A motor carriage came this way."
Lily crouched beside him. "Can you tell how recently?"
He touched the mud. "Not exactly. But recently enough that this road isn't as abandoned as it looks."
Lily looked toward the darkness ahead.
"So Seraphine was right about people returning," Lily said, standing.
"I'm starting to hate how often she's right. Makes the answers she won't give us more irritating."
"I'd rather her directions were accurate," Lily said, already walking.
Levi smiled faintly and followed. "Can't argue with that."
Abandoned Pumping Station
They found the remains of the pumping station twenty minutes later. Half the roof had collapsed inward. Thick iron pipes emerged from the ground before disappearing beneath the structure, orange with rust. A faded Five Points emblem remained above the entrance. Levi held up the lantern.
"Cheerful."
Lily examined the map.
"Drainage channel should be behind it."
They circled behind the structure and found a narrow, dry concrete trench disappearing into the trees. They followed it north. The terrain gradually climbed. Eventually Lily stopped.
"There."
Levi raised the lantern. At first he saw nothing. Then the light caught metal beneath the overgrowth. An iron door had been built directly into the hillside. Levi pulled away several vines. Old lettering appeared beneath them.
NORTHERN DEVELOPMENT DIVISION
Below it:
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
Levi took out Seraphine's key.
"Moment of truth."
He inserted the key and turned. The lock resisted. A second attempt produced no better result.
Lily folded her arms. "She did say it should work. She didn't promise it would enjoy doing so."
"Very advanced research facility," Levi muttered, pulling harder.
"It's been sitting outside for years. Perhaps it resents the neglect."
Electricity crawled across his fingers. Lily immediately stepped back.
"Before you do that, remember we're both standing on wet ground in front of a metal door."
Levi glanced at the mud, then let the current die. "Good catch."
"Academy training. Occasionally useful."
"I'm starting to see the appeal."
He braced a foot against the wall and forced the key. Metal groaned, something snapped loose inside, and the lock finally turned.
Levi smiled. "Practical education."
"Brute force with an audience," Lily corrected.
He pulled. The door opened. Cold, stale air escaped through the opening, smelling of dust, metal, and something faintly chemical. Levi lifted the lantern. Stone stairs descended underground. Lily looked at him.
"You first."
"Why me?"
"You're the Captain."
"I thought rank didn't matter."
"It does when entering abandoned laboratories."
"Convenient."
He drew one of his blades. Then descended. Lily followed.
Kestrel Research Facility — Sublevel Access
The door shut behind them. Darkness swallowed everything beyond the lantern. The concrete walls, exposed pipes, copper wiring, and mechanical vents belonged to a much older facility than Scientia's current headquarters. Glass insulators lined the ceiling, and dead emergency lamps sat behind wire cages. Levi touched one of the cables. A faint current passed through his fingers, making several lamps flicker. Lily looked around.
"You could have lit another lantern," Lily said.
"I wanted enough light to see the corridor."
"And a slightly more dramatic entrance."
Levi fed more electricity into the cable until weak yellow lamps awakened along the passage. He released the wire once they could see ahead.
"I won't deny the second benefit."
They continued along the corridor. Dust covered most of the floor, but bootprints crossed the cleared patches. Levi saw different sizes, some prints sharper than others, along with drag marks and the rectangular impressions of crates.
"Somebody's been picking through this place," Levi said.
Lily crouched beside the overlapping tracks. "More than once, judging by these prints. It wasn't all taken in one visit."
Levi nodded. In what had been an administrative room, filing cabinets stood open and empty above drawers dumped onto the floor. He checked the papers scattered around them: a blank requisition form, a maintenance schedule, cafeteria inventory. Whoever had searched the room had left the things that didn't matter.
"Somebody took what mattered."
Lily opened another empty cabinet. "They knew what they were looking for."
"Or had enough time to decide," Levi said, examining the room.
Levi checked the door. Nothing suggested forced entry.
"Whoever searched this room had access. Like Seraphine, or Soren."
"Or anyone who worked here," Lily said. "We shouldn't narrow it down because they're the two we've met."
"I was hoping for a shorter list."
"Then you chose the wrong investigation."
They continued.
Sublevel Two — Experimental Medicine Wing
Observation windows lined the next corridor. The rooms beyond them held examination tables rather than hospital beds, with leather restraints still attached to one. Lily stopped to look through the glass. Levi didn't. She looked toward him.
"You've gotten quiet," Lily said, watching him move toward the table.
"Trying to reconcile what they said the project was for with what I'm looking at."
"The restraints?"
Levi approached the table and examined the deep grooves in its leather restraints. Someone had struggled against them repeatedly.
"Kestrel started this to restrain people."
Lily joined him.
"According to Seraphine."
"And Irons."
He touched one restraint.
