The Insectoids are strong—so strong it stretches my imagination. Our first plan was layered attacks, mostly with firearms, hiding our Aether strikes, then wiping them out in one Aether surge.

Heron’s idea was good, but it wasn’t realistic.

The Insectoids are born blessed, far beyond Heron’s guesswork. They’re monsters, through and through. Even Aether turned into their food. Even when our Interstellar Exploration Corps held back and didn’t use Aether, those bugs still sensed it.

They’re creatures that devour Aether.

“What matters more isn’t that,” Heron said, voice tight before thought. “It’s their inner world. Those bugs are the real monsters.”

Heron remembered diving into those minds—each descent felt like crossing several entire worlds.

“What do you mean?”

Aphelia couldn’t help her curiosity. The whole thing slipped past her frame of reference, so she defaulted to the sea of awareness she knew.

Heron only smiled, secretive. Azure motes lifted like fireflies and, before Aphelia could blink, flashed into her mind. A tide of memory flooded her skull. Heron dimmed that glow, and a girl in a white dress stood beside her like a quiet moon.

“Take care of your sister.”

“Yes, Mother.”

The sky let fall a pallid rain, thread-fine and cold, sinking into the canyons between towers.

Fine beads traced hairline tracks on sterile polycarbonate, gathered into thin runnels, then slipped away, tireless as a bead-work loom.

The bar was almost dark. Only the little lamp at the counter glowed, a dim amber that cut the lone customer’s profile, and died at the edge like a guttering candle.

Clack—

Amber fizz, lively with bubbles, slid down the bar to the man. The abrupt scrape made him frown. He grumbled toward the source, eyes dull as wet ash. “Lunicia, don’t bug me right now…”

“Hmph. I’m not here to bug you. I’m telling you to finish and get out. Включить свет.”

On the far side, a lithe silhouette flickered into the mirror’s glare. She snapped her fingers, soft as rain, and every little lamp at the bar winked on. Light washed her and the man out of the gloom like a sudden dawn.

“…I’ll go. After this one.”

He raised the glass and downed the liquor in one swallow, heat flaring like a bonfire under the ribs. He slammed the empty down, let the loose ice clink and ring like thin bells.

“Jiye… don’t blame me for being cold. Hiding someone without an ID in your own shop—no one knows the risk better than you.”

Lunicia crossed her arms. A single green strand fell from her right temple to her waist, a vine on pale stone. The soft curves under her sleeves pressed the fabric into a clean arc. Under the warm lights her girl’s face shed some youth yet stayed short of maturity, impossibly lovely, like a dream that refuses to fade at dawn.

The man called Jiye thought that, and pushed the glass back. She caught it one-handed before it fell, a sharp glint of metal flashing on her pinky like a thorn.

Jiye’s pupils lost focus for a heartbeat, as if a memory pulled him under, then snapped back.

“Yeah. I’ll vanish. And you never met me. How could I blame a stranger for being cold?”

He grabbed his coat. A black scrap dropped from the pocket—his loosened body after the drink too slow—and a little retro device with a glass panel hit the floor.

“…”

Lunicia knew that thing. The shield crest on its screen and the G&K logo pricked her eyes like barley awns. She had to turn her head away.

“Mind a refill?” Jiye shook the bottle. On the floor, the awkward little thing vanished without a sound, like it had never existed.

“…” Lunicia lowered her head. Hair curtained her face. Her lips moved, a moth-small sound flying out.

“Sorry. I’m not a tactical doll anymore…”

Jiye acted as if he hadn’t heard. He took the bottle and strode out, leaving a brief draft that whooshed and died.

He stepped through the back door, into a narrow alley stitched between towers.

“How is she?”

A hoarse woman’s voice came through the rain at the far end. She leaned against a dead vending machine, swallowed by a black hood, and waved. In her dim yellow eyes, decay pooled like old tea.

Jiye didn’t answer. He tossed the bottle to her. “Don’t ask. Saying it out loud has a kind of magic—like going home to get married. Dangerous words.”

He pulled up his hood and drew the little device from his pocket. Neon green lit the boot screen, a firefly trapped in glass.

“I get it. You threw me this to say the story’s in the bottle?”

She cracked the seal with her teeth, tilted her head, and took a slow swig. Her left eye’s black patch showed, and unruly dark-blond hair slipped out of the hood like straw.

“No. I hope this bottle reminds you what we crossed half the Earth to do.”

Jiye stepped beside her, patted her shoulder, and lifted his chin toward the bar’s small door.

