The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere

RAN

My initial instinct, once I realized what we were supposed to be seeing, was that this was some kind of trick. That what had gone on between Fang and the inner circle was something else altogether, and the weirdness surrounding everything in the situation, especially in terms of the performative vibe that'd been in the background since we stepped into the elevator, was evidence that this was some kind of sleight of hand. We were meant to swallow the fucking ridiculous idea that Fang had somehow produced something physically impossible and get all worked up, like this was some cheap magic show, while whatever this was really about - whatever had really left everyone so shaken - went on in the background.

And even now, that'd still be my first bet about what was going on. ...but, watching the way Hamilcar, a guy I hadn't seen so much as flinch so far, lurched back at the sight of it... And seeing the look of wonder in Zeno's old eyes, almost like a part of him had reverted to being a kid...

It was hard to feel certain of much, physically impossible or not. If nothing else, they were doing a good job of selling it.

"It would appear so," Neferuaten said softly, seeming the most relaxed out of anyone present. "Or at least, it is a clear possibility. During our brief intermission, we performed a variety of tests upon it to verify its nature, and time and time again the Power rolled off it like water over finely-varnished wood. All divination offering no result..." She smiled. "There is only one thing in the Remaining World which should produce such an outcome, and that is the Tower of Asphodel itself. Which leads us to only one logical conclusion."

"That it's of the same substance," you said.

"Precisely, Utsushikome," she replied, with a nod.

"But that, ah... It can't be iron," Theodoros objected, fiddling with his glasses. "The element can't exist within the Mimikos outside of the human body. It's one of the seven Fundamental Principles that can't be altered even by the Power-- Everyone knows that."

But still, there we were, all starting to take a grey-brown stick as a serious challenge to our understanding of planar physics.

"Wow. Uhh." Fang said, still holding the thing up in the same position, but starting to make an awkward expression and side-eye the group. "You're giving me some pretty intense looks right now."

"Acolyte Jia," Hamilcar said, seeming to gather himself a bit. "Why don't you explain to everyone who is not already aware how you came to possess this object."

"Oh! Yeah, yeah. Sure," they said, nodding a couple times. "I mean, I guess it's not much of a story? Because of my whole reputation, I've studied some under a lot of pretty smart scholars over the years, and sometimes have ended up working with them on their personal projects. I guess sometimes you need a fresh perspective, no matter how much experience you have?" They looked up at the rod, spinning it a little around on its hilt. "This thing was kinda a weird one-- I worked with the guy behind it years back, when I was in my twenties, but had this in particular dropped off at my door nearly finished a couple months ago, with some notes about what it was and the connection to this conclave."

"A 'couple of months'," Durvasa cut in, though it kinda felt like he was talking to the world more than Fang, "would place this event before we had formally invited your class."

"Yeah! I thought that was weird when we got the news, too," Fang said, flipping away some of their gaudy red hair. "But I made the tweaks and figured, hey. Might as well bring this thing along and make sure the effort doesn't go to waste, even if there's a bit of intrigue or whatever going on in the background, right?"

"So █ █ █ █ █ really did accomplish it, after all..." Zeno said, his grin slowly widening. "Defiant until the end, as I'd expect. I knew we were in for a treat today, but I had no idea it would be so spectacular."

Obviously, I perked up pretty sharply at hearing that name. I couldn't see the face you were making since you were still looking over at the window, but your shoulders looked slumped and huddled together.

"Uh, wait," Ptolema, who could probably have her lips sewn together and still never shut up, said. "isn't that the name of Su's grandpa?"

You winced. I probably did, too.

"That's... That's right, miss Rheeds," Linos said, sighing as the words came out. "In fact, all of what surrounds us right now - the machines, everything... It's his project, more or less."

I admit, I'd already had my suspicions prior to that point. Hamilcar had mentioned the 'creator and his supporters', and that this wasn't an abandoned project. I don't know as much about the situation as you do, but even considering, it wasn't like it was tough to draw conclusions.

