The Crooked Arm of the Law
Seattle Police Station was full to the brim with prisoners. The department had had to expand a numerous amount of times just to accommodate the amount of gang members and various other assorted criminals in the city. As a result, the place was officially recognised as a county jail, as well as incorporating a courthouse after the old one was burned to the ground, but it kept the moniker of "police station" out of some twisted sense of nostalgia.
The police station itself was on the top level, with most of the rooms suspended high above the main prison floor. The place had a very cold feel to it, with just about every wall covered in the colour of gun-metal grey and numerous walkways connecting from the central elevator to the various areas of the department. It made Alan feel like he was walking around inside a submarine.
He and Zapper stepped off the elevator and headed to the front office, just as an irate cop pushed past them dragging an equally irate prisoner to the main holding area. Zapper walked up to the front desk, where a balding, bespectacled officer dwarf with a large black beard sat quietly sipping at a paper cup of coffee. He looked up and sighed as Zapper approached him.
"Hey, LeRoi," he greeted him somewhat warmly. "So the Reaper strikes again... I guess we'll be seeing your work on the front page again; another body and another byline."
"You know," Zapper retorted, leaning on the desk, "if you just catch this guy, Brandon, I can go back to writing about hacker technology on page 12."
Officer Brandon nodded, and then shifted to a more sympathetic look. "Sorry to hear about your partner. She was a nice girl." He looked behind Zapper to look at Alan, who was leaning nonchalantly against the wall. "Though it looks like you jumped ship pretty quickly."
"Oh, don't mind him," Zapper said dismissively. "Work experience boy. I'm just showing him the ropes." He looked back and winked at Alan, who looked like Zapper had just slapped his mother.
"Still," Brandon said, returning his gaze to Zapper, "I liked Catherine when she came around here."
"She used to come down here?" Zapper asked, sounding rather surprised.
"Came down here all the time," Brandon replied. "She used to do all your legwork."
"Oh right, right," Zapper said, shaking himself. "Well, I can't do everything, can I? Which is why I agreed to let this guy tag along." He indicated Alan again before turning to him.
"Well?" he asked forcefully. "Aren't you going to ask the nice cop some questions?" His elvish features were twisted into a broad grin. Clearly he was enjoying this whole ruse a bit too much. Alan just sighed, walking towards the desk and looking Brandon in the eye. The cop seemed to flinch as his eyes took in the mutant's appearance.
"Any clues from the library?" Alan asked. He had been very curious about the library access, and wondered if it held some relevance to the case. "It was the last place Stein was seen alive, after all."
"Well, standard operating procedure is to make a copy of all library content," Brandon explained. "You know, Matrix files, that kind of thing."
"So how can we get our hands on what they found?" Zapper chimed in.
"LeRoi," Brandon sighed, "it's a public library. They'll still have the files. We just copied them."
Zapper nodded. So it looked like he wouldn't need to do any serious hacking to get the files. Alan knew that Zapper hated tackling police networks because of the over-abundance of security measures such as ICs, so that was one thing they didn't have to worry about.
"I'll tell you something..." Zapper said, keeping his voice low. "Rigden wasn't all together at the murder site. Looks like he might have trouble following Goldstein's footsteps."
"That's lucky for you," Brandon shrugged.
"No, I'm serious," Zapper continued. "There was this one... strange thing."
"Strange?" Brandon asked, looking sceptical.
"If I didn't know any better," Zapper pressed on, "I'd say that he was intentionally trying to hide a piece of evidence."
"Well, it wouldn't be the first time," Brandon sighed, rolling his eyes.
"He's done that before?" Alan cut in.
"Yeah!" Brandon said, rather excitedly. "He hides it, destroys it, withholds it... You name it!"
"This is common knowledge?" Alan asked, sounding grim. The Rigden he remembered would never have stood for such things.
"Yeah," Brandon continued. "He's like King Shit of the bounty collectors, and the Chief gets a piece of it." He turned to Zapper, who was looking at Brandon with narrowed eyes. "What are you going to do? You know how this place works."
Zapper just sighed. He and Alan looked at each other, worried. It sounded like they were dealing with a very crooked individual. If Alan had his way, Rigden would be in the cells with the criminals he claimed to despise.
"Did forensics come up with anything yet?" Zapper asked, after taking a moment to compose himself.
"Apparently," Brandon said, "Carl's got a theory. He thinks the Reaper might be using nanomachines to do it. It's the hottest lead we've got. He's back in the morgue at the Medicog if you wanna ask." He sighed. "I'm surprised he's still soldiering on. This case has rattled him pretty hard. His wife's talking about taking him to Wyoming, see if a vacation can help him."
"Damn..." Zapper muttered. "He's the only guy I really talk to about this."
"Well," Brandon replied, "don't be surprised if he gets dragged off with no goodbyes or nothing."
Zapper nodded, and motioned for Alan to follow. They trudged along the metal walkways, as the shouts of the incarcerated echoed off the walls and filled the place with a cacophony of noise. They eventually trudged through a door marked 'Evidence', and found themselves in a small wire-mesh enclosure, beyond which was a cavernous room packed with boxes and filing cabinets. A square opening could be seen in the mesh, on the other side of which was an orc officer, who looked irritated at Zapper, his mouth curling into a look of revulsion which showed more of his prominent fangs.