“Say goodbye before we go. Maybe it’s the last time.”

“Should I use her hometown tongue?”

The one-eyed woman laughed and nodded. She waved toward Lunicia who couldn’t possibly see. Her raspy farewell broke and scattered under the rain.

“Прощай, маленькая принцесса.”

She drained the bottle, set it by her boot. A flaming emblem flashed on her sleeve—then she jogged, caught Jiye, and the two dissolved into the heavy rain like ink in water.

Downpour. Again, a downpour.

Leon hated this kind of weather. If he had to name a reason, maybe it was that heavy rain always dragged up his ex’s rotten temper, like thunder waking old dogs.

He pushed through the crowd, hands buried in his trench coat pockets. He bumped someone and left a brief “Sorry,” a pebble in the stream. It was winter; he didn’t want chilblains blooming on his knuckles like frost-bite flowers.

Guess I went zen early.

Leon shook his head with a crooked smile. If his job could be this zen, that’d be the day.

He reached the yellow virtual police line. Before the humanoid could speak, he fished out his badge like a practiced card trick and handed it to the girl.

“GCPD, Leon S. Kennedy.”

Looking at the guardian units shaped as pretty girls, Leon felt a knot of dislike. It wasn’t prudery. It was that these faces blurred the line between human and machine, a fog on the river.

They looked fragile. In a fight, each one was iron.

“Identity verified. Welcome, Detective Leon. Based on case status, you now have Level Two access.”

Data streams flickered in the humanoid’s pupils, a waterfall inside glass. She saluted sharp, broke the amber barrier, and opened a path like parting reeds.

“Thanks.”

Leon pocketed his badge and walked the length in, not looking back.

As he crossed into the scene, the uniformed girl-units stepped up again, sealing the crowd outside like a dam.

He hurried around toward the little alley. That was the true scene—hell you shouldn’t meet eye to eye. Outside, the blood would wash clean as the rain went on. Inside, the horror stuck like grease.

Just don’t let the evidence wash into the sewer.

He thought that as rain threaded through the jagged blocks and pecked at his coat. He lifted his head and studied the homes, windows like tired eyes.

“Hey, Leon. I thought you were off today. What pulls you to a crime scene? That’s rare.”

At the mouth of the alley, a figure in a white lab coat and a gas mask waved. A gloved hand stretched as if to clap Leon’s shoulder.

“Beat it. Don’t touch me after you touch the dead.”

Leon didn’t hesitate. He kicked. Tactical pants made it easy; bulk under lab coats didn’t.

“Fine. Old rules, then. Body first?”

The colleague laughed and slid away from the boot. A silver-haired rookie hurried up, handed Leon gloves and a mask, then went back to the corpse to sample, brisk as wind.

“See, Manstein? That’s dedication.”

Leon took the gear. He meant to thank her, but she was already gone.

“Come on. I still beat the guy who shows up to scenes in shorts.”

The coroner Manstein shrugged and pointed at Leon’s legs. Thoughtless ribbing earned an eye-roll. These two were freaks—banter in a slaughterhouse.

Soon, gloved and masked, they stepped to the center, to a body no longer human-shaped.

“Holy— what is this? A slaughterhouse?”

Leon frowned at the pulped flesh. The mask’s filters worked fast; the stink didn’t surge like a wave.

“Not a slaughterhouse. More like performance art.”

Manstein moved closer, waved away officers mostly done with collection, pulled forceps from the lab coat, and began.

“Female. A slum stowaway. No iris or fingerprint match in official databases. Medically, we’re looking at twenty-five to thirty.”

He pointed at her limbs.

“It’s clear the joints were destroyed. She was forced into this semi-elliptic pose. Damage to the joints predates death. See? The ligaments had begun spontaneous repair.”

Under the skin, the forceps parted muscle cleanly despite protocol. Healing ligament stood out like pale vines in meat.

Leon nodded, thought a few beats, then asked:

“Time of death? Cause?”

“Twenty-one thirty-seven, and eight seconds. Cause: cardiac failure.”

Manstein answered without blinking, no need for notes. For a coroner, that was baseline craft.

“Death by cardiac failure—are you sure?” he asked, his words cold as frost on a blade.

A chill pooled in his chest like rainwater in a stone basin, and Leon’s brows furrowed deeper, storm gathering under them.

If it was cardiac failure, then he finally grasped what Manstein had meant, the idea flaring like a lantern behind fogged glass.