Syphrett's Tales

1


"There's nothing you can do?" He held up his hand between them. Instead of skin, words moved around in a parody of a human arm.

"Sorry." The other man shook his head. "I can reach in and pull the arm off but it would kill you."

"Marvelous." Joshua Green looked down at his hand again. He actually made out the word finger moving on what would be his index finger.

Green looked around the bar. There were a number of people trying to get drunk on what he would consider poison. The bartender had a morose face and a beret on the top of his head.

The man he was there to consult wore a white coat and a battered suit. His hair had grayed prematurely, and his face had taken a beating.

Green pulled a glove on to cover the shifting stew of letters and empty spaces that had become his hand. He already wore a suit and coat to cover the shifting of the rest of his arm from people seeing it.

His right eye had been replaced like his arm. Every time he closed the left, a label appeared over whatever he was looking at until he opened his left eye again.

It was a strobe effect he could live without.

"I can tell you that this wasn't an accident." The man in the white coat stood. "Someone used you for this. I saw that as soon as I turned on my gift."

"So I'm an experiment." Green wanted something to drink. He was too afraid of what might be on tap. "How do I get my arm back?"

"You don't unless you can figure out what happened to you." He stood with his hands in his pockets. "I have my own business to take care of at the moment. If I come across something to help you, I'll let you know."

"Thanks." Green shook his head as he headed for the door. How did he get started looking for someone, or something, that could transform an arm and an eye into something unnatural?

He pulled on sunglasses to cover his eye as he reached for the door. He had to head home and think about this some more.

(HOME)

He opened the door. A wind pulled at him as he stepped through. He stepped out into his apartment. He shut the door and the wind died instantly.

Green pulled off his coat and tie as he walked to the kitchenette off the main area of the place. He placed the things on the counter divider before opening his refrigerator.

He pulled out a beer and went to the balcony. He stepped out on the decking. He opened the can and held it with his left to prevent accidents while he watched the city around his building.

How had he lost his arm? He couldn't remember. He remembered a phone call for a meeting with a new client. Then he woke up in bed with words for a limb. He raised his right hand again. He bent the square fingers again to watch it mimic a real hand.

The words did things when he needed them. They had put him on the man he had just talked to about his problem, arranged transportation to a spot in another world, and brought him back.

Those were useful things, but he wondered when the owner of the arm was going to come back and try to take it from him. He doubted giving him back his real arm and eye would be a consideration.

They would probably leave him in worse shape than they had found him.

Green sipped his beer. Sirens whooped as a police copter thundered by overhead. A couple of couriers jumped across the roofs on the other side of the street. Mrs. Califax waved at him from two balconies down as she stroked her winged cat.

He waved back with his normal hand. He didn't want to show that he had been turned into a freak to someone in his building. They might try to kick him out on the street.

He went back inside and threw his empty can away. He looked around his apartment. It seemed too small to him. He closed his eyes to shut out the feeling. He decided that he needed to clear his mind.

A walk down to his office to check his mail should help him.

Maybe a plan to figure out what had happened to him would jump into his mind while he walked the familiar path to his business.

It was better than sitting on the couch and waiting for something to fall into his lap.

He pulled on his coat. He stepped outside and locked the door before heading to the stairs. He hit the street and turned left away from the floating riverfront. He tramped along with an eye on the street in front of him.

He could have used his arm to jump to his office. He preferred to walk to think about what he wanted to do. He doubted the arm would jump him to whomever put it on him.

That would be too easy.

He walked along with his hands in his pockets. His mind tried to make sense of things. It failed.

The best he could come up with was that he was a lab rat under constant surveillance which he doubted. Nothing on Earth could make an arm into a conglomeration of letters.

The other possibility was that something had happened beyond what the transplanter had thought would happen, and the arm was a complete accident.

Either meant he could be a target of some entity who had done something he, or she, probably shouldn't have.

Green looked around as he paused on a corner. The sounds of the city washed over him for the first time since he started walking. Any of the people on the street with him could be an enemy.

Any of them could be watching him to see if he knew what the arm really was, and if he knew what he was doing with it.

He looked around. Most of the people he could see in their hovering cars and bikes seemed to be looking at other things than him. The blinking left eye gave him a variety of labels that indicated the vast majority were human.

Some were implants. A few genetes were mixed in.

He turned and walked down toward his office building. He crossed the lobby and headed for the lift. He had a place in the middle regions with a window.

He stepped out on his floor and headed for his office. He would pick up his mail, pay his bills, and head back home.

He opened the door and stepped inside.

"Mr. Green?" The voice came from behind him. It sounded female. He should have been more observant.

"I'm not open for business right now." He started to close the door on her. He stopped when he caught her foot with it.

"I just want to talk with you."

2

Green wanted to push her out of the doorway. He could do that. He took one look at her pleading face.

Maybe a job would help him take his mind off his missing arm.

Maybe it would make things worse.

He opened the door for her. His left eye closed for a second as he stepped out of the way.

(shell)

He wondered what that meant as he gestured for her to sit in one of his visitors' chairs. He walked around to sit behind his desk. He pulled out a notepad.

"What's your name, and how can I help you?" Green didn't try to be friendly about it. He wasn't sure if he wanted a case, or what his arm would do while he was working.

It seemed to be helping now, but that could change.

It might decide to try to strangle him at the wrong time, and he didn't have a way to cut it off if it did.

"My name is Madeline Rude." She pulled out a photo. "I need you to find my husband."

The photo was one you see for couples on vacation. The Rudes stood in front of a tree somewhere. They had the one armed hug. She smiled, but he only squinted at the camera.

"When was this taken?" She looked the same, but that didn't mean anything. Women rarely changed much in his experience until decades had passed.

"Last year." Mrs. Rude closed her small bag. "We were at a conference for Geo-physics at Marline Lake."

He put the photo down next to the pad. Marline Lake was a tourist spot around Lake Halcyon. A ton of hotels had set up so people could watch rainbows leaping in the air from the water.

"Your husband is checking out the Lake Halcyon Rainbow?" Green didn't know if that mattered, but every little bit helped.

"He's been studying it for his company." Mrs. Rude made a gesture that said she didn't know what they thought they were doing. "The idea is if they knew what made it, they could use it to build plants to use the effect for electricity."

That might be relevant. It might not. The husband might be lost around Lake Halcyon. Things like that happened sometimes.

"I'll need to look at your place, and anything he might have written down." Green looked at his notes. "I assume you already tried the hospitals and the morgue."

"The police weren't any help." Mrs. Rude pouted. "They think he ran off on his own. The best they did was open a file to show that he was missing."

"Do you think he ran off on his own?" Green knew the answer before he asked the question.

"My husband couldn't drive." She smiled. "I suppose he could have called a cab, but I doubt that."

A knock rattled the door. It sounded like someone was using a hammer on the wood.

Green gestured for her to stay in her seat. He walked over to the door. Two clients in the same day wasn't unheard of, but on the same day he had decided to check his mail was a little too much to ask for in his opinion.

"We're closed." Green thought he heard shuffling on the other side of the door.

"This is the police." The voice on the other side of the barrier sounded like gravel in a mixer. "We're here to talk to Mrs. Rude."

Green looked at his client. She had stood at the first word from the policeman. She shook her head.

Either she didn't think it was a policeman, or she hadn't called the police before dropping by his office.

"I don't know who you're talking about." Green gestured for her to move to the closet in case there was trouble. "Have a good day."

"We know she's in there, Green." The policeman sounded a little angry at the lie. "Open the door, or we'll break it down."

"Have you got a badge I can look at?" Green knew this wasn't a real policeman. A regular policeman wanting someone would just wait outside until they saw their guy leave, or until they got a warrant.

They didn't usually just threaten to break the door down at a flat denial.

What was Mrs. Rude's real problem?

It was certainly more than a missing husband.

Green cracked the door to look at the badges. He had his left eye closed. His right eye gave him something that made him pause.

(ogre holding a piece of tin)

"I thought I knew everyone on the force, Detective Skarskold." Green tried to keep his face the same polite neutral way he would for a client with a problem. "Been in the precinct long?"

"Transferred in." The policeman and his partner put their badges away. "We got Mrs. Rude's husband. We want to take her downtown to make a positive identification."

A gasp escaped from the woman's lips. Both ogres turned their faces in that direction. Green slammed the door in their faces.

(LOCK)

The door to the office vanished in front of him. He heard banging on it, but it sounded as if was from a long way off. That might buy them some time.

"Window." Green pointed at the glass behind his desk. "We're going to get out of here before they get in."

"You're running from the police?" Mrs. Rude went to the window. She had her eyes on the blank wall. "What about my husband?"

"If you want to vanish like he did, you can stay." Green grabbed the handle for his window and pulled. It opened to let cool air in his office. "I'm leaving."

Mrs. Rude looked at the blank wall one more time.

"How did you do that?" She pointed at the missing door.

"It's a new security feature the building owner is trying out." Green hoped only two fake cops were trying to get at him.

Things could get messy if there were more waiting outside.

He hopped out on a ledge and sidled down one side. He held out a hand to help his client out with him. He pulled the window closed as best he could before he led the way along the front of the building.

If this was good enough for couriers, it was good enough for him.

"We'll have to jump to the next building." Green paused at the corner. He pointed to the building in question. It was across a small alley from his perspective. "Then we'll use the stairs to get down to the street."

"I'm ready." She nodded in understanding. "What about the policemen?"

"Maybe we'll beat them down to the street." Green jumped across. He fell some feet as his body crossed the alley space. He landed on bent knees.

Couriers made it look so easy.

Mrs. Rude landed right beside him like a leaf.

"Let's see if we can get to the street before the cops do." Green started for the roof access.

3

Green led the way down the stairs. He hoped the ogres hadn't destroyed his office when they finally broke the wall down. He had a feeling they were strong enough to punch through dry wall and wood slats.

Why did they want the woman? She obviously wasn't related to the missing man. Every time he looked at her with the wrong eye he was reminded of that.

What did (shell) mean?

He decided to keep his questions to himself. If he confronted her, she would lie to him about what was really going on and know he was aware of the deception. He had a feeling this was tied to his arm and eye.

He woke up to the replacement. He experimented enough to find someone who might be able to help him. He showed up at his office for the first time in a while, and a new client braces him. And then the client has two fake cops show up looking for her.

That's a whole lot of coincidence to swallow at one time.

Add that the other players weren't what they said, and he was in some kind of conspiracy story.

The problem was he didn't see any way out of the story unless he found out who the two (ogres) worked for and figured some way to turn that to his advantage.

They reached the bottom floor of the building next to his. He paused and took a quick look around the lobby of the place. Everyone seemed normal to him. He walked to the front doors with his hands in his pockets.

Mrs. Rude hopped to keep up with his longer strides.

He paused at the doors and looked through the glass. The street had normal traffic according to his new eye.

Were Skarskold and his buddy still trying to get into his office? How locked did a (LOCK) lock your doors?

Could he un(LOCK) the door from the outside with his weird hand when he needed it?

He would have to use the window from then on if he couldn't.

"What are we waiting for?" Mrs. Rude drew his attention away from trying to figure out what he had done to make their escape.

"We're waiting to see if the two cops walk in front of this building after they finish ripping up my office to find out how much I know that they don't want me to know." Green doubted he would be allowed to live now that he had played a trump card.

He had become a witness that needed to be killed so the secret could stay secret.

What did that make his client? What happened to her if she was taken? He doubted anything so simple as a shallow grave in a field somewhere.

What did she know? What was Rude involved in? What happened to him? Did anything happen to him at all?

The last question was the trickiest because he only had the fake wife's assurance that he was missing.

He needed a lot more answers than what he had now. The only way he could get them was by trying to find out who the fake cops worked for. If he could do that, maybe he could figure out what they wanted with Mrs. Rude. Then he would have a point of attack to this thing.

He didn't wandering in the dark with someone who might try to cut his throat when he became useless.

He spotted the two (ogres). He backed away from the doors, pulling Mrs. Rude with him. He pulled out his phone and took pictures as the men passed. At least they hadn't seen him and his client inside the lobby waiting for them.

"I want you to stay close and be quiet." He waited for a few minutes, then stepped out on the walk. He started down the concrete strip. Mrs. Rude followed him. She looked around for anyone else who might be looking for her.

Green closed his left eye. Labels jumped out all around him. He only saw two (ogres). He was happy about that.

That kept his potential enemies down to a manageable level as far as he was concerned.

