“Beautiful piece, isn’t it?” Ryan nodded up at the wall. I could see why he liked it so much. If you peeled the graffiti off the brick and stick it on some canvas, it would match his style to the dot. It showed A somber, hulking silhouette with arms stretched out in despair, composed of bright reds and blues and purples that didn’t quite blend into each other. A faded piece, almost ghostly around the edges.

“They say it’s an early Lucullan.” My brother continued cheerfully. He pushed open a nondescript steel door, revealing an elevator. “There’s no record of the artist venturing out to this area, true, but I still find myself agreeing with the theorists. Every artist has their exceptions, their explorations, even if they’re kept hidden where no one else sees.”

It was getting colder down here. How was that possible? I stuck my hands deep into my pockets and wished I’d brought gloves.

We came down the elevator into a godforsaken parking lot of all places. Some cars and even an old tuk-tuk was languishing down here. I ran my fingertip on the surface of one. It came off dark and caked with dust. “Are you sure we’re not trespassing here?”

Ryan scratched his chin. He’d been sloppy in his shaving this evening, with a particularly hairy patch on his cheek. “In this particular spot? No. But I can be less confident in that statement as we go deeper in. The laws surrounding the catacombs are pretty old. I’m not sure what the legal system would do if we were taken to court.”

This prompted so many questions, but before I had a chance to ask any of them Ryan pointed at another door. On the left side was spray-painted a weird little symbol. I squinted.

“Is that a comb?”

“A comb with cat ears, though you’ll have to allow some artistic license there. Cat-a-comb.” Ryan grinned and opened the door.

I wrinkled my nose before following him inside. “Wow, that might just be the worst wordplay I ever heard. But seriously, catacombs? I thought those were like, underground graveyards or something. Like the ones in Paris.”

“You’d probably know better than me in that regard.” My brother admitted. The place we were walking in felt like a proper little tunnel. All wet, mossy stone, the ceiling dripping right on to me. “I’d reckon someone called this system the catacombs from a sense of morbidity more than anything else. It’s made of federally made passageways, unused sections of subway and sewer systems, old shelters from the Rudrich Offensive and the Cold War… You’d be surprised at how far out the of the city the tunnels go, or how many government employees use these routes.” I saw his frown deepen through the flashlight’s glare. “Well, maybe not this specific route. Also, you probably shouldn’t be touching those walls.”

I blinked and drew myself away from the side. “God, what is it? We’re close to the sewers, aren’t we?”

“Running parallel to them, I suspect. But I’m actually more concerned about the active power lines.”

I glared at him. “I appreciated the tour guide summary, I promise, but is there any good reason why we’re down here? I don’t trust you not to get us lost. And there can’t be good cell signal down here.”

He patted his pocket. “There isn’t. Thankfully, my phone can retrace any routes we take and give us directions. Nifty little feature, that. Pretty easy to enable too.” He saw my face. “But the point is that this is a much quicker way to get to the Rustin household, even if it means leaving the car behind. Another reason is that I want to have a talk with Theaker.”

I groaned. Theaker was a name I’d only heard in passing, but what I recalled was enough to explain everything immediately. “I can’t believe you took me down here to meet a homeless guy. Or is it a homeless girl?”

“Neither.” A voice said from behind us, nearly making me jump out of my skin in the process. “Truly, I’m not sure any singular term can contain my mag-nificence.” Theaker’s voice was rich, almost silky, a theater kid’s voice to the bone. Sure enough, when I turned I saw a violin case slung over their shoulder. They wore a threadbare sweater that was at least five sizes too big, with a beanie perched on top of long hair that came down to their shoulders. But even in the tunnel’s darkness, what stood out most was their eyes. They were a true green, catlike and almost glowing in the light.

“How are you doing, Theaker?” Ryan asked.

They looked him up and down. “Same as I always am, de-tective man. Might as well ask the same of you. Though I guess I already know the answer. That was good work you did, by the harbor. People won’t forget that easy.”

He sighed. “Already going through the grapevine, huh?”

“You ex-pected anything less?” They glanced over at me. “This is the new one, right? What is this, the fourth sidekick? You really go through them like toilet paper, don’t you?”

“What?” I said, before seeing the mocking grin on their face. “Wow, you’re really easy to like, aren’t you?”

“It’s a talent. Now, you wanted to know about dis-appearances, right? I’m guessing you mean beyond the usual ones?”

He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Just… anything that strikes you the wrong way. I went through all recent police reports from the neighborhood, and…”

Theaker just snorted in response, stomping their muddy boot down on the ground. “Heh. I will say there’s a reason why some people’d rather freeze on the sidewalk than come down here. Some of the cat-combs had guys packed in sardines just last year, but now….”

“ ‘People’ meaning the um, street population?” I said. It really was freezing down here. I was surprised none of the drips from the ceiling hadn’t turned to icicles yet.

