The email had not been a concern before.
This was because, before, there had been nothing to manage. The office's intake address, a string of characters Shmuel had assembled from the Hana Association's registration requirements and a free provider that came with the affiliate package, had received, in its first two months of operation, eleven messages. Three had been automated confirmations from the Association itself. Two had been from a man in District 14 who had the wrong address and was trying to reach a plumbing service. One had been from Shmuel, testing whether the address worked, which it had. The remaining five had been contract inquiries that had gone nowhere, either because the client had found another office faster or because the job had been the kind that dissolved on closer inspection, too vague, too dangerous for their grade at the time, or once memorably, entirely fictional, submitted by someone who appeared to have confused the intake form with a creative writing exercise.
The inbox had been manageable.
The inbox was no longer manageable.
Shmuel sat at the desk with both mechanical arms resting on the surface, fingers of his left hand curled loosely around a cup of tea that had gone from hot to warm to the temperature of a mild opinion while he worked through the queue. The screen in front of him showed forty-seven unread messages. That was after he had already read and sorted nineteen.
Sixty-six emails.
In four days.
He opened the next one and read it with the focused, methodical attention he brought to documentation, which was the same attention he brought to most things but deployed here without pleasure.
Dear The Great Kamina Office,
I am writing to inquire whether your office handles investigations into anomalous phenomena in residential areas. There have been reports in our building of a presence on the third floor that makes sounds inconsistent with the building's structure and that has caused two tenants to vacate their apartments in the past month. We are located in District 12, south section, near the…
Shmuel flagged it, tagged it District 12 / Phenomenon / Investigate and moved to the next.
To whom it may concern,
Marrow Noodle House in K Corp's Nest is currently seeking a temporary brand representative for a promotional period of two weeks. The role would require the successful candidate to wear the Marrow Mascot costume for four-hour shifts and engage with customers entering the establishment. We noticed your office recently achieved Grade 7 status and felt…
He stared at this one for a moment longer than the others.
The Marrow Mascot costume, based on the attached promotional image, was a large anthropomorphic bowl of noodles with felt eyes and short arms that did not appear to allow for meaningful range of motion. The hourly rate listed in the body of the email was not unreasonable.
He tagged it Unusual / Non-Combat / K Corp Nest / Pending and moved on.
Good morning,
My family resides in District 13 and we are seeking a long-term security arrangement for our household. The contract would be for a period of one year, full board included, with accommodation provided on the property. We require fixers with…
A year. He flagged it District 13 / Guard / Long-term / Review and kept moving.
The emails did not stop having the quality of emails. They arrived in some over-formal, some casual to the point of vagueness, some that buried the actual job somewhere in the third paragraph behind several sentences of context that may or may not have been relevant, some that were so precisely formatted they had clearly been sent to multiple offices simultaneously and had simply included his address in the batch. Some were polite. Some were not. One had been written entirely in capital letters for reasons that remained unclear.
He was on the thirty-first when the couch shifted.
Kamina had been lying on it with his arm over his face for the better part of an hour. The shift meant he was awake, or had been awake, and was now rotating into a position that involved being upright.
He sat up.
Looked at Shmuel.
Looked at the screen.
"Still going?" he said.
"Still going."
Kamina reached up and straightened his sunglasses. He looked at the number on the screen. "How many."
"Sixty-six total. I'm at thirty-one."
A pause.
"Is that a lot."
Shmuel considered the previous total of eleven across two months.
"Yes," he said. "That's a lot."
Kamina absorbed this with the morning-adjacent thoughtfulness. He put his elbows on his knees and looked at the screen from across the room.
"What kind of things."
Shmuel leaned back from the desk slightly, both arms pulling back from the surface with the faint pneumatic hiss of joints adjusting. He looked at the sorted folders he'd been building tags and categories, the small architecture of a workload that needed to be navigable.
"Phenomenon investigation in the district," he said. "Sounds like something on the third floor of a residential building, probably Urban Myth class at most. Couple of those, actually three separate buildings." He turned back to check. "Yes, three."
