I froze, just for one second. There was no time to process everything, but I had just enough time to kick my brain into gear with Thousand Sparks. Single-threaded for now, no consciousness splitting.

  Next, I tapped the holographic accept button.

  Mendoza’s impatient voice burst into my head.

  “Sullivan, are you alright?”

  “I’m okay. Should I not be?” I asked.

  Of course there was reason to worry, if Soro was dead. Even with my brain running hot, I still couldn’t stop myself from saying dumb things. I just did them faster now.

  Mendoza ignored the question.

  “We need to meet as soon as possible. Please follow Patel.”

  Soro had been promising me this meeting for a week, and somehow never had time…

  My speeding brain started spitting out scraps of analysis: I don’t think asking about her now is a good idea. No one’s going to share details with me here.

  Also, this smells like a setup.

  What can I do to protect myself?

  I still had access to Novak’s disciples chat. And to the Great One himself. Was it worth bothering him?

  Wait, Soro! I could just call her!

  “What… happened to Soro?” Zhang asked. “You said ‘dead’?” Her voice cracked on the st word.

  Patel gnced at her, then gave an uncertain nod.

  “That’s not something to discuss here,” he said, voice full of sympathy. “I know you two were close, but not now, not like this.”

  Right then, another burst of sparks lit the air and a man in full yellow armour appeared beside us.

  “I’d very much like to know what the hell’s going on here,” he said authoritatively.

  “My fault, sir!” Patel stepped forward immediately.

  “You’re the one who flew in, Patel?”

  “Yes, sir, that was me,” he admitted. “My master urgently wishes to speak with our guest —” he began expining.

  Just as his master cut in herself: “Sullivan, are you there?”

  My suspicion dropped a few levels. Too many witnesses, too much chaos. The odds of actual danger right here, right now were approaching zero.

  “I’ll be there soon, Master Mendoza,” I said to everyone, but didn’t move yet.

  My fingers danced over invisible interface keys. First, I messaged the Novak disciples chat: Soro’s dead. Mendoza wants to talk. They’re pulling me in now.

  Then I tapped Soro’s contact.

  The interface immediately informed me the recipient was out of range.

  That was it, all the obvious options were closed. If anything remained, it would have to be something less straightforward.

  “My apologies,” I said to the Garden official. “It won’t happen again. Patel, I’m ready to fly.”

  “Lift,” he said, pointing. “You won’t manage the flight, and I won’t be able to cover you.”

  He kicked the board that had been hovering nearby, set it upright, grabbed it, swung it round and flung it into the air. The sky cracked again, a bolt of lightning struck the board, and its engines roared to life as it shot off into the clouds.

  “Again, my apologies,” Patel said to the Garden official. “But I have to take him.”

  The official seemed satisfied the incident was over and waved us off.

  We all headed toward the lift.

  Zhang followed us. She clearly had questions but held them in until we were inside. Then, despite the presence of other cadets, she asked again.

  “So what happened to her?!”

  Patel gnced around at the other cadets, who weren’t paying the slightest attention.

  “Lava Heart detonation,” he said.

  “That’s bullshit!” Zhang snapped. “Lava Heart is a Fire-Earth blend. That’s literally her foundation! That’s like you dying from a lightning strike!”

  Her emotions were breaking loose, and it started to draw attention.

  She was right, it reeked of shit. Patel knew it. I suspected demons were involved, otherwise, why would they need me?

  But Zhang had only been told the official version.

  “The Heart was too close to stimunt ampoules. The bst ruptured them. The vapour mix was toxic, it damaged her lungs and brain.”

  So she’d been poisoned. Framed as an accident.

  Typical demon py.

  “She was third stage!” Zhang nearly shouted.

  “You think I don’t know that?” Patel raised his voice.

  He was fourth stage. Zhang, still at second, had no business yelling at him like that.

  Luckily, Patel wasn’t an arse like Tao. Soro clearly meant something to him too.

  Instead of shouting or shing back, he pced a hand on her shoulder. Metal clicked against metal. She didn’t feel the warmth of his skin, but the gesture carried human warmth nonetheless.

  “Death awaits us all,” Patel said, fatalistically. “I’ll mourn her too. But mourning won’t change the fact of it.”

  “This whole thing stinks!” Zhang insisted.

  “And Master Mendoza will do everything she can to get to the bottom of it,” Patel promised. “So will I. Personally.”

  I didn’t doubt him. But that didn’t bring much comfort to Zhang.

  Down on the metro ptform, we left her alone with her grief and headed straight for Mendoza.

  I stayed silent the whole way, trying to figure out why exactly I was being pulled in by a master. It clearly wasn’t to protect me.

  The whole thing looked like Mendoza, despite all her promises to Novak, was going out of her way to show everyone that I was somehow tied to her disciple’s death.

