Rai squeezed his eyes closed and saw numbers swimming behind his eyelids.

After a few seconds they subsided. His eyes snapped open and he went back to cross-checking the numbers on the screen, loathing every second of it. As cases went, this one was relatively low on horrors. Nobody had died, or even incurred any bodily harm. No sex and no blackmail. Embezzlement made for dry reading. Someone out there was probably suffering from the vanished cash, but the claimants were the banks and all Rai was told to care about was the health of their spreadsheets.

He finished matching up the numbers on the report with the numbers in the grid and laid his head back against the headrest of his leather swivel chair.

His office was a square with high windows in the wall across his desk and wooden half-panelling on the other three. Against that far wall to his right was what he called the ‘sitting area’; an incoherent ensemble of outdoor bench, slouching sofa, coffee table with edges just high and sharp enough to take out your shins, and his laser printer. In the far left corner was Sao’s desk.

He had the lights off, so he could watch a movie on one of the two monitors on his desk. Outside, it was night, but not dark. There were streetlamps and bus stops, the 24 hour laundromats and the artsy little bars that had been cropping up everywhere lately, and the big lighted bridge that connected the district to the city. And even if a power outage hit, there was always the glow of his hands.

The movie he had chosen was about a train, but it wasn’t the one he’d mentioned to Sao, nor was it the one Sao brought up. In this movie, a superhuman slasher trapped and ripped apart commuters to provide meat for eldritch beings who lived in underground tunnels. He was being pursued by a pretentious snoop with a camera who sort of reminded Rai of himself.

The guy who had been seated next to him on Plaza’s Historic Rail was the inspiration for tonight’s viewing. The man had stomped on Rai to stow his luggage, then whacked him in the head at least six times while swinging his phone around for a video call with (Rai assumed from the occasional spurts of oddly sexual baby-talk) a girlfriend or boyfriend. The call lasted the entire three-hour ride. He was still babbling when he hauled his luggage off the overhead rack and exited the train.

Rai had managed to just lob a few sharp words at the guy, nothing too dramatic. He’d been distracted, in a pretty good mood even, because he couldn’t get the picture of Sao running down the platform out of his head. Sao had all the form of a flailing ragdoll, and he was laughing like a maniac the whole way like he knew how ridiculous he looked. A bunch of people had been charging alongside him, some with arms outstretched and yelling. Maybe his noisy seatmate had the right idea. Rai should have had his camera out and recording.

Rai gulped down some coffee and tried to recall a movie that involved vampires, zombies and trains.

When the movie hit its great gooey dismemberment scene, Rai hit the print button on his report and went to get more coffee. In the kitchen, his yellow poppy was wilting on the countertop. He picked it up, held it over the trash can for a moment, considering. It seemed to shiver in the blue glow of his hand. Not for the first time he was annoyed with himself. If he was fated to live with glowing hands, why did they have to be blue, instead of white or yellow? Neon blue gave just about all living things a sickly pallor. No wonder Sao was repelled when the gloves came off.

Rai frowned. That was unfair, to himself and his assistant. And of course, the flower wasn’t sick. He took it to the office and dragged an old medical reference volume from under the desk. He cracked it open (unleashing a cloud of dust), laid down some tissues and carefully placed the flower flat against the page. Then he slapped the cover shut (sending up another cloud). Two packs of A4 printer paper on top completed the tower.

When he was back at his desk, his phone blinked with a notification from Neocam.

Rai sucked in a dusty breath.

It had to be another victim. Another knocked-out, stripped down, bloodstained victim. Rip or Happy, probably, finally getting what they had brought upon themselves. No, none of this should have been happening in the first place; not in the number-one philanthropy school in the country; a supposedly civilized place. Rai paused his movie and steadied his nerves. He picked up the phone.

It was Rip - but not a picture of him. Rip had sent him a pile of private messages.

Are you still in town? I need to talk to you about this. Whoever got Ace and Zed is going to get me. This was outside my room.

Attached was a photo of something red, wet and dead-looking in the snow, seen from directly above. Rai enlarged the picture, but it was too blurry to see what kind of creature - or part of a creature - it might be. The hands behind the camera had been shaking nonstop.

Happy said I should tell you. I might know who did it too. I mean I saw someone who looked like some1 I kno but I don’t know

Rai messaged his number to Rip and his phone started ringing within minutes.

“I’m sorry, uh, officer - no, no, investigator - maybe I shouldn’t have said I know who it was, I just saw a guy running away but I might have been seeing things…” A pause for breath. “Because I can sleep, right? I might have been seeing things.”

“What do you think you saw?”

“Well, the stuff, the bloody stuff under my window. And then I saw— someone who shouldn’t be here. It sounds crazy, I shouldn’t be throwing around names but — I shouldn’t.”

“Is the stuff still there? Could you get a better picture?”

“Probably. Unless he took it away. He could still be there — I don’t want to open the window. Y-You can come look yourself. Where are you?”

“I headed back to Mainline for the night. I’ll be back tomorrow,” Rai said. He hoped speaking slowly made him sound calming. “If you still want to talk, let me know a time and place that works.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I should. I should—”

Rai glanced at Sao’s empty desk. “Until then, you should get some rest.” That sounded pretty comforting, he thought. “Do you have a safe place you can go, someone you can stay with?”

“I can’t go to the other guys. Ace and Zed don’t want me talking. And Happy is out, still drinking at one of the Valentine's things. But I called campus security to take the thing away. And my roommate is here. I guess.”

After spelling out his dorm address Rip rambled to himself a while longer but there was nothing new to learn. Eventually, he wore himself down enough he had to hang up. Rubbing his eyes, Rai set the movie playing again and considered calling up Sao, telling him to get up and get dressed and get himself down to the north side dorms to heckle Rip and the campus police.

But it was four in the morning. Even if Rai gave him orders, Sao might not be much more functional than Rip had been. Instead, Rai left a message for Murnau’s campus security.

At 5:15am his phone buzzed again. According to the label on the number, it was Sao. But the noise on the other end resembled a white noise machine.

Sleep dialing? Rai cleared his throat. “Good morning.”

A yawn. Someone was on the line after all. “Good morning. What time is it?”

Their nighttime calls almost always started with that question, but it was seldom Sao initiated a call. “Better you don’t know. All I’ll say is I’m surprised you’re still up. What’s going on?”

“Give me a minute. Why did I call again?” At that Rai knew he had been right; expecting Sao to hold a late-night interview with Rip would have been too much. “I got a call,” Sao said. “I mean, Marsh got a call but it was for me. I expect he’s been telling people that I was staying here. In his house, that is. You see, there was a big faculty dinner today. Er - but that’s what the call was about—”

“I got a call too, maybe half an hour ago.”

Sao’s senses were catching up with him, slowly. “Ah, so he reached out to you first. I wasn’t sure what to say, since he was asking for you.”

“I told him we would meet him tomorrow. Do you want to catch breakfast at the Atrium? Or we could meet at the south end of the school.”

“Why there?”

“I guess that’s where his dorm is.”

“He lives in a dorm?”

“Yes.” There was a lengthy pause and Rai felt a chill trickle down the back of his neck. “We’re talking about Rip, right? He saw someone dump a bunch of guts or entrails or something in front of his room.”

Another stretch of silence and Rai’s patience began to wither. Sao might have fallen asleep on him. He thought of hanging up - but Sao surfaced again, with a nervous tinge to his voice. At least he was fully awake. “Guts… I hadn’t heard about that. No, the call for me came from Professor Triad. He said he’d really like to speak with us tomorrow.”