Deputy Paladin Connor Kenton Jr. was very confused by what he was seeing. It looked like a piece of equipment from the wind turbine, what with all its blinking lights and machinery. But it was sitting on a rusty hand truck in the middle of the motel lobby, which was rather unusual. He had been staring at the thing trying to puzzle out what exactly it was and how it got here when he heard a door down the hall creak open.

Annie stumbled into the lobby dressed in jeans and a ragged t-shirt looking like she'd been hit by a train. Her hair was a ragged tangled mess, her ruby eyes were bloodshot, and the bags under them looked heavier than the canister sitting in the lobby. All of that, combined with the fact she was currently propping herself up against the wall, gave Connor the distinct impression that the Stranger had had a rough night.

"Mornin' Deputy" she slurred her words slightly. 

"Good morning Annie. Do you know what this thing is doing here?" he gestured to the strange canister, opting not to acknowledge her haggard appearance. It felt impolite to him. 

"That? I brought it in here last night, swiped it off that smuggler I told you about." Annie shuffled behind the bar counter and began rooting around beneath it.

"The smuggler from the mines? He was here?"

"Yup. Did some sort of hand off behind Mitch's clinic." Annie emerged from behind the counter with a glass of water and a pill bottle. She tipped two pale green pills into her hand and knocked them back along with the entire glass of water, "If you see Tallis before I do, tell her to add a bottle of whiskey to my tab."

Ah, that explains it, "Rough night?" Connor asked.

"You could say that." Annie eyed a bottle on the wall, then shook her head, "Give me ten minutes and I'll be good to go. I want to ask Lorena about that thing." she gestured vaguely in the direction of the canister. 

"Wait, did you see who Filch met with?" Connor asked while he unconsciously took a step towards Annie.

She stared at him for a second as if she were considering her words carefully, then, "I'm not sure. It was dark and I want a bit more info before I say anything."

"Who're you thinking it is?" he pressed.

"I won't say anything yet. I need to be sure." Annie's voice carried an edge of steel.

Connor was a bit taken aback, "Okay then, let's get going. The sooner we see Lorena the better."

Annie nodded and then disappeared back down the hallway. Connor killed time by inspecting the bar, it had the large gash in the counter from Annie's tussle with Patton, but otherwise was looking surprisingly intact given the beating the motel lobby had received the last few days. Annie's empty bottle was resting a little further down the counter next to two short glasses, one of which had a spindly crack running down the side of it. Connor was surprised, Tulvir had always had a particular pride when it came to the motel's bar. He had never known the laceri to let a single napkin remain out of place for more than a moment, let alone a cracked whiskey glass. 

Connor was mulling over the cracked glass when Annie stepped back out into the lobby. She was dressed in her hunting leathers and had strapped on her additional armor plates under a cloak with a strange geometric design; and she had her holster, pouch, and medicine case hanging from her charm belt. She leaned over the counter and clipped her sword to the magnet on her back and jammed her pistol into its holster. 

"Ready." was all she said.

"We expecting a fight?" Connor asked.

"Always. I've had enough surprises on this job." she sounded tired.

Connor nodded and waved his hand in a "lead the way" motion and grabbing the hand truck as he did. Something had happened last night, beyond catching the smuggler. After a few minutes of walking to let the gears in his brain turn a bit, he looked over at Annie.

"Who were you drinking with last night?" Connor opted for the blunt approach.

Annie stumbled a bit and caught herself, "What?" she asked.

"There were two glasses at the bar, one of them is cracked."

"It broke during the fight." Annie said, but her voice sounded hollow.

Connor very gently put a free hand on her shoulder and they stopped, "Annie, I trust you. If you don't want to tell me I'm not going to make you, and long as you don't think it will affect your work that's ok by me. But you're my friend, and I'm worried about you."

She didn't look at him. Connor couldn't see Annie's eyes behind her glasses, but he was familiar enough with the Stranger now to know his words had struck a chord.

"Do you want to keep going?" he asked.

Annie shook her head, "It was that bounty hunter, Jaigra. She wanted to talk." her voice was strained.

"How did that go?" he asked gently.