"Oh, for Dunkelzahn's sake..." the officer muttered irritably as they approached. "What do you want?"
"Some respect, Spankaus," Zapper calmly replied. "You know, you really shouldn't talk to me like that, least of all when I've got rookies on board."
"I shouldn't be talking to you at all, you fucking leech," Spankaus snarled. "Well, what do you want?! Some of us have to work for a living!"
"I need the evidence in the Powell case," Zapper replied, firmly.
"No!" Spankaus yelled. "That could be my job!"
Zapper sighed. He then turned to Alan, looking strangely cocky. Alan could tell instantly that the hacker had something up his sleeve. He turned back to Spankaus.
"Spanky, Spanky, Spanky..." he said, in an annoyingly superior tone. "I own you! You're just gonna have to learn to live with it, or do I go to the DA's office to tell them about a little evidence-selling incident?"
Alan couldn't help but be impressed by Zapper's sheer gall. He was glad to have such a good hacker on his team; it was good to be able to get so much dirt on people whenever they wished.
"Shit, LeRoi..." Spankaus muttered, now looking worried. "How long is this going to go on, huh?"
"For the rest of your life," Zapper answered simply. "When I'm 80 years old, I'm going to come in here to shine my shoes, and you're gonna jump to and do it, asshole. So just go and get the evidence in the Powell case and be quick about it, or I'll make you kiss my ass."
With one last snarl, Spankaus turned around and marched into the main body of the evidence room. He seemed to be taking his time about it, his shoulders slouched.
"Will you stop moving like a fucking turtle?!" Zapper yelled. Spankaus returned eventually with a box marked "Powell", full of all the personal effects that were on Catherine when she collapsed. Zapper immediately began to rummage through it, looking for the commlink. Eventually he stopped doing this and looked back at Spankaus, his expression livid.
"Where's Catherine's commlink, asshole?!" he demanded. "It's supposed to be here!"
"Rigden took it home!" Spankaus replied, waving his arms indignantly. "He's always taking evidence. The guy thinks he owns the place."
With that, Zapper irritably pushed the box back into Spankaus' arms. While the orc went to replace the box, Zapper pounded his fist on the desk. Alan could tell that this setback had upset him greatly, and thought it best not to say anything. As he stormed out of the evidence room, Alan made to follow, only to hear Spankaus calling after him.
"Hey, changeling!" he was saying. "Watch your mentor! He's gonna get your ass fried, believe you-me!"
The two shadowrunners trudged along the station's walkways. Alan didn't say anything to Zapper and trailed slightly behind. He had the feeling Zapper really wasn't in the mood for a chat as they worked their way across the station, eventually stopping at a door marked 'Det. Vincent Rigden'. After all that Alan had heard about the detective, he was very curious to meet him.
Without even so much as knocking, Zapper marched straight ahead, the door sliding open to let them both through. They stepped through into Rigden's office, which looked strangely cold to Alan. A couch was resting against one wall, but there were no potted plants or anything like that. A few chairs stood around a large desk, which was currently littered with paperwork and a box of cigars. A large window was behind the desk, looking out over the dusty landscape that lay beyond the city walls. This part of the world still bore the scars of the Awakening, which was probably why so many shadowrunners drifted to Seattle. Strangely, the detective himself wasn't present. Zapper took the opportunity to search the desk, particularly fascinated by the cigar box.
"Fuckin' A," he said, turning back to Alan with a grin on his face. "The man's got taste, I'll give him that." Alan was sure he saw Zapper pocket one of the cigars for himself. Rolling his eyes, he walked over to the desk, picking up an open file and reading it.
"What is it?" Zapper asked.
"It's a crime scene report," Alan replied after a moment's pause. "Something to do with another murder case. It mentions a 'Hamilton Watford'. Think it has anything to do with the Reaper?"
"Why else would he look at such a file?" Zapper asked. "Actually, I recall the Herald running a story on a guy named Watford once, not long before the Reaper killings started. I'll tell you about that when we're done here." With that, Zapper snatched the file out of Alan's hands, placing it flat on the desk. Alan could see a wide scanner laser projecting from Zapper's commlink, and he then started running his arm up and down the length of the file, like a living photocopier. After a few seconds a tinny voice came from the commlink, saying "Object scanned to database".
"Great, isn't it?" Zapper said, smugly. "Sparks came up with it. You know how some files are only on hard copy so hackers can't get at them? Well, when we have to actually look at them physically, this means we can make copies of a file without having to physically move it and give away any signs of a robbery."
Alan nodded. It seemed like his team thought about every eventuality, which on a shadowrunner team was only a good thing. He picked up the other document on the table, and began to read it. This was an arrest report for a crime from some fifteen years ago; someone called 'Joey Falconetti' was arrested, but was released because there was no evidence to connect him to any crime. Apparently Rigden himself had made the arrest. Again, Zapper took the file and made a copy of it before replacing it.