"Hm."
"There's a guard contract for a wealthy family in District 13. One year, full board included."
Kamina looked at him. "A year."
"A year."
"We're not doing a year."
"I'm not saying we are. I'm saying it's there." Shmuel scrolled. "There's an odd job from K Corp. A noodle shop in one of their Nests wants someone to wear a mascot costume for two weeks."
Imogen had appeared in the doorway of the corridor at some point in the past thirty seconds, leaning against the frame with her arms crossed and her hair still slightly disordered from sleep, which she would not acknowledge and nobody would mention. She was listening.
"A mascot costume," Kamina said.
"For a noodle shop."
"What does the costume look like."
Shmuel turned the screen slightly so Kamina could see the promotional image from across the room.
Kamina looked at the large anthropomorphic bowl of noodles with its felt eyes and abbreviated arms.
"No," he said.
"The rate was reasonable."
"I don't care about the rate."
"I hadn't decided anything yet."
"Shmuel." He pointed at the screen. "I am not wearing that."
"Noted," Shmuel said, and tagged it Unusual / Non-Combat / Pending without changing the status.
Kamina watched him do this. "You didn't close it."
"I didn't close it."
"Shmuel…"
"The rate is reasonable, Bro."
Imogen made a sound in the doorway that she immediately converted into a cough.
Shmuel returned to the queue. He scrolled past three more that he had already read and tagged a request for document retrieval from a defunct company's District 12 office, a client who wanted their neighbour surveilled for reasons that became less legitimate the further into the email you read, and a very long message from what appeared to be a community group that could not decide what it actually wanted until he reached the next unread message and opened it.
He read it.
Read it again.
"There's one here from a research group," he said. "They're studying the clustering pattern of Urban Myth reports in Districts 11 through 14. They want a field office to corroborate their data by investigating three specific locations and reporting back. Academic commission, collaborative basis." He paused. "The rate is lower than standard but they're offering access to their incident database for ninety days as part of the arrangement."
The room was quiet for a moment.
"That database," Imogen said from the doorway, "would tell us what's actually going on in the districts before we walk into it."
"That's why I mentioned it."
Kamina looked at the ceiling, doing whatever internal calculation he did when something was actually interesting versus when he was simply awake and in proximity to information. "What kind of phenomena."
"Doesn't specify in the header. Details on request."
"Request the details."
Shmuel was already drafting the reply, both mechanical hands moving across the keyboard with the particular efficiency of limbs that did not tire from typing, the keystrokes even and uninterrupted.
He worked through the next several in the same methodical progression flag, tag, sort, move on. A request for protection during a supply chain transport between District 12 and District 15, which had potential. A message from someone asking if the office did debt collection, which it did not and which he declined with a form response. Two separate clients reporting unusual activity near the old L Corp infrastructure in the southern section of the district, which he tagged alongside the residential phenomenon reports. A commission that read straightforwardly until its seventh paragraph, which contained a clause so legally ambiguous it appeared to be hiding inside itself, and which he moved to a separate folder marked Review Carefully / Possibly Don't.
Forty-three read. Twenty-three remaining.
He picked up the cup of tea with his right hand, the steel fingers closing around it with calibrated gentleness, and found it had passed from warm to room temperature. He drank it anyway.
"How many are actually worth considering," Kamina said. He had migrated from the couch to the chair across from the desk, not crowding the space but present in the way he was always present, filling the room up to its edges without particularly trying.
Shmuel looked at his tags.
"Realistically? Six, maybe seven have enough information to evaluate properly. Another four or five are worth requesting details on. The rest are either wrong for us, wrong on principle, or need more from the client before they're anything."
"Out of sixty-six."
"Out of sixty-six."
Kamina considered this ratio with the expression of someone who found it both unsurprising and faintly amusing. "The price of being findable."
"More or less."
Imogen had moved fully into the room by now, settling herself on the arm of the couch, not quite committing to sitting, the posture of someone who was still deciding whether she was participating in this conversation or observing it. She looked at the screen over Shmuel's shoulder.
