Chapter 5: Jamais-vu

The street racing nightmare goes something like this.

He's driving in the RCGP, the "Revachol Circuit Grand Prix" or, as it was more affectionately known, the Jamrock Slam(rock). The Jamrock Slam, like all the street league races in Revachol, was completely unofficial and highly illegal; the RCM could do little about it without calling in the INSURCOM to shut it down by force, and there was of course no mayor or city government to pass preventative ordinances. The RCGP was the championship race, the culmination of the season. The best you could do about the league was pay attention to the flyers and stay off the circuit streets on the posted nights, when Revachol's tenuous, Coalition-enforced democracy gave way to total anarchy.

On these nights, the fans of the circuit league—the young and the old, the rich, the poor, and the dirt-poor, the Iilmaraan and Suresne and Samaran and Oranjese and Seolite alike—all of them united in their love for danger and drama, crowded together on the tops of walls and truckbeds to watch the race. There was food, and gambling, and drinking, and gambling, and tricked-out motor carriages, and gambling, and pirate radio coverage, and gambling. Eventually, when the RCM did root out league racing, they did so by shutting down the bookies one by one.

But that was still years away, now.

Young Kim Kitsuragi loved it all; had loved it since he discovered it in his early teens, while hanging around the auto body shop beneath his and his aunt's fifth apartment. The auto body shop employed a group of grungy, well-built older boys who slouched around smoking in grease-smeared jumpsuits, and whose every word and deed held a particular, mysterious interest for 13-year-old Kim. It wasn't until the boys introduced Kim to the circuit league that he truly fell in love.

Since age 15, he had been out of the crowd and behind the wheel. Most league drivers used stage names to race—for both dramatic flair and for legal protection. Kim, however, used no name at all. He was just Numéro 1111. His MC was n° 1111. He wore all black. His MC was all black. It was a customized LUM Fevre GX-09—an old model, the same age as he was, in fact, with a supercharged, 8-cylinder NO2 injection engine and other dangerous modifications, all of it heavily subsidized by the shady sponsorships and fan donations that he received for being mysterious, daring, and very, very fast.

For years, this was his life—an escape from the frustration of school, the tedium of minimum-wage work, and later, the tedium of junior officership. The freedom, the adrenaline, the anonymity. Kim was good at it. Better than most. He liked that. He liked to win. He made it to RCGP five times, and won once, in '30. And he liked becoming someone else, behind the wheel, or maybe—as he secretly thought of it—becoming his true self, speed demon n° 1111. Not a person but a force, something that transcended physical limitations, that made decisions without emotion or reasoning but instead on instantaneous, infallible instinct. In his secret heart, he harbored dreams of TipTop Tournée. There were only a few racers from the Revacholian circuit league who had made it that far—not many, it was true, but maybe he could be the next.

In the dream, Kim is driving in his last race: the '32 Jamrock Slam. He is 23 years old. Outside, the night is dark. The GX is slicing down Delta Boulevard's main drag at 150 km/h. The radio burbles in his earpiece, inside the helmet. He's shrouded in black fireproof gear. He's in the driver's seat, but the steering levers, gearshift, gas, and brakes are all on the other side of the cabin, on the passenger side.

Sometimes, in the dream, the passenger seat is empty, and Kim's trying to slide over and steer, but he can't unbuckle his seat belt. Other times, someone else is in the driver's seat, but they can't do what Kim can do, and they want him to help, or else they reject his guidance. The GX, with a mind of its own, drives on, rocketing towards the 8/81 on-ramp without slowing down.

You need to slow down, 1-1, says the radio dispatcher.

We need to slow down, Kim says to the driver. Slow down.

We need to slow down, Kim says to the GX, when no one else is in the cabin.

We need to slow down, he says to Bernadette, once, when the dream is different, and the dog is the one in the passenger seat. Kim is driving, but the brakes aren't responding.

"You need to slow down, 41," the radio dispatcher said, in reality, in the Jamrock Slam of '32.