She stared at something in the middle distance, "I don't know." Annie wiped her eyes, "Can we get going?"

"Sure." Connor said.

The two of them walked in silence the rest of the way to the wind turbine. It wasn't necessarily an uncomfortable silence, more of a thoughtful one. Both Paladin and Stranger had much to think about, and Connor wasn't keen to press Annie for more details lest she close herself off entirely. Annie, on the other hand, had the emotional constipation of a clam, and even saying as little as she did was a bitter struggle against herself. She was far too hungover to add that sort of emotional burnout to her plate. 

So the two of them quietly arrived at the door to the turbine and Connor rapped his knuckles on the door. There was a few minutes of muffled cursing and stomping, then Lorena threw the door open with a crash.

"What?" she barked. 

Connor spoke first, "Hey Lorena! We need some help, Annie found some kinda mechanical doohickey and neither of us have a clue what it is."

"And what makes you think I do?" Lorena made her irritation clear.

"It came from near the radiation shield." Annie forced out the words. 

Lorena cocked an eyebrow, "Show me."

The pair took her down the stairs and over to the canister (There was no way either of them was going to haul that thing up a flight of stairs).

"The fuck?" Lorena said as soon as she saw the canister.

"What?" Connor asked.

"That's a power bank. It's able to store energy for transport, if you configure it right." Lorena knelt down to inspect the canister.

"What happens if you configure it wrong?" Annie crouched down next to her.

"There's a good chance it'll fry the fuck out of whatever it's plugged into."

"Would it mess with the wiring?" she pressed.

The mechanic shrugged, "Probably, if it has enough juice."

Connor watched Annie connect several dots in real time. She shot up and turned to him, "I need to go talk to Doctor Mitch!" she said and took off. 

"Wait, what about the canister?" Connor called after her.

"Don't care!" Annie waved a dismissive hand over her shoulder as she ran.

Connor turned to Lorena, "Do you mind keeping this inside the turbine?" he asked apologetically. 

Lorena grunted and he took off after the Stranger, then looked over the massive power bank. "... Are you fucking kidding me?"

Connor didn't expect Annie to be this fast. He was pumping his legs as hard as he could, but he was losing ground on the Stranger with every step. He saw her skid to a stop in front of Mitch's clinic and shove her way through the door, then she was gone. Connor was panting and wheezing by the time he reached the clinic door, left open behind Annie, and he shouldered the door open to step inside. Annie's hand shot out in front of him, forcing him to a halt just inside the threshold.

The tile floor was smeared with blood in a wide arc that ended a few feet from the doorway. The heavy scent of iron mingled with the chemical scent of the doctor’s disinfectant, melding into a nauseating miasma. Annie pulled her cloak up to cover her nose, Connor pressed his face into his elbow.

“No…” he said softly.

Doctor Thaddeus Mitchell lay limp on the ground, collapsed on top of his legs like a marionette whose strings had been cut. They could see the deep slash in his neck from the doorway and the stream of blood trickling down his throat and along his arm. Annie stepped carefully around the blood arc, trying to avoid leaving any prints it. Connor watched her inch across the floor to kneel at the doctor's side. His neck made a squelching noise as she carefully tipped his head back.

"Neck's cut down to the bone," she remarked, "Just like the others. Bruising's here on the collarbone too."

"Damn it!" Connor shouted and smashed his fist against the doorframe so hard the wall shook and made Annie jump.

"Hey! Watch it!" she snapped. 

Connor said nothing, just turned and stormed out the door. Annie sighed and turned to inspect the area around Mitch. The body's position and the pattern of the blood spray were both in line with what she'd seen from the other bodies, as was the superhuman strength exhibited in the neck wound that nearly severed his spine. There was something new here though. Footprints.

Bloody tracks led away from Mitch, but not from behind him like Annie inspected. Instead they started in front of the body, and slight smearing along the toes and balls of the feet told Annie the owner of those prints had crouched down, probably to look closely at the doctor. Annie's eyes traced the path of the footprints towards a desk at the back of the clinic and she tapped the rune on her glasses.

