The Whirling-in-Rags is immersed in its usual artificial half-light. You sit down. The air smells of old wax and spilled whiskey. Next to you, the ex-cop — badly cut gray hair, hands that barely tremble, eyes like an old scratch on film. He is telling Garte a story that seems more like a nightmare that has never faded.

Empathy [medium: success]: He says it as if it were another city. Another life. But it was here. It was Revachol. Faubourg, next to the river. There where the waters smell of metal and toxic rain.

“… There were the broken barrels, those marked with the six-pointed symbol. My colleague, Lutz... he came too close. A bullet hit his throat. Not by a criminal. From an automatic turret left active from the war." Drink. Then he is silent. Even the bar is silent with him.

Empathy [easy: success]: Blame the bureaucracy. Of chaos. Of the city that forgets its children even when it kills them. He never got over it.