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III Garrett shifted the bow on his shoulder. Its bowstring had dug a red mark into his soft skin, and the weight of all the equipment was buckling his back. At that moment Garrett was crouched in the shadows at the bottom of a stairwell. As he looked on a well-groomed officer strode forcefully down the stairs and along one of the other corridors. Remembering the face Garrett perused his memory for a name. Hagen crept up in a few seconds. Garrett had lifted a watch from his pocket a few weeks back in a moment of weakness. Garrett had made a pact to give up petty crime, but the man was a fool. The watch just seemed to leap into his hand. Hagen probably found it gone later but that would not help him at all. If all went to plan, Hagen would not be an officer any more. That was the patrol out of the way. Heading up the stairs Garrett paused to check the guard post. No one around. He had already disabled all the alarms in the station, and it wasn’t as if he, master thief Garrett, would ever get caught. After all, he had already been in the station for nearly an hour before this time, and not a soul had suspected any different. Framing Hagen was going to be a long, yet easy task he hoped. Taking that detour to the records hall gave him some useful information on the vault in evidence storage. Next stop was Hagen’s office to pick up a few trinkets of his to convince the sheriff and everyone else that Hagen was a criminal. Continuing upwards brought Garrett to the second floor. Peeking round the corner of the doorframe he spotted the solitary guard on his rounds. A few moments of waiting, a flurry with a blackjack and the guard lay slumbering in the darkened guard post. Sprinting quickly along to the door of Hagen’s office, Garrett removed his lock-picking tools from a concealed pocket in his cloak. To his great surprise the door was open and he walked straight in. He lit a flare and propped it in an empty torch holder. Its eerie green light illuminated the room well enough for him to examine what was inside. Bookcase, desk, lamp, papers; all the usual as expected. Sifting through the papers he found Hagen’s diary. Mostly personal thoughts on the Mechanists and Truart. By the lamp was some money, which Garrett quickly pocketed. There was nothing in the drawers, and Garrett was about to leave disgruntled with a failed job when he spotted the sodden handkerchief draped on the desk. “That will do nicely!” he muttered to himself as he placed it in an easy to reach pocket. Closing an open drawer and extinguishing the flare brought Garrett to the corridor again. Quietly he pushed the door to and then walked off down the corridor in the direction of evidence storage. He checked out a few offices on the way and found a more money but nothing of real value. Clambering up the stairs to the next floor Garrett came to a door. From the other side he heard machinery moving, and when he pushed open the door he saw the reason why: a mechanical face was watching the room. The Mechanist machines were running the city now it seemed. He had come up against one of these the night before at the docks. Timing his run when the face was looking away Garrett got to the corridor across the room.
Just when he thought he was safe, a guard came out of a room up ahead. Garrett fled into an office and hid until the man passed by. Looking through the window above him he saw the vault ready to loot…
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