Reagan Shadow lay with his head on the table covered in blood. It was on the table, on his blond hair, on his lab coat, on the floor, and everywhere around him. It looked like he was literally throwing the blood around, just to get more of it on everything around him. And it was also strange that nothing was actually broken or scattered. Considering that there was obviously a hell of a thing going on here, the neatness with which everything was standing around was even more striking.
And the first thought was, of course, that it wasn't suicide. Why would they even think that? Could he have tortured himself like that, literally dancing on the spot, spurting blood from his veins and arteries? And yet at the same time trying not to touch anything on the racks, shelves, the row of magazines on the table — not to touch anything at all, but only to splatter his blood on it.
— Suicide, then? — Morgan asked restrainedly, but still surprised at that.
Tanner Knight, Deputy Chief of the Security Section, was already here, of course. Small, slightly overweight, balding, and with a small beard, he was always in the places where people-to- people relations came to the brink or went beyond it. He liked to be the one who was in control of the situation and knew its background. And if he wasn't here now, it would raise questions, not the other way around.
— If it wasn't a suicide, Mr. NPP Chief, we wouldn't have called you here. — replied Tanner. — First, I want you to watch the surveillance footage, and then I'll ask my questions.
He walked over to the labeled SB (this section, more than any other, liked to label all their property, as if that made it work better or only when they used it themselves) laptop and, pressing a few keys, started the video.
At first, everything looked pretty decent. The camera recorded Reagan shifting something in a folder with papers, making some notes, then closing the folder, taking out a new one and doing the same thing with it, and so on for five minutes. It seemed as if Tanner wanted to show us enough time on purpose to make it clear that nothing special was going on, because at one point Reagan grabbed the pen he was writing with in his hand like a knife and stuck it in his left eye, and then pulled it out and tried to stick the same pen in his left hand, but it shattered.
— What the hell! — Natalie shouted, clamping her hands over her mouth. It seemed to her that she wasn't looking at the past, but at the present, which was happening right this minute, and the more realistic she thought about it was that the corpse itself continued to lie quietly on the table.
While the infernal dance continued on the laptop screen.
Reagan stood up from the table and looked around, apparently searching for some new object. As he did so, his injured eye was pouring a stream of blood all around him. Reagan got up from the table and walked over to the refrigerator, a small square refrigerator that usually held all sorts of experimental materials, and very rarely used in experiments. Everything was usually checked on paper to the last minute, and only after the calculations were approved could an experiment be performed-not for speed, but to save money.
From this refrigerator Reagan took out a thin strip of metal, probably a scalpel, and sat back in his seat and began to cut his flesh on the left side: fingers, palm, base of the hand. And so easily and smoothly, as if he were moving his hand through the air. After half a minute, when he had drained enough blood, he cut the vein on the left side of his neck as carefully as before, and laid his head on the table.
Tanner pressed the stop key and turned to Morgan:
— Have you noticed anything unusual, Mr. Blackwood?
— Unusual?! — Natalie was outraged. — I wouldn't have believed you could do that to yourself if you hadn't seen it with your own eyes!
— Ms. Jackson, I know how important you've recently become, but still, you're not the one I'm asking now.
— Natalie, it's all behind us now. — Morgan hugged Natalie lightly and half turned to the Deputy Chief of Security and replied. — You mean the logic in his actions? There's definitely some. I don't even doubt it. It's not understood, but it's there… I haven't noticed any tendency to self- mutilation, much less suicide. But the pattern of his actions that I've seen now are absolutely
consistent with his normal behavior. The actions themselves are inadequate, and the manner in which he does them is perfectly normal. How long ago was this?
— He did it two hours ago. You were in the next room at the time. You didn't hear anything?
— No. Absolutely not. And it's well soundproofed.
— Why do you think he did it?
— If I had any idea, Mr. Knight, I would have told you by now….
— Right. No word on that. We're treating it as a suicide for now, but we need to investigate.
Either way, we'll have to draw our own conclusions. Oh, and I hope you didn't need this lab too badly, as we need to seal it off for the time being.
— Do what you need to do. — Morgan replied. — You can count on my full cooperation Can we go now?
Tanner nodded his head. Despite his seeming confidence, he could see that he was going to have to report to his superiors in a little while about what had happened here, and he wasn't going to be able to use the words "suicide" and "insanity" with a videotape like this. He would have to find out at least the motives for this act, not to mention the origin of such a devilish ability to destroy himself without any hesitation.
***
— I never thought tonight would be like this," Natalie said, getting comfortable again on the couch in Morgan's guest room. — Did you see him do THIS? It was like it wasn't flesh and it wasn't his at all How is that even possible? How can you not feel anything to that degree?
Natalie was surprised by what she saw, but now she was also surprised by Morgan's high level of calm. It was as if he hadn't seen anything unusual today. As if he was called in late at night every day and shown corpses lying face down on the table covered in blood, and then found out that they had done it to themselves.
— I'm not surprised at anything on this station," Morgan said, and again, as he had half an hour ago, reached for the bar door where the bottles were hidden. — I've got some medicine here, too….
— I don't get you… Is this not the first time this has happened?
— No, not the first…
The last word started ringing in Natalie's ears, then traveled to her brain. Not the first? What do we have here, a suicide club that destroys itself for nothing, and we sit around and watch it?
Building ourselves reactors, mining what we need out of regolith while our society is sick in the head? Maybe we should get our heads straight before we let people into anything important. So the next person who works on the reactor will just push a few extra buttons, and what do we get?
— Not the first, Natalie," Morgan continued, seeing that Natalie had just stopped talking in surprise. — There were two others before him. All from the energy section. Not under my command, but I know about all the cases… They all cut themselves like that, and all on the left side only… You should know about it, because no one knows what it is… Maybe it's contagious, since more than one person has done it. And especially since it's so localized here. There's nothing like it in the rest of the station.
— Wow, what prizes are awarded for achievements… I thought there would be something good for this helium-3 discovery. And that's what it looked like… But this…" she didn't finish, figuring it was better to keep her mouth shut at a certain point. Morgan seemed to trust her with the secret, believing it would keep her safe, and she should start thinking to herself instead of saying it out loud, even in front of him. And yet, why is he so calm? He's not just holding himself together, he's exactly that, calm…