Chapter Three

Don't eat the evidences!

March 17. Saturday 10.15 PM. S.A. 125.

The Detective Chief Inspector, Walter Grant, was relaxing in his apartment, enjoying the broadcast of a soccer match he missed the day before. Not that it was an important game, but he had nothing better to do, and it was time to relax after a day's work.

He was about to enjoy a cheese and cold cuts with a pint, when he received a call he hadn't expected at all. There had been a death that, by all accounts, seemed to indicate some sort of macabre murder. Walter Grant would have said he was "on 11", and that would have been all. Except that who made the call, assigning him to the case, was the Chief Constable of the Lothian Police himself. The other call was from the Police Superintendent, alerting him that the case required his immediate presence. No more words were needed.

To hell with my plans for a quiet and uneventful Saturday night, he thought sighing.

A thrice-divorced man in his eighties, although his physical appearance did not look a day over fifty, he learned that perhaps love was not his thing and, in the last two decades, he had devoted himself solely to his work at Police Headquarters. He had not lost his physique, despite the years, and he still had some hair, which fortunately had not yet been reclaimed by the force of gravity.

Resigned to the fact that he was going to have his work cut out for him that night, he had gone down to the parking lot, and as he was about to get into his vehicle, he received two new notifications. One was that a First Response Team, also called a FRT, from one of the local SID stations at the Nevermore Institute, had moved from an operation in Pilton to Piershill to investigate what happened. The second notification was that three senior SID agents would also arrive on the scene shortly.

That put the pieces in place as to why he would be called in, and not another DCI on the case.

In more of a hurry to get to the scene before the attached agents, Inspector Grant activated the automatic drive and, in a matter of minutes, under an annoying cold March rain, he was arriving at the scene. In the short drive time he had been getting all the case data and preliminary reports uploaded instantly of what was happening.

A few minutes before 5:30 p.m., a woman hysterically called the police after entering her neighbor's apartment, and discovering her neighbor lying decapitated on the floor. The first police officers, from the nearby Marionville station who arrived on the scene immediately, alerted the Violent Crimes Investigation Department of the Scottish Police Central Station on Prince Street, which was where Walter Grant was stationed. The case should have gone to one of the other inspectors but, when notified that an FRT would be involved in the investigation, Grant was the first choice Central decided to assign as an inspector. He had some experience working with the FRT and SID agents.

Walter Grant had seen a lot during his long career in law enforcement. He had often been surprised at the lengths human nature would go to, although he had been quick to learn his trade. Fortunately for him, he had rarely encountered cases involving Dark Events, having worked a couple of times in the past with SID special forces and SIGN agency personnel. And he really didn't envy the agents investigating Dark Events at all.

To each his own, as he liked to say.

The scene was already a hive of police, observers, forensic team members, search drones, and members of the Nevermore FRT.

Neighbors were evacuated from the building after questioning about the young woman living in the apartment, and a perimeter was set up outside the building. The only one left in place was the rickety old robot at the entrance.

Grant made the change of case inspector, with someone he knew from the office. The detective Inspector Mallen. A nice man, broader than he was tall, who seemed relieved that someone else had to deal with the FRT.

"Go BONGO," Grant said, smiling, as he watched Mallen leave the perimeter. The truth is, he didn't blame him either.

Mallen fled like hell once Grant took over case management, and he logged his exit from the scene. As the change of assignment had occurred later, the evidence collection teams at the scene had already begun.

When he heard that there was a decapitated woman, the first thing he thought was that he was going to find a butcher's shop. What was his surprise when he arrived at the building and discovered that the scene was different.

Inspector Grant climbed up to the sixth floor to find forensics and the FRT, wrapped in their white coveralls, rushing around taking measurements of the scene, while drones, round and small as a marble, hovered around the place. Grant came across a fey male member of the FRT, who had a sort of antenna protruding from his forehead and a wide mouth almost like that of an abyssal fish. It was nothing to be surprised about, after all at his workplace there were a couple of feys too, although those only had long ears. But he couldn't lie that the sudden appearance scared him a little. Over there was another fey girl, that from under her long jacket was wagging a long thin appendage peeking out from her backside, like a fine tail.

