Kayan, my sweet flower:
You’re reading this because I’m dead. That’s right, I’m doing that thing you hate in the weeklies you read, writing a last letter to my beloved because I expect to die. And my expectations have been excruciatingly accurate of late, so I’ll be surprised if I have to trash this. Surprised, and embarrassed.
But don’t worry—death circling overhead hasn’t turned me into a sentimental fool. This is not some misbegotten love letter or ode to a life unlived. As if I’d write that kind of horseshit.
Fuck that. This is a call to arms. This isn’t me feeling sorry for myself. I am burning with fury at the injustice I have encountered.
You were right, Kayan. You said that this job would kill me someday, and it has. Your prize is losing the only person who’s ever meant anything to you. Congratulations.
You remember my last letter to you? The one where I told you about the mountain disaster case I’d been given? Remember I said it smelled rotten? It was. That case went sour, real fast. The fruit was putrid to the core. Some news must filter out to your boat even on the unforgiving slush of the Demons’ Ocean, so you might have heard that the investigation closed recently, with all the blame pushed to the Machinists. Of course that shit isn’t true. The report carried my name, but neither my approval nor my complicity. Well, fuck. I guess it had my complicity. But I signed off on that heap of stinking lies to get them off my back. Since then I’ve been chasing the truth across the slimy underbelly of the Protectorate because the fortunes will cut off my tongue and hands before I let this stand unchallenged.
Well my love, it’s been days of wading deeper and deeper into foaming sewage. There’s a madness at the bottom of all this and I fear I haven’t even looked it in the face. The shit that’s gone down here is stranger than I could have ever imagined.
No doubt the Protectorate will spend the next few days smearing me as a traitor, a barbarian, a Kebangilan reprobate who couldn’t help but revert to her uncivilized nature despite her Kuanjin upbringing. All their usual nonsense—we know how they work, don’t we? I’ve worked for them for a dozen years, after all.
But you, my love—you will know the truth. Look. Here are the compiled journals, notes, and memos I’ve stacked up over the past few weeks. I suspected all along—hell, I knew—that it was all going to end in flames. Read these things. Read them, and understand what I’m sacrificing myself for. Read them, and then get fucking livid, like I did. Follow this gravesent affair to its bitter end. Anything else would be rank injustice, and I know how you feel about that. I trust you.
I know you’re going to make them pay.
Your beloved,
Sariman