.
Two Kinds the Same
Chapter IX.
Fire in the Hole
Her sight was hazy. Faces all blurred. She was here… so familiar, yet so new.
"Three klicks to drop off point!"
The engine whine suddenly increased in pitch as the thrusters vectored to break their descent. Its tone has changed just enough to interfere with Pretonus' order as the turian secured himself by the hatch.
Spirits know how long they have been enroute, but it felt like an eternity.
"What a piss hole." Zaalia grumbled, stealing a look through the window.
"A pretty arid one." Corporal Efrux added before he glanced over the strike team again.
The rest of the turians were giving their equipment the once over.
Zaalia routinely ran her hand down her side. Her fingers tapped on her sidearm, her armour's clasps and her utility belt pouches.
The door panel on the side of the dropship suddenly popped open. The roar of the engines and the unsettled dust blew into the hold.
"Go, go, go!"
The soldiers jumped to disembark as the ship came to an abrupt halt merely a metre above ground. Zaalia stepped by the opening, then leaped off the ledge. Her booted toes sank into loose, rusty red sand.
She dashed out immediately to contain her sector, straining her eyes to see through the dust. Her feet klacked in quick succession as she made her way to take cover behind a boulder jutting out from the ground on the edge of the gaping ravine. She halted at the sight.
The eerie howling of the canyon winds were thrumming on her chest and resonated through her bones.
Beyond the thick clouds of dust she could finally take out the ghostly figures of the balancing rock formations against the lurid horizon of Namakli...
Milgrom, Bekenstein [Boltzmann System – Serpent Nebula] – 18:15 UTC – 2182.11.12 CE
"The boss is so gonna kill us."
"Only if he knows!" Kevin japed.
Thomas was trying to keep up with Kevin, who was doggedly pacing back towards the police HQ.
"And what did you tell the girl – what's her name – ... Yvette?"
"Well, I hinted at the huge number of latent sympathisers in the force, and then suggested that tipping the odds in our revolutionary favour would probably overbear any resistance from the authority and eventually result in the glorious victory of The Cause. And that even Chief Harris is allegedly a great fan of the "Love is Not a Crime Movement" at his heart."
Thomas raised an eyebrow. "Did she buy it?" He asked in amazement.
"I worried I may have gone too far, but... she did not even bat an eye."
"So she agreed to do it?"
"One way to find out!" Kevin replied and momentarily stopped by an unoccupied terrace table of a café.
He snitched a leftover paper spoon and spun on his heel to face Thomas.
"Here!" He swayed the item before his eyes.
Thomas took the proffered utensil and frowned at it for a long second, but Kevin was already on his way. Tom shoved the piece into his pocket and trotted after him.
"Hey! Why did you give this to me?!"
Police HQ, Milgrom, Bekenstein [Boltzmann System – Serpent Nebula] – 18:25 UTC – 2182.11.12 CE
MacLeese looked at them, his eyebrows arching high. He spread his arms wide interrogatively.
"Ah, Eric! Nice to see you again! We forgot about a little something!" Kevin said with a broad grin, patting the officer's forearm as if greeting an old friend.
"Oh really?"
The detective returned the touch with a forced smile.
"Good thing you were able to come through the blockade", he added and reluctantly motioned them to follow him in.
As happy as he had been that this small episode with the spies had gone smoothly, now a meddlesome, tingling tension spreading all over the back of his neck reminded him how much he had not been missing them.
"And what exactly has just come to your mind?" He asked, flexing his neck slowly with a painful expression.
"We were thinking…" Kevin started as he nonchalantly adjusted his little backpack. "...and came to the conclusion that we really shouldn't leave until every aspect of this case is covered, right? I mean we travelled twenty thousand light-years to see you! Right?" Kevin laughed "We better make the most out of it!"
"I cannot disagree..."
The group was once again climbing the backstairs zealously. When they were about to turn onto the corridor with MacLeese' office, Thomas' omni-tool sprung to life around his wrist, playing a ringtone for an incoming call. He stopped in his tracks as he raised his arm to check the caller.
"Excuse me, but this is important. Do you mind if I join you later?" Thomas asked.
"Fine by me." MacLeese shrugged clearly indicating that he would not miss him.
Kevin also gave him a nod of approval. Tom did not need any more encouragement to step off.
Lieutenant Blauhorn had made himself comfortable in his now usual seat and waited until MacLeese plopped down on his chair across the table.