He doubted they would resort to humans and genetes when they so obviously weren't either.

He watched as a dog boy growled at one of the cops as he passed. Maybe their scent was a little off to those with a keener sense of smell. That was a usable fact about his enemies.

It would make them easier to track down if he hired a tracker.

"What exactly are we doing?" Mrs. Rude still looked around, but not as much as she had when they first stepped out on the sidewalk.

"I don't know about you, but I am hoping they don't have eyes in the back of their heads." Green wondered where they were going.

"Who are they?" Mrs. Rude hovered close as they followed the two large men toward the Center Hole Park.

"You tell me." Green wondered what was in the park for the two men. They didn't look like nature lovers.

"I don't understand." Mrs. Rude frowned at his stolid face. She could see a spark behind the sunglasses, but his eyes were unreadable through the covering.

"They're looking for you. You have something they want. You're missing a husband. That all seems to go together." He watched the two cops pause at the gate to the park, pulling his client to cover. He froze in place as he waited for something to happen.

He hoped they hadn't seen him arguing with Mrs. Rude. That could only make things worse as far as he was concerned.

He wanted to follow them to their homes where he could break in and learn a few things. He didn't want them rushing across the street to have a confrontation with him since he wasn't armed and they were.

He started breathing again when nothing happened.

Maybe they hadn't seen the two of them after all.

He peeked over the hood of the car he was using to hide from his quarry. They seemed to waiting for something to happen at the gate into the park.

That could be bad for them.

He pointed Mrs. Rude to the mouth of an alley between the two businesses next to them. He didn't want to be caught out in the open. He had a feeling Skarskold and his buddy were waiting to meet someone.

He wanted to see who that was without being seen himself. It might be the link he needed between Mrs. Rude and her attempted kidnappers.

It might be his only link to why they had shown up at his office.

It might lead to why someone had turned his arm into a mass of words that changed as you looked at them.

He wanted to take one of them and question him until he had answers.

"What are we waiting for?" Mrs. Rude stood next to some garbage cans. Her eyes looked at the canisters with disgust.

"What they are waiting for." Green stood at the corner, using the shadow cast by the building as his cover. The two cops still stood by the gate.

A black long car floated to a stop by the gate. Skarskold went to the nearest back window. His manner as he gave his report was deferential from what the detective could see.

Green closed his left eye.

(death coach black skeleton horses ogres wildlands)

He opened his eye as a pain shot through his brain. He needed to watch that. It might mean his eye was giving him some kind of stroke.

What exactly was a (death coach)?

Did he really want to know the answer to that question?

He pointed his phone at the back of the car and took a picture. He could figure out who owned it from the plate number. He would have to go to the hall of records and get the answer to that when he ran out his current lead.

The (death coach) pulled away. The cops didn't look pleased by what was said. Green supposed it was a tongue lashing for letting his client escape.

The cops walked into the park.

"Stay here out of sight." Green started across the street. Where were they going?

"I'm not doing that." Mrs. Rude hopped to keep up. "What if they circle around and find me on my own."

"You won't pay me to find your husband?" Green paused at the gate, holding out a hand to keep her from charging into the park.

Where had the two fake cops gone? They seemed to have vanished in the time it had taken for him to cross the street and look inside the gate. How had they done that?

Green realized he wasn't surprised. This case had become a twisting snake of a thing before he had even started on it.

How could he straighten things out so he could walk away before he got hurt?

He closed his eye.

Normal park trees and bushes presented their labels to his other eye.

It certainly wasn't the (wildlands) he had seen earlier.

That left him with the long car that had hovered to a stop so Skarskold could have his chat.

It wasn't much but it was all he had until he figured out how the cops had disappeared in front of him.

"Let's get out of here." He led the way out of the park. He took one last glance as he started down the street. It looked normal to his right eye.

"Where did they go?" Mrs. Rude kept looking back at the gate.

"I don't know." Green doubted it would be safe to go back to his office. He doubted Mrs. Rude would be safe if she went back home. "Come on. I have to talk to someone."

"Who?" She fell in beside him. She didn't look shaken by the events like he expected her to be. She looked perplexed by something that was familiar and different at the same time.

"Roseanne."

4

Green paused at the security checkpoint to get inside the central courthouse. He shrugged and dropped his belt, keys, wallet, notepad, pen, and phone in the offered bowl and stepped through the metal detector.

The arm and eye passed through without a problem.

He gathered his belongings and stepped out of line as Mrs. Rude stepped through the checkpoint. It took her three tries. The third try was with a hand scanner. It revealed that she had a piece of metal in her right arm.

He was not amused by that. His right arm was gone, and hers had something embedded in it.

What were the chances of them accidentally getting together?

He led the way to the third floor. Roseanne should be able to give him some kind of handle on the situation. He had too few pieces of the puzzle.

He pulled out his pad and wrote down the plate number and the Rudes' names. Roseanne could run them and tell him what he needed to know.

He might have to cut ties with Mrs. Rude if she didn't tell him something that looked like the truth.

She didn't pick him out the phone book. That was blindingly obvious after what had happened at his office.

"Sit down over there and wait." He pointed to a chair in the hall for visitors. "I will be right out."

"Why?" She looked around the half full corridor. Any one of the people could be an enemy.

"So you can give me a heads up if Skarskold shows up." Green waved her to the seat. "You're the lookout."

"You don't want me to see this Roseanne." Mrs. Rude glared at him.

"That too." Green pointed at the seat. "Sit down and keep an eye out."

He waited until she had done what he wanted before he entered the records room.

Green looked at the line to get to the desk. He got in it and waited. The five women processed the requests with the speed of long practice and suddenly he was at the front. He stepped to the counter with a small smile.

"Josh Green!" The fourth woman on the end waved him over. "Haven't seen you in a while."

"Been busy, Claire." Green handed her the sheet of paper. "I need Roseanne to run these for me."

She smiled as she typed in the entries. She printed out the results from the flat box at her station.

"Someone tried to manipulate the Rudes' data." She pointed out the discrepancies with a pen. "He doesn't have a wife, and her history doesn't add up."

"How can you tell?" The reports looked like random facts to him at first glance. It would look like a timeline when he sat down with it and really looked at it.

"All the codes are wrong." Claire pointed at the numbers beside the information. "His isn't too bad, just the fake marriage. Hers is all over the place."

"It's almost like she doesn't have a real history." Green put the reports in his coat's breast pocket. He wasn't surprised about that bit of news.

"Exactly." Claire smiled. "The plate was different. No hacks at all."

"Who owns it?" The owner of the limo could give him some answers to this dilemma.

"Something called Halcyon Enterprises." Claire handed him a new sheet. "They're a new company based out on the lake."

"They're probably running the hotels so people can look at the rainbow." Green frowned at the paper. "Who owns this company?"

"No one knows." Claire pointed to a listing for an owner. It was another company called Rain Bow Enterprises. "I can trace the ownership for you through public records but who knows how long that will take."

"Do you have a home address for this Halcyon Enterprises?" Green put the paper away. "All I saw was a post box."

"55515 Thread Road." He scribbled the address down.

"Take care, Josh." Claire smiled. "That's a swanky corporate address."

"Thanks for the readouts, Claire." Josh put his pad away. "I'll see you when I'm done with this."

"This doesn't look like your typical divorce case, Josh." Claire turned her full gaze on him. "Be careful. Rude is missing. I don't want the same thing to happen to you."

"I will." Green went to pick up the impostor. Maybe she knew the man who owned the (death coach).

The way things were going, he would learn that she was that guy's wife next.

He put the impersonation down as something else to be sorted out if he wanted to continue the search for the missing man.

He needed to take some time to sort what he knew into ways he could use to figure out what was going on and how to get out of the mess before the (ogres) caught up with him.

He couldn't go home. Someone would be watching it. He didn't know where she lived. He doubted it was safe either.

What did that leave him?

He decided he needed something to eat. He could sort some of this at the restaurant near his office. He could check the place and see if it was still empty.

Then he could start running down Halcyon Enterprises and see what they were really doing at the lake.

He doubted watching the rainbow was on their list of things to do.

Where had the fake cops gone in the park? That still nagged too.

He looked at Mrs. Rude as she stood. How much did she know about what was going on? Why did they make him the pawn? How did he get what she knew out on the table?

How far could he trust her with what he knew?

Eventually he would know too much, and then she would have to decide to get rid of him, or not.

He couldn't wait for their chat.

"Where are we going now?" She fell in beside him. "Did you learn anything?"

"A couple of things." Green headed for the front doors. "I'm going to get something to eat."

"Eat?" Mrs. Rude looked confused. "Why? What about those thugs?"

"We can't find out where they live from an alias." Green thought he could if the alias was in the system. He doubted that was the case here. His fake cops didn't look like the type to leave witnesses.

He walked down the street. He made sure to keep his hands in his pockets so he wouldn't bump anyone with his hand as he walked.

He didn't want something accidental to happen to anyone just cause he was thinking about the case.

Mrs. Rude followed. He ignored her questions as he walked. She was part of the problem as far as he was concerned. He couldn't trust her for real answers.

He paused when he saw his office building. He closed his left eye and swiveled his head to take in both sides of the street. He got the usual assortment he was used to by then and a (raven).

That could only be more trouble.

He crossed the street and headed down an alley behind the (raven)'s post. It was watching the building's doors from a neighboring building. He hoped it hadn't seen him before he made his course correction.

The last thing he wanted was more trouble from an unknown player.

"What's wrong?" Mrs. Rude struggled to keep up with his longer strides.

"Someone is watching my building so I can't get to my office to use my computer." He paused to take another look around the street at the other end of the alley. "It looks like there is only one of them, so if we're careful we can get something to eat while I try to think of some way around him."

"How do you know that?" She followed when he stepped out on the street. She tried not to look around to see where the watcher had to be nesting.

"The same way I know you're not married to this Rude guy." Green pushed open the glass door to the Excelsior Diner. He headed for his table at the back of the place, waving at the waitress and cook as he passed.

He sat with his back to the wall so he could watch the front and the kitchen at the same time. He glanced around the place with his right eye. Everyone fell into his category of normal.

"How did you find out?" Mrs. Rude sat down facing him. She kept her gaze on a wall mirror so she could watch the front also.

"Does it matter?" He gestured for her not to bother asking how again. "You have hired me to find a missing man that you claimed to be your husband, but he isn't. I have two goons try to break into my office. And now my office is being watched from the next building over."

"Usual?" Amy appeared with her pad and pen. One amber ear twitched under her short spotted hair. Green nodded. "What about you, ma'am?"

"Could I have some coffee, please?" Mrs. Rude blinked at her.

"Cream, or sugar?" Amy paused with the pen.

"Black is fine." She tried to smile.

"Here's a menu." Amy handed Mrs. Rude the placard. "I'll be back with your drinks in a moment."

The waitress vanished silently with a swish of her tail.

"You don't have a menu." Mrs. Rude opened hers. The offerings changed as she tried to select something.

"I always pick the same thing." He looked at her. "Who are you? Why do you want to find Rude?"

"My name is Madeline Rude." She smiled. "I want to find out what he knows about the rainbow."

5

Amy appeared with a glass of tea and a cup of coffee. She set them down on the table top gently. She pulled out her pad and pen.

"Are you ready to order?" Amy's smile revealed small fangs as she waited.

"Could I have the seafood platter?" Miss Rude smiled at her. "Some extra tarter sauce would be nice."

"What would you like as your two sides?" Amy made a short note for the sauce.

"A baked potato, and macaroni and cheese." She handed over the menu.

"I'll have your order out in a few minutes." She vanished again.

"Go ahead with your story." Green wished he still smoked. That would give him something to do with his hands.

"He doesn't know who I am. I found out about him when I started looking around the lake for property for my company." She reached into her purse and pulled out a card for him to examine. "My company gets the land and decides how to put up those tourist traps around Lake Halcyon."

"The photo?" Green wondered if her company did business with Rain Bow, or Halcyon Enterprises.

"That was from a trip I made around Marline Lake. He was out there staring in the distance with some kind of instrument in hand. I talked to him and he said he had a theory about the rainbow that could change the way people looked at them forever."

Green kept his disbelief to himself. People did things for stupid reasons all the time.

"I'm in real estate so it didn't mean anything to me." Miss Rude paused to sip her coffee. "He said the rainbow was really some kind of energy beam. He was looking for ways to harness it."

"What about the two guys at the office?" Green filed her information under suspect. There was something going on at the lake, but he doubted using a rainbow for a laser was what was at stake.

