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Clostridium Tetani
Topic Started: Jul 21 2017, 05:14 AM (657 Views)
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"You smell that?" It was thick in the air, a heavy blanket that didn't quite choke the lungs and skin but certainly bullied for space on the senses. "Taste it?" It was metallic. A cocktail resting somewhere between copper and iron. It made Kazan Tetsukana's nose slits wrinkle in disgust. "Burdum. Gotta be. No mistaking it, then. This is Rust Pit." True to all rumors and travel pamphlets, the island was a dark, sickly red, a color of decay that perfectly captured the island's inevitable fate. Every day of every year it grew a little smaller, until eventually there'd be nothing left except a few tiny rocks afraid to poke their heads above the waves, or worse yet nothing at all. An entire island consumed from the inside out.

They were approaching the southern face of the island. Tall smoke stacks spewing reddish clouds were the only ones to wave hello to them; a part of the smelting plant that formed the keystone of the entire island's economy. Kazan had a foreboding sense of déjà vu. "We'll land on a beach," he called to his newly acquired companion, Rei no Leliel. "Here's another silver lining to this tub. Keel is shallow enough that we can get close without beaching the thing." It was one of very few silver linings to the Ruddy Candle. Perhaps the fact that it had gotten them to Rust Pit's shores alive could be considered one such lining, though if so it was perilously thin. The vessel had not handled high waves, or any waves, really, all that well, and came close to capsizing at least four times. On another three occasions leaks sprung up in the hull, forcing one to desperately pump water back out while the other made very hasty and patchy repairs.

This was to say nothing of the comfort - or lack of - aboard the re-purposed fishing vessel. Everything inch of it groaned and announced it settling in the most obnoxious way, and once it had settled it quickly grew uncomfortable again and began its whining once more. Water dripped from every overhang, including from the damn pipes rattling over their hammocks. Kazan had even taken to wrapping their sacks of beli - reward for their aid on Salt Island - in spare sheets of plastic to ensure the delicate slips of paper weren't turned into pulp. Sleepless nights had become a common factor of life aboard the Candle, and Kazan was, at least internally, blissfully happy to be able to put his feet upon solid ground again. Looking back, he almost would have preferred to just swim the entire way.

Regardless, there they were. Kazan helped steer the vessel in close to a red, flaky beach and began carefully lowering the anchor. The wind swept flakes up into the air like volcanic ash, though any fire there might been had long since died down into desiccated embers. Happy that the Candle wouldn't blow away, Kazan went down below deck, hefted his box of medical supplies onto his back and gave his cybernetics a quick once over. This his eyes shifted over to the little bag he kept by his hammock. The little bag containing that fruit he had looked over time and time again but never had the nerve to properly pick up. With a
sigh he grabbed it and stuffed it in the box on his back, then heaved himself back on deck and over the side.

His landed with a heavy splash waist deep in the water, where the rust of the island bled into the foam, making it look more like thin, infected pus than anything else. Wading with arms held high, he soon crunched up onto Rust Pit proper and tried to survey the area. No plants, no vegetation. Just rough, flaky ground for miles around and the smelting plant looming not too far away. An industrial wasteland of rust. "So. Where do we start?"
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There was a dusty, moth-eaten navigation chart in the captain's cabin. Rei no Leliel had looked at it. It had said that journeying between Salt Island and Rust Pit Island was a smooth affair barring accidents or Sea King attacks. It had said further that there were no particular pitfalls to beware of, and that the journey should be expected to last three to four days.

Rei no Leliel had mentally harrumphed at that and taken a look at the condition of the Ruddy Candle, and tripled the estimates. It had turned out to be woefully inadequate. She had stayed up the first night anyway, making repairs to her arm, and then cursed when the ship rolled and tilted, and her tools and spare parts clattered to the floor. That was when she began to notice the damp on the floor that meant a leak somewhere else, and from there the list simply ballooned. The Ruddy Candle was less a ship and more a leaky balloon held together by salt-hardened barnacle shells, powered by a sputtering motor that had given up its ghost somewhere in the last decade.

The calendar had been tragically lost overboard somewhere in the third week. Rei no Leliel wasn't sure, looking back, whether that had come before or after the spare parts had all been used up patching hull leaks. Probably after. She didn't even have a hammock, any more, either; it was somewhere below-decks, wrapped around a pipe in a makeshift effort to hold it in place and stem its leaks. It wasn't even as if she had been using it; the Ruddy Candle practically required constant vigilance and servicing, and so she had worked out a system of alternating shifts with Kazan Tetsukana, where she rested while he worked, and vice versa.

It was sometimes up-ended, when the barnacles failed in their duty and both hands were needed to deal with the latest immediate crisis, but by and large... she sat up from the hammock, rubbing her arm. Kazan Tetsukana had gone and woken her up, and she was still slightly groggy. "I do not smell it," 8I she said at last, tapping a finger against her iron face where no nose was. "Or taste it for that matter." She looked out at the sky ahead of them, though, and rubbed her fingers together as if the red-tinged air would harden into flakes between them. If Kazan Tetsukana said it smelled and tasted like burdum to him, though, Rei no Leliel would accept that.

Kazan Tetsukana had said something on Salt Island about Rust Pit Island. It wasn't literal rust; it wouldn't harm their iron bodies. It was foreboding enough even without that, with its high chimneys rumbling along: its industries were running just fine, clearly, where Salt Island had all but ground to a standstill. She allowed herself to take one brief look at the skyline - not that it was easy to see, the way the smoke blended into the sky and was thick enough to hide the upper reaches of the smoke-stacks - and hurried off. Landing was a two-person job, and Rei no Leliel ran between the captain's office and the lower decks to trim the engines, hold the wheel steady, and do the hundreds of tiny tasks while Kazan Tetsukana dealt with the last legs of navigation and launched the anchor overboard.

Rei no Leliel wondered what they'd feel if the Ruddy Candle were to be eaten by rust and vanish overnight. She didn't think they'd feel much, if any, loss.

The water was deep, even if they had managed to bring it in closer than most ships would have been able to go. Then again, most ships would have gone to the docks, rather than simply beaching themselves. That was the fate of being clandestine. Kazan Tetsukana landed just fine; Rei no Leliel was submerged up to her shoulders, her coat billowing up around her before the seawater soaked in and dragged it down. She made a small noise of annoyance, but made her way to the beach behind the taller cyborg doctor. "Heavy machinery," she said, more preoccupied with wringing red-tinged water out of her soaked coat than with Kazan Tetsukana. They'd already discussed it before, anyway, so she wasn't giving him anything new. "We look for the builders, and they'll point us to the designers. Whoever designed the vats they sent to Salt Island will know the creators of the plague." She looked around. It looked like it would be a job of looking for a specific needle in a haystack made of needles, if you were going to look for heavy machinery first; but it would be less of a tip-off to their pursuers than going directly to the laboratories.
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Heavy machinery. Yes indeed, Leliel was right. The vats in which Salt Island's plague had been brewed was laced with Burdum parts, all of it clearly custom made to order. The application was too specific, the task too complicated for any old pot to work. It had been days since he'd seen them, but they were still fresh in his mind, cisterns of a most peculiar disease but a disease of death all the same. Someone, somewhere on Rust Pit, had designed and built at least some of the components to those vats. Did they know their purpose? Most decent artisans and engineers could recognize, or at least take an educated guess, at the effects their creations would have, even when following specifications laid out in a commission and not strictly told the full story. Did they know their machines were being put to a terrible purpose?

