Spiderweb

Note: Between the busy holiday period and a wee bit of writer's block concerning the epilogue of Chorus, I figured it might be better to just begin this new fic. The epilogue will happen eventually, I promise.

…..

Slim was a private gem by nature, few acquaintances from both before and after the zoatox crisis and the rebellion really bothered to keep in touch and she worked largely from her apartment, rarely having to leave it. The last time she'd had reason to leave was when that abandoned down-district factory exploded and everyone in a three-district radius had to evacuate while it was investigated. The resulting scandal when the authorities discovered the remains of an experimented-on pearl and traces of zoatox matter was a good reason to stay indoors for as long as possible.

So, whenever anyone did seek her out for any reason, it was a good sign that they were desperate.

She let the initial holo-call ring out, waiting for the message. The gem calling her tried three times before giving up, and the message they sent was pretty annoyed.

We have an incident in district fourteen, upper west near the Silverdene. Get your brittle mass over here or I'm sending a crew to pry you out.

Slim delayed for as long as she could, tossing back a compound mix and selecting her tools slowly, meticulously. If she were to guess, this was some sort of heist (the Silverdene was popular with upper-class gems) that had an unusual component; she'd need magnifying scanners, a metronomical, perhaps her pitch sensor.

She didn't lock the door before she left, thinking she'd be back within a quadrant.

She was wrong, for once.

…..

"Took you long enough," the Amethyst squad leader grumbled as Slim arrived on the scene.

"Apologies," Slim replied insincerely, rummaging through her toolkit. "You didn't mention what kind of job this was, I wasn't sure what to bring..."

"I would have explained if you answered your holo-cast. Never mind, you're here now. What do you make of this?"

The squad leader had walked her right up to the crime scene; cordoned off by macro-screens, surrounded by the little evidence fabricates where other Amethysts were interviewing witnesses, the unfortunate victim's ruptured mass was covered by a tarp. A halo of rich purple nitrate blood fanned out across the ground.

"They didn't go for the gem," Slim mused.

Most standard thieves and grudge-holders attacked the gem of their victim, to finish them off quickly and give them less of a chance to retaliate. If you pierced the mass just enough to get them to retreat to their gems you could rob them with ease. However, this attacker had gone for a shattering by ruptured mass, an especially difficult and rather sadistic way to kill a gem. Slim had never seen such a thing before, but it was unmistakable.

"Every gem we've talked to says they didn't see anything," the squad leader said. "At least one of them is lying, it's just a matter of finding out who."

"Maybe not," Slim mused, lifting the tarp and gently wincing at the state of the gem's remaining mass. "What do you think happened?"

"Hired hit," the squad leader shrugged. "By an Aquamarine, maybe... or a Spinel. Something that got in quick and vanished."

"Definitely not," Slim told her, taking out her metronomical and measuring the blood spatter. "At this angle, the attack was from above."

She pointed upwards for emphasis, at the mesh covering the quadrant's air-purifying system. The squad leader barked out a sarcastic laugh.

"From up there? Mid-cycle? Come on..."

"It would have to be a small gem. Or light, anyway..." Slim continued, ignoring her. "The mesh would warp otherwise..."

She raised her magnifying scanner and, sure enough, there were very small, almost imperceptible, indentations in the mesh. It was whole though, it hadn't been torn or bent to allow a weapon through. Curious...

"This quadrant's crawling with gems all cycle, especially at mid-cycle," the squad leader scoffed. "Don't you think any of them would have noticed a gem up there?"

"I wouldn't know, I haven't asked any of them yet," Slim shrugged.

…..

Even though the fabricates were supposed to be soundproof for the sake of confidentiality, Slim could hear the Carnelian sobbing from the crime scene. Once inside, they had to wait for her to calm down before they could get a straight answer out of her. Slim observed the little drops of blood on the hem of her sparkling gown; she was roughly four pelmetres from the victim when the attack happened, Slim estimated.

"I told you already, I didn't see anything," Carnelian sniffled at last. "I only turned around when I heard the screaming, oh sweet Core..."

"You were in front of the victim, then?" Slim asked.

"Well, yes..." Carnelian stammered, taken aback by Slim's monotone. "I always leave straight after a set, and she paid her bill before she left the..."

"Did she have any enemies you know of?" Slim interrupted.

"No, of course not! Everyone knows her, she's always throwing parties...though not anymore, oh Core..."

"Did you hear anything unusual, by any chance?"

"Aside from the screaming?"

"Before that..."

Plainly irritated that Slim wasn't fawning over her the way the other Amethysts had, Carnelian dropped the melodramatics.

"No, I didn't hear anything," she hissed.

That in itself was odd. Summoned weapons made noise, so did handheld ones.

…..

"I wasn't doing anything," the Spinel grumbled. "Just my job."

"So you say," Slim nodded. "A shortcut, was it?"

"It's quicker to go round the upper-west than north, every delivery-gem knows that!"

"Even at mid-cycle?"

"Especially at mid-cycle! Every gem's moving in the same direction..."

"Look, you're not on the hook for this..."

The squad leader frowned at this, but she said nothing.

"...if you tell us the truth maybe we can talk about clemency for anything else you've done."

The Spinel squirmed in her seat. Slim could tell she wanted to talk, but she wasn't sure if Slim could be trusted. That was fair.

"It's far more important to the Diamond authority to get a potential danger out of the quadrants, especially in light of what's happened recently..." she said.

Zoatoxes. Someone was messing with zoatox matter. She left that unsaid.

