You wouldn’t notice her at first, sitting in back of the tavern in the shadows like that. Giger Caust certainly didn’t when he strode into the smoky-smelling barroom.
“Excuse me,” he said in clipped tones. Educated in one of the old Institutes, no doubt, and the worse for it. “I’m looking for a guide. I’m going into the Static.”
The bartender flashed a look up at him from the glass she was scrubbing. Did she smirk? If she did, Giger didn’t clock it. He rarely cared to notice things. The girl pointed him towards the shadows.
“You’ll find Ridley back there,” she said. “You having a drink?”
Giger considered for a second the fine layer of grime that seemed to pervade every surface, and said in his most carefully polite voice, “No.”
“Please yourself,” the bartender said, working at a particularly troublesome brown spot on the glass. “Go on, you’re scaring away the customers.”
Giger turned, hesitated, and looked back.
“This Ridley. Is he good?”
“She’s the best,” the bartender said, and waved Giger on.

The dark figure resolved into something vaguely human as Giger’s eyes adjusted to the guttering candlelight. The woman was young, good-looking he guessed, though he couldn’t make too much detail out yet. She wore a long, thick coat in black or maybe blue that scuffed the floor around her feet, and a scarf was tightly wrapped around her neck. She didn’t look like someone who could handle herself in the Static, not from the stories he had heard. He noticed her eyes glittering in the light, and realised she was sizing him up the same as he was her.
He wondered what she saw.
“Apollo Ridley,” the woman said suddenly, offering a fingerless-gloved hand. “I take it you’re not here to make conversation.”
“You would be correct,” Giger said, taking the hand cautiously and giving it a perfunctory shake before sitting down opposite her on a rough wooden chair. “Giger Caust. I hope we can help each other, Miss Ridley.” He winced as his hand brushed the wood of the chair.
“You alright?” she asked. Giger nodded, picking at the splinter in his palm.
“Awfully… rustic, this place. We could have met somewhere nicer. Warmer, perhaps..?” he said, gesturing to her coat. Ridley shook her head.
“I don’t meet clients outside of this bar. And I’m cold everywhere, Mr. Giger,” she said, studying his face carefully. “What does the Static hold for you?”
“It’s my daughter,” Giger said. “She’s run away. We think into the Static. I tried to make a home for her, you know, but-”
“But?”
“Her sister. Drowned last year.”
“I see. I’m sorry,” Ridley said stiffly.
“Things haven’t been the same without her. Especially for poor Polonia. My poor girl… we had an argument a week ago. She didn’t come home that night, nor the night after. We didn’t think she really meant to go. She said she wasn’t waiting around to die here in Stellenmarek like us,” Giger said. His voice cracked. “I need my little girl back, Miss Ridley. Back like before.”
“Of course. There is the matter of money-”
“Anything you need. I have a good income. So do my wives. Whatever your rate,” Giger said, cutting her off. Ridley nodded.
“A description?” she asked. Giger frowned.
“I’ll identify her,” he said.
“Of course, but if we need to split up for any reason-”
“Fine, fine,” Giger said. “She’s seventeen years old. About five foot four. Dark eyes, like her mother. And her hair is the most beautiful golden colour.”
Apollo nodded. There was just one thing left to clear up with this old man. It might not be pretty.
“Before we set off, I have to ask you a question,” she said seriously.
“Ask away.”
“Are you prepared for what we may find in the Static?”
“If we don’t find her, you mean?” Giger said. If we don’t find her alive went unspoken. Apollo shook her head.
“If we don’t find her, nothing has changed. You pay me for my time, but no more. What I’m talking about is-”
“You mean if she’s… mutated,” Giger murmured. A simple nod from Apollo twisted his brow into a horrified expression. “Please, Miss Ridley, don’t make me consider it! My poor girl!”
“Mutation is a fact of life in the Static. And the longer she remains, the higher her odds are,” Apollo said. Her demeanor softened. There was no need to put the man through unnecessary grief like this. “It’s not the fate worse than death they make it out to be here. She won’t be allowed to enter the city, but you will always be able to visit her. There are safe communities for mutated people all over the Static.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Giger said. “How much?”
“Three days in advance. Fifteen scraps.”
“That’s five scraps a day,” Giger said, fishing the coins from his jacket pocket. “Very reasonable.” He left the statement hanging.
“I don’t have a lot of expenses,” Apollo said with a shrug. She took the coins and slipped them into the dark folds of her coat somewhere.
“Are you a mutant, Miss Ridley?” Giger said suddenly. He looked at her through narrow eyes, the flicker of the candle flame reflecting in each of them.
“I’m not.”
“How? I thought you said mutation was a fact of life.”
“Some people mutate, some don’t. Just got lucky, I guess.” Giger nodded. Lucky.
“I’ll see you outside the front door of this building at six o’clock,” Apollo said. That was his cue to leave.

