Anger slid cautiously down the slope from the watchtower, then made his way along the cinder hillside towards the railway line. As he drew closer, he noticed a layer of greywhite mist clinging to the ground, which began coiling around his calves.

  Beneath the shroud of mist, the path was nearly indiscernible. Each step sank into the soft cinders with a crunching, grating sound that grew louder and louder—so loud he had to halt, waiting for the overseer's distant bellowing to rise again before he dared take another step, masking his own noise with theirs.

  Gradually, the children's singing in his ears changed. From the watchtower, it had sounded like a distant choir. But the moment his boot touched the edge of the first sleeper, the song drilled into his skull, morphing into a ringing, intrusive whisper.

  Mother... is coming... home...

  Each syllable was still drawn out agonisingly long. Anger realised how utterly wrong this sound felt and shook his head violently, but the voice clung stubbornly to the edges of his consciousness.

  Give up? He was so close now. Turning back halfway was never Anger's style.

  In the jaundiced glow of the gas lamps, he looked down and saw the viscous fluid seeping relentlessly from between the sleepers. It oozed slowly, like living slugs.

  He crouched, retrieved tools from his evidence kit, and collected a sample. Drawing closer, the odour hit him—that bitter, quininelike reek—straight to the back of his head. And as the mucus touched the glass vial, a memory slammed into his mind without warning.

  The snowfields of the North. Sevenyearold Anger having a snowball fight with a girl. Her scarf was a vivid red. She laughed, shouting, "Brother!" They were having such fun, until the girl's foot slipped and she tumbled into a waistdeep snowdrift. Anger's small hand shot out, grasping hers...

  Before the memory could progress, it shattered. Anger stood frozen on the spot. What happened to that girl in the end? Why can't I remember? Did I pull her out or not?

  He shook his head, his thoughts refusing to coalesce. He found himself still crouched by the tracks, the glass vial in his hand halffull. He swiftly corked it, affixed a label, and pulled out a second bottle.

  Just then, voices drifted from the side.

  "The purity of this batch isn't sufficient. The Lady will be displeased."

  "Were the three defective units from last week disposed of?"

  "The usual way. Offered to the Pale Lady."

  The voices faded. The worksite was left with only the hiss of steam and the distant shouts of overseers.

  Anger moved along the stacked piles of sleepers until he reached the entrance to the tarpaulin shelter. The four blackclad figures he'd seen from the tower stood with their backs to him.

  A few steps further, and he could see the red glow emanating from within the shelter. He was about to creep forward, looking for a chance to enter, when a loud shout erupted:

  "Who's there?!"

  Anger turned. An overseer had rounded a cinder pile, a short whip in hand, and was staring directly at him, right beside the shelter.

  Run.

  Anger didn't hesitate. He spun and dashed towards the other side of the sleeper piles, his boots even skidding on the ground.

  The overseer's roar chased him. "Stop him! Grab him!" More footsteps—the blackclad men had spotted him too.

  Changing direction, Anger dove behind a stack of rusted track components. He spotted a pile of discarded spike sacks, and behind them, the entrance to a drainage culvert, halfblocked by a plank.

  As he rolled towards it, a burning heat seared his left arm. The metaltipped lash of the whip had sliced through his overcoat sleeve and the shirt beneath, followed first by sharp pain, then numbness. Anger ignored it, surging forward, using his elbow to knock the plank aside before plunging into the darkness. A stench assaulted him. He scrambled down the slick culvert wall for a good six or seven feet before his feet found solid ground.

  Above, the overseers' footsteps paced back and forth.

  "Gone."

  "Check over there!"

  "Damn it, must've been a reporter."

  The voices faded. Anger leaned against the culvert wall, panting. The burning pain in his left arm grew sharper. He tore the sleeve open to inspect the wound.

  Then, movement sounded from ahead in the drain. He held his breath.

  Enduring the stench and the throbbing pain, Anger found a fork in the drainage system and began crawling slowly along one branch. Fortunately, he emerged somewhere else. But it seemed any chance of returning to investigate further was now impossible.

  ******

  Just as Anger believed he had escaped danger, a searing, fiery pain shot from his wound. His head grew fuzzy, and within his blurred consciousness, a voice suddenly rang out:

  Run.

  Anger turned to look at the railway tracks. A group of children were stumbling and fleeing — about seven or eight of them, the eldest no more than ten. They wore ragged sackcloth, their faces not an inch clean, their eyes filled with pure terror.

