Annie kicked open the door to her room and made a beeline towards her bag. She lifted it off the ground and dumped its contents over her bed, then tossed the bag off to the side. If she hurried she could still catch up to the smuggler in the tunnels, idiotic bounty hunters be damned. 

She began to pull her cloak off and stopped. Her hand traced the fabric gently and rubbed it between her fingers. With a sigh she stuffed her arms into her duster and shrugged it on underneath her cloak. Her scraps of armor plating were quick enough to throw on, her charm belt and syringe case too. Annie snagged her hip pouch and secured it to her side, and then strung a bandolier lined with small canisters across her chest. Finally, she grabbed a few concoctions from her alchemy set and shoved them into the syringe case. Satisfied, she turned to go.

Tallis stood in her doorway, "Annie? What's going on? Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," the Stranger grunted, "A lead came up, I've got to run." she shouldered her way past the girl and grabbed her sword and gun from behind the counter. 

"Did you tell Connor?" Tallis called out as she stormed away. 

"I'll be quicker alone." Annie muttered, then slipped out the door. 

She threaded her way through the darkened streets at a run, carving as straight a path as she could back to the clearing. Neither the Sheriff, smuggler, or bounty hunter were anywhere to be seen. Good. Annie had every intention of keeping her word if she saw that snake again. 

It was easy to find the drag marks Filch and his hand truck had left behind. Annie didn't have the patience to try and push her way through the bushes. She unclipped her sword from the magnet on her back and hacked madly at the bushes. Over and over and over again, sending leaves and splinters flying around her and carving a destructive swath through all the way to the cliff face. 

There was a small opening in the rock, short enough that Annie's head brushed against the top of it, but big enough for a certain smuggler to slip through with a hand truck with relative ease. Bingo. Annie flicked out one of the syringes from her medical kit and injected it. The world around her shifted focus, as if she had put on the perfect pair of glasses, and the faint illumination of the night sky became as bright as the midday sun. Annie was quite proud of this particular concoction, the cat-eye elixir. The night vision and boosted perception it granted were extraordinary, it was a pity it's effectiveness was halved in the daylight.

Good thing Strangers did most of their work in the dark. 

She ducked into the tunnel, it was a tight fit, but if she sidled in on her side she could slip in with all of her gear. After a bit of shuffling she found her way into a wider tunnel of rough hewn stone. It was similar enough to the carved walls of the mining tunnels, but the marks on the walls were more uniform. The result of disciplined and organized work, not exploited workers trying to eke out a living on some rich investor's scraps. There was something more here. 

Annie tapped the rune on the rim of her glasses and the tunnel around her exploded into a rainbow of scintillating light. She was surrounded by threads of veil energy. She could see a clear trail of Filch's green threads headed down the tunnel, but there were different threads along the walls. Grey veil threads. 

Annie pressed her nose to the wall to get a better look, pushing her glasses askew as she did. It was the same dull grey as the thread she'd found in Tulvir's office, she'd have bet the job's pay on it. Now she had to find Filch. It was time she got some answers. 

Annie looked around and spotted the furrows in the ground left behind by the smuggler's hand truck. She tapped her glasses and dispersed the vision of threads around her, returning the tunnel around her to a dim and lifeless twilight. Her fingers traced the air where Filch's green threads had shimmered, almost of their own accord, then she stopped.

There's no time for this. She thought, and then took off down the tunnel. It was easy to spot the smuggler's tracks with cat-eye in her system, he didn't even bother to try and cover them in here. They trailed further into the tunnel, making meandering tracks that curved around stray rocks and divots on the ground. Apparently Filch didn't want to rattle his cargo any more than was necessary. That meant he'd be moving carefully, slowly. Annie picked up the pace.

It wasn't long before she began to hear that familiar toolboxey rattling. Annie broke into a sprint and whipped out her pistol, deftly plucking a vial from her pouch and locking it into and snapped it into the gun's alchemic chamber. Electric blue fluid flooded the sphere and Annie felt a chill creep from the chamber down into the pistol's grip. Annie reminded herself to add some insulation to the chamber when she worked on it next. 

A dull orange light danced along the walls ahead of her, the metal rattling growing incessant as she closed in. Annie was upon Filch before he even realized she was behind him. She knocked him and his hand truck to the ground, plating a boot on his neck before he even had the chance to struggle.