Not with whatever those two things were showing up at his place.

"I don't know." She shrugged. "I reported him missing tried to get the police to look for him. They told me it was none of my concern since I wasn't family."

"So you hacked the file to say you were married to him." Green turned over the explanation in his mind. He didn't like it. It was too pat.

"I hired someone to do it for me." Miss Rude sipped her coffee. "I don't have enough skill to do that myself."

And the hacker she hired didn't know about the codes the clerks used when they changed things.

"So you can see why I am not inclined to believe you." Green folded his hands together. "It looks like you're on your own."

"Why don't you believe me?" Miss Rude leaned forward with her hands on the table to support her.

Amy appeared with their plates on a tray. She frowned at the confrontation in front of her.

"Here you go, ma'am." The cat girl placed the seafood platter down on the table as soon as her customer leaned back from the table. "Here you go, Josh."

"Thank you, Amy." He smiled as he glanced down at his meal. He always got a steak and potato. He nodded.

"Let me know if you need anything else." Amy vanished again.

"Why don't you believe me?" She fiddled with her food, tasting it gently.

"Because I know that whatever you are, you aren't human and I doubt you even existed on paper before you came to my office." Green regretted being frank as soon as he said anything. "Let's start again. Who are you really?"

"I'm paying you." Miss Rude chopped her potato with her fork.

"You haven't paid me anything." Green gestured at the food on the table. "This meal is coming out of my pocket. You owe me the truth."

He touched her hand with his right hand.

(TRUTH)

"I can't tell you everything." She chewed on her shrimp. "I don't know everything."

"Why did you come to me?" Green thought that was easy. She needed a patsy she didn't mind leaving in the wind.

"Because of what was rumored to have happened to your arm." She paused. Her face said she hadn't meant to say that.

"How do you know about that?" Green leaned forward. Maybe the arm was giving him something after all.

"It was a rumor that went around." She seemed to editing what she was saying. She was speaking the truth but holding back parts.

"Do you know what happened to my arm?" Green wondered how long he could believe what she was saying.

"Only what the rumor said." Miss Rude shrugged.

"What was that?" What had been attached to his torso?

"You only get three questions." She smiled. "No one has ever compelled me to answer questions before. Don't do it again."

"What do you know about my arm?" He sat back in his chair. He had blown his chance to find out what was really going on. He had been distracted by the novelty of truth from his client and asked his questions carelessly.

"I can't tell you." Miss Rude chewed her food. "I hadn't expected you to see through my disguise, but you did."

"So I guess this where we part ways." Green started to stand up. "Good luck with the cops."

"Aren't you going to find Steven for me?" She looked up as he counted money out to pay for their meal.

"Nope." He placed the money on the table. "It's not my problem. Good luck with it. Say hello to Skarskold for me."

"You can't just leave me." Miss Rude stood up. "I can't find him on my own."

"I can't work for a liar." Green waved as he headed for the front door. He needed to clear the lookout from his office so he could get back to business.

Maybe if he sent a message back to the people looking for Miss Rude, they would leave him alone.

It would mean throwing her to the wolves, but he was good with that.

Lying clients could get you killed.

A thin man started opening the door as he started to push it open. He blinked at the man. The man swung an open hand at him. He raised his arm to ward off the blow.

(ARMOR)

Green's coat turned silvery as the other man's arm hit his arm. The weight of the blow drove him back into the diner.

Amy leaped over the detective. Claws extended from her fingers as she tried to rip the thinner man apart. He leaped out of the way, landing in the street.

"I got this, Amy." Green grabbed her shoulder with his normal hand. "You don't want to get involved in this."

He straightened his coat, wondering if the silver sheen would last through three blows. He stepped out on the sidewalk to confront the (raven).

"Hand over the woman, and we'll let you live." The thin man circled to get back on the sidewalk so traffic couldn't run him down.

"That's fine with me." Green held his arm at the ready. If the bird man came at him, he wanted his shield in the way. "Go ahead and take her."

"What?" The (raven) blinked at the bald statement.

"I don't need any trouble." Green stepped away from the door. "Go ahead. I won't try to stop you."

The thin man went to the door. He looked inside the diner. He turned his head to glare at the detective.

"She's gone." He raised his open hands. "I will have to settle for second best."

"Do you really want to do this?" Green raised his hand to keep Amy from jumping into the fray. Her tail twitched in anger.

"I have to take someone with me." The thin man frowned down his long nose.

"Let's go." He made a lead on gesture.

6

Green walked with his guide across the city. He kept his hands in his coat pockets. He hid the pleased expression at his coat's new toughness. He knew it was because his arm had acted on its own.

It had saved his life, just as it had when it stopped Skarskold from taking him from the office.

Would it help him against the (raven) and his boss?

Green had to think that it would. Otherwise, he wasn't getting out of where he was going alive.

The thin man pointed at a building behind a fence. It looked like it had seen better days from the missing windows and scored walls. It stood about four stories, two stories above the nearest buildings. Thin men in black coats stood on the roof and inside the fence. Their dark eyes concentrated on Green.

"We're going in there?" Green nodded at the building. The (rookery) didn't look too inviting to him.

"The King will want to talk to you." The thin man pointed to a gap in the fence. "He will decide your fate after your interview."

"I would rather decide my own fate." Green walked over to the fence. The men looked more like giant birds the more he looked at them. He wondered why so many of them had settled into a decrepit building.

Maybe he could get an explanation for all this. They didn't seem the types to lie to a prisoner.

His guide marched him up the four flights of stairs with a hand on his left arm. The rest of the thin men followed behind them. Some made noises like crows cawing over remains.

That could get annoying fast.

The top floor had been opened to sky by having a hole ripped through the roof. A line had been strung up by hooks in the wall. An obese (raven) balanced on the line. He glared at Green's guide, and then at Green.

"Where is the woman?" The fat man hopped down to the floor with a swirl of his black coat. Dark eyes glittered at the bridge of his long nose. "And why have you brought this man here?"

"He lost the woman." Green smiled. "I came along to try to smooth things out."

A clout on his head sent him to his knee. The world spun for a moment, but his right hand stopped him from crashing face first to the floor.

"You don't speak to the King, human scum." One of the guide's brothers leaned down to glare into Green's face.

Green pulled his glasses back on with his left hand before returning the bird man's glare with his own.

"Touch me again, and I will kill you." He kept his voice low and steady despite his head reeling. The venom in his words made the bird man step back.

"I see that you have Nuadata's Arm." The king glared at Green, the exchange of words beneath his notice. "What are your dealings with the woman we seek?"

"She hired me to find her husband." Green wondered how a bunch of human birds figured into things with what he already knew. "I had to tell her that I couldn't go on without some kind of truth."

"What is truth?" The king stepped closer, but not within reach of Green.

"What are (ogres)?" Green hid the smile when the birds gave him room. "Why do you care about the woman?"

"She has stolen something and must return it." The king turned from Green. "The ogresh are a complication that I do not like."

"What are these ogresh?" Green looked around. The birds were ready for him to charge their numbers. He wouldn't make it out of the room if he tried that. He needed an escape route in case things went really bad for him.

"What does it matter to you?" The king turned with a flourish of his coat. "We will eat you and take your arm for our own purposes."

"I don't think so." Green glared at the bird men starting to press closer with the predatory look on their faces.

(ESCAPE)

The floor sucked the detective through it before he could straighten up to punch the nearest raven in the face. He fell from the ceiling with an eye for anything that might stab him when he landed. The room was clear of everything but trash, so he landed without hurting himself.

The cries of hate filled the building.

He supposed not many of their meals passed through the floor before they could put the chop down. He mentally thanked his arm as he ran to the door. He couldn't climb down the face of the building with the bird men ready to knock him to the ground. He might as well cut his own throat.

The stairs were his only way down. He had to get there before the bird men thought about it. He figured they should be spreading out to look for him. He doubted he could make it to the ground before they did if they used the outside of the building to land inside the fence.

The numbers were against him. Could the arm help him against these monsters? How many could he kill before they took him?

He paused at the second floor. He couldn't charge out in the open. They would slaughter him before he could get to the fence.

He needed to lure them into a battlefield where he could use his arm against their numbers. He needed a weapon. He needed a way to get clear of the building without them being able to chase him.

He doubted he could punch the building down with his transformed arm.

He checked the rooms on the second floor as he jogged down the corridor. None of them had as much as a left behind broom in them. Windows had been smashed open long ago, so he couldn't make a knife from the glass. The lights were off. Maybe the power was off.

Maybe he had a weapon if he could get some of the wiring out of the walls.

He ducked into a bathroom. He glanced at the empty mirror frame. What kind of vandal broke out a mirror? He looked up at the light fixtures. If he could pull one of those down, he could pull the wiring out to use as a garrote.

He doubted his belt would last long for the same job, but he was willing to try that if he couldn't get the wiring loose.

He heard the (raven) battle cry. He didn't have time to pull down the lights. He would have to do what he could with his belt.

This might be a short fight for him.

One of the bird men burst into the bathroom as he pulled his belt from his pants. It smiled as it brought a sword up in both hands. The look of gluttony was in its black eyes.

It would eat its fill before telling its brothers what it had done.

(SWORD)

The belt transformed in Green's hand before he could stretch it out to use as a shield. A bar of light blazed in his right hand. The bird man paused in shock. Green cut him in half before he could pull his own weapon up to block.

A cloud of singed feathers floated on the air.

"That's impressive as hell." Green went to the door, the glowing sword ready to block any threat to his person.

He went quietly to the stairs. He listened. The bird men were rustling down on the first floor. He couldn't get out that way without fighting. He heard rustling on the floor he was on. He turned.

The (raven)s had decided to use the windows to get to the second floor. They had him hemmed in. He had to fight next to the stairwell, and be surrounded without a way to retreat. The only thing he could do was fight his way back to the bathroom and kill them when they tried to pull him out of there.

Climbing back up to the king would be hard with them using the windows to get around any barricade he might set up.

The call to battle went up as the bird men charged him. He was going to die and be eaten. The order would be decided on whether or not they could take him alive.

He planned to take a lot of them with him if that's what it took.

He chopped with his sword. His arm and hand acted on their own as he considered ways and means. The metal blades of the killers split in two as his own weapon passed through them like a rock through water. Clouds of feathers surrounded him for a moment as he charged through the dead (raven)s.

Battlecries came from the stairwell as he ran down to the end of the second floor. He needed to escape the (rookery).

7

Green ducked into an office. He pulled the door shut with his left hand. They knew where he was and could flood the floor. And he couldn't fly.

He looked around the empty room for something that could help him. The furniture had been stripped along with the window glass.

His blade cut into the floor as he let his hand drop to his side. He looked at it. It gave him an idea.

He didn't want to give up the sword until he was clear, and he didn't think he could touch it with his normal hand. He could cut through anything in his way. He could even cut through a floor.

He stabbed into the floor and drew a circle around his body as quick as he could turn. He spotted one of the bird men circling outside the building. The (raven) spotted him. That was worse.

The bird man dropped into the office. Its wings became hands. It pulled a sword out of its coat with a smile.

Green dropped through the floor. He leaped away from the hole in the ceiling as the section hit the floor below. He turned as the thin killer dropped down after him. He cut the thing into a cloud of black feathers before it touched the ground.

Now he had to get out of the building before the things realized what had happened.

He was in an office off the lobby of the building. He cut through the nearest wall and saw that the fence was a quick run over open ground. Once he left the building, he would be exposed and easily attacked from the air.

He needed a distraction if he wanted a clean getaway from the deathtrap.

He needed to set fire to the place and see if that would force the monsters out.

"I need my belt back." He held his sword out. It turned back into his belt. He folded it up and put it in a coat pocket. "Can you set a big fire? That's what we need."

He went to an inner wall and touched it with his hand. He needed something that would shake the (raven)s up so they wouldn't be able to give chase when he ran for it.

(FIRE)

The wall went up in a blaze of heat. Smoke drifted toward the ceiling of the office. The flame spread out into the lobby and up into the ceiling where it could reach into crawlspaces without any hindrance.

"We need it to be bigger." Green doubted what he had was going to distract the bird men for more than a second before they fell on him.

What happened after that would be a grisly death.

(BIGGER FIRE)

The pool of flame turned into a column of explosive air that punched through into the second floor. Smoke began filling the office in a smelly cloud. He smiled. That was more like it.

He went to the door he had cut into the wall. He looked at the fence. He would have to rely on the arm to get him through it like it had the rest of this. Whatever it was, it was on his side.

