It was time. It was time eight days ago. She avoided it, and vacillated, and distracted herself with work. She'd put it off for far too long now, and could no longer stand the uncertainty.

For several nights, she'd tossed and turned and doubted away the moonlit hours. Always a heathen, she had to steal minutes of sleep from her own personal gods--pseudo-deities with names like Responsibility, Justice, and Consequence.

The night before last, she tried to drown a beguiling, neonate chimera. The hangover, bad dream, and migraine that followed were all punishment for her reluctance to kill the thing. But all that was yesterday.

Today, galvanized as ever, Healer Ixbridge scuttled along a hallway in the sciences building. Her nose was deep in a book--some poorly-researched tale about ghosts and such--but she couldn't read it. Objectively, the large, patronizing print was clear as day, yet from her subjective view, the words blurred and danced together like febrile mayflies.

Withdrawing from the book, she looked up to find herself not quite where she expected. Wiping her eyes, she glanced back. As much as it consumed her every thought, she had overshot her goal.

For several seconds, or perhaps minutes were elapsing, she just stood there in the hall, tense as a spring. Her tight bun pulled at her electrified scalp and her starchy collar scratched at her flushed neck.

Try though she might, she couldn't quite force herself to look at the door to Moore's office.

Were she to glance in the general direction of the door, without necessarily intentionally looking at it, that is, not directly, Abeline would notice the hairline crack indicative of a rushed exit and a hasty closing, the ancient lock perhaps having bounced back due to improper security or a stubbornly rusted latch bolt.

It indicated that Professor Moore was not currently inside. Had he been, the door would have been either flung wide in the optimistic prospect of visitors, or shut tightly and locked ten ways from Dally Day to prevent outside eyes from glimpsing the arcane secrets within - or perhaps because Moore was changing into his suit in his office again.

It was cleaner than usual inside, as far as she could see from the sliver of golden light. No papers littered the ground, and a general spirit of organization seemed to have swept the small, cramped office, lifting the usual haze of mustiness to a faint dusty bouquet in the air.

Come to think of it, Moore had been doing a lot more cleaning since their trip to the ghost town.

"He's not there," she thought aloud, her eyes widening.

That circulatory apparatus commonly known as the heart was marvelous in its own way, for it somehow comprehended what the eyes saw and what the brain recognized and translated that into action. Hers thudded, filling her limbs with shaking impetus.

In an instant, she was inside, pawing the latch closed and spying-- spying!-- in the professor's lair.

There was a daisy in a glass vase on the Professor's desk. It was rigged up with two copper wires to some sort of self-fashioned battery. This was the first thing to catch her eye.

The rest of the room looked unusually tidy, as she had suspected, but not remarkably so. There had been half-hearted sweeping, at some point, indicated by a lump of what was surely dust beneath the rug. The file cabinets were still in disarray, apparently abandoned mid-cleaning while Moore went out. It was the bookshelves, looking as painfully organized and resentful as a freshly scrubbed boy before church, which were stacked more neatly than Abeline had thought Moore was capable of.

Another thud of her heart, and the door was locked. He'd be back any second--his inevitable fumbling with the keys would spare her a moment or two of warning. She would need an excuse for rummaging through his confidential materials, and a damn good one at that, but it could wait. Her lungs were monopolizing the air, allowing no oxygen to reach the creative parts of her brain.

The filing cabinet. She was there, she knew, for she was breathing in the scent of dry paper. Her vision was dominated by folders and records as her fingers sped through the alphabet. "Bingham, Bonnet, Brandywine..."

Where's Bricketson?

The file in question was notably missing. Were she to look closely, she would have noticed that another file was vacant from its proper place - that of a Tiebold, Wendy.

(( sfsr ))

Triston's file is gone--and Tiebold's, too. So where are they?

Abeline took a step back, trying to calm the caged tumult in her ribs. This mission would require brains, not mere celerity.

She quickly surveyed the cabinets, only now observing their state of disarray. The disorganization inherent in reorganization. (Why was he reorganizing? Was he already--still?--suspicious of her? Or was there some other reason?)

The book box. She remembered it from the 4th of Loshis, for much of that day remained vivid in her memory. It seems only yesterday we were discussing ley fabrics and playing with machines...

Today, she was thumping the books on his shelf with her traitorous fingers, listening for the hollow song of proof. Each solid answer fell leaden on her resolve, sinking it further and further into confusion.

Doubt was the healer's natural state. What to others would be a crisis of faith was to her a normal day. Instead, she was the least sane when the most certain.