"Oh." Fang blinked a few times. "Oh, shit! Now I feel like an idiot for not putting two and two together. It was 'Fusai', and everything-- Ughh." They slapped their forehead. "Sorry, Su. If I'd known you were related to the guy, I would've mentioned it to you and maybe let you bring it instead, if you'd wanted. It's just, well, I work with a lot of people, y'know? I can lose track."

"It's fine," you said, in a small voice.

"Heh," Ezekiel said, with a shitty smirk. "Pretty strong statement, to pass over ones own blood."

"Oh, be quiet, Ezekiel," Kamrusepa chided him. "It's not as if you know anything about the situation." Theodoros, who I guess was the only other person here who had even a sliver of context, nodded strongly along with her.

"Speaks for itself, in my opinion," Ezekiel said.

"So..." You said, turning around. You looked emotionally switched-off, more than anything. "He created all this himself?"

"Please," Zeno said flatly, looking in your direction. "I'm happy to allocate credit where it's due, but let's not be ridiculous. This was, of course, a group effort... Though he was the one to conceptualize it, an undertaking of such obscene ambition and scale could only ever be possible through the combined efforts of our entire order. Is that not so, Hamilcar?"

"It is so, yes," he said, speaking slowly. "As I said earlier, this was to be our Great Work - our defining accomplishment that could usher in the end of human mortality, until we were forced to abandon the project. Much of the sanctuary only exists in the form that it does to accommodate it... Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say the two exist in symbiosis, though one which is incomplete."

"I still don't quite get how all this is supposed to make somebody immortal," Ptolema said, frowning.

"Uh, sorry, but I can't help but feel we're kinda drifting off the pertinent point here," Seth interjected. "How exactly do you have a piece of iron in that thing, Fang? How does it work?"

They looked sorta sheepish. "Heh, you know, that's funny, because-- I don't actually completely get it, myself?" They flipped the rod around, holding it by the glass instead, and pointed to the bronze handle. "I only really worked on some of the runework down here. It produces a pretty advanced isolation field - nothing gets in or out - but that alone doesn't really explain much, and the iron was obviously already there when I got it, y'know?" They shrugged. "It's a mystery!"

"You're acting very casual," Anna cut in, "about holding what may well be an item that could overturn our entire understanding of the Ironworkers labor, the nature of our world."

"Yeah, no kidding," Seth said. "If I'd got something like that in the mail, I would've said 'fuck this' to the context and taken it straight to the doorstep of the Old Yru Convention. If that really is Iron, it could be capable of doing shit we can't even fathom."

"I mean! Don't get me wrong, here," Fang said, scratching behind their head. "It is crazy. And at the time that I got it, I was pretty freaked out, and did kinda weigh my options... But in the end, I figured it wasn't really my business to go off and do my own thing?" The tossed it back around, grasping the hilt again. "I mean, I don't even know if this really is iron myself, you know? It does seem to fuck with the Power like nothing else I've seen before, but, hell, who knows."

"Indeed," Neferuaten said. "Regardless of where it came from, or if it is the genuine article or not, it may very well represent █ █ █ █ █ 's final attempt to see this endeavor to its completion, after us all tasting so many bitter failures." She looked to her colleagues. "One last miracle, which he has afforded to us from beyond the grave."

Durvasa snorted. "Don't romanticize this, Neferuaten. It's grossly inappropriate."

She laughed a little bit, bowing her head. "My apologies for my indiscretion, Durvasa."

He shook his own. "All of this is foolishness. Whatever is within that cylinder, it cannot be iron-- It is impossible, regardless of what crude inference we draw from that test."

"But if it was," she replied, her voice calm and just a little self-assured, "then that would change everything, wouldn't it? What would be more suited to interface with the creations of the Ironworkers than the substance which they themselves worked, within our physical realm? Bridging the past and present--"

"It is fantasy. Unscientific absurdity," he spat. "And you know it is, Neferuaten. You can sway everyone here with your poetic language if you wish, as you have always done, but it will not change reality." He shook his head. "I cannot believe this. After I finally thought you were seeing sense, when it came to the planning of this conclave."

She said nothing, just maintaining that shitty look.

