Once Kofuku had woken up from her nap - though that was an understatement as it has been at least twelve hours since her head hit the pillow - all the adrenaline had been flushed out of her system, and the stinging hit her all at once. Hopping in front of the wardrobe mirror, she counted at least two bruises on her shoulder and left hip, from when she had jumped away from Falano’s missiles and landed in a less than optimal position. There were also various cuts and scrapes: the one under her ear from shrapnel, she found out quickly when she had taken the shower and the hot water had agitated it, but now she spotted more along her arm and lower leg; while they had sealed, the tissue around them was a little red. Not seeing any serious injuries, she quickly pulled on a plain white button-up shirt, and tucked it into a pair of newly washed trousers from a vacuum bag. Instead of her usual flat-end tie, she elected for a ribbon and brooch from inside her backpack, tying it under her collar and securing it with a pin on the back of the flower-shaped brooch. Makeup was next, just a light dusting of foundation after washing her face and a little concealer on the sealed cut, before she got out her pencils and added a little liner and shadow. It was a practised look, one she’d gotten used to applying for every formal engagement since Danny had told her how good it looked.

Danny.

She scooped her phone up from the bed, and navigated back to the texts. Of the last 15 or so texts she had sent to Daniel Wyland, none of them had been read, and there had been no reply. His account was last seen online the previous day, at around the same time that the messages appeared to stop reaching his end. It was worrisome, but as a member of Tor Barrett’s team herself, she was no stranger to excursions deep into the unknown. In her experience, once whatever interference shrouding was over with, they would come back with some new dead thing to study and more often than not, a new pelt. The only difference was now she wasn’t there with them, and from the outside, it was…it was reframing her view of things. Perhaps most of the other members on the team had little to no connections outside of it, and Wyland’s was just her, so it was the last thing on their mind, but Kofuku, as a circumstance of her birth and upbringing, could not to be so isolated and self-sufficient, at least not in the social sense.

Kofuku slipped back into her hiking shoes and took her leave, taking note that the strange animated document she had glimpsed was no longer in Colburn’s office. She made sure to close the door firmly behind her as she exited, and was once again greeted by the sound of a flute. The exact same uniformed officer, sitting in the exact sample place in the lounge, was still playing. It was hard not to stare, especially when the implication was apparently that he had been playing for 12 hours and was now playing in what was the middle of the ship’s night cycle, but she discounted it as not knowing his schedule, heading back towards the stairwell.

One storey up was the command floor, with the nucleus of ship operations located behind a heavy blast door, the short corridor connecting to it exclusively connecting to the elevators and the stairs, flanked by panels in the floor and ceilings he knew contained automated turrets. With the push of a single button, the bridge could be isolated from the rest of the ship's interior, vulnerable only to heavy breaching tools. Kofuku stood before the two floor mounts for the hidden turrets, and waved at a camera on the ceiling.

After a moment, the heavy doors groaned open, creating enough space for perhaps two people to go through. Kofuku stepped through, and they locked themselves behind her with a thick, wheeled mechanism which spun into place. She looked up, through the reinforced glass ceiling and the bank of processing units that continued up another floor, each cabinet fed by a coolant tube to keep the electronics from combusting into flames under the weight of their hyperdimensional calculations. A scientist was up in that space, taking readings from one of the machines in his PDA.

She descended down the short steps and came up beside the holographic display suspended between the table below and the other end of the projector above. For a moment, it displayed a shifting star map not dissimilar to what she had seen in Colburn’s hands, before Colburn waved it away, replacing it with a hologram of Earth.

“You’re up earlier than I imagined.” Colburn scribbled something in her small notebook. “The warden’s not done with the transfer yet.”

“What about Duran?”

“Contained.” A man in a darker dress uniform, complete with a fur half-cape folded over his right shoulder, joined them at the table. The tall collar of his breasted woolen coat was left opened, as was the top button. Instead of any kind of tie, he wore a cravat and underneath it, she saw the metalling chain of a charm, similar to some she had worn in the past for personal defense.

Kofuku tapped her heels together and saluted. “Commodore.”

“Didn’t think I’d see you again so soon, Miss Kofuku.”

Colburn raised an eyebrow. “You two know each other?”

“Operation Lerna,” he said. “I was part of the second deployment. To relieve the survivors of the first.”

