JEAN VICQUEMARE - Pockets the two bags of evidence, peels off his latex gloves, peers around at the charred carcasses of concrete and metal buildings again. "If we're done here with the initial inspection, we should find out who has been admiring us - it's a long shot, but maybe there were witnesses."

EMPATHY - And he likes to be thorough.

YOU - Puff on the shared Astra once more before handing it back.

PERCEPTION - A thin sheer scarf of smoke trails behind you as you squat for a closer look at the graffito on the road. Staring down at a massive black letter 'L', you say, "Tell me a secret, aero-graffito."

AERO-GRAFFITO - There's a shoeprint, preserved in paint like a fossil.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Talking to inanimate objects again - very normal. Well, at least it's not the fucking tie. I mean - honestly. *Anything* is better than the tie."

YOU - Stand and stretch. "I abandoned the tie in Martinaise."

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Was it 'cramping your style'? Did you tell it to 'fuck off' too?"

RHETORIC - That 'too' implies that you abandoned him as well.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - Takes a final puff on the Astra you share before flicking it hard at the mural, creating a tiny explosion of orange sparks.

SUGGESTION - Don't answer that, and whatever you do, don't apologize - it'll only make it worse.

AUTHORITY - I agree. *Defend* yourself.

HALF LIGHT - Your pulse rises, pounding behind your eyes. You've been putting up with these jibes for over a month. Who does he think he is?!

EMPATHY - Your clinically depressed partner whom you hurt.

INLAND EMPIRE - Oh yeah? Who *left* whom? You look out through the grimy bay window at Perdition in the dawn. Snow flutters to the frozen mud of the street. And you see the back of him *leaving* - the white reflective stripe on the black lieutenant's jacket flashing in the murk. And the sight *burns* like acid.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - A cold washes over you, watering down the acid.

SHIVERS - A breeze brushes against the front of your shirt, cooling the sweat on your skin. It carries a scent, subtle as a faded memory, of caramel in the air. But you are too inside yourself to notice.

VOLITION - Calm, now. A ship sinks only if it lets the water in. Just do your job.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Harry, are you all right?" He's frowning, worried. "You've gone really pale."

YOU - "Just my stupid head ..." You wave a hand at it half-heartedly. "A flashback, or something. I don't know."

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "A *memory*? Of what?"

YOU - Look away from his penetrating grey stare.

DRAMA - *Lie.*

SUGGESTION - Don't lie. He'll know.

RHETORIC - And then he will remark on how naive it was of him to think you would be honest.

YOU - "I'd rather not talk about it right now."

ENDURANCE - You are a little shaky. It's frankly worrying.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - His expression turns suspicious. "Okay," he drags the word out, conveying the opposite.

YOU - "Look, I'm trying really hard here, man. I'm trying hard to remember, to be more like you."

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Please stop. I have to force myself out of bed every morning. I have to force myself to work out because 'twenty minutes, three times a week' allegedly 'alleviates symptoms of even clinical depression'. So I force it *six* times ... Here's a newsflash for you: you *were* like me. Then you stopped trying, gave up, went to Martinaise and killed your *self* - you consciousness, your psyche, whatever. And this like" - he points at you with both hands - "tabula rasa you for whom everything and everyone is jamais vu is *nice* - honestly. It's not the repentance shit I heard a hundred times before. But he isn't *you*."

INLAND EMPIRE - 'Things as they are have been destroyed. Have I?'

YOU - Shake your head, vehemently. "That's not true. I'm *remembering* - just slowly. I'm remembering you."

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Well, after a month, I'm sure I'm fucking flattered."

YOU - "That's not the point, Vic. How could I remember you, if I were not myself?"

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "What do you remember?" he demands.

YOU - You turn and step away. "Let's take a closer look at this aero-graffito before we go on our door-knock witness appeal. Make sure we haven't missed anything."

PERCEPTION - A hand closes around your elbow. Energy courses through you from the point of touch right down to your balls.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Harry", his hand releases your elbow, "just now, when you went white ...?"

YOU - "No. Not you."

DRAMA - My liege, your silver tongue hath turned to lead in the presence of your partner.

EMPATHY - He knows you're lying. He's even more worried now. His face is an unreadable mask - but look into his eyes.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "You know, maybe you're right ..."

RHETORIC - Here it comes.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Maybe you *are* still your old self. You still have the same *shit tell* when *bullshitting*."

YOU - "Oh, shots fired!"

