Monday, July 6, 2370, 9:53 AM
DeWitt Investigations, Calypso Plaza, Bradley Heights

The office was dark, as was often the case. The only source of light was through the window shades, which blocked out the artificial sunlight of the city of Ascension.

In the past seven months, the office had become much cleaner, no doubt thanks to the help of its owner's new secretary/assistant/accountant/sister/techy. Most of the haphazardly-stacked columns of paper had been organized, shredded, and/or thrown away. Instead of a pile of discarded coffee cups, the windowsill had some artificial flowers. A bookshelf, which to be fair had mostly been filled with tax documents, had been removed and replaced with a new desk area for the secretary. The refrigerator had been cleaned out and generally had some sort of snack someone could enjoy.

Of course, when it came to better habits, there wasn't much to be said about the snoring woman on the floor, using her trenchcoat as a blanket.


A panel beeped an odd tune and the door slid open, revealing the silhouette of a woman, aged 19, carrying a backpack and a tray with two coffees on it. One was sweetened with some agave nectar, and the other was black.

The panel hummed, and a British-accented voice emerged from it. "Good morning, Sally."

"Mornin', Alec," Sally replied.

"mmmmORNIN', ALEC!" Anna blurted as she jumped up from the couch. She had been using her trenchcoat as a blanket, and her hair looked like a bird's nest had been untangled—which is not meant to imply it looked straight, but that it was all crinkled from being held in a certain way for a long time.

Sally stared at her. "You slept on the couch again?"

Anna felt her hair. "Oof, that feels like a bird's nest that's been untangled…I didn't trust myself to drive after I was done at the Liberty Club last night, and this was close enough, so I walked."

"You literally live behind that door," Sally retorted, pointing to the closed door next to a bookshelf. "You have a very nice bed."

Anna rubbed the back of her neck. "Yeah, but that was, like, seven more feet of walking I didn't have the energy to do. Is that coffee?"

"Alec, where's her car?" Sally asked, rolling her eyes as she handed Anna the coffee.

"Safely stowed in the parking garage. I activated the homing beacon after she arrived."

Sally sighed as she turned back to Anna, who was finishing up a big gulp of coffee. "Just as you like it: black as the moonless night."

"We're literally in orbit around the moon," Anna coughed. "None of our nights are moonless. Nor our days." She took another sip. "Why'd you go out and buy coffee, anyway? We have a machine, it makes pretty good coffee."

"Well it would, if we hadn't run out of coffee beans," Sally replied.

Anna looked at Sally. "So your solution to this caffeine conundrum was, instead of just going out and buying beans, was to go out and buy coffee, meaning someone's gonna have to make another trip to go buy beans?"

"If I may defend Ms. Tenenbaum for a moment—"

"Please don't."

"No, go ahead, I wanna hear what he says."

"…it is your machine, Detective. Therefore the coffee beans are your responsibility."

Anna sighed. She'd only been up for two minutes and already the day was looking dull. "Well then…I guess I shall go to the store and buy the coffee beans, seeing as initiative is something this office really lacks."

"Yeah?" Sally asked, putting her hands on her hips. "And whose fault is that?"

Anna finished her coffee, then picked up her coat from the couch. "I'll head down to the Grab 'n Buy, see if you can hold down the fort while I'm gone."

"Hey, careful while you're on the way, something happened at the Ascension Overtures store. There're police everywhere."

A spark of familiarity with the name of the store crossed Anna's mind, but the only thing she felt like saying was, "Strange. Well, call me if any clients come by."

"Gee, 10 in the morning and you're actually up and about?" Sally remarked. "Pace yourself, detective."

"I'll let you lecture me about pacing when you take a test that you studied for regularly instead of cramming the night before."

"Did you ever follow that advice in college?"

"Never."


Days in Ascension were entirely artificial: though they followed the Earth clock, Ascension itself generally had a constant supply of sunlight, disregarding the times it was blocked by the Earth or the moon. The city followed the Earth-sun cycle simply because it was convenient. Plus, no one wanted to go through the trouble of making a so-called "Stardate" measurement.

Anna never really understood why people adhered to the cycle so rigidly. But that was mainly because she liked going to clubs until the early hours of the morning. Really, a detective had no set sleeping schedule.