And what would Kazan do if he found them and it turned out they did know?

He nodded to Leliel, lit up a cigarette once his hands were free of seawater and began to wade his way towards the smelting plant "May as well start with the elephant in the room then." It was his plan from the start, really, and specifically why he'd wrestled to get the Candle on the southern coast as opposed to the north and its villages. Always nice to ask the opinion of his partner in crime, however. "Biggest and obvious place where that kind of manufacturing could possibly take place. Time isn't so much of a luxury that we have, is it?"

Like Kazan, the plant puffed away, disgorging its choking red clouds over the skies and giving the sun a somewhat eerie tint through the smog. The rusted, flaky ground kicked up in their wake, sending tiny rivulets up into the wind to fly away and settle into the ocean. But this carpet soon gave way to an actual well-maintained pavement that led straight to chain-link fence that surrounded the plant. It was one of several, gently curving either around or in some cases directly over, the looming pit that gave the island its name. Tracks lay in parallel, and Kazan could see numerous box-like trams chugging through the smog back and forth to the plant carrying heavy bucket loads of burdum. "Suppose we follow them. I hope they don't expect any sort of tribute."

Kazan was convinced he would need to swallow those hopes in short order, and did not disappoint himself. The only gap in the fence was occupied by a checkpoint with a small booth and gate. No-one else walked the path they did, but similar checkpoints existed for every other route and tram line into the plant's perimeter, and at every one passerby were stopped, inspected, and catalogued. He sighed, and strode up to the lonely little hut regardless. The clerk within, a petite woman with shiny red hair, a tight hourglass dress and suit, and pure white gloves that somehow avoided being stained by the clogged up air. She frowned at first at Kazan's heavy footfalls and approach, but seemed content at the sight of the box strapped to his back. It was soon her turn to be disappointed.

"Which village, how much are you carrying?"

"Neither and none. We're here on other matters."

"Excuse me?"

Some pale blue smoke from Kazan's lungs mixed with the hazy red. She didn't take to it very kindly. "Other matters. We're not here to sell burdum or whatever it is happens here. Who's in charge around here?"

"That isn't how it works, fish." And if almost to demonstrate how it worked, she took pencil to notebook and began to write in a harsh script the letters 'F' 'i'... but she could not finish the word. Her hand, in a sudden and violent spasm, shot off to the side leaving a horrible gash of graphite in the page. "D-Damn it, not another one..." she muttered, face tensing up in pain. She tried to ignore and push through it by turning to another page with shaking fingers, but before the pencil could land for another shot, the book was snatched up. "Whu- Hey! Give that back right now before I call secur-"

"Those spasms of yours have been going on a while," Kazan noted as he flipped back through the pages, taking careful note of the logbook's dates - and the similar gashes where the woman's hand disobeyed her command and flew off in spasm. he closed and returned the book, but before the speechless woman could utter another word, he placed a sudden hand on her forehead. Her eyes widened and she recoiled. All Kazan did was furrow his brow. "Running something of a fever too. Here." Reaching around for his box, he rummaged a moment and retrieved some pills. "Antitoxins. Should help, but you need to go to a doctor soon. Especially if you start having trouble breathing."

"I-"

"Trust me. Have a nice day now." He was about to walk away, around and past the gate, but suddenly stopped himself as he noticed an open lockbox of beli notes. Taxes, bribes, tolls, he didn't know. He did know Leliel though. His eye slid towards her a moment, before clearing his throat in an awkward cough, and reaching through to snatch a few of the notes. "For the medicine," he hastily replied to the woman's incredulous face. he gave one last quick wave then hurried beyond the barrier.

Once out of earshot and in the perimeter proper, he motioned again to Leliel. "You recognize those symptoms? Looked a lot like tetanus. Appropriate place for it."
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It was a taller order than it sounded, at first glance. The plague on Salt Island was - many weeks old, from the dossier that Priscilla had had - if the journey hadn't rattled it right out of Rei no Leliel's head. She was irritated, briefly, at having given it to the hospital administrator on Salt Island, but consoled herself by the knowledge that it would not have been of much use to her in any case. But the point was that they were seeking the people who had built a machine more than a month ago and shipped it off to Salt Island, without identification or marking or sign of their work.

None of that sounded as if it would be easy to locate them. But you couldn't hide a factory of the size they would have needed... Kazan Tetsukana arrived at the same conclusion as she did, motioning to the giant smelting plant that dominated the landscape from where they stood. "Indeed," said Rei no Leliel shortly, pulling her boots off to disgorge yet more seawater. Small, rust-scaled crabs fell out, too, and promptly scuttled for safety. Rei no Leliel jammed her boots back on and looked at the smelting plant through the reddish haze that passed for air in these particular parts. It was tall and ominous and powerful-looking, and radiated hostility.

Somebody had tried to do something about that, in the unknown past. There were bits of signs and banners that said "SAFTY FIERST" and "WE'R A BIG FAMELY" on the building, complete with pictures of smiling people. Rust had accumulated on the ropes that held the banners up and dripped down their fronts and given all the faces an unnervingly bloody tinge.

Nothing grew there, either. There were artificial trees - plastic, surely, thought Rei no Leliel. Probably put there by the same person who had put up the happy people. Their feet were almost invisible beneath the small clouds of rusty dust that kicked up with every step. "No tribute." 8? said Rei no Leliel, watching the tram-tracks. "This is hardly the visitors' entrance."

And true to her expectations the tracks led to a gate beside a booth, where a small prim woman took documents and conducted a cursory - very cursory - inspection of the trams' contents. Still, there was no choice, and they approached the booth. Rei no Leliel looked at the little woman in it, and looked at Kazan Tetsukana.

He was the better choice to wheedle with strangers, so she let him go to it. She decided to look around a little more. The tram-tracks in particular; on an island where everything seemed to be decaying into clouds of red flakes, the tracks were suffering no more than the expected wear and tear of heavy tram-traffic. Not a coating, thought Rei no Leliel, stooping to scrape a finger across them; coatings would have been rubbed off long ago. Some kind of rust-proof steel, perhaps - not burdum. Imported stuff, she thought. Strong, too, to resist the repeated weight of the trams...

She looked up, to see Kazan Tetsukana arguing with the woman. He had a little book in his hand and the woman was staring at him. Rei no Leliel half-expected a little string of pearls to appear in her hands at any moment, but instead Kazan Tetsukana pushed the book back at her.

And produced pills from his little box. Rei no Leliel made a little noise inside her head. Was that how he was going to get them in? Medicines for entry? That was such ridiculous luck, she thought as he waved her over and she left the tram-tracks to hurry in. She got ready to tell him so, too, and then.

"I was not observing the woman," she said, deliberately not looking back at the woman, in case the woman got suspicious about the strangers. More suspicious, anyway. "But if you say it's tetanus..."

Yes. It was appropriate. Almost too appropriate. Rei no Leliel kicked up some dust. Hypernatremia on Salt Island. Tetanus on Rust Pit. Most people thought tetanus was something you got from being cut by rusty metal, and on Rust Pit Island... Rei no Leliel would have bet anything that people considered rusty metal cuts as just another thing you did all day long. Wake up, wash your face, nick yourself on a rusty spoon.

