Khalil had a vision.
He was standing in the room. The room where the attack had taken place. Five people were attacking him. A wave of force burst out, deflecting the bullets. And then came the knife in his chest, and the vision ended.
He made the decision to trust the others. None of them seemed to have any prejudice against mystics, and the more informed they all were, the better.
Sayah, Razaq and Arin went to a weapon shop to investigate the silenced bullet they'd found, soon learning that such things were not sold on Coriolis - at least, not in respectable shops like this. They were used by rebel groups down on Kua though, so could have made it onto the station if brought up by smugglers. Sayah took a look at the knives, to see if there were any that resembled the one in Khalil's vision, but there were not. She bought one anyway, to be polite.
Which turned out to be a good choice, as shortly after leaving the shop they were attacked by a group of stevedores. They fought them off and made a hasty departure, but soon ran into Jeyla Kuhari, the reporter, once again, and had to avoid sharing the story with her.
Khalil and Tahir, being the more social and less paranoid part of the group, went to visit the ambassador. Not to make any accusations, but because as the last person seen on the camera, he might have caught sight of something important without realising it. His room was an imposing sight - a group of servants carried potted plants, which Khalil recognised as being a particularly poisonous variety with sharp leaves, where a single touch could prove deadly.
The ambassador spoke briefly. He'd been given a tag to put into the emissary's music system, as somebody 'wanted him to hear a message'. He'd since examined the tag, and to nobody's surprise found it infected with a data meme.
The local news was reporting more murders. Sayah asked Judicator Akouba about them. The one mentioned as happening at Wahib's was a woman called Kohmina. Sayah remembered her well - the mad woman with the crystal ball that was really just a ball of sugar, who wanted to go down with the Ghazali because it was the will of the icons. She'd been saved by Lila's intervention. Sayah did not know what had happened between the two of them, and did not want to.
Once Khalil had complimented the ambassador on his taste in plants and Tahir had got his assistant's comm address, the two of them left to meet up with the others again to pay another visit to the sanitorium. Tahir and Sayah went looking for their old friend from the Ghazali, Brother Ramos. Instead they were introduced to Sister Robwah. She confirmed that Ramos had met with Noor, and after some prodding, Ramos himself appeared.
They discussed the mystic's disease, and convinced Ramos to talk about Noor once they told him what had happened to Aram. Noor believed that she was chosen by the icons to perform great deeds. Specifically, she was chosen by the Martyr - the Zelosian name for the Judge, and according to their beliefs, the only icon.
Razaq had had enough. Enraged by the constant claims that mystic powers were a disease in need of a cure, he stormed out. The others followed, but Sayah had had a communicator pressed into her hand as she left, with just one message. "Contact me."
A meeting was arranged. That night, in the Garden of Seekers.
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