RHETORIC - Don't mirror him - if you continue there will be more shots fired and a *man down*. Disarm him with *honesty*.

YOU - "I told you, I'd rather not talk about it now."

RHETORIC - Which implies *later*. Good. But why would you rather not ...?

YOU - Why would *he*? He's the one usually ranting about time-wasting and the case turning colder -

EMPATHY - Because it's *important* to him.

YOU - Amble nonchalantly over to the start of the graffito. "Maybe we'll find a clue - that paint was wet before it dried."

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "No shit."

YOU - "Maybe someone left a footprint behind."

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Oh, you don't say?" He arches a black eyebrow, takes a half-step back. "Did *the aero-graffito* tell you that?"

AUTHORITY - Find the shoeprint and shut him up Foot In Mouth style.

HALF LIGHT - Oh, God, yes.

EMPATHY - No. He's only biting in self-defence, like an animal in pain.

YOU - Stoop to inspect the giant black letters, one by one. It takes a long time. Your jacket soaks in the sun, baking your back. You start to sweat properly under your shirt. You're two-thirds down the ribbon of painted words when -

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) - A footprint!

VISUAL CALCULUS - Whooa! What have we here?

YOU - "A foot-print, left by a boot?"

VISUAL CALCULUS - A boot-print in the paint of that letter 'F'. A perfectly preserved acrylic specimen. Number 44. And not just any boot: a boot with a custom-made sole. A cameo with the alphanumeric M32-8. Strange.

YOU - The cameo - who is that man with the neck ruff? He looks familiar.

CONCEPTUALIZATION - He does. It's on the tip of my tongue. How frustrating.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - His arm brushes against yours as he bends forward for a closer look at the street around the boot-print. "Strange."

YOU - Why are there no paint prints leaving the scene?

INLAND EMPIRE - They flew away, picked up by a Coalition airship.

VISUAL CALCULUS - The length of the letters spans the width of the street. There are no tyre tracks in the paint, and the pavement is too narrow for a motor-carriage to have squeezed past without touching the wet paint or scraping the walls.

YOU - So we can rule out motor-carriage. What about two-wheels instead of four?

VISUAL CALCULUS - A two-wheeled vehicle would have left no tracks on the pavement. But now we are entering the realm of wild speculation.

YOU - How wild?

VISUAL CALCULUS - A negligibly wild percentage.

YOU - Understood.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - Squints down at the footprint, then up at you. "43, 44?"

YOU - "44." You make a note in your ledger. "Are you starting to be 'bewitched by the shitkid' again?"

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Get over yourself - we would have found it during our final inspection." He scribbles a sentence into his notebook, and adds, "As you said, you had a 'hunch'. Detectives have gut feelings sometimes."

VOLITION - He's seen you have these hunches before. He's willing to accept anything that helps to solve the case, however strange, so long as it's not a product of *delirium tremens*.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - Which it isn't, because you've become a boring pansy.

LOGIC - They stepped in the paint, noticed, and removed the shoe. Should you go dumpster-diving for evidence?

YOU - But if they noticed, and didn't want to leave tracks behind, wouldn't they have erased the footprint too?

CONCEPTUALIZATION - Maybe it's how they sign their graffito - with a unique sole.

ENCYCLOPEDIA - M-32, M-32 ... You need your Copopedia for this one.

YOU - Try to spot a trash container.

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) - There's nothing - just the ashen facades of exhausted buildings.

LOGIC - Look around the back, and in the alleys.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "But why isn't there a trail of footprints?"

SUGGESTION - Don't say the flying thing.

YOU - "Maybe they noticed and removed the shoe? Or maybe they had a bike? Or maybe they did it on purpose - like a signature?"

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "The first option is my first guess." He takes a Trigat Seaside Mini instant camera out of an inner jacket pocket.

LOGIC - *This* is why Kim's camera looked familiar when you first saw it behind the Whirling in Martinaise.

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) - The camera's anodized blue aluminium body glitters in the sun. Where the ampoules attach, black rubber O-rings create a waterproof seal. There's a click, a whirring noise. A flash. An ampoule cracks, depositing a layer of rainbow ink onto a piece of paper rolling out like a receipt. An image of the boot print materializes in seconds.

Your partner puts the camera away, and attaches the photo to a page of his notebook with a blue-and-white striped paperclip.