The 8/81 on-ramp hurtles towards him. In the pocket of grass embraced by the boulevard and the on-ramp and motorway, there is a makeshift grandstand for the truly insane. Scaffolding made out of laminawood and aluminum ferrule. If Kim can't slow down, the GX will skid right off the curve and kill every last one of them.

Sometimes, he's yelling so loud at his passenger that he wakes himself up.

Sometimes, he lunges so hard for the steering levers that he wakes himself up.

Sometimes, he can't stop it, and he hits the on-ramp doing 170 and rockets right off the inside wall, crashing into the stands. Splinters and metal and blood hit the glass and then he is in darkness, in incredible pain.

Sometimes, the dream takes the shape that reality did. In the '32 Jamrock Slam, he was flying along the Delta Boulevard Drag—the 75% mark of the race, nearing the climax, the Em-Jam Straight-shot on the 8/81—in a distant 5th. He had little hope of winning 1st place—he'd already accepted that his was a one-time victory—but he was bent on overtaking the racer currently in 4th, Numéro 41, because nº 41 was still close enough and nº 41 often made stupid strategic mistakes, and Kim was extremely good at focusing on achievable goals.

He was well aware this was probably his last Jamrock Slam, because he had decided to give up the TipTop dream and get serious about his career, and success in the illegal street racing circuit was not compatible with success as a law enforcement officer. He intended to go out with a bang. So, with the focus and precision that nº 1111 was known for, he was gaining on nº 41, his stupid green ForTex M, with its noisy suspension and its ugly dragon decal. The streetlights sped past like a train overhead as they raced down Delta towards the 8/81 on-ramp.

The on-ramp had a notoriously tight curve, and the deceleration required there took some skill. Instead of slowing down, the green ForTex pulled ahead with a burst of speed—Kim considered this unwise, so close to the turn-off, so Kim, giving up the overtake for now, stopped accelerating. He wasn't stupid.

But nº 41 was. In his haste to escape nº 1111's overtake, he hit the cement barrier head-on. The car careened off the wall and jackknifed across the track, spinning out. The fans in the little grandstand screamed. Kim decelerated the GX, hard. But the road was too narrow to pass, and he had too much momentum to stop.

His hands moved over levers, downshifting, as he braced himself against the back of his seat in preparation. Either he was going to just barely make it, passing nº 41 at exactly the right instant like a bird through a turbine, or they were going to collide, and his last race was going to end early and possibly in a lot of pain.

The ForTex was still spinning out, and he was slower, in control, he was counting the rhythm with his unreliable eyes and his reliable timing.

Kim accelerated.

He would have made it, he later concluded, and witnesses agreed. He would have made it, if it hadn't been for the tire.

In its death spiral, nº 41 threw off ballast—the left rear tire came loose, and flew under Kim's front wheels. The GX went into a spin, the tire slid under the carriage, and nº 1111 flipped into the air and crash landed in a far more spectacular manner than nº 41.

Kim doesn't remember the moment of impact, but he does remember flying upside-down through the air, all his weight compressed on his shoulders and neck and all the fear leaving his body like it was flung out by centrifugal force. Chasing the danger means catching it sometimes. He accepted all the consequences. He felt the peace of powerlessness. Then the chassis hit the pavement with a deafening boom, louder than an air raid, and skidded some ways up the on-ramp. Everything was broken; Kim couldn't hear or understand any sounds, and he could hardly see anything, and he couldn't feel anything, anywhere. The fear came rushing back. What if I've been paralyzed? What if I can never drive again? What if I'm dead?

The first sensation to return was smell. He smelled fuel.

Then he felt heat.

Fire.

This was a reason to move, his reasoning supplied. His peripheral nervous system, however, was still not picking up the receiver.

The GX, he thought sadly, feeling his first non-fear emotion. It was probably destroyed. He patted it.

Your hand works!

This was good news.

With some difficulty, he unbuckled his seatbelt. This was difficult because he was still upside-down, and the pressure on the buckle was enormous. Click. He fell.

