The Informant’s Last Words
Dravin liked the interrogation room cold. Not the kind of cold that made you shiver, but the kind that seeped into your bones, made your fingers stiff, made you forget what warmth felt like. The ventilation system hummed a low, constant note, recycling air that smelled of recycled ozone and the faint metallic tang of old blood.
The informant sat in the chair across from him. His name was Jex, a wiry man in his forties with a network of scars across his knuckles and a twitch in his left eye that told Dravin exactly how long he’d been awake. Forty-eight hours, maybe more. The fluorescents above the table buzzed, casting everything in a sickly white pallor.
Dravin didn’t sit. He stood, arms crossed, watching Jex with the patience of a man who had all the time in the world and knew exactly how to use it.
“You’ve been helpful,” Dravin said. His voice was flat, professional. “The information about the artist’s tag was useful. We traced his movements through three wards before he went underground.”
Jex’s jaw tightened. “Then let me go. I told you everything I know.”
“Did you?” Dravin uncrossed his arms and walked around the table, his boots clicking against the polished concrete floor. He stopped behind Jex, close enough that the man could feel his presence but not see his face. “You told me about the murals. The blue poppy. The ghost orchid in the old textile district. The night-blooming cereus on the wall of the abandoned hospital. But you didn’t tell me about the flower.”
Jex went still. The twitch in his eye stopped.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Dravin leaned down, his mouth inches from Jex’s ear. “The real one.”
The silence stretched. The ventilation hummed. Somewhere in the building, a door slammed shut, the sound echoing through the corridors like a gunshot.
“I don’t—” Jex started.
Dravin grabbed the back of his neck, fingers digging into the soft tissue just below the skull. Jex gasped, his body going rigid. Dravin held him there, not hard enough to cause real pain, but hard enough to remind him who was in control.
“Let me clarify,” Dravin said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “We’ve been tracking anomalies in the lower wards for six months. Temperature spikes. Soil composition changes. Air quality readings that don’t match the synthetic plant output. Someone is growing something organic down there. Something that shouldn’t exist.”
He released Jex’s neck and walked back around the table, sitting down across from him. He folded his hands on the metal surface and waited.
Jex rubbed the back of his neck, his eyes darting to the door, then to the camera in the corner, then back to Dravin. “I’m just a fence. I move stolen tech. I don’t deal in plants.”
“You deal in information,” Dravin said. “And information has a price. You’ve already taken my credits. Now I want the rest of what I paid for.”
Jex’s hands were shaking. He pressed them flat against the table to still them. “There’s a woman. She comes to the market sometimes, buys soil amendments. Not the synthetic kind—the real stuff, the kind that’s supposed to be illegal. She pays in old currency, pre-collapse coins. She doesn’t talk much.”
Dravin didn’t move. “Name.”
“I don’t know her name. She wears a hood, keeps her face down. But I saw her hands once. She had dirt under her nails. Real dirt. Dark, rich, the kind you don’t find in this city.”
“Where does she live?”
“I don’t know. But I saw her heading toward the old subway station on Tanner Street. The one that was sealed after the chemical spill.”
Dravin’s eyes narrowed. “The Tanner Street station was collapsed five years ago.”
“That’s what they want you to think.” Jex leaned forward, his voice dropping. “There’s a network down there. Old tunnels, maintenance shafts, storage rooms. People live in them. People who don’t want to be found.”
Dravin studied him for a long moment. Then he stood, walked to the door, and opened it. Two enforcers stood in the hallway, their faces blank behind their visors.
“Take him to holding,” Dravin said. “He’s going to help us find the entrance.”
Jex’s face went pale. “I told you everything! You said you’d let me go!”
Dravin turned back, his expression unreadable. “I said you’d been helpful. I didn’t say you were free.”
The enforcers grabbed Jex by the arms and hauled him out of the chair. He struggled, but they were stronger, their grip like steel. As they dragged him past Dravin, Jex spat at his feet.
“You’re going to regret this,” Jex hissed. “That flower—it’s not just a plant. It’s a memory. A piece of the old world. People will die before they let you take it.”
Dravin wiped the spit from his boot with a handkerchief, then looked up at Jex with cold, flat eyes. “That’s the idea.”
The enforcers pulled Jex down the hallway, his protests fading into the hum of the ventilation system. Dravin stood alone in the doorway, his mind already moving past the informant, past the interrogation, past everything except the single piece of information that mattered.
A real flower.
