3423rd cycle after the Ascension.

Two days after the imperial ambassador’s murder.

There was no end to the bastards.

Macreen crouched behind a section of a crumbling wall – the only part of the building that had survived the collapse – and reloaded her pistol. The empty mag fell and slid down the hummock of rubble she was balancing on, raising puffs of dirt and dust in its wake. She readjusted her mask. The air was stifling and stuffed with dust, so much that she could taste it even through her mask.

The members of Night’s gang rushing to her location didn’t seem to mind; they fought with the dogged determination and fierceness of death-row convicts bolting towards freedom. It was impressive, frankly admirable, and also a huge pain in the ass.

When they got close enough, Macreen whipped out from behind cover with the fury of a storm. Her arm moved in a blur, guided by the Gift. She tapped the trigger of her pistol in the split-second intervals when the sights lined up on one of the incoming enemies. She shot thrice, and thrice blood spattered behind her targets, a crater dead-centre on their foreheads.

She ducked back behind the crumbling wall and pressed her back against the sooty brick. The headache was getting worse, and so was the ethereal scream she heard every time she channelled. The way dirt caked her skin and trapped her sweat in its sticky grip didn’t help with her frustration.

A curse slipped through her lips. Sun’s people would have lost Silver’s Ridge already if not for her. They’d spread their forces too thin, dealing with riled-up idiots who took highborn Mannock’s death as some Ascendant-given sign. It was utterly idiotic. They were the type that shouted ‘rebellion’ with the zeal of a child yearning for the ground, simply ignorant or too stupid to realise the consequences of their hot-headed actions.

She shot up from cover, eyes darting across the ruined distract. Ash and dirt blanketed everything, a monochrome of desolation. She fired first, feeling her gun’s recoil even before she spotted the enemies, the two men reduced to a crumpled, bloody mess. She crouched back down.

Her vision shook, the periphery swallowed by the information pouring into her head. She had connected her mind with those of Sun’s people – a one-way link – and the Gift fed her their sight, forming a three-dimensional map of the battlefield, an awareness of where everything and everyone was. Angles, timing, and complex equations of flight path were all facilitated by the Gift. But at twenty metres or less between her and her targets, she didn’t really need much of them.

Four of Night’s men approached her location, treading stealthily between mounds of smouldering rubble and remains of walls, never out long enough for her to shoot them. They were going to die anyway, couldn’t they make her life easier?

Her comm rang. For a moment, Macreen wondered at the sheer absurdity of receiving a call during this chaotic mess. Had it come earlier, her spell might have unravelled, and she would have been the one to welcome a bullet to the head. The moment passed and she tapped on her earpiece. “This better be good—”

“Get out of there!” Garn said. “The Hand is coming. Her flagship just landed!”

She froze. The spike of dread muted everything around her to a low drone: the cries, the shouts, Garn’s voice, and the sounds of gunfire. The Hand had come. A shiver crawled up her spine. Everything around her became muddled, distant, like a dream. The Hand of the Emperor, the Oracle, had landed on Radaar with the full force of—

A bullet punched through the edge of Macreen’s cover inches from her face. She jerked downwards, deeper behind cover, waking from her stupor. The spray of brick and cement coated her in a new layer of grey and brown. “Void-forsaken—!”

“Macreen?” Garn asked, the agitation clear in his voice.

“Call for a retreat,” she hissed. “Get our people out. No one gets within five clicks of that woman!”

The call ended.

She slammed her fist against the wall, and the wall shook off its coat of dust. Disregarding the rowdy crowds screaming rebellion, and the skirmishes erupting across West Island, everything had been going well. And then the Hand arrived, and all plans simply fell through. How could fate screw her over twice in less than a week?

She slid down the mound of rubble and set off towards her base, the battle that was still raging behind her completely forgotten.

***

The following day, Macreen did little more than drink and pace the bunker’s main room, brooding. After the Hand’s arrival, the whole undersurface had gone quiet, with everyone crawling into their hidey-holes. Not that it would make much of a difference for that woman; a few corpses and she would know everything that had been going on in the undersurface. Such was her void-damned power: seeing the past of the dead.

A wave of chilling fright swept through Macreen, raising goosebumps all over her body. If the Hand was bored or annoyed sufficiently, she’d purge the undersurface of all who’d broken enough imperial laws – and that was pretty much half the population.