"Some petty thievery doesn't matter, if you can help us out," she continued.

"Okay," the Spinel mumbled reluctantly. "I was there to scope out pearls. I wasn't even going to take any, I was just reporting back..."

"I see."

Slim didn't even ask who Spinel was scoping out the pearls for, which went a good way towards gaining her trust. She didn't say anything, just waited for Spinel to speak.

"The Silverdene's a good place to scope out pearl owners, and they're usually careless enough to get away quick. There's new models on the market..."

"And did you see the victim leaving the Silverdene?"

"I wasn't watching her," Spinel admitted. "I had my eyes on her pearl."

Slim sighed, and turned to the squad leader.

"You didn't tell me she had a pearl with her."

…..

Pearls made jobs like this so much easier, in Slim's estimation. Their recall was excellent and they were incapable of lying, and this one had the bonus of belonging to the murdered gem. Slim would be back in her apartment before aftcycle, she was sure.

It was faintly smiling when she was brought into the fabricate it was stored in, and Slim wasn't surprised that the Amethyst squad hadn't thought to interview it. As far as they were concerned, it was about as useful as the broken holo-corder that had failed to get any footage of the attack.

Still, Slim winced, they might have washed a little of the blood off of it. Poor thing looked like it'd been dipped in the stuff.

"I'll arrange for a iodine wash and a full repair before we find you a new owner," Slim assured it. "We'll make this quick...what did you see?"

"I didn't see anything."

Slim's fingers paused over her notes. Pearls almost always walked just a few steps behind their owners. Surely it saw something...?

"Nothing at all?" Slim asked. "Are you absolutely sure?"

"My owner instructed that I keep my eyes on the ground."

Slim groaned, rubbing her head. Just her luck to get a pearl that had been ordered not to see anything.

"I am sorry I cannot be more helpful," the pearl said, neatly folding its hands in its lap.

That little action lead Slim to notice something unusual...

"Your fingers," she said, taking out her scanner to inspect closer. "Did you tell the Amethysts you were injured?"

"I was not injured in the attack," the pearl told her. "My owner removed my fingers."

Now that the scanner had her looking more closely, she noticed other ways the pearl had been 'modified'. Its gem was too pristine to account for gaps in its mass; the excised pieces of its bodies were cut too cleanly. As well as missing three fingers on one hand and four on the other, a slice of its ear had been taken out and there was a long furrow running down the left side of its face that Slim had initially thought was dried blood.

So the assailant had directly targeted the victim, but left the pearl untouched even though it was just a few steps away? Even though the pearl could have reliably informed on them? It didn't make sense.

Slim wouldn't get much out of this pearl. Unless she used its inability to lie to find out more.

"I think whatever attacked your owner came from above. Would you agree?" she asked.

"Yes," the pearl answered.

"But the mesh above the air-purifying system wasn't damaged. Why do you think that is?"

"I think the weapon used was long and thin enough not to break the mesh."

"It would have to be very long and thin, though, wouldn't it? The gap between the mesh and your owner would have been eight pelmetres at least."

"My owner was lifted off of the ground by the weapon."

"I thought you said you didn't see anything?"

"I didn't," the pearl responded. "Her mass was dropped on me afterwards."

"So whatever it was had the strength to lift her off of the ground using something thinner than a strafing pole, at least."

"Yes."

"And what do you think would be capable of doing something like that?"

"A zoatox."

There was something a little off about the pearl, to Slim's finely-tuned instincts. Her responses seemed almost rehearsed, but pearls rarely interacted with any gem besides their owner. Could the victim have planned her own murder?

All of Homeworld had talking in whispers about zoatoxes after details of the illegal experimentation on pearls using zoatox matter were leaked into the bulletins, but it seemed too easy somehow to blame a zoatox for this murder. During the war they had killed countless gems, but they had infested and laid their eggs in many more. Their strength had always lain in how quickly they could breed. Just one working alone wouldn't settle for killing a single gem.

Had this one somehow learned to lie? Was that even possible?

Or was it infected?

Slim simply didn't know enough about pearls to tell. She'd need the opinion of someone else.

…..

Slim was one of the last hatches from a planet that had proven too weak to support proper gem growth. Almost every hatchling from that planet shattered within a few cycles, and the ones that survived weren't fit for purpose. The Jaspers were too small and spindly, the Larimars were dull and homely, the Rubies weak and fearful, the Sapphires blind and the Peridots stupid. The one useful thing the planet could be used for was its large supply of fresh water for pearl production.

Slim was added to the ranks of the new Amethyst squadrons, but she failed most of her training. The rest of her squad often left her behind when they went on patrol, to file evidence or fix the equipment. Over long boring cycles that turned into long boring orbits, when there was nothing to do but look at the evidence again and again she developed a knack for seeing things that other Amethysts overlooked.

Even for all the cases that were solved purely because of her, all the black market operations she cracked and all the criminal leaders she had brought down, the other Amethysts thought of her as a failure and treated her as such. They brought her into cases begrudgingly, always with a hissed under-the-breath insult.

Homeworld did not take well to inferior products. Once she had enough money saved to move out of the squad barracks and work from a distance, she resolved to only step outside when absolutely necessary.

…..

The pearl was the one who answered the door. Somehow, Slim wasn't surprised.

She was ushered in without a word to where Orthoclase was buried up to her elbows in the chest cavity of another pearl.

"To what do I owe the pleasure of your fine company?" Orthoclase drawled.

"I need your help," Slim admitted.