"...and even if - by some insane twist of fate - it is iron, then it will not change the outcome. The Ironworkers built this as nothing more than an observatory. To imagine you can transform a telescope into a knife by merely sticking a point to its tip has always been a ridiculous notion, overflowing with a hubris only he could possess."

"Perhaps," she admitted. "...still, though. Even should it turn out to be a dud, then there remains no harm in the attempt, I don't think."

"There is every harm in the attempt," he said. "We don't know what it will do. It could invite catastrophe."

"Uhh," Ptolema said, looking to the authority figures around the room. "Is that true? Is this actually dangerous?"

"I would also be keen to be made aware of any potential risk," Mehit said, sounding almost as tense as she got earlier.

"I, uh, think Durvasa might just be a little upset about the situation," Linos said, holding up his hands, trying to calm them down. "I assure you, in spite of its dramatic appearance, there are countless fail-safes in play to prevent any danger to us here on the observation platform. The fields Hamilcar mentioned earlier are only the first in multiple layers of protection." He tried to smile reassuringly, but did a shitty job.

"I do not mean risk for us," Durvasa hissed, looking pissed off. "We should never have kept this abominable thing operational out of... Whatever wrongheaded feelings possessed some of you, when we evicted him from the organization. I have lived in anxiety of an event like this-- Where someone could exploit that sentimentality to have you all make a terrible mistake, against every compromise we came to."

They were harsh words, but the atmosphere in the room made it clear that they weren't going to change anything. Linos and Hamilcar looked sympathetic, but it was clear the decision had been made, and people just wanted to get on with it.

"Again, Durvasa," Zeno said, sounding bored, "it is eminently dull of you to try and drag this affair out against the consensus. The decision has already been made."

"I am sorry, Durvasa," Neferuaten offered. It was hard to tell if she was being sincere or quietly reveling in her victory. "You don't have to stay, if you don't wish to. We can't force you to be a part of this."

He didn't even shake his head, just staring, stone-faced.

After this, she turned and gave Fang an apologetic look, to which they gave a tiny shrug and a small smile in response.

By this stage, I was trying to put together what was probably going on in the back of my head. It went basically without saying that Fang and Neferuaten had made some kind of plan to spring this on the rest of the conclave together. Everything pointed in that direction - the fact that she'd been the one to let them in the sanctuary all low-key and acted smug about it when it'd come up at the conclave, what she'd said earlier about this being a 'demonstration of their failings', the fact that all of them except her and Zeno - he was probably involved, too - were acting like this whole chain of events was one long dentist appointment at best...

That much seemed pretty fucking obvious. What I didn't get was why the inner circle at large, and especially Durvasa, apparently didn't want this machine to work. They might've fallen out with... Your grandfather, and felt shitty about his work being vindicated, but I didn't think what amounted to office politics would be enough to put them off what sounded like a huge breakthrough. And especially not to provoke a reaction like this.

So it follows that somewhere along the line, there was something we weren't being told. Was the machine actually for some other purpose? Was my initial guess right, and everything we were being shown and told was horseshit, with Durvasa having to hide his real objections in euphemism to get away with them?

Or were there stakes surrounding its success or failure that I just couldn't see? I settled on that as the bet I was most confident of. The one thing I didn't feel like Hamilcar or Neferuaten were full of shit over was the repeated assertion, both now and earlier, that it was important for us to be here. As witnesses.

...why that would be important, though, I couldn't tell you.

"Well, I think that's quite enough foreplay," Zeno said. The longer this went on, the more his excited attitude intensified and seemed at odds with his elderly features. "Let's get to the moment of truth. Hamilcar!"

He sighed. "Yes?"

"Attach the damn thing already," Zeno insisted. "If we're going to make history, I'd prefer it to do it without skipping dinner."

"...very well." Hamilcar looked to Fang. "Acolyte. May I?"

They shrugged, passing the object to him. "Sure. Here you go, boss."

Hamilcar took it, and then looked into the glass for like, a solid half-minute. A couple times, from the pretty close position I was standing, I could swear I saw his mechanical body tense a bit - like he was wondering if he ought to just smash the thing against the ground. I think it was only at that point that I really grasped how much he'd been... I dunno, emotional for the whole misadventure, even if he was subtle about it. All these long pauses, his weird attitude of reluctant responsibility.

