Zayn Gerges opened the door to the balcony of his office. The wind was quite potent this high up, but he liked that. Not only was living this high up a symbol of his status and power, but he also enjoyed heights. He would like to climb the World Tree in Sadina for the experience alone, but alas, dryads were a zealous bunch, and they didn't allow anyone to get close to it beyond its base.

  Most people didn't understand the greatness of a good breeze and the heights. But at the same time, most people couldn't spend their time enjoying them.

  They weren't the head of the greatest pharmaceutical company in the world, after all.

  His long white mane and beard were the ones that took most of the liking in the strong breeze. His old bones? Not so much.

  Zayn was just reminded of his duty as someone knocked on the door of his office.

  "Uncle?" A sweet voice asked.

  "Come in," he lazily commented as he took in the sights of Asina. He would never tire of them. Though his opinion on the imperial palace oscillated from day to day. On the one hand, it was a beautiful piece of architecture with its golden dome. On the other… it blinded everyone that dared to look at it. But such truth was the same with the Calipha.

  The door of his office, made of the finest cherry from Seviren, opened to reveal his niece. Nesrine was quite a young and bright mind, but she was too innocent to be in the family business. Yet she was quite enthusiastic about her studies, so it would be wrong to not exploit that. Chemistry was one of the greatest fields a researcher could study, and the background of her parents as engineers had certainly molded her into a unique mindset.

  Though he would like if the girl wore clothes of her adequate standing and not just that horrendous lab coat everywhere.

  "How has your time at palace been?" Zayn asked her.

  "Superb!" Nesrine responded excitedly as she adjusted her glasses. "I thought you had finally gone senile," Zayn frowned, "after sending me to the palace instead of the University of Asina, but you were right, there the greatest minds are gathered together in a single spot!"

  "I'm glad you are enjoying it, Nesrine, but you haven't forgotten of our deal, have you?"

  "Of course not, uncle," she extended a piece of paper forward. "This is the list of the newest pill maker graduates. But I must ask, why do you want it for? To scout new hires?"

  "New hires, yes," he mused as he groomed his beard. Though not for the company. "I'll take a look at this list later. Do you need something else?"

  "No, that would be all." Nesrine responded, not bothering to hide her eagerness to leave already.

  "One more thing." But as she was going to leave, Zayn interrupted her. "What about that compound you were researching? The one about easing the effect of that sugar malady."

  "Diabetes?" She questioned with a frown.

  "Yes, that one."

  "Well, diabetes is a growing problem in the population, and because it is caused by high sugar levels in the blood, we thought that the best way to fight it would be to target the pancreas…"

  "Stop yapping, girl. I know what your research is about, your mother wasn't even born when I pioneered the field of medicine." The lecture was enough to silence the young girl. "No, what I want to know is about the compound. Does it work? Is it marketable?"

  That last question was the only one that mattered to him.

  "Uhm… recent results show against it?" Nesrine responded coyly with a titled head.

  "Elaborate," Zayn grunted.

  "Insulin, the medication we have been testing – which is a hormone, compound is too vague of a term – is effective to prevent diabetes, the problem we have seen is that a constant usage of the defense stance is enough to boost the immune system to get the pancreas working correctly so…"

  "The medicine is useless as anyone with a Defense Pill will be unaffected by diabetes." He finished the sentence.

  "…Yes," the girl added sheepishly.

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  "Why does this sickness even exist then?"

  "Well, the rising consumption of sugar in the popu-"

  "It was a rhetorical question, dear."

  "Oh, sorry." She had the presence of mind to at least look crestfallen.

  "So the defense stance is enough to tip the scales to prevent this affliction from occurring…" Zayn mused as he sat on his armchair. "Yet more reasons to reduce the cost of pills so more people can buy them. You could do something useful and investigate how to produce pills without the need for a pill maker."

  "You are the one who guided me into chemistry and drug-making, uncle," Nesrine responded with a deadpan, though the rage was very much visible.

  "Right, right," he swayed his hand around. Those are useful, but for other businesses. "My fault. You can go."

  After puffing, the closest the logical Nesrine would make to a tantrum, his niece left his office, leaving him alone. Or so he would wish. Unfortunately, he had his hands in too many enterprises.

  "Grandmaster," the figure that appeared from the shadows bowed.

  "Oh, it's you Mehmed, we haven't met in a while." He casually greeted the Shadow. "Is there something important? I would like to rest a bit."

  "It's important," Mehmed taciturnly responded.

  "Then out with it!" Zayn scoffed at him. "No need to idle around!"

  "There has been a murder in Selen."

  "There's always a murder everywhere. That's what we do."

  "It hasn't been one of us."

