(the pig's head turns into a human's, that of an 
approximately fifty year old man, with pinkish skin, fatty 
cheeks, thick lips, and an apple in his mouth) 


[DATA REDACTED] 


Male 1: , it tastes like pork. Why does it taste like pork? 
Just because they used a swine? Well this isn't really 
official, is it- 


Head Server: No sir, | assure you that is what human 
flesh tastes like. 


Male 1: But are you sure? Maybe it’s just being... 


"Oh, there's... before what happened, | was in Bristol meeting with a 
business partner. Maybe you could go there... see if there's 
anything magical you can find?" Casey searched his pockets for Mr. 
Erwan's card, and recited the address into the phone. 


"Roger. | can... | guess | can go through the Library? Yeah, 
probably..." He was working through the logistics in his head, Casey 
could tell. He was nothing if not resourceful. 


"Thank you. Stay safe." 

"You need that more than | do. Please be careful. | love you." 
"Love you too." He clicked the phone off. 

He turned, and Eustace was staring at him. "...what?" 


Eustace shrugged. "Didn't say anything.” His wrinkled face had a 
surprising capacity for passive aggression. "You're scrubbed of any 
identifying links, now. You're welcome for that. But you should go 
change your clothes. Just... take some of Adam's, from the hall 
closet upstairs." 


"Right, right." Casey rather pointlessly tried to smooth himself out, 
and went upstairs to change into something that wasn't covered in 
dirt and blood. 


He walked back down wearing slightly too-tight jeans and one of 
Adam's nice tan jackets. For the first time since what had happened, 
he felt somewhat refreshed. 


This positive feeling quickly evaporated when he reached the bottom 
of the stairs and saw Eustace pointing a gun at some woman in the 
kitchen. 


Eustace motioned to Casey with his free hand, beckoning for him to 
come closer. "Finally." 


Casey inched towards Eustace, eyes wide as he struggled to take in 
what he was seeing. A black woman, wearing a tan suit, her hair tied 
in a neat bun. She was sitting at the kitchen table, and seemed 


unperturbed in spite of the elderly man waving a pistol in her face. 


"Found her in the lot out back. She was trying to snoop through the 
window." He shook the pistol at her. "Now, why don't you tell him 
what you told me?" 


"Well," she said. Her voice was calm, rehearsed. She'd clearly been 
looking forward to the chance to speak. "The first thing you need to 
know is that I'm on your side." 


She paused for a moment, feeling the room for a reaction, and then 
continued. "My name is Vera Garcia. I've been sent by an 
organization that knows of what is going on here, and wants me to 
help you prevent it from getting worse." 


Eustace nodded. "You buying any of this, Casey?" 
He had, in fact, heard this story before. "What organization?" 


"We're devoted to keeping the world safe, and preserving the things 
that matter most." 


Casey raised an eyebrow. "...but what's it called?" 
"Directorate K." 


Eustace suddenly bent over, laughing hoarsely. The gun in his hand 
evaporated into smoke. "No shit? This night just gets better and 
better." 


Casey did not know whether he should take offense to that. "You 
know them?" 


Eustace ratcheted himself up to a standing position again, still 
smiling. "You could say that." He turned back to the woman. "What, 
just come off of infiltrating the leadership of a Chuck E. Cheese's?" 


She smiled earnestly. "Funny. | suppose it's important to keep some 
levity in the face of bomb threats." 


Eustace's gaze narrowed. "What?" 


Vera nodded to the file folder, stolen from the Chaos Insurgency, still 
splayed on the kitchen table. Indeed, a paper was poking out — 
some notes about potential locations for a device that could be 
planted on one of Three Portlands' many side streets. "Sounds like 
there's a real conspiracy shaping up. It sure would be convenient if a 
skilled infiltrator were to offer a hand." 


Casey looked down. "Point taken." 


Eustace squinted at her for a good while. Like his view was piercing 
her and examining the insides. Which, to be fair, could literally be 
happening. 


After another moment, he spoke. "Fine. You can stay here. But you 
take a single hostile action, the house will eat your flesh and | will 
not treat your bones with dignity." 


Vera smiled. "Noted." 


The sun rose, pulling shadows taut across the stone and brick 
landscape of Three Portlands. Casey watched it with suspicion. 


Behind him Vera pored over the contents of the ill-gotten dossier. 
She flipped through pages of equations, numbers she couldn't make 
sense of. Details of people she didn't know, working for corporations 
she didn't recognize, in cities she hadn't known existed. She pulled 
free two pages in particular and set them down on the table, towards 
Casey. 


"These," she stated, "are the only people in the file who aren't 
marked deceased." 


Casey turned from the window, scanning the documents. Sidney 
and Timothy Way, two brothers. There were no pictures, just basic 
identification information. And a Three Portlands Address. "That's... 
not much to go on." 