He couldn't ask for anything more than that at this point.

He ran out from the office. The cloud was filling the air with a smelly haze. The thin men didn't sound happy about their nest being burned down around them. He saw one fat specimen climbing away from the blaze.

He would settle with the king of (raven)s later. First he would arm himself for their next meeting. Then he would shoot the fat man-eater from a distance.

He didn't need answers about the arm bad enough to let the monster, or his brood, live longer than it took to put a bullet in them.

He had learned two very important things in the encounter.

His arm had a name. He could look it up at the library and find out what it meant. That would give him something he didn't have now.

The birds weren't in it with the fake cops. That meant more than one faction wanted to talk to Miss Rude and figure out what was going on. That led back to Mr. Rude and what he was doing with the Lake Halcyon Rainbow.

What had she stolen that the birds wanted back? They didn't look like they cared about anything he would consider wealth.

Green looked up at the sky. Large birds flew away from the blaze he had set. He smiled. It felt good to clean them out.

He also had a way to track them down eventually. Any place they settled would be their new (rookery). It would show up to his eye as soon as their nest was established.

Then he could burn that one down too.

Green didn't know where this feeling came from, but monsters were to be killed whenever he could. He had the means to do the job. No one else could stop them as far as he could tell.

He watched the skies as he crossed into an alley and waited. He had to make sure the fire didn't spread to the neighboring buildings. He already had an idea how to do that.

He still had no idea why all these monsters were in his city. He thought it was connected to the Rainbow somehow. It had appeared right before his arm had been transformed. Maybe that was connected somehow too.

He needed to get his thoughts together and work out a plan of attack with his new information.

Eventually he would have to take his own look at the Rainbow.

That was the only thing that held everything together from the looks of things.

Steven Rude vanished when it appeared. His arm became a flowing mass of letters. Then Miss Rude hired him to track the missing man down. Then the monsters show up looking for her.

What had she stolen that was so important? That seemed to be a key piece of the puzzle. If he knew, maybe he could make sense of the rest of it.

Miss Rude was some kind of monster herself. He just didn't know what kind. That was the only explanation for the label his eye had given her.

What was a (shell)?

The fire department arrived in a clash of sirens. He watched as water cannons were leveled at the building and it was hosed down. Some of the men suited up to go inside to make sure no one was squatting on the property.

He hoped none of them would be hurt, but he couldn't go over and tell them the inhabitants had been a murder of human crows.

He scanned the sky again. He had to move on before he attracted unwanted attention.

He decided to go back to his office. He needed to set up a white board and that place was better than going home.

He didn't want to disappear from his apartment without anyone knowing. He also didn't want to wreck the place if he got into it with one of the principals of this mess. He didn't care about his office as much.

The fact that he had a firearm hidden in his office was also a factor in his decision. He definitely wanted something he could use at a distance.

The sword was great, but he didn't want to stand so close that monster blood could drop on him when he swung.

He started down the sidewalk toward his building. He used awnings as cover from the sky as he went. He couldn't see any bird men, but that didn't mean they weren't there. He doubted they would let him walk away after what he had done.

He wasn't too pleased with them either.

He reached his office after about an hour of walking. He used some courier ground routes to cut his time.

He needed to get his car out of storage if this went on for much longer.

8


Green stopped by the Excelsior to get some carry-out, and watch the street. He didn't see anything that triggered his right eye. That meant no one was watching his building from a place he could see.

That meant nothing with what he was dealing with at the moment.

He had seen the tip of an ugly iceberg. He knew that other things were waiting for him. They wanted his client and what she had. They would roll over him to get to her.

He was glad she hadn't been in the (rookery) with him. That would have slowed him down when he needed to move fast.

"You look ragged, Josh." Amy twitched an ear. "You should have let me rip a new hole in that gimp."

"I put him in his place for the moment." Green smiled. "Let me have a club special and a gallon of tea. I have some paperwork to do."

"I'll get right on it." She went to the kitchen in a bound. She vanished through the bat doors.

Green went back to watching the street. Where had Miss Rude gone when she ran out the back? Did she think he was dead? How did he find her if he needed to do that?

He had a feeling that he would have to before he could get himself off the hook.

"Here you go, Josh." Amy returned with a bag, and a plastic jug of tea. She took his money and dropped it in the register. "Take care."

"I'll see you around, Amy." Green picked up the food and jug. He headed across the street toward his building.

He needed to grab something to eat and think about his next move. The bird men could be bad enemies since they had something personal against him now.

He hoped some of them had been caught in the fire.

He climbed up the stairs to his office. He was too aware that elevators could be used as boxes. Stairs at least meant he could get to a floor and try to use some of the office space as a hiding place.

He walked toward his office. He paused when he saw the door was open a little bit. He turned to walk away. He could eat someplace else.

"Come in, Mr. Green." He paused. Should he run? "I have been waiting here for some time. Let's have a talk."

He might as well get this over with. Maybe he could get a few more pieces of the puzzle.

He walked to the door of his office. A man in a business suit sat behind his desk, feet up on the top. The stranger smiled when he saw the detective. He made a come in gesture.

"Do you mind?" Green waited for the interloper to get out of his chair and move to one of the visitor chairs.

"Certainly." The man moved out of the way. "My name is Lycos."

"Sure." Green settled down in his chair. It felt out of tune to him. "Want some?"

He closed his left eye. His right told him he was dealing with a (wolf) in a suit. The stranger was probably not a lawyer, no matter how well he dressed.

"That would be nice." Lycos smiled again. He sat down in a visitor chair and pulled it close to the desk. He sniffed the air gently.

Green pulled the Styrofoam container out of the bag and opened it. He pulled the top off so the container was two trays. He put half of his sandwich on the other tray. He shook about half the fries out next to it.

"Part of the pickle?" Green indicated the wedge that came with the meal.

"No, thank you." Lycos shook his head.

"More for me." Green pulled out a drawer and pulled out a pack of paper cups. He pulled two from the pack and put them on the desk. "What brings you to my humble place of business, Mr. Lycos?"

"I represent an interest who would like to locate a woman passing herself as the wife of an employee." He opened the jug of tea and poured out equal measures in the cups.

"What did she take?" Green took his tea and food and warmed it in a small microwave he kept for that purpose. He had spent many a night trying to figure some things out.

"Excuse me?" Lycos paused in mid-bite of his sandwich.

"The birds told me she took something." Green took his toasted food and drink back to the desk. "What did she take?"

"I am not certain." Lycos bit half of his half of the club and chewed. "Some things are beyond my need to know."

"I wish you the best of luck finding her then." Green chewed his own sandwich slowly.

"I take it that you won't tell me where she is." Lycos leaned forward.

"Can't tell you." Green sipped his tea. "She took off when the bird showed up at the diner across the street."

"Really?" He leaned back. He grabbed four, or five, fries and wolfed them down.

"Ketchup?" Green sipped more of his tea as he pointed at the dinner bag.

"No, thank you." Lycos shook his head. "Can't stand the stuff."

"Is there anything else you want to know?" Green chewed another bite of his club as he sat back in his chair.

"Do you have any way to contact this woman?" Lycos started on the rest of the fries.

"Do you have any way to contact the employee?" Green poured himself another cup of tea.

"Maybe." He finished chewing. He wiped his mouth and hands with some of the napkins that came with the container.

"You're doing better than I am." Green put the second cup in the microwave. "You should call the cops if you want to get your thing back. That is their job."

"I'm afraid that isn't possible given the nature of what was stolen according to my employer." Lycos poured himself another cup of tea and threw it back in one shot.

Josh raised his eyebrows at the display.

"High metabolism." Lycos put the empty cup down. "This was enjoyable. I have so little time for a small meal with a colleague."

"How much latitude do you have?" Green sat behind his desk.

"What do you mean?" Lycos put his half of the trash in the small garbage can beside the desk.

"I know that the birds want whatever she took. I know you want it. She wants her husband." Green sipped his tea. "Maybe you could arrange a trade."

"The artifact for the employee?" Lycos smiled. "How would we let her know that we were willing to do such an exchange?"

"You could advertise."

I envy the pace you're just cruising along at!

Originally Posted by Hermit

I envy the pace you're just cruising along at!

like I said, I'm about to hit a small speed bump. I might be able to make up the time tomorrow morning. The boy is grounded so we wont be able to hang out at the library so I might be able to squeeze something in before I go to work tomorrow night.

I envy Ghost Angel. This time next week, he'll be done and adding on to his story.
CES

Green saw his visitor out with a wave. He looked around his office. The place wasn't safe. He had to think about his next move and get away from the building until things were over.

Before he took off for the hills, he had to arm himself.

He had no doubt that Lycos had been in his floor safe. If his pistol was gone, he would have to report the theft.

Too many frames had been put in place because the weapon of choice had not been reported missing.

Green pushed his chair out of the way and slid the fake carpet aside. He punched the combination to the floor safe. He pulled it open. Everything seemed intact. He pulled out the gun safe. He put it on the desk before closing the floor up.

He thumbed the combination on the gun safe to the open numbers. He flipped the lid open and examined the contents. Everything looked okay, but he decided that he should strip and clean the weapon to make sure.

Lycos might have done something to the pistol while he had been waiting in the office.

Certainly he had copied the contents on the office computer, and searched the files.

Green wished him good luck on finding anything related to Miss Rude since all he had was Rude's picture and some notes on a pad.

At least the picture was still there on the desk.

Green took his cleaning kit out of the gun box. It was small sample bottles, brush, and swatches of cloth. He pulled unused napkins from his meal close to use to hold the pieces of the weapon. He quickly took the pistol apart as he thought.

He could only see three options out of the paths ahead. None of them looked good to his way of thinking.

The first option was Rude had made himself vanish. He had something that everybody wanted, but he couldn't use himself, so had given it to his fake wife and let her take the heat.

Some branches presented themselves from that.

Another consideration was that Halcyon Enterprises had Rude and was holding him until they got back whatever was stolen. Then they would get rid of both Rudes.

The problem with that was how did the (raven)s fit in. They knew about his transformed arm, and that Miss Rude had come to him for help, but didn't seem to know about Halcyon at all.

They knew that Miss Rude had something. The king acted like he knew exactly what he was looking to take from her.

If Lycos worked for Halcyon, that put him on the side of the search against the bird men. If he worked for some third faction, things had gotten way more complicated than the detective liked.

He had few ways to get a handle on the problem. It would be easy to look for Lycos's surveillance and wreck it. It wouldn't get him anything.

He supposed he should at least look at Rude's home and work. Maybe that would give him some clue on which way to go. It was better than sitting in his office.

He looked at the gleaming weapon. He needed to fire it to make sure it worked. Firing pins and bullets could be exchanged for things that looked like they would do the job but fail on use.

He would have to chance it. He didn't know of any shooting ranges that were open at that time of the night.

He felt better with something to do.

Green tucked the pistol in a holster and clipped that to his belt. He grabbed a spare magazine and put it in his coat pocket. He put the gun safe back in the floor safe.

He decided to check for Rude's address in the phone book. If it wasn't there, he would walk around to a net cafe and see what he could find from a search engine.

If neither of those efforts were successful, he would go out to Lake Halcyon and look at the rainbow.

No matter what, he would be moving. Sometimes movement led to things just from the casual searching.

He checked for Rudes in the phone book. He had a list. He ripped out the page and put it in his pocket. It looked like he was searching the net next.

He certainly couldn't do anything like that from his office before he had an expert search for listening devices, and repeating worms in his computer.

He might have to have the drive dumped out and reset because of this.

He looked around his office one more time before he closed the door and locked it. It would keep out common burglars, but he doubted he had to worry about that. It was more likely that more monsters would show up.

He headed downstairs. He wouldn't use any net connection near his office. There was too much of a chance that they had been bugged in anticipation that he would conduct a search.

He needed a place that was busy so if they were listening they would have to sift through other people's output while looking for his. It couldn't be close to his office. And it had to be escapable.

Lycos was giving him room for the moment, but there was no telling when he would change his mind and yank the leash.

Green used some courier routes to cut through the buildings. They were full of obstacles, but it was a straight line north to his garage. He would have to get his car out and start driving.

He hoped that Lycos didn't know about that. If the (wolf) did, it was already bugged and compromised.

He would have the electronic version of a leash with a crew following him in the hopes of finding the missing woman.

That was a lot of hope since no one seemed to know her real name.

