“You have a high yield explosive attached your armour,” the observer pointed out, “of a kind which must be actively prevented from detonating. Either you were coerced into carrying it in spite of your sense of self-preservation, or you volunteered for reasons which transcend the self-preservation imperative.”
“I volunteered with full knowledge and complete freedom to decline.” Gabriel stated.
“Why volunteer for a mission with near complete certainty of death?”
“Because there are tens, if not hundreds of millions of lives at stake,” Gabriel replied resolutely, “and if no one is willing to step forward and put their own life on the line for them, they would all be extinguished.”
“You sound as committed to your objective as the Enthralled are to theirs.” The observer replied, “Unless there is a mechanism for safely detaching the device?”
“…There is.” Gabriel confirmed reluctantly, then added over the comm., “thirty minute timer post-decoupling, with anti-tampering fail-deadly mechanism.”
“The concealment of crucial information is not conducive to trust.” Said the observer.
“Neither is splitting us up against our will.” Viker pointed out.
The observer was silent for a moment.
“True.”
“And just as an aside,” Cato added hostilely, “none of us are totally convinced that you aren’t somehow connected to the Swarm itself.”
There was another pause.
“That inference is logical, but inaccurate.” The observer replied, “The Swarm’s nature and origins are unknown, but since its motives are malevolent, its destruction is paramount.”
“On that, we can agree.” Gabriel answered.
They had no choice but to trust the observer, for now.
* * *
The owner of the club had been furious when one of his servers had panicked and called Civil Security instead of him first. His anger was assuaged, however, when the ACS officers pointed out to him that concealing a suspicious death in his establishment would count as criminal complicity, whether or not he had anything to do with it.
The body was lying sideways, knees bent as though he had been kneeling when he died, with a single entry wound through his right temple. The cheap, black market handgun he had presumably used to take his own life was still clutched in his cold, dead hand.
The forensics drone hovered over the body, bathing the corpse in sensory light as it scanned the body from head to toe and back again. Several patrol officers stood guard outside the room whilst two other officers, a forensics specialist and a supervising detective, stayed in the room itself to examine the crime scene.
“Suicide looks like the obvious verdict.” The detective concluded.
“Really?” the specialist asked, raising a sceptical eyebrow.
“Well, look at him,” the detective pointed to the body, “he clearly blew his own brains out. What other explanation is there?”
“A murder set up to look like a suicide.” The specialist replied.
“How?”
“Well why would someone go to the trouble of renting out a private room at some nightclub in order to take his own life?” the forensics specialist asked rhetorically.
“One last fabulous ride before ending it all.” The detective replied, “Seen that before.”
“Which hand did he prefer?” the specialist asked.
“Why does that matter?” the detective asked, puzzled.
“Tell me and I’ll tell you.”
The detective had already reviewed the footage, but he duly pulled up the video from the club’s security cameras. As a Civil Security officer, he enjoyed automatic access.
“Looks like he favours his left hand,” The detective said, “at least, he does in this video.”
“Which raises the question,” the forensics specialist pointed out, “why would a left-handed person hold the gun with his right hand in order to shoot himself?”
The detective was silent, realising his colleague’s point.
“Maybe we should swap jobs.” The forensics specialist quipped.
“Maybe he was ambidextrous?” the detective retorted defensively.
“No evidence for that,” the specialist countered. “It’s more likely that someone forced the gun into his hand without knowing that he was left-handed.”
“And what’s the evidence that someone forced the gun into his hand?”
As if on cue, the forensics drone completed its post-mortem scan and displayed a life-size, holographic recreation of the body in the air. Highlighted in red was the fatal wound through the skull, appearing as a red-shaped cone with the entry wound at the tip and the exit wound at the base. However, there were also uneven blotches of brown on the elbows and wrists as well as on the backs of the knees.
“See those,” the specialist pointed to the parts highlighted in brown, “subcutaneous bruising. Likely caused by applying substantial pressure to the skin.”
“He was physically restrained?” the detective asked.
“That’s what it looks like.” The specialist confirmed.
“So our victim comes here to meet someone,” the detective pondered aloud, “and he even though he looked agitated in the security footage, he came alone; so he probably wasn’t expecting his contact to betray and murder him.”
“At least two suspects forced this guy onto his knees and put their feet on the backs of his knees to keep him on the ground.” The specialist explained, “Then one of them forced the gun into his hand and bent his arm until the muzzle was touching his temple, hence this area of bruising in the crook of the right elbow.”
“A murder made to look like a suicide…” the agent mulled it over.
“Exactly as I said.” The specialist concluded, “probably a professional hit.”
“Not very professionally done, actually,” the detective replied, “a professional killer would never make sloppy mistakes like this.”
“Then who would think to do it this way?”
“Someone who wanted to make sure the job was done in person,” the detective surmised, “with accomplices, but without the expertise to do it properly.”
“Well that leaves motive.” Said the forensics specialist.
“Masterminds know what the motive could be at this point.” The detective replied, “But a DNA match and a name would be a good place to start.”
The forensics specialist scanned the body, coming up with a profile almost instantly.
“Dr Felix Kessler.”
THE TRAP
Whoever the observatory’s architects might have been, they had clearly been immune to motion sickness. So was the squad, thanks to their physical enhancements; but even though the gravitic tunnel network shaved an hour off their journey, Gabriel couldn’t help but think that most people would rather walk.
After the insane, high-speed journey through the bowels of the observatory, one by one the squad dropped down through the ceiling into one of the many sub-chambers. Several of the Enthralled saw the squad drop in and were shot dead before they could raise the alarm. Once they had secured the room and made sure there were no enemies hiding there, the squad took stock of their surroundings.
Having abandoned the original facility, the research staff had also abandoned all the labs they had been using before becoming enthralled. But they had taken with them as much equipment as they could move into their temple, and this particular sub-chamber had been converted into a substitute lab. The walls were lined with all sorts of machinery, including surgery tables equipped with robotic medical suites, and fluid-filled growth tanks; some with live subjects and others lying empty.
Upon closer examination, the term ‘live subject’ seemed like a polite exaggeration. The subjects were mutilated and deformed, their skin turned pale by exsanguination or darkened by injuries, the victims of revolting experiments to enhance their bodies and minds. Some had had their chest cavities opened, and half-finished cybernetic components were visible inside them, while others sported cybernetic limbs or other implants.