It was late enough that Nate let himself take a swig from the flask he kept in his desk drawer. No one would see – if there were any perks to being chief police inspector, it was getting his own office.

Frankly though, he hardly felt deserving of all that space.

Even the case that had landed him the promotion, the explosion at the University, didn’t seem as resolved as it was on paper. The arrest had been utterly bizarre, and mostly the result of work of that detective woman – and perhaps some other, stranger forces.

Something was wrong with his city – if it was even his – and Nate didn’t know what it was, didn’t even know where to start trying to understand.

Nate wasn’t a superstitious person. He was never one to be fooled by charlatans and magicians, didn’t have his fortune told even for fun. He prided himself on his rational thinking.

But there were strange things happening, things where he felt left out. From his big case being suddenly taken from him once he had the perpetrator in custody, to the persistent rumors of monsters seen in the city and around it, he kept grasping at straws trying to figure out if there was some bigger conspiracy at play or if he was finally going mad after the years of service.

“Inspector Russel?” a young constable cracked the door open, eyes so wide with confusion that Nate forgot to tell him off for not knocking. “Sir, uh, there’s been… an incident.”

“What now?” Nate frowned. “A murder?”

“No, sir, uh…” the constable looked behind him and slid inside the office, hat clutched tightly in his hands. He shuffled closer to Nate’s desk and continued in a lower voice, “We’re getting reports that, uh, all the trains have stopped.”

“In Wreving?” Nate couldn’t hide the bewilderment in his voice. “A strike?”

“No, it’s like… they all suddenly stopped working,” the constable kept getting more and more flustered. “All of them. The Orchis workers are inspecting the ones still on the Wreving station, and if anything happened outside of town, well, I imagine it would take some times for the news to reach us. Because the trains aren’t working. Sir.”

It was tempting to leave this to the Central department. A problem of that size, it was probably up to them, no? But the train station was also in Nate’s jurisdiction, and in all the – granted, not many – years that there had been a railroad in Wreving, Nate hadn’t heard of a single case of a breakdown.

With a sigh, he got up to get his coat. Could it have been sabotage? How many trains did they know for sure were affected? Was the problem only with the locomotives? Were the civilians in any danger?

The door burst open once more, another, significantly sweatier constable stumbling in.

“If this is about the trains, I’ve already been informed,” Nate scolds him, irritated, but the constable shakes his head and takes a moment to catch his breath.

“There are… machines!” he blurted out. “In the university district! Human-like machines! Around Hope Street, but they’re on the move.”

More hurried footsteps sounded in the corridor, and Nate braced himself for more bad news.

Perhaps he should have retired when he still had a chance.