  He saw pursuers chasing the children. Looking toward the one running straight at him, Anger instinctively tried to grab hold, but the child's figure passed directly through his body.

  Not real.

  The pursuers behind held rifles. Just as Anger could only watch the impending tragedy, a figure wreathed in a faint white light, his face indistinguishable, suddenly placed himself between the children and the hunters. He stood tall and straight, arms spread wide. On his back, an inverted cross scar was visible.

  "They are just children. That clause isn't in the contract."

  "All debtors and their derivative yields are assets!" the lead pursuer shouted. "These brats are debtors' spawn — that makes them derivatives. Step aside. You can't protect them."

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  "Then we'll see."

  The man moved. His speed was inhuman, weaving through the pursuers. Anger saw him bend rifle barrels barehanded and hurl three hunters aside.

  But there were many. One of them pulled out a bell and rang it. A sharp, piercing dingdong shattered the air.

  The man's movements froze abruptly. The white light around him flickered violently.

  "How dare you—"

  "Dare? Why wouldn't we?" The leader stepped forward. "An instrument bestowed by the Master, specifically for dealing with unruly ones like you."

  Chains manifested from the void, shooting forth and wrapping around the man's limbs. He struggled, but with every movement, the chains tightened.

  Anger saw the chains bite into flesh, saw silvery sparks of light erupt from the skin where they constricted.

  "Run!" The man turned his head and shouted in the direction of the children. "Don't look back! Just run!"

  But the children were petrified, staring dumbly, rooted to the spot and trembling.

  The pursuers raised their rifles.

  The man made his choice. With his last ounce of strength, he threw himself forward, his body crashing onto the railway tracks. The moment he made contact, a torrent of silvery liquid surged from between the sleepers.

  The liquid engulfed the man. He lifted his head one last time — his face still blurred, but Anger could see his green eyes. Those eyes looked into the void, his lips moving:

  "Alicia..."

  Alicia. Alicia Bethany. His mother's name.

  Then the silvery liquid completely covered the man. He began to solidify, hardening into a crude, silvered statue — yet he remained frozen in that forwardfalling posture. The children finally began to scream and flee. The pursuers cursed, firing their guns, but bullets merely sparked against the silver statue.

  The vision began to shatter. Anger stood beside the railway tracks. His journal issued a warning. He took it out and saw a sentence written on a blank page:

  The First Debt is Never Repaid.

  Anger stood in the darkness, under the dim moonlight, staring at that page for a long, long time.

  His mother's name... appearing in a past vision? The timeframe of the vision didn't seem recent. And Anger could guess this was likely the working of Edict 10: Reverberation of Past Agony.

  Most importantly, the man's inverted cross scar — it bore the same symbol as the inverted cross on the sword of Greyfen from the Mute Tower. Was this coincidence, or did all historical reverberations contain this pattern? He looked again at the journal's title page:

  Edict 10: Where old agony is carved, the present wears the past like a shroud.

  Anger hadn't been back to see his mother in years. His only remaining family now was his sister.

  Mother died of illness. What if that illness was false? What if her death was a lie?

  Anger shook his head violently, forcing himself to stop this line of thought. Mustn't speculate wildly. Everything requires evidence. I buried her with my own hands.

  He dared not dwell on it further.

  Evidence. Stick to the evidence.

  ******

  Anger left the railway tracks swiftly, knowing he couldn't linger. Upon returning to the station, he attended to his wound first. It smarted like the devil, but fortunately, it was only superficial—nothing deep, just flesh.

  As soon as day broke, he delivered the collected mucus to Watson, asking him to analyze just what in blazes the stuff was.

  It wasn't until Watson secretly summoned him later that he got an answer.

  "Hastings, if you'd brought this in an hour later, I'd have had to write it off as 'sample degraded recommend recollection.' Got results. Preliminary ones, mind."

  Anger pulled over a stool. "Go on."

  "Alkaloid components. Contains a quinoline derivative. But this stuff... theoretically, it shouldn't be stable. Shouldn't exist."

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning it's both a chemical substance and a carrier for some other kind of energy. The蠕动—the writhing—of the mucus generates a sonic signature. Publish this, and I'd be whisked off to a professorship in the loftier academic circles, no doubt."

  Anger could almost see Watson's triumphant awardacceptance grin; his expression hovered dangerously close to euphoric.

  "You planning to publish it?"

  "No."

  "Why not? Don't fancy being a professor?"

  "I just want to study it."

  Anger couldn't help but laugh. "Because it can't maintain stability for long, can it?" He punctured Watson's fantasy with one blunt sentence.