Kim still didn't have his bearings, and could still not hear. If he had been able to hear, he would have heard the screaming, and the sirens, and the fire, which had already started in his engine and was making a rapid approach Kimwise. Where he was, it was dark, and cramped. He wanted to get out, into the orange-lit world, but he couldn't contort his body into the right shape to exit from this dark space. His legs also felt very, very hot.

Then, the miracle occurred. A force connected with the fire-proof scruff of his protective black jumpsuit, and pulled.

It dragged him out through the narrow opening, over the twisted metal of his trusty Lum Fevre GX, and onto hard black pavement. And the miraculous force didn't stop there. It dragged him over the pavement—pain bloomed in his leg, deep and sharp, worse than anything that had come before—and away, and then the miraculous force rolled him onto his back and checked his breathing with steady hands on his chest.

In his peripheral vision, a bonfire burst to life.

Strong arms lifted him up. A mouth moved but he couldn't hear the voice. The colorful emergency lights grew closer. Later, he would ask after his rescuer—it wasn't one of the medics, it was a bystander from the audience, from the dangerous little grandstand at the corner of the 8/81 on-ramp. The medics told him that his MC had been consumed by flames seconds after he'd been pulled out. The bystander had saved Kim's life. While pulling him out over the twisted metal chassis, he had also given Kim a nasty wound on his upper thigh. That, not the shock or concussion or first-degree burns, was what kept Kim in the hospital for a week, and ended his racing career. The nerve damage made his reaction time slightly slower in his right leg.

Ever since that night, Kim has had recurring dreams of the crash. Sometimes he can't prevent it. Sometimes it's caused by his uninformed passenger. Sometimes, he is the rescuer, running towards the ruined GX as the fire catches in the engine, but in those dreams, he can never make it fast enough—the fire blooms, consuming its victim before Kim can rescue him, whoever he is. Lately, it's that version of the dream that comes almost every night.

That was almost 20 years ago. Kim has cheated death once more since then. He's never known who his rescuer was, or harbored any hope of finding out; his memory is too fuzzy and fragmented—arms and half a face, if that.

But looking up at Harry on the beach in the dark, Kim realizes he's found him. The person who rescued him from his wrecked MC in the '32 Jamrock Slam was Harry Du Bois.

*

Day 4 - 9:52 P.M.

Back on the beach, in the whining wind and icy rain, Harry doesn't notice that Kim has suddenly gone rigid and silent.

KINETIC DRESSAGE: (easy—success) That's pretty much how I am all the time.

Harry the bear cop has his eyes on the half-frozen corpse. Kim's still staring at him. "Do you think we can carry him back to civilization?" Harry says.

When Kim doesn't reply, Harry looks at him again.

"You okay, Kim?"

Roused by the sound of his own name, Kim buys himself time by fishing out a dry handkerchief and cleaning off his glasses. Back in visual focus for the first time, Harry looks like a drenched cat. He doesn't appear to be cold at all. Kim is freezing.

"Fine," Kim says.

BRAIN BOUNCER: Obviously, we can say nothing of what we just learned.

SPEED DEMON Nº 1111: Whaaaaat? Come on!

ESPRIT DE CORPS: So, he saved your life. That's great. You'd save his, too. You're officers of the RCM. You're brothers-in-arms. You'll return the favor—ASAP, in fact.

➤ Task Gained: Save Harry Du Bois's Life.

SPEED DEMON Nº 1111: We need to talk to him about this. You can bond over it! Come on, he'll love it! And you love telling people about me! Especially people who you know will appreciate it!

TORQUE DORK: And he obviously will, darling. He was at the Jamrock Slam, sitting in one of the most dangerous seats in the circuit. He was a thrill-seeker, a true devotee of the league. Maybe even a devotee of yours.

ENDURANCE: The answer to his question, by the way, is no. His first question.

"We can't carry him back," Kim says. "I can't."

He indicates his shoulder.

"I have an injury."

"Oh," Harry says. "You could have fooled me." He looks around with his flashlight. They're at the base of a ridge, a steep slope of sand and rock and scrub. Coming down was easy; going back up won't be.