Grant decided to concentrate more on the site and scanned the room with his eyes. The diameter outside the place did not match the one inside the room.

"An SDD," he said, as he looked around the giant room with the mirrors on either side.

Many people bought Spatial Distortion Devices as a way to enlarge residences and vehicles, although the ones with more capacity were a bit more expensive. Apparently the deceased young woman must have liked to use a lot of space, even though at the time there was nothing to see, but the room full of people taking samples and drones flying around, scanning and recording the entire crime scene.

The young woman's body was on the floor, in front of the mirror with windows on the sides, already covered with a sheet. Grant met with the forensic coordinator and then ordered the medical examiner to show him the body. She was a young woman by the physiognomy of her body and was wearing a swimsuit.

The head was nowhere to be seen.

He didn't know what made him more uneasy, imagining what the killer might want with the head, or seeing that there wasn't even a drop of blood spilled. It was certainly a bizarre scene, the body looked more like someone planted a headless mannequin on the spot.

From what I had been reading from the preliminary reports, the body was in that condition when the police entered, Grant thought.

The medical examiner covered the body, and Grant set about talking to the other members of the forensic team, to see if they had found anything that might help to find out what had happened, and to corroborate if there was already a list of suspects.

"Sir, are you Inspector Walter Grant?" said a somewhat shrill voice behind him.

"Yes. DCI Walter Grant."

"Good evening, Sir. I'm Jim Stuart, FRT Broxburn," introduced the young man, who was carrying a tablet in his left hand.

Jim Stuart was a freckled, red-haired fey, so skinny-looking that Walter Grant was sure a strong enough wind could blow him easily all the way to the Hebrides Islands. Unlike the other FRT members, milling around, the young fey was dressed in a dark overall. He must have been the one in charge of the team. He was not wrong on that point as, indeed, Jim Stuart introduced himself as the leader of the FRT team on the scene.

"Good evening. Broxburn, eh?" asked Grant, as he shook his hand. "I thought you were at Pilton?"

"We just came from Pilton, we were there all day with another team from the SIGN agency."

"Busy day?"

"Pretty much," Stuart stated, looking circumstantial.

"Well, I've only been informed by headquarters that you folks would be here. What's going on? Is this a Dark Event?"

"To be honest," Jim Stuart started to say, but was interrupted just as he was about to start explaining.

"You're a muncher, that's what you are," said a male voice.

"You were taking too long," replied a female voice.

"You ate my food too, you could have left me some. You're like Liz's capybara."

"And I'm still hungry. In case you don't remember we skipped lunch."

Walter Grant and Jim Stuart turned and looked at the door to the room. Stuart's face changed, and he put on a serious expression.

Those who had spoken were a human man and a fey woman, who were just walking in at that moment.

The man was wearing a black suit, with the dark SID badge pinned to his coat lapel. He was quite portly and, more or less from his appearance, it could be deduced that he must be in his late forties. He was bald, somewhat hard-featured, with a searching look in his black eyes and thin lips. He walked in a very straight, easy gait. Walter Grant could almost deduce with complete certainty that the man had been in law enforcement previously, or perhaps the military.

The woman accompanying him was younger, her physical appearance making her look as if she were in her thirties or slightly younger. Grant dismissed the idea after looking at her ears, it was likely that the woman was many years older than him. She had a slight poker expression, which made it more difficult to guess her age. Black hair, tied in two pigtails at the nape of her neck, and from between her bangs peered two gray eyes. She was dressed in black, with a short jacket, over a wide-collared top, with black pants and tactical boots, which, like her partner's shoes, were currently covered by bags so as not to contaminate the scene. The same badge hung from the belt of her pants.