Those green eyes narrowed. “Yeah. That. I can’t give you numbers. I don’t think anyone could get that count for you. Most people think it’s just Aiello scrubbing out his ter-ritory, or the Grey-hound filling in his quotas, but I don’t know… it’s strange. I can’t - ” There was a brief stutter in the last sentence before Theaker covered it up with a harder, wider smile.

Ryan shook his head, growing colder and more professional. I got the sense that Theaker was more comfortable with that. “It’s fine. Just tell me, did you notice more alcoholics disappearing than usual? Or say, addicts? That’s applies to a lot of people, I know, but at the moment there’s nothing concrete enough to narrow it down further.”

“I mean, I guess, but… no. Shouldn’t say things I can’t back up. You want me to check around the tunnels, right? That’s why you wanted to meet at this spot. If anything happened to all of them, it had to be down here. I’ll take a look, see if I can’t find some-thing you can use.”

“Look, that’s not – ” But Theaker was already running past us into the tunnels, taking a left on the fork and fading out of reach of the torch. The light caught the outline of a shadow, then they were gone. Ryan cursed. “They just said it was dangerous out there. Still, they know the catacombs like the back of their hand. Come on.” He took a right at the tunnel, and I followed him through.

Sure enough, the icy mud seemed to transform itself almost instantly back to gravel and glaring incandescent lamps, and we walked into a subway station, and up into Hartview. I gave out a long whistle. “Damn, I take back what I said earlier. It would’ve taken us at least an hour to get here by car. Why don’t more people use these?”

But that was a sore subject after what we had just heard, and he ignored me completely as we made our way to the Rustin household. Jacques Rustin, our young client, still hadn’t come back home. Ryan wisely implied at the doorstep that Jean Rustin’s coworkers and other friends at the bar had asked him to check out what happened, just as a personal favor. Very good at implications, my brother is.

Mina Rustin received us in the kitchen that doubled as the dining room. She was a rosy-cheeked woman with curly black hair. I guessed perhaps unjustly that she was of Korean descent, purely from the jar of kimchi fermenting on the counter. Her daughter was seated at the kitchen table, kicking her legs up and down with her cheek pressed to a coloring book.

It was a small place, for sure, and you could see almost everything fraying around the edges. Yet there was a quiet nobility to it, one that told me that each night the beds would be made and the teeth would be brushed even if the parents had to skip dinner. Ryan accepted the mug of coffee offered with a grateful smile.

“Jeanette, bomul, please don’t touch my needles.” Mrs. Rustin patted her daughter’s head and carefully wrenched them from her grip. “I really shouldn’t be leaving them out like this, of course, but you know how it is when you’re doing work. This commission, especially.” She sighed and nodded towards what looked like a quilt laid out on a couch. It was marked with gorgeous pink blossoms. Cherry flowers, I think? “Anyhow, it’s Mr. Neville, wasn’t it? Mr. Neville, Jean disappearing like this is something that’s never happened before. Never! I won’t deny he’s had his problems, but…” She shook her head.

I felt bad for her. I really did. But a lot of people who walk out of their families’ lives don’t exactly telegraph their plans beforehand. I’m sure a decent percentage don’t plan their leaving at all. And no matter how many subterranean hobos Ryan talked to, I still wasn’t convinced this was something we could fix.

My brother just nodded. “I see. You told me your husband always comes home from work before heading out to the bar, right?”

“Oh, yes. Always. He always wants to see Jacques and Jeanette after school. And talk to me, of course.” She paused, her eyebrows furrowing, then abruptly pushed her chair away from the table and ran out of the room. Jeanette looked up from her crayons and offered a suspicious glare. I sighed and pushed my cup of coffee towards Ryan. He didn’t even hesitate to guzzle it down, the gluttonous prick.

Mrs. Rustin came rushing back to the room. “Look!” She was holding a wallet up in her hand. She pulled out an ID and shoved it into Ryan’s hands. “Jean left his wallet behind. He always does that, you know. Says it makes sure he doesn’t spend too much. Doesn’t even take his credit cards or anything, just cash. He tells me that if I ever need to pay for anything, I could take from it.” She started ruffling through the rest of the wallet. “I’m not sure he spent any money at all in the last day before he left.” She looked decidedly confident in that judgement, no doubt secure in her position as arbiter of the family finances.

Was it possible for someone to make a new life without an ID or credit cards? There might be a drivers’ license… but I had to admit, this had a poked a lot of holes in the theory. Maybe Mr. Rustin had just drunkenly fallen into a gutter somewhere. It was still snowing these days. It might be possible the poor guy had just frozen to death.

Ryan asked a few more questions, but he clearly wasn’t getting anywhere interesting. We did learn the family didn’t have a car. And when my brother brought up the subject of Mrs. Rustin’s sister in the yellow raincoat (notably not mentioning she’d been seen with her husband at the bar) Mina Rustin simply smiled.

“Oh, Yuna’s coming over for dinner. She always does. If you want, you two can stay to meet her. We’re making fish skewers.”

