That lyin' basdun. I knew Hansard weren't exactly the loyal type, but I never thought he'd scorn a friend, so.

To know the whereabouts of mine kin, and not tell me! Even worse, to make a deal wi' that invisible hellion. She that stole Goron's knockers away, and those from my clan as well. She that works for Baines and Grayle, them that we'd agreed were evil! Had they not killed a man wi' a demonic parasite? Had I not nearly died of the same? What were ye thinkin', Hansard?

This an' more I wanted to shout at him. Why would ye trust her?

We likes to think we bested her before, with my crafty stealin' of the phoenix egg. But truth be told, she could've ended us if she'd wanted. Perhaps only luck that she din't notice my bluecap riffling through her pockets back then.

So here I sits, staring moodily at my bluecap and the egg inside. Daren't remove it, in case I throws it against a wall in anger.

'Shoulda known,' I mutters to meself. 'Business partners. Ha! Ye weren't one fer keepin' promises.'

'You all right there, kid?'

'Tis a man, leaning over the back of his seat on the bus. Snuck on, I did, and hoping I won't be asked for fare. My new costume ain't as tawdry as Hansard's pick, but now I'm wishing for a wider brim of a hat to hide under.

'Fine, mister,' I says, and cross my arms around my lantern. He looks dubious, but turns back round.

I'm straining for snippets o' conversation in the other passengers, especially any mentioning our destination. Think I've picked the right bus, I have. All that map reading for Hansard's got to have had some use.

Some lasses are chatterin' about their shopping plans in Manchester, and I relax. That's what the slip o' paper said. That's assuming Quiet Eyes gave Hansard the right address, and not some nasty trick.

I scribble a letter to Goron while I sit. Include where I'm headed, everything I know, which ainn't much. Hansard was right shocked seeing Baines & Grayle on them tablets. Think I knows why. It's easier to deal with monsters when they ain't human. For him, anyway.

For me, it's all the same. I've been out of the world so long, it don't matter who's where in it – I has to scurry through shadows, regardless.

But it had been nice, feeling seen, for a little while.

I fold up the letter carefully. I'll find a rat in the city to carry it for me.

Until then, I doze in my seat.

An advantage of being a coblyn – or any uncanny creature by human standards – is that oftentimes human folk are quite blind, so I weren't too worried about my nature raising any eyebrows. The same goes for when I slipped quietly off the bus with the rest of them and into the evening crowds. People don't expect to see a coblyn, so they don't see one. And people hate seein' lost or beggar children, so the best solution is not to see 'em at all

I sees, though.

I drop coins into the cup of the woman begging at the bus station. 'Can ye tell me where this is, please?' I says politely, showing her the address.

She squints at it, scrunches up her mouth. 'Hm. Long walk. It's in one of the industrial parks.'

'If I pays, can ye take me?'

She gives me a long look. 'Where's yer mam, kid?'

'Long gone,' I says. But also not far.

She nods recognition, as one lost soul to another. 'You need a warm meal? These fuckers won't pay you any attention.' She spits at the passersby and cackles when they show disgust.

'No thanks.' Already swiped one, before the bus. I hold up a ten-pound note from my meagre shares o' Hansard's profits. 'Is this enough?'

'Keep it, kid. C'mon, I'll take you.' She gathers up her things: the sad cup and a sleeping bag she carries over her shoulders. 'My name's Minty. What shall I call you?'

'Ang.'

'Nice to meet you, Ang. You got people waiting, where we're going?'

'That's right.'

She cocks her head. 'Friends?'

'Some of 'em.'

We amble easily through the streets. I'm doubly invisible, I realise, with her as company.

'S'it drugs, kid?' she asks.

I startle. 'How'd ye know?'

She stops us, lays a hand on my shoulder. 'If you're mixed up in something bad, we got folks who can help.' She spits again, this time at the floor. 'Fuckin' despicable, using kids as mules.'

'Ain't nothin' t'do with donkeys,' I says uncertainly. I sound out the word Hansard had used. 'It's farm-a-sutikals.'

'Opiates?'

'What're them?' I shake my head. 'Thanks, but I don't think ye can help. I'm goin' to find my family, is all. It ain't some criminal dealings. Not on my end, anyways.'

She smiles, showing yellowed teeth with a few holes in, but it's still a nice smile. 'If you're sure, kid.'

We arrive at a gated estate of modern work buildings. Some are plain and boxy like warehouses; at the front is a tall glass one, all windows. There's a sign over the door, an' it boils my blood to see Baines & Grayle advertised so brazenly.

'Thanks Minty,' I says.

'You want me to wait for you?'

'Dunno how long I'll be, lass. Don't worry about me.'

I'm about to squeeze through the bars when she touches my shoulder again. 'Careful,' she says seriously. 'There's weird stories about this place. We don't go near it usually.' She looks t'be deciding whether to say more – whether to scare me, I suppose.

'Any screams?' I say flatly, to draw it outta her.

'More like . . . ghosts,' she says. 'Strange lights. Trucks that come and go at weird times. Just be careful, you understand?'

'I do.'

I leave her behind and steal through the parked cars up to the glass building. There's a reception area but it's all locked up, no one inside. It's later in the evening than I realised, still plenty of golden light outside thanks to long summer days.

My ears prick at the sounds of activity, though. Work sounds, men hauling and cussing. I follows it to the back of the box buildings, where men in overalls are unloading white supplies from a van.

