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All through Durem a soft rain was falling-- glazing the wide main streets, dripping from faded awnings, forming rivulets as it flowed downhill through the narrow back roads. Walt's footsteps were loud claps against pavement glistening gold in the light of flickering streetlights. His eyes were focused not on the road ahead or the potential threats concealed within the shadows of Durem's alleyways, but on something else that no other could have seen-- indeed, something else that was not even there: A heart-shaped face, cheeks subtly rouged, smiling through soft lamplight.

Not here, in Durem's darkness. Nor in the Myenlo manor, where the owner of that face belonged, protected from the incomprehensible cruelty of this world.

Presently, Walt veered to the left. Warm steam pouring from a nearby vent shot upward into the saturated air and was consumed by the veil of cold rain in moments. Surely Vivienne was still here, somewhere in the city she had always dreamed of living in-- it was merely a trick of finding out who knew where.

The heel of Walt's shoe freed a loose stone from the ill-cared-for street and he fell hard onto the pavement with an astonishing lack of grace. The day's accumulated bruises cried out in protest at the impact; it was his sixth fall since morning. He didn't count the ones that happened before he left his flat.

As the runoff from the street seeped into his already damp clothes, Walt found himself overcome with a wave of incredible inertia. For the moment, he made no attempt to stand again. Worry was beginning to overcome his typical tendency to keep moving. Furrowing his brow, he silently wondered:

What have they done with you, my Vivienne Rachel? My soul, my songbird...

The rain began to fall harder, and pain shot through the empty socket of Walt's left eye. Now he rose and walked onward, reaching up to adjust the patch that covered the disgraceful injury as he did so. The motion was clumsy, belabored; he'd only been wearing the accursed thing for a day, and its presence there was still unfamiliar. The stitches around the lip of the wound tingled as he nudged the eye patch upward. It would heal, of course, and soon-- much more quickly than it would have healed had he been human-- but in the meantime he felt disoriented from the loss of half his field of vision.

The alley he'd been following came to a sharp corner, then continued its gentle slope downhill. Runoff from the storm rushed around his feet and trickled this way or that into the Durem slum's inadequate storm drains. He could feel the beginnings of a headache behind his good eye.

Vivienne's gentle features fought their way into his mind again. It was hard to concentrate. Making the best effort he could, Walt retreaded his already well-worn musings on the meaning of her disappearance, hoping some new detail would reveal itself.

The two personae that defined Vivienne Rachel Myenlo were her role as an heiress-- the daughter of Aekean inventor and business mogul Howard Myenlo-- and her role as a talented and beautiful singer, marked by connoisseurs as the next big thing. The obvious motive was ransom, but none had been demanded; and now he feared that his Vivienne Rachel had been kidnapped, that some cur had taken her from her home seeking to force from her the intimacy she would never give them willingly.

The news had come to him through a contact in the Myenlos' Durem household, three days after Vivienne had disappeared. There had been no signs of struggle, no witnesses, no casualties, and no reports of any suspicious persons. Since then, Walt had searched every corner of the city that was open to him, spoken to every informant he knew, threatened the life of every connected criminal he could get his hands on... except one. In the last two days alone, he had inflicted a good deal more violence than he had in the past five years, but the result was always the same. Nobody knew anything.

In any other situation, it would have been a minor annoyance, but this time it was not a simple matter of a job that needed doing-- it was the life and the dignity of his beloved, his Vivienne, that was at stake. The thought of her in pain, held against her will, made his blood boil.

As Walt continued through the back streets, past the dimly lit doorways and the drunks and grifters staggering alone through the rain, he realized it had been a very long time indeed since he had thought about the safety of anyone other than himself.

The rain began to pour, now, as he reached his destination: the den of his least favorite contact. Walt brought up his hand to knock at the splintering door of Tristan Ederud's off-season hide-out, and hesitated. The narrow, windowless building rose up story after story to match the height of the surrounding slummy apartments. Reminding himself of the nature of this visit-- a last resort, and one upon which everything depended-- he rapped twice, then scowled with distaste at the depths he'd been driven to.

Ederud. If you've nothing for me to go on, I'll kill you for my trouble.

At that moment the door swung open, and light spilled out onto the street and the puddles that had gathered there. Walt drew himself up to his full height as Ederud's bone-white face peered around the door at him, a toothy, salacious grin spreading slowly across his face at the sight of his visitor.

"Walter Scordato," said Ederud, relishing every syllable. He opened the door wide, victory shining in his dark eyes. "Our infernal mercenary. Oh, I knew you'd come."