"So, what'd you mao snatch?" Fii asked, peeking over Virgil's shoulder as he set the tents of his coat onto a desk, ying the stolen objects out on a cloth spread beh the light of an antique mp.

  "Hmm, not bad," Virgil remarked, scrutinizing the scattered tents. "Got a few chits, some keys, a lighter, a switchbde, some gum ers, a ...and this." He picked up a small piece of paper, squinting at it uhe light. "Looks like a note from someone. 't make out what it says, though. Might be worth something."

  Fii poked around in the pile and rummaged through the debris, pig up each item individually. "There's also some Tinks, some dice, and a pack of cigarettes. This seems like junk to me. Are you sure there's nothing else?"

  Virgil nodded, peering into the folds and pockets of his coat. "Yup. Nothing else. At least we have something to work with, though. Here, see if you make sense of that note."

  He passed the scrap of paper to Fii, who exami closely, holding it up to the light.

  "Looks like scribbles to me." She wrinkled her nose in disappoi, but then her eyes lit up in reition. "Oh wait! These kinda look like the writing that Kenzo's band uses."

  "Who's that?" Virgil asked.

  "He's part of a band I listen to. They're pretty famous around here. I don't uand his lyrics most of the time, but I've seen posters and graffiti written in the same style."

  Virgil frowhoughtfully. "Huh...well these also look like a tag from the gangs. They sometimes leave signs or symbols around town. Helps them y cim to territory, intimidates rivals, that sort of thing. Maybe this is a message from one gang to another? Doesn't help that this seems like it's written in code, though. Could be worth something if we crack it."

  "Maybe whoever wrote this just has really bad handwriting?" Fii offered, half-jokingly. "You should've seen what mine looked like the first time Edith taught me how to read and write. Was all shaky. She said my writing looks like someone okih hot needles when I spell stuff."

  She wi the memory. Week after week of endless, painful tut sessions with Edith fshed through her mind, making her ge inwardly. Those had been...not fun times. In the end, she mao pick it up, but damn did she hate every minute of it. Edith wasly known for her patience eeag style.

  Still, she wouldn't trade those lessons for anything in the world. Despite Edith's gruff mannerisms, Fii reized the genuine effort she had made. Learnihings went from being a chore to a wele challenge, and soon became a source of fulfillment and personal growth.

  Now, she was actually starting to enjoy reading and writing. And speaking of reading, she should visit Orion again sometime to borrow more books. That guy was great for book reendations and adviot to mention he always had the most iing stories to tell.

  Virgil scratched his and tinued sing the note. "Well, either way, this is the only other lead we got out of all this nonsense, so I say we pursue this to the end. See what we find, talk to people who know about these symbols. Perhaps there's something to be learned from the folks who paint them on the walls."

  Fii rubbed her thoughtfully. "Actually, wait a minute, maybe Sumiki might know how to read this."

  "Who's that?" Virgil queried. "One of your friends?"

  "He owns a little shop close to Edith's ic. He has a bunch of stuff there that he's collected, and some of 'em have symbols and markings that look like this." She held the back til. "Might be worth cheg out."

  "Lead on, then," Virgil decred. "I re I've rested enough from that errand earlier. Time to go for a walk." He slid the items into his jacket pocket, pced his hat ba his head, and followed her outside.

  "You. Girl. Y new er. Good, good! Wele!" Sumiki spoke in fragmented phrases as Fii and Virgil ehe store, the jangle of a bell announg their presence.

  Fii chuckled at the aged shopkeeper. "Hey, Sumiki. I've got a question for you. Something I ransted, hopefully."

  Sumiki waddled closer, adjusting his spectacles on his hawkish nose, peering at the two of them curiously. "Ahh, Fii-girl! Of course, of course! Anything you want to know, I answer. Easy! Wait, who this? Your boyfriend?"

  He elbowed her pyfully, ughiily. "Eh-heh-heh-heh!"

  "He's not my boyfriend!" Fii hissed, flushing. She gred at Virgil, who stood quietly to the side, examining the room's interior. She looked back at Sumiki with a gre. "He's almost as old as you are. Old enough to be my dad. Are you crazy?"

  Sumiki ignored her and waved a hand dismissively. "Old man, hmm? So? Age does not matter, yes? Experience ts, you see. More experienced, better sex life! Plenty of couples around here with big age gap."

  He gestured at Virgil, indig his muscur, athletic physique. "Older man like that, he'll please you like nothing else, I'm sure. Make the magic happen! Eh-heh-heh-heh-hey!"

  He cackled wildly at his own joke. When his ughter died down, he wiped tears from the ers of his eyes and grinned.