She shrugged. "It has an address. That's all we need to pay them a 
visit." 


Casey's face hardened. "Is that a good idea?" 


"If they're like you, they're allies. And either way, we get more 
information on what's going on." 


Casey pursed his lips. "What about the police? Everyone thinks I'm 
a... murderer." 


"Well, you got away the first time, didn't you? How'd you manage 
that?" 


"| was picked up by a strange man and then lost most of my memory 
of what happened after." 


"We've all been there. But for now, you're wearing someone else's 
clothes, and a strange woman is going to be giving you instructions. 
Now... where is this address?" 


Casey gulped. 


The day was cool and clear. Perfect weather for taking a walk. 


Evidently many others felt the same way. The streets were saturated 
with milling crowds, pastel swarms wandering about to get to work, 
to school, to shopping. Living their normal lives. Or as close to 
normal as Three Portlands permitted. 


Casey watched with envy until Vera grabbed his shoulder and pulled 
him back into the alleyway. 


"Staring is weird. Criminals stare," she whispered. 
"I'm pretty sure regular people stare too." 


"Not from alleyways. Usually." Vera cast a glance behind her. "Let's 
keep going.” 


They'd been going through alleys for a bit — zig-zagged gashes in 
the urban jungle, growing pains of a city constantly making space for 
the new and shuffling the old to the outskirts. Most of these voids 
between buildings were empty, though some were marked by signs 
of occupation: clotheslines, plywood shacks, or bundles of blankets 
on the muddied stone. Sometimes people huddled in the alleyways, 


sleeping off their hangovers, or searching for scraps. 


Walk at a constant pace, she had said. Every day, you walk by 
hundreds of people, each with plenty of their own thoughts on their 
mind. Take every precaution to not disturb their daydreams, and 
stand out as little as possible. The vagrants Casey passed certainly 
didn't pay him much mind. Casey wondered if they would care even 
if they did recognize him. Better them than one of the faceless police 
golems he'd seen on the street corners. 


As he neared an intersection in the path he took a left turn onto an 
unpopulated side street. The brothers, it seemed, lived in a 
particularly dense area of the residential district, where teetering 
tenements were stacked against each other. It was a ways from 
Eustace's home on the outskirts. 


As she passed Vera peeked into the displays of stores advertising 
fashion, art, or gluttonous indulgence, boundaries artificially 
removed with the help of regenerative exploits, anomalies typically 
reserved for the ultra-rich. 


Casey turned back to her, as she was eyeing the posted menu for a 
restaurant that specialized in food that was the opposite of Italian 
food. "...have you not been in Three Portlands before?" 


She shook her head, snapping her gaze away from the store and 
quickening her pace to keep up with him. "I have no idea what this 
place is or how it works." 


"Oh. Wait. You haven't seen behind the Veil before now?" 


She shrugged her shoulders. "From what | understand, it seems like 
most of the things | thought were impossible are in fact possible, and 
that there is some kind of secret underworld of people who know this 
and can utilize these impossibilities freely." 


"Yeah, that's... basically it. You're taking this a lot better than | did." 
Casey had spent more than a few days locked in his room after 
Adam had showed him some magic years ago. 


Again, she shrugged. "What I'm learning is that my preconceptions 


were getting in my way. There's no need to dwell on the lies others 
tell to us." 


"That's the best way to look at it, | guess." He led her into a right turn 
into another jagged alleyway where bricks gave way to sandblasted 
stucco. They kept a healthy pace. 


"It's the benefit of my work. Clarity of purpose means that 
sometimes you don't need to think. You can just be and do." 


Casey nodded. "| guess that makes sense. What does ‘doing’ entail, 
anyhow?" 


"The way | see it, we have firefighters and doctors to preserve the 
things we need to survive. Directorate K is concerned with 
preserving the reasons we have to keep living." 


"Reasons to live?" 


"Things that make life worthwhile. The things previously unknown. 
The tastes that change each time you sample them. Disorder is an 
order all its own, and it's what human life is built around. It's about 
finding that combination, the repetition of something that changes 

every time. The appreciation of a thing just for what it is and how it 
feels. That's how | see it, at least." 


"And that requires... spy shit?" 

"| appreciate secrets. I'm skilled at finding them, cataloging them, 
patterning them. Beyond that, where the information goes is 
irrelevant." 


"And you're here now." 


"I'm here because it's where I'm best applied. My superiors knew 
there were secrets here worth sharing. Or maybe they felt 
something was at stake. Or both. It makes no difference to me." 


"That's a... relaxed attitude you have towards the crimes you are 
currently committing.” 


She cast a sideways glance at him. "I have faith in what | do. I'm 


good at what | do. I'm confident that this is where I'm supposed to 
be. You could do it too, you know. You're overwhelmed, but you're 
still moving forward after what happened. You're more adaptable 
than you think." 