"Inspector Grant?" asked the bald man.

If they know who I am, why ask? Grant thought to himself. "Yes, sir, DCI Walter Grant."

"I'm Agent Philip Cook, SID. This is my partner, Agent Zi."

"Zi, SID. A pleasure," the girl said without so much protocol, in a voice that seemed to slur the words a bit.

"Ma'am," Grant greeted.

"Cook and Zi are fine, please."

Grant silently checked the records of the two agents in his Neurowire, and saw that the SID couple's team name was Coxis. Probably a typo, Grant thought.

Apparently both agents didn't know Jim Stuart either, since they also greeted him. Or so it seemed, Zi squeezed Stuart's hand as if she wanted to crush his fingers. After the protocol exchange of greetings, Grant, Philip and Zi gave the orders to the different teams of the police and the FRT, since it would be a shared jurisdiction. So the evidence could change in the chain of custody between the different labs. Nevermore did not have a facility nearby, and so all studies would be conducted at the MCIT and DOJ forensics labs. All data and reports would be handled by the agents sharing the case, Philip, Zi and Grant.

It was Inspector Grant who noticed. "I was expecting three of you. I was notified that three special agents were coming."

Philip and Zi exchanged glances quickly, with a disapproving expression.

"Yes... well. He's most likely held up by something," Philip said, putting on an apologetic smile.

"Yeah, maybe the roulette numbers weren't good," Zi commented, under her breath.

"..." Grant looked at her, in confusion.

"He should be on his way, he will be here any minute," Philip said and hurried to change the subject. "Let's get to it," he added, nudging his companion.

Walter Grant didn't get to see it, as the two were standing close together, but Zi responded by pinching Philip's butt. What he did hear was a snap, as the man brought his hands behind his back, and Zi raised her hand with an "Ow" of pain almost instantly.

What's wrong with these two? Walter Grant thought worriedly, then asked, "Are you field agents from the London Division?"

"No. We are from the SID Main Division. We were notified to be on standby, at Cardiff station in case anything happened here. We flew as fast as we could here when we were notified of this case."

SID Main Division? These two are level 6 agents? It was the first time Walter Grant had met agents of that level. If he could remember correctly, level 6 was only one rung below special ops and case approval controls. Whoever those two were, they held a much higher rank than any other field agent he met before. This can't be good. Maybe the name of the team was Coxis, because they are a pain in the ass.

"Well? What's going on?" Grant asked, as a small evidence-collecting drone whizzed by just inches from his nose.

The group walked over to where the young woman's body lay.

"Our alert is because of a creature sighting near here on Thursday. The FRTs, along with a SIGN team, have been on the lookout ever since. But there has been nothing more abnormal than some anomalies in the power supply yesterday morning."

"Creature?" Grant asked.

"Yes. I'm sorry. It's classified, we can't disclose that information yet," Philip apologized, "I'll just tell you that we're investigating all possibilities, based on what we're looking for that might have something to do with this girl."

"Huh…"Grant couldn't be bothered by that, after all, SID had other rules about revealing sensitive information, even if it was a case where the information would be shared.

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"And here's the icing on the cake," Zi said. The four of them looked at the body covered with the white sheet.

"What you guys are looking for, have to do with this girl?" Grant asked.

"We're not sure yet, to be honest," Philip replied.

"Oh. But we are now. Or at least, we're sure this case does fall within our jurisdiction." Stuart pointed out excitedly.

"What do you mean?" Philip asked.

"You see this room?"

"Yes, with my two eyes," Zi told him mockingly.

"Well, when we just walked in, and set up our measuring instruments, guess what we found?" Stuart seemed to enjoy the theatrics and added, "MAP traces."

Zi looked at Philip with apprehensive eyes.

"Map traces? What's that?" Grant asked.

"Mozumi Arbitrary Particles," Zi replied.

"Are you sure?" Philip asked.

"Yes, there's no doubt." Stuart nodded.