One mistake and she and her crew would end up as ash that dirtied the streets. So she had called them back and forbade them leave until the danger had passed, but she couldn’t control the other gangs.

Luckily, most of the dwellers weren’t an issue – all except Zyke and Rising Sun, whom she had worked with the longest. Who knew what information they had on her?

She stopped her pacing. The clacking of her heels had become an irritating reminder of the subdued silence that held the rest of the room. The whir of the vents was about equal to the murmur of conversation and the clatter of dice.

Huddled around the many tables, her crew sat in groups of up to a dozen – half of them hammered, the other half gambling. Despite the games, the air was heavy, a picture of playfulness painted with colours of anxiety, dread, and solemn resignation.

Amid all the dismay, it was no wonder she felt a crushing weight on her spirit. Still, it was nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a little booze. Or a lot.

Turning towards the corridor leading to a small office, she caught sight of a faint glimmer of blue in the corner of her eye. A small pile of crystalline powder sat on one of the tables, right in front of a member of her crew. She scowled. The thought of those drugs lit a spark inside her, and her feelings of uselessness that had gnawed at her added fuel to the flame.

Bringing a small straw to his nose, the man leaned his head downwards.

Macreen’s patience snapped. The Gift flared inside her and she flung the man back, knocking the air out of his lungs. Then she set the drugs ablaze.

“Don’t take that shit in front of me,” she said.

A silence took the room.

Coughing, the man tried to stand up, but her glower kept him and his gaze on the floor.

Grabbing a bottle that she didn’t bother to read the label of, Macreen strode towards her office. She kicked the door open and strolled inside. There was nothing to ruin her mood here. The old wooden desk and chair waited patiently as they always did, blanketed with a film of dust. The weak light overhead added a warm hue to the room and was easy on the eyes – perfect for when she wanted to get buzzed.

The old chair bent a little as she plopped into it. She raised her feet on the table and threw her head back. Popping the lid, she plugged the bottle’s tip with her mouth and chugged the liquid down greedily. When the taste settled, she grimaced with disgust, then looked at the label: Silver Spell Brandy.

She closed her eyes and sighed. That drink gave her the worst headaches.

The door creaked open.

Who in the void was that desperate for a beating? Her crew should know better than to disturb her when she was in a bad mood. The sound of footsteps came, and she knew it was Garn. Tension left her face, the frow she had worn replaced by calm.

Garn stopped at the opposite side of the table. “I thought you hated that drink,” he said.

“Aren’t you monitoring comms upstairs?”

“I was. Then the others came up and begged me to check up on you. Said you kicked up quite the storm.”

“Who told them to take that Blue Glimmer shit?”

A pause. “So, what’s the next step?” Garn asked.

“Sniff out if they have any more of that junk and burn it.”

“That ain’t what I meant, and you know it.”

She opened her eyes and looked at him. Arms crossed, brows furrowed with concern, the man stared back at her. She scoffed, then took a good swig from the bottle.

“What do you want me to say, Garn? Kick up a fuss while the damned Hand is here? We had a chance before. Now we’ve got nothing.”

“After. After she leaves.”

She took another swig, a few drops of the alcohol trickling down her chin. “And when will that be? She’s here for Mannock’s murder. Who knows what connection she’ll make? We might get iced in a few days.” She chuckled. “A few days if we’re lucky.”

“There’s nothing to find – you said so yourself.”

“Wanna bet on it?” she asked, swirling the drink around in the bottle. “I’ll bet half my fortune.”

He sighed. “You’re drunk.”

“Not yet.”

“The crew needs their leader.”

“Tell them to fire up a hologram of me or something.”

“Macreen…”

“Don’t.” She raised her hand to stop any further argument. “I don’t want your pep talk. We planned big. Got everything ready. Then fate screwed us over – again. If we live, we’ll be right back at the starting point. It’ll be a miracle if that doesn’t happen, and I don’t believe in miracles.”

Garn said something, but she wasn’t listening anymore.

Mannock’s death had created the perfect chance to raise the undersurface from the mud – too perfect as it turned out. The oversurface had stirred greatly, and the ripples had reached further than she’d anticipated. Given Mannock’s status as the head of one of the thirteen Great Houses, it made sense. She should have known better. Now there was no chance of using a war amongst the highborn to change the order of this world.

With a sigh, Garn turned and left, closing the door behind him.

Macreen slouched in her chair. A few minutes passed, then the alcohol kicked in.