  Fii's face reddened further, and she stamped her foot. "Seriously, Sumiki, stop it! That's gross. Quit imagining things." She exhaled, trying to tain her embarrassment. "Okay, look, this isn't why I came here. This is business, all right? Now quit being weird and focus."

  "All right, what you wao transte? Must be important, eh?" Sumiki lowered his gsses to peer at her, his tone adopting a more serious ce. "No time for fun. I uand. Is all business." He cpped his hands together. "Okay, no problem. Show me, show me."

  Fii walked over and grabbed the note from Virgil's hands, pg it in front of Sumiki's face. " you read this for me?"

  Sumiki adjusted the frames of his spectacles once more and brought the piece of paper withiimeters of his eyes. He cocked his head and hummed pensively, narrowing his eyes as he tried to make sense of the cursive scrawl.

  After a few seds, he set the paper on the ter with a sigh and scratched his forehead. "Sorry, Fii-girl. I 't help you. Too many Kanji I don't reize. Been too long since I learhem from my father. I have lost much. Ehh, I'm getting old now. Memory like a sieve. Ehhh, I'm sorry, Fii-girl."

  Virgil stepped forward, intrigued. "You 't read any of it, then?"

  Sumiki shrugged and boologetically, his eyes creasing sadly at the edges. "Only a few characters here and there. Not much. 't decipher message. One I know is 毒液, or Doku-Eki. It means venom, poison, or toxic liquid"

  He paused and pulled out a pencil and a notepad, scribbling the another phrase on a bnk sheet. "Another one is 医薬品, or I-Yaku-Hin. It means pharmaceutical."

  He showed them the notepad, pointing to the characters with the tip of his pencil. "Not much else. Just these ones."

  "Hmm." Virgil sidered Sumiki's words, rubbing his beard pensively. "That's not much, but it gives us a hint. A vague one, but better than nothing."

  Fii groaned in frustration and banged a fist on the ter. "This sucks. Do you know anyone else who might be able to tra, Sumiki? Please, it's important."

  Sumiki thought for a moment and shook his head. "No oeach Kanji here. Only very few know—like the one who wrote this. You must go to metropolis. Only there."

  "Great, that's really helpful," she muttered sarcastically as she sank her head into her hands with a groan. "What are we going to do now?"

  Virgil ied the note once again, sing the text with keen eyes. "It's not over yet," he murmured. "That means whoever wrote this is educated—maybe from the metropolis. It also implies they might be associated with a pharmaceutical pany. The guy I shis from must have also s from a Neon Viper."

  Fii watched as Virgil folded the note and tucked it into his coat, cealing it from view. "Let's che with Edith and see what she has to say. She might be able to provide a fresh perspective.

  Fii stood up and smiled gratefully at Sumiki. "Thanks f, anyway."

  "No worries, Fii-girl. e bad visit again soon, eh?" Sumiki winked and nudged her again, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. "If older men not your type, my nephew single. Good boy, young and handsome, just ye. No, wait. Five years younger. Maybe four."

  "Sumiki..." Fii growled dangerously in warning, her eyes fshing.

  "Ha ha, sorry, sorry!" Sumiki excimed, throwing his arms up in surrender. "No matchmaking, I swear! Five old man and his silly jokes. My wife tell me, 'no, you stupid fool, leave girls alone!' but I no listen. Still as naughty as spring chi, you see? Ha ha!"

  He csped both Fii's hands in his and gave her a grandfatherly smile, "Okay, you go with cowboy. Oh! I have few pack of in back. Ribbed or thin. Both have. Six months before expire. You buy? Cheap price, I promise."

  "Bye, Sumiki." Fii shot him one final withering stare, snatched her hands out of his grasp, and stalked out of the shop, cheeks fming in mortification.

  Virgil tipped his hat courteously at Sumiki before following Fii outside.

  Baside the ic, Edith was hard at work when they arrived. She was hunched over a microscope, humming to herself while tapping a pen on her clipboard. Several test tubes sat on the ter nearby, taining samples of different colors and sistencies.

  "Hey, Edith," Fii greeted.

  Edith's head snapped up at the sound of their voices. "Oh, hey there. You're both back early. Find anything useful?" She blinked owlishly at them as they approached. "Something wrong? You don't seem happy."

  Fii slumped against a nearby stool and sighed. "We got some intel, but that's about it. The guy who gave us this transtion said he couldn't figure the rest out. He tried, but it's no good. The closest he could do was 'venom' and 'pharmaceutical.' And that's it."

  Virgil produced the paper note from his coat pocket and passed it to Edith, ted it gingerly.

  Edith leaned forward to ihe scrap. "Hmm, hmm, hmm. Iing, iing..." She rotated the paper, flipping the scrap between her fingers. "Helix. you take a look at this?"

