Sable Koro's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Sable Koro leaned against the loading dock wall and watched another body cart roll out of the sealed district. She smuggled cures for a living. Tonight she had none. Behind the quarantine gates, people coughed themselves dead, and the one thing that could save them didn't sit in any crate she could steal. She didn't even know where it existed. A runner without cargo was just a woman with a fast ship and empty hands. She pushed off the wall and went looking for the only person who might know something before it happened. Marvin Nowcast sat cross-legged on a stack of shipping pallets, a skinny kid draped in a purple robe covered in painted symbols. Glass beads clacked around his neck when he moved. Half the dock thought he was a joke. Sable had seen his tricks work. He could see the future — but only twenty-four seconds of it. Useless for most things. She was out of most things. "I need to know where the cure is," Sable said. "The one for the coughing sickness. Somebody's making it. Somebody's hiding it." Marvin blinked his wide eyes at her. "Can't see that far. I see the next twenty-four seconds. That's the deal." He picked at a bead. "But something's coming. Right now, I mean." "Coming how?" He held up one finger, counting under his breath. Sable waited. She was about to call him a fraud when a clerk in a supply uniform hurried around the pallets, clutching a folder to his chest. He nearly ran into her. "Him," Marvin whispered. "He drops that." The clerk's foot caught a loose pallet slat. The folder flew open. Papers scattered across the wet concrete. Sable moved before she thought, kneeling to gather them. Manifests. Shipment logs. One page listed a sealed crate flagged for a private lab inside the Spire's upper levels. The contents were coded, but the destination note was plain: antiviral stock, restricted, do not distribute to quarantine sectors. The clerk snatched at the papers. "Those are Marvin Creswell's records. Give them back." Sable's grip tightened on the page. She'd heard that name at the docks. A supply clerk who moved things for the right price. "Marvin Creswell," she said. "He handles this crate?" The clerk swallowed. "He signs off on the restricted stock. Everyone knows he'll bend a rule if you pay him." He grabbed the folder and fled. Sable stayed crouched on the concrete. She had a name now. She had a location — the upper Spire, a private lab. The cure was real, and it sat behind the exact wall meant to keep it from the dying. Marvin hopped off the pallets and squinted at her. "You look happy. That's rare." "I know where it is now." Sable folded the stolen page into her jacket. "Which means I finally have something to steal." She looked up toward the Spire's guarded upper levels and felt the old cold weight settle in. Finding it had been the easy part.