"Please take a look at this." Kevin said, pulling a datapad out of his bag, handing it to MacLeese. "Mind you, this is classified information." He said, giving an apprehensive glance behind his back as if checking for unwanted attention.
MacLeese took the device reluctantly and started reading.
"I assume you saw our original information request…" Kevin said, and took MacLeese' somewhat reproachful look as a positive 'yes'. "Yeah… We were a little laconic on the causes of our interest indeed - a bad habit of our Company." Kevin waved away the excuse lightly, "but let's talk turkey."
MacLeese paused to regard the officer.
"Of course, you understand we cannot show you these details…" Kevin said, watching MacLeese' eyes jumping from line to line avidly, "but we thought that you may be more willing to discuss this case, when we are standing on level ground. We are fighting on the same side after all…"
MacLeese grunted in sort of an acknowledgement, and dived back into the document. ID photos and older pictures about Pitman lined the report on the former detective. A couple of communication footprint charts and spreadsheets of banking transactions added to the pile of intelligence topping it with a neatly written conclusion — one that Kevin was particularly proud of.
"Pittman came up as a tertiary subject of interest, as a middleman, in a money laundering operation. Now, that would fall outside our typical field of interest, but the 'laundry' belongs to a man well-acquainted with the top level Bekenstein business sphere who is — let's say — strongly suspected of spying for foreing powers — and that is where it all gets political and where we will not share more on this, alright?
"Yeah... we have not heard about any of that and have nothing to do about it." The detective muttered, frowning at the new development.
"As it should be… So," Kevin said as he adjusted his shirt-sleeves" Pittman's name arose as a figure in kind of a security role and he seems like quite a regular occurrence at meetings where we would appreciate having an ear and eye. That is, if he is reliable. To establish that, we need to have him under control, but for that we must have a hold of him. We had surmised he might still be speaking with the authorities, but had not seen any direct evidence until recently, when his history with the police has been revealed.
"If I understand you correctly, Kevin, that you know he is talking to someone here, "MacLeese spread his arms out while speaking", why did you come to me and not to that person instead?"
"Because we do not know who he talks with."
Eric cracked a smile.
"And…" Kevin raised his eyebrow, while slowly opened his mouth to continue" ...we do not even care. What we care about is Pittman. If we can get to him, we are good… we take him under control, whether we recruit him or not. But if we cannot get to him first, his unidentified connection to the police will be a liability that we must cut off, just like his moles from inside the force… and that will take us a lot of uncomfortable screening of the personnel here, but... loose ends must be tied up sooner than later."
MacLeese looked up from the glowing screen. Their eyes met and the two men had scrutinized each other for a brief moment before the detective returned his attention to the datapad.
Kevin was scanning the man's face from his chair as he was running through the file, and found it changing from the initial neutral to intrigued, then acknowledging and finally genuinely surprised. But what intrigued him the most was the fleeting sign of concern before any of those…
Tom had edged away from the office and distanced himself from the busy part of the corridor. He meandered to an adjacent aisle to answer the fake call.
Not wasting time, he sneaked through the door to the stairway, keeping on a seemingly important conversation with an imaginary nobody. He descended a few floors and passed a few detectives and uniform officers on the way, nodding briefly or just ignoring them - whatever seemed the most neutral course of action to slip by drawing the least attention.
He soon passed the level from where the elevator operated to the ground floor and fortunately for him, traffic on the stairs dropped to zero just as he had hoped.
As he progressed further down, the clacking of his shoes slowly grew over the fainting chatter upstairs and finally became his sole companion. Alongside which his thoughts and racing heart started to feel almost too loud. Now he regretted that he had not begun his preparation for the yearly fitness tests earlier as the serpent of stairs became more and more of a labour to climb, even downstairs!
He stopped eventually, hunching over while propping himself on his knees.
The sign on the wall read 'Level 1' finally, and Thomas, still heaving, turned his attention to the door under the glowing green exit sign.
It took a few moments to overcome his body's stubborn desire to recuperate, but eventually he squared his shoulders and stepped to the door. He gave a quick check for any security cameras, but similarly to the rest of the staircase, he found none. Thomas took a deep breath, reached with one hand into his pocket and another on the handle. Then with a quick move he swung the massive fire-door open.
"Wait!" He raised a warning hand immediately into Yvette's face. The woman was standing there, right outside the doorstep, tense and ready to push right through. But now she halted as Tom gave a glance over her shoulder.
