Tavi didn’t stick around to play concierge. He ducked behind a row of dried lavender bundles, his scrawny frame shaking so violently the dead sprigs rained purple dust over the floorboards. Inessa didn’t run. Running required functional hamstrings and an underlying belief that tomorrow held something worth sprinting toward. Instead, she wandered down the warped limestone steps toward the private cove, nursing a cracked teacup filled with lukewarm tap water. If mainland goons wanted to shoot her, they could at least do it while she had a view of the sea. The water looked like poured paraffin—flat, utterly devoid of swell, glowing yellow under an afternoon sun that hadn’t moved an inch in two hours. The gravel path crunched. Two men stepped through the gap in the crumbling salt-bleached wall. They wore synthetic suits built for the drizzling smog of the mainland, black polyester currently cooking them alive in eighty-degree heat. Sweat darkened their lapels into greasy crescents. The tall one had knuckles bruised gray from cheap gym wraps; the shorter one gripped the grip of an automatic tucked into his waistband, his thumb twitching over the plastic frame. "The girl from the ferry manifest," the short one rasped. His skin was pale like lard stored near a radiator. "Vargo. Corporate extraction or cleanup, they didn’t specify. Where is the butcher?" Inessa took a sip of her metallic water. "If by butcher you mean the tall brooding man who clearly buys his linen shirts from people who hate buttons, I think he’s upstairs having an existential crisis. Or bleaching something. Honestly, you should come back during normal office hours. Between eleven and eleven-fifteen. On Tuesdays." "Shut up," the tall one barked. He took two steps closer, kicking up dry white dust. "You think this is a game, desk jockey? The mainland wants you accounted for before the heat seals the island. And we know Tahl is here." Inessa set the teacup carefully on the flat top of a boulder. She tilted her head, her gaze tracking from their sweat-soaked collars down to their ankles. For four years, her entire waking existence had consisted of cross-referencing behavioral patterns, expense anomalies, and delinquent micro-loans for the southern district of Morvalis. A human being was just an unoptimized spreadsheet with legs. "You're subcontractor dregs," she said flatly. The short one scowled. "What?" "You aren't syndicate core. If you were syndicate core, you’d be wearing tailored blends that breathe, and you wouldn't have salt-crust dried around the eyelets of knockoff Calvini loafers." She pointed a lazy finger at the tall man’s feet. "Sole separation at the left toe. Glued back together with hardware-store resin. You bought those secondhand off an estate lot. You’re on thirty percent commission, aren't you?" The tall man stiffened, his fingers curling into loose fists. "You don't know who you're talking to." "I know you're carrying three delinquent installment loans from the Oakhaven Credit Union," Inessa continued, her voice slipping into the rhythmic, deadened cadence of an end-of-quarter audit. "Only someone facing an imminent wage garnishment agrees to cross the sound this close to the Glass Summer. You have that twitch in your upper eyelid—classic sodium-and-caffeine diet, probably gas station stimulants. And your friend?" She looked at the lard-skinned short one. "He smells like mint alcohol trying to cover up sour rot. Liver strain. Two weeks away from yellow sclera. If you fire that piece, the muzzle flash is going to illuminate the fact that you’re shaking too hard to hit a wall from ten paces. What’s your payout for tracking Merrick? Five thousand marks? After ferry bribes and diesel, you’ll clear twelve hundred. That doesn't even cover the interest on your mother’s assisted-living bill, does it, tiny?" The short man turned the color of raw pork. "You insolent little corporate bitch—" He lunged forward, hand ripping the weapon clear of his belt. He never leveled it. A shadow detached itself from the overhang above the terrace with no more sound than falling linen. Merrick Tahl landed between them, the impact muffled by the dry sand, his body moving with a terrible, economical ferocity that belonged entirely to an abattoir. Before the short thug could pivot, Merrick seized his gun hand by the wrist. One sharp, upward snap of Merrick’s palm against the man’s elbow produced a wet, splintering crack like dried pine snapping in winter. The short man opened his mouth to scream, but Merrick’s other hand closed around his throat, cutting the sound off into a dry gurgle. Merrick drove him downward, slamming the man’s skull against the white stone of the retaining wall. Sand flew. The short man collapsed into a heap of twitching limbs and ruined polyester, his pistol clattering harmlessly into the shallows. The tall thug scrambled back, his knockoff shoes losing traction on the gravel. "Tahl—wait, the boss said—" Merrick didn't speak. He stepped over the fallen body, his bloodstained shirt from earlier now covered by an unbuttoned canvas overshirt. His posture wasn't hurried; it was mechanical, the rhythm of a man slaughtering cattle at sunrise. He closed the distance in two strides. The tall thug swung a wild, desperate right hook. Merrick caught the forearm, twisted his hips, and wrenched the limb downward with enough leverage to wrench the shoulder entirely from its socket. A second sickening snap echoed across the flat water. The tall man dropped to both knees, vomiting saliva onto the dust, howling in breathless agony. "Get up," Merrick said. The voice was barely louder than the hum of the unmoving midday air, but it carried the blunt density of lead shot. Inessa watched, her ribs aching around shallow lungs, but her lips curled involuntarily. "Ten out of ten on the form," she whispered, her voice gravelly from exhaustion. "Though technically you could have saved energy by just kicking his bad knee. Trust me, the cartilage was already failing." Merrick glanced at her over his shoulder. The gray in his gaze was stripped of whatever reluctant patience he’d shown earlier; he looked feral, stripped down to raw muscle and old scar tissue. "I told you to stay in the courtyard." "Courtyards are for people who don't want to watch the free show," she replied, leaning against the boulder, forcing her knees not to betray how much they were trembling. "Besides, they were insulting my financial literacy. I had to defend the sector." Down in the dust, the tall man didn't stay down. He rolled onto his back, cradling his dangling, ruined arm against his ribs, his breath whistling through shattered teeth. But instead of begging, a wet, rattling laugh began to bubble up from his chest. "You think... you think you won something here, Tahl?" the thug wheezed, spitting a string of blood onto his lapel. Merrick stepped on the man’s good hand, grinding the knuckles into the sharp quartz pebbles. "Talk. Or the other arm goes." The thug didn't flinch. With his trembling, bloody left fingers, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small, rectangular black plastic module. A tiny green diode blinked on its face with rhythmic, precise pulses. "Go ahead and break it," the man spat, holding up the remote toward the dead sun. "The boat’s already tagged. That little delivery rat’s ferry has a mag-clamp transponder bolted to the hull. The main cutter leaves Morvalis at sunset. You aren't hiding from anyone, butcher—you brought the whole pack right to your front door."

Data and Broken Bones