3-6 UNEXPECTED

As you follow Master Lasah into the room, you shiver as you pass through the doorway. The room is cold. Clearly, it’s meant to keep the cadavers from decomposing, but it seems almost too cold — practically freezing.

Master Lasah walks forward to a shrouded body lying atop a table and pulls the covering down far enough to reveal its face. It’s Justinia Ryker. Dead, as expected. Hopefully, she’ll be returned to the Temple soon for her final rites, and then cremated as per tradition. For now though, her body must remain here while you solve this mystery.

You make your way to Master Lasah’s side to get a closer look at the body. It would be a bit difficult to see if you didn’t have Force Sight as you’re barely tall enough to look down at Ryker. Fortunately, you have no need for such a mundane sense.

You watch the Force flow through the body and it strikes you as rather… sad. The Force doesn’t pool within her. It doesn’t pulse with the breath of life. It treats her as if she were an object. Inanimate. Dead.

Her spirit is gone — her soul returned to the Force, or perhaps the Warp.

You glance upward at Master Lasah who appears to be in deep concentration. She stands still, solid as a rock. Searching. Her Force-sense roams about Ryker’s body and you can feel it touch against yours when you get close. As you look closer, however, you see something odd about the way Master Lasah is using her Force-sense: she’s not in full control.

She directs her own senses in general, reaching out to Ryker’s body, but she allows the Force to guide her. Her senses are subject to the currents of Force, floating about wherever it goes. She puts her trust in the Force, and the Force doesn’t disappoint.

“Where is the pathologist?” she suddenly asks, her voice echoing throughout the room.

“Ah. Um, we don’t have one,” comes the reply from the morgue technician. Despite the cold room, she’s sweating. She’s nervous, but why?

“So, who did the pathology? The autopsy?”

“I - I did, Master Jedi.”

Master Lasah looks toward her, suspicion in her mind. “Are you trained for such work?”

“No, Master Jedi. I, uh… I didn’t…”

“What is going on here?”

At that, the technician breaks down, her composure completely gone. She trembles as she stammers out her explanation.

She’s a new hire, having only recently completed her vocational training. As a morgue technician that is — the job she was hired for. However, the last forensic pathologist and the coroner were fired for “obscene treatment” of the cadavers just before she arrived, and so she has been managing the facility by herself for the past week.

One week. She has been on the job for one week. A morgue technician is not a pathologist — she’s essentially the equivalent of a medical assistant, and she was handed the task of managing a morgue by herself until new hires could be found.

And to make matters worse, her first job was to handle the body of a Jedi. And when an autopsy and a pathology report were requested, she was the only one available, and thus was forced to make an attempt.

No wonder why she was so nervous.

At the end of the explanation, Master Lasah paces the room silently. She’s managing her anger. She takes small, shallow breaths, chipping away at her fury.

The technician doesn’t know that, however, and has to stand there still trembling from the interrogation. In the meantime, you wonder: what is it that Master Lasah found? Stepping closer to the body, you look again, focusing in on Ryker’s throat and lungs. Stitched up incisions are made there where the technician muddled her way through the autopsy.

Closer. Deeper. What happened here?

You compare Ryker’s body to your own. Her lungs are, indeed, inflamed and swollen — enough such that she would, and did, asphyxiate. You cast your sense backwards, checking that the technician is still standing in one place. She is, so you pull your headband upward and pull out the datapad Master Corr gave you the other day. You probably should have given this back, but you kind of forgot, so exhausted from the work you had done. You’re glad you have it now, though.

Ah, the wonders of the HoloNet. You quickly search up the symptoms of asthma and compare what you read to what you see. You page through diagrams, displaying cutaway images of human lungs, looking for anything that would set Master Lasah off.

Nothing. It does look like asthma. Puzzled, you put your datapad away and peer at Justinia Ryker, then blink.

That’s odd. A small patch of skin on the side of her neck is red and swollen. Hives.

What can cause inflammation of the lungs as well as hives? An allergy. How the hel did the technician miss this?

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“You see it?”

You jump, startled by Master Lasah’s question. She leans over you, and you nod at her, looking into her seemingly serene face. She reaches up and pushes your headband down, back over your eye, then says, “According to our records, Ryker seems to have had a severe allergy to citrus. This may be our culprit.”

She turns to the technician, asking, “Did Ryker eat anything prior to her death?”

“N - no. I think.”

“Check it.”

“Yes, Master Jedi.”

A few minutes later, under the supervision of Master Lasah, the technician has the results: yes, Ryker did eat some foodstuff. However, what’s strange is that none of what she ate contained citrus. So, how did she have an allergic reaction?

“Maybe she was allergic to something else?”

“No,” Master Lasah responds. “After her allergy was discovered, she was given a full battery of tests. She showed no reaction to anything else.”

