Chapter two contains explicit descriptions of violence and gore (and much nastiness; you have been warned).

Megaman X: The Shadow of Arcadia
Chapter Two: Mortem in C Minor, First Movement

Three guards, bleary eyed and sweating, stood watch over the taped off hallway X was going toward. As he approached, the three stood more at attention, and the center nodded his head, signifying X could pass. He quickly ducked under the yellow tape that read, "Keep back; authorized personnel only," repeated over and over. The hallway got darker. He passed three more checkpoints on his way to the crime scene.

When he arrived, he could instantly tell that something terrible had happened in the large, open room. There was a curtained off area beneath part of the second level catwalk at the opposite end of the room. Three voices were coming from behind that curtain, filling X with even more trepidation. The curtain seemed daunting, dooming; it loomed silent, stark, and even monolithic in its loneliness among the ample moonlight from the windowed roof. He was frozen for a moment, listening to the serious tones behind the immobile barrier against the terror behind the curtain.

As he stared forward, X began to feel strange. His head started to swim and his hands went numb. A chill went through him and he felt weak. The curtain seemed to stretch and warp into something grotesque. Through the terrible sensation of fear, X thought he could hear a noise, as of something laughing in a deep, repeating strain.

Suddenly, the curtain moved near the bottom, snapping X back to reality –everything was just as it was when he entered the room. A gloved hand held the fabric back while two women walked out into the room. X recognized them as Carice and Angie, but they looked stern and businesslike now, completely unlike what they had been earlier, and dressed in much less formal clothes. The owner of the gloved hand exited behind them. Zero was still wearing the suit he had on at the ball, although he no longer wore the tie or jacket. X could tell none of them had slept.

Carice motioned for X to join them at a table set up in the center of the room with a dim lamp. The four took chairs and spent a silent moment before moving full-steam into the work before them.

"Alright. What we have is a repeat of the last incident. This time the victim was obviously targeted because he participated in the investigation…" Angie's tone was objective and cool. "The numerous wounds were likely inflicted by the same weapon in quick succession. It's the work of a trained killer; unfortunately for us, we have those in abundance on the list. All but two of our suspects are trained in the use of weapons that could inflict such… grievous wounds." She tossed a file folder at X. It was marked "Classified: Eyes Only."

X started to look over the documents inside the file as Carice picked up the dialogue.

"The attack is consistent with the previous one, which means –thankfully –there is only one killer. That does not, however, rule out conspiracy. The evidence seems to suggest that the killer has connections in high places or… is in a high place himself." X looked up from the small stack of papers that said a whole lot about nothing –it was almost as if the brass didn't want anyone to know about the first murder, even the new team of investigators. He tossed the papers back on to the desk.

"Well, let's concentrate on catching the one who has killed these people first; then we can worry about his ring of friends." Angie nodded at X's initiative. They wasted no further time in getting to the core of the matter.

"The weapon must have been large, which narrows our scope a good deal. Only two of our suspects have access to and training with weapons of that size and type." Carice tossed two pages with a paper clipped photo each as Angie continued talking. "Vance Couran and Sam Hark top our list. Couran is a maverick hunter from the sixth unit, specializing in crowd suppression techniques."

X stared down at the imposing mug shot of Vance Couran and could instantly see why he was in unit six –he was large, very large. His shoulders were at least as wide as X was tall and the rest of him seemed to form around those. The hilt end of a gigantic sword stuck up behind his shoulder in the picture, lending weight to the "crowd suppression" part of his occupation. X was a little surprised as he flipped the page to look at the other photo.

"Hark is a former Repliforce Second Colonel trained, almost exclusively, in hand-to-hand combat." A pair of eyes as cold as steel looked back at X from the second photograph. Short hair and a slender build screamed of seduction in the form of a heartless woman with looks to kill. "She reportedly utilizes a large axe as a backup weapon."