  And who’s the most interested party when it comes to tracking Soro’s movements?

  Demons, obviously.

  The whole setup was rushed, almost deliberately so. We hadn’t even taken our armour off, just lifted the face ptes.

  As was becoming tradition, I ran my standard entrance check with my nose at the master’s door.

  A hint of citrus, stronger cucumber, and a whole lot of alcohol. The smell wasn’t from someone drinking, it was from something spilled.

  The tea table was empty. Nothing prepared for me. Nothing at all.

  Mendoza, in her standard brown jumpsuit, no armour, was standing by the window with a bottle in hand, just a few drops left at the bottom.

  But the alcohol smell wasn’t coming from her. It was in the room itself.

  On one of the pale walls, just below a shelf with a few statuettes, a chunk of decorative cy had been chipped off. A patch of grey showed through where the decorative yer had cracked and fallen away. Below it, on the floor, were a few tiny shards of gss and pster, glittering slightly. Looked like someone had hastily cleaned up only the biggest pieces of the projectile that left a dent in the wall.

  Mendoza turned around.

  Her face was unreadable.

  She gestured toward the chairs.

  Will they even hold? We were both still in full armour, not exactly light.

  Patel set the example. The antique chair creaked under his weight but held.

  Mendoza sat next, pcing the nearly empty bottle on the table. Only then did her gaze settle on it, as if seeing it for the first time, realising it didn’t belong, and quietly slid it under the table.

  Her face was stone, but Mendoza was wrecked.

  I took one of the empty seats, not bothering to worry which side the window was on.

  “You already know about Soro,” she said.

  Her voice was dry. Even. Ft. As if we were discussing statistics, not her dead disciple.

  “Yes. Patel told me,” I nodded. “My condolences.”

  “Condolences won’t help us,” she replied. Then quickly corrected herself. “Thank you. That’s kind of you. But I don’t want to waste time on formalities. The longer we dey, the slimmer our chances of finding the killer.”

  “Which raises the obvious question, what does this have to do with me?”

  “She said she’d spoken to you. Literally the day before she died. Said you made her look at some things differently. And that it gave her a few ideas.”

  We talked about sex. And flirting!

  No, wait. That’s emotion talking. What were the actual facts? What exactly had been said?

  “Yes,” I confirmed, sitting a little straighter. “We talked. She asked what I could tell her about demons. Something special. Something that had struck me.”

  “And what did you say?” Her voice was dry again, but the tension was showing.

  “Not much. I said we hadn’t had our own conversation yet, so I couldn’t assess what she was allowed to know. But I mentioned one thing in particur.”

  I gnced at Patel.

  “He knows everything. Speak,” Mendoza allowed.

  “I told her I was surprised to find that demons can love. That was the point I made. It led to a discussion about familial ties. Soro suggested some of the demons we’ve encountered might be siblings.

  “That’s… pretty much all I can recall.”

  “Siblings?” Mendoza echoed, thoughtful. “Is there any obvious way to identify them?”

  “Afraid not,” I said. “If Soro found one, she definitely didn’t share it with me.”

  Mendoza leaned back in her chair and pressed her lips together. After a brief pause, she gnced at Patel. He nodded, stood, and the poor antique chair groaned again under the shift in weight.

  Patel left.

  A heavy silence settled over the room. Mendoza studied me for a good few minutes, then stood.

  “I’ll give you temporary access to all doors. Go upstairs and remove your armour. I’ll make some tea, and you can tell me the full conversation.”

  I nodded, rose from the long-suffering chair, and left her quarters.

  I still had Thousand Sparks of Awareness running, so my brain was churning out nonsense at double speed. My thoughts were bouncing from one topic to another at a rate I could barely keep up with.

  From Soro’s death, my mind drifted to Mendoza herself. For some reason, I couldn’t shake the impression that she was far behind Novak not just in personal strength, but in professionalism too.

  Between me and Soro, you could draw a symbolic line of equivalence. I was Novak’s youngest disciple. She had been Mendoza’s.

  But try as I might, I couldn’t draw that same line between our teachers.

  Could Novak screw up like she had?

  Let’s be realistic. Novak could, and probably had accounted for that possibility. But if I died, he’d get the whole demon organisation served up on a silver pte. Maybe not right away. Maybe he’d keep watching for another year or two, or ten, but he’d gain something from my death.

  Did Mendoza stand to gain anything from losing Soro, other than questions?

  She kept a straight face during the conversation, but that dent in the wall…

  I couldn’t picture Novak throwing gssware at walls. His nerves seemed forged from alloys tougher than armour.

  Besides, intentional or not, Mendoza had set me up the moment she yanked me out of the Garden. I get it, she wanted to avenge her disciple. But if demons hadn’t yet marked me because of Soro, I was definitely on their radar now.

  MaksymPachesiuk