ESPRIT DE CORPS - Elsewhere in West Revachol, Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi and Patrol Officer Judit Minot enter a hole in the wall of an abandoned tenement boiler room. Inside, in the strong white beam of Patrol Office Minot's flashlight, a centurion of refurbished weapons glints, dug up from Revolution catacombs and fixed: rifles, pistols, swords and knives.

"God," she whispers, taking them all in, "so many ..."

Lieutenant Kitsuragi's face is bloodless in the harsh electric light. "Yes," he whispers. "But, on the bright side, at least we found this cache before it could find its way to the streets - and there are no semi-automatics here." He unzips a pocket of his jacket, and pulls out an aluminium Trigat Sunshine instant camera as well as an ampoule.

Patrol Office Minot watches the lieutenant photograph the weapons cache with an odd expression. She isn't used to working with detectives who look on the bright side, who see the glass half full. It feels awry, especially given their current circumstances - but it is also a little nice.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "What's our witty titular for this case anyway?" He peers down at your ledger.

INLAND EMPIRE - In your head, it's THAT FUCKING THING *AGAIN*.

RHETORIC - Not witty but pithy. That *again* says it all, really.

YOU - Gaze down the road into The Burnt Out Quarter.

THE BURNT OUT QUARTER - Gazes back, reminding you of the smoky explosion of a gun firing.

YOU - Close your eyes for a moment, and tilt your head up towards the sky. The sun presses against your eyelids, and you see red. You open your eyes and look down, blinking. "How about, THE NEXT WORLD'S FOOTPRINT?"

JEAN VICQUEMARE - Nods approvingly, scribbling THE NEXT WORLD'S FOOTPRINT into the margin like a shout. He checks his watch, and raises his eyebrows: "Fuck - is that the time."

YOU - sweep a look across the dark windows of the surrounding buildings. "Reckon the anon who made the call will reveal herself?"

THE LEDGER - THE NEXT WORLD'S FOOTPRINT. After finding the footprint, you and your partner JV do two more things before calling it a day. First, you examine all the trash containers in the surrounding alleys and dead-ends for evidence. At one point, your partner gags on the stench of rotting organic matter. You find not a single shoe, but at least you scratch a task off your list. When JV is done gagging, you buzz the intercoms and/or knock on every apartment and ex-commercial space facing the mural and its addendum the aero-graffito. Yes. Every. Single. One. You interview the illegal occupants in search of witnesses. According to the Emergencies Desk at Precinct 41, the anon who made the call was a woman with a refined albeit heavy smoker's hoarse tone. You have doubts about coming across any voice matching that description here - but miracles have happened before on cases. Alas, not this time. The usual assortment of lowlife favourites languishes in the stairwells and corridors. Then there's a dozen wannabe Skull youths who refuse to let you in without a warrant until you threaten to 'evict' them from the commercial-zone space they're illegally occupying, and who then demand a show of 'pig badges' even if it's 'not enough' to 'prove you're real pigs'. The demands for further proof continue until JV goes full Half Light on the toughest of the dozen. It ends with you inspecting all their IDs, fining them ✤100 each, and handing out almost all your station calls. Afterwards, as the sun sinks below the horizon, and the temperature drops, you lean against the Coupris 40 beside JV, who seems even incurably sadder than usual. You point out the shifting blocky shapes of orange sunlight and blue shadow stretching over the scene. Try to convince him to take a moment to admire it. JV looks grimly to where your finger points, and listens to your Conceptualization. He mentions a hostel just on the other side of the river, near the place where you stopped for coffee that morning, and suggests you take a room there for the night. You agree.

INLAND EMPIRE - You agree with a feeling of foreboding.

YOU - Drop the Kind Green Ape pen onto the dense lines of blue handwriting, and massage your right hand. You wonder why your handwriting is so painfully straight and orderly.

LOGIC - Over-compensation.

PERCEPTION - The bathroom door opens and your partner steps out through the steam, buttoning his black RCM pants. His feet are bare and very white, his hair is still damp, his white shirt hangs unbuttoned on his frame, revealing that he has indeed been forcing himself to work-out six times a week.

YOU - Feel strange, alert.

INLAND EMPIRE - The air in the tiny hostel room grows heavy with possibility as the past and the present almost touch. Wait. I take it back. Don't lay your mind out and pick on all the blue. Don't remember.

YOU - But I *want* to remember.

PAIN THRESHOLD - There's pain down that memory lane.

VOLITION - You can take it. You'll handle it. Besides, it might not be as awful as you're imagining.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - Hot flushes. Are you coming down with something?