Green looked around the outside of his garage before going inside. He didn't see anyone out of the ordinary. He walked along the slots until his found his vehicle at the back.

He walked around it. He didn't see anything on the outside to show that it had been tampered with by anyone. He would have to have it checked, or trade it for another vehicle if there was a problem.

He got behind the wheel and entered the code start up. He smiled when the car didn't blow up.

10
Green found a net place after fifteen minutes of driving. He picked it after passing several others. He didn't know if Lycos could bug every place in the city, but he didn't want to make it easy for him.

He had things to do. Having a car after a day of walking would make that easy.

He parked in a lot at the back to conceal his car from the street. He walked into the café while looking around. He was sure he hadn't been followed, but that meant nothing if the crew was good enough.

He still didn't know if they bugged his car, or not. If they had, he could still be leading them around.

He walked into the café and signed up for a station. He looked around to make sure he had a bunch of humans to contend with in the room.

His station blinked a light on a pole when it was ready for him. He walked over and signed in with a credit card. He had fifteen minutes to work before his time expired. He decided the best thing to do was search for what he needed and print it out for later.

He needed to narrow down the phone book page for an address. He searched for Steven Rude and wrote down several addresses that came up. He searched for Nuadata's Arm and printed out an article. He looked at the session clock. He didn't have enough time to look for the (raven)s and the (wolf).

He decided to print out the front page for Halcyon Enterprises. Maybe that would give him something to work on if everything else failed.

He hoped he didn't have to find the place in person. He had a feeling their headquarters would be a fortress.

He took his papers and signed out before the machine could. He didn't know if the machine tracked his searches but he didn't want someone to sign on and see the last page because the machine timed out.

He put the articles in his coat. He looked around for the bathroom. He had to take care of some personal business before he headed out of town.

Green walked out of the café. He scanned the street as he went. He didn't see anything unusual.

He wondered how long Lycos would let him run free before trying to stop him.

What had Rude found that had been so important? Why had Miss Rude taken it? Where was she now?

He doubted any of the players could be trusted in a bargain. They didn't seem that given to keeping their word.

He checked his car over again before getting in. He drove out of the lot. He had two places he could start looking for Rude. He doubted the man ran off on his own, but poking around might reveal more of the puzzle.

Maybe a clue to what Rude had found would be laying around so he would at least know what the fuss was about.

He doubted it was something material. That would make the thing too easy to find. He had an idea that Halcyon had people for that.

And if that was the case, both Rudes would be dead by now.

Green drove through the night, watching his mirrors. He didn't want to make things easier for him to be followed. He turned on the highway and knew he could be followed with impunity as soon as he drove off the ramp.

Even at night, cars hovered along in their lanes in vast swarms. No one could spot a chase car in that situation. There were too many people going the same way.

Green watched for the exit he needed. He nodded when he saw it. He pulled off and headed into the residential area adjacent to the highway.

Rude's general address had been in his page. A search of the phone book page narrowed it down to a specific house. It had been luck that Rude had a landline hooked up.

Most people used cell phones as their main communication tool.

Green pulled into the drive and let the hover car settle on the pad. He didn't see another car in sight. The garage was closed. Maybe there was one inside the enclosure.

He reached into his console and pulled out a small kit bag. He would have to open the door. He hoped Rude didn't have a dog.

He walked around the back. He didn't hear, or see, anything that would send out an alarm. He opened the bag and got out two rods. He opened the back door in a matter of seconds. He put the rods back in the bag.

He put the kit in a coat pocket as he walked into the house. The place seemed empty as he listened. He searched his pockets and realized he had forgotten his light. He would have to risk lights so he could look around.

He cut on the kitchen light. It looked unused at first glance. He checked the refrigerator. Out of date milk and some sandwich things greeted him. Evidently the owner ate out a lot.

Green stepped into the next room. It should have been a dining room. Instead it was some kind of plot room and office. White boards covered the walls. Equations had been scribbled everywhere. Papers full of notes and observations covered the desk.

The place was orderly but had the air of busyness that Green associated with a hot case.

He looked at some of the notes. He couldn't read the writing. It seemed to be in some kind of shorthand.

What had Rude found?

The place didn't have the air of a place where something violent had happened. The two rooms he examined had the look of the owner just stepping out and never coming back.

He found a living room for visitors in the next room. Pictures of places and people dotted the walls and end tables. The chair and couch didn't go together. A computer was hooked up to a large flatscreen on the wall.

Maybe Rude liked to watch his movies on a bigger screen than a lap top.

He found a closet and a half bathroom next to the living room. Nothing in them seemed to be strange.

He found stairs to a second floor. He walked up them and looked those rooms over. Three rooms and a bathroom off the main bedroom. No evidence of a kidnaping was present.

That didn't mean anything if he had been taken at work.

Those notes and equations might mean something to some other expert. He didn't see how any of them could help him.

He went out the back and locked the door behind him. He didn't have anything to help his search as far as he could see.

The photo with Miss Rude in it seemed to be the only one from what he had seen in the living room.

That left the question of where she had came from, and why she was looking for Rude at all.

He doubted it was because of love, or anything personal like that.

11

Green pulled into a spot in front of the Earth Sciences building where Rude worked. He looked around the lot. Everything looked normal. The only thing that stood out was a car with a bunch of tickets on the windshield.

If that was the missing man's, it looked like he had been taken from his office, or classroom.

Green took a picture of the plate so he could check it with the readout from the hall of records later. A car would be listed unless that detail had been hacked out.

He headed up to the building. He was not surprised that all the lights were off. It had taken some time to drive over, and he had started late in the evening.

Only someone with no life would still be checking papers at this time.

He pushed on the front door and entered.

He checked the doors. The bottom two floors seemed to be classrooms. Some of them had sinks and equipment for testing chemicals and showing how things worked. The top floor had two rows of tiny offices to match the classes below.

Rude had put a tape nametag on the wall next to his.

Green pulled out his kit and opened the door. He stepped inside. The space reminded him of the home office. There were papers and maps of the Lake Halcyon area in addition to the equations on the papers pinned to a cork board on the wall.

Nothing seemed out of place as far as he could see. He might be the first one to step into this office since the man had vanished.

He wrote down the spots marked on the map. He would have to find them if he wanted to walk in Rude's shoes.

He wondered if the police had even visited his office. The report was real, but the interest shown didn't match other cases he had worked with detectives on. Maybe they had been warned off and took the warning to heart.

He had also been warned off. He shouldn't be looking for the missing man after what he had already seen.

He doubted that anyone wanted him horning in on the action.

He closed and locked the office up. He still had to drive out to the lake. It was time for him to see the rainbow himself.

Whatever happened had started at the school. He could come back and ask students if they had seen anything. He might be able to speak to someone in the administration in the daytime.

He doubted he would get anywhere if he shook people out of bed in the middle of the night.

He walked out to his car and checked it. He looked around the parking lot. It looked the same as when he had entered the building.

If he was being followed, they were doing it from a distance so he wouldn't spot them.

He would drive up to the lake and look around. He would have to get a room first. He didn't want to search the woods in the dark.

He also needed some sleep. He had been going at it for a while and needed to rest. He didn't want to fall asleep at the wrong time.

Green drove out of the university and headed north. He checked his mirrors but the road remained empty as he hovered along.

His car would have to be recharged too from the way the needle crept down toward empty.

He didn't use his phone for a search. Instead he decided to pick a hotel at random and check in there. He didn't know if his phone was hacked, but he didn't want to risk it.

Paying with credit cards was bad enough.

As soon as he booked a room, the card would tell anyone watching his account where he was. He hoped he had a headstart on that.

He drove until he found a small place in the center of a small town east of the lake. He had driven in that direction so people wouldn't get a bead on him if he just drove to Lake Halcyon. The rainbow was visible even at that distance as if a big spotlight had been pointed up into the night sky.

He didn't look at it with his right eye. He didn't need confirmation that it didn't belong in his world.

It belonged where the other things had come from in the first place.

Maybe that was why everyone wanted what Miss Rude had. Did they want to turn the beam of light into something more dangerous than it already was?

Josh parked his car into a pad and went inside to book a room. He filled out the paperwork and showed his identity card to get his card processed so he could stay in a room. He plugged his car in and went to his room. He put a chair under the doorknob before he kicked off his shoes and coat to lie down on the bed.

He closed his eyes and slept.

He saw things that didn't make sense, heard things that sounded vaguely like words, and wondered what his dream was about before he woke up.

He blinked his eyes and listened. No one was in the room with him.

He got up and used the small bathroom to clean up before pulling on his coat and shoes. Daylight pounded against the shades over the window. He made sure his sunglasses were in place before he stepped out in the light.

He turned in his key before unplugging the car and heading out on the road. He still had to drive another six miles according to the mile marker sign before he entered Lake Halcyon's domain. Then he would have to find the spots Rude used for his note taking.

It promised to be a busy day.

He drove into the city that was growing up around the beam in the sky. Construction seemed to be everywhere. He wondered how many would be here if the rainbow shut down.

That made a good motive to grab Rude, and anyone else, who knew how to do that. Shutting down the growing city would cost companies millions, maybe billions, in lost revenue.

The man who could do that could command his own price.

What would happen if the rainbow could be used for other than decoration?

He looked at the light with his strange eye. It didn't see a rainbow. It saw a (bridge).

He suddenly didn't want to know what needed a (bridge) that filled up the sky.

Josh parked in front of an eatery. He needed some breakfast before he started chasing phantoms in the woods.

And flapjacks would be just the thing for that.

He sat down in a booth away from the windows and looked at the menu. He frowned at the cute names for plain food. A waitress came over with a pad out. He ordered a plate of pancakes and hash browns with some syrup and bacon on the side. He ordered coffee and tea to drink.

She went away with a faint frown.

He supposed he didn't look like the tipping kind.

He pulled out the sheet he had printed out on Nuadata's Arm. He read the content in the space of a few minutes. He put the paper away.

It went with what he had seen with his right eye so far on this case. It gave him a host of other questions.

The Arm belonged to a hero that had fought the Fair Folk. They had taken his body when he drove them out of the land with his last breath.

So who had gained access to it, why had they grafted it to him, and were the old stories true?

Some of them had to be if he had the Arm and fought the (raven)s. He didn't know how it helped him to know his arm had a name and a former owner.

How did it tie into everything else? How did it lead back to Rude? Where was he?

Did the Fair Folk have him? Did they want him? What did they expect him to do? Could he open a door for them to cross back in the real world?

Had he already done that? Is that where the rainbow had come from in the first place?

He supposed it was possible, but he had no evidence to back up what he was thinking. He needed something concrete to help him clear the mess.

How did he get anything like that?

Did he want anything like that?

His food arrived while he waited. He thanked the waitress and started eating as he watched the rest of the restaurant. He would have to move fast if something happened.

He was plodding along but eventually something would come after him.

It was unavoidable as far as he could see.

12


Green finished his meal and programmed the spots from Rude's notes into his phone. That should help him find the places without too much trouble. He checked the distance to the first place.

He could drive out there in a few minutes from the looks of it. Some of the other places were on the other side of the lake. He would have to drive back from wherever he parked to the main road before he could follow the route to the other side.

Walking would take too long the way the spots were spread out.

Driving cut down on time, but he still didn't know what he was looking to find. He doubted someone would leave him a secret message carved in a tree.

The only thing he would gain as far as he could see was walking in Rude's shoes and maybe seeing something that showed what he thought about the rainbow.

He obviously didn't walk the distance from the university to the lake.

Green drove along the road struggling with which faction would want the scientist. The best he could come up with was that Halcyon Enterprises was holding him as a bargaining chip to get back whatever they wanted from the missing woman.

That hadn't seemed to work well as far as he could see.

It might be keeping Rude alive, but that didn't mean he was intact.

There were lots of things you could do to a man if you had the time and the will. The only question was if he would break, or if they just wanted to torture him for kicks.

Green shook that thought out of his head. He had nothing to show if Rude was anything but detained. If he found the man's body in the woods, that would clear up his status immediately.

He pulled into the lot next to the trail leading up to the first spot. He got out and locked the car. He started up the trail with the phone marking the path for him as he went.

Green spent the next few hours checking each of the spots. He had no idea what Rude had been looking at when he made his notes. Each of the spots had a clear view of the rainbow leaping out of the water, but nothing else as far as he could see.

Why had he picked those spots? What was so vital about the rainbow? Had Rude figured out it was a (bridge)?