The back door opened to a shadowy alley, where the sight of a small and impatient crowd of colourful people greeted him: humans and a few asari with banners, boards and flags, whom Yvette managed to keep surprisingly disciplined and quiet for their numbers.
With a swift move, Thomas pulled his hand from his pocket and chocked the lock's metal plate with the now very practically bent neck of the paper coffee spoon, fitting snugly into the lock, keeping the mechanism in place from triggering the alarm.
He could not suppress a smirk.
Police HQ, Milgrom, Bekenstein [Boltzmann System – Serpent Nebula] – 18:45 UTC – 2182.11.12 CE
Thomas found nobody in the corridor, but voices sifted through the doorway not far ahead to his left. He pulled up beside the door of what looked like a waiting room with benches lining the walls and a few coffee tables before them. Plain clothes and uniform members of the force were relaxing and chatting away, all of them humans except for a turian, and from the looks of it there were no civilians present at the moment. His suspicion was confirmed by the unfolding scene in an adjacent room across the lounge, which grabbed not only his attention. The bystanding officers craned their heads as they edged closer to get a better look.
"We were patrolling downtown when he took a potshot at the patrol car; the slug passed Amireh by mere centimetres!" The Uniform Officer fumed.
To spitting distance from him was sat a chunky man secured tightly to his seat with a pair of handcuffs, who was glaring back at him with a sullen face, which – just like his torn shirt – had probably seen better times.
"Was he like this when you brought him in?" Another human in a once-white lab coat asked.
The officer seemed to hesitate a bit. Then he nodded. "Yes, Doc."
The man chained to the seat cried out.
"They beat me up, doctor!" The man cuffed to the bench raised his head and turned it around slowly, showcasing an assortment of bruises, a black eye and a swollen lip. "You gotta do something!" He whimpered, which made him look even more miserable, given his considerable size.
"Hmm..." The doctor muttered. "Do you guys keep him in for a few days... till these heal up?" He gestured at the lesions.
"Of course." The officer replied.
"I see." The doctor regarded the detainee for a long moment impassively. "No visible injuries." He uttered his professional resolution as he scribbled down a note on his datapad and then signed it.
"WHAT?! Come here, I'll cut your throat too, you piece of sh..." he hurtled forth, but a detective leaped by the door and with a smooth move she shut it right before the restraining officer's knee could have had a more direct relationship with the raging giant's stomach.
Suddenly there was silence.
"Khm. Excuse me…"
All eyes in the waiting room now darted at Thomas immediately.
"I... believe I've seen protesters inside the building... I thought I would let you know."
"That's fine, we brought in some troublemakers earlier."
"Well, I did not catch the bracelet on their hands... Probably the same policy why you let them keep their sticks and firecrackers and whatnot?"
The moment of disbelief fled in an instance when the muffled scants from the back-stairs hit their ears and they noticed the slowly whirling traces of purple smoke from the same direction. The officers dashed out of the room as one, smashing the alarm on the way. Sirens broke out blaring throughout the building.
MacLeese winced at the sudden clamour.
"What the hell?" The detective stood and stepped outside the door. "What's going on?!"
"They got in!" Another officer yelled as he ran down the aisle.
It did not take any longer for the excitement to stick over to MacLeese, too.
"You stay here." He ordered.
"Are you sure we shouldn't move out? To... some safe place?" He asked, letting some worry slip into his voice.
"You'll be alright." MacLeese gave him a condescending smile and exited the room with haste.
Kevin turned after him, watching through the glass. One of his colleagues grabbed MacLeese on the shoulder, then both men ran down the corridor.
Kevin rose from his seat a little, then sidled by the office's glass wall. People seemed to be preoccupied with the alarm, so with newfound confidence he reached for the control panel's holographic controls. He quickly set the office to lock-down mode. The huge transparent window turned opaque in a second with a red circular icon floating over the doorknob. Kevin scurried to the table.
A few hours ago - during their first meeting - when MacLeese had accessed his computer with his finger ID, Kevin envied the ease of access and lack of typing passwords. Now he was outright thankful for Milgrom Police taking the comfortable route with their security.
Not that they were particularly wrong though...
He grabbed the datapad that MacLeese had thrown on the table. He held it carefully by its edge, and started to scratch at its corner. It did not need much until a clear plastic sheet began to peel off. Kevin pulled the membrane away and gently, albeit with hands shaking from the rush of adrenaline, he laid it on the desk.