"Shadow people?" Zi asked.

"Or a new fey?" Philip added. "That can't be good."

"That would explain the sighting..." Zi pointed out.

The three looked at Walter Grant who didn't seem to understand anything that was going on.

Stuart took to the floor and explained it. "The Mozumi arbitrary particles are particles that appear when something from the Other Side crosses into our world. For example, normally when a fey appears, those particles appear for a short period of time and then fade away. They decay."

"The creature that was sighted in Pilton has a history of appearing in places before feys do, or when those particles appeared too," Zi followed up.

"You just said Shadow People? Are they real?"

"We don't know, but I guess you've heard some legends."

Walter Grant could vaguely remember the term. He thought he'd heard it a long time ago from one of his sons, though they were nothing more than urban legends. "Are those black shadow-like creatures appearing around the world in diferent years, right?"

"Yes. We have had reports for centuries of them. Although we have never been able to capture any of them. We know they exist, they are real in that sense. We don't know much else, though."

"If so, what does it have to do with this girl?" Grant asked.

"That's what we want to know too..." Philip sighed.

"From the rigor mortis of the body, and the decay of the MAPs, we know this took place yesterday around 10 PM," Stuart explained.

Zi looked at him quizzically. "MAPs can be detected by satellite. If this happened yesterday, how come it wasn't detected earlier?"

Stuart pointed to the room. "This whole part of the room is an SDD, there's a layer that acts like a Faraday cage."

"But even if it's minimal, radiation can get through."

"Believe me. I'm as surprised as you are, this is a special SDD, it's customized like ours. This girl was a genius. It had a system to prevent some types of electromagnetic radiation from getting out when activated, as well as several layers of reinforcement vectors."

"Not too smart to keep her head on her shoulders," Zi muttered, ruefully.

Jim Stuart knelt before the corpse and lifted the sheet and Philip squatted down to get a better look at the corpse. There was not a single drop of blood from where the head should have been. The cut was at the level of the fourth cervical vertebra. It was a clean cut. It was as if it had been produced by some kind of cauterizing instrument, but there were no burn marks on the tissue. It was as if the head had simply been severed from the body.

"What kind of weapon causes this?" Philip asked, to the medical examiner.

"There are no traces of any kind of material, just dust in suspension adhering to it. There's no trace of the main burned tissue, but there's some in the veins and arteries, which is why there's no blood. It could have been some kind of molecular vibration blade or maybe fractus material, but we don't have any evidence of that either. There are no shear patterns in the tissue or bone."

"Any clues from the head?" Zi asked.

"Not so far," admitted the doctor.

"What do we know about her?" Philip asked.

This time it was Grant who answered him, he was getting all the data from the victim's profile. "Sil Moore. Age 23. Single. Lived alone. Worked as a technician at Edinburgh station. Clean nose... no record of any kind, not even a ticket for irresponsible flying or DUI. Up to date with her taxes, and with 400k E-febs in her bank account." Through Neurowire he was even looking at Sil Moore's social networking data and added. "She had a relationship until a few months ago."

Walter Grant had tossed around the possibility that it was something to do with money, but the bank surveyor's initial inquiries showed that she hardly had any big money movements.

"She's local?" Zi asked.

"Yes. She was orphaned at age nine and lived with her aunt and uncle until she was sixteen, when she moved here."

"The information on how the body was discovered is correct?"

"Yes. The neighbor had the combination. She and the victim knew each other, they both had each other's passwords in case of emergency. The neighbor got strange when she saw that she hadn't been online for many hours and decided to check if she was here."

"And her ex-partner?" Philip asked.

"He has an alibi. He's not here. He took a job in Birmingham, he's been there for months, the local police there are doing an HRI on him." Grant replied.

"Any strange movements near her? CCC? Any reports from NWADC or HTPC?"

"There was no strange movement in the vicinity, from what the cameras and drones show. No strange reports from NWADC either," Grant said, shrugging.

