Even through the gas mask, Kamak could feel the death and poison on the air. Even a full purge of the local area’s atmosphere had been unable to chase away the bitter tang of decay. Kamak bit back his disgust at the scent and looked at the shrouded corpse of Officer Annin.
“You fucking idiot.”
“Don’t curse the dead, Kamak,” the Ghost said. He was overlooking the scene with a similar expression of disgust. “It’s bad luck.”
“If the dead don’t want to get called fucking idiots they should try not being fucking idiots,” Kamak said.
“Annin saw an opportunity to extract more information and capture the killer,” Ghost said. “It was, admittedly, overly ambitious, but luring Kor Tekaji by commandeering an existing interview was a smart move. As was exploiting her peculiar psychopathy with an all-female task force.”
“Yeah, how’d girl power work out for them?”
Ghost said nothing. The corpses scattered across the room were answer enough. Kor’s bias towards women only went so far. When forced to choose between herself and a room full of innocent women, Kor had chosen to kill them all and save herself.
“Annin is fucking lucky the studio has it’s own ventilation system,” Kamak said. “If they hadn’t been able to shut the place down and vent the cell a lot of innocent people might’ve died.”
No one was quite sure what Kor Tekaji had used—some were already speculating it was a brand-new nerve gas of her own making—but it had spread fast and killed every member of the task force in seconds. Annin had used her last choking breaths to call in the gas attack, and get the area of the station sealed off to prevent the gas spreading to any nearby districts. Kamak did give her credit for that, at least. He was just mad as hell right now, and taking it out on the dead idiot was easy. She didn’t have feelings to hurt anymore.
Across the room, Farsus examined one of the corpses more directly. He shook his head, and Doprel replaced the shroud and allowed the hazmat team to cart the body away.
“It’s hard to imagine all this coming from one ring,” Doprel said. The murder “weapon” had already been carted away for evidence, but Doprel and the crew had been shown pictures and 3D scans of it. A false jewel had somehow contained enough compressed gas to kill almost eighty people -but not Kor herself. Farsus assumed that she had engineered herself an immunity to the same poison she was employing to kill others.
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“Now we get to add poisonous gas to the list of things we’re worried about,” Tooley said. Amid all the death, she was putting in orders for new air filters for her ship.
“I’m hoping simple logistics will prevent her from using such methods again,” Farsus said. “You saw the recording. She expected it to be us here, arresting her.”
“Which is worrying,” Corey said. He’d been hoping Kor’s arrogance and pride would prevent her from thinking she might ever be caught. Morrakesh had underestimated them in the end, after all, but apparently Kor would not be repeating that mistake.
“Kor Tekaji expected this to be her master stroke,” Farsus said. “And likely spent a great deal of time preparing it as such. It’s very likely she would not be able to repeat this in the near future.”
“Yeah, well we’re investing in new gas masks anyway,” Tooley said. Farsus did not protest.
“And her not being able to pull off another war crime ‘soon’ is dependent on our ability to catch her ‘soon’,” Kamak snapped, from across the room. “And we have no fucking reason to believe we can. She got away, and now she knows we’re on her trail.”
“Pessimism doesn’t suit you, Kamak,” Ghost scolded.
“Pessimism is half my personality, dipshit,” Kamak said. “Kor Tekaji is one of the smartest bitches in the universe, and thanks to Annin’s impatient ass, she knows we’re onto her. What little advantage we just managed to get, you people wasted.”
“We’re not done yet,” Ghost said. “This was an information gathering expedition, we had cameras and scanners pointed at her. Can’t kill those with gas.”
“Apparently all those cameras and scanners weren’t enough to keep her from sneaking away,” Kamak said.
“Shockingly there was a lot of confusion while we were dealing with the largest bioterrorism incident in the history of Centerpoint,” Ghost said. Kor had been spotted a few times, presumably heading toward the hangar, but had mostly managed to get herself lost in a panicked crowd of people fleeing from the attack.
“Doesn’t really do us a lot of good.”
“Give us time to analyze the fucking data, Kamak,” Ghost said. “If you want to feel useful in the meantime, Kor had an apartment here on Centerpoint.”
“You want us to go into the secret lair of the crazy lady with the secret bioweapons,” Tooley said flatly.
“As opposed to standing around bothering me? Yes,” Ghost snapped. “It’s across the station. By the time you get there, our advance team will already have disabled any traps. Probably.”
“I understand you like to jab Kamak a little, but that was just uncomfortable,” Doprel said.
“That wasn’t a joke, Kor Tekaji obviously has methods we don’t fully understand,” Ghost said. “I can’t guarantee your safety.”
After a long moment of consideration, Kamak nodded towards the door. It was a risk, but there was potential benefit as well. It was better than standing here amid the corpses, at least.