Memory transcription subject: Estala, Junior Exterminator, ‘Little Yortu’ Colony Cleanup Division
Date [standardized human time]: October 31st, 2128
I could see the blood dripping off of my feathers, the purple drops of thick liquid hitting the floor of the infirmary with a splatter, as I stared at the trail of gore I’d left behind upon entering the room. I sat there on the perch as the sound of my heavy breathing from my slack jawed beak reverberated around in my head, as others moved around in the field hospital.
The ache in my leg, from where vicious teeth had punctured my flesh, was a distant feeling. It would hurt later, but the pain was a million miles away for now, a secondary concern compared to the constant dripping from every feather on my wings. Even though I was covered in blood, I looked worse than I actually was; my injury would only take a few weeks to properly heal. After all, most of the blood wasn't mine.
Most of the blood wasn't mine.
“It looks clean, it appears to have missed everything major. You're a very lucky woman to survive with no long term damage.”
I flinched as the words broke through to my mind, eyes darting around in fear before focusing on the Krakotl in front of me. How long had he been speaking? How long had he been inspecting my injured leg? I couldn't tell.
It felt like an eternity as I tried to focus on the doctor in front of me, the words taking agonizingly long to register in my mind, and even longer to respond back in a small quiet voice.
“And Talsim?”
I knew the answer already. I knew what he was going to say, I knew what had happened. I knew whose blood covered my feathers from head to tail. I knew it wasn't my blood.
“...I'm… Sorry.”
It was a feeling I knew well, the same one that had consumed me when I'd found my father murdered by predators in our own home. Numb grief, not sadness, but a crippling emptiness. A broken nest never to be reassembled.
It was supposed to have been one final job. The planet was basically safe apart from one remaining spot, ripe for one final mission. But this planet had saved the worst for last.
There had been too many of them. It was insane to think of that many predators living together without tearing each other apart, yet it was so. We approached their dens of evil, and as we did so the forest lit up with yellow, unblinking eyes.
We never saw them coming, at least not until it was too late. Starving tainted beasts launching themselves out of the bushes towards us in bloodlust, attacking our vulnerable rear guard. How long had they been waiting for us in their desire for flesh? With a flurry of tooth and claw, they were upon us before we could even raise our flamers in response. Five? Ten? Twenty? A hundred? I wasn’t sure how many there were.
I'd watched as Talsim fell, teeth tearing into his belly as I lay there unable to help, my own fight for survival unfolding as I fought against my own beast; Teeth had grasped onto my leg, dragging me to the floor, the predator refusing to left go as I clawed at its face in an attempt to get free.
It would have been worse if not for Ostala. The Exterminator’s fanatical drive to eradicate the predators might normally have been creepy, but then it had been a blessing, a whirlwind of righteous Inatala driven death upon our foes.
Those not killed by fire or firearm during their predatory bloodlust had fled, roaring in rage as they slunk back to their corrupted dens as our squad recovered from their surprise attack. Even with our ‘victory’ in driving them back, the damage had already been done, even from a distance I could see Talsim had not been as lucky as I was.
“But it really hurts!”
The voice of Officer Parsim cut through my thoughts, causing my vision to snap up to look at the useless officer. Sitting amongst the other injured Krakotl at this field hospital, complaining to a doctor about whatever ailed the moron.
“Parsim, you've sprained your ankle. Shut up and leave attention to people who need it.”
I let my thoughts wander once more from the pair, back to that predator infested forest. I'd seen the damage the evil predators had done as Talsim lay on the ground, blood bubbling from his beak, guts strewn across the floor. There was no helping him, no matter what I'd try. I'd held Talsim in my wings as his beautiful eyes became unfocused and blank, the Krakotl’s charming singing voice turning from gurgled blood filled chokes, to silence.
“You must do something! You're a doctor for Inatala’s sake!”
The whining caused my attention to once again return to the present, this time a new feeling erupting from my chest. Rage. Like I'd never felt before. I got up in a fury, droplets of blood trailing behind me as I marched over to the incompetent idiot.
“You! This is your fault! You did this!”
My voice was filled with anger as I moved towards Palsim, the pain in my leg a distant thud compared with the pure emotion running through me. A look of shock covered the Krakotl as he glanced in my direction with confusion.
“Estala, you-”
“Shut up!” I silenced the idiotic officer with my own scream of rage. “This is your fault! It was your job to protect the rear, it was your job to keep us safe! I warned you that someone was going to get killed! I warned you!”
Parsim was a few inches taller than I was, larger, and had the advantage of age over my youth. Yet, I watched him stumble back and fall on his ass as I descended upon him with righteous fury in my whole being, feathers stained with purple blood flared out as I screamed at my commanding officer.
“I hurt my leg, it should have been fine. How dare you talk to me like this Estala, I am your commanding-”
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“I don’t give a Maltos’ shit who you are!” I didn’t let Parsim speak. He didn’t deserve to speak. “You are an incompetent, ass sniffling, moronic, flightless idiot! No, if you were simply incompetent that would be fine, but you’re also a lazy predator diseased shirker! I told you what you needed to do, and now Talsim is dead because you didn’t listen you egg breaking shit! You shouldn’t be a sewage worker let alone an Exterminator!”
Others were starting to rush to my position; various Krakotl placing themselves between myself and Parsim, various wings pulling at me, guiding me away from the sorry excuse of an Exterminator. The pitiful commander looked up at me from the floor. Fear? Guilt? Recognition of wrong doing?
I wanted to hurt the idiot, I wanted him to pay for his negligence having an impact. Sadly by now half the people in the room had seen my shouting, making sure I couldn’t get to them. Instead, as I was pushed back, I retorted said one final sentence.