You stepped closer to me at this point to get a better look. I mumbled, asking if you were alright, but you just stared at it, your eyes kinda glazed over. I assumed it was because of your grandfather being brought up so much, and didn't push the issue.

Hamilcar didn't smash it, for whatever reason. Instead, he reached up and removed the rod currently in the machine from its position at the crown of the metal structure. Then, he replaced it with the iron totem.

"This is so exciting!" Kamrusepa said, her hands clasped together as she stepped forward too. Some of the others followed in her wake. Lilith abruptly pulled herself away from her mother, running right up to the railing.

"I'm glad at least some of you have picked up on the gravity of the moment," Zeno said. "Still, don't get excited quite yet. The best, as they say, is yet to come..."

It fit into place perfectly, the gears and mechanisms locking around it with a sharp, hollow sound.

𒊹

Research Tower | 7:09 AM | Third Day

"...and then?" I asked.

About 15 minutes had passed since we'd arrived in the research tower, and not much had happened. After the initial talk with Anna, we'd settled into just sitting around in the central, circular chamber, since there wasn't really a better environment to be in when it came to avoiding an ambush. We still had Linos's barrier up, but an atmosphere of greater calm had taken hold with Anna present, who was an even better arcanist than him.

We were waiting for Zeno to return, since the control office showed that he was still alive and wandering around the laboratories with Yantho, as reckless as it seemed. In the meantime, Ran had been trying to update me a little more on what the fuck was happening, while the others kept themselves preoccupied in various ways. Seth had produced a deck of cards, which hadn't surprised me. He seemed like the type who'd always keep a deck of cards around.

"You wouldn't think it since they'd made so much fuss about us being there," Ran said, "but after that, not a lot more happened. Like I said back in the abbey, after the component was replaced, Hamilcar told us all to just wait around, while the six of them and Fang went to somewhere even deeper. Then we got to see the machine actually power up, though most of the lights actually went out when that happened so all the energy could be used properly, so it wasn't like there was much to see." She looked downward, at the glass surface of flooring where we sat. "After that... They all came back up, looking a bit shaken. And we all got ushered out. And that was it."

I blinked. "What, they didn't explain anything about what actually happened? If it even worked?"

"Nope," Ran said, shaking her head. "I guess you can draw your own conclusions, though."

I furrowed my brow, looking downward. Ophelia, who was also sitting with us, was looking at me with visible concern. "Why didn't you bring up the stuff about my grandfather, back when I asked you about this in the guesthouse?"

She hesitated. "Well... Because it's a topic you're not exactly in love with, and I was just doing a quick summary. I didn't know you'd lost your memory at that point, remember? And we were short on time."

"I guess that's fair," I said, scratching my head. Internally, I was completely freaking out, but I didn't want to make that clear quite yet. "But, that still doesn't really... Well, explain the uh..."

I gestured in the direction of where Anna was still standing, awaiting the return of her fellow council member. With her hood down and the angle at which we were sitting, her face was plain to see.

And it was nothing like the one I'd seen the previous day. There were similarities - it was still kinda top heavy, with a big forehead and a small chin, along with a short, upturned nose - but other than that, there was no similarity whatsoever. Far from looking elderly, she looked our age, or maybe even younger on account of her short height. Her skin was taut and clear - now a healthy shade of brown, on the darker end for an Ysaran - and her black hair, which had just a bit of a wave to it, fell smoothly down to her shoulders. Her green eyes, disturbingly dissonant when I'd seen them earlier, now looked pretty and utterly in place with the rest of her features.

What didn't look in place was her persona and clothes, which now clashed sharply with her apparent youth. There was something deeply surreal about it, both in the moment and thinking about it in context. Like my brain wasn't able to accept that this was the same person, in spite of all the evidence in support of that notion.