He pulled out his comm unit and dialed a number he knew by heart. It rang twice before a voice answered, smooth and cultured, with the practiced calm of a man who had never known fear.
“Report.”
“Sir,” Dravin said. “I have confirmation. There’s an organic plant in the lower wards. The informant placed it near the old Tanner Street station.”
A pause. Then: “How reliable is the source?”
“He’s scared. That makes him reliable. He wouldn’t lie to me.”
“Good.” The voice on the other end was pleased, the way a predator is pleased when it catches the scent of prey. “I want it found. I want it secured. And I want the person who’s been hiding it brought to me alive. They might know what they have.”
“Understood.”
“And Dravin?”
“Sir?”
“The artist who’s been painting those murals—the one who escaped your patrols. He’s connected to this. I can feel it. Find him too.”
The line went dead.
Dravin pocketed the comm unit and walked down the hallway, his boots echoing against the concrete. The building was quiet, the night shift skeleton crew going about their duties with the mechanical efficiency of people who had learned not to ask questions.
He passed a window that looked out over the city. Neo-Solace sprawled beneath him, a glittering web of neon and steel, the upper spires piercing the acid-cloud sky like needles. Rain streaked the glass, leaving trails of pale yellow that glowed under the building’s exterior lights.
Somewhere down there, in the dark, wet belly of the city, a woman was tending a flower that shouldn’t exist.
Dravin smiled. It was not a pleasant expression.
He had been VexCorp’s head of security for twelve years. He had hunted dissidents, hackers, smugglers, and spies. He had broken strikes, crushed rebellions, and made people disappear so completely that their own families forgot they existed.
But he had never hunted a flower before.
The novelty of it pleased him.
He reached his office, a small room on the forty-seventh floor, and keyed open the door. The lights flickered on automatically, illuminating a space that was spartan and functional: a desk, a chair, a terminal, a wall of screens showing live feeds from the city’s surveillance network.
He sat down and began typing. Within minutes, he had pulled up the records for the Tanner Street station. According to the official files, it had been sealed in 2147 after a chemical leak from a nearby factory. The entrance was collapsed. The tunnels were flooded. No one had entered or exited in five years.
But the official files were only what VexCorp wanted the public to see.
Dravin accessed a deeper layer, one that required his security clearance and a biometric scan. The screen flickered, and a new set of data appeared.
The Tanner Street station had never been fully sealed. The collapse was staged—a controlled demolition that blocked the main entrance but left the maintenance tunnels intact. The chemical leak was a cover story, designed to keep people away from something else entirely.
Dravin scrolled through the data, his eyes scanning rapidly. There were reports of unusual energy readings from the station’s old power grid. Water consumption patterns that didn’t match the surrounding blocks. Heat signatures that suggested human habitation.
Someone had been living down there for years.
And now, apparently, they had company.
He pulled up a map of the tunnel network, tracing the possible routes from the station to the surface. There were at least six access points, all of them hidden, all of them off the grid. It would take time to find them all.
But time was something he had.
He leaned back in his chair and stared at the map, his mind already working through the logistics. He would need a team. A small one, to avoid drawing attention. He would need thermal imaging equipment, motion sensors, and enough firepower to handle any resistance.
And he would need to move fast. The informant’s capture would not stay secret for long. The woman—whoever she was—would hear about it eventually. She would run. She would hide.
But she couldn’t hide forever.
Dravin reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a small, leather-bound notebook. It was old, worn, the pages yellowed with age. He opened it to a blank page and began to write.
*Target: Organic plant specimen. Location: Tanner Street station (lower wards). Primary subject: Unknown female, possibly connected to underground horticulture network. Secondary subject: Kael Vance, former VexCorp lab tech, current street artist. Connection: Unknown, but likely.*
He paused, then added:
*Bounty: 500,000 credits for the plant. 200,000 for the woman. 100,000 for the artist.*
He closed the notebook and slipped it back into the drawer. Then he picked up his comm unit and dialed another number.
“This is Dravin,” he said when the line connected. “I’m putting out a bounty. Priority one. Spread the word to all informants, all fixers, all freelance operators in the lower wards. I want eyes on every street, every alley, every hole in the wall.”
He paused, letting the weight of his words sink in.
“Someone in this city knows where to find a real flower. And I’m going to make sure they tell me.”
He ended the call and stood, walking to the window. The rain had intensified, streaking the glass in sheets of pale yellow. The city lights blurred and smeared, turning the skyline into a watercolor of neon and shadow.