“Congratulations on your promotion,” Kofuku said. “It fits you.”

“I got a little more than that. The Empress has seen fit to grant me a title from my home.”

“I’m sorry she knighted you?”

“Different incident.” Colburn shrugged. “Olivier Archambault, Chevalier de la Virelle. At this rate he’s going to take my job in five years.”

“I’d never do that to you, Rear Admiral,” the Commodore said. “But don’t worry about the prisoner. My men have gone through and removed any weapons on his person. The spare limbs, though, are another problem. I understand you want to use him as a guide?”

Kofuku nodded. “He was involved in making the blade. If we can track the process then maybe we can narrow down the places it’s been.”

“That’s still a needle on a planet of hay,” Colburn said.

“It’s not like other magical artifacts. There’s weapons and instruments made from dead gods and then there’s those forged to contain their leftover grudges. There’s no way anyone kept that sword first without soothing what’s inside it. We just need to find the pattern, and I need to know the nature of it and find the path it’s taken.”

“He hasn’t responded to any interrogation,” the Commodore said. “We could try physical stressors, but with that many cybernetics there’s not much we can do that wouldn’t irreversibly damage him.”

“I’m hoping he’s going to talk to the other guy.” She placed both hands on the map table, staring at the hologram of Earth. “I saw them together once, on the estate. They know something, they’re just not telling me.”

Colburn moved her hand to gently wrap around Kofuku’s wrist. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said quickly, withdrawing from her grip. “It’s just…really important to me that’s all.”

“I can tell. But you might want to look at this guy. I didn’t get his ID until the warden handed it over a couple of hours ago.” She tapped at the surface of the map table, dissolving Earth and replacing it with the rotating head of a man with a short crew cut. His face was on the wider side, with a matching nose that was flattened against his face, high cheekbones and wiry thin eyebrows that framed the sharp corners of his eyes. “Richard, no last name, age unclear, likely in his forties, and get this: Homo venatus.”

“From A199,” Kofuku breathed as she read the accompanying text.

“Ever dealt with a Venator?”

She shook her head. “Only heard of them. What are they like, less than one percent of the population?”

“After the Stateship’s purge, there’s likely less than a thousand, at least that we know of, but that’s just in the Empire,” the Commodore added. “A199’s Earth was struck by a meteor in the mid-20th century that contained a dimensionally transcendental virus. Five generations later, most of their population gained the same kind of augmentations to their biologies, so essentially they’re bigger on the inside. Most of them were comparable to congenital diseases, but others were beneficial, like superpowers.”

“Except they don’t need to exert much effort,” Colburn said. “Apparently it’s not our kind of magic, but it’s still a form of reality bending.”

Kofuku crossed her arms. “I did hear about something like that.”

“They went to war with each other even before the Stateship arrived,” the Commodore continued. “Apparently when you kill a Venator, they’re so powerful their mind and some of their powers linger after death. Matches Division Five’s definition of a ghost.”

“Their grudges devastate the place where they fell.” A pattern was hardly the full picture, but it was one that left a bad taste in Kofuku’s mouth. She scrolled further along his data. “What’s ‘A-class’?”

“Power classification,” Colburn said, tapping at a separate paragraph. “A-class means beneficial powers, with no tangible downsides. Apparently Richard here has extra organs folded inside him that generate massive amounts of electricity that he can channel. Says here…shit, comparable to lightning strikes.”

“Up to three hundred million volts, thirty thousand amperes.” It was lightning, no doubt about it. “But it’s not magic?”

“Venators can’t even do magic.”

“So he’s not infused in the same way as the sword. That doesn’t really make sense.”

The Commodore looked over to one of the bridge officers, who was pointing at his personal terminal. “You can ask him yourself. He just arrived. I’ll move him to the same holding area.”

“Ready?” Colburn asked, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“Of course I’m ready.” Kofuku stared hard at the man’s face for a moment, trying to imagine him conversing with her father, before turning to leave.

The one thing they had forgotten to mention to Kofuku was apparently the fact that Richard came with his own cell. It was a big cube of some kind of superhard alloy, with the only feature in the front being a large window rated as bulletproof and blastproof. The only connections between the inside and outside were the big hatch at the top and the large vents that controlled airflow in and out of the unit, which was built similarly to that of a ship’s airlock. Even with assistance of mechanised drones, the cell had taken almost fifteen minutes to move due to its sheer weight and size, necessitating relocation via the transport rails between the floors rather than just pushing it to where it needed to be.