Or maybe it was just her.

There was a considerable crowd near the police line around Ascension Overtures, the local music store. These people seemed to adhere to the normal sleep schedule—as one would expect, they were carrying coffees and various snacks.

"Hey, Sullivan!" the detective called out, recognizing a face behind the line.

Chief Sullivan, a mustachioed man who to Anna always looked like a rodent, looked up. "Anna, what are you doing up so early?"

"Early?" someone in the crowd wearing a red shirt remarked. "It's past 10."

"Hey, you in the red shirt, shut up." She turned to Sullivan as she approached the line. "Just heading over to the market, what's going on?" She could now see that the main focus of the crime scene was a relatively fancy-looking car with the clearly-defined license plate "SUN."

Sullivan looked grim. "Well, I'm not really supposed to talk about this, but this is looking a lot like a mob hit. Car was found parked here this morning, someone looked in, saw…well…okay, come on." He lifted up the police tape.

Anna was taken aback. What could possibly be so odd about the crime scene that Sullivan felt the need to show her?

Soon she found out: the backseats of the car had been removed and replaced by a small kiddy-pool filled with blood, with human remains sticking out, almost as though someone were bathing in it. Only, you know, it was a kiddy pool, so it was too shallow for…

"I can't make heads or tails of this," Sullivan remarked. "If you're gonna kill someone, why do it so publicly?"

Anna leaned in closer. "Well, I imagine someone's going for theatricality. Like Hannibal Lecter. Is this blood the victim's?"

"We're pretty positive. The actual body parts are burnt to a crisp, we can't get any DNA from them. But we tested the blood, it belongs to the owner of both this car and Ascension Overtures—a man named Cobb."

No discernible features on the remains. They looked like they had been put through a furnace. Perhaps to hide DNA…but then why put them in a pool of blood?

Wait…who?

"What was his name again?" Anna asked, standing up and staring at Sullivan.

"Cobb. Silas Cobb. Local guy, people seemed to like him. I hear he was also an actor."

Anna looked back at the remains. "This…" she pointed, just to be sure. "…is Silas Cobb?"

Sullivan stared at her. "Err, yes. Did you know him?"

Normally, Anna kept Sullivan in the dark about her personal life. He was always butting in on it, especially when it came to her cases, it was better off letting him know as little as possible. But she'd had her morning coffee and a reasonably good night. "Not exactly. I met him at the Liberty Club last night, I lit a cigarette for him."

Sullivan pulled out his phone and started taking notes. "Did he seem worried or concerned about something?"

Anna raised an eyebrow. "Oh, so now you're questioning me."

"Well, you might have been the last person to see him alive."

Sigh. "Nice guy, I guess. Said he was under a lot of stress at work."

"Did he say if it was work at the store or acting?"

"He didn't specify. But the way the conversation went, I think it was acting."

Sullivan jotted down what Anna said. While his attention was on his phone, Anna took out her own and surreptitiously snapped a photo of the human remains.

"Did he say anything else?" Sullivan asked, looking up after Anna had safely stowed her phone.

"Not really," Anna lied. Something about Silas's attitude the night before troubled her, making her wonder if the conversation was better off kept between the two of them. Or the one of them now. "We talked for a bit, I gave him my card, and then he left."

"Did he leave by car?"

"Nah, he walked."

Sullivan pocketed his phone. "Well, I might call you for a follow-up later if we find anything else, but I think you're done here. Thanks for cooperating, I know you're not used to it."

Thank you for the backhanded compliment. "It's no trouble. I don't have a lot to do today, anyway." Anna turned and left for the police line.

"Oh, and Anna?"

She turned. "Yes, Sullivan?"

"Are you sure he didn't say anything else?"

"Would I lie to you?" Anna shrugged.

Sullivan frowned disapprovingly. "I'm not gonna answer that." And then he turned and started talking to some of the forensics people again.


The cashier at the Grab 'n Buy was a teenager named Genesis. She always saw Anna when it came to her regular trips to the market, and knew her general shopping routine: two cartons of milk and a box of Cadbury chocolate. Recently Anna had given up on always buying 3 or 5 six-packs of beer, but she still occasionally snuck one into her shopping basket, especially before the weekends.