"Barnacles, again." 8? said Rei no Leliel, looking around the barren landscape. It wasn't like salt, where everybody was sure to eat some of the contaminant at some point. If it were the same thing, and she wasn't just seeing patterns where there were none. And she didn't think there were any bugs that ate metal, on Rust Pit Island at least. "Something to think about."

She looked at the building before her; it had several wings, leading off to different areas, though everything was linked by bridges and corridors anyway. The main office, the smelters, the staff facilities, the warehouse... the scrap heap.

"The scrap heap, I think. Or do you want to look elsewhere." 8?
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"I'd like to think," Kazan said as Leliel caught up to him. They were in, past the fence and moseying about the compound of the great smelting plant. The air somehow tasted even thicker there, despite the difference of only a few hundred meters. Something Kazan would have to suffer alone, given Leliel's curse-turned-blessing of having no sense of taste to speak of. "...that it's a one off case. Or that tetanus just happens to be common here. For obvious reasons." Surely, it could not be another plague? Of course the idea ought not be so alien. They were on the trail of conspiracy; a group that had orchestrated a sickness rooted deep across an entire island, one that corrupted its very nature against it. Rust Pit was an island with a similar overabundance of one particular resource that could, theoretically, be used to poison in its own way.

He took the cigarette from his mouth and shook his head to try clear his head. It didn't bear thinking about, not right then. What they needed to focus on was finding evidence and direction to their targets. It didn't really bear thinking about how they were going to achieve their end goal, of somehow taking down such an organisation, either, but somewhere along the line they had seemingly become committed to it. "Scrap heap. Fuss might be impossible to avoid - gonna have to recruit some local help at some point. But I'd prefer it a latter resort. Besides, those machines have already been shipped out. Stands to reason any failed prototypes or faulty parts will have been thrown out."

The scrap heap was, unlike the rest of the facility, not hidden behind towering walls of concrete. Instead, it formed a sad and desolate area at the rear of the building, its only shelter arms from the wire fence offering something of a border. Chutes protruding from the plant occasionally rumbled and spat out another hunk of twisted metal or a lump of soot and slag scraped off the edges of the furnaces. "Natural evolution of 'needle in a haystack,' huh." The heap came up to a few meters at times, and was many yards deep. Had it been nothing but a landfill, their task would be impossible save for divine invention. Scrap, however, is a ludicrous business and the heap at the Rust Pit smelting plant was no exception. A mix of scavengers and official employees attended to the heap, doing their best to stop it going fully amorphous by sequestering it into smaller, organised piles or otherwise playing vulture and making off with the occasional limb or two.

Thunk!

Another lump came crashing down, and two people were already on it before it had fully stopped rolling. As Kazan approached the gap in the fence that lead into the heap, he noticed a hard-hatted foreman with a clipboard and list trailing down to his feet. It blended somewhere with his beard into a knot of white. He saw them both and smiled. "Ooh, we've got ourselves a new set of competition! Hehe, I'm just pulling your leg of course. Feel free to take whatever you can carry." Despite the length and whiteness of his immense facial hair, he didn't speak or look particularly old. Mid-forties at the most, with only a handful of wrinkles and a back straight enough to put a carpenter's level to shame. "Would I be right in thinking those arms of yours aren't just for show, and you'll be relieving us of a fine bounty?" he said, nodding at Kazan and Leleil's cybernetics. "I hear you sea breathers can haul a load and a half, too, so you enjoy yourself."

"Thanks," Kazan gruffly replied around his smoke stick. "Was wondering, though, if you could help. Looking for burdum."

The foreman snorted viciously in laughter. "Who ain't?"

"More specific than just raw material. We're trying to track down some machine parts. Medical devices, vats. Maybe even just circuitry would do."

The foreman chewed on the inside of his cheek. "Can't say we don't get them, but they ain't all that common. Burdums too valuable to just throw away; most time if they're trying to put something together with it in there and it goes wrong, they just melt it down and start again. Sometimes the metal'll be too contaminated though, too many impurities. Times like that, they'll chuck it, but then your luck is double bad since stuff like that never lasts long here. Ain't worth it to the big men to store an' move something like that, but to a little guy? Healthy profit in it, even if its just to be broken down for parts." He chewed a little more, tongue and gums squelching as he rolled his thoughts around in there. "But, no harm in looking. If its anywhere, you'll wanna check row six, third pile on your right."
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Hope sprung eternal in the heart of Kazan Tetsukana, thought Rei no Leliel. It was too kind of him. A one-off case? You could hope it. But when the literal first person you met on the island was a sufferer, and her suffering had lasted... some unknown length of time. Rei no Leliel racked her brain. Symptom onset, one to three weeks. Untreated, it could last months before the sufferer recovered... but it was not like hypernatremia, where almost every sufferer would die. All the same, she thought. The prim little woman with her delicate white gloves would surely have gone to seek medical treatment if she had been nicked in any way. Rei no Leliel could not imagine that woman tolerating a bleeding wound at all.

Perhaps it was simply part of the local culture, and it was nothing significant, but Rei no Leliel kept it under consideration as they approached the scrap heap. Scrap heaps. Scrap... something, Rei no Leliel didn't have the right words for it. Metal surrounded them in badly-balanced piles several meters tall, and that was on top of the depth of the pits, however deep they went. Rei no Leliel thought they looked as if they ran very deep indeed. "I do not expect that these factories produce needles," she said. "They would be an incredible risk of... tetanus." She knocked her knuckles on a few pieces of metal as they passed by. Iron, most of it, surely doomed to rust uselessly in the open air before salvage. Some of it was steel. She thought she recognised some bars that would have belonged on the tram-tracks. None of it was needles.

"That is very generous of you." 8) Rei no Leliel said to the bearded foreman. "Though we are looking for specific items, and not for spare parts..." She trailed off, looking at the heap. On the one hand, they had quite enough to do as it was. On the other hand, the foreman was right, and Rei no Leliel's thoughts drifted back to a particularly horrible little red boat anchored off the shore of Rust Pit Island, which was in desperate need of a brand new everything. They would most certainly have to return here before they cast off again, if they succeeded.

The foreman laughed, and directed them away to the third pile in the sixth row for their medical burdum, or even any burdum. Rei no Leliel nodded her thanks, though she was still thinking more of the parts she could use. An improved arm wouldn't go astray, either, she thought, or even an additional...? There were always times when one could do with more limbs. She counted the rows as she went, but the piles... "Not all that common," said Rei no Leliel, pausing in her step to put her fingers up in air-quotes. "Clearly a relative statement." It was maybe two or three piles of burdum amidst a sea of iron and steel, into which more iron and steel was always falling, but the pile teetered taller than Rei no Leliel. From her distance it was all plates and pipes and unidentifiable pieces, and many parts of it too heavy or too entangled to move on her own - or, for that matter, possibly even by Kazan Tetsukana, even if his arms weren't just for show.

