The Silver Ho had been in town.

Sujatmi Rais looked at the crime scene, freezing one particular image into her mind with quantum clarity: the scalped girl's sawn-off cranium, shockingly white around the greyish-pink of brain matter and the raw wound of a node extraction. The second in as many days. It was no coincidence that the Silver Ho had been in town, and left just two hours ago on private jet. He was almost always in town for a Heaven Thunder soma operation.

In a week or two, a new batch of soma would hit the crowded streets of Denpasar. The foreign tourists would indulge in the fave drug without a care in the world. Some would die. It was an appropriate justice for ghouls who drew pleasure from the fruits of death.

The victims of soma-processing in Southeast Asia were usually female, seen as the less useful gender culturally. Her own node ached in sympathy as she had the ambulance crew cover her face with a blanket and put on a stretcher, forensic evidence gathered. Not that it would lead anywhere beyond a few low-level goons.

The Silver Ho had been in town. Coincidence? Not bloody likely, to quote an Australian colleague.

Sujatmi walked from the warehouse without a backwards glance, looking over the orange sunset of a clear Balinese sky. In the distance, she could hear the hubbub of foreigners and locals as they engaged in the intricate commerce of tourism. A balmy wind lifted her black hair from her shoulders and removed the stench of death from her nostrils for just a moment. It was a moment of stillness between the day and the night, a moment of peace in her hectic life.

This was her home. A place of dingy streets and white beaches, counterfeit goods and classy resorts. It was not a perfect place, but it was still her home.

The Silver Ho had been in town.

Like the farm tool that sounded like his name, he had prepared the ground. The seeds had been sown for a bitter harvest from which could only be reaped death and addiction.

And he would be the only one to profit. She would gain nothing but stress and failure as the Heaven Thunder Triad slipped through the cracks of a corrupt government yet again.

A bitter harvest indeed.