"Somewhere along the way he started restraining them so he could do this."
Lily looked through the observation glass at a diagram pinned to the opposite wall. Red ink marked pathways along the human nervous system, running down the spine and through the shoulders, arms, and legs. Levi recognized the pattern from the prisoner's markings.
"Those are the same pathways as the prisoner's markings," Levi said.
Lily came closer to the glass. "Along the spine and limbs. They were following the nervous system."
Levi removed the diagram. Written beneath it:
SUBJECT CONDUCTIVITY RESPONSE
EXTERNAL INHIBITION — SUCCESSFUL
Below that:
INTERNAL ADAPTATION — INCONCLUSIVE
"Internal adaptation," Lily read. "That could mean making the body itself part of the restraint."
"Or part of the weapon," Levi said, remembering the prisoner. "Either way, they weren't just fitting collars anymore."
Levi folded the diagram.
"We're taking this."
They searched the room. Most records were gone, but a broken notebook remained beneath a cabinet, along with several damaged photographic plates. Lily opened a drawer containing injection needles far thicker than any she had seen used medically. She held one up for Levi to see.
"That's not for medicine."
"Maybe patients were bigger back then."
She gave him a look.
"I'm trying to make this room a little less disturbing," Levi said.
"It isn't working."
His attempted smile faded. "No. It isn't."
They moved on. The deeper they went, the less complete the facility became. Fire damage appeared along the ceilings, and they passed blackened walls, collapsed corridors, and melted wiring. Some doors had warped shut permanently; others had been cut open. Levi stopped beside a cut-open door. Its edge was clean enough to show someone had used a torch rather than forced it during the fire. Lily ran her fingers near the cut.
"That was cut open after the fire," Levi said.
Lily examined the edge. "How can you tell?"
"No soot over the cut. Didn't need an academy for that one."
"I was going to compliment you. Now I'm reconsidering."
"Take your time. I'll try to survive the suspense."
They stepped through. The room beyond had been emptied almost completely. Large rectangular spaces in the dust showed where equipment once stood. Copper cables had been severed. Mounting brackets remained bolted to the floor. Levi crouched beside one.
"Whoever came back wasn't only after papers," Levi said.
Lily looked over the mounting brackets. "They removed machinery. Nothing that fitted in a pocket, either."
Lily looked back toward the cut door. "You don't remove that much equipment quietly, and nobody carried it six miles through the woods."
"The motor carriage," Levi said. "Those tracks weren't just somebody taking the scenic route."
"That took transport and time," Lily said. "It wasn't someone picking through the rubble for scrap."
Levi stood. "They came to recover equipment they wanted to use."
Sublevel Three — Secure Storage
The staircase ended at a heavier steel door bearing a faded four-point emblem. Levi and Lily stopped at the sight of it. Seraphine's warning came back immediately.
"If you find black storage cases marked with an older four-point seal, don't open them alone."
"That's encouraging," Levi said.
Someone had already forced the door open. Shelves stood inside, mostly empty, with one black case still bearing the four-point seal. Lily stared at it.
"Don't start considering the lock," Lily said.
"I haven't said a word."
"You've been looking at it in a very familiar way."
Levi glanced at her. "My face apparently gives away an alarming amount of information."
Levi approached without touching the case. Dust surrounded it except beneath one corner, where the disturbed surface suggested it had been moved recently.
"Someone moved it and then left it," Levi said. "Either it wasn't useful to them, or they had a good reason to keep it closed."
"Let's give them credit for knowing something we don't," Lily said.
Neither possibility was comforting. Levi examined the locking mechanism. No damage.
"We leave it closed," Levi decided.
Lily glanced at him. "I wasn't expecting an argument, but that was unusually quick."
"Seraphine said to bring someone who knows what they're handling. Two officers looking at a strange box don't qualify."
"One sensible officer and one officer who considered electrocuting a door in the rain."
"Exactly. We need better supervision."
Despite herself, Lily smiled. They left it. On the opposite side of the room, Levi found a shipping ledger with only three pages remaining. The older entries listed medical supplies, conductive alloys, and chemical stabilizers. A later entry used different ink and handwriting, and its date fell years after the fire. Lily leaned closer to read it.
"Someone reused the ledger."
Levi read the entry.
RECOVERY AUTHORIZATION
The equipment list included a neural conduction array, a pressure containment assembly, three sealed research cases, and biological storage apparatus. Someone had scraped away the destination until it was unreadable. A partially smeared authorization stamp remained, however. Levi tilted the page toward the light and made out R&D. Lily's expression hardened.
"Someone inside Five Points authorized this."
"The stamp certainly suggests it," Levi said. "We need somebody who can identify the authorization. Seraphine might know what to look for."
Lily studied the smeared imprint before letting him close the ledger. She didn't look thrilled.