"I guess I thought that was kinda obvious via implication," Ran said, crossing her arms. "When we were all being ushered back through those rooms and up the elevator, it became pretty clear that something major had happened. They were all pretty tight lipped, even Zeno, though he could obviously barely hold in how thrilled he was. And Anna seemed to be doing her best to stay away from the rest of the group, keep her hood down..." She placed a hand against the side of her head, leaning forward a bit. "Then, at dinner, they couldn't keep it a secret any more. She took it down, and Hamilcar told us the machine worked. It'd reversed time."

"Oh my god," I said.

"Yep." She nodded distantly. "Pretty big deal, I guess."

"'Pretty big deal' isn't even half of it!" I said, my eyes wide in spite of myself. "With the state her body was in-- That's probably the medical discovery of the millennium!"

"You're starting to sound like Kam right now, Su," Ran said flatly.

"I-I'm sorry," I said. I took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes. "It's just... I can't believe nobody even brought it up until now."

She rolled her shoulders. "Well, like I said, the atmosphere around the whole thing was pretty weird. People did talk about it a lot at dinner, especially Kam and Zeno, but everything in the past couple hours has kinda been colored by the whole serial murder thing, y'know?"

I frowned to myself. I guess it made sense, when I thought about it. Everyone would have assumed I'd have known already, and now that I thought about it, there had barely been time to share a single word that wasn't about the unfolding crisis from the moment I'd woken up in the wrong room.

Actually, I still needed to learn how exactly that had happened at some point.

"What do you think, Ophelia?" Ran asked her, turning her head. "Did I miss anything important?"

"N-No..." She said, hesitantly shaking her head. "That all sounded right to me. I think you cut down on some of the chatter in the elevator and when we were walking through the underground facility, since that all went on for so long, but I don't think it was anything important..." She looked to me with concern. "You really can't recall any of this, Utsushi?"

"No," I said, shaking my head. "Even hearing about it, there's just... Nothing."

She looked troubled, her blue eyes tightening into a sad expression. "Don't you think it might be pertinent to, well... Have someone examine you? The Power shouldn't be able to affect the mind at all, so... It's possible you might have a head injury, or maybe some other form of trauma. It's only been a few hours, so you might not be out of the woods..."

"I'm fine," I said obstinately, rubbing my brow. "I mean-- I feel okay."

She bit her lip. "Mm, that's... Well, you're trained as a healer too, so you must know that's not really a guarantee of much..."

"I checked myself over with the Power, too," I lied.

She didn't add anything further, simply staring with concern.

In truth, I didn't really want to know if there was anything physically wrong with me. It wasn't even remotely rational, but I was more comfortable leaving the issue as something abstract then adding the idea that I could have a serious medical problem as yet another thing I needed to be concerned about in this horrifying situation. Plus, I didn't like being touched and looked over by other people at the best of times.

Speaking of which, it was time to breach a topic that now seemed utterly unavoidable. I wondered if it might be a better idea to ask Ophelia to leave for this part, since she'd only really ended up a participant in the conversation by happenstance, but that felt incredibly rude considering how worried for my well-being she seemed.

Plus, if it turned out that she was the killer, we were probably all fucked anyway. That was a level of lying that even I couldn't compete with.

I took a deep breath. "So," I said. "This'll sound crazy, but... Hearing all this has kind of confirmed something."

"Confirmed something," Ran said, raising an eyebrow.

"Mm-hmm," I said, nodding. "I told you this earlier, but... Now I'm certain. Back yesterday... No, during the whole weekend... I've been having this sense of deja vu. Like this has all somehow happened before. And that came to a head during the conference, when I suddenly 'remembered' a bunch of things that were going to happen next."

Ran looked at me flatly. "You're going to say that what I just described--"

"--is exactly what I saw, yes," I said, nodding with what I hoped came across as confidence and not mania. "Especially the part about Fang having received the rod from my grandfather, but also just everything. Even down to a lot of the minor details."

"Utsushi..." Ophelia said, reaching up to put a hand on my shoulder.

"I'm not crazy, okay?!" I said, speaking a little too loud and prompting Theo to glance in my direction from where he was sitting at the card circle. "Ran, the way you described me acting lines up with how I'd have reacted with that premonition in mind perfectly. Especially the way I practically knew where things were going during the initial exchange we had with Neferuaten."