There wasn't the burst of shimmering light Annie was used to, the space around her was empty void. Lifeless. The corpse pushed away any traces of magic that might have been left behind around the body, but that was to be expected. Annie glanced around; starting several feet away from the body were tangles of dull orange thread that meandered around the clinic, back and forth out the door and from the operating table, pacing around in circles and generally just saturating the place. It was a safe bet that these belonged to the doctor.

Annie followed the tracks over to the desk. The density of the Veil threads around it pointed towards Mitch having spent a great deal of time here, but there was no sign of wear and tear on anything. The desk and chair were pristine, not a scuff mark or tiny scratch in sight. It was as if the desk were brand new. Hold on a minute...

Annie looked closely at the wood. It was a luxurious varnished cherry, polished to an almost mirror sheen and adorned with carvings of various animals like tiger voles, flying Cobras, and bears. It was hard to believe the doctor could afford such an expense, he would hardly be making the big bucks with his practice here in the middle of nowhere on the edge of a wasteland. Very hard to believe indeed.

A locked drawer near the top caught Annie's eye, she gave it an experimental tug and had the pleasant surprise of it popping right open. Inside was a whole lot of nothing. There were some paperclips, a few discarded rubber bands, and not much else. Well, not much else besides the smears of dried blood along the drawer's edges and its base. The murderer had been after something in this draw, and Annie would guess he'd found it.

She nudged the drawer shut and tugged open another. It was empty. She opened up the drawer beside it. Empty as well. They looked clean, no hints of dust or lint inside. It didn't seem like the doctor had used his shiny new desk very much. Annie tried the next drawer down. Inside was an array of folders labelled various things like clinical notes, patient files, medications, expenses, receipts, and inventory.

Annie plucked the expenses folder from the drawer and flipped it open. Inside was what she'd expect: a stack of reports as thick as her finger each marked with line upon line of names and numbers. There were countless orders for medical supplies, each noted with the runner who'd taken the request and the exact quantity of the order along with the cost and profit. She flipped through the reports, she wasn't sure what exactly she expected to find in there, but something here smelled, and it wasn't the corpse. 

After standing there combing through the clinic's expense reports three or four times, Annie finally found what she was looking for. The doctor's largest expense by far was for radiation pills like the ones he'd given Annie. He'd said it was a common condition in town, but the quantity he was ordering was beyond extreme. He had enough pills in here to give every resident of Millpoint three or four bottles of the stuff each. Almost as if he was stocking up for something. Annie folded a few reports and tucked them into a jacket pocket, then pulled the receipts folder from the drawer.

The receipts told much the same story as the expense reports: massive quantities of radiation pills coming in, smaller quantities of pills going out. But there was something else there too, a receipt for "services rendered" just noted as being paid for by a "contractor". Annie checked the reports again. The doctor was fairly meticulous with his documentation, he noted every detail on his expenses down to the runner who made the delivery, but "a contractor" left a massive gaping hole where the details would usually go. And the contractor paid for "services rendered" often. Large amounts of money, hundreds of Union alt, found their way through the doctor's clinic every other week like clockwork. 

Annie looked at the new desk, the locked drawer, the report in her hand, and at the corpse of Doctor Mitch. The doctor had been in on some sort of racket, and Annie knew of only one game in town it might be. She had to find Sheriff Jed.

She found Connor outside, leaning against the wall to the clinic and staring at the sky, "The 'doc was good to me," he said, "Didn't tell anyone about my meds, didn't make a fuss, just wanted to make sure I was being safe about it."

"Sounds like he was a good doctor." Annie leaned against the wall beside him.

"He was. You know he set the bone when Tallis broke her leg trying to reshingle the roof? He even kept one of the shingles, called it a souvenir." Connor smiled softly, "We never let her hear the end of it."

"I'm sorry." Annie said. The weight of the papers in her coat pocket suddenly felt heavy.

"What did you find?" Connor asked and looked at Annie. He was on the verge of tears. 

"I..." Annie did not like what she was going to say next, "I found his desk. And some documents. It's not good." she pulled the reports out of her pocket and hesitantly passed them to the Paladin.

He read them in silence, then folded them up and passed them back to her. "I see." Was all he said.