"| mean, | couldn't-" 


He was interrupted by Vera grabbing the sleeve of his borrowed 
jacket and dragging him to a stop. They were standing at the outlet 
of the alley, and she pulled him back against a rough plaster wall. A 
few people kept walking past them and Casey turned to hide his 
face. "What? What is it?" 


Vera pointed down the street and across, to a dinky apartment 
building among rows of others. "That's it, isn't it?" 


Casey turned over the address in his head. "Yeah, that's probably it. 
Why did we stop?" 


She stopped pointing but kept looking in that direction. "There's a 
man out front." 


She was right. A bearded man wearing basketball shorts was 
leaning against one side of the building's entrance, peering into a 
small mesh backpack. She continued, "I've seen him before. In 
Portland just a few days ago. Portland, Oregon. | saw him and 
another man and they were talking about doing something big and 
vague." 


Casey peered at him. "Big and vague, huh?" 

"He's Sidney, probably," Vera finished. 

The two of them stood in the alley for a moment longer. 
Casey started. "So... what do we do?" 


"Ideally we approach in a non-threatening manner and begin a 
dialogue." 


"And then get held hostage by an old man with a gun?" 


"| did say ideally." 


Casey leaned out of the entrance they were discourteously blocking. 
"He's leaving." 


The man had zipped up his backpack and turned to start walking 
with purpose down the street. 


"So should we..." Casey trailed off. 


Vera was already walking down the street. Casey nodded to no-one 
in particular and followed. 


Casey gulped, grasping at an air of nonchalance. No big deal, just 
stalking someone in broad daylight while wanted by the police. Just 
a hobby. 


Vera exuded effortlessness effortlessly. She weaved through the 
crowd (it just kept getting denser, Casey was suffocating), eagle- 
eyes trained on the mark. 


Casey strained to see over the commotion in front of him. Where the 
street led around a run-down community garden, the paths were 
blocked by concrete dividers. Blue tape and sawhorses. They were 
heading straight for a checkpoint, manned by half a dozen police 
golems. Oh no. 


His breath started to pick up. It's okay, he thought. He can just turn 

around and walk away. They can come back for Sidney some other 
day. He tugged at Vera's sleeve. She was undeterred. He stopped 

in place. 


It was at this moment that Casey was tackled. 


Arms flung around his neck, the weight of a lanky man toppling him 
him off his feet and onto the asphalt. Casey looked up. A man he 
had never seen before was on top of him. He was shouting. "Why 
are you following us?" 


Casey gasped for air. 


"Hi, Timothy," Vera said. She swung her leg into the man's side, 


sinking her foot into his stomach. He wheezed, loosening his grip. 
Casey pushed into his sternum, and Timothy Way landed on his 
back beside him. 


A siren rang. The crowd was fanning out like air bubbles leaving 
water. A mechanical voice chittered, "This is an active crime scene. 
Please lay on the ground and place your hands behind your back for 
processing." 


Vera kneeled down, gripping Casey's forearms, and hoisted him to 
his feet in one fluid motion. Timothy started to clamber to his own 
knees. Vera glanced down the side street. Sidney was running. The 
golems were still blaring. 


She started to run, and pulled Casey with her. 


The streets were surprisingly empty. A crazed murderer on the loose 
tends to do the opposite of draw crowds. 


Sidney ran down the street, fiddling with something in his grip, his 
backpack jostling back and forth with each of his strides. 


Casey's legs burned. He ran track in high school, but that was the 
better part of a decade ago. Now not only was Casey confronted 
with the physical pain of his burning muscles, but the simultaneous 
emotional pain of being acutely aware exactly how much he had let 
himself go. To make matters worse, Vera seemed to have hardly 
broken a sweat behind him. 


By now the police golems must have alerted the UIU headquarters. 
They'd probably be setting up a cordon any minute, a ring of armed 
men lassoing every exit. No escape. He banished the thought from 
his mind. Sometimes you just need to lie back and let yourself do 
what will be done. 


Sidney spun on a dime, running straight into a tight alley. As he did, 
he dropped what he'd been carrying, something like a small blue 
pipe. Casey slapped the brick as he followed, leaping over the 
object and paying little mind. 


Behind him, it activated — bursting into a cyan cloud of fluttering 
wings, thousands of blue bats spiraling around the entryway. Vera 
wasn't coming through. Probably best if she didn't chance it. 


Casey kept running, dodging littered mush, feet splashing through 
iridescent puddles of contaminated water. His muscles were 
screaming, but he'd never been a good listener and didn't plan to 
start now. 


He was getting close. Casey stretched his arms out to grab onto 
something, anything of Sidney's, but his fingertips only brushed his 
backpack.