  "You've got my attention," the old man's visage stopped showing joviality and turned serious. His eyes shone ever-so-slightly brighter.

  "Yesterday one of our men, Jawad, was murdered in one of our warehouses." The Shadow informed.

  "Any clue as to who might have been?" Zayn asked. "A rival company? A caliphate spy? Or maybe one of those serial assassin fellas, like that Ripper I've heard about."

  "We… are not sure, but the clues point out several profiles."

  "Do tell," the old man took out his pipe and lit it. There was nothing better than a bit of tobacco to clear one's mind. Especially for someone of his lineage.

  "Jawad was found… headless."

  "Chopped?"

  "Exploded," Mehmed answered.

  "Exploded?" Zayn frowned.

  "Exploded," the Shadow reiterated. "Someone burst the man's head. Looking at how his body was placed on the ground and the lack of struggle, our best guess is that he was stepped to death."

  "So it must be some sort of cultivator if our killer has that much strength," the Grandmaster pondered his wording for a moment. "Yeah, that doesn't tell us anything. Anyone is one nowadays, I preferred when that wasn't the case. But it does fill the profile of a serial killer with the whole head-bursting deal. That's what they do, right?"

  "There has yet to be one serial assassin to do 'head-bursting', sir."

  "Could be the first. Who knows?" Zayn shrugged.

  "It's the other clues that disconcert us," the Shadow ignored his comment. "We found traces of a liquid on Jawad's chest, which we identified as sap."

  "Sap? Like from a tree?"

  Mehmed nodded. "We searched for traces of drug – hallucinogens and whatnot – but it was very much normal sap. One of our brethren more experienced in Nurture told us that it had an unusually high content of vitality, but that was all."

  "Was this sap Jawad's?" He mused after giving a long hit to his pipe.

  "Not that we know of."

  "So this murderer dropped sap on our fellow's chest for no reason?"

  "That we know of," the Shadow corrected. "But that wasn't the last substance that disconcerted us."

  "Oh, there's more? What now, discharge?" Zayn joked. Mehmed looked at him with dead eyes. "You are joking."

  "I'm not," the assassin sighed and took out his own pipe, though this one was loaded with hashish. "We found seminal fluid inside Jawad's pants."

  "Inside? Oh, thank heavens." The old man sighed in relief. "For one moment you had me thinking we had a serial assassin tickling his fancy on their victims. Wait," he suddenly realized the problem with the outcome. "Was this Jawad wanking on the job?"

  "Not that we know of," Mehmed reiterated and took a hit of his pipe. "This is the thing that confound us the second most, he just seemed to release whilst he was being assaulted."

  "What a creep… Wait, second?"

  Mehmed exhaled his smoke. "We had one relay around, he goes by the name of Yusuf, and he was the one who first noticed the incident, but there were some… complications."

  "Stop with the suspense, you are going to kill this old man." The old man said with puffing his tobacco.

  "Prior to Jawad's death, Yusuf felt a wave of pleasure coming from the soon-to-be-dead man. For some reason, this wave caused Yusuf to collapse and bleed from his eyes and nose. He barely stayed alive as he almost too choked on his blood."

  "Mhmm," Zayn hummed, completely unaffected by such a grotesque description.

  "Whilst we cannot tell why that happened – nor why anything did, really – one thing everyone agrees, and not just Yusuf, is that an emerald tree appeared in the world of ideas where Jawad's body should be. And everyone, and I cannot stress this enough, everyone said and swore for their lives that it was emerald. It mattered not the shape of the light, but that it was emerald."

  "How curious that so many assassins agree on one color, especially considering how many of us are colorblind," the Grandmaster scratched his beard. "But color in the world of ideas, eh?"

  As a Grandmaster Assassin, Zayn knew how impossible that was. There was only grey and cyan in the world of ideas, with only the circumstantial red of the eyes of assassins. But emerald – not just green, but that exact same color – was an important detail. Not all of the eyes of assassins were red in the world of ideas, some were crimson and others scarlet, but they were all saying that the light that had appeared on the body was emerald.

  In a way, they were saying it was on the same level as the cyan. As the very thoughts that composed that realm.

  That was, to say the least, problematic.

  "So, let me get this straight," Zayn took a hit of his pipe. "We are dealing with an assassin that has brutalized one of our fellows, was completely undetected by all the other assassins in the warehouse, manifested their own light on the world of ideas, and then escaped without anyone seeing them?"

  Mehmed nodded.

  "Well, shit," the Grandmaster cursed. "It seems that we will need the full resources of the Gerges Pharmaceutical Company to resolve this slight. Ah, thinking about the expenses is making me dizzy already."