Kai and Avren cleared the rift gate into Zone Delta and walked straight into a precinct pretending to be a precinct. The lobby looked busy, which was a trick. People hustled in every direction, but no one moved with purpose; the noise had that hollow echo of a building yelling to convince itself it was alive.
The first thing Kai noticed was the evidence door: unlocked, half open, a cart of tagged bags left in the hall like laundry. Inside, boxes sat unsealed, labels curling off in the humidity. Chain-of-custody sheets lay face-down under a paper cup sweating coffee into the ink. A refrigeration cabinet clicked, light on, compressor off. Someone had unplugged it to charge their radio.
Dispatch screens flickered snow; the CCTV wall ran split-screen static with a single camera pointed at a stairwell no one used. The weapons locker was propped with a mop. An officer napped at a desk, chair kicked back, badge on his chest like a paperweight. In the intake corner, a biohazard bin overflowed with used swabs next to a box of still-sealed ones; the dates on the blood kits had rolled past last winter. A printer screamed for toner. The sign-in sheet on the public counter said TUESDAY. It was Thursday.
And threading through all of it: a tall man in Concord slate gray, badge on a lanyard, manners on loan. He drifted from desk to desk, pulling files like he owned them, correcting people with the calm of a tourist reviewing a menu. He wore the smile of jurisdiction.
"We don't have a free desk," a harried sergeant told them, not looking up. "Planning room."
The planning room had a pin board stealing the wall. Not string—too ambitious for this place—but a grid of clipped photos and printed case headers, map pins hammered into a laminated Delta, marker lines bleeding like veins.
One board held Active Scenes (Delta), five squares in black:
1) Canal Path (D-44) — female, late 20s, throat compressed, no guardian trace. Wallet gone. Found at dawn by sweeper.
2) Workers' Motel (D-17) — male, 40s, tub scene, cuts post-mortem, evidence of staged suicide.
3) Laundromat (D-09) — male, 30s, torso opened, organs removed with clean edges; coin machines jimmied, camera dead.
4) Market Back-Alley (D-31) — teen, male, blunt force; resonance smear on wall; shoe prints in cooking oil.
5) Highway Drainage (D-03) — unidentified, partial remains recovered; bags tied with two-loop dock knots.
Next to the photos: clock stamps, response times, the kind of notes you write when you're trying to convince yourself you're doing something. Someone had scrawled NO RIFTS IN YEARS at the top like a badge of honor.
"Three," Avren said, before anyone asked. He didn't sit. "Take us to D-09."
They walked under the board and out again, past the Concord officer leaning in to a conversation that didn't need him. Outside, the air felt cleaner simply because it wasn't breathing the precinct's excuses.
The laundromat sat behind a row of shuttered storefronts, its window taped with GRARC yellow that flapped in the wind. They ducked the tape and stepped into a room that smelled like detergent trying to murder blood. Machines lined the walls, doors ajar like mouths. The hum was gone; someone had killed the power.
Kai held the perimeter by habit. Avren crossed the tile slow, eyes half-lidded, the way he did when he let the room speak. He crouched by the body's chalk outline, ran his hand in a small circle over a drying bloom, then stood again with that look that meant the pieces had already arranged themselves.
"That fast?" Kai asked.
Avren didn't answer. He was listening to something that didn't make sound. He turned his head to the left, just a degree. "Familiar," he murmured. "I've met this pressure before."
"From where?"
"Don't know yet." He tapped a coin slot with his knuckle. "But I can tell you what he thinks he is."
Two men clomped in behind them, boots heavy, breath heavier. One wore a name strip that said H. KENNARD, but everyone called him Henny. He had the voice of someone who thought volume was a credential.
"We don't need Zone Alpha's stray in here," Henny announced, chin for Kai, not Avren. "Delta hasn't had a rift in years. We don't need your pet monsters or your Resonants measuring our floors."
Kai kept his mouth calm. The word stray always snagged, but he let it pass.
"We're here because Lieutenant Mary told us to be," Avren replied, bland as tea. "And because your evidence door is open."
A snort from Henny. "Resonants are greedy scumbags in Delta. They take their cut and vanish. You'll fit right in."
"Good to know where the bar is," Avren said. "Any other hospitality tips or can we do our jobs?"
Henny started to square up. The officer with him tugged his sleeve; not today. They slunk to the doorway to glower.
Kai stepped closer to Avren. "You really got a read that fast?"