“Talsim shouldn’t have died. It should have been you.”
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Memory transcription subject: Estala, Human Methods Advisor to the Exterminators.
Date [standardized human time]: March 7th, 2137
I sat in front of the whiteboard, looking at the supplies I had gathered. A minor issue I was facing during this new plan to take on a human hobby, was I didn’t really know what I was supposed to be doing. Exterminators didn’t reopen cold cases, because before the humans had arrived, everything was either a predator attack, or done by someone verified to have predator disease.
So all I really had to go on was the human method of solving such cases, which seemed to involve a variety of different styles, most of them impossible for me to replicate. However, in all of them there was a single common thread, pun intended. All of them involved printouts of important information, and lots of red string. I’m not sure how this aided in solving murder cases, but I was willing to try anything.
I stared at the rather expensive art materials, taking a moment to consider my next move. What was next? I’d watched a lot of human media over the last month, in particular a very predatory genre called ‘Crime dramas’. I guessed the first thing was to go over the facts.
“There have so far been three confirmed murders by the so-called ‘Heartbreak killer’. First was Regven on 11th August, followed by two more deaths on October 23 and December 4th. They were all killed by the removal of the heart, which was then burned. All bodies were found in the Dawn Creek district. I swear that district is cursed.”
I spoke into my phone, recording my thoughts, which again seemed to be a common action taken by people solving such crimes. Well… That didn't really help much. I was still in the same place I started. What came next? I tapped my talons on the floor as I tried to remember. Ah yes, the next thing to note is any possible motives.
“Motives… I have no clue. All three were strangers to each other, in completely different herds and jobs. I guess the heart burning is very specific: many old pre-Federation religions believe the heart is the soul of a person. Fire is generally for cleansing? Killer might be a Linked Chains member as they tended to follow pre-Federation religions…”
That was a long shot, and the limitation of someone being religious changed the number of potential suspects from ‘everyone’ to ‘nearly everyone’. OK, suspects. That’s always the next step, to list out the potential people who could have done this.
“Suspects are… nobody. Nobody hated the victims, they were generally well liked, sociable, and got along with the herd. They had no friends in common and no reason to be connected. This suggests that the killer targeted them not for who they were. Randomly? The killer must be generally intelligent, since they managed to specifically avoid cameras, as all victims were killed in isolated unrecorded areas.”
That didn’t help either. My whiteboard was still empty, there were no threads to link together with red string, and I was no closer to having anything at all to go on. The question really came down to what kind of person would randomly murder people for no reason at all?
Well… someone with Predator Disease.
As much as I’d recently learnt that the term didn’t ‘exist’, the definition… fit. A lot of people sent to the PD facilities were legitimate dangers to the people around them.
Such as the people released from the PD facility.
Before the humans arrived, before the overall environment of PD facilities were made public a few short months ago, the Dawn Creek PD facility had been shut down due to the facility owners running it “Worse than the Arxur”. Part of the staff’s revenge against a population who had demanded its closure had been to simply dump all of the Predator Diseased patients out onto the streets… which would explain how Dawn Creek managed to gain a ‘serial killer’.
I know Joseph would frown upon me suggesting guilt upon the ex-PD facility patients… but it’s not like I have much else to go through.
The next step was to leave the untouched whiteboard and craft supplies behind, instead focusing on analysing the Exterminator’s database to generate a list of potential facility members. While there was never an official list of patients released into the population, I could extrapolate the data by looking at PD assessment logs in the district, then doing some educated guesses as to which members would have still been in the facility. 51 names.
I guess it’s a start.
I took a quick break to grab a pair of mangos to devour at the computer screen before continuing with the next step of my plan: Filtering out anyone who couldn’t have accomplished the crimes.
Jarval - Died in the facility 3 years ago. Age 19. Complications during treatment caused a heart attack, resulting in death.
Gorlia - Died in the facility 5 years ago. Age 79. Natural causes similar to a Venlil his age.
Kritten - Released to family, rehabilitated. Later found dead 3 years afterwards in her family home at the age of 23, death by self termination, hanging.
Trilva - Killed in predator attack a year ago. No information.
I paused for a moment as I tried to find the report for the predator attack on Trilva. Nothing. They clearly had died, as their cause of death was listed as a predator attack, but the actual report with photos and a description of the wounds was missing. Not that surprising: sometimes an Exterminator would fill out the data locally, but fail to upload the information.
Quarven - Transferred to Shallow Valley Facility. Still remains there, although now under human care.
Yarala - Died in facility 4 years ago. Age 33. Other patient attacked her with a shard of tile, resulting in blood loss and death.
Zulifer- Killed in predator attack 9 months ago. No information.
Again… no report. I felt a feeling of suspicion start to fill my chest as I stared at the blank space on the database where the report should be. Zulifer had been found in a neighbouring District, and I knew that Exterminator guild. They were competent, having started implementing human based changes before I’d even started advocating for such concepts. An Exterminator mistake for a second time was less likely.
I started focusing on previous PD facility members who had been killed in predator attacks. I found four in quick succession, four predator attacks all missing from the official database in various surrounding districts. There was a human saying that seemed to apply here: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time is enemy action.
The chance that all of these Exterminators had failed to report the data correctly, without a large issue having become previously apparent, was unlikely. Unless… someone was trying to hide something. If the humans had been able to get into our systems so easily, why not a Federation member with more nefarious means. I didn’t know if it was related to the Heartbreak Killer yet… but it was a thread to check out. A lead, something to investigate.
There was only one way to find out. In each of those districts the original report would be stored in a physical location. A quick train ride would be enough to confirm or deny the origin of these deaths that had slipped past the Exterminator’s systems. A little part of me suggested I wouldn’t like the implication of my findings.