"We've already established possible motives and gone over how the murder would have played out in either scenario, but we still have a lot of work to do." X cast his eyes over to Zero, who was busy explaining what was done and what wasn't. Zero went on for a while, but X didn't catch most of it; that noise he had thought he heard was back again, just faintly, at the edge of his mind –it kept him from concentrating, and it was almost –

"X?" The noise shrank away again, and X looked over at Angie, who seemed a little concerned. "You feeling okay? You were spacing out over there."

"Uh.. Sorry." He made a quick excuse and asked that they continue.

"Alright, let's see… right. Okay, so in a nutshell, if it was Couran that did this, things would have been something to this effect…"

It was just a few hours after the ball ended, Couran trailed his prey at a safe distance most of the way. The short little reploid in the bright colored jacket must've known he was being followed: he kept to the path watched by cameras, didn't take any shortcuts back to his barracks, kept an even pace. He was getting paranoid, and no less than a little edgy. Unfortunately for him, Couran had planned for this, and he was walking steadily to his own death.

Two corners more, and things were set. The short, brightly clothed reploid was starting to walk faster; maybe he knew there weren't any cameras in that courtyard, maybe he didn't. It wouldn't matter anyway, everything was going right. Now!

Couran lunged forward, grabbed the shorter reploid with a single, powerful hand and swung down with the other. He finished his job, left his "note" and headed off, one nuisance less to worry about, and the terror reinforced from before. Things would be glorious…

Carice finished in an imposing tone. Couran could have done it, he may have done it, and the possible motives list seemed to say he probably did. The postulations weren't over yet, however. X glance down at the information on Hark –it seemed to say up to him, "No! It was this woman! Her!" and Angie was the one who explained what the papers tried to say…

Simply perfect. Dodging here, ducking there, avoiding this place. Her quarry walked quickly on his way back to his barracks. It was a pity she'd have to kill such a cutie, but hey, he's a knot in an otherwise perfect strand. Bright suit jacket, and quite a dancer too –all too soon, just as dead as the style of his clothes. He was getting very, very sloppy; his last walking companion had left him twenty minutes ago, and he was taking the long way back, just to be sure the cameras saw him go the entire way –like being caught on camera would stop her anyway.

It was time now; he was in the courtyard that she'd picked out for him to die in. No cameras, no people, and very, very little light. She tossed an empty soda can into a nearby trashcan and ducked around behind the short little reploid man with amazing speed. He wheeled around in time to see a wicked pleasure creep onto her face before she attacked him. He was dead in less time than it took to blink. "Now to scare them, just a little more…" She left that awful calling card like she planned and left without a trace…

X couldn't tell what really tugged at him more sickeningly: the fact that there was a horrible murder, or the way that these two new girls explained how it was done. Zero didn't seem phased, but nothing much froze his blood anyway. They all sat in silent thought for a moment, drawing lines between what few metaphorical dots they could, trying to come up with more concrete motives and cases. This would be radically different from anything X had ever done before; the magnitude of it wall was just starting to set in, and it was discomforting; he could deal with madmen like Sigma and Vile. He could handle the stress of fighting on the front lines of a war. He could handle the fate of the world, balancing precariously in his hand, but for some reason –for some unfathomable reason, he felt it was going to be a real test of his power to survive this with a scrap of sanity if it dragged on too long. All he could do was hope that it all ended with either Couran or Hark.

"I think that's about all we can do for now; we're all tired, and we've got a whole lot of work to do. We'll meet at twelve-hundred in the HQ general cafeteria. You guys get some sleep and some food." X was glad that the meeting was over, however short it had been. He rose to leave as the others did. Angie stopped him before they left the courtyard completely and waved Carice and Zero on ahead. She spent a few seconds looking X's face over, cool eyes darting every here and there at the slightest muscle twitch.

"Are you sure you're up to this X? You seemed pretty out of it." X took a second to arrange his thoughts.

"I'm just a little tired, that's all. I'm sure I'll be able to help more once I've woken up." Angie seemed to accept that.

