Shadow sat at the café, trying to ignore Ina, who was sipping at her drink. They were waiting for Chaze to arrive, and Shadow was just about fed up with trying to be patient. He stood up, walked around the table, then sat down.

"Stop doing that," Ina whispered. "We're undercover."

"Whatever."

Chaze took another six minutes to arrive, and by that time, Shadow was steaming. When he asked what had taken so long, Chaze changed the topic.

"Doesn't your doctor give you money monthly so you can afford that prescription medication of yours? The one that calms you down?"

Shadow flipped his hand impatiently.

"That's what we use to pay the rent. But that's not important. What took so long?!"

"Securing permission to bring a civilian onto the crime scene," he answered, sitting at the café table.

"I thought you fixed that. I'm technically the murder investigator or something."

"You're only doing this so we let you off the hook as both prime suspect and for stealing that car last week."

Shadow rolled his eyes. Who was he to just leave a nice car just sitting there? With the keys in the ignition, no less. And who cared about speed limits or seat belts? As far as he was concerned, the owner was just asking for it to be taken.

"Let's move in," Ina said, rising and heading toward the apartment complex. Shadow followed her, oblivious to Chaze's sighs.

Apartment 46-0 had belonged to Liun. Shadow insisted on being 100% alone. It was really the only way he could concentrate. But both Police Officers wanted to be with him at all times. In the end, Chaze waited outside and kept away anyone else coming to investigate while Ina would stand next to the door and just watch him work. No nothing, just watching.

Shadow walked straight to the taped area that displayed where the body fell. He ran his hand over the smooth floor, coming up with a single hair. He cocked his head and squinted at it. Red. But while it was the right color, the end was singed and there was the faintest trace of a familiar smell on it.

Electrical fire. Shadow knew the hair had been burned using electricity because, before Hydron threw the Vexos out of the palace, he had stuck a fork into the electrical socket and lit his hair, and subsequently, the carpet on fire. The smell of this burned hair, and his own burned hair was identical. It even tasted the same.

Further search gave nothing but another hair. It was a strange color: yellowish but very white at the same time. Not a Vestal hair color. One of the annoying members of the Resistence, the small one, had similar color.

But humans couldn't get on Vestal, so a human murderer wasn't possible. Shadow shook his head, his brain aching from this much conscious thought. Normally, he let someone else do all the thinking, and he got to do the supposedly "weird stuff".

"Hey, Ina!"

"Officer Kert to you!"

"How did Liun die?"

"The autopsy said a blood vessel burst in his brain. The cause was unknown."

Shadow felt like his brain might just follow Liun's example, but he forced himself to focus. It was so much easier when Mylene did it all, and he got to be the idiot.

Looking back at the white/yellow hair, he decided to ignore Ina's stare and very deliberately put it in his mouth, making sure to spit it back out.

The taste was weird. It had a metallic tang to the flavor that suggested electricity ran through it. Shadow stood up and walked out into the hall where Chaze was waiting.