The Signal on the Road

"There was a girl," Palwin mumbled, her mouth half-full. "She warned them about the City Market."

She shoveled another spoonful of Murkillo—a local abomination of boiled chicken and oily fish swimming in a grey broth—into her mouth. They were seated in a restaurant that tried too hard to be elegant, just off the Road of Lion. The silverware was polished, but the air smelled of stale grease.

The Fox watched her eat with undisguised horror. "You don't have a stomach, Palwin. You have a landfill."

Palwin didn't even blink. "Niva DeRosa," she said again, chewing thoughtfully. "We need to burn Intelligence to the ground until someone talks. We need every detail."

"Niva is a ghost," Fox interrupted, sipping his water as if it were wine. "Her father died in the Market. A tragedy she saw coming and couldn't stop. That breaks a person. Finding her is your job, Fox. Fixing her? That's God's."

Their clothes were stiff and uncomfortable. To blend in, they had adopted the layered, restrictive dress code of the Predymesh locals. Soren Perborn felt like he was wearing a coffin.

"Every eleven hours," Soren muttered, staring at the second hand of his watch. "A signal. A pulse coming from the Road of Lion. Not ten, not twelve. Eleven. It’s an ugly number."

He tapped the table, a nervous rhythm. "Twenty-two is better. Twenty-two has symmetry."

He didn't know why he said it. The number surfaced from the silt of his memory like a corpse. Twenty-two. It reminded him of a friend. Twenty-two stars on a green beret.

"We can't pinpoint the source," Fox said, his voice low. "But our comms go dead every eleven hours like clockwork. That's how we know we're close. It's a heartbeat."

Palwin wiped her mouth with a napkin, signaling the end of the meal. She looked at Fox with dead-serious eyes. "You cannot get the Touch of Rose if you eat fish and chicken together. The proteins cancel out the toxin."

Fox stared at her for a long second. "That doesn't change the fact that you have taste buds made of asphalt."

Granold Rolnifeld walked the Road of Lion with the heavy, dragging steps of a man haunting his own life. After the attack at the City Market, he had been quietly dismissed from command. He couldn't carry the weight of the massacre, so he had accepted the demotion to patrol duty without a fight. He was a uniform filled with regret.

The trio was there to collect him.

The terrorists known as Cytrox were still the city's favorite boogeymen. The gossip and whispers connected every criminal activity to them. A little burglary? Cytrox. A kidnapping? Cytrox. It was the perfect cover.

It would be embarrassingly easy to grab Rolnifeld and let the city blame the phantoms.

One man on the Road. One watching from inside a building. One sitting in a coffee shop.

Soren caught up from behind, matching Granold's pace perfectly. He suddenly linked arms with the former Major, locking him in a grip that felt like friendship but held like iron.

"You and I," Soren whispered, leaning close enough to smell the cheap brandy on Rolnifeld's breath, "are searching for the same girl."

Granold stiffened, his breath hitching, but before he could shout, Palwin stepped out of the coffee shop. In one fluid, practiced motion, she slipped a bag over his head.

"You are coming with us," she said, her voice devoid of negotiation.

In broad daylight, on the busiest street in Predymesh, they kidnapped a man without grabbing a single soul's attention. The bag was soundproof; his screams died in the heavy fabric. Fox brought the car to the curb, and they rolled him into the backseat with the gentle efficiency of moving a rug.

The city was asleep. It didn't care for Niva then, and it didn't care for Rolnifeld now.

The safehouse was dirty, as expected. It smelled of mildew, rust, and old secrets. They had sedated Rolnifeld for the trip. When he woke up, he was tied to a rusted metal bed frame. The trio stood two meters away, their faces hidden in the shadows of the single, flickering bulb.

"You have questions," Soren said, his voice calm and terrifying.

Rolnifeld blinked, his eyes darting around the room in shock. "Where am I?"

Soren smiled in the dark. "That was the first one."

Rolnifeld struggled against the ropes, the metal creaking. "Who are you? Why am I here?"

"Calm down," Soren said. "We are on the same side, Granold. We just have different methods."

"Do you want retribution?" Soren asked, leaning forward into the light. "Forgiveness? Absolution?"

"For what?" Rolnifeld screamed, his voice cracking.

"For your ignorance," Soren answered. "Thirteen civilians. A Mayor. And..." He stopped, letting the silence hang.

"And?" Rolnifeld panted.

"And Niva," Palwin said, her voice cutting through the air like a scalpel.

Rolnifeld reacted as if he'd been physically struck. "Don't you dare say her name..."

Palwin moved an inch closer, leaning into the light until he could see the coldness in her eyes. "Would you kill me too, Major? Like you killed her father?"

Rolnifeld lost his head. He thrashed and cursed, furious, but his anger was brittle. It broke quickly, leaving only a hollow exhaustion.

"Look," Soren said, his voice softer now. "We are after the same thing. Tell us everything you know."

For hours, they interrogated him. He broke down multiple times, sobbing, pissing himself. Fox, already disgusted by the scenery and the smell of fear, called for a timeout.

"We need access to the files," Fox said, pacing the small room. "He's useless. He's broken."

"Agreed," Palwin said. "Niva made a proper case. The answers are in her reports, not in his head."

But how could they get the files? They couldn't trust Rolnifeld to retrieve them, and they couldn't walk into Intelligence headquarters without starting a war.

Fox stopped pacing. A spark lit up his single eye.

"Klaude Barral," Fox said, pointing a finger at Soren. "The Chronomancer. One hour of nostalgia. That is all we need. We put Rolnifeld back in his body on the day of the attack. We see where Niva hid the files through his eyes."

"Or what the files say," Soren added.

"How do we even find a Chronomancer?" Palwin asked skeptically. "He's a myth."

"You trace the miserables," Fox said. "They will lead us to him."

Fox looked directly at Soren. "Two eleven-hour cycles have passed since we took him. Two disturbances."

"Twenty-two," Soren said, the memory locking into place with the force of a bolt sliding home. "We will follow the twenty-two stars."