  "...Fine. What's so special about this sonic signature, then?"

  "Affects the temporal lobe. This signature... it's disturbingly close to the frequencies receivable by the brain regions governing memory, time perception, and selfidentity. My guess? Prolonged exposure to an environment saturated with this mucusproduced resonance could lead to timesense distortion, memory confusion, and ultimately, an inability to distinguish past from present... or even oneself from someone else."

  Anger considered this. Near the site, he had experienced some cognitive degradation.

  "Conclusion?"

  "Artificially synthesized cognitive degradation agent. The Industrial Commission has an unpublished project on this. We forensic types have our own channels too, you know."

  Just then, the laboratory door cracked open, and Hendrick's head poked through the gap.

  "Sir? You're here." He held a notebook. "Those matters you asked me to look into..."

  "Speak."

  "'The Pale Lady'—no official records. But in folk whispers, she's the Goddess of Debt, the Patron of Collectors. Some who can't repay their debts set up makeshift altars in偏僻的小巷 (remote alleys), praying for the Pale Lady to... claim the debtor's soul. The debt is then considered settled."

  "Claim a soul? Any rituals involved?"

  "Unclear. Rumour says the altar requires three items: a copy of the debt contract, a lock of the debtor's hair, and... a 'dust coin.'"

  "Go on."

  "Second thing. I found out that in the three months before her death, Lady Vinter took a carriage out of the city weekly. To a private institution. To watch a play."

  ******

  Just then, the laboratory telephone rang. Watson answered, listened for a few words, then covered the mouthpiece and shot Anger a meaningful look. "The Chief wants you."

  "Hendrick, keep gathering information on that theatre and the address. Leave it on my desk later. I need to see the Chief first."

  When Anger knocked and entered, the Chief was standing with his back to the door, contemplating a newly hung painting on the wall.

  Railway and Dawn — a rather expensivelooking oil painting, no doubt. Train tracks stretched into the distance, gilded by the morning sun, a vision full of hope. But what Anger's eyes perceived was different. In the painting, the tracks seeped silver, not gold. He made no mention of it.

  "Hastings, sit."

  Anger sat.

  "About the railway site," the Chief began without preamble. "The Parish formally sent a communiqué this morning. There have been... complaints from nearby residents about anomalies. The Parish considers the unusual phenomena at the site to fall under religious jurisdiction. They've dispatched clergy to handle it. The police are not to conduct independent investigations into any related cases. That includes those three from Whitechapel Division. They're all being transferred to the Parish's Special Tribunal."

  "The Northern Railway Company is the primary contractor. This railway is a milestone for the Alikaxi Core Empire's connection to the New World. No one wants any trouble. It's a matter of national prestige. The Vinters secured the bid for most of the project. Our role at the Yard is to cooperate."

  "I understand."

  "Good. The Parish and the Commission have reached a consensus. The railway will be completed on schedule. The inauguration ceremony will proceed as planned."

  Anger was unsure of the Chief's intent. Why single him out for this notification? Was it because of the Whitechapel case, or had they discovered his own clandestine investigation? Probably the latter, he thought. Using my authority to have Hendrick pull those records tipped them off. They're covering their tracks.

  Ah, well. I've investigated what I needed to for now. He returned to his desk and found a slip of paper.

  Tonight's Performance: Mime 'Destiny'

  1 Elspeth Street, The Broadcast Hall

  An address, but no theatre name.

  He then took out his notebook and began organizing his thoughts.

  Death of Lady Vinter.

  The old soldier's corpse in the morgue – fungal growths.

  The silver mucus on the railway.→The mysterious 'Pale Lady'.→The Bellatus family.

  The BoneBird gambling. →den reflection salon.→The Bellatus family... again.

  Two lines of inquiry were converging at the Bellatus family.

  Next to Lady Vinter, he scribbled: Hypothesis: Substandard product? Ritual failure? Why was she killed? Why was she chosen? Human experiment? My own acquired 'vision'... or an inherited curse?

  Nothing was clear yet. The clues demanded deeper digging.

  His eyes drifted back to the slip on his desk. Since there's a show tonight, might as well take a look.

  As Anger left the Yard and hailed a hansom cab, Hendrick was just entering the office. He'd been tied up earlier, summoned by Miller. Now, catching his breath, he placed a note on Anger's desk.

  23 The Strand, The Vic Theatre.

  He didn't even have time for a sip of water before hurrying off again to fetch materials for someone else.