The ruins received them without ceremony.
One step off the last slab of paving and the world changed its rules entirely — the engineered certainty of ground that had been laid and maintained gave way to something that had been neither for years.
The surface underfoot was a sedimentary record of accumulated collapse: old concrete at the base, then brick rubble, then broken glass, then the fine grey powder of things that had disintegrated past the point of being identified.
The government agent — Ishiki had mentally labelled him Black Suit for convenience, as he had given no name and offered no conversation — moved with the practiced efficiency.
He kept a precise three meters behind Ishiki, neither closing nor widening the gap. His hand rested at the sidearm on his right hip. It was not necessary to point out that he was a player and that too at least an Adept.
'He's good,' Ishiki thought. 'He's also going to be a problem.'
