Calli stood motionless atop the slope, looking down at the golden rays shining down on the cavern below her, and at an old monastery, overlooking a vast graveyard.
This can’t be real, right? Calli had thought earlier, when she arrived near the Night Market. She took one of the side entrances into the underground which was accessible only by gliders like herself, as attempting to enter otherwise would spell a 100-foot drop into certain death, even with Johrei shielding.
She spotted a body from atop the slope, about half a kilometer out, lying prone under one of the moving sunbeams shining through the gaps in the cavern ceiling. At first, she wondered if there was a hunt nearby, but didn’t see any signs of another hunter. Either the hunter took proof of the hunt, or they dragged the body in front of the Auditors themselves, dead or alive.
But the raven black jacket and jumpsuit, plus her memory of what this monastery meant to one of her closest friends, and the pieces fit together in her mind. And yet, she rejected that reality.
It can’t be. It can’t be. It can’t be real, she repeated to herself, refusing to believe that that was Cyr, lying dead on the dirt floor, surrounded by once blue cavern flowers, now tinged red by the pool of blood nearby.
But when she arrived, she could deny the truth no longer. Cyriak Imeraza, hunter of the Blackbirds, had passed on. From what she could see, he was ripped apart by something, or someone. A torrent of emotions raged inside Calli at that very moment. Pure anguish at his death, rage at his killer and, though she tried to reject it, part of her blamed herself, for not getting there on time – for burdening her team once again.
Cyriak was a stoic person, but his presence was of great comfort to the Division during the early days. He was the first recruit of Caz after he became Shogun of the underground and had, through his connections, helped Caz expand his team to what it was today. Without him, the team would have broken apart, especially after the previous Daimyo left, due to the callousness of Casimir at the time. And without him standing as Caz’s advisor during the peace-talk negotiations following the Clan’s alliance with Taysa Polaris in the great purge of the underground, war would have destroyed Lucens Mundi entirely. Through them, a balance of power was maintained, an unwritten contract between the Imperial Court of the surface and the leaders of the underground. Things would have been much different back then, and we wouldn’t have changed for the better, if not for Cyr’s wisdom. He was the glue that tied the Blackbirds together, a capable mentor to new recruits, including her, and the heart of the team, that kept the Blackbirds from losing themselves to the dark realities of Neo-Kamakura, and the pointless futures it represented.
And now he was gone, and she was too slow to save him.
She glided down to the center of the cemetery, to where he was. Though her heart ached, she was surprisingly calm right now. Death was so common today, so ingrained in society, that few hunters or civilians, save for the paranoid ones, cared much for a corpse found within the city. Often corpses were left alone until a report was made, and a cleaner was expected to be sent by the Auditors to pick up the body. It was only upon confirmation of an unmarked individual during the autopsy process that Auditors begin to ask questions. However, by then, the perpetrators have usually long fled, and the case gets filed away.
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Still, this was Cyr. She shook away her thoughts. Shaken as she was, she needed to search the area for clues. She would have time to grieve later. However, despite leaving the body behind, a thorough sweep of the location garnered nothing of value.
No Hunter’s curtain. Cyr’s body was fresh. Cyr wasn’t marked, so why would someone just leave his body behind? She looked around. No traps from what she could see.
She reached into her pocket-space and pulled out a goggle of a streamlined design. She put on the goggles, and with a non-verbal command, the device activated and began highlighting the surrounding environment in a desaturated color scheme. This device operated as a thermal scanner, looking for signs of heat in the area, but the mode could be changed to one which highlighted Johrei residue in the area.
There was more here than she expected. Though she couldn’t differentiate between Johrei types, at least she knew whatever it was that killed Cyr, was human, and not a subterranean Enthipid. She grit her teeth. The Johrei particles danced in the air, spread out in a frenzy – a sign of the aftermath of battle. Whoever killed him left no other trail. She cursed her own helplessness.
Something did pique her curiosity, however. Two faint trails of Johrei, a consistent distance apart, seemed to move this way and that throughout the area. Going by what she knew to be Cyr’s footprint intertwined in the mix, she could approximate what had happened. Did the killer use a vehicle of some kind? No, there wasn’t any that left two treads like that, especially one that skinny. If anything, this trail seemed akin to a cleaner’s crew carrying a body across a field before tossing it on the back of a Suncycle. But Cyr’s corpse was still here, so there couldn’t have been cleaners…For now, Calli pushed those thoughts aside.
I have to get to Aio. He had to have some information about whoever might’ve done this, or he might be the next target. Whatever the case, she needed to get to him quickly.
But…
Calli took another glance at Cyr’s body, holding back the sickening feeling welling up in her gut. The least she could do, was give him a proper burial. Once that was done, she needed to contact Caz and relay what happened. As for Nyx…she wasn’t sure when the best time would be to tell her. She looked around at the grave markers around him…
Imeraza. Did you choose this place, Cyr? Did you know this would happen?
She pulled out a handle attached to a Johrei generator. With a non-verbal command, it formed into the shape of a shovel. One of its many preset designs.
She stabbed the shovel into an empty space to the right of the grave marker carrying the name “Zariah Imeraza” on it and began lifting off the soil. She threw the soil aside, forming a small pile. Again, she dug. And again. And again. All while repeating Cyr’s name in her head, so that she would forget what had happened today, promising herself she would never let something like this happen again.
Internally she apologized for being so weak. To herself, to her team, and to Cyr’s family next to him. It was then, as she dug, that her goggles picked up a trace shimmer of white hiding under the roots of a small, blue flower.