"Well maybe that's all in order… but there's something else," Jim Stuart said, and grabbed the tablet with both hands and stretched it out until it was three times the size.

From the tablet emerged a hologram of the body on the floor. He could see through the skin and organs, though that wasn't the strangest thing. From various parts of the hologram, there were parts that did not match a normal skeleton, and from the vertebrae sprouted a series of indicators with different labels.

"I think this can be classified as weird," Jim Stuart said.

"Her bones... are like..." began Philip, with a confused expression.

"Modified," said a young woman from the police forensics team, who was directing the scanning drones a few feet away from them.

https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/42dd80f9-5ac6-42d5-8ccc-bcea020b6152/dfhossm-4ef1ad3c-a56d-4617-ad74-fb2f4d63b87f.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzQyZGQ4MGY5LTVhYzYtNDJkNS04Y2NjLWJjZWEwMjBiNjE1MlwvZGZob3NzbS00ZWYxYWQzYy1hNTZkLTQ2MTctYWQ3NC1mYjJmNGQ2M2I4N2YuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.u9saY8HojqmTfYS0uUzEWCKJqpCoyWSaT7DGpMRHZLA [https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/42dd80f9-5ac6-42d5-8ccc-bcea020b6152/dfhossm-4ef1ad3c-a56d-4617-ad74-fb2f4d63b87f.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzQyZGQ4MGY5LTVhYzYtNDJkNS04Y2NjLWJjZWEwMjBiNjE1MlwvZGZob3NzbS00ZWYxYWQzYy1hNTZkLTQ2MTctYWQ3NC1mYjJmNGQ2M2I4N2YuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.u9saY8HojqmTfYS0uUzEWCKJqpCoyWSaT7DGpMRHZLA]

Another forensic scientist, this time male, approached the group and added. "And she has too many implants. Lumbar braces, vertebral memory banks, extensors, upgraded lungs for longer endurance. Increased strength in leg muscles and phalanges, upgraded cochlear systems. And she' s got a couple less ribs too. I haven't seen anything like it in a while."

"Dinosaur girl," Stuart commented.

"What's the point of carrying all this in the body?" Philip asked the coroner.

"I wondered the same thing when I saw it. It doesn't make sense. Transferring the consciousness to a new and better body, with all the same parameters makes a lot more sense and is cheaper. These kinds of upgrades are a bit crude. Unless this girl was a masochist, I can't understand why she would suffer so much to modify muscles and bones this way, let alone add those portable memory banks don't make sense nowadays."

"Unless she was storing something she didn't want to entrust to a regular memory bank," Stuart pointed out.

"It's a possibility," the coroner admitted.

"Fingerprints? NW data?" Grant asked.

The young female forensic scientist replied. "We have seven distinct pairs of fingerprints in the apartment, all identified, including two from children. There were none on her. Her NW wasn't online either. I was going through the records and she almost always turned it off for a few hours at night. We have no records of the time she died."

"Why is she in a bathing suit?" Zi asked.

"This SDD is set up as a practice space and a swimming pool," replied the forensic scientist.

Grant seemed surprised. "Is that a joke? Isn't it against building regulations to have a pool in an SDD?"

"Apparently not in this building, but, like I said, this girl was very smart," Stuart said. "The whole space has seven firewalls, with extra security measures with multi-layers." He paused and added. "On top of that there's something else."

Stuart typed for a few seconds on the tablet and this time a series of numerical data and equations scrolled up and down in a dizzying fashion.

"This girl, at the time of her death, was sending a huge amount of data to the portable memory banks."

"What is that data?" Philip asked, who at that moment was looking at the almost imperceptible marks on Sil's body and the bird tattoo on her arm.

"They are not complete. In fact, from the estimated volume, I think I was just starting to save them. Most of it is encoded but, from what I can see, there are many longitudinal variations and frequency variables. Sound… Music. It really is a huge amount of data though. Not only that, I was using a lot of applications and subroutines. Some of them with no security log."