Well. There was not really anything for it, unless they borrowed a lift or crane - and she did not think the foreman's good humour would extend that far. "I'll take this pile," said Rei no Leliel, walking to the one nearest her. She began to roll up her sleeves, tugging at the smaller pieces. "With any luck we will find something that looks medical, and with identification of its originating factory."
Edited by pantherasapiens, Aug 5 2017, 02:27 AM.
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Kazan grunted around his cigarette. "Relative to how much they pull out the ground on a daily basis? Yeah. Kind of a pittance. Still," he rumbled as he too pulled up the sleeves of his coat, to spare them getting snagged on the many edges protruding from the piles, "better a pleasant surprise than none at all." With Leliel dealing with one pile, Kazan made a start on one of the others. At first it was hard to determine exactly why the pile had been left as it was, burdum quite possibly being worth more than its weight in gold. However, it soon became apparent and the the foreman's words rang true. Every wretched pipe, every mangled frame that he hauled from the debris was splotched and infected with alloy impurities. Bits of iron, nickel, or zinc that had become irrevocably fused with the burdum in such a way as to weaken both. A few struts, bolts, and even a circuit board disintegrated in his hands: worthless. It was a blessing the items they were looking for, if they even existed, weren't needed for their monetary or construction value.

A few minutes digging and Kazan huffed and wiped at his brow. True, his cybernetics were doing most of the work but it wasn't entirely easy. Nearly every piece was shakily intertwined with another until they all built up to form an architect's nightmare, meaning removing them wasn't as simple as lifting and moving them. Instead, it required careful poking, prodding and slow, slow, slow easing to make sure a errant tug wouldn't cause the entire pile to collapse on top of him, or worse yet, destroy any artifacts that might be buried underneath. It was heavy and tiring work, with no sunlight to mark a shift in time thanks to the never ending rust-red cloud that choked the sky.

And as that cloud shifted and rolled in on itself over and over, Kazan's hope for anything of real value begin to diminish. He wiped at his brow again, got stuck in, and it was then that fortune showed him a little favor. A small, buckled plate slid down from the top of the pile, disturbed by his diggings like so many other pieces of junk. He was about to toss it like he had the others, but he noticed something inscribed in the corner. The text was incomplete, but read "-boratory uses," and just below it, "-ep sterilized!"

It wasn't much, but it was something. "Lelei," he called, without taking his beady eyes off the plate. He turned it over, inspected it some more and gently rubbed where flakes of rust had begun to congeal too heavily. "Castor Medical Ltd..." he read from the other side of the plate. He'd never heard of them, but could they be the ones who commissioned the vats? The ones behind the whole thing? Some kind of front, most likely, but it was a name they could try and chase. By itself, it didn't give much. But that wasn't the only bounty the plate offered. "Here, look." In the corner was a pair of initials, "F.K.K." The style of the writing differed from the rest of the text, and they appeared to burnt in with a welding torch after the fact rather than included as part of the mold. "Artisan's initials?" he pondered aloud.

A puff of smoke left his lungs and was absorbed by the ever present cloud. He tapped at the initials, then the company name. "Could be something totally unrelated. But, then again, can't be too many medical devices made with burdum. This was left here recently too, near the top of the pile." He looked to Leliel. "My bet is we find this F.K.K, we find Castor. If looking in the business directory doesn't work."
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They got to work. It was hot, tiring, and she didn't even have the luxury of letting her mind drift while she went through the repetitive motions. No, every piece was tangled or hooked or pressed down by some other piece, and it was like trying to unravel a jigsaw puzzle. She had to carefully wiggle at pieces, or push aside some other piece to loosen up space for the one she wanted, and many of them were simply impossible to access despite lingering in clear sight. Kazan Tetsukana, she thought, must be having a worse time of it; his height simply meant he had to bend down lower to do the work. But then he was stronger, while she was limited to the smaller sheets of metal, or the wires.

At some point she had to take out her own cutters and pliers to twist and cut away at the burdum parts around her, though they weren't all exactly burdum. The foreman had spoken true about that, at any rate, and the burdum parts were shot through with iron and other things. Mostly at the joints and welding-points, where parts had been joined together, but it looked as if in some places it had been an attempt at alloying the two metals and had failed utterly. She cut those away, tossed them aside, and continued digging. The red cloud overhead was, in this case, both curse and blessing; it filtered the sunlight out, and it was not as hot or sweaty as it would normally be - but the reddish light that did come through, was a poor tool for sorting out rust from good metal. Not that she had even that, after a while, as she ventured deeper in and the lights of her eyes were all the light she had in the shadows of the metal pile.

Time passed unchecked except by the growing soreness in her arms and legs, and the growing frustration in the back of her mind. There was no guarantee that they would find anything in this heap; she should have chosen a different place to begin their search; this was a fool's errand, and they were simply begging to be tripped up by something in the pile that would bring it all crashing down on them, several tons' worth of metal at a go -

"Lelei," said Kazan Tetsukana, his voice echoing strangely in the little metal grotto that Rei no Leliel - not Lelei - had hollowed out for herself in her progress downwards. She paused, and turned slowly around, creaking as she did from the sudden change in posture, and she began the careful hunch-backed journey back out into the relative sunlight. He'd have to have good news indeed, or she'd - well, she didn't know what she'd do, but she'd do something.

"What is it," 8? she said, emerging and standing straight up. She stretched, just enough to limber herself back up, and walked over to his pile. He was grimy in dust and rust, much the way she felt, but he looked triumphant in some small way. Good. Something.

"Rei no Leliel," she said to Kazan Tetsukana, "well done," taking the piece to look at. A small, slightly curved plate of rusting burdum. She traced the letters with her fingers, noting as she did that it was a particularly good piece of burdum. A little rusty, to be sure, but there were none of the impurities that she'd been seeing all day. Castor. F. K. K. "Possibly. And a skilled one, if they're willing to sign their name to their work - but not skilled enough that it did not become unusable, and therefore scrapped." She looked at the piece. "It may be easier to find Castor than to find the artisan - if either of them are still around to be found."

Still, it was a lead, and their only lead right now. She began dusting herself off. "We may as well go and begin looking..."

***

The foreman was still there, though now shirtless and covered with a sheen of sweat. He tipped his cap as they approached. "Foun' anythin'?" he called to them from atop a pile of metal parts he was securing with rope. "Bad days 'appen, sometimes!"

Rei no Leliel assumed he was sympathising over the fact that they appeared to only have a small plate of rusted burdum between the two of them, to show for the past few hours' work. "Your sympathies are appreciated," she said. "But we were not searching for parts, but for..." She paused. It would not do to reveal things too early on; it would be best to keep their heads low, for the moment. "We found what we were looking for, but may be back later for more. Do you know of Castor Medical Limited." 8?

"Castor?" said the man, frowning puzzledly. "Dunno. Hey!" he turned, yelling to his men in the nearby piles. "Any of you ever hear of a Castor Medical?"

There was a shouted conversation back and forth, while Rei no Leliel and Kazan Tetsukana waited. Eventually there seemed to be a consensus reached, and the foreman pointed off in the distance. "Bob over there says they're over there," he said. "But they ain't the nice sort."