Somewhere down there, a woman was tending a flower.
And somewhere else, an artist was painting its ghost on a wall.
Dravin watched the rain and waited.
The hunt had begun.
The informant sat in the chair across from him. His name was Jex, a wiry man in his forties with a network of scars across his knuckles and a twitch in his left eye that told Dravin exactly how long he’d been awake. Forty-eight hours, maybe more. The fluorescents above the table buzzed, casting everything in a sickly white pallor.
Dravin didn’t sit. He stood, arms crossed, watching Jex with the patience of a man who had all the time in the world and knew exactly how to use it.
“You’ve been helpful,” Dravin said. His voice was flat, professional. “The information about the artist’s tag was useful. We traced his movements through three wards before he went underground.”
Jex’s jaw tightened. “Then let me go. I told you everything I know.”
“Did you?” Dravin uncrossed his arms and walked around the table, his boots clicking against the polished concrete floor. He stopped behind Jex, close enough that the man could feel his presence but not see his face. “You told me about the murals. The blue poppy. The ghost orchid in the old textile district. The night-blooming cereus on the wall of the abandoned hospital. But you didn’t tell me about the flower.”
Jex went still. The twitch in his eye stopped.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Dravin leaned down, his mouth inches from Jex’s ear. “The real one.”
The silence stretched. The ventilation hummed. Somewhere in the building, a door slammed shut, the sound echoing through the corridors like a gunshot.
“I don’t—” Jex started.
Dravin grabbed the back of his neck, fingers digging into the soft tissue just below the skull. Jex gasped, his body going rigid. Dravin held him there, not hard enough to cause real pain, but hard enough to remind him who was in control.
“Let me clarify,” Dravin said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “We’ve been tracking anomalies in the lower wards for six months. Temperature spikes. Soil composition changes. Air quality readings that don’t match the synthetic plant output. Someone is growing something organic down there. Something that shouldn’t exist.”
He released Jex’s neck and walked back around the table, sitting down across from him. He folded his hands on the metal surface and waited.
Jex rubbed the back of his neck, his eyes darting to the door, then to the camera in the corner, then back to Dravin. “I’m just a fence. I move stolen tech. I don’t deal in plants.”
“You deal in information,” Dravin said. “And information has a price. You’ve already taken my credits. Now I want the rest of what I paid for.”
Jex’s hands were shaking. He pressed them flat against the table to still them. “There’s a woman. She comes to the market sometimes, buys soil amendments. Not the synthetic kind—the real stuff, the kind that’s supposed to be illegal. She pays in old currency, pre-collapse coins. She doesn’t talk much.”
Dravin didn’t move. “Name.”
“I don’t know her name. She wears a hood, keeps her face down. But I saw her hands once. She had dirt under her nails. Real dirt. Dark, rich, the kind you don’t find in this city.”
“Where does she live?”
“I don’t know. But I saw her heading toward the old subway station on Tanner Street. The one that was sealed after the chemical spill.”
Dravin’s eyes narrowed. “The Tanner Street station was collapsed five years ago.”
“That’s what they want you to think.” Jex leaned forward, his voice dropping. “There’s a network down there. Old tunnels, maintenance shafts, storage rooms. People live in them. People who don’t want to be found.”
Dravin studied him for a long moment. Then he stood, walked to the door, and opened it. Two enforcers stood in the hallway, their faces blank behind their visors.
“Take him to holding,” Dravin said. “He’s going to help us find the entrance.”
Jex’s face went pale. “I told you everything! You said you’d let me go!”
Dravin turned back, his expression unreadable. “I said you’d been helpful. I didn’t say you were free.”
The enforcers grabbed Jex by the arms and hauled him out of the chair. He struggled, but they were stronger, their grip like steel. As they dragged him past Dravin, Jex spat at his feet.
“You’re going to regret this,” Jex hissed. “That flower—it’s not just a plant. It’s a memory. A piece of the old world. People will die before they let you take it.”
Dravin wiped the spit from his boot with a handkerchief, then looked up at Jex with cold, flat eyes. “That’s the idea.”
The enforcers pulled Jex down the hallway, his protests fading into the hum of the ventilation system. Dravin stood alone in the doorway, his mind already moving past the informant, past the interrogation, past everything except the single piece of information that mattered.
A real flower.
He pulled out his comm unit and dialed a number he knew by heart. It rang twice before a voice answered, smooth and cultured, with the practiced calm of a man who had never known fear.
“Report.”
