Another pause. I wait patiently for Jumble to keep reading, though as the seconds tick by, it seems less and less likely that there's more to the story.

"Is that where it stops?"

She purses her lips. "Not quite. But it's where the notes stop; everything else is just names and dates. The part I just read was written by one 'Whirl Branchsoft'. His handwriting stops here and gets replaced with… well… technically, it's still his. But it's like someone made a font out of his handwriting; there's no inconsistencies among letters at all."

The book snaps shut, and she hands it over to Pearl. It's a little too big for the shellraiser, yet somehow, she retreats into her shell with it in tow. Still a little off-putting to see, but we've got much bigger problems.

I nod down at the perfect bodies. "So all these people… they had their anchors taken?"

"That's my leading theory," Jumble confirms. She motions for me to follow her to one specific body; a paindne with salt-and-pepper fur and a snout that's far thinner than normal. "This is doctor Whirl. As you can see, he didn't escape the horizonguard's wrath."

The corpse rests on a simple medical blanket. Almost like whoever put him here expected him to recover. I reach down to gently feel at his neck on the off chance that he'd been… I don't know… put into a deep coma or hibernation-like state. All I feel is the radiant body-heat matching warmth of my surroundings.

"How did he die?" I wonder aloud. "When the anchor was destroyed, it said they didn't die right away. So what triggered the actual death? And how did the system do it?"

Jumble nods up at Pearl's shell. "It's all explained in there. But since we're on a time crunch, I'll give you the short version; the system only checks for anchors when the main quest progresses. All the death dates match up with those dates perfectly, and the people who didn't have their anchors destroyed aren't dead at all."

A very small piece of okay news. It means Gnash isn't instantly doomed if Dani decides to take his anchor to ensure cooperation. Also means we'll have to be damn careful when we eventually do find the asshole construct, since he'll probably threaten to destroy Gnash's anchor if we do anything.

I shake my head and step away. "So the horizonguard's using this to ensure loyalty–and there's a good chance most of his people don't even realize they're missing their anchors. Does this complicate things?"

Jumble shrugs. "Only if you care about their lives."

I set my jaw and look down at her to figure out if that was sarcasm or not. She looks right back up at me with the exact same questing glimmer in her eye. In those few seconds of eye contact, I can feel the confliction in Jumble's mind. There's no way she'd be happy to let all these people just die like that. But if we don't stop the horizonguard and the city rematerializes, then they'll all die anyway thanks to their missing anchors.

So there's only one thing to do; push it down the road. "We'll deal with that when the time comes."

"Yeah," Jumble agrees with a small, uncertain smile. "When the time comes. On a deadlier note, take a look at this construct. You'll see a striking similarity right away."

She steps away from the doctor and walks to the half of the room with the… less than complete constructs. Without a hint of squeamishness she kneels down over the one with all its extremities missing and jabs a finger at its heart. My eyes nearly bulge out of their sockets at the casualness, but before I can say a word, the heart beats.

A full blown contraction and relaxation. Only once, as if the force had brought it on, but that's not like any dead body part I've ever seen. All my disgust at the scene vaporizes and macabre possibilities rush in to fill the newly open space. I step over the construct corpse and crouch down just far enough away to avoid touching anything.

"Is it actually dead?" I ask.

"I'm pretty sure it is, but everything I've done to it says otherwise."

Jumble flattens her hands and presses down on the heart. It beats rapidly as if trying to shake her off. Maybe if I knew more about anatomy I'd be able to say all the ways that this is absolutely messed up and unnatural.

"So it's… acting like it's dead?"

"Hmm… yeah, I guess that's a good explanation," Jumble says. She lets up on the heart, then grabs the head and holds it up. "Recognize this guy?"

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Salt-and-pepper fur. Long, thin snout. It'd be damn hard not to. "Why's the doctor's construct dead here? Shouldn't it be working with the horizonguard right now?"

"Oh, it was. It and pretty much all the other constructs you see here." Jumble motions at the greying 'corpses' for emphasis. "I killed them a few days ago once I found this hidden room and figured out they were constructs."

"Is that why everything here is body-temperature?"

