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Marasi sits a moment longer than she should in the Wayfarer townhome, biscuit in hand, surrounded by people Wax and she have been searching for on and off for seven years. The shape of the thing presses down on her. The Set has long wanted access to Allomantic powers; the spikes they already have say plainly that some of the Vanishers' victims have died gruesomely. But this colony — the lottery weighted for Allomancers and women of childbearing age, the careful absence of metal, the children in the swing set out front — points at a much longer plan than execution. It is a literal breeding ground. The Community is Edwarn's project, Entrone had told her on the caverns surface, and the pieces line up: Edwarn's long-term solution to the Set's shortage of Allomancy, inherited by Telsin when he died, now hidden under Entrone's expanded bunker city and Autonomy's perpendicularity site. Two of the women in the room may be pregnant. Marasi cannot save the years already lost in here, but she has — at least — found the captives before the spikes did.

She names the realisation aloud. *I know you. You're Armal Harms, aren't you?* The blonde woman softens at the name. *I was a Harms,* she says. Marasi introduces herself as Steris's cousin — the long-standing public lie — and tells Armal her sister is alive. The whole Basin is alive. There was no ashfall. The disaster they have been told sealed them down here is a hoax. The captives glance at one another and rule, kindly, *ash sickness*; the Set has clearly seeded the cover story for exactly this contingency. Marasi pulls out her constabulary credentials. *For years I've been trying to trace you,* she tells Armal; *they took you because they wanted Allomancers and they are playing the long game.* Armal turns the badge in her hand. The date stamp on it is for this year.

A voice cuts the conversation in half. The public-address speakers above Wayfarer crackle to life and Lord Mayor Entrone declares from his broadcast station that a dangerous, *very, very ash-sick* outsider has slipped past the outer tunnels and is to be reported to the nearest tranquility officer — *do not approach, do not engage.* The townsfolk look up. The mood in the room changes, but not the way Marasi feared. *We have to hide her,* Armal says. The plan is to *rough up the room*, claim Marasi threatened them and ran. The mousy one suddenly proposes overthrow; Armal refuses — *all we need to do is sneak up, find survivors, bring them back, prove we can help, the lord mayor will come around*. It is a noble fantasy and a doomed one, and Marasi does not have time to argue with it.

She presses for the route to Entrone. Armal tells her: an ostentatious new mansion at the edge of Wayfarer with the broadcast station inside it — built large, the only place in town that uses metal, which makes it the place any *mutant* would be sent against first. *How brave of him,* Marasi notes; she has already guessed there is a tunnel up to the surface from it. She asks if there is a portal in the cavern — large construction, off-limits area, anything? They have no idea. They are captives, not confidants. And yet it puzzles her. If Entrone is opening Autonomy's perpendicularity, why do it here, beside these test subjects?

Marasi shoulders her rucksack, draws her pistol from it — the room gawks; only Armal looks merely disappointed — and tells the assembled captives, flatly, that things are about to get dangerous and confusing. If she does not come back, they need to overthrow Entrone: millions of lives may depend on it. *We don't have weapons,* one woman protests. *You are weapons,* Marasi answers. The lack of metal in Wayfarer is suddenly very legible to her. The Set has imprisoned a population of people who either are Metalborn or are likely to bear Metalborn children, and the *mutants* who can sense metal are the story that keeps them disarmed. The way you hold a roomful of dangerous people captive is to convince them they are not captives.

She catches Armal's eye and holds it until Armal looks down at the badge again, then away. *You know, don't you,* Marasi says. *That what I'm saying is true. Or at least you suspect.* Armal admits she has a family she loves. Marasi tells her that if Entrone wins, those children will be taken from her. Armal will not fight even if she had a weapon, but she will lead Marasi to the mansion. That, Marasi decides, is enough. She lifts the rucksack — and freezes as something inside it clinks.