  She pced the sheet of paper beh a camera mounted by her monitor. The lens zoomed in, and Helix's meical voice chimed in an instant.

  [Processing. Stand by. Processing plete. Extrapoting. Linguistialysis identifies writing as a mix of Kanji, romanized letters, and English numerals.]

  "Tra."

  [The note tains informatiarding a pnned meetiween the Neon Vipers and an unknown group in an abandoned pharmaceutical building within the slums in two days. The name of the building is Kijiru Pharmaceuticals. There is mention of a trade—Shiver for venom. Unknown quantities.]

  "A trade? I see. Anything else?"

  [ive. Extrapotion suggests the exge will take pce at 20:00 hours in two days.]

  Edith stood upright and clicked her tongue. "Well, well, well. I suppose that's the most important thing. Looks like we've found ourselves a solid lead."

  Fii ruffled her hair in frustration. "Ugh! And I had to deal with all that teasing and harrassment for nothing!"

  Edith quirked a brow. "Teasing? Where'd you go? Did something happen?"

  Fii averted her eyes sheepishly. "Don't ask. It's embarrassing."

  Virgil cleared his throat. "That's her here nor there. More importantly, Fii, there's one question you should be asking yourself right now."

  A question? What did he mean by that? Fii tried to think. A trade. Shiver and venom. What about it? It was already obvious that the Neon Vipers were—

  Wait.

  "Why did one of the guys from the Neon Knights have that note on him in the first pce?"

  Virgil snapped his fingers and poi her. "Exactly. Even though not many people could have figured out what it meant, this gang had that message in the first pce. So what could that mean?" He looked at her expetly, waiting for an answer.

  Fii's mind raced. The Knights and the Vipers were supposed to be at each other's throats, acc to what she'd heard. It didn't make sehat they'd be w together. So, maybe the guy who had it must have swiped the note from the Vipers somehow? Or maybe he's a mole in the Knights posing as a grunt? This was getting plicated.

  She chewed her lip. "Either the guy that had it swiped the note from a Neon Viper, the Knights are in cahoots with the Vipers, or the Vipers have a mole pnted within the Knights."

  "Right." Virgil nodded approvingly, clearly pleased by her response. "Or a bination of those, possibly. Any of those could expin how they got their hands on that scrap of paper. Unfortunately, we still don't have the full picture yet. But, whatever the case may be, it doesn't ge what we'll o do . In two days' time, we'll infiltrate the meet, ao the bottom of this."

  Fii nodded sharply. "Sounds good to me. Let's do this. Finally, some a!" She cracked her knuckles and pumped a fist excitedly.

  Virgil removed his hat and ran his fihrough his disheveled hair. "Actually, there's one more problem. I don't know where that building is."

  "Don't you have a map of the slums in your basement?" Fii asked.

  "The one I have doesn't have the names of specific buildings, just general locations," he crified. "We're gonna have to do some more legwork."

  "What about Helix? Maybe it has the building in its database or something."

  Edith looked back at her monitor. "Helix, do you have access to information on Kijiru Pharmaceuticals? Aed intel?"

  [Specififormatiarding the pre-metropolis history of the slums is unavaible. Historical records are limited or missing due to ck of dotation.]

  "Not even old maps?"

  [Unavaible. All records reting to that time period prior to the metropolis expansiram have been purged or lost.]

  Edith sighed in annoyance. "Well, guess that's another dead end." She removed her b coat and slung it over her chair. "We'll have to find out more information, then. See if anyone knows where this pce is."

  Fii stretched nguidly.

  Seemed like they had some more work to do. No one in the slums really khe inal names of these buildings, after all. Most of them weren't even marked. Only a few street signs here and there were legible enough for people tnize, and even those were fading with age and covered by graffiti.

  If Virgil's map didn't show any of the actual building hen that meant they'd have to search through the entire slums—one building at a time—until they found the right location.

  Less than two days to do all that? No ce.

  They'd o find a better map, or someone who actually knew what the area used to be. Someone would have to be older than dirt, though. So finding a map was the only option. Maybe a sedhand shop like Sumiki's might have something like that, or maybe Orion might have an old map in his lib...rary...

  "Wait. Hang on," Fii gasped. She spun around to face Edith excitedly. "Orion. Orion runs the Gilded Library, right?"

  Edith g her, fused at first, but then reition dawned on her features as prehensioled in. "Oh...right! There is an actual library still standing here. I pletely fot about that. You're thinking that they might still have records of what the area used to be like, before the slums?"

  "Maybe. Worth a shot, I think." Fii gnced over at Virgil. "What do you think?"

  Virgil put his hat ba and grinned. "We check. Let's go."