STATUS Alive, in Section 18’s care – status still under review
RANK Probationary Agent (rookie), same intake as Branson
ASSIGNMENT General patrol, Section 18; had hoped to join the K9 squad
ACCESS LEVEL Standard patrol officer, probationary
AGE Unrecorded – young, early in his career
ORIGINS Chuza-born; family ran the Chuza Cures apothecary, Cove Street
YEARS OF SERVICE Newly sworn in as of Session 1 – still on probation when everything went wrong
FIRST ON RECORD Session 1 – the wharf golem attack, alongside Branson

Dew and Branson came up through Section 18 together, both rookies still on probation when a golem tore through the wharf on their first real callout. Dew’s tell was always the dog talk – he could spot a K9 partner from across a burning dock, hoped to join the squad himself one day, and never missed a chance to mention he’d kept dogs his whole life.

The rest of his story starts with something considerably smaller than a golem: a handful of aramis pods, pocketed off a broken crate at his own request because his father loved them. “Do you think they’d mind if I grabbed a few?” Nobody minded. Nobody knew to.

FILE NOTES

The pods moved through his family before anyone understood what they actually carried. His father, Joren, took one and never fully turned – the parasite’s transformation outpaced what an old man’s mind could sustain, and it killed him rather than complete the change. Dew’s wife worked the counter at the family’s own Chuza Cures apothecary on Cove Street, and the pods moved through there too – to customers, to neighbours’ children, to Branson’s own daughter Tilly and her friend Brad among them.

What happened on Cove Street the night it all came due is still logged in more than one report. Sanchez, responding to screams, was met at the door by Dew himself – axe in hand, no hesitation in using it. By the time backup arrived, Dew’s wife lay dead on the kitchen table, her skull opened, and Brad – transformed into something no longer entirely human – barely registered the lantern oil he was walking through. Dew was found afterward sitting on the bathroom floor, smiling, soaked in oil, a nicked hatchet in one hand and a tindertwig in the other, evidently partway through an attempt to burn the whole scene down around himself.

One detail from that night never made it into any follow-up report: the walls of Joren’s own apartment, pinned edge to edge with drawings nobody in the family has explained since. What they show, and whether Joren put them there himself before the change took him or something else did, is still an open question – one Section 18 hasn’t had the chance to chase down, with everything else that night demanded first.

He survived what followed – more than Branson eventually did. Brought in alongside him afterward, Dew reported something none of Section 18’s physickers quite knew what to do with: he could still hear voices that weren’t his own, not the ones his file calls ‘the pairing,’ but something. Whether that’s the aramis parasite still talking, or just what’s left of a man who lost his father, his wife, his dog, and very nearly his own mind inside a few weeks, hasn’t been settled.

“The names Dew, sir, like the claw – I’ve kept dogs all my life. I’m hoping to join the K9 squad.”

Agent Dew, on his first callout

STATUS: Filed under The Unknown. Not filed alongside Branson under the Good, though nothing here suggests he chose any of it either – a rookie who wanted a dog partner and got a parasite instead, and something Section 18 still isn’t sure it can call fully cured, fully himself, or fully safe.