"Well, at least take a look at the scene; they want to clean this all up in an hour."

"I will, Angie."

"Alright X. You take care, stay safe." She nodded X good-bye and turned down the hall at a trot to catch up with Carice –Zero was already well out of sight.

As the "clap, clap, clap" noise of their boot-clad feet grew fainter and fainter and finally grew too quiet to hear at all, X felt more and more alone. Once again, it was just he in front of that terrible, pristine curtain. X could see the first tiny trickle of daylight on the far horizon out the window that said day was still too far off to wait for. He looked back at the immaculate whiteness of the hanging cloth, and he was lost.

For the first time since Sigma's first uprising, X had no idea what he was going to do. It was just a simple piece of fabric, suspended in a room, but it almost seemed like moving it would open a doorway to a place X didn't want to be –never wanted to see. Once again, the terrible laughing noise invaded X's mind –still far off, still too faint to really focus on, but it made X feel vulnerable. His feet moved on their own, and he found himself in front of the terrible milk-white enemy. A foul odor was struggling to come under to the other side, but the curtain kept it at bay.

X shivered. It was just a little warmer than room temperature, and he shivered. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard –it was like picking up the blaster for the first time: scary, powerful, cool, but seemed to take away a part of himself when he did it. Now he had gone into that territory of no return. He could start now. He opened his eyes once more and stood up straight; the noise receded from his mind. He pulled the curtain back enough to step inside.

The stink of copper and that unique stench of hydraulic fluid invaded his nose. Everything inside had been covered too; the body was covered by a large cloth marked "A1" and something on the wall with one marked "A2;" a few numbered "B" markers were stuck about a few different spots of blood –why those few, X couldn't tell –blood was everywhere. He steeled himself, and moved over to the wall curtain. He didn't know why he was starting there, but he did. He pulled the curtain back a ways, but couldn't see anything in the darkness. He pulled it from the wall, and was taken aback at what he saw:

In big, shaky letters a message ran on the section of wall, it would have been silly –if it wasn't written in blood. "I have seven notes to play, one got a sharp; the others are yet to be written." He took a moment to steady himself again. Psycho. The word flew into his brain, and he just accepted it as the explanation. He wasn't done yet, however. The body was left to see. He replaced the cover on the wall and looked down at the bold "A1" next to him. With a deep breath, he grabbed the corner of the cloth; with another, he flung it away and saw a sight he'd never forget.

There were three pieces, the top-left quarter, the top-right, and then the midsection down. The body was shredded –jagged edges marked where the horrible weapon had sliced through metal and pseudo-flesh. Blood covered everything. The shoes were a pair of old worn-out dress shoes that were now doused in coagulated blood. The dress slacks the reploid had on were wrinkled in a hundred places and full of the sick smell of reploid death. X's eyes continued upward, and he felt sharply ill when he saw the disgusting mess the innards had fallen into when they fell out of the body. It was horrible, and he could hardly stand to continue upward.

Then he saw it: the face. It was twisted in a terrible agony, warped in a death-hardened scream of terror that never escaped the lungs. That wasn't all to be experienced. X knew this reploid –it was one of his close friends. Double, the light-hearted, yellow-wearing good-guy who was in his division. It was more than X could take all at once. He left things as they were and walked dazedly out of the curtained off area. The air in the courtyard itself was free of the stink of death, but it didn't help at all.

"Hey. You look like you could use a hand getting back home." X looked over at the source of the voice. His vision began to blur and he could see the outline of who he thought was Zero. He made a groggy sort of nod and thought he heard Zero say something else, but he couldn't be sure. He fell forward to the ground, passed out, and that peculiar noise seemed to come back for an instant, just before everything turned black.

A/N
The first murder scene is revealed, and the plot lurches forward ever so slowly. I don't think updates will be too often, but I'll do my best to keep at least a monthly schedule (I'll probably make more updates if school isn't too harsh). As always, make comments and tell me how you feel about this story.