“Sir,” Dravin said. “I have confirmation. There’s an organic plant in the lower wards. The informant placed it near the old Tanner Street station.”
A pause. Then: “How reliable is the source?”
“He’s scared. That makes him reliable. He wouldn’t lie to me.”
“Good.” The voice on the other end was pleased, the way a predator is pleased when it catches the scent of prey. “I want it found. I want it secured. And I want the person who’s been hiding it brought to me alive. They might know what they have.”
“Understood.”
“And Dravin?”
“Sir?”
“The artist who’s been painting those murals—the one who escaped your patrols. He’s connected to this. I can feel it. Find him too.”
The line went dead.
Dravin pocketed the comm unit and walked down the hallway, his boots echoing against the concrete. The building was quiet, the night shift skeleton crew going about their duties with the mechanical efficiency of people who had learned not to ask questions.
He passed a window that looked out over the city. Neo-Solace sprawled beneath him, a glittering web of neon and steel, the upper spires piercing the acid-cloud sky like needles. Rain streaked the glass, leaving trails of pale yellow that glowed under the building’s exterior lights.
Somewhere down there, in the dark, wet belly of the city, a woman was tending a flower that shouldn’t exist.
Dravin smiled. It was not a pleasant expression.
He had been VexCorp’s head of security for twelve years. He had hunted dissidents, hackers, smugglers, and spies. He had broken strikes, crushed rebellions, and made people disappear so completely that their own families forgot they existed.
But he had never hunted a flower before.
The novelty of it pleased him.
He reached his office, a small room on the forty-seventh floor, and keyed open the door. The lights flickered on automatically, illuminating a space that was spartan and functional: a desk, a chair, a terminal, a wall of screens showing live feeds from the city’s surveillance network.
He sat down and began typing. Within minutes, he had pulled up the records for the Tanner Street station. According to the official files, it had been sealed in 2147 after a chemical leak from a nearby factory. The entrance was collapsed. The tunnels were flooded. No one had entered or exited in five years.
But the official files were only what VexCorp wanted the public to see.
Dravin accessed a deeper layer, one that required his security clearance and a biometric scan. The screen flickered, and a new set of data appeared.
The Tanner Street station had never been fully sealed. The collapse was staged—a controlled demolition that blocked the main entrance but left the maintenance tunnels intact. The chemical leak was a cover story, designed to keep people away from something else entirely.
Dravin scrolled through the data, his eyes scanning rapidly. There were reports of unusual energy readings from the station’s old power grid. Water consumption patterns that didn’t match the surrounding blocks. Heat signatures that suggested human habitation.
Someone had been living down there for years.
And now, apparently, they had company.
He pulled up a map of the tunnel network, tracing the possible routes from the station to the surface. There were at least six access points, all of them hidden, all of them off the grid. It would take time to find them all.
But time was something he had.
He leaned back in his chair and stared at the map, his mind already working through the logistics. He would need a team. A small one, to avoid drawing attention. He would need thermal imaging equipment, motion sensors, and enough firepower to handle any resistance.
And he would need to move fast. The informant’s capture would not stay secret for long. The woman—whoever she was—would hear about it eventually. She would run. She would hide.
But she couldn’t hide forever.
Dravin reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a small, leather-bound notebook. It was old, worn, the pages yellowed with age. He opened it to a blank page and began to write.
*Target: Organic plant specimen. Location: Tanner Street station (lower wards). Primary subject: Unknown female, possibly connected to underground horticulture network. Secondary subject: Kael Vance, former VexCorp lab tech, current street artist. Connection: Unknown, but likely.*
He paused, then added:
*Bounty: 500,000 credits for the plant. 200,000 for the woman. 100,000 for the artist.*
He closed the notebook and slipped it back into the drawer. Then he picked up his comm unit and dialed another number.
“This is Dravin,” he said when the line connected. “I’m putting out a bounty. Priority one. Spread the word to all informants, all fixers, all freelance operators in the lower wards. I want eyes on every street, every alley, every hole in the wall.”
He paused, letting the weight of his words sink in.
“Someone in this city knows where to find a real flower. And I’m going to make sure they tell me.”
He ended the call and stood, walking to the window. The rain had intensified, streaking the glass in sheets of pale yellow. The city lights blurred and smeared, turning the skyline into a watercolor of neon and shadow.
Somewhere down there, a woman was tending a flower.
And somewhere else, an artist was painting its ghost on a wall.
Dravin watched the rain and waited.
The hunt had begun.