Quinn tapped the surface of his desk impatiently. He was waiting for the large board of tacked messages and maps hanging on the wall to tell him something, anything, new. For months he had been staring up at the board with no new additions save for scribbled in extra lines chronicling the ongoing shipments. Shipments of people. Shipments that he could do nothing about.

The thought made him clench his fist. His other hand absentmindedly reached for his fine glass filled with a dark colored liquor whose name he had already forgotten.

Something cheap. Something easy.

The liquor burned his smoke-stung throat as it touched. Still, he closed his eyes and took a good swig. Upon opening them again, he flinched against the noonday sun shining in through the singular window in his small office. Even with the rain, the dull light that came through was enough to upset his hangover.

Observing the glass in his hand, his dark, rough skin shone through the glass.

Too many late nights out in the mud, he thought to himself with a bit of disdain. I would have no need to dig if I could just get some damn cooperation though.

His eyes glanced over his hand towards his desk. Stacked neatly in one corner were rows upon rows of official letters from the Church. All requests for records, comments, and interviews. All replied with polite apologies and stern refusals.

It is enough to make anyone sick. They are just warding me off. Making sure that my life is difficult. I would not be getting such serious treatment if there was not something there to find.

Quinn sighed. His joints ached from standing.

He slowly lowered toward and then collapsed all at once into his ratty, stitched together office chair. He spun himself around so as to avoid the posted notes which had become hieroglyphics to him around the time that dawn broke that morning.

Unfortunately, this put his sights directly onto the map of the country with it's many metal sewing pins. Quinn remembered the dread that he felt when he had put the two hundredth pin onto it. All of them were children that matched the circumstances associated with 'Gabriel's snatching squad' as Quinn had come to call it. .

Gabriel, the thought disgusted him. We have been doing this dance for what? Eighteen years? You chase, I follow. I find out and no one believes me. What could a man who runs the biggest orphanage in the country want with even more kids?

Quinn shuddered to think what the answer to that could be.

Instead he directed his anger onto the head of the pin with its white painted face that had come to represent Gabriel. The two pins next to him, marked black for Umbra and red for Sol, were for his bodyguards. A red string looped around Gabriel and then attached to a list of members of the Internal Bureau. There were notes scribbled on it as he tried to dig into his pet theory that one of them was feeding information to the Cranes.

Not that I would care in the slightest. The Cranes might actually get some movement going. It really seems like God may have blessed Gabriel if she let things stay this way for so long.

Another deep swig combatted the new melancholy.

Hell, I cannot even get a hold of what is going on in this city, he thought with some dismay.

His attention drew to the two little black tacks that he had been using to mark Gabriel's villa and the medical clinic in the Night Barrows. Two places almost equidistant from the orphanage and both places locked up tight.

Quinn thought that the orphanage may be a source for whatever human trade that Gabriel had going but by all accounts it was a lovely and well run establishment. Certainly they had their fair share of deaths and accidents but they worked with the abandoned and the abused. Things were bound to happen. They had even taken him around the property of the orphanage in such a nonchalant manner that it almost felt like a slap in the face by Gabriel.

The one time he responded and it felt like he was just parading me around his greatest work.

What Quinn could never quite get his head around was why they were moving the kids.

Why kids? What exactly could all of this systematic trauma possibly be worth? Gabriel is a man who plays every situation safe so why would he do something so blatant? Cruel though he is, he is not sadistic. There has to be something that I just do not understand.

Quinn slugged the rest of his glass and gave a coughing exhale.

"It is all that damn Gabriel's fault. He is a leech!" Quinn began to shout out loud. "A parasite that preys on the weak and the ignorant! If he were not around then the lynchpin in this whole operation would be gone! If I really wanted to do the world a favor then I would just go and kill him myself!"

Quinn pulls upon the large drawer in his desk. Looking inside he can see the fine wooden box that had lived there for as long as he could remember as well as what remained of the bottle of brown liquor. He pulled out the bottle and popped the cork before swishing it around.

Barely even a third left.

He took a small shot from the bottle before corking it.

His attention grew to rest on the box inside of the drawer. He picked it up and placed it onto the desk.