The beach is a boneyard of bleached wood, from what little they can see, a blip between two tall sea stacks. Kim remembers the spot from his long walk home the morning before (Was it really only yesterday?), and he remembers that one of the cliffs has an arch under it. With difficulty, they drag Armin's body south, towards the shelter under the rock. Bernadette follows, very interested in the plank-like corpse.

Under the narrow tunnel of rock, they rest the frozen corpse on the pebbly ground. It's less like standing in a cave and more like standing under a bridge. Kim, gloved hands trembling with cold, tucks his flashlight into his shoulder like a telephone receiver, and takes out his notebook to begin the field autopsy.

The body has been in a deep freeze for the last 36-odd hours, drifting on salty currents just above freezing. It hardly looks human; it looks like a lump of rock. The color is gone from the flesh and the clothes, leaving it uniformly gray, crusted with ice and stained with salt.

Harry kneels over the body, flashlight in his mouth. No gloves. It's his first encounter with the corpse, so Kim, shivering inside his leather jacket, gives them time getting acquainted. He writes down all the necessary categories for the autopsy.

"Cause of death?" Harry finally says, breaking the loud silence. With a ghostly, naked hand, he points to the ghastly hole in Armin's cheek.

"My conclusion," Kim says.

Harry leans in close to Armin's frozen face, pointing the flashlight straight into the hole. He doesn't even grimace.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: (easy—success) He's seen worse.

SHIVERS: (medium—success) Much worse.

"What was it?" Harry says. He looks up at Kim from the rocky ground. "What weapon can make a wound like this?"

"I don't know."

Harry touches it. Kim's stomach lurches.

"Frozen," Harry says. "But smooth. Feels like... frozen meat."

"I'll write that d—down, shall I?" Kim says, failing to control his jaw.

Harry looks up. "You cold, Kim?"

"Let's just do this as quickly as we can. I've already done the initial examination. There won't be much—more left that the ocean hasn't washed away."

Harry goes back to the entry wound. He peers down into it. "When you found him, was there much blood?" He's still rubbing his finger around the rim of the void.

"No. Just a small amount on the back of the head. Congealed."

"And it wasn't because the water washed it away."

"No."

"Self-cauterizing wound," Harry says.

Kim nods. "Mhm."

"Something hot."

Kim nods again. "Or else, it wasn't the cause of death. Perhaps he was killed by something we can't see yet, and this is just treatment."

"Lividity on the brain—would that tell us if he was still alive when it was made?"

"Presumably, if you could make it out, Detective. Your eyes are better than mine, but these are not ideal c—conditions."

Harry takes Armin's frozen corpse into his arms and hoists it up onto his knees, leaning, if possible, even closer. In what Kim considers perhaps a stroke of investigative genius, Harry points the flashlight up the exit wound, into the tunnel through Armin's once-functional brain. He closes one eye and peers in, leaning so close that his ruddy, living nose touches Armin's purple, permanently broken one.

The light shining through makes a circle around Harry's eye. Kim watches with a mix of horror and awe.

"Red and brown," Harry says, voice muffled. "Bruising. There's burst blood vessels in his brain. I can see them."

Face/head wound: burst blood vessels in brain tissue. Evidence that hole was pierced while victim was alive.

Harry lets go of Armin's cold shoulder and puts his index finger into the exit wound at the back of his skull. With his other hand, he sticks the flashlight into his mouth. Thoughtfully, he runs his finger around the edge of the wound, then his thumb around the rim.

VICE: What... is going on here?

"The skull," Harry says. "It's..."

"Jagged or smooth?"

"I can feel small fractures," Harry says. "Whatever it was, it was pushed in with a lot of force."

Exit wound: Fractures. Traumatic force.

"What about the entry wound?"

"You think this is the exit wound?" Harry says, looking up at him with his finger in the bottom of the wound and his flashlight between his teeth like a cigar.

"That is the assumption I have been operating under, yes," Kim replies, stiffly. "Perhaps we should find a way to confirm that."