"We should find the Sheriff." Annie said.

"Yeah." Connor's eyes stayed fixed on the ground.

Annie very slowly placed a hand on his shoulder, like she was trying to pet a wild horse, "You don't have to come with me."

Connor looked up at her, "I just need a minute," he said, "I'll catch up to you."

"Alright," Annie got up and dusted herself off, "I'm going to go check the Sheriff's office."

He grabbed her wrist, "Be careful, ok?"

Annie grinned at him, "I'm always careful, Deputy."

Hangover forgotten, Annie sprinted her way through the Millpoint streets. Possibilities were racing through her mind. Mitch was involved in the Sheriff's smuggling business somehow just like Tulvir, of that she was certain, and it had something to do with the radiation pills. The doctor had said radiation sickness was common in Millpoint, but Annie knew the town had a radiation shield, one that had continuous outages that let radiation leak through and made the residents sick. Then the sick residents went to Mitch for treatment and he sold them the radiation pills. That thread made sense to Annie.

Then there was the other thread. Sheriff Jed drains power from the wind turbine using a power bank that can fry electronics if used improperly, then he and Tulvir take the power bank to Filch the smuggler who takes it out of town and over to Partee City. How did the two things connect? Did Jed intentionally short the radiation shielding so residents bought more pills from Mitch and then get rid of the evidence by smuggling it out of town? It was possible. 

But there were still pieces missing. Who was the mage with the grey threads that killed Jen, Tulvir, and Mitch? And why? Whoever it was had a substantial amount of magical power to throw around, left no tracks, and could move about town unnoticed. If Annie was right, that same mage had used magic to carve out the tunnel Filch accessed the town with too, which meant they have some stake in Jed's smuggling. But why?

The Stranger was close, but there were still too many missing pieces for her liking. She stopped outside the Sheriff's office and took a moment to breathe. She'd been doing an awful lot of running for someone recovering from a stab wound, radiation poisoning, and a night of heavy drinking. She knew her body was going to crash at some point, she just prayed it wouldn't be until after she'd interrogated Jed. She pulled on the handle to the office.

Nothing. The door didn't budge. Well that took a bit of the wind from her sails.

Connor probably had a key, but Annie didn't have time to wait until he got there and she certainly wasn't running back to grab it from him. She should really learn how to pick locks, that would make doors much less of a problem. And handcuffs. In the meantime, she started looking for another way in.

The sheriff's office wasn't much to look at. It was a squat cement T-shaped building with a flat roof and a bland beige paintjob. Annie hadn't been impressed with it when she'd arrived at Millpoint and she remained unimpressed now. The Sheriff's office did have one thing going for it though, it had nice big windows to either side of the door.

Annie whipped out her sword and smashed it into the window, then shoved her arm through and slapped the wall a few times feeling her way towards the door. Then, once her fingers brushed the wood, she brushed them along the edge until she felt the cool metal of the lock. With a quick twist of her fingers and a jerk of her hand, the door to the Millpoint Sheriff's office popped right open. Clearly the Sheriff didn't care much for his building's security.

The glass crunched under Annie's boots as she walked into the office and made a beeline for the Sheriff's desk. She hadn't really taken the time to have a proper look at it before. Her first time in the office she'd ridden 30 hours across an irradiated wasteland and was half delirious, the second time she'd been skewered by a demonic aberration from another dimension and was half delirious. This time she was only hungover and about a quarter delirious, so she was already off to a better start. 

It was an enormous desk made of a glossy varnished cherry wood and sported roughly a million and one drawers to search through. Annie usually saw these desks in the offices of men who wanted to appear powerful and thought some shiny pieces of wood were the best way to go about it. Normal things that normal people think, obviously. 

Annie shoved the enormous padded chair to get it out of the way and very nearly threw out her shoulder and smashed her head into the desk when it barely moved. She stood up.