"No," said Rei no Leliel. "They probably are not. Thank you." She began walking away, but as she did the foreman's arm spasmed sharply, and he dropped his rope and swore. She looked at Kazan Tetsukana. Another coincidence, would he say?
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"Rei no Leliel. Sorry." Kazan still hadn't quite gotten used to his partner's preference in naming. It was strange and something of a handful to use her full name at every opportune, when the opposite was true of the vast majority of people. He figured there must have been reason behind, some deeper meaning that simply hadn't come up in conversation as they had plied the depths of Salt Island's seedy underbelly or as they crossed the sea in their perilous craft. There was a lot he didn't know about her, really, and no doubt the same could be said vice versa. At no point had they really had the chance to properly sit down and simply talk about each other. The task, nebulous and uncertain as it was, had taken all precedent and they were simply two individual cogs grinding together to try and create a solution.

He shrugged at the suggestion. "Castor to F.K.K, or F.K.K. to Castor. Either route ought yield answers." He just hoped they were asking the right questions. Plate tucked neatly under his arm, Kazan followed Leliel and they both retraced their steps in the mud. He was going to go on ahead to investigate the trams, but the foreman's shudder, the same involuntary and seemingly painful spasm as the gatekeeper from before, gave him reason to pause. He watched the exchange more closely, smoking quietly, until Leliel was done before walking closely by her side. "Seems to be 'what I'd like to think' and what might actually be the case don't want to share the same space. Don't want to sound as jaded as I feel, but... typical."

A tram, one of many, sat patiently within the perimeter of the gate as workers, scavengers, and miners having brought tribute, piled on to go continue their work day wherever they were needed. There was little in the way of security or passes needed; people simply jumped on and stood unmolested until departure. Presumably if one was already inside the fence then what concern was it if you were wanting to leave. Kazan looked out over the horizon, and the tracks seems to follow the same direction as the foreman's gnarled finger and thus he too climbed aboard. Several people shuffled to make space and cursed under their breath at the stupid fish, but didn't raise any more of a stir, the fuss apparently not being worth it with their energy needed for labor elsewhere.

The cigarette rolled around in Kazan's mouth, and he eventually extracted it as the tram's bell rang and it started its trundle along the rusty tracks. The regular beat of wheels was somewhat soothing, though Kazan was not much in a mood to properly appreciate it. His mind, ears and eyes were elsewhere, studying the occupants of the tram. Several of them seemed to be suffering from spasms of varying degrees and frequency. "If we hadn't already bitten off more than we could chew, then we have now. If this is another plague there's no reason to think Salt and Rust Pit are the only victims. This conspiracy could stretch the length of the entire route. Maybe even further." It was disquieting to think that some group was releasing specially bio-engineered pathogens on who knew how many islands, each one tailored to take advantage of the local environment and resources. But why? To wreak a slow, subtle havoc across so wide an area required resources and smarts; surely such smarts would see how insane a scheme it was? It was, of course, hopefully and naive thinking. Whatever agenda was behind the plagues was malicious and worryingly large in scale and ambition.

"We may need to gather samples. I'll admit I'm curious as to the vector here. Relying on people to cut themselves is unreliable. People eat salt. It's an easy pick. Burdum, not so much." The questions just kept piling up without anything resembling answers. He hoped that Castor would help balance the equation, but it was clear as the tram clacked on toward a village that this was not going to be the case.

The building was on the outskirts and he would have mistaken it for a barn were it not for the crudely painted sign hung atop it. Really, it was a barn and didn't look to be anything else. The wood was rotting, there were holes a-plenty in the roof and one of the doors was hanging open on a single hinge. The place might have been all but abandoned were it not for a handful of men and women dressed in cheap, worn and patchwork guard uniforms sitting around outside gambling. Kazan hopped from the slowly trundling tram as it passed by and took a few steps, eyebrow as high as it could go. "This can't be Castor." Yet, that was what the sign referred to it as and it matched the directions they were given.
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"It has only happened twice," said Rei no Leliel. "It may yet turn out to be a hazard of working on these premises." It was certainly much more likely for a foreman, who worked on the scrap heap all day, to have received any number of small rusty cuts. And yet, mused Rei no Leliel as they boarded a tram and left the scrap heap behind, you would expect that exact same man to be the most resistant to such things. Callouses, or scars, or simply the experience to know how to treat cuts. You did not (in the limited experience of Rei no Leliel) become the leader of a team of men doing rough work, without at least having done enough of it yourself to earn their respect. And she did not think that the foreman was ignorant of the risks of their line of work.

Which meant, then - if it was a pattern, and it wasn't certain yet, but it could be, and if it was, then this instance of tetanus was able also to simply bypass any defenses or treatment the local sufferers would have had or known. Possibly, especially, if it had been created with local help... There was a twitch of a hand opposite her, and her train of thought switched tracks as her attention began drifting up and down the tram. All of them men and women of varying appearances. Most of them were rough looking: factory workers, or scrap collectors, or such; the others, huddled in a neat little group near the doors, looked like office workers. Some of them wore dainty white gloves like the ones of the prim woman. Rei no Leliel looked at those gloves. Some kind of uniform? She wondered. But regardless of their dress or manners, they all shared something in common.

Tics, spasms, shakes. A neatly dressed man struggled to straighten a shaken glove; a clang (and then a stream of invective) sounded as a large-built woman dropped a toolbox that burst open and scattered tools about the floor. Others simply held themselves tight - ankles hooked around each other, hands tucked tightly into armpits despite the heat. One of them fished out a bottle of something and swallowed it. A home remedy? thought Rei no Leliel, though she was unpleasantly reminded of the curative vials from Salt Island.

Rei no Leliel considered Kazan Tetsukana's proposal at length. "If the plague-maker has that far a reach..." She considered. "Then it may be more profitable to go on to Nemea, or even Neptunia, and attempt to find them more directly, rather than coming along and finding their months-old leftovers." >8/ "But we do not have the power yet to do anything about it." Which, if Rei no Leliel was honest, was still something she was not fully certain of. It was something she had considered, on those sleepless nights on the Ruddy Candle, but she was no closer to answering the question of what she would do if they found the plague-maker. "Burdum is everywhere on this island," she mused. "Lace enough of it, or create something that lives well on its surface, and it is only a matter of time." And there was one more similarity to the hypernatremia of Salt Island; tetanus was non-transmissible from one sufferer to another. "The hospitals are sure to have sufferers, and samples of drawn blood or plasma. Samples are easily obtained."

She was still looking at the other tram-passengers as she spoke, and it was only a stroke of luck that she saw the sign in the opposite window that read CASTOR in old, faded paint on (of course) rusting burdum. She pulled at the bell to ring it, and the tram slowed down in response to deposit the two of them on... well, on the burdum path. It was just as dry and dusty as the factories and scrap heap they had come from, with the singular difference that they seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. Rei no Leliel looked at the tram track with some slight irritation: had the tram, seeing that they were new to the island, simply left them there as some kind of cheap prank?

They found another sign, and that led them to... Castor Medical Limited.

Castor Medical Very Limited, thought Rei no Leliel, staring at the barn. Men and women sat outside it in cheap clothes, gambling, but Rei no Leliel thought that if they simply walked in to announce their query... It would not end well. And yet they had to approach.

"A shell," she said, as flatly as her monotone-voice ever would go. "I suppose we could not have expected any better." She wondered if it would even appear in the directory; probably not. Which meant that the lazing rabble around the rotting barn were their only lead, if you could even trust them for that. But there was no help for it; they were their only path forward on this lead, unless Rei no Leliel and Kazan Tetsukana wanted to test a different tack. She thought of waiting for the next tram to take them back to the offices and factories, and trying to gain access to those records... "There is no help for it," she said, "but be ready."