Harry nods. He puts the flashlight back underneath the hole and feels around the top again with his other hand. Kim watches him shut his eyes and tip his head back, lips parted in concentration, as he circles the frozen rim of the wound. His finger dips inside, then further in, sliding back and forth—it's not a perfect circle, it's elliptical, almost like a keyhole. He withdraws his finger again and explores the shape, then quickly, opening his eyes and moving the flashlight, he feels at the back again.

"It's... non-uniform," Harry says. "What's the word... wider at the top and bottom."

Kim's voice comes out dry: "Tapered?"

"Yes—yeah. It's tapered at both ends. Like an hourglass. I... can't tell... how narrow it gets in the middle..." He frowns in frustration, trying to thrust his finger deeper.

"Don't force it, Detective."

"Do you want to try?" Harry asks, looking up.

"No, I do not," Kim says. The idea of looking into that void of darkness and death again—even and perhaps especially in the current circumstances—sickens him.

Harry nods, still digging up and in with his index finger. Kim finally looks away, up at the ceiling of the cave.

"Sorry," Harry says, "is this too gross?"

"...Can you feel anything in there? Any other—material?"

"No," Harry says. "Just brain. And I think it's starting to thaw out from my body heat. Eugh." He pulls his finger out with a slick sound that Kim wishes he hadn't heard.

Silently, Kim hands him a handkerchief. Harry wipes off his finger and thumb, rubbing the feeling back into his cold fingertips. Outside, the waves crash against the rocks. Kim remembers he's cold, too.

In the notebook, he makes note of the hourglass-shaped wound.

"What's your conclusion regarding entry and exit points, Detective?" Kim asks, not looking up again.

"I think your initial instinct was right," Harry says. He can tell from Harry's voice that he's touching it again. "There's no fracturing on the cheekbone. It's a smooth perforation. It went in this way. Like I said—a huge amount of force."

Kim makes note.

"So in your initial external exam, you found no other evidence of injury, that right?" Harry asks, setting Armin's body back on the ground. He starts unbuttoning the white collared shirt.

"That's right."

"Okay. Are you ready?"

Kim clicks his pen in response. "Go ahead."

"Decomposition has been arrested by the cold temperature of the ocean. Clothing shows salt damage and some predation on exposed extremities by fish. One sleeve of jacket is missing... One button missing as well." He pulls the shirt apart, exposing the frozen white chest. The fabric is stiff with ice. "A lot of bruising... postmortem... based on the pattern." He's running his big hands slowly and lightly over the marbled purple and blue on the dead man's torso. "Except... here." He follows something up, a trail that only he can see, up the sternum, between the pectorals, tracing his neck and throat, and up to his chin. Back to his face. "Yellow... brown. Broken nose is the same color. There is some bruising here that was made while the body was still warm. Or at least, before the deep-sea freeze."

"Consistent with dragging?"

"Yeah. That's what I was thinking."

"That's consistent with the mud and crease marks I found in my initial exam."

"Good."

Kim records Harry's words in shorthand. He glances up again to see Harry hand cupping Armin's chin. He's trying to open his mouth, Kim realizes. Harry rubs his thumb back and forth over the bloodless lips, trying to generate a little heat. "Did you open his mouth?" Harry asks.

Kim shakes his head.

Harry leans in and breathes warm air onto the dead man's mouth. Kim watches with raised eyebrows.

CONCEPTUALIZATION: (challenging—success) He's completely unfazed by death. Intimate with it, even.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: It's...

Harry massages his jaw on both sides, then leans down and exhales again, his breath making a little steam against the frozen surface of Armin's lips. He digs his fingers in and pries downward. The frozen flesh yields, and his mouth opens.

"Respiratory..."

There's a crack of bone. Kim starts.

"Shit," Harry says. "Too far."

BRAIN BOUNCER: Focus.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: Take notes!

"...Respiratory." Harry feels the chest and ribs again, pressing harder this time with a flat hand. He points the flashlight into Armin's unnaturally open mouth, frowning. "Hard to tell. No evidence of choking, no evidence of suffocation on the inside of the mouth."

Kim silently records the prognosis.