And she had been far, far too certain.

Gliding away from the bookshelf, she left her search incomplete and slumped into the professor's chair. What was she doing? How had it gotten to this? So unsubtle a betrayal! Normally, this weasel was better at skullduggery. She could've at least had a plan.

Placing her elbows on the desk and her head in her hands, she tentatively returned to herself. Harper, regardless of his personal hobbies, was still the brilliant head of a preeminent research project, the results of which could change the course of history.

With the nexus recognized as non-hereditary, there'd be no need for laws prohibiting passives from having children. Half of Triston's problems would go away.. and the same would be the case for thousands of other passives, now and into the future.

That was important. Far more important than one galdori woman's desire for justice. It wasn't like her nemesis-idol, entangled though he was in thorny paradox, had committed any genocides.

The death of one passive and the.. discomfort.. of a handful of others... That was, in the grand scheme of things, from a strictly utilitarian perspective, just a drop in the ocean. If she found anything incriminating in this little investigation, the healer would have to keep it to herself if she were to ensure the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

She pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed at the daisy on the desk. Abeline knew she hadn't from the start, but if Harper was innocent, she would never, ever deserve him.

After a moment of contemplation, during which she could make no sense of the flower arrangement, Abeline's eye began to wander in search of more interesting targets. It happened naturally; it did not constitute a search in any moral sense, though she might have had a tricky time explaining it to a jury. And her eye returned to the neatened bookcase, so strange and out of place as it was.

Professor Moore was, as he would later be remembered, a terrible concealer of sensitive objects. He had the worst possible method, which was to put them in a purposefully inconspicuous container (a large, false, probably hollow book labeled "BONE ETCHINGS OF THE NAULANESE" - mistake number one), settled neatly into the top row of the bookcase (mistake number two) between two novels that he would never have occasion to touch (mistake number three). Furthermore, all the dust had been wiped from the spine of said book (mistake number four) and it was standing perfectly straight, while all of the other books were ever so slightly ajar (mistake number five). It couldn't have been more out of place to the discerning mind if it had been wearing a fancy hat and singing.

It was clearly not from Abeline that he was concealing these documents. He had a perfectly good lock on his closet, and he did have his own house, somewhere, presumably. The disguise spoke of a man who wanted to keep certain things close at hand, for one reason or another - certainly a man who was not expecting a thorough search of his office, in any case.

And there it was. Lofty and unsuspecting. Obvious. Too obvious--

In a second, she was standing on her toes, reaching for the top shelf and the probably (hopefully) empty book-box. He couldn't be that trusting--he knew she knew about the container. It couldn't have actual important papers, surely. Forgeries planted to misdirect, perhaps. Or, potentially, seeing as he seemed to have an appreciation for boyish pranks, it might contain a frog. Well. If a slimy amphibian did hop out, she'd be expecting it. No screaming from her.

She could just barely contact the box, and despite her care in tugging it out, managed only to send it toppling.

Bone Etchings of the Naulanese was suddenly airborne, and, after clipping her shoulder, bound straight for the floor.

It is said that one only keeps a diary in the subconscious hope that someone, one day, will read it. If this is true, Harper Moore had not gotten the memo.

The contents of the false book scattered like leaves across the once-tidy floor: a mess of scraps of paper scrawled with indecipherable messages, in Harper's hand, presumably to himself ("note: relay info Devlin re: cabbages" and "idea - make every-one wear trousers"); half-graded student papers, some dating from when Abeline was in school, yellowed with age; files, yes, there were files, mixed in among strange arcane charts, an etching of an otter, and a small, sepia spectragram of a little girl.

The contents of one folder was peeking out from its cover. The front read, in neat feminine script, "James Carr." It had fallen atop several other files of a similar nature.

On hearing the contents make their scattered landfall, Abe cringed like a flustered criminal, which, come to think of it, she was. Despite the rapid deterioration of human rites in Anaxas, the unwarranted search of a galdor's property was still a crime. Though only a minor infraction, it would still be added to her recently-growing collection.

However, while she felt contempt that some of her crimes were considered crimes at all--keeping a young woman's private matters private should not be illegal--she felt quite differently about this one. Her actions now were very clearly a transgression. There was a victim (one Harper Moore) and an aggressor (one Abeline Ixbridge). She was violating his trust.. for he did indeed seem to trust her. His personal notes wouldn't be cluttering up the floor if he didn't.