"We could take it to someone else."
"Like Soren?"
That ended the discussion. For now.
Sublevel Three — Records Annex
The records room had partially collapsed. One entire wall was buried beneath stone. Levi climbed over a fallen beam. Lily squeezed through behind him.
"Anything useful?" Lily asked.
"Several dead filing cabinets. I'm trying to persuade one to cooperate."
"Try asking before threatening it. It works occasionally with people."
They searched among papers ruined by water leaking through the ceiling. Ink had bled into meaningless stains. Levi opened two empty drawers, then pulled harder at a third that had stuck. It came free abruptly, dropping something from the top into his face. He caught it as Lily covered her mouth.
"Don't."
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're laughing."
"I am not."
"You absolutely are."
Levi looked down at an old black-and-white photograph. Several researchers stood outside the facility. Most of the names written beneath them had faded, but one remained clear.
DR. HAGAN KESTREL
Levi found Kestrel immediately: a thin, dark-haired man in a laboratory coat, younger than he had expected. Nothing in the faint smile marked him as the monster the stories described. Beside him stood a serious-looking boy of perhaps twelve or thirteen, dressed differently from the researchers. Levi turned the photograph over to read the writing on its back.
Hagan & son — Development Wing reopening
"His son," Lily said, reading the caption.
Levi turned the photograph back over. The boy looked distant rather than frightened among the adults. "I didn't know Kestrel had one. Nothing in the report mentioned him."
"Nothing in the copies we were allowed to read," Lily said.
Lily found another photograph in the drawer. The same boy stood beside a training apparatus, older now—perhaps fifteen or sixteen. Faint black markings ran along one arm. Levi's expression changed when he saw them.
"Lily."
She looked and went still. The markings weren't identical to the prisoner's, but they were close enough to make her take the photograph for a better look.
"Those could be X-9 markings," Lily said. "Not the same as the prisoner's, but close."
Levi studied them. "Close enough to keep the picture. We need to find out what they were testing."
She turned it over. No name. Only:
H.K. — SUCCESSFUL INTEGRATION RESPONSE
"Hagan Kestrel?" Levi asked. "Those are his initials, but that's not him in the photograph."
"They might identify the researcher rather than the subject," Lily said. "We can't tell from that caption alone."
They looked at the boy again. Lily's voice lowered.
"What if his son was involved?"
Levi didn't answer immediately. Kestrel had disappeared, the facility had burned, and somebody had returned for research that should have been destroyed. Now they had a photograph suggesting his son had been exposed to the project, perhaps successfully. It offered a connection, but not yet an explanation.
"He could have continued his father's work," Lily said.
"He could have. We've got two photographs, though, and I'd rather not make them carry more than they prove."
She looked at him. "You're keeping the possibility open."
Levi took the pictures. "I'm keeping it a question until we have an answer."
Lily watched him put both photographs carefully into his coat. Something behind the drawer caught his eye. He reached in and pulled out a handwritten note, most of it destroyed. Only fragments remained legible.
—not ready—
—response exceeding projections—
—cannot continue testing—
Then:
He's my son.
Levi and Lily stared. Below it:
I will not lose—
The rest had burned away. Neither spoke for a moment. The room felt less distant with those words in front of them. Lily looked toward the photographs in Levi's coat.
"Maybe Kestrel used his own son," Lily said.
Levi's jaw tightened. "Or he was trying to save him. That note could fit either."
"Save him from what?"
"I don't know." He folded the fragment carefully. "We need to find out why the boy was here, what happened to him, and where he went afterward."
Metal scraped somewhere outside the records room. Levi stopped moving. Another sound followed, closer this time: footsteps beneath the low ceiling. He lowered the lantern wick until its light died. Lily slipped behind a damaged cabinet beside him, her hand settling near her weapon. Neither spoke. They waited as a yellow glow crossed the doorway.
An older man in a dirty coat entered with a lantern and a canvas sack. A crowbar knocked against the tools hanging from his belt. He paused to listen, then went to a cabinet Levi had already searched and tried the drawers. When he found nothing worth taking, he moved on without noticing the two officers in the shadows.
Lily leaned close enough to speak against Levi's ear. "A scavenger. We could stop him."
Levi watched the lantern drift toward the corridor. "Or see where he takes what he finds. Somebody's still buying pieces of this place."
She glanced at the ledger under his arm, then nodded. They waited until the man's steps had receded before easing out of their hiding place. He checked one last room and left by the eastern entrance, his sack heavier than when he'd arrived. Levi and Lily followed at a distance, keeping clear of the lantern's backward sweep. The man never looked behind him long enough to see them.
Beyond the ruined facility, his light turned toward Scientia. Levi tucked the photographs deeper into his coat and followed Lily into the dark. This time they would let someone else show them the way.