Even the corporations couldn't clean up what had happened in the terminal. Not completely.

Most of the blood was gone, more than she could easily detect, but Arrow assured her there was plenty of residue in the cracks. They moved through the space with painstaking care, amplifier sweeping back and forth like an old-style metal detector.

But the groups' sorties didn't yield much that Mattellus couldn't already tell them. They knew about the barge, and they'd seen the cam-drone flythrough footage from the first corporate security team on site. Unsure what else to do, Piper found herself wandering the perimeter of the terminal yard, walking slowly through the scattered detritus of the docks while the others continued digging through the molecular aftermath of the killing.

She wasn't a scientist, and she was still honing the precision of her skills to investigate a scene to the same level as her comrades. Her accelerated curriculum at AmpCore could only compensate for so much.

Her eyes swept back and forth, watching the swirls of the breeze carrying shreds of discarded paper, food wrappers and cigarette butts out across the docks and into the river beyond. Piper walked, towards the Hadrian, and the dark ruin beyond it, her eyes narrowing. Sometimes, if you looked close enough, you could glimpse the metal things crawling in the darkness. Not tonight though. Tonight the shadows stayed silent.

Shaking her head, Piper sank down onto her haunches, examining the cracked and pitted concrete of the dockside. Gently, she brushed her fingers against it, trying to find something that could put them on the trail. Her mind taunted her, tracing monstrous footsteps in the broken stonework. Maybe some heavy thing had gone battering through the concrete, but how the hell would anybody know? Not for the first time, she cured the corps that had let this part of the city decay and die. Now, it seemed, they were reaping the consequences.

I feel something.

Piper froze, her fingers still pressed against the damp ground. She glanced back over her shoulder. Mattellus was nearby, wandering disinterestedly back and forth along the wall of the ferry terminal as he hunted for clues of his own. Staying crouched, Piper lowered her head and made a show of examining a divot in the ground.

Talk to me, Cassie.

The datastreams, they are warped.

What exactly does that mean?

Something very powerful passed this way. Powerful and angry. It is not deliberate.

So like... an angry aura?

That is a suitable analogy.

I don't feel anything.

I will show you.

Piper raked the fingers of her free hand through her hair uneasily, twisting at her long dark locks as she waited. Then she felt the twinge, a little jolt of discomfort right behind her left eye. It was like someone had used her face as a plug socket. She blinked and tried to focus, reaching out with her implants to follow the source of the feeling.

Suddenly she could see the data stream, the never ending deluge of code that blanketed Hadrian's streets. Even out here in this derelict slice of hell she could see it, thinner by orders of magnitude that what you could see in the corporate heart, but still enough to make the air shimmer with gossamer threads.

But it was what she didn't see that made more of an impact.

Out here there were no jammers, no EM fields, and no corporate harvesting hubs that would pull at the streams like planets with gravity. And yet, she could see the streams bending very definitely, twisting and warping along a very particular route. A ragged path of darkness stretched away from her, leaving mangled pieces of code in its wake.

It looked like someone had driven a freight train through the datastreams. Even with her middling skills in Logistics, she could see the carnage as clearly as an earthquake.

"Shit," she breathed, before clearing her throat, remembering Mattellus's presence barely a dozen meters away. What is it? A virus?

Not a virus.

Then...?

I am not sure. A virus would follow the data streams, out into the city. This is more destructive. As I said, not deliberate.

So something just wandered through here and tore up the data streams on their way?

That seems accurate.

And you have no idea what could do that?

Rigging a device to do such a thing would be simple. The question would be, why? What does this accomplish? No data has been harvested. This is just mindless destruction.

Oh. Well that sounds good.

It does, doesn't it?

She blinked. Cassie, was that sarcasm?

Her passenger recoiled bashfully. I thought I would attempt it.

I appreciate the effort. Stick with it. But what about this data thing? What do we do?

I suppose. I suggest you tell Arrow. They have an affinity for this sort of thing, do they not?

*

Arrow did.

Ten minutes later, they led way, amplifier hanging loose in one hand and glowing as they traced the tears in the data stream. It had been easy enough to bluff the discovery to Mattellus, claiming she'd just felt something odd in the datastreams. Arrow and Odiye knew the truth about her tag-along consciousness.