My brother nodded sagely. “You know, I think we just might.” Then he brought his phone to his ear, raising an apologetic finger to ask for a moment. He listened to something on the other end. “Okay. I’ll be there. Go back to where you found it, but try to be quiet about it. Don’t move if possible once you get there, but if you hear anyone coming, run.”

There was a flurried response on the other end, and Ryan sighed and cut the call. “We’ll have to meet up for that dinner a little later, I’m afraid.”

“That’s a real shame,” Mrs. Rustin said, trying to wrangle a needle out of her daughter’s hand for the second time. “I think Yuna would’ve loved to meet you two. Wonderful lady, my sister.”

When we came out, Ryan broke into a run. I had to struggle to keep up with him all the way to the subway station. By the time he slowed his pace to go down the stairs, I was puffing like a steam engine with each breath. “Seriously? Are you really running out on a chance to talk to our prime suspect? Not to mention at the moment our only suspect? Because – ” I frowned. We were going back the way we came. “Did Theaker call you this quickly? It hasn’t even been an hour yet!”

“I know.” Ryan said, flicking on the flashlight. He didn’t run the moment we entered the catacombs proper, but his body was almost thrumming with tension, his grip shaking on the torch. I couldn’t tell if it was stress or sleep deprivation at this point. “But if Theaker’s right about what they found – and they’ve given me no reason to doubt their judgement before – then we need to get there as fast as we can.”

“What did they find, anyway?” I wasn’t expecting a straight answer from him, but he must’ve been too tired or too worried for his sense of melodrama to take point. He rubbed his eyes. “There’s a body.”

“Of our client’s father?” I asked. “You did send them a description of it, right? You don’t think Theaker could’ve just found some other frozen old corpse?”

“Along with the photo we were given, yeah. But Theaker was almost panicking on the other side of the phone. They called it a body, and they’re pretty thick-skinned. I can’t imagine they’d call me over for someone caught in the elements.” He checked his phone again. “Anyway, Theaker sent me some directions, but I don’t know how quick navigating this place is going to be.”

Almost on cue, we started to hear music. String music that wasn’t exactly cheerful, but it had a vibrancy to it, a brightness that resonated through the catacombs. More importantly, it was loud enough to hear from a long distance. Ryan ground his teeth, his eyes flashing in recognition. “I told them to keep quiet, damn it.”

The music steadily grew louder as we came closer, the notes coming faster and a lot more frenzied. I’m not exactly a musical aficionado, but even I could tell some it was off-tune. Theaker clearly wasn’t giving this their best performance here.

We came out in a sewer, the stench punching up my nostrils all at once, sharp and unrelenting. No doubt it would be ten times worse without the cold. Grumbling, I pulled up my collar to cover my nose. There was barely any light down here, except for some pinpoints far into the distance.

I’d never imagined sewer tunnels this big, though I’m glad to say I’ve never had to imagine them much at all. There weren’t too many rats around in this season, but I heard a skittering here and there. I shivered, rubbing my shoulders, and followed Ryan further into the darkness.

The smell was changing, too. There was still plenty of bog-standard sewage, don’t get me wrong, but there was an undercurrent to it now, just as familiar and far more ominous. Sure enough, we found Theaker a few moments later. They strummed what I saw now was a ukulele, their flashlight clipped to their belt. They turned to see us, then pointed slowly and carefully down the tunnel.

“There’s a big pile of gar-bage down there, round the corner, where the sewage collects. The um, body’s closer, washed up on the side. If someone meant to dump it in the pile, they didn’t do it right.” Theaker’s teeth were almost chattering, their breath misting the light beam of Ryan’s flashlight. My brother shone the light where Theaker was pointing, and my stomach lurched down to my shoes. Even after a dunk in the sewer, everything was still so wet and so red.

“The organs…” I muttered, to no one in particular. You didn’t need to have a biology degree to look at that mess and realize there were was a lot missing. A lot of the clothes had been cut away to open up the torso. And the head…

Ryan pulled on a pair of disposable gloves, carefully turning it until we got a proper look at the body’s face. Theaker sucked in another shuddering breath.

“Deep, disfiguring lacerations on the face and hands, particularly the fingers,” Ryan said, his voice crisp and emotionless. “Sloppy work, especially compared to the rest of the injuries. The corpse looks young, definitely male. Seems like the wrong body type to be our client’s father, I think, but in this environment it’s hard to be certain.”

I took a deep breath, my head throbbing. “Ryan. Look at his arm. Those faded tally marks.” The words felt like they were choking me. When I closed my eyes, I could see those guys my age just a few hours ago, walking into that bar. “They’re for a drinking game. One I did when I was in Doldrum. They probably still do it, I…”

I couldn’t take it anymore. I stumbled away from the body, away from Ryan and Theaker, leaning over the pitch-black sludge. I vomited my guts out, wrenching everything I could out of my stomach and wishing I could burn this image out of my mind. That I could tear down this rotten place, this rotten City. Bring it down brick by brick, and watch it crumble to dust.