Looking over the chaos she had wreaked, so like the amateurish ransacking of just a month prior, the healer slipped her notebook from her bag. Biting her lip, she crouched down and gently brushed aside Harper's notes, charts, and pictures. Her intense curiosity regarding them, and indeed her confounded desire for every detail of his personality and works, had, also, to be pushed aside. Irrelevant things.

She found a blank page in her notebook and began picking though the files. Though she had specific passive girls in mind, she didn't know what the professor's.. preferences.. were. It would be a gross negligence on her part if she overlooked a potential victim simply because of his sex.

A quick glance at the locked door, and she jotted down notes from James' file, under the hastily scribbled heading Possible Dates of Concep., and the subheading C., J. (N/A).

James' file was heavy with notes; the earliest page was dated to Bethas 2665, and it was yellowed and dusty, the writing almost completely faded from the paper. An etching of a boy was attached. His hair was long, cut in an old-fashioned style, and he had a cheeky smile on his face.

The following pages painted a grimmer tale of James Carr's life. Detailing his "service" to Brunnhold, countless infractions and Patron's notices were scattered liberally between applications to apprentice, letters between faculty members, and even letters from the Carr family themselves, warning the school not to trust James one inch.

Further back, it was clear when research on James had begun, though the first notes were not in Professor Moore's hand. The neat calligraphy intimated that James' diablerie had 'manifested itself' five times in a single year, and scrutiny into his physiology had to be undertaken. Charts and medical documents followed, and all in all it seemed to have been a nasty period in James' life.

Even further into the folder it became clear that a young Professor Devlin had taken over James' case around twenty years ago. The notes ceased to be entirely medical in nature; Devlin's shorthand script indicated a Perceptive interest in James' ley lines rather than a purely physical one. Many years of research had gone into this file: charts and graphs, pages and pages of notes, interviews, correspondences. Oddly enough, the notes were signed Mgr. Castor Devlin, PAP*.

The notes stopped abruptly on Achtus 14, 2709. The last writing indicated that James had taken ill with some unidentified affliction of the lungs.

(( *Abeline would understand this to mean Magister Castor Devlin, Professor of Applied Psychiatry. ))

Interesting. Very interesting. Clearly, there were lots of things Abeline didn't know, things that seemed rather important. Was Devlin the progenitor of the research? What happened to James three years ago? Why had Moore never mentioned any of this?

A plague of questions buzzed in her head, almost overwhelmingly. She sunk to the floor with a heavy sigh, still taking down minute facts in her little book. The strings of data tangled together in a Roannese knot; the mystery was older and murkier than she had anticipated. This would take more than a single morning to unravel.

Carefully, she set down the passive's file and searched for the next, looking for either Triston's or the Tiebold girl's. Or, she thought as her breathing stilled, Maggie's.

It was as if Triston had lost something. The something that made her more then what the galdori saw. She used to live, but now she simply was. When she was told to sweep, she did. And when she had to vomit, she did. And when something like awareness flickered behind the curtain of her eyes, it was but for a moment and then quickly snuffed out.

It was at one of those moments when she was slightly lucid that she decided to visit Horatio. I'm having a baby, she thought. I should practice mothering. So, literally dropping everything to do so, she started towards the office. It didn't matter that her mop was slobbering dirty water all over Brunnhold's nice clean floors. Brunnhold could suck it.

If motherhood was really something that Triston felt she needed to study or if this was simply her excuse to visit Harper didn't matter. She ended up in the same place anyway. Triston announced herself with a small "tap tap tap" on the heavy wooden door.

Her heart tried to mimic the sound, but only went "thump thump thump". It reassured her to hear that it was still there, and still hers.

Abeline did not have to look for long. These folders were apparently of great importance to Harper Moore; Maggie's folder was directly beneath James', and a few folders down she spied Triston's, Wendy's, and another folder labeled in red and scratched out a few times with white ink. The red had bled through to a dull pink, showing the faint name of "Ethan Dell".

It was at this moment, however, that the rapping on the door reached Abeline's ears.

Her hand was frozen mid-reach; her heart was thundering, and she felt her glasses sliding inchwise down her nose. So this was it. No-- It couldn't be Moore. He wouldn't knock on his own office door.

"J-just a minute!" She said reflexively. Instantly, she chided herself for giving away her position. She could've simply stayed silent, pretending to be an empty room.

There wasn't much time now-- she'd have to learn what she could before stuffing it all back in that bookbox... which she had no way of getting back on the top shelf.

Despite her focus on the girls, one had to admit, scratched-out red ink was extremely suspicious. Wide-eyed, she flicked open the file on Ethan Dell.

