The tangled, snaking metal stretched on for miles. Sometimes there was a rooftop below, where one of the ducts would disappear, or a bit of machinery above. Once in a while, everything connected into a single mass, and he would be forced to stop to remember which direction he came from in order to know which direction he was going.

All metal and industry, wires and ducts. Vector.

He didn’t like it at all, even if it hadn’t been dancing feathers up the back of his neck all evening. In lieu of wondering how he got here, he wondered what used to be here before. Or if it was always just… Vector.

As for how he got here, well… he volunteered.

Banon was like that. Knew how to exploit weaknesses, and how to get people to do things for him, willingly. ‘This is what you want,’ he’d insinuate, ‘And this here’s what I want. And see how it’ll benefit both of us.’

And hey, there was this rumor in Vector, ‘…and you might just find something you’re looking for,’ in Locke’s case. Damn you for that.

He was right, too, the way he spelled it out. Word was that Ghestal’s Empire had some kind of new high tech weapons design. Banon said it was a new breed of monster. Locke thought it probably had something to do with gunpowder, but he could afford to be wrong, and he had a history of absolutely refusing to get himself killed. So he was the best operative for the job.

Heck, he was the Returners’ best operative, period… even if it was half his pride talking.

Admittedly, he’d thought the old man cracked when he’d mentioned Espers, of all things. But, then again, if anyone in the world would know…

Which wound him up in Vector, of all places. It was fouler than he imagined, and the best smell around was the pungent, slick oil. The asphalt and the thick, acrid smoke gave him a headache. The town proper had been worse – it was as filthy, if not more, except that everyone he passed was trying to fool themselves with lavish perfumes that, he would have liked to tell them, weren’t doing a damn thing but mixing into the quagmire.

No, the world seemed to be getting cleaner the closer he got to the interior gates of the city. The Imperial Palace was shining brightly against the night’s sky, with only a trace of the city’s tarnish lapping up against its walls. Twenty feet below, the street was grimy white cement. And, ten feet below was the research complex.

Or so he hoped, anyway. All the buildings looked the same.

He climbed down slowly, careful to stay out of the ambiance of the street lamps. He watched the door across the scaffold,

The lock was inside the door itself, but accessible. And so long as it wasn’t bolted from the other side, it was easy.

Easy. Everything had been easy. It felt… weird. Strange, the only way to describe it. Perhaps it was sheer luck, and he tried the door first, because no one was that lucky.

The door opened outward an inch, without a sound, without a snare.

No, he thought. No one was that lucky.

Calmly, he stepped back and surveyed the surrounding mess of buildings and tiers. There was nothing, of course, and he knew what it was then – that ticklish feeling that had been plaguing him throughout the evening.

He was being led.

Quelling the urge to do something stupid, he slipped down beneath the railing and dropped to the concrete path. He started back on a different route. And maybe he was mistaken, but…

There it was, soft and certain, trailing after him.

Openly, now he was being hunted.

Upping his pace, he soon found that the casual approach wasn’t working; he glanced back to see, barely, the shadow following him beyond the corner.

He knew the way back, but he wasn’t going to chance sneaking into his pursuers; the way forward amounted to blindly finding his way through the maze of restricted paths and spaces between buildings. It was the only way, he imagined, and broke into a desperate run. He wasn’t sure where he lost count of turns – more importantly, of direction under the ambient city lights – and he couldn’t worry about it. By then, he thought that he must have doubled back, passing the thing he sought to escape; it was a passing fancy as a voice shouted after him, indistinct, and the rest of the world exploded.

…couldn’t see, couldn’t hear... There was the indistinct flickering, dull pain, and when he found himself again he panicked. He managed to pick out a hiding hole, between the gutter and the conduits. It wasn’t the best, but he’d had worse. His arm was slick with blood, and he crawled along behind the sparse curtain of wiring and crates to avoid being caught too easily. If he were seen, he were seen, but at least they’d still have to pull his carcass out of it if they wanted it that badly… so he hoped.

And she was there. He stopped, cold, at the soft jingle of metal. Jewelry... a pair of golden bracelets, and a hand too small, too fragile. If she looked down, she might have seen him; he became aware of how much his throat itched, and held his breath for good measure.

There was a hissed whisper, the words indistinguishable from the mechanic hum. The hand curled up, out of sight, a moment before the girl hastened away. She paused at the corner, by a flurry of color, and was gone.

He waited, counting frantic heartbeats. He wanted to wait longer, until he’d caught his breath, or until it was safe… but there was no safety here, and he had to get out before they decided to track him down with dogs.

Although he now wondered whether dogs were the least of his problems…