There was no gate or fence to speak of; if there had ever been any, they had rusted or been stolen away a long time ago. Rei no Leliel simply walked, brass-faced, up to the nearest person who was not currently involved in a game, and tapped him on the arm to get his attention.

"I am looking for Castor Medical," she said, without preamble.

He shook his arm in irritation. "Waaall. Found it, ain't'ya?" he said. Around her the other people gave her a moment's glance, and then returned to their game.

Annoyed at being ignored, Rei no Leliel persisted. "This is not Castor Medical."

"Thass wot it sass on the sign, girlie," said the man, in more irritation. "Castor Medical Limited. See?"

"It is empty," said Rei no Leliel. "I am looking for where it has gone to."

"How'd'ya know? Ain't gone inside 'ave ya?" said the man. "Why don' ya go in and holler for 'em?"

And even Rei no Leliel could tell that was a brush-off, and she thought that perhaps she should have let Kazan Tetsukana do the talking. But she was already here, so she tried the next best thing. "I will gamble you for the current location of Castor Medical," she said.

"Oah? Didn' ever see them move," said the man, but there was a glint in his eyes now.

"But do you know where I can find the people who worked at Castor Medical," 8? said Rei no Leliel.

"...maybe," said the man. "But you have to wager something, girlie."

"I have beli," said Rei no Leliel.

"Good enough," said the man, grinning. "Fifteen hundred thousand beli."

"...steeply priced," said Rei no Leliel. "Be sure your answers are worth that much."

"They are," said he with lazy arrogance. "So, what'll we play? Dice? Poker?"

"...dice," said Rei no Leliel, and she rubbed her hands and was glad she had spent time in the Redlinns' casinos on Stearr. "Let us play something simple: we will play cho-han."

"Good enough," said the man again. "Have you got dice?"

"No."

"Then I'll use mine."

"Let me see them." Rei no Leliel bounced the dice on her metal palm, rolled them about, and inspected them. "Very well."

He grinned an insouciant grin. "And I've got the bowl, too." He put the bowl on the ground, and counted. "One, two, three -"

Rei no Leliel cast her die. The man cast his die, and before the two stopped spinning, he threw the bowl over and covered it.

"Odd."

"Even," he said. "Now, let's see."
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It was far from unthinkable, Kazan pondered. He had fell largely silent once they had departed the tram. Aside from his disbelief at the supposed Castor building, there was much to think about in regards to the apparent sickness itself. Leliel was possibly right in that a bacteria could simply thrive on the burdum and then be absorbed into the body by any many of openings, much like regular tetanus. Strictly speaking they only had observation of a fairly small group to even base their theories on, and the people's ails could well be down to just regular, everyday tetanus bacteria, with no bio weapons in sight. But Kazan was not entirely convinced that was the case. For one, rust and burdum were two different things, and though tetani bacteria might thrive in the former this did not necessarily translate to the latter. For seconds, with exposure came adaption and resilience. Rust was still prevalent on Rust Pit, even if not every reddish brown substance turned out to be another patch of decay; tetani baterium would still be found in the environment, which meant those living and working on Rust Pit would almost assuredly built up a resistance to the disease, if not outright immunity.

No, Kazan's nose was twitching like a bloodhound on the trail of a fox. Something odd was going on, something that reeked of further conspiracy and the deployment of another plague. The shady shell of Castor only cemented those suspicions. They were going to get answers, one way or the other, even if that meant playing the games of the goons hired to make the barn sufficiently equipped to just barely crawl over the border of legitimacy. Anyone looking at the barn with half a brain could tell the whole thing was a front, but with an address and employees on a payroll the site would, at least, look crystal clear on paper. When dealing with a conspiracy of such a size, no doubt that was the most important part.

So Kazan waited as Leleil stepped up to the batting plate. He went to go lean on the barn wall but reconsidered after it gave a dangerous groan. Was it possible that Castor in its entirety was a front? A dummy held on thin strings, all to lengthen and confuse the paper trail so as to further hide whatever umbrella was really in charge. If that were so, then it was also entirely possible that Castor wouldn't be the only one. Kazan and Leliel would, quite possibly, need to be dogged to get to the end and find the real perpetrators.

He wasn't sure he'd have the patience for a hundred or more games of dice. Still, they played their game. Leliel made her bet and the goon made his own. The dice rattled, the bowl came up, and all eyes began flashing back and forth to count the numbers. "Well would ya looky that. Nice call, girlie." The dice came to a healthy eight, with a two and a six.

"Cough up what you know, then," Kazan grunted.

The man gave Kazan a dirty look. "Ey, I'm dealin' wit the girlie, pal, not you." His look sweetened right up as he turned back to Leliel. "Fair's fair an all that. So yea, this place ain't used for squat, innit? But we get givin' gubbins to 'guard' it, an yeah it ain't much more an' beans an' rice, plus its boring as shite, but beats digging round the pit, yea?" A perfect job for the lazy and unmotivated, certainly. "Honestly divin' nah who awns the place, but we gez a parcel each week wit pay from the Redbird lot up in Cango. Ain't got no return address neither, but ask wozzis face, Adonis. All we nah." The rest of his gambling buddy guards all shrugged in agreement.

Clearly they were all on a need to know basis, and they needed to know very, very little. Nor did they seem all that inclined to ask, making them the perfect names to put down on a nice form to prove that Castor was indeed a functioning company specializing in ageing wood and apparently nothing else. Still, they had been useful enough; almost too useful. "Not very hesitant at giving any of that out," Kazan noted aloud.

The man shrugged again. "They divin give half a rart's ass boot us, divin see why we art give one boot them." That little glint returned in his eye and he gave an almost trademark glint. "But nee harm in tryna make a bob on the side, eh?"

Kazan snorted at that, and threw a few notes their way anyway. Far from their intial asking price, but something of a small tip to compensate for the trouble of speaking. Could be he and Leliel ended up putting them out of a job, though he had little doubt they'd get by somehow. He returned, stomping slow, ponderous steps, to the tram line to wait for another heading north around the rest of the island. He wasn't entirely sure where Cango was, but it was likely one of the major villages of the island and thus would be connected somewhere along the line. "These people are very concerned with keeping their distance," he said as he waited, arms folded and cigarette puffing away. "If they're getting parcels delivered, good chance the real 'Castor,' isn't based here. Least not the puppet masters." He glanced up at the reddish clouds drifting low in the sky. There was a rumble of thunder and a few drops of an oncoming shower. One of the guards had been trembling.
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There were some gamblers who liked to stretch the suspense out as long as they possibly could, living for that moment where the wagers were held in the teetering unknown status of "won" or "lost". Other gamblers simply went directly for the reveal, whether win or lose, the better to get to the next bet. Rei no Leliel was not a gambler, and disliked the unknown. Fortunately, the man was not much of a showman; either that, she thought, or the looming mass of Kazan Tetsukana was enough to dissuade any such inclinations in him.

The bowl came over, and it was - "Even," 8) said Rei no Leliel, looking at the dice only long enough to count the pips before her attention flicked back to the man - and the other people, surrounding them beside Kazan Tetsukana. They'd attracted a small audience, though she should have expected that; she and Kazan Tetsukana were likely the only thing of interest to have happened there in a week. But she didn't know if they would be sore losers.