JEAN VICQUEMARE - Tilts his head, his eyes gleaming in the dim yellow light as he studies you studying him. You can smell his skin-heated cologne, woody and spicy, as he pads across the room. Bending over the RCM Carry-All that he dumped beside yours by the wardrobe earlier, he retrieves his Astras, shakes a lighter and a cigarette out of the packet.

PERCEPTION - He lights up. Smoke curls out of his nostrils as he straightens, the rest is expelled from his lungs in a long sigh as he peers outside through the window.

YOU - Get up and walk over to take a look.

WINDOW - The sky down here is darker than in Jamrock because there are fewer electric lights. If you were to look through a north-facing window, you would see the glow of light pollution rising up from the epicentre of Central Jamrock. But this is a south-facing window. Against the blue-black backdrop of The Burnt Out Quarter across the River Esperance, tiny windows of light flicker and burn here and there like dispersed campfires in a jungle of concrete, metal and melted glass. The mural gazes back at you from somewhere in that darkness. Looming in the foreground, the bridge is a dot-to-dot of orange lights. A red one, for ships, blinks lazily.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - Offers to share his cigarette. But he doesn't simply hand it to you. He holds it in front of your mouth. It feels so, so familiar.

YOU - Lean forward a little so that you can clamp your lips around the filter and take a drag. Chocolate.

INLAND EMPIRE - The taste of the cigarette feels like a tongue pushing against yours. Who knows why.

YOU - Another memory?

VOLITION - Seems to be a good one. Why not focus on that?

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "I want to hear about your 'flashback'. Is now a better time?" He pulls the cigarette away, back to his own mouth, and you watch as his lips close over where your lips were seconds ago. The tip glows orange in the dim light, reflecting off his skin, his eye-shine, his damp hair. He exhales a stream of smoke against the windowpane, moistens his lips, looks askance at you. "Harry?"

YOU - Try to collect the details of the first memory, the feel of the jacket against your face, the starched shirt collar brushing your ear, his scent.

INLAND EMPIRE [Impossible: Failure] - It's all in pieces again. Sorry.

YOU - But the other memory of him *leaving you* is clear and sharp and cutting as the edge of cracked crystal.

PAIN THRESHOLD - Those ones usually are.

HAND/EYE COORDINATION [Medium: Success] You don't want to *imagine*. You need to *remember*. When you were asked you to describe your lost gun, you knew it was your Villiers 9mm Pepperbox pistol because you *remembered* how it *feels* in your hand. Let's do that again.

INTERFACING - I'm up for that.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - So am I. Fuck knows why.

COMPOSURE - And I've got your back.

YOU - Okay ...

JEAN VICQUEMARE- "Harry, I'm your goddamned partner!" The unbuttoned shirt whirls and billows as he turns on his heel and stalks away from you, rubbing his face in frustration.

LOGIC - You were quiet for so long after his question, he concluded that you still do not want to talk about it.

YOU - "Jean, wait."

RHETORIC - Yes, wait. It's probably nothing, but it's possible that I have been a stupid brute. When Jean says 'partner', does he mean Esprit de Corps, your blue-souled brother, or does he mean something more *personal*?

INLAND EMPIRE - Stop. Now. Your blue heart. This is what you *really* wanted to obliterate. The rest was a smokescreen, a trick of the Pale. I was wrong.

VOLITION - Shut up. The decision is his, and he's about to make it.

EMPATHY - He *longs* to remember again.

ENDURANCE - You're reeling. You feel like you're about to faint, like when you realized with dawning horror that the motor-carriage in the sea is *yours*.

VOLITION - No, that was different.

PERCEPTION - There's a noise in your ears like a buzzing metal guitar string.

PAIN THRESHOLD - Your chest tightens, and all the air squeezes out. Your throat constricts.

COMPOSURE - I've still got your back, but you need to relax your throat and draw a breath. Like that, good. That's it.

YOU - "Jean?"

PERCEPTION - You swallow, and your throat is so dry it sounds like an unloaded Villiers clicking uselessly in the quiet as you pull and pull and *pull* the trigger. Click. Click. *Click*. Your tongue feels sticky and sluggish.

HALF LIGHT - Calm the fuck down.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - There's a crackle of burning paper and tobacco in the quiet as he takes a long drag on his cigarette and inspects you.

YOU - "Jean , when you say 'partner', do you mean" - Click, click - "in the amorous sense?"

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Yes," he says calmly, then just keeps staring at you.