"Hepatobiliary... Toxicology... Serology... can't be assessed by this examiner," Harry continues, still pressing on the chest and ribs. He massages the stomach, which is just as frozen as the rest of him. "Gastrointestinal... Undetermined, in the conditions. Cardiovascular... No blood anywhere."

"There was hardly any when I found him," Kim repeats.

"We can't rule out poison," Harry says. "He could have been poisoned before this was made." He taps at the cheek, below the entry wound.

LOGIC: That doesn't really matter. This was obviously the killing blow, and identifying the weapon that caused it will be much easier—and also more crucial to public safety—than looking for a ghost poison.

"My conclusion was that that wound was the cause of death," Kim says. "After your examination, do you concur?"

Harry looks back down at his victim's face, lying in his lap with sightless eyes and a broken-open jaw.

DATA COLLECTOR: He thinks there's still something else left for him to find.

He runs a hand up the center of Armin's face, feeling his nose. There's a purple and brown bruise at the bridge, a later stage of the same bruise that Kim noticed the day before. "Nose broken, post-mortem," Kim comments.

"While being dragged..."

"No blood on his clothing from that."

"Face down, then."

Harry's hand circles the broken nose lightly, then travels over the forehead. He strokes Armin's left eyelid, inches above the face wound. "It's like glass..."

Then something happens. The fogged gray pupil moves. The eye looks at Harry.

Harry yelps and yanks his hand back. Kim jumps in shock, then drops to his knees beside the body, dropping his notebook—"Did you see that?"

"It looked like he moved his eye. But that's—"

"Impossible." Kim's heart is thumping, adrenaline already fading. For a second there, his hands had prepared to perform CPR, but his rational mind is catching up.

LOGIC: (trivial—success) It was an optical illusion.

"That's impossible," Kim restates. Nonetheless, he presses two fingers against Armin's throat. His flesh is ice cold, with only the slightest give—'frozen meat' is right. He's dead.

Harry leans in close again, shining the flashlight into Armin's ice-fogged eyes as Kim puts his glove back on. He rests his hand on Armin's chest. "Hold this—would you?" Harry says.

Kim takes his flashlight. Harry starts pressing around Armin's eyes with both thumbs, like he's looking for a secret catch or button.

"He's not alive, Harry," Kim murmurs. "It was an optical illusion. A trick of the light."

Harry looks back up at Kim, inches away. His warm breath makes a cloud between them, fogs Kim's glasses. "That's one possibility," he says.

"There is no other possibility," Kim replies in a low voice.

Harry quirks an eyebrow.

"If you're suggesting a supranatural explanation, Detective..." Kim raises both eyebrows.

"Think about where we are right now, Lieutenant."

"You mean la zone d'émergence?"

Harry nods. "Bernie brought us to the eastern side of the cape. And... Armin's body has been floating on ocean currents all day that could have sent him as far out as porch collapse."

"That's over 50 kilometers," Kim says. "100 round trip. That's not possible in a single day."

"Pale exposure can do crazy things, Kim," Harry insists. "Why not this?"

"'Why not' reanimate the dead?" Kim says dryly. "Because it's a biological impossibility, that's why not."

Harry is undaunted. He just smiles, exhaling another warm cloud of fog. "What about time displacement?"

SHIVERS: (medium—success) That rings much truer. So much so that it gives you a chill.

At close rage, Harry the bear cop has a disarming smile. His mouth is warm red and slightly open. It's hard to look away from it. "There's no recorded proof of Pale-influenced time displacement for anything other than electromagnetic signals," Kim hears himself say, firmly. "What you're describing is superstition."

"Then tell me you didn't see it too."

"I saw it," says Kim, looking away. "It was a trick of the light."

VOLTA DO MAR: If there's one thing I can't trust, it's my eyes.

*

Night is as dense and dark around them as a shroud, and Kim moves through it like a ghost, feeling connected to nothing. His psyche and his body are losing touch with each other, communicating through increasing interference. It's so late at night that he's transcended tiredness. He's so cold that he's forgotten he's freezing. He can hardly see more than a few feet ahead, and can hardly hear anything over the roar of the waves. Harry and Kim move the corpse, heavy with frozen water, up past the waterline, onto an embankment where small trees grow. Harry and the Constable will return with help tomorrow to retrieve it. They consider taking the same shortcut by which they came—thrashing straight through the woods over the cliffs—but in the end Kim deems it too risky in the dark. He and the dog know the marked route, and they know it will take at least 3 hours.