”What?” Annie asked no one in particular. She gave the chair an experimental push, it scooted a small distance and stopped again, “What?” she repeated. She began to inspect the chair, getting onto her knees to check the wheels, spinning it back and forth in half turns to try and feel out the weight of it, running her hand up along the back of it looking for an odd seam. Nothing felt off or out of place, so what gives? Annie turned the chair to inspect the front of it and found herself looking at the back again. She paused. Turned the chair to look at the front only to be greeted by the back again. 

“What?” Annie said again. 

She gave the chair a very forceful turn and felt something smack into her legs and nearly drop her to the floor, then was met with the back of the chair once more. Alright, enough was enough. Annie was going to conquer whatever was going on with the Sheriff’s weird chair. She tapped the little rune on the rim of her glasses and was greeted by a dense and tangled net of light. Grey light, to be exact.

”Motherfucker.” Annie muttered. Sheriff Dickhead had a magic chair. Well, it wouldn’t be magic for long if Annie had anything to say about it. She bit down hard on her thumb, pricking it with her incisor and drawing a tiny trickle of blood. She reached her bleeding thumb towards the grey threads and watched them wither and snap as her blood brushed against them. The grey mage’s spell slowly dissolved away, and Annie recoiled with a gasp..

Sat in the chair, was a corpse. 

It was a man, a head or two shorter than Annie with a large grey felt cowboy hat and a crusty brown mustache that covered his upper lip with a short pointed goatee just below his lower. His maroon vest and white collared shirt were covered in dried blood and what remained of his desiccated skin had had begun to rot, making it a perfect breeding ground for the maggots that crawled from the slashes in his neck and wrists and poured from the small bullet hole in this forehead. 

This was Sheriff Jed, and he had clearly been dead for several weeks. So who had she and Connor been talking to?

Annie turned away from the corpse and tried to clear her head. So the Sheriff was dead, and somebody was walking around wearing his face. That was bad. How much had Connor told them? This other person had also somehow killed three people with incredible strength and no signs of a struggle, but Jed had completely different wounds, so did they just change methods or was there another party involved? Annie knew at least one mage in town with two pistols and a willingness to use them. 

And then Deputy Connor Kenton Junior walked through the door.

”Connor–!” Annie exclaimed.

“Annie? What’s… Oh gods.” Connor placed a hand over his mouth and ran back out the door, Annie heard him retch into the dirt just beyond the threshold. She looked at the Sheriff’s corpse, then followed him outside.

Connor was hunched against the wall, wiping his mouth and gasping between dry heaves. He looked up at Annie, then retched some more.

”I uh…” Annie wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say, “Were you two close?” That seemed like a good enough start. 

He spat and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, "Is that really him?" Connor glanced towards the doorway and forced down another wave of bile.

"It sure looks like it." Annie was feeling a bit green around the gills herself.

"What do we do now?" he asked her.

"Same as before, find Sheriff Not-Jed and ask him a few questions." Annie patted her pistol emphatically. 

"Right... Okay, yeah, right." Connor's voice was hazy. Annie could hardly blame him, it seemed like the Paladin's whole world was falling out from under his feet the last few days.

"You should get some rest, Deputy." Annie said and closed the office door behind her, "I can handle myself."

Connor looked up at her, "No, you shouldn't go by yourself!"

Annie sighed and pulled off her glasses to lock eyes with the Paladin, "Connor, you look like you're about to pass out. I will be monumentally upset if I have to drag your unconscious ass around because you refused to take a damn nap, not to mention that I'll have add 'stubborn paladin hauling' to your bill."

Connor chuckled weakly, "Do I look that bad?"

Annie nodded solemnly, "Like three day old roadkill."

"Fuck." Connor cursed.

Annie put a theatrically aghast hand to her breast, "Deputy Kenton! Was that actual profanity I just heard? For fucking shame sir, for fucking shame!"

That got a smirk from the Deputy, "Turn me in if you'd like, though I hear this town's running low on lawmen these days."

Annie snorted gently punched Connor in the shoulder, "You gonna be alright?" she asked. Connor nodded, and she took a step back, "Good. I'll let you know when I know a bit more about our Not-Sheriff."

Connor watched her go with a sinking feeling in his stomach. He really hoped Annie had a plan of some kind because, for the first time in a long time, Deputy Connor Kenton Junior had no idea what to do.