The Gold turned his eyes on them, his lips pinched white.

“Chancellor Henk,” Gyde addressed him. He snapped his right arm forward, fist clenched, then brought the fist to his left shoulder in a salute. Pol mimicked the gesture.

The chancellor sent a grazing glance over their identification badges. He made them hold the salute longer than was customary, to indicate his displeasure, then nodded at them to relax. “You’re the detectives assigned to this case?”

“Yes, Chancellor. I am Gyde 332 and this is Pol 137. He’s new to the department, but he has an outstanding battle record.”

“The Department of Communications wants an end to this.”

“Yes, Chancellor,” Gyde replied.

“This kind of thing cannot be tolerated. This is the third defacing. Did you know that?”

“We were briefed.”

“And the Department of Monitors has still not caught this terrorist.”

“No, Chancellor. But I have the case now. My classmate and I will find him, and we will destroy him.”

Gyde, with his straight back, lifted chin, scarred features, and hard eyes, was the embodiment of Silver determination. He knew how to make his superiors feel secure. Chancellor Henk’s anger visibly diminished.

Pol watched this shift, studying Gyde’s proficiency. He was also fascinated by the Gold. His grooming was immaculate, his yellow hair polished straight back like a helmet. The blue at his temples reflected a soft light, even in the perpetual cloud cover, and his smooth, handsome face was toned and oiled. Pol had never been this close to a Gold in the flesh. He’d only seen them on posters or on the evening telecast. He stored the details mechanically.

Chancellor Henk was used to being stared at and ignored Pol’s unnerving blue-white eyes. “Gyde 332, I will accept that as a commitment.”

“Chancellor, you have my pledge.”

“Good. I’m elevating this degenerate to a state terrorist. You’ll receive a memo today. In the meantime, my adjunct has all the information. Good luck. The state rewards service.”

“Long live the state!” Gyde saluted again.

The Gold signaled for his driver and pulled away in his long black car. The adjunct stood waiting for Gyde. He was a young Silver, and his face was haughty with the privilege of his position. While Gyde went over the case with him, he sent Pol to survey the site.

Pol went carefully over the broad marble steps leading up to the portico, but they were smooth and clean. In front of the steps was the pedestrian zone, also unremarkable. On the portico itself there were no footprints, no paper or wrappers or smoke butts. Pol took out a small knife and envelope and scraped a sample of black paint from the wall. Up close, the letters were so tall he couldn’t read the message, and it helped his concentration not to think about what it said.

He shared a smoke with the monitor commander and questioned him. The Hall of Justice, the state’s grandest courthouse, was just off Victory Plaza at the heart of the capital. Monitors walked the district at night, but their route and timetables meant that most buildings, the courthouse included, were left unwatched for ten minutes at a time. The commander believed the message had been left between 0100 and 0140 hours. They had seen no one on the streets, not even someone with a legal curfew pass.

So whoever the terrorist was, Pol wrote in his notebook, he was clever enough to study the monitors’ routes and to time his defacement accordingly. There hadn’t been an air raid last night, so the streetlights had been on, harsh and glaring, yet he had done his business without being seen. Pol had to wonder who would be so stupid as to risk so much for so little. What could possibly be the motivation? A malcontent. A madman.

The commander’s eyes lingered on Pol’s face as they talked. The look was only a brief second too long, but Pol felt a stab of concern. Gyde was still talking to the adjunct, so Pol went inside the Hall of Justice and found a service room. It was at the back of the grand foyer. The sign said it was for Golds and Silvers only.

The interior was impressive—high ceilings, marble floors, elegant but cold. Marble columns divided the spaces. Polished metal receptacles reflected nary a thumbprint. An Iron attendant was waiting to assist Pol and to clean up after he had gone. He motioned the slave back and turned to the fountain. He put the tips of his fingers in the flowing water, using the moment to examine his reflection in the mirror. The blue at his temples was intact. His eye color helped to focus attention away from it in any case. His brow was clear and smooth. The small scars hidden inside his hairline just above both ears were not visible. There was a hint of darkness on his cheek, but only if you were looking for it. It would hold until they got back to the office. The commander had been staring at… what? Nothing. Often eyes lingered on him, and he never understood how much people could or could not see. He could drive himself mad worrying about it.

The Iron waited with a towel. Pol dried his hands. He was about to leave, but he decided he might as well relieve himself while he was here. There was no one, only the Iron, who was busy wiping down the metal he had splashed at the fountain. The bathrooms back at the Department of Monitors were usually occupied; Pol avoided them.

He turned to the metal receptacles, his back to the room.

He was releasing a stream of urine when he heard the heavy hall door swing open. He hurried to finish and tie up his pants. He thought he not been obvious about his haste, but as he turned, Gyde stepped up to the receptacle beside him, smiling.

“You make me laugh, Pol. Shy as a girl, as if you weren’t raised with a few hundred men.”

Gyde released his own uncircumcised, slightly hooked penis with exaggerated boldness—or was it pride? A sardonic smile dimpled his aging face.

“I’ll be outside,” Pol said.

Back at the Department of Monitors, Pol sat at his desk eyeballing the photographs in front of him. Black paint on a white marble wall: THERE ARE ALIENS AMONG US.

Gyde stood up at his desk. “Lunch?”

“I’ll be down in a minute.”

Gyde’s departure opened the floodgates. The massive old room, with its towering cracked ceilings and clanging radiators, held the desks of six other Silver-class detectives. Their occupants followed Gyde to the dining hall as instinctively as they had once followed him into battle.

Pol was relieved to be alone. He opened the case file from the adjunct. The terrorist had left two other messages in graffiti prior to last night’s defacement.

THEY ARE HERE. THEY ARE US, said the most recent message.

And the first: WHAT ISN’T THE STATE TELLING US?

That one was stupid. What was the state telling them? But the other message struck that mental funny bone just as the alien message had. THEY ARE HERE. THEY ARE US. Pol felt the darkness in his mind quiver responsively, as though disturbed by a neurological aftershock. He did not know what it meant, only that it meant something.

When he reached the dining hall and sat down, Gyde put a finger to his lips to hush his greeting. He motioned his head toward the next table, where a group of Bronze monitors, their rust-colored uniforms tight and foreboding, were having a conversation. An Iron female came to determine his choice of the two menu options today. Pol gave her a quick response, hardly knowing what he’d ordered. He was listening to the Bronzies.

“Where was this?” one of them asked, voice low.

“Saradena. I was stationed there until last week.”

“How do you know the corpse was a Silver? You said the head and hands were missing.”

“You wouldn’t know a Silver when you saw one? He had an old sparring scar on his left thigh, his skin was white, prominent blue veins at his privates, like a statue, and his physique was perfect, a classic warrior. By the blood, he was a Silver.”