Chapter 34: Embers of Control
The days after my reevaluation passed like drifting ash—weightless on the surface, but suffocating underneath.
I knew one thing for certain: I couldn't just stumble into the mastermind's lair. This wasn't some neatly wrapped investigation. I didn't have the skills or the resources to track them down directly.
But fires—they were predictable.
Not in the way they burned, but in the way the mastermind set them. Patterns buried beneath chaos, like fingerprints left in soot.
The District Inferno had to have drained a lot of resources. It wasn't just about the scale; it was about the precision. Fires that big didn't start themselves, and they sure as hell didn't maintain themselves without meticulous planning. There was something methodical in how the fires never touched the same place twice—like the mastermind was crossing names off a list.
Which meant two things:
1. I had time. Time to prepare, to anticipate, to shift the board before the next move was made.
2. The next fires were limited. A pattern could be disrupted if I planted myself right in the middle of it.
So instead of heading back to Station 47, I followed the pattern that my Strategist skill told me.
The first location was an old office complex, busy but just rundown enough to be vulnerable. People stared when I arrived, the Fox mask catching the morning light like a beacon. I hated how it felt—like the mask walked into the room before I did.
But that's what they needed.