To my surprise, it didn't look like she was dismissing the idea outright. Instead, she just nodded very slowly, her expression careful. "So... What do you think is going on?"

"I--" I hesitated. "I don't know. I don't know why this would be happening at all."

I said that, but there were very faint ideas starting to form in the back of my mind. Even if they seemed too ridiculous to consider.

"Perhaps... This might not have been the first time you've had a memory lapse, like this...?" Ophelia suggested. "Maybe you somehow heard about what was going to happen with Fang and Neferuaten, and just forgot about it. And now those memories are coming back to the surface...?"

"Ophelia, really, I'm not crazy!" I insisted.

"I-I'm not saying you are, Utsushi!" She said, holding up a hand and wearing an apologetic expression. "It's just, well... I can't think of any other explanation..."

"Yeah," Ran said. "That seems like kinda the sticking point."

I was silent for a long moment, clasping my hands together as my mind ran through the different options of what I could do next. I found myself gritting my teeth. Annoying, only one idea was coming to mind, and I really didn't like what it would entail.

"Balthazar," I said.

Ran frowned, and Ophelia seemed suddenly uneasy. "What?" The former said.

"Balthazar," I repeated. "Yesterday... I had this really strange conversation with him, where he acted like we knew each other a lot better than we did. And that he somehow knew what was going to happen next, too." I glanced upwards, towards the higher stories of the tower. "Everything about him really rubs me the wrong way, and it's possible he was just being a total asshole... But I think if there's anyone who might be able to explain what's going on, it could be him."

"What do you mean when you say that he acted like you knew each other?" Ran asked, raising an eyebrow.

"It was a lot of things," I said. I found that my palms were sweating, even just considering the prospect of facing him again. "Most of all, though, he-- Well, he kept calling me 'Shiko'."

Ophelia looked puzzled, but Ran understood instantly. Her eyes narrowed.

"Unless he's pulled some sort of vanishing act... He's probably still in this tower," I said. "Do you mind if I go ask Anna about it?"

Ran shrugged. "Be my guest. Just don't run into anything weird without telling me first."

I nodded, standing up and walking to the other side of the room. The logical course of action would've been to take the elevator and speak with her face-to-face, but the situation was so surreal I wasn't sure I was mentally prepared for that, so instead, I simply called out to the upper level.

"Um, exalted mistress," I called out, recalling the formal title that Kam had used earlier.

Her head turned from staring out of one of the massive glass windows towards my direction. "What is it, girl?" After a moment, she blinked, and snorted to herself. "Hmph, perhaps it sounds silly to use words like that now."

For someone who'd just had their youth restored, she certainly didn't seem in particularly high spirits about it. "I was wondering, do you know where Zeno's guest is? Balthazar?"

Because of the volume of our voices, the exchange was drawing a little attention. Seth had looked up, along with Linos and a few others.

"Did I not say a few moments ago?" she replied, irritated. "The last I saw him was in the lavatory."

"Well... Yes..." I said, fiddling with one of my braids awkwardly. "But since he hasn't come back, do you know where he might've gone?"

She didn't respond for a moment. I could just about make out her face, but it was becoming clear she was an incredibly inexpressive person, her face blankly serious at the best of times and often just blankly... Blank. It hadn't been so obvious when she'd been so visibly old - the harshness of her appearance had made it come off as simple hostility - but with youthful features, the impression she gave was almost like a more extreme version of Ran. Or maybe a more attentive version of Sacnicte.

It was peculiar how much something like this could completely flip the way your mind processed a person. Before, it would have felt awkward or presumptive to even make guesses like this at all.

"Now that you have mentioned it," she eventually said, "it is odd he hasn't returned, but I distributed a simple artifice from my personal storage in this tower which is designed to alert the other bearers if one who possesses it removes it or falls to any misfortune, so I do not expect he has been harmed."

"Not to be an asshole, but if you have something like that on you," Seth interjected, "I think we could all use one."

Linos nodded. "I'd agree with master Ikkuret, in this case,"

She let out a small grunt. "There may not be enough stock, but I can investigate the possibility once our group reconvenes. ...in any case, it is also possible to use the enchantment to track the position of wearer, if one knows the trick. I will do so."