Not so easy to actually trace the course through the docks, however. The breaks in the data were sporadic, like randomly scattered detonations. Arrow stopped repeatedly, reorienting, scouring the air until they could find the next broken section. Mattellus and his guards didn't have much choice but to take it all on faith, but they trooped dutifully along, keeping their eyes open for more easily identified threats.

Their course led them away from the ferry terminal, running parallel to the river and heading west steering away from the tightly packed housing blocks that reminded her uncomfortably of home, instead moving through the grimier, seedy parts of the old Allchem Bridgeways network. They found an old mag-rail that had once ferried cargo to the old docks here, which the destruction seemed to follow.

Out in front Arrow came to an abrupt halt. Piper stopped too, holding up a hand to the others, and they waited. Ahead of them, a black, man-made crevice opened up – with the set of mangled, rusted mag-railings disappearing into it. Apparently the rest of the track ran below street level. Arrow's wand pulsed brighter, and Piper could feel them reaching out, invisible fingers caressing the lifeblood of Hadrian as they searched.

"Crap," Arrow murmured after a moment, the glow of their wand fading.

"What is it?" Mattellus stomped up alongside them, his faceless helmet scanning back and forth in the darkness.

"Lost the trail."

"It's gone?" Odiye asked.

"I think so. I can't see anymore gaps. Can't feel them either. Datastream looks intact as far as I can tell."

"Well, we followed these things this far," Piper interjected, gesturing to the mag-rails beside her. "Probably not a coincidence that you lost the scent right as we hit this dip."

Odiye smiled knowingly. "So we are going down there?"

"What do you think?" Piper smiled back, enjoying the sight of his often stern features finding a bit of levity. "Not afraid of the dark are you?"

He snorted and gave her a playful shove. "Hardly."

"I wouldn't be joking around if I were you," Mattellus grunted as she regained her balance. "Dark's where the rats live."

"I take it you're not talking about actual rats."

He shrugged. "Literal and figurative."

"Terrific."

"Piper's right," Arrow said. "The trail led us this far. Maybe the sub-level keeps whatever it is from affecting the data stream higher up."

"Yeah, alright, I get it." Mattellus motion them back, hefting his rifle. "Stockley, Pendleton, with me." The pair moved up wordlessly as he continued. "We'll go first."

He looked back, and Piper didn't need to see his face to know he was definitely looking at her. She raised her hands in a gesture of acceptance, and their chaperone turned back, his rifle whining as its firing primer came to life.

The corporate troopers descended first, their helmet lights carving up the gloom as they moved. Piper could feel the tension in the air cranking tighter and tighter with each second, and couldn't stop herself from moving up to the edge of the ramp beside Arrow. They gave her a nervous glance, still gripping their amplifier wand tight.

"Clear," Mattellus called, his bulky armoured body turning and beckoning. "Let's go digging, eh?"

The lowered section of the cargo rail formed a dark gully that scarred a long section of the dockside. Piper descended into it reluctantly, feeling the rust and muck on every inch of this forlorn place. She could feel the flimsy structure of the rails and walls right down to their atoms, and really wished she couldn't.

Frankly, it was a miracle the structure was still standing. She felt like at any moment the corroded walls could collapse in on them. Odiye moved off to the right, his implants sizzling with pent-up power, ready to atomise anything that leapt out at them from the shadows. Arrow hung slightly further back, still digging through the airways for any further sign of their quarry.

Piper pulled her own amplifier out and exhaled a long breath, letting her implants warm beneath her skin. Her fingers curled and uncurled, feeling the conductors of her wand, and sending a thin, particle skin out over the surface of the railway. She let herself feel the imperfections in the contours, the cracks, and the faint residue of the currents that had once lit up this place.

Up ahead, Mattellus and his two guards were already inching forward again, rifles raised and helmet lights piercing the gloom. The other two moved as a rearguard, shuffling along with a stealth that belied their heavy armour.

Twilight engulfed them. The sub-rail sank twenty feet into the concrete before it levelled off again, and as they made their way along it they encountered several splurging crossroads where even more derelict mag-rails connected. She wondered just how much traffic had once pummelled its way through this little slice of Hadrian.