"Grade 9 to Grade 5," she said. "Two weeks."
Shmuel glanced at her.
"Since I registered with the Hana Association," she said. It wasn't pride exactly. More the tone of someone turning a number over and examining it from multiple angles, checking it for meaning. "That's what the letter said. Grade 9 to Grade 5 in two weeks."
"The Association weights it by case class and outcome," Shmuel said. "The cases we took weren't Grade 9 cases."
"We nearly died in most of them."
"That's generally what happens when Grade 9 fixers take cases above their weight."
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "What's the gap between Grade 5 and Grade 4."
Shmuel looked at the ceiling briefly. "In practical terms, they are case access, client tier. In difficulty terms," He paused. "Significant."
"So Kamina went from Grade 7 to Grade 4."
"Straight through," Shmuel said.
Kamina said nothing. He was looking at the window.
"That doesn't happen often," Shmuel added. "Grade jumps of that size. The Association accounts for exceptional circumstances but three grades in a single review period is… " He stopped. Chose the accurate word. "Rare."
The window showed the usual view of the district's rooftops and upper walkways, the city doing its perpetual, indifferent thing.
"You should be proud," Imogen told Kamina.
"I know," Kamina said, without turning from the window.
It was the honest, unfussy confidence of a man. He turned from the window after a moment and looked at Shmuel.
"Finish the emails," he said. "We'll look at the real ones after."
Shmuel turned back to the screen.
Twenty-three remaining.
He set the empty teacup down, both mechanical arms returning to the keyboard, and opened the next message with the same methodical attention, tagging and sorting and building the small architecture of what the office had become without either of them entirely planning for it, a Grade 7 office in a District 12 apartment with a sign that was missing a screw and an inbox that had sixty-six messages in it and a kettle on the counter that Shmuel would put on again once he'd finished, because the tea had gone cold and there was still work to do.
He kept reading.
The sixty-sixth email was easily recognizable..
Shmuel recognised the address before he read it.
He read the subject line.
Then he read the body of the email.
Then he set both hands flat on the desk and said.
"Kamina. Come read this."
Kamina was off the couch, crossing the room. He leaned over Shmuel's shoulder and read the screen.
"Who's Alexy?" Imogen said from the arm of the couch.
Both of them looked at her.
Shmuel leaned back in the chair. He looked at the screen for a moment before answering, choosing what to include and what to leave out the way he always organised information by relevance first, completeness second.
"The first person who ever commissioned this office," he said. "Before we had a grade worth mentioning. They came through the door with a case." He paused. "The White Circle. The factory in District 13 where workers were disappearing. That was Alexy's commission."
Imogen was quiet for a moment. "That was before I joined."
"Yes."
"And since then?"
"The golden coin case," Shmuel said. "The researcher who had been working under the Ring's protection. Alexy was connected to that from the beginning, gave us the information we needed, was present at the right moments." He stopped. "They operate at a level that makes most of what we encounter look like surface detail. We don't fully know what they are or what they represent."
"And we know," Kamina said, "that when they show up, things get interesting."
Imogen looked at the screen now. "What does it say."
Shmuel read it aloud.
The commission was, on its surface, straightforward. A group of four children in T Corp's Nest orphans, ages ranging from ten to sixteen had a stargazing project. An ongoing study of the sky as visible from within District 20, which was its own particular challenge given the District's nature. The children needed supervision, support, and protection for the duration of the project. Alexy was requesting the Great Kamina Office for the role.
The pay listed at the bottom of the email was no small amount.
It was not the rate of a protection detail either.
It was the rate of something Alexy expected to require significant capability, written by someone who understood exactly what they were paying for and had priced accordingly.
"Full body procedures," Shmuel continued, reading from the brief. "Three of the four children have undergone complete prosthetic conversion. The youngest has not." He set both hands back on the desk. "Ages ten through sixteen. The youngest is ten."