"You're up early," she remarked as Anna approached with a shopping basket full of bags of coffee.

"Why is everyone marveling at how early I am?" Anna sighed. She started placing the coffee on the counter. "It's not like I never wake up before noon."

Genesis stared at her.

"So how's your day been?" Anna asked, feeling a need to change the subject.

"Slow. We have 2 for 1 deals on a bunch of bath products if you're interested."

"Just the coffee beans."

Genesis started scanning the bags of coffee. "Hey, you walked here, right?"

"I did."

"Do you have any idea what all that commotion is over by Ascension Overtures?"

"Oh, apparently there was a murder. Some guy's remains arranged in a pretty intricate way, actually: like a body bathing in a pool of blood, only the pool's too shallow for it to be an actual body."

"Well…that's disgusting. Who was the victim?"

"The owner of the store: a guy named Silas Cobb."

Genesis's eyes squinted. "Holy shit…now it's him?"

Not the response DeWitt expected. "Excuse me?"

"You're talking about Silas Cobb, as in the guy who also acts with Cohen Productions?"

Anna was completely lost. "Yeah, I think that's him. Why do you ask?"

Genesis looked around before leaning forward. "Okay, so here's the thing: I didn't know him that well, but I chatted with him a few times. He mentioned he was working on this new Sander Cohen/Ava Tate movie."

The first name Anna knew already, but the second one she had to think about for a second. "Ava Tate? The movie star? What's that has-been doing in a Cohen film?"

"No clue. Weird, right? Never took her for an art-house fan…anyway, so I went online and started looking into the production. It's called The Pink Room, it's being described as something like a…'sexual disturbia' or something like that. But here's the kicker: I found out that two actors who were attached to this film have been murdered in the past couple of months."

"What?"

"Look." Genesis pulled out her phone and showed Anna an article. "Right here: 'The body, which was found tangled up in a piano backstage at the opera house this morning, has been identified as belonging to local actor Kyle Fitzpatrick.' And here: 'Representatives for The Blue Ribbon restaurant have no explanation as to how actor Martin Finnegan's remains got onto the meat hooks in their industrial freezer." Genesis put down her phone. "So what do you think? Conspiracy?"

"Conspiracy is a strong word," Anna replied. She did find the whole thing a bit too peculiar to be coincidence, but she was reluctant to take on this particular case for a number of reasons.

A few months back Anna had been roped into a case involving the murder of Ascension scientist Brigid Tenenbaum. The case, which she felt was wrapped up in a satisfying manner, had jogged a host of memories she truly doubted she ever should have remembered. Memories of a certain city in the clouds…

That previous case had nearly drained the life from her (and, uh, me), she didn't want to get into too much trouble again.

The only choice was to try to dodge the question. "If it's so clear, why haven't the police noticed the connection yet?"

"I thought about that." Genesis was sounding like a detective herself. "I can think of a couple of reasons. One is that each of these murders happened in different jurisdictions, so the departments aren't exactly working together. And their only connection is The Pink Room, which is already pretty obscure. It looks like only the arts entertainment media and Cohen's circle of influence are really aware of it, and even then Cohen's pretty secretive about his films in progress."

Knowing Sullivan, he would probably notice the connection sooner or later. But probably later. For now, Anna and Genesis were the only ones who knew.

"Wait…" Anna looked up. "Why are you telling me all this? If you made the connection, why not bring it to the police?"

Genesis shrugged. "You're the one who knows what to do around here. So are you gonna take this case?"

Anna pulled out her wallet and started to pay for the coffee. "Are you hiring me?"

That made the clerk laugh. "Nah, forget it." She placed the coffees in a clear plastic bag. "Seriously though, you can't deny it's strange."

Anna grabbed the bag from the counter. "Don't be so sure. I've seen some strange stuff in my life."

Genesis laughed as she watched her favorite customer head for the door. She didn't hear her mutter under her breath, "Well, lives."


Sullivan had already left by the time Anna passed the crime scene again. It looked like the forensics team was loading the pool into a van to bring back to the station.

She pulled out her phone and made a memo describing the details of the car:

LEXUS, 2368-2372 MODEL?
LICENSE PLATE: "SUN" PROBABLY CUSTOM JOB
COHEN CONNECTION; COMPANY CAR
BURNT REMAINS AND POOL OF BLOOD; WHY BURN REMAINS?