They were not. "Luck of the throw," said Rei no Leliel, who was a gracious winner and had absolutely not been considering springing Spine on them if things had turned ugly. "You'll do better your next time."

"What, by callin' evens?" said the man, snickering.

But the upshot of it all was that they got directions to Adonis of the Redbirds in Cango, if that was even his real name. She wondered if they might have been better served by bringing the man along, even if he didn't seem to like Kazan Tetsukana very much. Rei no Leliel pondered on the unlikely event of any person liking Kazan Tetsukana less than herself.

"If they were found, and their scheme revealed," said Rei no Leliel reasonably, "They would have at least one island out for their blood, and maybe more, if Rust Pit Island has also been struck, and the others along the line. Powerful enemies hunting them down, and the World Government does not look kindly on these things." She tapped her fingers on her metal arm. "Unless the World Government is behind it, but then they would seek plausible deniability even more." It would also mean that, however indirectly, Rei no Leliel and Kazan Tetsukana were making possibly the most dangerous enemy of all. And it would not be the first island-destroying weapon that the World Government had researched and created; the Buster Call was the bogeyman of all island-dwellers in the world. Which meant... would the World Government even need to have plausible deniability? Maybe, if they did not want to spark conflict with any Yonkou or Shichibukai who held the other islands, but that was... Rei no Leliel shook her head. "It is a great puzzle," >8/ she said at last.

A round spot darkened on the ground, then another, then another. Rain, thought Rei no Leliel, holding out her palm to collect the falling drops in it. Even the rain here was red with rust. "Or the elusive F. K. K.," said Rei no Leliel. "But as an artisan of that skill, surely they would have demand in other areas." She watched the tram tracks as the drizzle came down around them properly, soaking them both through. Fortunately it was only a few minutes before the tram came, and they boarded it in their sodden clothing. "Is Cango along this route," 8? said Rei no Leliel to the tram-driver.

He shrugged, busying himself with covering his window with a sheet of plastic to keep the rain out. "Yeh. Long ride though. North."

Rei no Leliel looked down the tram. All the seats were taken. It would be a long ride.
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The World Government. By their very nature they liked to have fingers in ever slice of business conceivable. "I know I jumped to conclusions regarding the Government before. Back on Salt." The rain began falling in earnest, leaving the pair of them sodden as they waited by the tracks, the raindrops reverberating off their metal bodies as it did the metal of the lines. "They're an easy target to blame. And they have the resources for this sort of thing, too. But the more I think about it, can't help but feel there's no motive. At least not any obvious one. True, their ties with Salt and here are tenuous at best. But the World Government's objective is subjugation. Not extermination. They have nothing to gain by wiping out entire islands like this. Unless they were in dire need of real estate." It was a humorless joke that even Kazan himself couldn't muster up a grunt to. None of which was to say Kazan ruled the thought out entirely; if they were capable of it, they were a suspect, and the Government already had its fair share of atrocities on hand. Not seeing a motive wasn't the same as there not being one, and as much as he'd lack to start narrowing down some form of list, the Gorosei and their pawns remained near the top.

The monotony of the rain was soon broken by the tooting and rattling of another tram, this one packed even tighter than the previous, likely by those wanting to escape a walk in the rain. Kazan climbed on, but ended up half-in and half-out, with the tram's roof unable to contain both his bulk and that of all the other passengers. "Got to wonder if F.K.K. actually knew what he was doing," he mused, rain still dripping down his arm and smattering his hair. "Like you say. Niche machines require niche skills. But if Castor - or whoever is in the shadows - can get away without telling someone, I think they would. Those vats could probably be re-purposed. Medical. Industrial. Catering even, at a push. Could have easily have lied to the men or women working on them." Kazan shrugged. "We'll find out when we find them." First they needed to wait out the trials of public transport. True to the driver's advice, it was a long ride, with frequent stops as people got on, off, or something locked up and needed oiling. Rust resistant design was oddly not very high up the priority list it seemed.

Kazan remained largely silent throughout it all, occasionally dropping comments on the scenery, or lack thereof, and the poor engineering behind the trams. He even begrudgingly stepped off the tram to help fix it after a brake wheel failed and refused to move without screeching to high heaven. Eventually, however, the brick architecture of Cango began to appear on the dotted, rusty horizon. The rain even let up a little, turning more into a dirty drizzle of pollution. Kazan stretched and groaned as they finally came to a halt at the dingy little platform. At the very least they wouldn't have to walk very far; the village only had the one major high street with the others being little more than self-contained cul-de-sacs. Their destination, the Redbird Export company, was situated right next to the tram lines. He looked to Rei no Leliel, and then sauntered forth, whirring and clicking as he went.

"Can I help you?" Adonis was clearly a man who very much loved his business, possibly more than its customers. He did not look up as the little bell rang to announce new trade, and it took Kazan's heavy thudding footsteps reaching the counter for him to finally do so. he wrinkled his nose in mild disgust, and somehow managed to look down it at Kazan and co. despite being shorter than them both. "Fishman?" he added with a slurp of saliva he no doubt would have spat were he not in the confines of his own store.

Kazan let the tone slide. "You import stuff?" he coolly asked.

Again the slurp of saliva, again Kazan's dignity was preserved by him standing on hallowed ground. "What does it say outside on the sign?" Adonis grumbled. "Does being out of water make your vision go all funny or something? We do exports. We're an export company. Now if you're done with your dumb questions I'd kindly ask you get out of my shop and go swim back down to whatever clam you crawled out of before I call the sheriff. You can take your doll with you."
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Rei no Leliel shrugged, too. It would take a very certain kind of artisan, she thought, to willingly sign their name to a piece of work that they knew would kill islands-worth of people. So Kazan Tetsukana was probably right, in that F. K. K. might not have known, or the other people they had worked with; in which case they had at least chosen the right path, in hunting down Castor before the artisans. If they had even survived the process of building the vats, thought Rei no Leliel. The kind of people who built large edifices using people who didn't know what they were doing, even skilled ones? And if they were as secretive as they were, and as powerful as they seemed?

"If we find them," said Rei no Leliel to Kazan Tetsukana. "The suspicion arises that F. K. K. might be best found in the obituaries, or in the missing persons reports." She pondered. "Which might make things easier, because the newspapers must keep records of both of these things. Something to look at, when we are done with Adonis."

The tram pondered through the landscape with frequent stops. The first was a surprise, the second an irritation, and the third was outright disgraceful, thought Rei no Leliel. She watched the tram driver and engineer lumber off to fetch spare parts from a carriage that had been repurposed to hold tools and parts rather than passengers, and tapped her foot with annoyance the whole time they were working to fix up whatever it was that had broken down. And that was when the tram was actually moving; Rei no Leliel was coming to think that the Ruddy Candle had been an excellent choice of method of transport to Rust Pit Island, because the tram seemed to have just as many breakdowns as it had parts, and even the parts that didn't...