The room was quiet for a moment.
Prosthetic procedures were common enough in the City. Full body conversion in children was less common but not unheard of, especially among orphans, where the procedures sometimes came as part of institutional arrangements that benefited the institution rather more than the child.
Nobody said this out loud. Nobody needed to.
"We're taking it," Kamina said.
It was not a question or a suggestion. It had the quality of a statement that had already been true before he made it, that he was simply confirming for the room's benefit.
Shmuel looked at the rate again. Then at the email. Then he nodded.
"We're taking it."
Imogen looked between them. "You both decided that very fast."
"Alexy doesn't send things that aren't worth taking," Shmuel said.
"And kids," Kamina added, with the simplicity of someone for whom this completed the argument.
Imogen looked at the screen for another moment. Then she settled back on the arm of the couch with the expression of someone who had reached the same conclusion independently and was simply confirming it arrived at the same place. "The rate," she said. "That's a combat rate."
"Yes," Shmuel said.
"A stargazing project for four orphaned children in T Corp's Nest has a combat rate."
"Yes."
"So Alexy expects something will try to stop them from watching the sky."
"That's the most reasonable interpretation of this number," Shmuel said, indicating the rate with a gesture of his right hand. "A child caretaker doesn't cost this much. A child caretaker with the capability to handle whatever this rate is accounting for is not what they'd hire for the role. They're hiring us because the children need someone who can watch the sky with them and deal with whatever decides to interrupt."
Imogen absorbed this.
"T Corp," she said.
"T Corp," Shmuel confirmed.
"District 20."
"District 20."
She was quiet for a moment, thinking through what she knew, which was less than Shmuel and more than she'd known six months ago. "The time district. The one where everything is black and white."
"Monochrome in the Backstreets," Shmuel said. "Sepia in the Nest. T Corp's Singularity drains colour from the district. The amount of time a person owns determines how much of their day they actually experience, four hours is the minimum to survive. Time functions as currency there." He paused, organising the relevant details in order of practical importance. "We'll need time pendants to operate in the Nest. Personal timepieces. Without them we can't move through the district at a functional rate. We'd be running on minimum allocation the moment we stepped inside T Corp territory."
"How much does that cost," Imogen said.
"More than we currently have available from the last commission cycle." He looked at the screen. "But this rate covers it with significant remainder. I'll pull from the office budget to acquire the pendants before we go. We recoup on completion."
Kamina had moved around to the front of the desk by this point and was now sitting on the edge of it with his arms crossed and the particular expression he wore when he was thinking ahead of where the conversation currently was not impatient, just running further down the line than everyone else and waiting for the rest to catch up.
"T Corp," he said. "Time as money. Colour drained out of everything. Kids who need watching while they look at the sky." He tilted his head slightly. "That's the job."
"That's the job," Shmuel said.
Kamina was quiet for a moment.
Then he grinned..
"I have absolutely no idea what waits for us in that district," he said, and somehow made this sound like a promise rather than an admission. "But I know it's going to be something."
Imogen looked at him. "How do you know that."
"Because I know Alexy doesn't send things that aren't worth taking," he said, using Shmuel's exact words back with the easy comfort of someone who had absorbed them into his own vocabulary. "And because I can feel it."
Shmuel looked at him.
"That's not a reliable metric," he said.
"Has it been wrong yet, Bro?"
Shmuel considered the White Circle. The golden coins. The Ring's laboratory. The Titanic.
He looked at the email from Alexy.
Four children. A stargazing project. A combat rate that implied something in District 20 did not want them to finish it.
"No," he said. "But it might be someday."
He turned back to the screen and began drafting the reply to Alexy. Formal, direct, the language of an office accepting a commission with the full understanding of what was being asked and the rate of his keystrokes was steady, both mechanical hands moving together, because there was a job to accept and after that there were time pendants to acquire and after that there was a monochrome district with four orphaned children in it who wanted to look at the sky.
Imogen looked up from the email on the screen.
"How are we getting there?"