"Music?" Zi asked.

" Yep."

"So… Dark Event, or not?" Grant asked.

"Yes, without a doubt. I'm not sure of the type, though. This is a Class 2 or 3 DE, but with Code Red," Stuart stated.

"Well as long as it's not a SOMNIUM EXTERRI and we have to evacuate Edinburgh I'm happy," Philip said.

"I think I can understand about the body. She wasn't a masochist, she was a perfectionist," Zi said, who through the Neurowire was checking Sil's social networking data.

"And what's the difference?" Philip asked.

"The difference between perfectionism and masochism is just a matter of semantics," Stuart said.

"She was a free dancer. There is an artistic movement, which uses surgical techniques to modify the body, but without altering it too much. Basically, they achieve new types of movements without passing their consciousness into a new body."

"Do all the implants have serial numbers?" Grant asked to the forensic scientists.

"All of them. They're all legal, vintage old fashioned, but legal."

"Pass me all the numbers. Better to do a check-up"

Grant met with the forensics team members and a couple of cops who were first on the scene. Philip and Zi donned latex gloves and set about checking and observing the room, while at the same time collecting the data that the FRT techs were sending in. Stuart continued to play with the numbers in the equations, which kept appearing and disappearing.

Philip walked over to the room, where Sil used to sleep and checked the closet and bedside table, when he noticed a rose next to the picture frame and looked around the room.

"She doesn't look like a flower girl," he said to Zi, who at that moment was looking at herself in the mirror closest to the door. "These must be her parents."

"They all seemed to love her. Very socially active," she added, still corroborating data through the networks.

"Very social, no trouble with the law, tax payer. No apparent enemies. How does someone like that end up decapitated?"

"Maybe she lost her mind because she was a good citizen."

"Don't be cynical. She was probably a good person."

"A good person, albeit with serious PTSD up to the age of twelve."

"What?"

"I'm reviewing her medical records."

"We need a warrant for that," Philip said, glancing at Grant to make sure he didn't hear what his partner was saying.

"Not when she talks about it herself in her social networks. This girl was present the day she lost her parents. She watched as they and three others were sucked into space. She was saved because she was in another compartment of an orbital transport…"

"Poor girl."

"..." Zi turned and looked around the huge room. "This is for a pool, right?" she asked Stuart, who was still engrossed in his numbers.

"Yes, it's one of the settings she used the most, as well as a personal gym and dance practice instruments."

"What are you thinking?" Philip asked, looking at his partner.

"I was just reading what she was writing with her friends. Apparently she was afraid of space. Who knows, maybe she was using the pool to deal with her stress. As a form of training," Zi said, as she headed for the kitchen.

"Maybe... but that doesn't explain why she ended up decapitated," Philip pointed out and headed for the bathroom to do his own ocular inspection.

He checked the closet and bathroom cabinet, while small drones scoured the bathtub. He found nothing beyond the usual and even less.

"Hey, look at this!" Philip called. His partner came out of the kitchen and joined him. "What's wrong with this picture?"

"Mogkeup, contact lenses, oxidizing wate-." Zi was making strange noises as she spoke, but Philip didn't pay attention to it at first.

"No drugs, not even recreational, aspirin or pain killers. And if she had PTSD, there's no medication here either."

"Mogh… maybe she didn't need it. The severe PTSD she had in the eagrly years. Maybe her training, it was her coping technique with the aftermath. gulp."

"Like psychotherapy?"

"Yes. It's pog-ssible," Zi admitted as she made an effort to swallow something.

The sounds Zi was making were becoming annoying. Philip turned to look at her and watched as she finished eating a slice of pizza. "Where did you get that?"

"From the fridge," Zi admitted, with a slight smile.

Philip looked at her as if he didn't believe what he had just heard and closed the bathroom door. "Are you nuts? Don't eat the evidences!"

