There was a shimmer in the air, a cold, never-ending shimmer. Like a cold stream of dark water running under the floors beneath them. Every step Pax took echoed sharply in her ears. For souls used to the sun and light, it felt like the gates to the underworld, though the feeling was unexplained. It was a modern facility, with the highest standards of hygiene and technology. The morgue section wasn't a grave. But as the oldest tradition in humanity goes, it was designed to feel differently. Sterile.
Kidaria lifted her head up from a screen where she was making notes, distracted by a knocking sound, and her gaze met the detectives. Pax didn't wait for an invitation and let herself into the room.
The walls and corridors were covered by pearl white metal, and lights were everywhere. Soft amber ones in rows of three along the walls of the corridors, and in the offices and rooms which all had one wall made entirely of glass, there shone a different type of light. There, you could find globes which had been independently located for the use of the medical staff and bore a bright blue light.
"Hello, Detective," she heard this distant greeting from the entrance, but to her mind, it was only a little game. She brought a peace offering and put it on Kidaria's desk. A tall, covered mug with piping-hot coffee. She made a promise, and this was the best one you could find on the station. Coffee. One of the things that no matter where humanity goes, will always stay the same.
"It took you quite a while to get this one, did you fly all the way to the old continent to get it?" the MD laughed. The woman wore the same blue suit she did earlier with a white jacket to keep her warmer in the colder temperatures of her surroundings.
"Perhaps I may actually do that when I leave for Earth today," Pax responded with enthusiasm, taking a seat in front of the woman. She twitched a bit in pain when sitting.
"Oh child, why in the goddess's name are you walking? You need rest," Kidaria walked from the terminal to her to check the injuries. But Pax was already prepared to stop her.
"I'm fine, I'm fine. It's just bruised." She rolled her eyes as she raised her hands in a gesture of self-defence. "Maybe some stitches."
"Charming," the MD answered, going back to her seat. "You know that I am still a doctor even if most of my patients are dead, and your close friend and I do worry about you."
"Most of your patients? I thought all of your patients were dead."
"That's quite enough, child. I know why you are here. Brimos will not approve of this, and as I recall, he doesn't want you to be getting any deeper into the evidence. Especially since you have a bigger fish to fry off-world. Isn't this the same for: You are off the case?"
Pax, however, wasn't going to give up and gently pressed on the topic.
"Kidaria, you know this keeps me awake at night. I'm still trying to put the pieces together... I know there is a pattern there." While she was talking, Kidaria got up and walked to the morgue pod and slowly opened it.
"What are you doing?" Pax shook her head, and the hair followed.
"I'm waiting for you to come here. What does it look like? It's like you never saw me break rules before." The doctor mocked playfully. She didn't have to tell her that twice, as Pax's mind was already stretching to every bit of information they had come across in the previous cases, previous locations, clues, and patterns.
"Also, I would prefer if living people would keep you awake at night."
"Tell me, from the beginning." She rolled her eyes and didn't respond.
"Goods, sharp mind, that's what we like." Kidaria waited for a second and lifted the cover from the body in the pod. The victim looked peaceful, asleep and graceful. Her pale skin only just started taking the blue-greyish shade.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
"So, from where we left. The victim suffered from extensive trauma to the head. The cause of death was a traumatic brain injury which results when the head suddenly and violently hits an object or when an object pierces the skull and enters brain tissue. In this case, it was the damage of the temporal lobe caused by the impact of the glass shard from the table." She said that while pointing at the entry wound at the girl's head. "Now, there are defensive wounds on her hands, as you can see here." Kidaria lifted the victim's pale hand, showing the dark bruises, scratches on the fingers, and broken nails. She also pointed to linear abrasions on the shins and one of the knees. "Lastly, there is something you will want to see."
"The bruising on her back." Pax nodded excited, leaning forward not to miss any details. Kidaria gently grabbed the shoulders of the victim, lifted her to show the back muscles to Pax. Her mouth opened for a second looking for words.
"There is nothing." She was lost." No bruises, no wounds. Nothing."
Kidaria stuck the tongue in her cheek. "Exactly. That proves there was somebody else in the room during the struggle."
"Hold on. This makes no sense, we thought it was a kidnapping gone wrong. If there was a third unknown party involved, it changes everything." Pax's brain was going wild to match the evidence to this new perspective. "What else have we got? I need an anomaly, something out of place. We have one body only; where is the other one? And why did the second victim leave her? We know they didn't take the girl because of the fatal wound. What if the other victim was injured, bleeding, but not bad enough, and they took her or him?"
"That's nice, but before you get ahead of yourself and your made-up theories, let me stop you. You need solid evidence and proof. I have more. And you are not going to like it."
The detective crossed her hands and waited with pursed lips.
"Back to the drawing board then. Firstly, blood screening has shown two distinct markers. Female for our victim and a second, unknown marker which would belong to a second victim or the assailant. The sample was polluted but I managed to ID it as a male. There is more, however, the wall splatter only contains the second unknown marker, also there was more of it on the broken coffee table leg part. We still are missing that one, by the way."
"That doesn't mean there were three of them. Actually, it proves there were only two of them. And that our attacker bleeds, and takes a part of the table with them." Pax added.
"Right, now the anomalies you wanted." Kitaria covered the girl's body and moved away from the table to her console.
"Should I be excited?" Pax asked with a mocking tone.
"Probably. I'm going to destroy all of your theories now. Sorry. The toxicology screening has shown traces of an unidentified toxin in the victim's bloodstream. It is the same chemical as your technicians have detected in the air. I can't match it to anything I have seen before in my medical history, or any scientific database we had access to. The victim either must have injected it or it must have been somehow introduced into her system. But, this toxin or drug has rendered her in a very passive, almost euphoric state. The only reason she was able to fight back was that the administration of this thing was somehow aborted." Kitaria laid a number of documents and screens in front of her.
A beautiful pattern of data, like a number of puzzles for her to move around and match to create a complete image.
"Go on... I'm guessing you will present me some sort of proof that there was this third person again." Pax raised her brow when the doctor stopped.
"Indeed. No need for irony. I am just following the evidence. You may not like it this time but this is how it comes. In pieces."
"So what is it?" The question burned her deeply now.
"Impact strength." Kitaria responded calmly with a partially raised eyebrow as she saw Pax's questioning look. "The impact strength of a normal person falling on any object that can cause head trauma isn't corresponding to the depth of the puncture. I've done the computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging of the head. Nothing makes sense here. The wound is too deep."
"Unless somebody helped her? I'm sorry Kitaria, don't give me this look, I'm trying to put everything in my head into one whole image."
"The force needed to make a puncture this deep would require a body of around 80 to 100 kilograms to be travelling at a speed of 30 metres per second. It may be that the victim was collateral."
The two women shared the silence for a while, moving documents, screens, data, and pictures. It was a complex puzzle, and so many details didn't make sense. The more they knew, the more questions arose.
"I don't know where to start right now," Pax admitted.
"Perhaps it will be best to leave it for now. The pieces will fall into place eventually."
"If that piece is our missing victim or a crazed man with bionic arms." Pax gathered her hair off her forehead, helped to gather the documents back, and passed them to Kitaria. "I'm worried about the safety of others since this case."
"I'm worried about the safety of everyone since that fatal explosion, yet I can't do anything," Kitaria responded to her words. "Don't worry yourself with things you can't control at this time."