How had he done that without a strange eye? Had someone told him what the rainbow meant? Was Miss Rude the answer to that? She knew what it was and had told him the significance.

That made sense even if it risked the question of where had she got the knowledge of the (bridge).

He doubted it was because she was a top notch scientist with degrees in things people didn't use.

Green leaned on his car and looked at the rainbow. Was the key to making the rainbow something more dangerous the reason everyone was looking for his former client? That made sense to him.

It went back to proving his suspicions. He could speculate all day. Eventually if he wanted to keep searching, he would have to get proof of things. He needed someone to give him answers.

He doubted any of the principals he had met so far would do that. The bird men wanted to eat him. Lycos and whomever he represented would probably do worse if they thought he knew where the woman was. Miss Rude had given him a name, but nothing else real.

How could he turn this to his advantage?

He couldn't see a way to do that.

He decided to look at the corporate headquarters. Maybe that would give him some idea on how he should move.

Maybe he would see the object of his search being led around by a leash.

That would make things easier for him to decide what to do to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Maybe there was something there to explain all the monsters that had invaded his life in the last few days. That would be great as far as he was concerned.

The chances that it was some fort in a place far away from Earth with a public face was also just as good.

People who drove around in a (death coach) weren't exactly standing on the same planet that he did.

Green looked back at the rainbow with his right eye. It looked so different from a rainbow, almost like a solid stairwell leading up to some other place. Then he saw the stone sticking out of the lake in the rainbow's shadow.

He checked the photos he had taken at the spots from Rude's notes. There were dark shapes there that he hadn't noticed against the rainbow. Something was in the water.

He nodded. That was what Rude had been looking for. Maybe he didn't know what had caused the rainbow, but he had been looking for a source. It looked like he found it, even though he didn't know what it was.

Green needed to hire a boat to get a closer look at whatever it was out there in the water. Maybe he could shut the rainbow down if he got rid of the thing.

He drove down to the dock area. Hover cars weren't permitted on the water. The signs said something about the fish and birds. He parked in a slip in the middle of a bunch of other cars.

If something was put on his car as a trap, he wanted someone else to set it off when they turned on their own car.

He walked down to the dock. He didn't see a boat anywhere. He didn't see any out on the lake. He saw a boat rental place. A closed sign had been marked across the windows.

He supposed that the local boat people had taken their boats to better waters.

How was he supposed to get out there? He wasn't going to drive his car out there. He didn't want to lose it in the water if something went wrong. He didn't know what those things did out there.

One wrong move and he would be swimming back to shore with his car at the bottom of the lake.

Green looked around until he found a discarded paddle boat floating on the water. He shook his head as he sat down on the seat. The metal swan sank a bit under his weight. He unhooked the line from the hook between its wings. Working the pedals in the bottom spun the wings so they pulled on the water.

He rowed out to the middle of the lake. When he reached the base of the rainbow, he saw that it wasn't actually touching the water. It hung in the air about a foot above the surface.

He wasn't a genius in the study of light, but he knew that wasn't natural. He didn't need his right eye to tell him that.

Where was the thing he had seen in the water? It wasn't apparent now that he was close up.

He closed his left eye and looked around. His sunglasses mitigated the glare from the rainbow, but it was more real than the surrounding water as he looked around. He saw the (anchor) after a few moments.

He saw four others. He smiled.

They were holding the rainbow to the water. If he had a way to pull them up, the rainbow would be gone. That would put a monkey wrench in whatever plans had been put in place.

How useful would the key be if the (bridge) had been uprooted?

He wondered if the arm could pull one of those things out of the water. Did he want to swamp the paddle boat trying to do that?

He needed a bigger boat than the one he had before he could think about moving one of those (anchor)s from the bottom of the rainbow.

And since he didn't know what was really going on, he had no way of knowing if he did do something to the rainbow that it would help him, or Rude.

It might make things worse for the both of them.

It looked like he was going to have to get someone on their own and beat what he wanted to know out of them.

Green turned the swan around and paddled back to shore. He knew some more of the puzzle, but not enough to be effective.

He was going to have to visit Halcyon Enterprises' headquarters and look around.

He paddled for the shore. He wondered how many monsters would be inside the place when he got there. He was sure some of them would not be happy to see him.

13

Green hooked the swan back to the dock as soon as he found the anchor rope. He looked back at the rainbow. The absence of boats could be explained by the government warning the natives away.

It could be explained by guided tours being set up for tourists to see the weird light on the water.

He looked around the dock. He saw men coming toward him from the parking lot. He closed his left eye. The men were (ogres). He noted the presence of firearms and made his way down the lakefront to a set of piers for people to park their boat.

Apparently Skarskold had been told to bring him in.

Or the fake cop had been told to get rid of him for good.

He didn't like either of those options.

He looked for something to use for concealment. He didn't like the odds on taking on that many men out in the open. He wanted something to put between them when he decided to do something.

He doubted he would last more than few seconds if he tried to take them on out in the open.

He paused by a shack. The (ogres) had spread out. They seemed to be moving along the docks in a line. He could maybe shoot two on the end and head for town.

Were those things stopped by bullets? Did he want to risk his life on something like that? Even if he got lucky and killed two next to each other, that would reveal his exact position to the rest. Could he get away in that kind of situation?

He doubted it.

The amount of bullets they could put in the air would chew up the landscape around him before he could take two steps.

He moved across the open space between the shack and a swim gear shop. Shouts went up. He cursed because he should have seen that. Their nightvision was better than his.

A bullet flew by behind him as he stopped at the edge of the shop. He pulled his pistol. He hated to get into a gunfight, but he needed to keep them from rushing him.

(OGRE KILLER)

Green took careful aim at the lead man. He snapped off a shot. The bullet exploded from his pistol with a roar like thunder. He blinked at the sudden boom. The man flew backwards from the impact.

The line went to ground under the sudden blasting. Rifles blazed at the shop. Holes broke the wooden walls and windows as the bullets searched around for the detective.

Green retreated from the fusillade. He placed the shop between him and the firing squad as he crept further into the dark. He didn't want to be around when the police arrived to find out what was going on.

He didn't want to find out the hard way that Halcyon Enterprises had the local police on the payroll.

"There he goes." One of the (ogre)s charged after him, holding the trigger down on his rifle as he ran forward.

Green fired once at the man. He took cover behind some barrel that smelt like fish. He cringed at the sound of metal on metal as the rifle bullets bounced from the curved surface of the drum. The metal rain stopped.

He looked at his target so he could fire a second shot. The rifleman looked down at the gaping hole in his chest. He growled before falling over.

How many more were out there trying to kill him?

He moved back from the barrel. He had to get away from the dock area if he wanted to escape the squad. He frowned at the chain link fence that loomed in the darkness. He decided to go left and hope it was open close to the water.

If he followed the fence the other way, it would head right into the line of fire as far as he could tell.

He might have a chance in the water.

Green tried to keep his movement as silent as possible. His enemies could already see better than him. He didn't want to know that they could hear better than him too.

He worked his way down to a pier that stretched out over the water. He saw dark shapes moving against the light from the city. He kept down as much as possible without actually crawling. He had the feeling he stood out against the rainbow as he worked his way down to the end of the pier.

He didn't want to jump into the lake but he didn't want to be shot. He looked down at the water. He looked back at the fire team trying to figure out where he had gone. He lowered himself over the edge of the pier. He swung his legs out and caught the pole that propped the deck up. He slid down to the water. He lowered himself into the water and listened.

They still seemed to be up on solid land as far as he could tell.

How did he get out of the trap he was in?

Green worked his way away from the search, pulling himself along with one hand as he carried his pistol above the water with the other. He paused every few feet to make sure that he hadn't been detected.

Shooting him in the water would be as easy as falling off a log.

He found a slip further along the lakefront. He pulled himself out of the water. He dripped as he walked up a set of steps to the yard between the house and the lake. He walked around the side and out on the street.

He put his pistol away. He wondered what he would do about his car. He supposed he would have to leave it for the time being. Hopefully, it hadn't caught a bullet in the exchange of gunfire.

He decided to walk over and see if he could figure out what had brought the riflemen down to the lake. Maybe he could trace that to something else.

He wanted some kind of home base for the assault team. He could look around for some indicator after everyone had gone out to rest and relax.

Maybe he could get one of them alone and ask some questions about why they had tried to shoot him in the dark.

He had at least escaped unharmed as far as he could tell at the moment.

What had brought the goon squad down to the lake? Maybe someone didn't like people looking closely at the rainbow. Maybe they especially didn't want the (anchor)s pulled up.

So where had they set up their lookout so they could watch him coming across the lake?

He looked at the rainbow as he walked along in his wet clothes. The place could be anywhere that had a clear view of the lake and anyone floating on it.

He paused when he saw blue and red lights in the darkness. He sat down in the shadow cast by a house to wait. The scene would be under guard until daylight at least.

What did he do to kill time now?

He closed his eyes. He supposed he could wait for his clothes to dry from his swim. Then he could try to get his car back.

He drifted off to sleep without realizing. He snapped awake at the sound of a barking dog in the distance. It was time for him to pick himself up and see what the new day offered.

Green stretched the kinks out while he walked back toward the docks. He had been on the road and learned just enough to keep him going.

He needed to figure out his next move after he checked to see if he could drive his car away from the lot. He needed to find a place to think that was safe from things trying to kill him.

His office and home were out. They were probably being monitored so he could be picked up anytime Lycos wanted.

He needed to hide out for a while. He didn't see how he could do that at the moment. He was in trouble if the gunmen saw him walking down the road in the next bit of time it took him to get back to his car.

And he still didn't know what happened to Rude.

14


Green watched the lot. He didn't see anybody lingering around. There were two places where some kind of green sludge had been thrown across the lot. No guesses were needed on what that had been.

He crossed the police line and looked for his car. It was gone. He frowned. He should have expected that.

The locals might be looking for him right now.

Stupid (ogre)s.

What did he do for a vehicle now?

He certainly couldn't walk back to the city.

And he still needed a place to regroup and plan for a possible break in.

He needed to get a look at the Halcyon place. He needed to find something that pointed to them having Rude, or not. Then he could go from there.

What could he do without a car? He decided to walk back into town. Maybe he could rent a car.

How many factions were involved in this mess? He counted at least three, four if Lycos wasn't with Halcyon Enterprises like he had thought. The best thing he could do was get them all together.

The resulting fireworks would be worth it in his opinion.

He walked until he found a little place that was open for breakfast. He went in and used the bathroom to clean up and get ready for the day. He needed to get some food and figure out how he was going to get anything done without a car.

Maybe he could get it from the police impound without too much trouble. He might have to answer some questions about the firefight if he did that.

He didn't know what he would say about that. He doubted that being attacked by monsters with guns would be something he wanted to say. That might get him locked up in the looney bin.

He doubted breaking his car out of the impound lot was a better plan. That would put the police on the lookout for him.

The arm could change things, maybe it could change his car into something else usable for him to drive around. It would be the perfect disguise as far as he was concerned.

He could see exchanging his car's looks for another car in the lot. He just needed to drive it out. Would his arm do that for him? It apparently acted on its own as far as he could tell.

Would it help him commit larceny of his own car?

He wouldn't know either way until it was too late to back out of the situation.

He could try to explain his way out if he was caught on the lot. He doubted his bullets would match with what had been used on the scene of the shootout. Those things his arm had called up were grades higher than the forties he used.

He doubted there was any place that had (OGRE KILLERS) in stock.

Green ate his food mechanically as he watched the place. His mind sifted what he had learned. He thought maybe he could figure out where the security team had put their lookout, but why bother? He didn't want another shootout with them. They probably didn't know anything but keep people from pulling up the anchors.

That didn't mean anything when put against everything else.

A detail out in the middle of nowhere wouldn't know what their boss was doing in some other area.

Green paid for his meal and stepped out on the street. He kept his eye roving for monsters as he walked down to the nearest convenience store. He needed to know where the impound was before he took his car back.

He stopped in and bought the most detailed map of the area. He looked it over until he found the lot. Most government facilities were marked so you could find them if you didn't know where they were. He smiled.

He was back in business.

He walked across town in the straightest line he could manage. That saved some time where he didn't have to stop for lights. He paused when he saw the lot.

He recognized most of the cars from the lot. His car had been brought in and placed in the middle of the crowd. He would have to cut through a fence and get to his car. Then he would have to start it and drive it off the lot before the guards got wise.

He watched the lot from across the street. He didn't see any guards, or dogs. There were cameras. He noticed that a couple had been pushed away from a spot next to the fence. He could probably get to that spot and cut his way in after nightfall.

