Memory transcription subject: Estala, Prestige Extermination Officer, Krakotl to Venlil Extermination training leader.
Date [standardized human time]: July 12, 2136
I could feel my heart pounding as I stared out through the window, my raised gun waiting for the first predator to appear within my sights. The blaring alarms were still ringing, the harsh sound echoing along the streets, warning the herd of an incoming attack. Not that there was anyone out and about any more; anyone not in one of the bunkers had decided to lie low wherever they were, hopefully out of the grasp of any predators.
My eyes scanned the surroundings, looking for any movement, waiting, ever vigilant for signs of danger. That was something “The Exterminators” TV series never showed: most of the job was long periods of boredom, just waiting for something to happen, followed by small, brief moments of everything happening at once.
I glanced around at my surroundings, tables and chairs of the office upturned to provide extra cover, the five other Exterminators all doing the same as us as waiting any contact with the enemy. The small Guild owned building we were in, when not being used as a general office and administration hub, was designed to be a defensible location allowing the Exterminators to scout out the movements of any attacking Arxur, situated at the outskirts of the city.
A clattering sound caused everyone to jump as the tension in the room heightened, half a dozen pairs of eyes darting around looking for the noisy intrusion. My own heart threatened to beat out of my chest before I spotted the offending item: a can of flamer fuel that had fallen out of its pocket on a silver flame resistant uniform.
The room calmed back down again, the six of us going back to our defence of this part of the town and its hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, awaiting defenseless in their shelters. There were thousands of these groups spread out all over the planet, all armed and trained Exterminators holding as the last time of defence against the Arxur, awaiting first contact with the beasts. Our job was simple: engage any forces we could, and provide information of Arxur movements to the rest of the Guild’s forces.
I looked over at the Venlil who had dropped the item. A Junior Exterminator by the name of Salek, no more than eleven years old, not that age mattered. When a Arxur raid was inbound, any paw, wing, or tentacle that could hold a flamer needed to help and defend the herd.
I watched as Salek fumbled with the canister, shaking from ears to tail, another clanging sound echoing through the room as it scattered from his trembling paws once again. This time the others gave more annoyed and frustrated tail flicks, worried that the junior's actions would alert any hostile predators to our position.
Poor kid looks like he's on the verge of stampeding.
I moved over to his position and picked up the canister from the floor myself, placing a reassuring wing upon Salek’s shoulder.
“Hey kid, look at me, everything's going to be fine.”
I saw the Venlil look up at me as I touched him, a sharp movement as my contact startled him. I could see Salek breathing heavily through a slack jaw, eyes darting around unfocused as panic was completely in control of the Venlil. The kid was fully under the influence of his prey instincts, running on autopilot without a single coherent thought. I'd seen this before, especially in newer Exterminators. This was probably his first Arxur raid while wearing the uniform.
Poor guy.
“Listen to my voice. Take deep breaths. Everything is fine, you're going to be OK, just focus on breathing.”
I watched as Salek listened to my instructions, taking large deep gulps of air, the staggered sound eventually slowing as I stood next to him, watching his gaze slowly regain focus and his trembling slowing.
“You good? You think you can continue?”
I handed the Venlil the flamer fuel again as Salek gave an affirmative tail flick.
“Y-y-yes, I th-think so. How a-are you s-s-so calm knowing what's o-out th-there?”
I gave a small soft laugh.
“I'm really not. Fear is good, fear is a healthy part of being prey. But you've got to push through in order to keep the rest of the herd safe. That’s what it means to be an Exterminator.”
I gave a small shrug as the young Venlil looked up at me, only giving a small glance back out of the window to make sure nothing had changed, before returning to reassuring the Junior Exterminator.
“Besides, statistically we won't see anything. The chance the Arxur raid this exact location is low.”
Almost in response to my statement, the blaring predator alarms gave three short, final tones before going silent, signalling the all clear to the entire planet. Whatever threat had befallen Venlil Prime was clearly over.
“See, everything is fine kid.” I gave Salek a final reassuring pat, before turning to the now relieved rest of the room, the tension evaporating as the raid was declared over.
“OK, squad, we've got work to do, standard post stampede cleanup. Check for anyone injured in the rush, see what damage the predator attacks did, and get treatment and aid to anyone that needs it.”
The end of the predator attack didn’t mean the end of our job. The guild would be busy over the next paw, providing aid where needed from the inevitable injuries and deaths in the resultant stampeding, as well as ensuring there were no stragglers left behind by the Arxur raid. I hoped it had been a small one, that as few people got hurt by the beasts as possible, but asking for mercy from a predator was like demanding the winds not to blow.
I reached over to Salek, the young Venlil seemingly perking up now that the immediate danger of the Greys had passed, giving the Junior Exterminator a reassuring pat on the back.
“The worst is over, everything is going back to normal.”
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Memory transcription subject: Estala, Human Methods Advisor to the Exterminators.
Date [standardized human time]: March 10th, 2137
“So what do we have to go on?”
I asked the question rhetorically, looking at the random pieces of information shown on the digital whiteboard, the various testimonies of dates and times given by the more helpful witnesses at the facility. Jkob stood behind the controls, the Letian’s regular IT experience greatly helping out with this kind of thing. I myself sat on a perch situated in the otherwise empty meeting room at the Guild’s office, a bright mango coloured scarf Joseph had given me covering up the new patches from where I'd been pulling feathers. Each of us trying to solve this murderous puzzle.
“Well we know they are, or were, an exterminator, and that they are a Venlil of average build.”