When the man had left her alone, Apollo flicked through the coins, checking each one. Giger seemed on the level, but it was always worth giving each one the old bite test just to be sure. He didn’t seem the kind of man to know good money from counterfeit. Another missing family member. She couldn’t tell you why people ran into the Static so frequently, but since they kept on doing it, she’d be damned if she’d let anyone else get as good as her at finding them. Somehow she sensed there was going to be trouble with this one. A gust of wind blew across the room as Giger left the bar, and she shivered.
They’d start in Mutetown, check in with Delta. Everybody went through Mutetown, and everybody who went through Mutetown talked to Delta. From there they’d follow whatever Delta gave them. A week’s travel… That could take her as far as the Black Ravine Camp. But a seventeen-year-old spoiled rich kid would never make it there.
The wolves or the Bad Companies would get her first.
A race against time, then. She stood up, and the shadows fell off her like a cloak.

Her room upstairs was sparse; it cost a single scrap a night, not including meals, and it felt like it. The bed was little more than a bench with a sheet on it, and a cold wind blew through the window all hours of the day and night. Apollo knelt down beside the bed and reached under it. Tied to the underside of the bed was a long cloth bundle, a bit more than half a meter in length, held closed by a leather belt about the middle. She flicked the buckle of the belt open and rolled the bundle out onto the bed. Her fingers wrapped around the hilt of the longsword and drew it from its sheath silently. It was plain, maybe even dull. The steel did not glint blue in the moonlight. She ran her fingers along the edge of the blade a couple of times experimentally.
“Couldn’t hurt, could it?” she said to herself. She reached into a pocket of her thick woolen coat and retrieved a small whetstone. This would occupy the time until sleep deigned to take her, sure enough.
It was by chance, then, that she was awake when a thump and a curse from the landing outside startled her into alertness.
“Idiot!” came a muffled voice from the other side of the door. Apollo raised her sword in a guard position across her body. On bare feet as silent as a cat’s, she crept towards the door. If they opened it, they would see only an empty room.
Until she chopped their arms off, that is.
She shrugged off her coat, revealing the sinuous muscles of her arms. Her sleeveless undershirt was covered by a breastplate of stiffened leather. She adjusted her grip on the hilt of the sword.
The door began to open with a faint scraping sound, and a hard-faced man entered, holding a snub-barrelled revolver like a man who knows how to use it. As he saw the empty room, he began to turn, immediately knowing what was coming.
Apollo didn’t give him the chance to fire. She swept the blade downwards, leaving his right hand hanging from his arm by a red scrap of flesh, the matt black gun – a professional’s gun, one that wouldn’t flash in torchlight – falling to the floorboards. She struck again, this time at head height, and sent the hired killer sprawling to the floor, blood bubbling from his slashed throat. She heard a yelp from the landing. A younger man stood frozen in fear at seeing his comrade taken apart so easily.
He had a gun in his hand too, and he raised it and fired wildly, slugs rocketing past Apollo as she dropped to the floor, face upwards. His gun clicked empty as she rolled backwards, and she came up swinging her blade that hissed through the air as though it was puncturing the very gases composing it. A spray of red viscera arced towards the ceiling, and the unlucky young man looked down at the gash that ran from his belly to his collarbones in surprise.
Both men were dressed in simple travelling robes, and Apollo bent down and wiped her blade clean on the older man’s cloak.
Who would send thugs to kill her? More to the point, who wouldn’t know to send more than two? She methodically searched the older man, since he was in slightly less disgusting condition. Around his waist was a simple belt from which hung a leather pouch. Apollo undid the belt and slipped the pouch off, emptying its contents into her hand. Five scraps, a couple of slices of Trail Bread, and a small clay figure.
A hand closed around her wrist. The old man was alive! He stared at her with dry, blind eyes, straining to speak above a whisper.
“J- J- Julius..!” he spluttered. With a final wheeze that splattered blood across Apollo’s face, he expired. Apollo looked at the old man for a moment, and then carefully closed his eyes.
She did the same for the young man. He had a clay figure in his coinpurse too. One is strange, two is stranger.
She sheathed her sword, hung it from her belt and re-dressed. After some thought, she dragged the bodies into the room and went downstairs to tell the landlord.