Rusty water dripped on Rei no Leliel's head, and she simply stepped aside and looked up at the hole in the roof through which rain had begun to leak. She fixedly stared it, though she didn't bother wishing it away. She merely wondered if it rained often, on Rust Pit Island, and whether an umbrella might be a worthy investment. The rain dripped in and puddled on the floor. Rei no Leliel gave it an experimental step, and the splash and hollow noise of the floor were not reassuring. She shook the water out of her hair irritably, and sighed and waited.

At some point she realised they were in Cango. It was not a significant improvement from the emptiness of the earlier landscape. She did not think the brick buildings looked very much better up close than they had when they were far-off shapes in the rain... which had stopped, or at least weakened enough that even the dripping from the ceiling had stopped, though her boots were in a puddle of reddish water. She followed Kazan Tetsukana off of the tram, watching it go, or not go as it happened; the driver and engineer got off at the same time as they did, and Rei no Leliel lingered just long enough to watch them head for the spare parts carriage.

"Are all the trams in Rust Pit like this, I wonder," >8? she commented to Kazan Tetsukana as they left the station. They had (probably) more tram rides in their future, and Rei no Leliel was adjusting her expectations of Rust Pit Island life downward with every minute. "In any case," she added, looking at the signs around them. "Redbird Export is that way, and hopefully Adonis."

Adonis did not fit his name, or at least had not been born fitting his name. He was a smallish, weedy man with beady eyes who had sprinkled sparkling powder in his hair and stuck glittering stones in his ears, and all his fingers were adorned with sparkling gems. He looked like a man who was completely obsessed with one thing and one thing only, and perhaps that was deliberate. He was sitting at a desk that had been made with ostentatious carvings that did not match the rest of the office at all and attempted to make him look important. Rei no Leliel thought that if she did not know what he was really involved with, she could easily underestimate the man for dressing the way that he did. Even knowing that, it was easy to get caught up in his silly style of dress.

"I am no doll," replied Rei no Leliel, and she was only mildly gratified to be underestimated as well. "And we are here to ask about your deliveries to Salt Island."

"What do I look like to you? Some information counter clerk?" snapped Adonis. "Of course we export things to Salt Island. They're right there. What are you even asking about?" He turned to one of the people at the other, less-important desks. "Hey, Corva! Call the -"

"We are specifically," said Rei no Leliel, leaning in and interrupting him, "asking about your involvement in Castor Medical Limited, which is a rickety warehouse in the middle of nowhere, and yet has somehow built at least one giant vat of burdum metal and sent it, through Redbird Exports, to Salt Island." >8| It was a pity to give up their secret so quickly and so easily, but -

- it worked, to some extent. Adonis smoothly changed his order mid-sentence: "-coffee girls! Three coffees, extra cream and sugar."

Rei no Leliel was sure he had not meant to call for coffee. She watched him.

He scowled. "Those idiots at the warehouse are going to get it."

"So are you, if you do not explain." Rei no Leliel made the most of her height advantage to stare down at him. At this angle she could see that his hair was filled not only with sparkling powder, but also with dandruff. "You likely do not know that someone has done to Rust Pit, what you helped them do to Salt."

"..." said Adonis, pushing himself back from the desk and standing up. He motioned them to a side office, and when they were all inside and the door was shut and locked, he planted his hands on the desk with a loud bang.

"Who the hell are you?" he ground out in a low voice, controlled anger seeping through every word.

"Does it matter," 8)? said Rei no Leliel.
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The coffee came much too slow for Adonis' taste and as soon as his cheery assistant had the tray down on the desk he shooed her out and slammed the door shut like she was a magpie trying to rummage through a jewelry box. A box that contained more than one ill-gotten gain, it seemed. He grumbled and rubbed at a five o'clock shadow. He all of a sudden looked so much older and scruffier than he had in the nicely lit store. "You Marines? Cipher Pol?" He waved the notion away and began to murmur and quietly ramble to himself. "You're right, doesn't matter who you freaks belong to. I don't know anything, anything important, and I don't accept any blame for what's happening on Salt."

Kazan adjusted himself in his chair, a far too small device, and reached for the coffee. He took one tiny gulp to test it then near downed the thing in one shot. It was good coffee. Adonis watched him with all the prejudiced he could muster in those tired little eyes.

"It was a sketchy client wanting delivery to a sketchy crowd. Contract was simple though: they send me payslips to pass on to those deadbeats at the warehouse, I make a run of deliveries to Salt. Just burdum components, some wiring there, a bit of casing here. Insisted on using different names and drop zones for every delivery, but they didn't make an effort to hide themselves from me. And why should they? What they do is there business. They paid well. Very well at that. harp on all you want about me facilitating evil or whatever, but if it wasn't me it'd be someone else, another company, another boat. They'd find a way."

A splinter was tickling at Kazan's back, and no matter how much he shifted he couldn't get it to change. Still, the coffee had left him feeling cozy, relaxed, and in a good mood. "You blab this much to everyone, guy?" Kazan said, idly scratching at his neck. "Known a good few mob bosses over the years. Don't take kindly to people spilling the beans like that."

Adonis glared, turned, and groped at a thick entry on one of his shelves. He tossed the ledger onto the table in front of them, where it hit the wood with a mighty thump, so dense were its pages. Yet, despite other pieces of furniture and decoration in the office, there was not a hint of dust to be found on the ledger. Taking it as an invitation, Kazan opened it up to the latest page. Clearly Adonis had spent many hours of his life lost in that book; the most recent date was that very day, and the ink was so fresh it was at risk of smudging. "I told you. I'm not afraid of retaliation, because I've nothing to spill. Every one of those names is fake and every one of those addresses is temporary." A flicker of renewed confidence came to light in his eye. He thought he had them beat, and was glad at the thought of having wasted their time. "Couldn't even give you faces. Most of the jobs came in through Den Den, and the few times they needed to come in they just sent some local idiot who knows even less than me, I bet."

Kazan scrolled through the entries as Adonis yapped on, tracing a webbed finger down each line. At first it seemed that Adonis was right; every line came a totally different name with a totally different address. Even those packages sent off to Salt Island were never delivered to the same place twice. But then Kazan realized his mistake: he was looking in the wrong field. He noticed it out of the corner of his eye, in a tiny box on the other side of the page labelled "Dropped off by." It didn't require a full name like the client list, but it did require a signature at least, and the same entry appeared on a handful of occasions - the local idiot, apparently. Certainly not many, but it was the only pattern to be found in what was otherwise meaningless paperwork. The signature was very poorly written, inconsistently written with a nervous and shaky fingers stacked on top of naturally poor handwriting, and it came as no wonder to Kazan that he had missed it at first. "This idiot," Kazan said. "You know his name?"

"Eh?" Adonis mumbled, his happy little fantasy of triumphing over the goblins that had limped into his shop momentarily bursting. "Him? Fenton, I think. Fenton Keys or something. But I told you you, he won't know anything more than I do."

Kazan's eyebrow was in a very healthy place of curiosity. "Call it professional thoroughness. You know his middle name? And where we'd find him?"

"You think I'm the kid's pop? K something, like in the book, if those aren't deformed A's." He shrugged and began to writhe his hands together, shrinking in his chair with an increasing hunch as if the very sight of them was like a blinding floodlight. "Lives in the Pit, probably. Can always pick those scum out, they're covered head to toe in burdum residue. Kept getting it on my floors."

Kazan glanced over to Leliel. He didn't think anything more needed to be said.
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