Kofuku watched as Richard, whose dark hair fell past his shoulders despite the model she had seen, just sat against the back wall and stared back at her. The interior of the cell was all titanium with ceramic fittings, as was the mask strapped to Richard’s face, obscuring most of his nose and his jaw area; a thin tube extended from it into the ceiling. Unlike Falano, it was impossible to spot any hint of recognition, only a seething annoyance.

“He’s been fitted with a restraining bolt,” Colburn said, flipping through a folder of copied reports. Stuck to its front was a small plastic bag containing a thin metal bangle that had some touch-activated buttons on it. “And that cell is full of oxygen. One spark and he’s-”

“Literally cooked.” Kofuku stepped right up to the glass. “Must suck being stuck in there. We can help each other, you know.”

He sat in place. “Tell the warden I’m not playing this game.” His voice was communicated through a system on the cell’s exterior.

“No games, Richard. Do you want out of the box?”

Richard narrowed his eyes. “That would be a mistake on your part.”

“I can guarantee that if you don’t attack anybody, we’re not going to hurt you. You can spend some time on the ship, maybe even go for a walk. I just need some information.”

“And what would that be, hmm?”

“Twenty or so years ago, you worked for a man named Takeshi Kofuku. I’d like to know more about what you did for him.”

He threw up his hands. “You just said it yourself, lady. It’s been twenty years. How the fuck am I supposed to know?”

“It had something to do with a sword. You helped him empower it with the essence of a storm god. That’s remarkably similar to your powers, wouldn’t you say?”

“I don’t know anything about a fucking storm god. I just ride the lightning, man.”

Kofuku looked at Colburn, then back to Richard. “I beg your pardon?”

“I just said I ride the lightning. Maybe if this Takeuchi guy was cool enough then I’d actually remember him.”

Kofuku licked her chapped lips. “What about a lightning sword?”

“...sword?” He thought for a moment, and shook his head. “Can’t really make a sword out of lightning. I had a stick once though. Put my lightning through it.”

Colburn cleared her throat. “You killed twenty-three people with a cattle prod prior to arrest, including two children and a Divisions agent.”

“I keep telling you, they looked all wrong. Just trying to do the right thing.” Richard snickered. “Not that you people would ever understand that.”

Kofuku fought the urge to step away in disgust. “But I know for a fact you’ve worked for someone.” She held up her phone. “He ride the lightning like you said?”

Richard slowly crawled towards the glass on all fours, tilting his head as he examined the last of the few photos she ever took of her father. After a moment he sat back on his hunches. “So you know the boss, huh?”

“Yeah,” Kofuku said. “Remembering a sword yet?”

“Once,” Richard said. “He stopped my lightning with his blade. That’s power, you see. Real power. I don’t know what you have but you ain’t him.”

“Actually,” Kofuku said. “Your boss is my father. I’m just trying to take back what belongs to me.”

Richard came right up to the glass again and it took Kofuku all of her willpower to not flinch at the closeup of his wide, maddened eyes. They scanned her face, her body, the top of her head. The interest and alacrity quick faded though, and he crawled back to sit against the wall. “You don’t look like him.”

“That’s not usually what people s-”

Colburn tapped her on the shoulder, leading her behind the cell. She turned the folder towards Kofuku to display a medical report. “I don't think that’s gonna work.”

She read the first few lines. “Prosopagnosia?”

“Face blindness. He literally can’t recognise you.”

Kofuku sighed. “Of all things.”

“I genuinely think we should send him back down to Division One. He’s a maniac.”

“He knows my father, we just have to get him to open up. If Falano can’t get him to talk…” Kofuku scratched the top of her head, relieving an itch that sprung from nowhere. “It can’t be a coincidence  right? His powers, the whole Venator turning into ghosts thing, just like the s-” She caught herself, and just shook her head. “My father must have sought him out. I can’t think of any reason why he would need that.”

“Okay, we can try Duran, but if it doesn’t work, I’m not going to endanger the entire ship by keeping him here. Understand?”

Kofuku nodded. As she watched Colburn leave, a single question burned in her mind: Why, father?