The layout of this file was completely different from that of James Carr - she could see that immediately. There was no etching or spectragram, no file giving the date of birth. Instead, handwritten notes dominated the folder, clearly in Devlin's and Moore's handwriting.

"Human male, age 31," said one note near a forest of scribbles. Amid unintelligible words she could make out the phrase "ley topography".

That was unmistakably a woman's voice. Was this the right room? Triston looked up at the name plate, mouth moving along with the words spelled out on its dulled surface. P-R-O-F...Prof? M-O-O-R-E. Prof? What is prof? M-O-O-R-E. Prof. Moore?...Prof? Her mind hit this roadblock like a drunk hit the floor. She grabbed at it like said drunk man grabbed at the bar on his way down. Tearing and ripping and clawing, just to keep from slipping. The moment she's on the ground though, it doesn't seem so bad.

What a sight Triston must have been, frozen in front of the office door, lips moving but no sound coming out. Mind working but nothing to show for it. And suddenly, a revelation.

It didn't matter. M-O-O-R-E, Moore. Harper Moore. His office. His. So then why was that so unmistakably a woman's voice? A familiar voice. She tried to open the door, to get some answers, but it only clicked and clanked angrily. Locked.

Momentarily forgetting the existence of a person waiting just a few feet away, Abeline stared at the file with her mouth agape. The shape of the word 'Human' silently formed on her lips. The professors' research wasn't a study of humans as far as she knew, and there was absolutely no mention of them in the official documentation. Why was it-- What did it-- Ley topography--?

The latch clicked, giving Abe a fright worse than any ghost had yet accomplished. Her heart stopped, and her mental gears froze and then melted like wax. Oil meant to keep her mind working smoothly sprayed everywhere, stippling places that needed friction and draining from places that needed fluidity. In bits and pieces, everything within her was falling apart, and all she could do was watch it go.

She knew she had been in a precarious position, psychologically speaking, for what, almost two months now? She knew she'd have a nervous collapse at some point. It was inevitable. Well. Now, it was imminent. It would all be downhill from here.

And all it took was the click of one doorknob.

The file on Ethan Dell wound up in her bag; she knew this, for she saw her own hands put it there. She felt herself stand, and she observed the box and its once-hidden treasures still scattered on the floor. She looked at them, fallen like leaves from a holy tree of knowledge, and noted that she left them there as she went to the door.

And the door was unlocked. And opened.

And Triston stood there in the hall.

The healer merely stared at the passive for a second, the confusion in her brown eyes magnified by her round spectacles. Suddenly, she started, as though hit by a brick. "Triston!" Two furtive glances down the hall--no one else was there. Yet. "Come in! Quickly!"

Triston jumped as Abe suddenly popped out of the previously locked door like some sort of jack-in-the-box. It was unexpected to say the least. More unexpected may have been the fact that it was Healer Ixbridge's voice she had heard and correctly classified as female.

Perhaps it was the pants, or maybe her demeanor, but Triston sometimes forgot that Abeline was supposedly one of the fairer sex. In her mind it was like academics and their kind had an entirely separate third gender. They were not man, nor woman. They were Scientists.

And currently this scientist looked worried and was apparently adamant on getting her inside. Triston humbly complied, breath catching as she saw the tidy version of Harper's study for the first time. It made her feel...left out. Had he gotten another passive to clean it for him? Why'd he have to go and do that? Who cared about cleanliness anyway? The cluttered papers and books were part of what had made the place charming, if not cozy. Now it was just an office that smelt slightly of burnt carpet.

Manners eventually kicked in, and Triston bowed politely to Abeline. "Good morning Healer Ixbridge. I'm sorry if I've interrupted...something," She said.

The healer looked nervous. That is to say, more nervous then normal. As twittery as a caged bird, and just as likely to fly off if given the chance.

The healer's head tilted, indeed like a bird's, and she chirped, "Not at all! I just dropped ah.. um.." Her hand flicked at the mess by the bookcase. "That. If you could help me clean it up?" She looked pleadingly to Triston. "You know, before the professor comes back, or I'll look like an utter--"

Coughing back whatever words she might have used, Abeline fidgeted with her collar and stared at her larcenous handiwork.

"He's obviously been trying hard.. only Alioe knows how he got this far.. a-and I wouldn't want him to see his work undone," she said, obliquely referring to things greater and more historical than a cluttered room.

She went back to the small pile and knelt on the floor. However, she found she couldn't touch a thing; the papers were either too profane or too sacred for her touch, and she feared (irrationally, she knew) that they would disintegrate her if she tried.