"Why? Are you thinking that whatever they used to cut off her head they used to cut pizza?"

Philip took a long breath and tried to calm down. It was useless sometimes to try to reason with his partner. "Have some decorum, woman. Her body is still in the other room."

"Calm down, there were no fingerprints on anything on the pizza or in the fridge and no one saw me."

Philip pursed his lips, as if he wanted to give her one more reprimand. "You'd better. If we have a problem with that, I don't know you at all," he said sighing angrily, and walked out of the bathroom, addressing Stuart again. "Do you have any toxicology data? Medication, some kind of psychopharmac or something abnormal?"

"There's no data uploaded from when she shut down the NW network, but she doesn't have anything abnormal."

"Nothing unusual? No sign of any problems?"

"No. Other than all those implants, she was perfect. Vaccinations up to date, heart in optimal condition. She liked to take care of herself, had optimal vitamin levels. Although she liked to eat anything sometimes. She had pizza and dessert for her last meal."

Philip hearing that, looked at Zi, who was checking the other mirror near the windows now.

"That one's not real," Zi said, pointing to the mirror across the room.

"The one what," Stuart asked.

"The mirror."

"How do you know?" asked Philip.

"That one doesn't have a gap. This one does. That one is a copy of this one."

"The fact that the mirror is real shocks me more than the fact that one of them is a fake," Philip admitted. "It's usually easier to make a copy rather than spend a few E-febs."

"Can you turn off the distortion on the real one?" Zi asked Stuart.

"Do you think the assassin is behind it?" Stuart asked mockingly.

"Maybe. Maybe it's your sister stripping."

"Hey, hey. You two, calm down. What's wrong with you?" Philip tried to calm them down. For some reason, he had sensed tension between his partner and the redhead FRT leaders as soon as they entered the room.

Stuart and Zi looked at each other as if at any moment they were going to start a name-calling contest, but they looked at Philip and kept quiet. Stuart began to search through the programs on his Neurowire for an interface to unlock the spatial distortion in the mirror. There was a chance that there was something behind the wall and they had to disable it anyway at some point.

Walter Grant, who had finished talking to the cops, approached Philip. While the two feys were concentrating on the mirror he decided to talk to Philip Cook. After all he didn't know agents of such a high rank and the bald guy seemed friendly, despite his apparent tough mannerisms. "Long time dealing with the feys?"

"Fifteen years," Philip admitted.

"Wow."

"Fifteen years... with her," Philip said, looking at Zi. "Twenty since I joined Nevermore."

Grant looked at him in surprise. "May I ask?"

"I'm sixty-one years old. I stopped my aging when I joined Nevermore."

"Have you been in the police before?"

"Army, SPOPs."

"A lifetime," Grant sighed.

"Indeed. And you?" Philip asked.

"Eighty. I gave up on getting old twenty-five years ago," Grant replied, scratching his cheek.

"How many years in the service?"

"Fifty-five...with three divorces, three kids, two dogs and a turtle."

"Wow."

"Are they always like this?" asked Grant looking at Zi and Stuart.

"You've never worked with feys?"

"Yes, of course. A couple of times, and that's the reason I was assigned. I guess it's different for you guys, though."

"Well, they're unruly, even the ones that seem quieter. But not all of them. The fey's personalities may change, but not the way they behave. They are the Very Good People."

"The Very Good People?"

"That's another of the appellations given to feys in ancient times. Fairies, elves, gnomes, feys, fee, fata. I mean, fey is just another chosen name, but they've been called a thousand things."

" Yeah, I know. Personally I like the term feeric better, although it is in disuse."

"Don't think so much of it."

"And her?" asked the inspector, looking at Zi.

"Her age?"

"If you can tell, of course."

Philip smiled and spoke softly. "She was already on this planet before my great-grandfather was born."

Zi turned and gave Philip a dagger-sharp look. "I heard that."

"It's the truth," Philip said with a shrug.