… after all this tech was not something a common dude had access to. Finger IDs were deemed considerably safe and widely in use even at the Citadel police force dubbed C-Sec, to match the old-school fingerprint recognition methods with in situ DNA sampling.
He brought up his omni-tool. The proper application had been already loaded and connected readily on his command to the smartsheet.
DOWNLOADING DATA… COMPLETE
COMPILING FINGERPRINT SHEET…. COMPLETE
CONSTRUCTING BIOMETRIC PROFILE…...…..….. COMPLETE
Kevin rather avoided situations like this. While all these spy gadgets piqued his curiosity, and he was more than willing to partake in the trainings on how to use them, his excitement and interest was more about the technical side of it - without the unnecessary excitement: the sweating, the racing heart and the potential chance of getting caught or worse - more likely worse. If MacLeese had been suddenly back, he was not sure he could talk himself out of this…
Kevin tapped on a few haptic buttons on his omni-tool, and one loading bar later the imprint of a palm materialized in the middle of the smartsheet. Kevin inspected the three dimensional mimicked ridges of MacLeese' finger and palm print, then cagily wrapped the sheet around his own hand.
MacLeese' desk terminal was switched on, standing by. Kevin lowered himself onto the detective's seat and pulled himself closer to the keyboard. He woke up the computer and stared at the login screen.
Please work.
He pressed his palm against the sensor screen with bated breath. The haptic board suddenly came alive below his palm, letting him feel the keyboard keys emerge from the holographic plane lying on the table in front of the terminal's display. He was in.
Kevin did not waste a second. His fingers were racing over the glimmering blue interface, his eyes sternly fixed on the screen. To his luck he was familiar with the software the police used for organizing their documents — perks of governmental savings across agencies. He swiftly navigated to the list of cases, narrowing down the items in line with Kasumi's tip-off.
He found it at last.
MacLeese, you damn dog… he shook his head.
A smile touched the corner of his mouth. The detective did not only have access to the case, but it had been assigned to him in the past, not much before he closed it eventually.
Oh and just who do we have here...?
He gasped as an ear-piercing blast shook the office.
The thin office walls were still vibrating violently all around as the smoke dissipated.
"GET ON THE GROUND!" The officer to Tom's left shouted the order, as he was still hugging his ears for dear life.
The reply came across the corridor in the form of an indistinguishable mix of angry hollers and flying office furniture parts.
The pungent smell of pyrotechnics and the not less palpable aggression in the air were good giveaways for Thomas that he was at the wrong location at the wrong time. But after having been running around for a while, he found it increasingly difficult to find a good place to be inside the building anyway, now flooded with protesters at random floors wherever they had come through from the invaded stairway.
However, in Thomas' view more worrying was their closeness to MacLeese' office.
Come on Kev, come on... Get it done already! He gave his omni-wristwatch an impatient glimpse to no avail. Tom had pulled out to an adjacent aisle for cover, and to catch his breath a little. He almost choked on it though when a huge asari with her human companion trotted out of a room before him. Their libertine attire pretty much immediately gave away their side, just like Thomas' suit and tie did his. The asari - man, a seriously tall and buff asari - and the lady measured him up from head to toe.
"Well, well, well." The asari bit her lip.
In normal circumstances he would have deemed this a pleasantly exciting situation, but now he felt like his very official looking visitor badge cast him on the bad side, telling from the two trespassers' fierce grin.
"Come 'ere lil boy, wanna have some fun?"
Thomas felt something inherently unsettling about receiving such an offer from an extraterrestrial, who was also clearly hard to resist physically in case things would get physical, so fending off the sudden dumbfoundedness, he excused himself promptly:
"Thanks ladies, but I'll pass!"
He barely finished his objection, but was already halfway through an adjacent doorway — with his unbuttoned suit flapping after him, followed by his suitors in pursuit.
Fun or not, he was reluctant to find out and on the contrary, determined to lose them. He was pelting through the place, flipping a few chairs in his way as makeshift barricades, not even looking back to check their effectiveness.
Nowhere's the police when you need them! His chest was throbbing.
He shouldered the door across the room in the hopes to seal himself off from them at last, which he thought would have been a great service to his lungs.
He smashed the lock and stepped back to glance at the red holo-disk and cross, which appeared over the door as a sign of salvation. He spun around with a lighter heart just to have it sink to his feet as his face abruptly contacted a hairy chest with a blunt thud.