She withdrew her scepter. It was old - very old - the shaft wrought of unartificed bronze and wood, and the symbol which crowned it, a stylized white-gold star which represented the word 'anu' or 'that which is divine' in Eme (𒀭), was no longer distributed to arcanists in any position. It was one of the most important characters in casting, being the very first word spoken in all incantations, but had become controversial to use in symbology because of its association with the Rhunbardic Empire, and rulership by arcanists in general.

It didn't surprise me to see her with it, though. She struck me as someone who was so stubborn that, if her home flooded, would sooner live underwater then move house. ...actually, I guess that was pretty close to a literal description of this whole place, based on the story Neferuaten told earlier...

Anyway, she cast the incantation.

"It looks as though he's gone back to the Neuromancer's chambers," she said, looking in the direction of Zeno's laboratory which I'd visited earlier. "He was there when we arrived, too, so it isn't surprising."

"That's no good," Linos said, frowning. "No one should be alone right now, regardless of what arcane aid they might have."

"Kiiiinda might wanna be careful with where that logic leads, chief," Fang spoke up, from where they were leaning against the wall. "I mean, we've got Ophelia with us. Things could get pretty dangerous, y'know?"

I saw him hesitate, then glance downward.

That was an obstacle that'd come up earlier, hadn't it? We'd almost split into two groups just to avoid having to confront it, but in the situation as it had emerged, it was now facing us dead on. It was, for lack of a better description, a wolf-and-sheep puzzle situation. We wouldn't be able to bring both Ophelia and Balthazar with us, but on the other hand, if we left either of them behind, they'd be easy prey for the killer. And if we split the group outright...

Well, I said that, but it wasn't as though the idea of 'we can't bring them both' was absolute. After all, in a big city, people ran into strangers with prosognostic overlap all the time - so long as you were completely covered, it wasn't a big deal. As was demonstrated earlier, there was an uneasy feeling caused by when two people with the same seed were in close proximity, but even that could be ignored. If they were kept at a good distance, both veiled...

But then, that also handed the killer an incredibly dangerous weapon. It would only take one slip up for a contact paradox to annihilate our entire group. And neither of them would be completely comfortable - the situation would need to be constantly managed. Was it worth it?

No one here knows Balthazar, a voice in my head said. It would be better just to sacrifice him for Ophelia's sake.

I flinched right after the thought crossed my mind. ...even if I could be pretty selfish or cynical sometimes, I wasn't normally the type of person to casually condemn someone to what was likely certain death. And yet, for Balthazar, the thought came incredibly naturally. I felt again like I had some deep seated loathing for him that I couldn't explain logically.

...that was, again, unless I started to consider certain things...

"Did you wish to see him?" Anna asked.

I didn't, particularly, but nevertheless I said: "Yes. I was hoping to confirm some stuff."

She nodded. "An override was executed on the laboratory locking mechanisms to aid in the Neuromancer's attempt at looting anything of value, so you should be able to pass through without fuss."

"I'm not sure what you're hoping to learn, Utsushikome," Linos said, wheeling his chair away from the other group and in my direction, "but I don't feel comfortable letting you go off alone without anyone experienced to protect you. And really, since we're waiting anyway, I ought to speak with him myself, so we can figure out what we're going to do to keep everyone safe."

My brow furrowed slightly. I didn't feel totally at ease with Linos coming along for this - he'd been acting a little suspicious - but there was probably no way to turn him down. And even though it sounded like Balthazar had an air-tight alibi for what happened back at the abbey, there was nothing to guarantee he wasn't involved in the killings. I didn't know how well I would realistically defend myself.

"I'll go, too," Ran said, sighing as she stood up herself.

Anna reached into her robes. "If it's just the three of you, I have a few more of the artifices with me. They're wristbands. Just put them on and activate the initial enchantment. Then they should link to the others automatically."

"That makes this a little less risky, then," Linos said, with a small sigh. "Thank you, Anna."

She said nothing further, only tossing the bronze objects down one by one.