They walk. They had not dressed for an excursion like this. Kim has two layers of wool socks, and his leather jacket, though heavy, keeps him warm. Harry is not so lucky: cotton shirt, cotton socks, and thin, flat-soled, ugly shoes. He complains, then the complaints fade to silence. They can see nothing beyond their small sphere of light, illuminating the stones and driftwood underfoot, and they can hear nothing but the ocean on their left, invisible.

ENDURANCE: I'll handle this. Hours of physically grueling activity are something you accept and then get through, one minute at a time.

PAIN THRESHOLD: Tomorrow, though, your middle-aged joints are not going to thank you for this.

YOUR MIDDLE-AGED JOINTS: We're not thanking you for it now.

ENDURANCE: While I handle this, you have a lot to think about.

THOUGHT GAINED: PONDER THE PALE

➤ 1. This is related to the investigation. (Proceed)

2. There's no way this is related to the investigation. [Discard thought]

Good. Now, listen. I know your conceptualization skills are rudimentary—you're more of a logic guy, Kim, I get that. You like cause and effect. You like proof. So this might be hard. But I'm going to need you to try, OK?

In that cave, you saw a dead man's eye move. Yesterday, the lividity on his corpse was not temporally consistent. It's starting to occur to you that there might be more to this case than meets the—euh, rigidities of conventional wisdom. Not because the supranatural is real (god, no), but because we (humanity) are still in the early stages of understanding the Pale as a phenomenon. That our understanding is limited does not mean its phenomena are not actual, and affecting the physical world in real ways, every day. You're going to need to wrap your head at least partway around that.

And plus, Harrier will appreciate it if you do.

So? What about it?

1. No way. [Discard thought]

2. No way in hell. [Discard thought, emphatically]

➤ 3. If the evidence cannot be denied, it must be explained. (Proceed)

4. The evidence CAN be denied. And I will continue to do so. [Discard thought, adamantly]

THOUGHT ACCEPTED: PONDER THE PALE

Time to complete: 16 HOURS

+1 to Conceptualization: Trying really, really hard.

-1 to Data Collector: Overinterpreting non-objective evidence.

CONCEPTUALIZATION: Let's think over what you read about Palestorms in your cute little Guide Gris, shall we? It was the sterilized version, for the Occidental tourists.

GUIDE GRIS "THE NATURAL WONDERS OF LE CAILLOU AND SURROUNDING ARCHIPELAGOS": 4th EDITION: Palestorms are exceedingly rare, and the seasoned traveler should be no more concerned about them than they should be about sandstorms in the Koko Nur or snow in the Irmalan Mountains.

Because they are so poorly understood, their arrival cannot be predicted by more than a few hours. Local authorities will announce any danger, and shelter can be taken underground. In Ifrania-du-roi, the former military retreat is outfitted with its very own plumb-plated, storm-proof bunker. Locals always have protective masks on hand to share with those who do not have their own. In a pinch, bandanas and scarves work too.

DATA COLLECTOR: "Poorly understood" in the '80s. 70 years later, it's better understood. They can predict them with some accuracy, a few days in advance. They've also shown that covering your face with fabric does absolutely nothing to protect you from it.

LOGIC: Protect me from what?

An owl hoots nearby, startling both men. They're in the forest now, past the abandoned campsite, walking inland through the pines.

SHIVERS: (hard—success) They say that when Palestorms roll inland, navigation becomes as impossible as traversing the ocean without stars or compass; streets that had once been familiar become spatially alien, leading you in loops; rooms in your home become temporally unreliable—long-dead family members can be seen cooking in the kitchen or sleeping on the couch; even the air itself becomes untrustworthy, molecules of different gasses rearranging themselves into clouds like they've forgotten about entropy and gained intentions of their own.