"Excuse m…!" Tom coughed the words, taken aback by the sweaty reek, but that was the minor issue.
Ten thick fingers shot around his neck into a firm grip, his body pushed back against the door.
Thomas' mind and heart were racing once again. His options at reasoning with the beast of a man about how bad of an idea this was had quickly converged to nil. His eyeballs strained to get a better look at his assailant, which was no easy feat with his neck forced upwards. The ugly face was terrifyingly familiar. This was the guy taken in by the patrol officers earlier! Also the one who had fired a gun at them — Thomas made the alarming sidenote —, now standing free, with part of the broken chair still hanging on the fuzzy arms.
He clamped onto the thick wrists with all his might to pry them off, but his fingers kept slipping off as even the shut door behind him seemed to hit him on the back.
"OPeN uP! Don't run away boooy!" Came the muffled voices from his pursuers from beyond the shaking door. "Come on Ari, push it with your blue magic!"
"Yeah babe, why not?... Here it comes! Threeeeee..." sifted through the asari's voice.
Thomas' eyes widened in panic. All his heard and read knowledge about asari "magic" came to the surface in a snap. His wriggles grew desperate at the thought of standing in the way of a biotic attack. Yet, with a single and firm move, the man shook off his vile attempts and pushed him against the door again with such vigour that left him breathless.
"Let me borrow your little key to my freedom…" He said reaching for his badge when he halted halfway, eyeing the huge "VISITOR" text across it. His moment of doubt earned Thomas another chance and a sudden idea as his flailing hand found grip on the bracelet on the detainee's thigh-thick forearm.
"Twoooooo."
Tom jerked the handcuffs back above the man's wrists and twisted it with all the force he had. The move tore the metal deep into his flesh and tendon sheath, right against the bones.
A painful roar escaped the giant's throat as the sudden shock travelled up his arms, numbing them in an instant.
Thomas gasped for air as he finally freed his neck and smashed the lock button open as he jumped to the side. His manoeuvre did not hold the goliath back for long. Angrier than ever, his hand shot out after him.
Tom narrowly pulled his suit out of reach as a loud crack slapped the door right into the man's face.
"Oneee!... Oh, who the fuck is this?"
"AAAARGH!"
Thomas could still catch the sounds of not quite a new friendship unfolding behind him, but he wanted to be no witness to it.
When feeling reassuringly distanced from the whole ordeal, he finally stopped and shoved his back against a wall to recuperate a little and not less importantly, to think… Struck by a sudden idea, he turned to the evacuation plan on the wall. Not that he was on the way out. He tapped his finger on the schematic drawing, right on a small backstair quite possibly out of the way of harm.
The SAIA officer raced down the floor and pushed in the red marked emergency door. With all the alarms already blaring, nobody could care less. He took the stairs by two and nearly knocked over a young detective.
"Hey, hey, hey. Hold on!" The man ordered giving emphasis to his words by hooking an arm around a fast moving Thomas' chest. He raised his hands in defeat as he backed up to face the officer. The detective eyed him up fast and reached out to his badge for closer inspection.
Seemingly satisfied, he pointed up towards the door Tom was heading to.
"That level is secured. Stay there and wait for further instructions. It's gonna take a few more minutes, the situation's under control."
"Aye aye, and thank you…" Tom uttered, readjusting his suit and badge lanyard, walking on while keeping track of the quickly leaving man from the corner of his eye.
Once far enough, he trotted up the remaining flight of stairs and swung the heavy door open to the floor of MacLeese' office. He fixated on the glassy room, all turned opaque as if filled with smoke.
He entered with the dash of a whirlwind.
"Kevin, we need to g… oh."
"What a timely arrival, Mr Smith." MacLeese greeted him.
Thomas' omni-tool also lit up. Before he could have got a good look at it, Kevin hung up and turned to him on his seat interrogatively:
"Where have you been? This was the third time I have been calling you!"
"Erm."
Thomas' eyes flitted from the detective to Kevin, and then back at him again. Both men were staring at him, visibly impatient to hear Tom explain himself, MacLeese standing in front of him, leaning back against his desk and Kevin sitting in his seat just like how he had left him. Which… were good news - presumably.
"Er… yeah, I'm sorry." He squirmed a bit. "Have you seen what's been going on out there? I couldn't really find a good spot to chat... Have you been waiting for long?" Thomas asked in an attempt to get back in the loop.