Shmuel glanced at her. "District 20 is accessible from the main backstreet routes. There are connecting paths through…"
"Two weeks," Imogen said.
Shmuel stopped.
"At average," she continued, with the tone of someone who had looked at this problem from multiple angles and arrived at the same answer each time. "District 12 to District 20 is at least two weeks of travel. And that's assuming we have a car." She paused. "Which assumes one of us can drive."
The room considered this.
Shmuel was seventeen. Imogen was fourteen. These were facts that the City's licensing requirements had opinions about, specifically the opinion that neither of them was eligible to operate a registered vehicle in districts with active traffic regulation.
They both looked at Kamina.
Kamina looked back at them.
"I would not pass the written test," he said, with the uncomplicated honesty of a man who had made his peace with this limitation.
"You haven't taken it," Imogen said.
"I don't need to take it to know."
"That's…"
She closed her mouth.
"So," Imogen said. "No car."
"We go on foot," Kamina said.
He said it like he said most things, as a complete answer, self-contained, requiring no further infrastructure.
"On foot," Imogen repeated.
"On foot."
"For two weeks."
"More or less."
Shmuel set both hands on the desk. "The bus lines are still active on several of the main backstreet corridors between here and District 20. Not all of them, some sections dropped service after L Corp collapsed and the routes that ran through their territory haven't been reinstated. But the core connections between 12 and 20 have at least partial coverage." He paused. "If we hit a section where the route is broken or there's an access issue, we can hire a taxi for the gap."
Imogen's expression shifted. The logistical concern that had been occupying her face made room for something more immediate.
"A taxi," she said.
"For the sections where…"
"I want the front seat."
Kamina's head turned toward her with the speed of a man whose territorial instincts had been activated without warning.
"That's my seat," he said.
"You just said you don't care about…"
"I didn't say I don't care. I said we're going on foot. The taxi is hypothetical."
"The taxi is the real deal and I want the front seat."
"The front seat is mine by default. I'm the tallest. I have the most legs."
"Everyone has the same number of…"
"I have the most leg," Kamina said, gesturing at his legs as evidence, "and the front seat has the most room for legs, therefore…"
"That's not how…"
"It's geometry, Imogen…"
"It is absolutely not geometry…"
"Bro," Kamina said, turning to Shmuel. "Tell her. Front seat. Who gets it."
Shmuel looked at Kamina.
Then he looked at Imogen.
"Imogen should have the front seat," he said.
Kamina stared at him. "Based on what."
"Based on a vote."
"A vote requires…"
"WHO THINKS IMOGEN SHOULD SIT IN THE FRONT SEAT?"
The question left Imogen's mouth at a volume that the apartment had not been expecting. She had her hand raised before the last word landed. Shmuel raised both mechanical hands simultaneously with the unhurried certainty of someone who had known exactly how this would resolve from the moment he introduced the mechanism.
Two hands. Or three, depending on how you counted.
Kamina looked at the two raised hands. Then at Imogen's hand. Then at his own hands, which were not raised, which he appeared to be briefly considering raising on principle before deciding against it.
He looked at the ceiling.
Then he turned, walked to the couch, and lay down on it with the full commitment of a man returning to a position he had never truly left, one arm settling behind his head, legs extending to their full considerable length.
"Well," he said, to the ceiling, "I kind of don't care about the seat anyway."
The arm behind his head adjusted slightly.
"Front seat is a lot of sun through the window," he added, after a moment. "Hot. Inconvenient."
Another adjustment.
"Better view from the back, actually. Wider perspective. Strategic advantage too if you think about it."
Imogen looked at Shmuel.
Shmuel looked at his screen.
"I'll draft the acceptance to Alexy," he said, and began typing.
From the couch, Kamina stared at the ceiling with the expression of a man who genuinely, completely, and entirely did not care at all about where he sat in a hypothetical taxi, and had never cared, and found the whole subject faintly beneath his attention.
The ceiling fan clicked through its broken rotation.
Shmuel kept typing.