"Yeah," he began with liquid courage dripping off his voice, "That is what I will do. I will go and kill him myself. I know where he lives, where he works, where he spews his fucking sermons. It would be easy to find him!"

Opening the box he found the familiar velvet cushion holding a custom made silver pistol and several rows of ammunition next to it. Guns were rare to come by outside of the Gavels and Quinn felt a bit of reverence each time he looked at it. He ran his fingers over it lovingly before pulling the gun from its case. Grabbing a small pouch with eight bullets inside of it, he loaded one in the breech-loading pistol. With a dramatic swing he clicked the barrel into place and aimed at Gabriel's pin.

Quinn grabbed the bottle and picked his long coat off the back of the chair. Holstering the gun in his waistband, he strode confidently out of his office and into the main room of his house. Such was his confidence that he strode across the room and whipped open the door.

"Do you think you will make it down the stairs this time?" A sardonic voice called out from behind him, stopping him in his tracks.

Oh God, Laena!

Quinn turns to look at his sixteen year old daughter who is sitting in a chair looking over some case notes. Her hair, much like his, was tied up into elaborate braids with beads laced through them in intricate patterns. She did not even look up at him as he stood there in the open doorway. In fact, she leaned on an elbow as if she were bored with the whole exchange.

"I can go and end this! Save the town, stop the terrible things that are happening here, and –" Quinn started but was cut off by Laena.

"-and get revenge for Mom?" Laena asked briskly.

Quinn's brow furrowed.

"This is not about revenge, Laena. This is about doing the right thing!"

Laena just shrugged.

"I am sure that you are right! Getting revenge will be easy! You will just need to sneak past the constantly patrolling guards on the exterior of the mansion, either break into the grounds or climb over a fence, avoid the mutated horrifically huge guard dogs, make it in through one of the constantly locked windows, and then you will just need to go up to his room! I hope your plan to get past Gabriel's body guards is good though because we have never been able to find someone who fought them and lived to talk about it! I believe in you dad! I think that you will be able to beat the odds and get past all of that and put a bullet in Gabriel right before they arrest you and hang you for murder!" Laena said with a feigned enthusiasm.

Quinn was taken back by the sudden sarcastic assault.

"You and I both know that things would be better if someone just took the hit for the team, Everything we find in this case leads back to him or the Church!" Quinn slurred out.

"Oh I know, Dad. We just handle things very differently. You do...whatever it is that you have been doing for the past year or so with the gun and I sit here and calmly review your investigation notes," Laena said haughtily with a pointed glare appearing from above the notes for just a moment before returning to their work.

"Yeah?" Quinn countered expertly, "Is there something in those investigation notes that is going to crack everything wide open?"

"Not particularly. However it is a damn sight better than a suicidal revenge fantasy. By the way, you may want to unlock the safe for me before you go. I still have to pay rent next week even if you leave."

Quinn's shoulders slump. His eyes shoot to the floor as he meanders over to one of the other vacant chairs.

"I'm a failure!" He declared while taking another swig from the bottle, "I have failed these people, I have failed myself, and most of all I have failed you Laena!"

Quinn collapsed down into the chair dramatically.

"Well you have not failed me yet. You are still sitting here after all," Laena said with warmth creeping into her voice once more.

A knock sounds at the door which Laena is quick to jump up and answer. After a bit of back and forth, she reemerges from the doorway with a letter. She opens it and reads it quickly before dropping it in her father's lap. Quinn is surprised when he looks down and sees a Gavel stamp on the front of the letter.

"Well we may yet have some luck on our side," Laena declared as she sat back down. "That is a letter from someone who not only knows about your work but wants to help look into it! This might be your big chance to make the Church actually do something about the corruption and the kidnappings!"

"I do not want to share my work with a filthy Gavel trying to take all of the credit for the work that I did!" Quinn grumbled incredulously.

"They offered to pay us up front at triple our going rate," Laena said cheerily.

There is a moment of pause before Quinn swallows with a loud gulp.

"Well we could use the money. You are right about us needing to pay rent. The safe is empty so this job is a windfall," Quinn said as neutrally as he could.

"Excuse me what the fuck?" Laena asked angrily, "when did you empty out the safe?"

"That is a very small thing in light of the great opportunity we have just received my dear!" Quinn stated avoidantly, "Now what were their names again?"