She pocketed her phone. No one was paying her for this, but it didn't hurt to be curious.

After she returned to the office, she made a fresh cup of coffee and helped Sally with her homework. She wasn't that much help, but it gave her a sense of accomplishment; a chance to really feel like the older sister.


That night, after Sally had gone back to her apartment, Anna stayed up at her desk and looked up the name of "Silas Cobb." Nothing particularly noteworthy showed up besides film and theater credits. She found a few videos of him as Louis in a production of Angels In America, but not much else. There weren't even red carpet interviews with him for the Cohen films he did. Actually, by the looks of it he wasn't much more than an extra for the films. There was no listing for his role in The Pink Room, however, just that he was in it.

After closing her computer, she reached into her drawer and pulled out a photograph she had received some months ago, one of a necklace with a graphic of a bird engraved on the front.

She stared at the photograph for a good minute. Memory was a fickle thing. She did not remember everything about the other cities. But she remembered enough to look at the photo with a sense of nostalgia.

Sander Cohen. Kyle Fitzpatrick. Martin Finnegan. Silas Cobb. Ava Tate. Names she remembered. Brief glimpses of people in rooms, singing songs, shooting films, electrocuting hapless muses.

The Fontaine case had proven there were certain constants between the cities. Frank Fontaine had been a lying murderer in Rapture, and he proved very much that in Ascension. Jeremiah Fink was a philandering louse in Columbia, and there was absolutely no denying he was that in Ascension.

And Esther Mailer…where was Esther Mailer from? She never was able to remember which city she was in. But the odds were in favor that she was a lying bitch there as well.

Knowing the rumors about Cohen and his production company, it didn't take much mental power to guess this Cohen was as deranged as the one in Rapture. But she could not guarantee this Cohen was guilty of the same crimes.

Anna needed a drink.

She went over to the fridge and looked in. No alcohol…she should have bought some at the Grab 'n Buy.

She opened one of the cabinets in her desk and found what she was looking for: the dregs of a bottle of scotch.

She placed it on her desk, grabbed a glass, and pulled open the top. But she didn't pour the drink into the glass. Instead, she sat there, staring at the bottle.

Finally, she tapped a button on her desk, and Alec booted up. "How may I assist you, Detective?"

"Alec, I need you to crunch some numbers. Can I afford to take on a case where there's no financial benefit?"

"…I'm…not entirely sure I understand what you mean, Detective."

"If I decided to commit to a case where I wasn't gonna get paid, would I be able to without running this business into the ground?"

"Well, if the situation involves just not earning money for the duration of such a case, you could hypothetically continue paying taxes and bills and buying groceries for about three more months."

"And if it's more than just not earning money?"

"You mean like all of your cases?"

Anna laughed bitterly. "Yeah."

"Well, my programming can't give you an exact estimate considering how unpredictable your investigations tend to be."

"I guess that's true."

"But if you take into account any potential risk of injury and legal problems that you could encounter like you have in the past…well, my best guess is you would have to start asking Sally for money."

Sally of course had a substantial inheritance following the murder of her mother, the scientist Dr. Brigid Tenenbaum. That was one inheritance Anna had no intention of ever touching.

"Thanks Alec, that'll be all for tonight."

"Goodnight, Detective."

Alec's panel made a beeping noise before turning a shade of purple.

Instead of going to bed, or even taking a sip from her whiskey, Anna opened a blank document on her computer. At the very top she typed out the phrase, "SILAS COBB AND THE PINK ROOM."

"Maybe not an actual case," she muttered. "But curiosity never hurt."

Suddenly, Alec's panel went blue again. "Sorry to disturb you, Detective, but I just noticed there's a new message in your inbox. I'll cue it up on your screen."

A message appeared:

Detective DeWitt,

I am sorry to disturb you, but a friend of mine gave me your address. My name is Donovan Boyer, and I am looking to potentially hiring you to investigate something a bit…personal for me. May I stop by your office tomorrow?

D. Boyer

"Huh."

Mr. Boyer,

Absolutely. Feel free to come by anytime. But be advised I cannot guarantee I will answer the door before noon.

Detective Anna DeWitt