"Nah. We had a little interruption, but it's all under control now," answered MacLeese. "We have just wrapped it up with Kevin."
"Ah." Thomas uttered and looked at Kevin.
"Yah, we both gained a better understanding of our common and individual professional interests, so to speak." Kevin said in a mannered tone. Since Thomas' expression did not change the least, Kevin promptly added further explanation: "In short, we are good." He nodded to underline his words.
That seemed to suffice as Smith' features softened and his posture also eased up for the first time since he had rushed into the room.
"Good. Well then, shall we?" MacLeese asked as he pushed himself away from his desk and motioned at the door.
He ushered the SAIA officers out to the corridor, where they could grab a coffee from the vending machine there, while waiting for the all-clear. And it happened exactly as the young detective had foretold Thomas, as within a few minutes MacLeese' omni-tool indeed sprung to life with the message broadcast about all criminal elements having been contained in the building.
"Copy." Eric acknowledged, and saw the intelligence officers down to the main lobby.
Kevin felt a mix of guilt and excitement at the aftermath of the chaos, the latter of which he tried his darnest to hide. Some of the aisles, which were adjacent to the sairway looked like a scene after a mad Saturday house party. Dirt and stains on the walls, burnt spots on the plush floor marked the places of standoffs. Kevin stole glimpses of armoured riot police leading cuffed protesters downstairs via the back corridors.
MacLeese nodded at them as he noticed where Kevin was looking. "Damn bastards got to the roof to hang out some kind of a banner. If it wasn't for the cameras I'd have smacked up some of the wiseass loud ones."
"Oh."
"Do you stay alive Brad?" The detective patted an armoured officer on the way, washing some blood off his face. It seemed like he bit his mouth in the turmoil.
"Yeah dude. Tis but a scratch!" He laughed it off.
MacLeese showed a half grin as he waved and walked on without a stop, leading Thomas and Kevin to the main stairway in a hurry, where he stopped to wait for them.
"This way, guys… Hey, did you get hurt?" He pointed at his own nose.
"Who, me?" Kevin said, but he figured out immediately what the detective was frowning at. He raised a hand to his nose and eyed the red smear of blood on his finger with the same concern, which Tom was looking at him now as well.
"Are you alright?"
"Yeah, yeah, never mind… And I thought I merely had a runny nose from my teargas-fever or something…"
"Do you need medical assistance?" MacLeese asked more out of politeness than a serious offer.
"I'll live. Really," Kevin replied in a nasal voice, doing his best creasing a napkin against his nostrils, when they reached the lobby area, which seemed like it had avoided the incident completely.
"Alright then. Take care when you leave the building. Those mobs are lurking around in the nearby alleys."
"Thanks, detective."
"We'll keep in touch."
"I'm sure we will." Eric stared at them with an ever so slight smile on his face.
Thomas shook hands with MacLeese. Kevin quickly took the napkin over with his left to prep for the farewell, but an awkward moment of their hesitation over whether it would be appropriate to exchange any possible traces of blood pretty much killed the vibe and the two men opted for a simple nod instead.
As the door closed behind them, Kevin felt a huge weight drop off of his chest and took a relaxing draft of fresh air in the waking evening breeze. A false sense of security, but one that felt good enough to re-energize his effort. They paced down the stairs in a hurry, weaving through the loose cordon of riot and uniform police, which had just cleared the courtyard in front of the building. The two men were soon out of sight in the alleys, while the sun was slowly dressing Milgrom's white walls in flames of orange.
MacLeese plopped onto his armchair. The last sun rays of the Boltzmann star cast long shadows and bathed the office in warm, fiery colours. He was not sure if it was the teargas or the fireworks that irritated his throat more. He gave a try to cough the unpleasant feeling away and reached down for a bottle of water he kept by his desk's leg.
Albeit his thirst and the pressing need to wash down the ache in his larynx had not faded the least, he abruptly stopped in his move as his eyes - now in level with his tabletop - struggled to focus on something.
At the usual place of the holo-keyboard for his computer terminal, against the dark matte surface, little reflective droplets mirrored the ceiling lights, standing out clearly now that he was looking at them at an angle. It still would not have warranted much of his attention, but the little pearls were playing in a curious ruby colour… A growing sense of unease enveloped the back of his skull. He poked one of the small puddles and held his finger up while drawing his chair closer. His face looked pale and straight as if carved from stone. The need to massage a familiar tension out of his neck just came back even stronger as he scrutinized the red smear on his fingertip.