He wondered if the cars had been disabled. If they had, that would put a crimp in his plan.

The arm would have to handle that problem if it came up. It had already done more than he thought it could.

Green looked at his map. He found a library a few blocks over. He decided to kill some time there before he came back after dark.

He checked his phone while he walked toward the library. It refused to give him a signal. He shook his head. The lake had done a number on it.

He should have thought about that before dropping into the water so he could swim to safety.

He took the phone apart and broke it up before throwing it in different public trash cans. He would get another one after all this was over.

He had to live that long.

He paused at the no weapon sign on the library doors. He turned and walked away. He didn't need any more trouble than what he already had. He certainly wasn't going to hide his gun and hope no one found it while he was in the building.

He decided to hit a book store instead. Maybe he could find out some more about his enemies there. It might even give him some idea what the rainbow did as a (bridge).

He doubted it was to some place of gingerbread men and pretty witches that guarded humanity on their magic ponies.

Green found a book store and went in. He must have looked awful from the looks he was getting. He wandered the shelves until he found something that looked like what he wanted. He pulled the book out and went to a chair as far from the door as he could get.

He read the thing from cover to cover as he waited for dark to fall. Some of the stories about Nuadata and his struggles with the Fair Folk seemed familiar. Nuadata's main enemy was the King of Meverin March at the end of a long rainbow. The King had a castle in the air from where he tried to force his ways on the groundlings below.

In the last battle, Nuadata ripped the rainbow down with his arm and crashed the castle into a sea.

Green didn't plan to throw his life away doing something like that.

He put the book back on the shelf. He looked toward the front of the store. Night had fallen outside. It was time to move back to his place across from the impound lot.

He wanted his car back. He needed to have some mobility if he wanted to work this case around the lake. There were very few places that were in walking distance as far as he could see.

He didn't plan to stay in the area on foot with armed men looking for him.

He had to be on the move so he could be a harder target to hit.

15

Green watched the lot from beside a tow service garage. He suspected the same people had towed his car in from the dock area. He didn't see any dogs, or monsters, in the parking area.

He watched the lot for about an hour. Nothing moved. He thought an occasional patrol should walk the lot. He didn't see that while he waited.

It made things easier if there were no guards on duty when he made his move.

He didn't want to hurt anyone when he committed his crime. That would mean additional time if he were caught by the cops.

He didn't want to be stuck in prison with the (ogre)s and (raven)s after him.

Green walked across the street to the fence. He noted it was electrified. He held his right hand over the chain links. He didn't dare to touch it. He would have to go around to the gate and try to get in that way.

He wondered if electricity would bother his new arm at all. He decided not to chance it in case he was wrong about how things worked.

He walked around to the front of the place. He saw a guard sitting with his feet on the desk. A paper was in his hands. He didn't look too concerned about anything happening at night.

Green slipped under the gate arm and made his way inside the lot. He kept an eye out in case the guard decided to walk around. He frowned at the cars as he passed. Most of them had covers placed under them so they couldn't hover.

He paused by his car. He frowned at the cover. He couldn't drive it out of the lot with a cover on it.

He checked the lock and thought maybe he had something he could open it. He tested the lock with a few bars until he had one that seemed to be working. He used it to turn the tumblers. The lock opened. The cover fell off as the retaining bars slid out of the way.

Green got behind the wheel. He put in the combination to start it up. It sputtered but didn't start.

The mechanics, or the riflemen, must have done something to make sure his car wouldn't start if he did take the cover off.

The noise attracted the guard's attention. He leaned out of his gatehouse, shining a light into the lot.

Green pressed his hand on the dashboard. He closed his eyes.

"I need you to do whatever you can so we can get out of here." He hoped that it didn't sound crazy out loud.

(GO CAR)

The car lifted off the ground on a trail of flame. A facade that looked like a fanged face dropped over the nose of it. The eyes glowed.

Green poured on the power. His car roared off its pad and headed for the gate. He closed his eyes as the gate came apart as he drove out on the street. He turned right and hovered away with no destination in mind.

"Good job." He looked for a place he could hide his car from pursuit.

The theft had gone better than he had thought, but the escape still had to be accomplished.

He needed to get off the road before a police helicopter could be routed to chase him. He didn't know how fast he was going, but he doubted it was faster than an aircraft.

He looked out the window. The side of the road went by in a blur. He supposed he could be going faster than an aircraft. He put it down to the arm changing his car into whatever it was.

How long did he have before it changed back to normal?

He decided to stop at the motel he had stopped at the first night of his road trip. That should buy him some time.

He hoped he could get the car working with a simple trip to a mechanic. He might have an ignition block installed. That made his car a marked vehicle.

Any mechanic who saw that was supposed to report the block before they took it out.

He would deal with that when he had time. Now he had to get off the road before the police caught up with him.

He saw the motel up ahead. He pulled around to the back of the place. He parked in a slot and the flames died instantly as the car became inert on its pad.

He would look at the motor in the morning. Maybe his arm would help him with that.

It had already done a lot of what he could only call magic. No wonder the Bird King had said they would put it to their own uses when they took it from him.

He walked around to the front of the hotel. He looked around as he entered. Everything seemed the same as the last time he had been there. Even the same clerk manned the desk as he walked up to get a room.

He paid for his room and got the key. That part was different. He headed for his temporary quarters and turned on the television. He turned it to the news channel as he took off his clothes. He listened to the announcers as he showered and cleaned up. Then he did the best he could to clean his clothes in the tub. He hung them up on the shower curtain rod as he watched the news.

He brushed his coat off on a towel as he waited for someone to announce his daring raid on the impound lot. He didn't see anything.

Tomorrow they would know someone had taken his car. They would think it was him. The evidence for that would be him driving it around. He needed to change its looks before someone saw it and said something.

He would do that after his clothes dried. He had gone through a rough two days so far. He wanted to take a day and hold out until he figured out what he could do.

He doubted he would be forgiven for what he had done to the security team in his escape. They didn't look like a group that would let him get away with killing some of them.

He expected the same from the bird men. He had burned their house to the ground. He didn't think they would take that lying down. They would probably want to eat him alive.

Lycos was the only one he wasn't sure would let him live if he was crossed.

He doubted it even though the man acted as if he was as friendly as a kid show host.

Where did that leave him other than in a hotel room far from home, hunted by enemies, trying to find a man he wasn't sure was missing?

It seemed like he should have turned Miss Rude away as soon as he had seen her.

He should have pushed her out of his door as soon as Skarskold had shown up at his office looking for her.

He would at least not be on a wanted list for stealing back his own car.

He checked his clothes. They were still wet. It would probably be morning before he could get dressed again. He checked his coat. It looked better. He ran his right hand over it and it looked cleaner after the words passed. He hung the coat on the bathroom door. He put a chair under the door knob and tried to get some sleep on the floor on the other side of the bed.

If someone broke in, that would give him time to fire his pistol before they fired at him.

The only place he hadn't been was Halcyon Enterprises. He needed to get in there and figure out what they were really doing.

He wanted to check if they had Rude stashed in a dungeon somewhere.

He wondered if the man was even alive after all this time.

Green closed his eyes. He slept and dreamed of words forming and vanishing in the dark. Every one of them was a name. All he had to do was pick the true name to shape things to what he wanted.

He woke up to the sun shining through the curtains of his room. It was time for him to get busy.

16

Green took his dry clothes off the rod as he readied himself for the new day. He needed to take a look at Halcyon Enterprises. He would have to get in there somehow.

He went out to his car. It looked sad in its slot. He had never thought a car would feel anything. He needed it to run like it had last night.

He placed his hand on the car. He felt the words shifting as he thought. His dream seemed to have been trying to tell him something. Maybe it had.

"I name you Car." He felt a twinge in his hand. Maybe it wanted a better name than that. "I name you Excellent Car."

He felt his arm shift under the sleeves of his suit and coat. It seemed to be warming up for what he needed it to do.

"It's time for a color change and to be in tip top condition." He placed his hand on the hood of the car. The gray paint bled to a darker brown with green stripes worked in. The body of the car shifted slightly so it was more rounded and looked faster just sitting on its pad.

It looked good enough to get passed any roadblock stopping cars that turned into rockets.

He got behind the wheel and drove up to the front door of the hotel. He checked out and headed back toward the city. It was time he had look at his enemy.

There was no doubt in his mind that Halcyon Enterprises and the rainbow were connected. Maybe they had caused it somehow. He put the beam down as magic. It was the only thing that made sense. No amount of water was going to hover for so long above a single location.

That also went with the security response when he checked the anchors.

Pulling those up might get rid of the rainbow.

He might need to do that anyway before things were done.

Nuadata had pulled down the King of the Meverin March's castle. He might have to do the same thing. He didn't plan on dying if things came to that.

He planned to do everything he could to avoid that.

Green didn't have the map guide from his phone. He checked his dashboard. A small map screen was inset in the dash. He pushed the on button and then typed in Thread Street as he drove down the road.

A route lit up the screen with a line back into the city and out the other side.

The area would shrink the closer he got to where he was going.

He hoped the place had lax security. That would make things easier for him to do what he had to do inside the walls.

He doubted it would be that way. There was probably some kind of dragon in residence and acting as the King's right hand burglar killer. More (ogre)s with guns would be walking the grounds in shifts. Maybe some kind of weird plant grew around the fence.

Could his arm handle any of that? Did he want to find out? How much blasting power did a pistol give him?

He doubted he had enough bullets to kill all of the bad guys.

He doubted he had enough to get through the main gatehouse.

He passed through town. He wanted to go by his place, or his office. He decided against it. The bird men might be waiting on him for just such a move.

He wanted to deal with one enemy at a time. There was plenty of time for him to get to them if he lived through what he was about to do.

He hoped Miss Rude was doing all right for herself. He doubted she had been taken by anyone. She seemed too paranoid for that.

She was probably hiding out until things shook out one way, or the other.

The map told him to follow a winding road off the highway until he found himself wandering around in the industrial area of the city. Every other building was a warehouse. Vast parking lots behind fences and gatehouses seemed the norm.

He drove by the complex for Halcyon Enterprises with his left eye closed. He frowned at the things that seemed to be put up around the fence. And the monsters patrolled everywhere.

Someone was serious about keeping people out.

He had to punch his way through all that. He didn't like the idea of that.

He pulled down out of sight of the place. He needed some way to get in without having to shoot some guard before he cut his way through the fence.

He had a few hours before darkness. He had time to watch and plan. There had to be some hole he could exploit to get through the defenses.

He got out of his car and walked back to a place that looked empty. He didn't see anyone on the site. He used his right hand to pull a hole in the fence. He got into the lot and moved to where he could watch the area behind the cover of some discarded drums.

He didn't see any way into the compound that didn't require force. Everything flowed across the yard with precision. He looked at the setup until his right eye tired of the drifting labels.

He needed to catch one of those spell things with his hand and get rid of it. He was sure his right hand could do that. It had already done things of a similar nature.

The question was could he get close to enough to the fence to grab one of those spells without being shot. If he could do that, he could get on the lot. Then he would have to get to the building before he was seen. He was sure his hand could open a door for him if he wanted it.

He didn't have a way to get through the patrols unless he was willing to shoot them as he went. That kind of noise was bound to attract attention.

He had never seen such a fortress. Maybe that was why all those old stories were about using force to overcome obstacles. That was good if you had an army to back you.

He took one more look at the energy wrapping around the place. He had an idea that the actual building wasn't what it looked like. The different defenses obscured his view of the headquarters.

If Miss Rude stole something from this place, how had she done it?

He wondered if she flew in over the fence and dropped in through the roof. That was one way he couldn't do since he had no way to fly as far as he knew.

He wondered if he could turn his coat into a pair of wings to lift him over the defenses.

How fast would he have to do such a flight before he was shot down?

Did he want to find out?

He decided that he didn't want to try and fly over the heads of the monsters.

A truck rolled up to the gate to enter the facility. He focused on it. It was a bigger version of the (death coach) he had seen earlier. The defenses flickered for a second as the truck rolled passed the lifted gate arm.

He smiled because he had seen a way to get into the place without being discovered if he was careful.

He needed to find one of those trucks coming into the place. He hoped they had more than one running around. Otherwise, he was going to have problems.

He went back out the way he had entered and walked back to his car. He got in and drove out to the head of the area. A truck coming in from the city was more likely than it driving in from the other end. He parked his car and waited. He would have to board at a light and hope the driver didn't see him.