I'm nippy, and well-practised in avoiding the gazes of people fixed on labour. I skirt round their peripheries and into the loading bay. I dodge between plastic-wrapped pallets – masks, gloves, and syringes – until I find a door at the back and slip quietly through into the bowels of the building.

It's ain't a warehouse, like it looks from the outside. Or at least, no warehouse I've seen. The walls and floor are cream and white, with mirror-shiny linoleum and fittings in sleek chrome. A sterile smell fills my nose; reminds me of my mother's ointment for cuts and scrapes.

Arrows on the walls point each way down the corridor.

Biolabs and Containment.

I don't know the meaning of the first, but the second sounds closest to 'captured'. I follows it down the left corridor, and soon my ears are fizzing. I thump the side of my head, but it won't go away. Feels like a wasp is holed up inside, a horrid tickling buzz hopping around in a panic saying, 'Look out! Tread careful ahead!'

I has a better feel than humans for the weight of the world around me, and I got the feel that somethin' was pushing down hard on it nearby.

I focus on it, attune to the eerie vibration. (Always struck me as funny, it has, that Hansard calls this unfocusing. Shows you just how wrapped up humans are in their own heads.) It beckons me to a door: locked.

Well, I'm invested now. I release my bluecap and retrieve the egg from her core. 'I'll keep this safe awhile,' I says. 'Can ye get this open?'

There's a quiver of uncertainty. This ain't the usual work of bluecaps, but she's been doin' more and more unusual tasks of late. 'If I've picked a lock before, so can you,' I say reassuringly. Not a trait of which I am proud, as it is. Lockpicking is more've a side-effect of hanging around Hansard for a while.

She drifts to the door to find there's no keyhole; a number pad blocks the way instead.

I click my teeth. 'Don't worry about that. Locks're all mechanical eventually.'

But there's no cracks round the edges of the door for her to slide into. It's sealed tight.

More sounds. Another door opens further along the hall. I hurry the bluecap toward it. 'Catch it afore it closes!'

The man is in a white coat and blue surgical gloves. A cloth mask and visor cover his face – all the easier for him to miss me, but he's heading in the other direction anyway.

Bluecap has caught the door half an inch ajar. We let it close behind us as we slip inside.

The lights come on automatically, but there wouldn't have been any need. The blazing blue glow would be enough for even a non-coblyn to see well by.

It's in all manner of curious tubes and containers lined up around the room. All the counters are white, just like the floors and walls, so the whole room absorbs and reflects the ghostly blue of the stuff filling the strange glassware. Long pipes connect beakers to drippy upended flasks, and curious sieves with pumps working like bellows in some kind of cylindrical filtration system. Flowing along all of them is this eerie blue . . . not liquid, not light, nor smoke.

I'm looking for a stool to get a closer look, when I notice the change in the bluecap. She hovers erratically, flames stretched out in taut tongues in all directions like a star. It's as close to a scream as I ever seen.

I dunno if I just didn't want to see it. Like with humans and coblyns, or lost souls. It never even crossed my mind that the blue glow could be exactly what it looked like.

'Never,' I choke, staring up at the caged blue vapours.

I climb on the stool, pick up the nearest tool: a pair of metal tongs. Like in a dream, I raise them over my head and bring it crashing down over the nearest web of glass.

Air rushes from the room, knocks me to the floor. One by one all the beakers shatter. Glass sprays into every corner and a tormented sighing fills every inch of empty space. It's in my ears and my nose and my mouth and it feels like I am being split, atom by atom, into my fundamental parts. This here is the part your father gave you; this here from your mother. Here is the same laugh that your great-grandfather had, and here are the working hands of your many aunts. Here are the millions of fragments of your ancestry, overlapping each other like new patches on a worn pair of trousers, holding together your seams with ancient stitching and congenital discomfort from the prick of many inherited pins.

Where is the soul housed in my body, I wonder? How do you wring it out of the skin? What happens when the soul itself is broken apart?

I'm lost, I think. The many parts of me tangle with the tattered edges of other souls, all fragmented, in immeasurable pain. We are fractals, spiralling into one another, separating and multiplying in infinites, yet desperately trying to cling to one whole before we dissipate, before the splinters of our selves become too small to ever reform again . . .

Suddenly I am me, in the whole. There is a storm raging around outside me, but I am held by my mother. Her presence is warm and calming. I look at my hands and see her fire enveloping them, protecting me from the squall that is our broken brethren and ancestors. It is whipping at her edges: she is fraying.

'No, don't,' I whimper.

There is a memory. Of a hand stroking my hair. A soft lullaby in my ear. Rough palms and a gentle smile. She pulls away.

The tempest of fractured bluecaps dispels. Air fills my lungs again. The room is strangely brighter, all white without the blue glow.

My mother's bluecap is nowhere. A sob escapes my throat in the silence.

I lie on the floor and I wail.

* * *

Author's Note

Okay. Are we all okay? Okay.

Sometimes a story takes a turn you really weren't expecting - even as the author. This was one of those times. I knew the fate of Ang's friends and their bluecaps of course, since way back writing Season One. But as for the sacrifice of Ang's bluecap? Jeez, I was holding back tears as these words spilled onto the page. And yet, I don't think it could possibly go any other way.

How did all this hit for you? Is anything unclear? Is the story going in the direction you thought it would?