She marvelled at how it had all just been allowed to just ... die. The smell of discarded food and cigarette ends formed a fug in the metal ravine, the railway reduced to little more as a convenient landfill for the denizens of this place. Piper spotted tables, chairs, the sphere-tyre from an inner-city cruiser; even a fridge, all dumped here.

They'd been traversing the gloomy place for maybe half an hour when Piper felt her implants snap at something. Her amplifier twitched and she allowed herself to turn just a little, the creeping film of particles under her command focusing into a tighter cone.

It only took a few footsteps more for her to find the blood. She raised her amplifier just a little, letting a low beam of light spill out from its tip. It revealed a mud-red rag, scraped and torn on the ground at a nearby maintenance hatch. The hatch hung open – its interior blacker than ink.

"Piper, what is it?" Odiye moved up behind her. His brows rose slightly. "Is that...?"

"Yeah, I think it is," she replied. "Mattellus? We've got something here."

The rest of the group gathered quickly, but their guide wasn't impressed.

"It's a bloody bandage." He shrugged. "Dry as a bone. That doesn't tell us anything. Could have come from anywhere."

"You think so? Didn't realise you were a doctor and a corporate thug for hire."

"Piper..." Odiye gave her a reproachful look.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, play nice." She rolled her eyes, and turned to the open hatchway. "Let's go see if there's more where that came from, eh?"

"Russel, wait-,"

She ignored Mattellus's blurted command and stepped into the darkness, letting light blossom from her amplifier. The chamber was little more than a cupboard, maybe six feet by six – one a stash for spare parts for the maintenance workers when the mag-rail line had still been running.

Now it looked like it had been the site of more than one drug-fuelled bender, with empty liquor bottles, lighters, cigarette packets and old style syringes scattered across the floor, along with more than one mouldy sleeping bag. As she turned, however, she saw something else that made her stop dead.

Tucked into the far corner of the room between two rusted equipment cupboards, was a body.

"Ah, son of a bitch," she breathed. It was a man, middle-aged with a fuzz of greasy black hair and matching goatee. His tank top and thick cargo trousers were torn up above his heavy work boots, but her eyes were immediately drawn to the fact that his right arm was missing from just above the elbow joint.

The blood all over his clothes, and the protruding spur of bone told her this wasn't a recent amputation. His skin was greyer than dockside synthmeat, save for around the wound itself where it was blackened and scorched. She realised he'd tried to cauterise it to stop the bleeding, but it looked like the arm had been stuffed into a furnace.

"Piper, you okay?" Arrow poked their head over the threshold.

"I'm fine. Him, not so much." She gestured to the dead man in the corner.

"What in the-HEY!"

Arrow's yelp made her look back, only to see her friend getting muscled aside as Mattellus barged into the chamber.

"Russel, what the fuck do you think you're..." The man's tirade dribbled away when he saw the corpse.

"Just stay where you are, will you?" Piper snapped, shooting him a warning glance. "Odiye, get in here, will you?"

After a quick scuffle, Odiye squeezed in past Mattellus's bulk and came over to stand with her, his eyes running over the scene. He bit his lip, slowly crouching down to take a closer look.

"A very unlucky man," he murmured. He cocked his head to one side, examining the arm. "Recent, too."

"Looks like someone took it off with a fucking axe, Odiye." She cleared her throat, the smell of the man beginning to creep into her nostrils. "How's your Internal? Think you can figure anything out from him?"

"Maybe." His amplifier flickered. "There's not enough blood here though. That happened somewhere else."

"Then the poor bastard dragged himself here to die," Mattellus interjected. "So what?"

"So what?" Piper rounded on him irately. "Weren't those gangers carved up just like this?"

"They were ripped to pieces," he shot back. "If whatever did that found this guy, do you really think there'd be this much left of him?"

"Maybe he managed to get away."

"Wait, wait! Stop, both of you."

Spinning back around, she found that Odiye had frozen in place, his face twisting with confusion, amplifier half raised towards the body.

"What is it?"

"Piper, I don't think he's-,"

The man's eyes snapped open.

||