If the driver did see him, all the man had to do was tell the guard at the gate.

Green went over his plan in his mind. He stopped when he realized he was scaring himself. He took some deep breathes to steady his nerves while he waited.

He wondered why he was doing this.

17
Green spotted a truck rolling down the road toward where he stood. He readied himself for something he considered a bit on the insane side. He wondered if he was letting his judgment be clouded by his arm.

The truck rolled by where he stood. He ran after it, grabbing on the back with his right hand. He stood on the bumper for a moment as he caught his breath.

Now came the hard part. He had to get on top of the trailer before they lumbered to the gate.

He should have thought of a better plan.

He jumped up and caught the top of the trailer with his hands. It felt squishy as he tried to get a grip. He tried not to jerk back from the contact. That would have dropped him in the road. His right hand yanked him to the top of the trailer so he could lay down.

He listened to the truck as it rolled along. It sounded almost like a heart beat under the sound of normality. He tried not to think about that. He still had to get through the fence and into the headquarters.

He hoped this was the only unpleasant part of his infiltration.

He didn't want to consider what would happen if he got caught. Being eaten alive after having his arm ripped off was a real consideration at this point.

Green listened as the truck stopped at the checkpoint. No one said anything about a stowaway. The thing rolled forward through the gate. It headed for a spot at the back of the headquarters.

He looked at the building he was going to break into with his right eye. It resembled a pile of rocks in his altered vision. He frowned at the (castle).

He should have expected that after all the other fairy tale elements that had crossed his path.

Green jumped on a roof as it passed. He couldn't hope to stay with the truck until it parked. He had to get inside and away from the patrols. Some of the dogs had already started to bark at his presence.

He made his way across the roof to the main building. He put the barking down as dogs, but knew that what was on the ground was worse than a guard dog. He felt the wall of the building with his hand. He concentrated on his hand.

(INSIDE)

He passed through the wall. He looked around the hall he was in. It didn't keep up the pretense of a modern skyscraper. Everything was stone from floor to the ceiling. Torches lit the walls.

He shook his head. Who wanted to live in a thing like this? Did he want to meet them?

The prisoners were either kept in a tower room with plenty of light and air, or a dungeon where everything was darkness. Which way should he go?

He decided to go down. He doubted if Rude was there, he would be kept comfortable. The creatures he had already run into didn't give him reasons to doubt that.

Rude would be lucky to be alive.

Green made his way down. He hid when he saw a patrol moving in his direction. The attack dogs seemed to be an outdoor precaution at best.

If you could get in the building, then you didn't have to worry about them, he supposed.

Green paused at the corner leading to the final hall. He saw two guards talking in front of a wooden door. He didn't want to alert the place, but he didn't want to kill them just because they were in his way.

He wondered what Nuadata would do. He supposed the hero would pull his sword and cut his way through his enemies with the power of his arm.

That wasn't the way he liked to do things.

He pulled out his pen. He threw it across the gap and listened to it skitter along the floor. The talk stopped as the guards went on alert.

One of them approached the mouth of the hall. He held an axe in his hand. He looked toward where the noise had come from and away from the detective. A fist struck him in the face.

(BOOM)

The guard went down. His axe dropped into the floor, blade first. His eyes rolled up in his head as he tried to shake off the effects of the punch. Then he stopped moving.

The other guard rushed forward. He jumped to swing at where he thought the punch had come from. His axe bit into the wall. He tried to pull it out.

(BOOM)

A gloved fist caught him in the center of his face as he struggled with his weapon. He flew down the hall. Green blood dripped from his mashed nose.

"That went better than I thought it would." Green picked up his pen and searched the guards for keys. He went to the door and opened it. He pulled the nearest back in the cell area by the shirt. He dumped him in an empty cage before dragging his comrade back and putting him in the same cell.

He wiped the green blood off his gloved hand on one of their shirts before locking the door.

He looked the other cells over. Only one had a prisoner. The inmate looked up with a bruised face.

"I already told you." The prisoner raised his hands. "I don't know where it is."

"We'll talk about that later." Green looked at him with his right eye. This man was normal human. "I'm here to get you out."

"You have to be kidding." The man stood up. Green noticed that one of his arms was chained to the wall. The manacle had been pressed closed around his wrist. "How are you going to get this thing off my arm?"

"I'm going to pull it off." The detective looked around for more guards showing up while he went about his burglary. "I need you to be quiet if you want to get out of here."

Rude held out his arm. The manacle was sealed tight around his wrist.

Green hoped his hand was up to the challenge. It had proven reliable so far. He grabbed the manacle in both hands. He pulled.

(OPEN)

The circlet snapped along the weld and spread apart. A second later, it clinked against the wall.

"Thank you." Rude stepped out of the cell. His hand rubbed the bruising from the manacle.

"Let's go." Green waved him out of the cell. "I'll get you out of here. Then you can tell me what's going on."

"Don't you know?" Rude waited at the door out. "How did you find me?"

"I guessed you would be here." Green looked out in the hall. "Someone claiming to be your wife asked me to look for you."

"Claiming to be my wife?" Rude's statement of bachelorhood was cut off by a raised hand.

Green waited for the guard to get too close to back away from him. He swung his right hand. The disguised monster hit the wall. He reached for his axe to cut his attacker down. Another right hand to the face stopped that.

"That was impressive." Rude picked up the axe. He struggled with it before carrying it on his shoulder.

"Let's go." Green directed him up the stairs. "Things are about to get really bad."

The two men ducked several patrols before reaching a closet with no windows. A gong rumbled through the citadel. The detective went to the wall. They had to get off the grounds before they were caught.

That meant he had to do something so destructive that the guards and defenses went crazy while he tried to sneak out with Rude. Could the arm do what he wanted?

He pulled out his pistol. If it couldn't, they were good as dead.

"Cover your ears." Green stepped back and aimed at the wall. "This might be loud."

He waited for Rude to do what he said before he pulled the trigger. He closed his eyes as the wall exploded in a jet of lava spraying out over the yard around the (castle).

The guards went for cover. They had no idea who had dropped molten death on them from the sky. Green hurried them along with some (OGRE KILLER)s before jumping down to the low roof under his exit.

Rude followed. He had to drop his axe first. The weight would have hurt him on landing.

Green looked around. They needed to get off the roof and out of the grounds. They needed help.

18
Green noted that the trucks were moving toward the gate. That could be good for him if he could get one moving fast enough. He blasted two more rounds at the security before ducking back.

"We're going to have to get on one of those trucks and drive through the gate." He dropped the empty magazine out of his pistol and replaced it with a full one.

"You've got to be kidding." Rude looked over the edge of the roof. Bullets passing by made him jump back. "It's better than staying here and being rounded up again."

"I am going to shoot to attract attention." The detective thumbed the hammer back for his weapon. "You drop to the ground. Watch your landing."

"I'm ready." Rude hunkered on his heels so he could just swing down and drop to the ground.

Green blasted at security forces on the ground. He turned at a noise from the building. He put two more rounds at the building to stall anyone from dropping on the roof with him and Rude. Molten stone fell inside as the bullets punched through the wall.

Rude dropped to the ground. He ran for the nearest truck. He glanced over at guard dogs running toward him. Spittle flew from their open jaws. He concentrated on the door of the truck so he could pull himself out of reach of the teeth.

The dogs stumbled from hammer blows as Green dropped to the ground. He ran for the truck. He had three bullets left and a lot more enemies to shoot.

They had to get away from all the bullets flying around.

"Get ready to help me with the driver." Green grabbed hold of the door handle with his right hand and pulled. The door came open despite the man behind the wheel trying to hold it closed. Rude pulled the man out with his heavier weight.

"Inside." Green pushed him over into the passenger side of the compartment before climbing behind the wheel and pressing down hard on the gas. He fired his last three bullets through the front window at the gatehouse and watched it explode. The truck roared on the street.

"They're coming after us." Rude used the side mirror to keep track of their enemies.

"I hope they don't catch us because I am out of bullets." Green put his pistol back in his holster as he concentrated on his driving.

(FASTER)

The truck roared down the street. Smoke drifted from its exhaust as it labored toward the corner where Green had left his car. The detective made a hard left and swung the hauler across the road to block it.

"Out." Green looked down the road. The security forces approached on what looked like golf carts. They didn't look happy to him.

Rude dropped out of the passenger side of the compartment. He looked around. Were they supposed to run now?

"I got a car." Green passed him. "I don't think we should wait around."

"I agree." Rude ran as fast as he could. The outside air hurt his face, but at least he was moving and out of his cell.

Green spotted his car. He couldn't remember if he had left it unlocked, or not. He was hoping unlocked because he wanted to fly out of there.

He paused for Rude to catch up. The man had taken a beating. What did they want from him? It had to be something about the rainbow. That much was all over his home office.

"Get in." He gestured for his passenger to go around. "We're going to have to talk."

Rude opened the passenger door and got in. The seat felt so much better than the strange seat in the truck.

Green got behind the wheel. The car started up the moment he grabbed the wheel. He put it down to magic from the transformation his hand had worked. He hovered away from the curb and jetted into the city.

He needed a place to hide the scientist now that he had him back from the Halcyon people. He couldn't trust his office, or home. He couldn't trust Rude's office, or home.

He needed somewhere to stash the man that neither one would be associated with in any way.

He couldn't think of any place like that. And once Rude was out of his sight, who would protect the man? He couldn't give the found man a magic sword and tell him to look out for anything that didn't look human.

And what about his wife? How did she fit in this?

Where had she gone after the bird man had showed up at the café?

"How did you do what you did back there?" Rude watched the road.

"Magic bullets." Green passed slower moving traffic as he let the car drive itself. "Why were you locked up?"

"I discovered that the existence of the rainbow at Lake Halcyon is anchored in some other reality." Rude checked to see if his driver expressed disbelief. The stone face told him that other realities had encroached far from the lake country. "My contention is that it can be removed if we had the right lever. As it is, it defies our reality."

"How bad could this defiance be?" Green felt that he was adjusting to having an arm made out of words well. Destroying artifacts of other realities was something he wasn't equipped to handle.

He wasn't a hero.

"Right now, it's stable." Rude made a gesture to indicate smooth water. "If someone were to rock it too much, there's no telling what would happen."

"You have any idea on how to get rid of it?" Green needed more bullets if he were going to fight whatever was defending the (bridge) in this world.

The existence of the King of the Meverin March started to look very likely after all that he had seen.

He didn't like that line of thought at all.

"I theorized there were anchors at both ends of the reality span." Rude made a plucking gesture. "Pull them up and the rainbow should vanish."

"How do we do that?" The detective had thought the same thing when he had seen the rocks in the water.

"I have no idea." The scientist shrugged. "I was working on that when those thugs grabbed me. They wanted to know something about some key."

"That's because of a woman posing as your wife." Green thought that made sense given the remarks by the king of the (raven)s. "She took something and a bunch of people want it back."

"A key?" The passenger looked out the window. "What key would be worth all this trouble?"

"If it unlocked the anchors?" He frowned at his mirror. Two wagons rolled fast toward his car as the vehicle roared down the highway. "It would be worth killing for if someone who knew how to use it had it."

The two wagons spread out as they roared past slower moving traffic. Men with guns eased out of the windows.

It looked like their getaway wasn't as clean as he had thought.

He spotted something in the sky. He had underestimated the opposition. They had launched an aircraft to keep track of him while the ground troops mobilized.

He should have seen that coming.

"We're going to have to make a run for it." Green pushed down on the turbine speed. "It looks like we're not done with Halcyon."

"Don't you have any more magic bullets?" Rude rubbed his sore face. What was he talking about?

"No." Green started crossing lanes so he wouldn't be trapped between the two wagons. He needed some magic bullets right then.

"Take the next exit." Rude looked over his shoulder. "We have to get off the highway."

"Really?" Green agreed that if he kept in the middle of the highway, the wagons would catch up and riddle his car.

He jerked the wheel to the right, riding up on the lane protectors for the exit. He let the car right itself on the downslope. He checked for traffic before doing a hard left under the highway.

"They're still coming." Rude winced. "One scraped the bridge column. That won't buff out."

"It would have been better for us if he had hit the thing head on." Green took a right. He wanted to get away from the highway.

"They are still back there." The passenger looked at the blurred scenery. "How fast are we going?"

"Not fast enough." The detective looked for a turn he could take where the security detail couldn't follow.

He needed to lose them somehow.