"Hey there Filch." Annie panted, then shot the ground between his feet. Sheets of ice grew around it, creeping over the smuggler's legs and freezing them in place, "Now behave yourself, or I'll start freezing other more important bits."

Filch's eyes trailed from the ice over his feet to between his legs. He swallowed hard and nodded up to the Stranger vigorously, "No funny business this time, ma'am! You have me dead to rights."

Annie rolled her eyes, "You said that last time, Filch. How do I know you're not going to pull another stunt like that?"

"I will not do nothin' to harm you ma'am, on my honor as an honest criminal!" Filch gave Annie a salute with his free hand.

She smirked, "Great, does that mean you're going to answer my questions this time?"

"I'll be honest as I can be ma'am! Without violatin' client confidentiality of course." 

The Stranger pointed her pistol casually at Filch and pulled back the hammer, "That had better be enough."

"It will be! It will be!" Filch squeaked, "What do you want to know?"

"It's obvious you're working with the Sheriff. It has something to do with the windmill, right?"

"I can't say—"

Annie shoved the pistol closer to him.

"—too much about it, but you're absolutely correct! Haha..." Filch started to sweat.

"Good," Annie leaned away from him and looked over at the hand truck, "That thing was next to the radiation shield yesterday, and Lorena said the Sheriff was snooping around earlier. What's his interest in the generator?"

"I don't rightly know, ma'am." the smuggler shifted uncomfortably, "He just brings me canisters like that one, then I transport 'em to the drop point."

"And that is?"

"Six miles outside o' Partee, there's an abandoned radio station that I drop the canister at and exchange it for an empty one." Annie remained expressionless, "I don't know where it goes from there!" Filch added hurriedly. 

Annie frowned, "I see. And you don't know what's inside?"

"Not a clue, ma'am!" 

So, Sheriff Jed was smuggling something from the wind turbine out of Millpoint and to the outskirts of Partee City proper. What exactly did Millpoint have to offer a place like Partee, if that was even where the goods were going?

"Why were you being so careful with it?" she asked.

"Instructions from my client, ma'am. They said the cargo was delicate and I oughta be all gentle-like with it."

"Hmm, maybe I shouldn't have knocked it over then?"

"Probably not, ma'am." Filch agreed. 

"At least it hasn't exploded yet." Annie's joke didn't do much to ease the sudden tension. She decided to move on, "Who exactly carved out the entrance to the town you sneak in and out of?"

"That'd be my employer, ma'am. Can't tell you who he is, never actually met him." Filch was apologetic.

"You accept a job from a man you've never met?" Annie was baffled.

"Oh that's very common ma'am. Us smugglers get lots o' work from confidential types. It's stranger to meet them than not to, you see." Filch was matter-of-fact about it. 

"Tough luck for me," Annie moaned, "You don't talk to anyone else besides Jed?"

"Nope, job's as straightforward as it can get!" Filch blushed, "That is, until you got involved ma'am."

Annie pressed her boot a little harder against Filch's throat, "Two people are dead, Filch. That's simple to you?"

Filch's eyes widened, "What?"

"You heard me," Annie studied his face, "Don't tell me you didn't know?"

"I'm an honest criminal, not an assassin ma'am!" Filch protested, "If people are dead, I had nothing to do with it! Murder's bad for business. In my humble opinion, if you have to kill someone to keep your work secret you're not a terribly good smuggler at all."

 Annie's stare was withering, Filch started to squirm under her boot until she finally relented and removed her boot from his neck, "Okay, I believe you," she turned and started walking towards the toppled hand truck, "That ice'll thaw in an hour or two, you can skip town after that."

"What? You're just going to leave me here?" Filch cried.

"Yup, consider it payback for dropping a demon on me!" Annie smiled over her shoulder at the smuggler, "I'm doing you a favor, you'll be out of work in this town soon anyway." 

Romedeus Filch watched as the Stranger tipped the hand truck and its contents back upright and rolled it back down the tunnel the way they came. Skipping town might be a good idea after all, if that woman was telling the truth about those bodies it was time for him to move on anyway. If someone was going around tying up loose ends, he was looking awfully loose himself right about now.