“I see… Huh, why was she crawling toward the loading docks? If she was suffering from an allergy, or whatever, why didn’t she go toward the clinic?”

“That is a good question. Hopefully we will find more at the scene.”

Mater Lasah turns to the technician, saying, “We are done here. The Jedi Temple will arrange for Ryker’s body to be returned soon. Do not do anything else. Understand?”

“Yes, Master Jedi.”

≡][≡ ⬦⬦⬦ ≡][≡

“This is it,” Master Lasah says.

The intersection of 82A Camberoa and 82P Goldrock. This is where Justinia Ryker died, apparently from a food allergy. You, Master Lasah, and the Guardian droid approach the scene from the East along 82P Goldrock. To your south is the industrial zone. Smog, sparks, and tired minds are all you perceive from that direction. The block is surrounded by a three-meter tall wall, meant to keep the noise contained. It doesn’t work so well, though, as most of the machinery, vehicles, droids, and buildings back there tower over the wall. At least it keeps the debris they generate from being flung into the street.

To your north, you see a wall of thoughts. A hab block, serviced by the one small clinic that Master Lasah spoke of earlier. It’s a monolithic, weathered tower of concrete and durasteel, with tiny rectangular windows inset to break up the gray monotony. A thousand citizens live within: stratified by the floor they live on, but still consigned to a dull life oppressed by the hundreds of thousands of citizens far above.

Could be worse. These people, at least, see the sky on occasion. Those below this layer — this outer shell — have far greater cause to complain. You watch as rivers of sewage flow through massive pipes below the surface. Workers, masked or not, dredge the sludge for purposes unknown. You retch quietly as a man pulls on a rope, revealing a wriggling creature hooked on the other end. As he reels it closer, he opens his mouth to take a bite, but it unleashes a tentacle, swiping his feet out from under him. It then scurries away along the ceiling of the pipes on a multitude of skittering legs and furled wings.

You turn your attention back upwards as you reach the intersection. To the northeast are rows of stores: a pawnshop, a grocery, and a dozen other purveyors of various goods and services. To the southeast is the loading docks: with shuttles and cargo vehicles lumbering in and out at the far end.

Twenty meters above you, speeders fly between the buildings along the wide avenues. Every time one goes past, you feel the urge to duck, despite the distance. It just doesn’t seem safe, strolling about under the stream of traffic.

Master Lasah doesn’t seem to mind it though. She strolls on ahead, walking directly into the center of the intersection where a barrier of cones is set up. Another Guardian droid stands watch, keeping any civilians from walking through and tainting the scene. It appears to be a lost cause though. Scraps of litter whirl through the air, carried on the breeze generated by a hundred vehicles whizzing over your head. Some detritus has smeared the area where Ryker was found and Master Lasah has to give it a good kick to dislodge it. She shakes her foot, frowning at the crud sticking to her boot, then shakes her head and turns to you.

“There is not much to see here. The paving here is too hard for marks to be easily made, and any clues that may have been left here are likely to have been blown away. I believe the conclusion that Ryker was heading toward the loading dock is based on testimonial from Ioaniis Tlin, the one who found her. Ryker was found, collapsed face first, with her head toward the docks. It is the simplest conclusion to make, but perhaps there is more. What do you think?”

“Me?”

“Yes. Take a look. Tell me what you see.”

You carefully step between the cones and make your way to Master Lasah. Looking downwards, you see… not much. Just as she said. The pavement is worn down from years of use. People have tread through this area so many times, what with the populous hab block and a manufactorum nearby. You can’t tell what could be from Ryker and what could just have already been there.

…Maybe the Force can tell you more?

You squat down next to where Ryker should have been and reach into the Force. You feel the lingering of emotion, the taste of memory and life. So much of it. So many people have been here. So many people live here, work here, die here.

No, you need to narrow the search. You need to look right here.

It’s too much though. Just this one spot has seen so much history. Boring, mundane history of people just walking back and forth. Love, frustration, grief, and happiness. It all blurs together and you can’t just reach in and untangle the strings of long-past Force.

Whatever Ryker felt when she died just doesn’t stand out. You can’t find her.

“I can’t find anything. There’s nothing significant about this spot.”

“It is the same for me. Do not worry. Now, let us decide what to do next. I believe we should question Tlin, but it may perhaps be more prudent to look around this area first. Ryker left the loading docks in search of the item, but we do not know where she went or who she talked to. All we know is that she stayed around this area.”

“Wait, how did we know that the item got to the bank? How did it even get there?”

“CorSec received a message from the bank, Coruscant Highline Bank, once they noticed they received the wrong package, who then told us where it went. I believe that it was mixed up with another item of similar size. The container was not clearly marked. Ryker, unfortunately, did not know that at the time, so she likely went looking for it around here. Now, let us make a decision. Where do you think we should go? What should we do first?”