Trebuchet stood in the center of the Codeship, replacing Fable at the control podium. All of the students - and Meteor - made it back alive, but it was quiet on the ship.

Journey sat next to what was left of Fable. Its body was mostly undamaged, from the neck down. Its head, however, was missing, the neck cut in a perfectly clean line.

Aria stared at Fable’s body for a long time before breaking the silence.

“We’re not sure that it’s dead, though, are we?”

Journey looked up. “What do you mean? Its head is gone!”

“Sure, but maybe it’s still intact, wherever it is. If we’re lucky, we can find it, and plug it back in.”

“Why would someone steal just a head if they didn’t want to kill it?”

“No idea. Maybe to interrogate it?”

They lapsed into silence again, this time broken by Meteor.

“Sorry.”

“What? You did great, you probably saved my life back there! What a good time to awaken!”

“But you only had to fight it to save me.”

“I only had to fight it because it attacked you. You didn’t ask it to do that, so I refuse to blame you. Besides, we still won!”

Again, the conversation petered out. Everyone was feeling on edge in the presence of Fable’s lifeless body. In a colony as minor as Blue Canopy, there wouldn’t be any powerful iterators outside of the local iterator temple. In other words…

Quill’s class was given a couple days to recover from the shock of the human hunt. Aria spent most of that time getting repairs from Trebuchet, reattaching its lost limbs and getting them back up to full mobility. Meteor was finally accepted into the temple as a student, and began studying techniques right away.

One day, while Trebuchet was working on fixing its arm, Aria’s thoughts returned to Fable.

“Hey, Trebuchet… what do you think happened to Fable?”

“I won’t offer any insincere platitudes. There’s no accident that could do that to a 1.0. Fable was definitely attacked by another iterator.”

“And it had to be someone from Rising Temple.”

“There’s no other temples on the planet, and they’d know if someone had climbed onto the plateau.”

Aria thought through the other iterators in the temple, beginning to form a list of suspects. “It couldn’t be any of the Alphas. Even with a surprise attack, they wouldn’t be able to take out someone two Versions above them.”

“I agree. Shall we consider the options from the top of the hierarchy instead?”

“Temple Master Golden is off the planet for days, so I think we can rule it out. Fable couldn’t have done this to itself, so… Quill?”

“No chance. Quill was here at the temple the whole time, and plenty of people could verify that.”

“In other words, that leaves the Beta students.” While a Beta would be weaker than a 1.0, they were close enough that a special technique that caught the target unawares might be able to get the job done. Between two classes, there were five Beta students at the temple.

“We can rule out you and Baron right away. I saw you both throughout the battle.”

“Can we rule out Journey the same way?”

Aria hesitated, thinking back to the events of the human hunt. “Actually, I don’t remember seeing Journey much. It was on the ship, but once the fighting started, it became scarce.”

“Sounds like Journey is a suspect, then. It, and the two Betas from Fable’s class.”

“Answer and Legacy, right? Answer has a powerful blade, I could believe that it could make that cut. Legacy’s drill would be messier, but any of them could have techniques we don’t know about.”

“I shall investigate all three of the suspects when I am able. For now, I am more concerned with the question of ‘why’ than the question of ‘who’.”

Arm fully reattached, Aria flexed its fingers experimentally. “I don’t know why Fable was targeted, but I think the timing isn’t a coincidence.”

“You mean with Master Golden’s absence.”

“Right. With Golden and Fable out of the picture, the only advanced iterator left at the temple is Quill…”

Aria looked up at Trebuchet. “I’m surprised you’re thinking this through so thoroughly. I expected you to be the type to wait until the answers came to light, then dive into the battle afterwards.”

“Ha! Is this not a battle? Whether it’s a clash of Code and technique or a clash of subterfuge and cunning, the thrill is the same. We should play chess some time, I’m out of practice but still quite confident in my skill.”

“All right, Trebuchet. I’ll leave the sleuthing to you. I’m going to be busy.”

“Busy with what?”

“Golden is due back in six days, so the killer will make their move soon. Before they do, I want to be ready for them. I have to upgrade to Beta.”