Joseph was right, of course. In the end I couldn’t change what has happened, only try to make it better in the future. That started with bringing this murderous Exterminator to justice. Joseph and Jkob had both individually said they wanted me to rest properly till my injuries, new and old, healed up. I'd told them both the same thing: I wouldn't be able to rest until the monster hiding behind my organisation's name was caught.
“So that narrows it down to only almost every single Exterminator on the planet.”
“Can't we just focus on Dawn Creek, since that's where all the murders were done?”
I shook my head, giving a sigh of annoyance.
“Nope. Nothing stopping someone from travelling to Dawn Creek because they see how incompetent they are. Or how incompetent they were. We also have no idea if there are more murders in another district we didn’t find.”
“So our search area is any Venlil exterminator within travelling distance to Dawn Creek?”
“Which is basically a quarter of the planet thanks to the train system. That's what, a suspect list of two hundred thousand people?”
There was a moment of fingers tapping on a keyboard as Jkob searched through his data.
“161,366 to be exact, boss.”
I gave another sigh. Far too many to search through. There must be something we've missed, some detail that can cut down the number of suspects. Silence took over the room as both of us mentally strained our memories or occasionally rechecked the data we'd gathered.
That was the issue, wasn't it? All of our leads were second hand, rumours and missing people reports with the only first-hand witness being a child who only got a glimpse of “A Venlil in an Exterminator suit”. There wasn’t even any real evidence still that it was an Exterminator, perhaps just some kind of twisted fan who got their hands on a uniform. We were merely assuming so because otherwise we had literally nothing to go on.
Maybe we can see if the facility members know anything else, see if we can get more info on a second meeting with them? Although I really don’t want to go back there.
“Boss, something I've been wondering. Whoever’s doing this, why didn't they keep wiping the records? If they kept doing that, there's no way we'd even know there was ever a killer.”
That’s… that’s a good point. Jkob’s assertion was correct: it was only the predator attack records of the three latest victims that let us know what was even happening. Without those records, there would have been no media attention, the humans would have never spotted them, and whoever was doing this would be free to keep doing it. Whoever was doing this clearly had enough knowledge on our processes to keep this hidden.
Unless they didn’t want this to be hidden, they wanted to send a message.
“I think- I think they wanted people to know. Not that it was a murder, but that these people had been killed. Everyone already knew the ex-facility patients were predator diseased, but the three latest murders were just normal people who supported humans some way. Whoever did this wanted people to see that supporting humans invited ‘predator attacks’. Humans arriving was the change in their behaviour…”
I trailed off for a moment at that last word, a niggling idea forming in my mind. Change. Something changed, something was different that caused the killer to change their victims.
“Jkob,” I asked, an idea starting to form. “Can you show all the confirmed dates of death in order of date?”
A furious tapping once again emitted from the Letian’s fingers as they did their computer magic, changing the screen to show a depressing graphical representation of the assumed dates of the murders. Seeing it like this, it made the distinction between the pre and post human killings rather blatant, as well as instantly highlighting a discrepancy we hadn’t noticed before.
“What happened there?” Jkob asked, highlighting a series of dates where the more consistent pattern of Facility patient killings stopped near instantly one paw. “Before these three latest killings at a far slower pace, the original targets just seem to…stop.”
While I knew we didn’t have the whole picture, not with our limited information, something had clearly changed here. I rubbed my head with my wing to try and think about anything that might have changed an Exterminator’s schedule during that time. It was early during the human interactions, I was busy being stupid and trying to work out what the humans were up to, failing to keep people ‘safe’. It was also around that time that the Guild decided to…. Decided to…
“The suspended Exterminators!”
Both of us shouted it out at the same time as we realized what had happened. Early during the discovery of the humans, every suspended Exterminator had been rehired by the Guild, to gather as many personnel as possible. I personally had been against the move, since they were no longer Exterminators for a reason, but the idea had been popular amongst the fearful public, so had been done.
“That means the Heartbreak killer is a previously suspended Exterminator who was rehired by the Guild!” I shouted triumphantly, the excitement of finally hitting a solid lead running through both Jkob and I.
“There’s no way someone doing all the extra patrols and work during that period would have had time to travel to the facility and kill people there, which is why they stopped! We can search with that!”
“We can filter further! Get rid of anyone who left the planet in the last [2 years].”
“Or had an extended medical issue! Anything that would stop them from being consistent in the last [2 years].”
I paused for a moment, thinking, before adding another limitation.
“Remove anyone who later had pro-human leanings. Joined the exchange program, befriended a human in any capacity. There’s no way whoever did this would have changed their mind, at least not that much.”
“Also going to remove anyone who was originally suspended for general incompetence. The killer being able to hide their tracks to this level means they aren’t an idiot.”
“Good thinking!”
I waited impatiently as Jkob did his magic on the computer, the tapping of the keys sounding out as the Letian filtered our result further, leaving me to pace side to side as I waited to see if this gave us a list we could work from.
“31,” Jkob finally spoke. “31 suspects who fit the criteria.”
I couldn’t help but give a gleeful trill at that news, the first good news I’d had while investigating this case. Sure we’d made some assumptions to get this list, but they were reasonable ones, ones that made sense.
“That’s manageable! We just gotta go down the list one by one, filter out anyone who has an alibi at the known times, then see what’s left.”
I felt a confidence swelling in my chest at the thought that we were a mere 31 names away from finding whatever monster had corrupted the Exterminator’s noble ideals to do their horrific business.
I can’t change what terrible things have happened, but I can make sure they’re fixed in the future.