"Not a read." Avren's voice went soft, almost private. "A memory with no name." He pointed with his chin. "Walk with me."
They moved the aisle between machines. Avren's eyes ticked like metronomes: floor, walls, lint trap, the smear under a table leg, the twist of tape on a power breaker.
"Talk to me," Kai said.
"Fine," Avren said, and he did. Their exchange lengthened, the room falling away until there was just the thread between them.
"Start with the obvious," Kai said.
"Obvious is lazy. Start with the rude." Avren gestured at the outline. "Torso open, edges too clean—says knife with a stupidly fine edge. But the cuts aren't exploratory. No hunting around, no hesitation. He knew where everything lived. He didn't fumble a single organ."
"Surgeon?"
"Or butcher with pride. But see the wash lines on the tile? He cleaned here with a mop head that sheds—cheap precinct issue. You can buy that anywhere, sure. But the way the water pooled at the drain says he pulled power at the breaker before he mopped, which most civilians don't think to do in a panic. He didn't want the fans moving air."
"Professional, then."
"Comfortable," Avren corrected. "Look at the coin slots. Fronts popped with a flathead, but not for money; he was looking for the camera feed. This model routes the internal cam through the same panel. He knew that. He also knew the external camera had been dead two days because the tape over the cable shows two layers of adhesive with different dust—someone checked it yesterday. He didn't bother to fix it. He wanted it dead."
Kai frowned. "You got all that from—"
"From listening to how lazy he allowed himself to be." Avren's mouth quirked. "Also? Boot polish fleck near the drain. Regulation issue. Off-the-rack brand the precinct commissary stocks when they stock anything at all. And the residue on the tape over the window is Delta-procured crime scene tape, not Concord. He brought a roll from here. Killer is one of them, Kai. Either Delta PD or someone with access like a janitor who dates a cop. My money is a badge."
Kai exhaled, annoyed at himself for not seeing any of it. "You said familiar."
Avren nodded, gaze far. "The resonance pressure around the cuts. The way he holds his fear in his knuckles. Don't ask me how I know that. I just do. I've stood next to it before, shook a hand, maybe. It's a smell you can't wash out once you've met it."
Henny laughed from the doorway. "You done pretending you're wizards? Put your notes in the box and let Delta handle Delta."
Avren didn't even look at him. "Delta is handling Delta. That's the problem."
Henny stepped forward a half step; Kai's shoulders rolled without thinking, that quiet angle that meant not today. The other officer tugged Henny back again. The tape on the window fluttered like a lazy flag.
"Give me the rest," Kai said, eyes still on Henny.
"Rest is simple." Avren held up one finger. "He staged for time—picked a place with machines that could muffle movement, killed power to own the air, cleaned enough to pass a glance, not enough to pass a lamp. He counted on Delta's response lag." A second finger. "He carried the bag out his own tape line because he knew your people won't write up their own errors. And a third." He tapped the coin-op again. "He wanted me to see him. He left a tell only I would catch: the glue he used to reseal this panel smells like the batch Concord used on a case in Alpha six months ago. There were thirty tubes released to field. I can name three people who hoard it. Two are in Alpha. The third transferred to Delta last month."
Kai blinked. "You're telling me you can narrow to a person from glue smell."
"From glue smell, mop shed, breaker prep, tape type, boot polish, and the way he let himself be a little lazy because he trusts this building to keep him safe." Avren's eyes finally found Kai's. "He's one of them."
"Name?"
"Soon." Avren looked back at the outline, the silence pressing around them. "I don't miss. You know that by now."
Kai hated that he believed him. He hated more that he hadn't seen it first.
They walked out past Henny without looking, back toward a precinct that would resist any truth that made it bleed. In the hall, the Concord officer was already leafing through a folder labeled D-09 like it belonged in his hands. The evidence door yawned. The cameras blinked snow. Somewhere a fridge clicked, trying to turn on.
By the time they reached the planning room, Avren had given Kai everything he needed: a picture so clean it couldn't be ignored. Killer in-house. Method confident. A smell that matched a name he'd dredge up by evening. Kai tucked the facts into his head, the way he did when he wanted them sharp enough to cut.
Worse than the mess, worse than Henny, worse than the Concord lanyard that kept drifting where it didn't belong, was the simple, stupid fact that Kai hadn't seen it. Avren had, with one look.
He'd have to be better. Or this place would eat him the way it ate its own.