“What are you talking about? What god?” Detective Vandez asked as Jason, Laura Jensen and Aimee proceeded to examine the body.

“The thing that caused the incident, it’s a fallen god, at least that’s what I’m told..” Aimee immediately answered, but then she realized something and looked to Detective Vandez.

“What? Did I say something?” Detective Vandez appeared confused.

“No. It’s just - normally this kind of information cannot be spilled easily.” Aimee shook her head, then asked: “Hey, sorry I didn’t get a chance to ask this - are you gifted?”

“Gifted? Meaning - having superpowers like you?” Detective Vandez appeared slightly confused at first, then shook her head: “Not that I know of - unless you have some way to tell?”

“I - I actually don’t, sorry.” Aimee sighed: “It’s just - the information I just told you, be careful with it and don’t tell just anyone, okay?”

“Sure, no problem. But I would still like some clarification - what does a god have to do with this? And what’s a ‘fallen’ god? Does it mean he’s dead?”

“No, but he fell from his godhood, he lost it, and he was trying to regain his strength through his conduits.” Jason picked up some of the shiny grains embedded inside the body’s wounds using a pair of tweezers he conjured using his Xuanli: “I haven’t seen this before, can we use a classification array?”

“Sure thing.” Laura Jensen reached into her purse and took out a scroll. She then found an empty and relatively tidy spot and laid the scroll open there, revealing a complicated array drawn on it with lines tied to a number of small squares of different colors at the edge of the scroll. Jason then placed the tiny grains he collected from the wounds into the circle at the center of the array.

Laura Jensen infused the array with her power, then array lit up, a transparent energy dome appeared covering the center of the array on which the grains were placed, and a few dozens of small streams of energy current started circling inside the dome, deconstructing the grains to smaller particles and carrying them around as they flowed inside the dome.

“Well - we have a small centrifuge over there - ” Detective Vandez appeared confused as she watched the array work.

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“Thanks.” Laura Jensen chuckled: “But it’s not gonna work for this - this is very probably energy constructs, meaning that they could have very different mass and density even when they’re made of the same substance. And this array could distinguish the basic energy signatures of the materials being examined and sort them out through various different measures.”

After around one minute, the energy currents stopped, and all the smaller particles were dispersed and funneled through the thin energy tunes formed along the lines to the colored squares on the edge of the scroll. When the energy currents completely died down, five of the squares lit up - dark red, light blue, light yellow, dark green and dark purple.

“Okay - what do we have here - ” Laura Jensen read along the notes and markings along the edge of the scroll: “Dark red - means blood, no surprise there; light blue - crystalized energy constructs with no strong elemental properties or affinities other than water; light yellow - particles imprinted with strong markings of power of mind and will; dark green - decayed flesh, again, no surprise; dark purple - indication of Xen magic or darker magical energy. And - oh!”

A square with a vortex of red, blue and green drawn on it shimmered in a dim light. And Jason leaned back and sighed after reading the notes beside the square.

“Traces of essence burn - indication of burning of life force, essence of magical abilities or even one’s soul.” Aimee read the text with a lower and lower voice.

“Which means that fucking fallen god tapped him dry in your fight, probably destroying any traces that could lead us to him. ” Laura Jensen sighed: “To be honest, for the first time seeing a conduit in the flesh, this kinda sucks.”

“Let me try something.” Jason took a deep breath and said: “It’s a spell I asked Boss to teach me. He told me to be careful with it, but this could be as good a time as any.”

“What? What spell is it?” Aimee asked.

“Shouldn’t we move to a more empty space when you try?” Laura Jensen asked.

“This spell has a greater chance to succeed if we are in the same space as the place where the conduit dies. But we should probably evacuate the precinct first.” Jason conjured his silver pen-spear and drew a symbol above, which then turned into a bubble shield covering up almost the entire room: “Detective Vandez, can you ask the officers to leave the building for a quick while?”

“O - okay, but what should I tell them?”

“Crack!” Before any of the three power wielders at the scene could answer, the body seemed to have some kind of reaction to Jason’s spell - it’s neck leaned forward slightly and its shoulders twisted and expanded, seeming like it was trying to get up.

Detective Vandez almost jumped and screamed, while instinctually standing in front of Aimee and Laura Jensen ready to draw her gun.

“What the fuck? You didn’t cast the spell right?” Laura Jensen readied attack spells on both her hands.

“No I did not, all I did was conjure the dome.” Jason shook his head.

“Ready your mind blocks, this sucker could try to pull us into limbos!” Aimee shook both her hands, and streams of light blue energy came from inside her sleeves and formed two ice scimitars in her hands.

“It’s you … it’s you!” A weak but hoarse voice came from the opened belly of the body as it sat up like a rag doll with a speaker embedded in the abdomen area: “It’s you! You are responsible for this - you should pay for this!”

The body sat up straight on the metal table, with the slicing wound at the center wide open, and at the stomach area, Jason could see a wide face made of rotten and wrinkled flesh - when he took a closer look, it seemed to him that the body’s stomach had turn into the face somehow.