She nods. "It's another one of my skills; one of its uses is to keep everything else away."

Ah, right. Of course. "So you're the one who… uh…"

I motion at the construct corpses just like Jumble did. An image of her bloodied hands flashes in my mind, yet somehow, it brings nothing but relief. Relief that she'd only gone after the constructs the horizonguard's people had helped the system make. Not sure if that's exactly a positive thing.

"I am," she confirms. "I had to make sure they were actually constructs. When I first cut this one open it really scared me; he bled red all over the place, and his guts were… well… there. Even the twisted, broken paindne in the halls weren't made like this. And no matter what I did to the organs, then just regenerated as long as all the pieces were close enough. I… I'm pretty sure he could just revive at any time."

"What? That's… just…" I chuckle in disbelief and shake my head. "So it's only acting dead because it thinks it actually is the doctor? Am I assuming that right?"

Jumble slowly nods. "I'm pretty sure you are. If the system sends out a command to all these things, then they'll just get right up and start living again. I… didn't want to ask you to come here because you were so busy, but I think you might be the only one of us who can actually destroy the magic keeping them together."

I flip a purification through my fingers. "Right now?"

"Right now."

Purification flares as I drop the coin on the construct. Absolutely nothing happens, yet it feels like something just ended. The click of a television turning off in the next apartment over. I lean in closer and put two fingers on the thing's body.

It's exactly the same.

"Jumble?" I look over at her in question. "Did it do anything?"

She pushes on the heart in response. It beats back against her hand. With a furrowed brow she shakes her head, unsure why my spell didn't work. I'm not sure either. Maybe I have to… well… do what I did in the apartment. Repurpose the construct into something else.

I motion for her to put the head down. She does, then leans back for me to do my work. I touch the dead construct's forehead and try to focus on turning it into a spell. A spark of denial shoots through my nerves.

"Nope," I say as I shake my hand. "I didn't make the kill, so it doesn't count."

Jumble scrunches her face in annoyance. "I already tried it, too, and I couldn't get it to work either. Why not? Is it because they have Class Cards?"

That could do it. Or maybe the system's protecting them somehow. I stand up with a click of my tongue and look over all the others–none of which I even remotely recognize. None of the constructs. I nudge the doctor with my foot just to make sure he won't stand up and fight, but it really does look like he's dead.

At least until the system says he isn't.

"I guess we just need to get moving," I turn to Jumble and offer her my hand. "Unless there's another reason you're staying here?"

She shakes her head and takes my hand. "I thought maybe these constructs were like my friends. They're closer than the others we've found, but still not quite the same. Did you know Dani doesn't have any lungs? I kind of forgot to make them when I made him, and his body just kind of still works anyway."

No, I did not know that. Not sure how that works at all, honestly. Jumble takes the lead and brings me to the room's exit, takes one last look over the bodies, and frowns.

"Wait, I almost forgot. There's another body you need to take a look at."

Without waiting for me to say anything, she pulls me to the corpses–specifically, to one that's missing an arm. With a stump that's perfectly closed up. I furrow my brow as recognition tries to spark some neurons, but something just won't let it take hold. This feels like someone I've seen before. I just can't place it.

Jumble points down at him. "Do you recognize him?"

I narrow my eyes and try to make sense of the man. He's a paindne. Reddish-brown fur with black markings, fairly normal looking everything else, and of course the missing arm. There's a strange mark on his face–like the nose divots people with glasses get, but on his forehead.

…Forehead. Forehead. Something about that word shoves a blurry image of a face into my brain. It feels like I'm trying to remember something that I saw in a dream; all the details are fuzzy and utterly incomprehensible. Almost like the world itself is censoring them. I reach down and gently run two fingers over the corpse's forehead to feel at the divot.

The answer is tantalizingly close. But something's keeping me from seeing it. I grit my teeth and shake my head, then turn to Pearl. Maybe she has answers.

"It's one of them."

I haven't even said anything yet. "Pearl?"

She taps her book with growing unease. "The logs here say a patient came in with a self-inflicted amputation. They confiscated his anchor, and when he died, his construct appeared and stole the mask shard he wore on his forehead."

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