VOLTA DO MAR: Part of me is healthily afraid of this phenomenon, like a sensible person who does not want to fly, because both man's feet belong on solid ground. But another part of me, the part that always longed to be a pilot, feels curious to see it, to experience the indescribable.

SPEED DEMON Nº 1111: Fuck yeah.

BRAIN BOUNCER: (hard—failure) But not if it means I will wake up, or have any awareness or motor function whatsoever, after I die. That is horrifying.

CONCEPTUALIZATION: (challenging—success) Could Armin's exposure to l'émergence have displaced him, even partially, in time?

Kim tries to imagine it, to make it fit with what he knows of the world. He can't. But he tries.

SHIVERS: (hard—success) In your psyche, a lot of large, intangible things are rearranging themselves. You feel unreal, this late at night, in a dark and unfamiliar place, alongside an unfamiliar companion and someone else's dog. Outside your will or control, your mind is working differently, reshaping itself. In the morning, these changes will fade from your awareness. But you'll have learned something new about yourself, which you didn't think was still possible at this age. You think of yourself as someone rigid and intentional; you think that you know yourself quite well. Your capacity for change might surprise you.

*

By the time they get back to town, it's closer to dawn than to midnight. The streets are silent, and even the rain feels quieter, a uniform hiss of water over the muddy ground and the eternite roofs. The world is so quiet it feels made-up. In his exhausted state, Kim desires warmth and unconsciousness.

BRAIN BOUNCER: No dreams, tonight, please.

SHIVERS: (hard—failure) We'll see about that.

Harry, close beside him, has maintained a pretty good pace for a recovering alcoholic. His lungs wheeze in a steady way that suggests they might actually appreciate the strain. The flashlight batteries have long since died.

"Think it's unlocked?"

Harry accompanies them unquestioningly to the stables, like the safe return of Bernadette is just as much his responsibility as Kim's. They sneak around the back of the Dacha like teenagers out past curfew. The doors are bolted, so Kim has to climb in through a window. There, he makes an interesting discovery—the antique green Lebewesen Model H, parked inside a stall, a silhouette in the dark. He lets Harry and Bernadette inside. Harry finds a chain and kaučuk crosstie on the wall and clips the dog up with that—"Good luck chewing through that, Bernie," he mutters to her, and she sniffs his face and licks his cheek. Kim silently bids her good night, and the two men steal across the courtyard.

Water rushes from the gutters. The clouded night sky is a light gray square above the Dacha's black walls. "Time for bed," Kim mutters. "I don't think I remember what it feels like to be warm and dry."

Harry grunts. They reach the back door.

He jiggles the handle while Kim wipes off his glasses. The hallway lights are off inside.

"I hope I actually—sleep," Harry mutters.

"You'll sleep," Kim says. "Your body needs rest. It's been a very long day."

"It's not my body that's the problem," Harry says, opening the door. His shadowy arm gestures for Kim to step inside first. "It's my brain."

"Take a warm shower," Kim says, wiping his boots off. The hall is carpeted and narrow, and he remembers the layout in the dark. "Don't turn the lights on."

"You make it sound so simple."

"It is simple, Detective."

ESPRIT DE CORPS: (easy—success) Once asleep, he'll probably just have the same problem as you—nightmares.

Harry walks Kim to his room, for some reason. Kim is ready to pass out on his feet. At his door, he pats Harry on the arm. "Good work tonight. Thank you for helping me search for the dog."

"Sure thing, Kim. G'night."

"Good night, Harry."

Kim closes the door on the sound of Harry's shuffling footsteps, with the warm, wan friendliness of his voice lingering in his ears. He thinks of the '32 Jamrock Slam. Despite his exhaustion, Kim crawls into bed with a strange feeling of buoyancy; it's a feeling he remembers from when he was a child, when he acquired a new, precious object, and could hardly fall asleep for the excitement of waking up tomorrow. A feeling of discovery and newness.

VOLTA DO MAR: (impossible—failure) You'll still dream about pulling Yves from the wreck.