All of a sudden Alan felt someone slap his shoulder. At first he thought it was Zapper, but as he turned he saw an older man with silvery hair stood behind him. He was wearing a black shirt and brown trousers with matching brown jacket, with smart shoes and a brown fedora hat. He looked at both Alan and Zapper with a steely gaze that could curdle custard.
"Dragging rookies into your sordid affairs, LeRoi?" the man asked, his voice being the same gravelly one Alan had heard earlier on Zapper's audio files. "Looking for something?"
"No, Rigden," Zapper quickly replied. "I just need to ask a few questions."
"If I find out you're going through my stuff," Rigden said fiercely, "I'll be glad to give you and your friend 72 hours in the tombs for tampering with an investigation."
"Sling your shit at someone else, Rigden," Zapper retorted, standing firm. "It's not our fault you can't catch this guy." At this, Rigden only chuckled in reply, a nasty cold chuckle. Alan was already beginning to dislike the guy and could see him causing more problems than he solved. A moment of silence followed, so Alan snatched the opportunity to ask about the open case-file. He was very curious to find out if there were any connections to the Reaper case and this old one.
"Who's Watford?" he asked. Rigden looked at Alan surprised, as if he hadn't expected such a direct question from someone he didn't know. He promptly turned to Zapper with a nasty look.
"Training your lap-dog to sniff through my stuff, LeRoi?!" he snarled. "Did you think I was kidding about arresting you?!" Zapper looked to Alan, looking very annoyed.
"I'm the one you should be talking to, Detective," Alan replied. "I asked you the question. It's not like you made any effort to hide your stuff."
"It's not news to me anyway," Zapper chimed in. "The Herald ran the story a while back. He was a cyber-architect, designer of Matrix spaces for different companies and also did a few private commissions on the side. I interviewed him before his death a couple of days ago." Rigden just nodded in reply.
"What interests me," Alan quickly added, "is that you have this file lying on your desk at all. Does it have something to do with the Reaper?"
Rigden snarled. "You're lucky I'm in a good mood today, changeling," he said, "because you and your master came this close to finding out what it's like to be a metahuman shishkabob rotating in one of our fine penal institutions. You're way off on that though." When he finished, he lit a cigar, the smoke almost choking Alan as he puffed away. He had been allergic to smoke from cigars and cigarettes for as long as he could remember, and he had to step back slightly to avoid throwing up. Seeing that Alan was occupied, Zapper, who wasn't bothered by the stench of cigars, pressed on with the interview.
"What's with this place you sent Catherine to?" he asked.
"Well, according to all the hype, it's the best of its kind for flatliners," Rigden answered. "It's got a doctor named Burton who practically invented the field of cyber-surgery. She's a real ball-breaker though."
"So what have you got on the Powell case, anyway?" Zapper asked.
"Look," Rigden answered indignantly, "just because you two play tiddlywinks in your birthday suits doesn't mean I'm gonna give you police files. For all I know, you're a suspect! I mean, you were the only one there."
"Just answer the question," Zapper retorted, his tone clearly annoyed. "Any new developments?"
"Yeah," Rigden sarcastically replied, "the pile of bodies is getting bigger. I got crazies coming outta the woodwork to confess. This Reaper's been spotted more times than Dunkelzahn's ghost. The mayor wants to revoke my jurisdiction, and if I don't break this soon every cop and shadowrunner in Seattle will wanna get a piece of my bounty."
"And you accuse me of getting rich off the Reaper..." Zapper muttered. By this point, Alan had sufficiently recovered and strode over to the desk again. Something else had come to his mind.
"Are you aware that there's evidence missing in the Powell case?" he asked forcefully.
"What the hell are you talking about?!" Rigden replied in outrage. "There's no evidence missing!"
"Catherine's commlink, for example," Zapper retorted, furious. "Spankaus says you have it!"
"Well, then it's not missing, is it?" Rigden retorted, looking annoyingly superior. "Worry about your own business, and leave the police work to me! Now get outta here before I have you both arrested!"
For once, Alan wasn't inclined to argue, and so he and Zapper headed out of the office and departed the police station. As they reconvened at the car park and Alan straddled his motorcycle, he shook his head.
"That's the guy who's in charge of this case?" he asked.
"Yeah..." Zapper muttered, running a hand through his black spiky hair. "The Reaper's gonna be very happy indeed."
***
After the unpleasant visit to the police station, Zapper insisted on heading to the Medicog to visit Catherine. Alan decided to go with him. A part of him was very curious about the whole affair. For example, how had Catherine survived her encounter with the Reaper? Perhaps this 'Dr. Burton' could clear things up.
The receptionist had pointed out the directions to Catherine's room, though Alan suspected that she had ulterior designs on his elven comrade. As it turned out, Styzyack was also still here, still trying to piece together the Reaper's method of slicing his victims head-to-toe. They trudged through the cavernous entrance hall, which looked to Alan like it had been designed after some old cathedral. He reasoned that this was definitely a facility only available to the upper-classes, for when they rode the elevator up to the first floor they found that there were very few rooms. It also seemed some parts of the building were still under construction, for a number of areas were cordoned off.
It wasn't long before they reached Catherine's ward, which seemed to be split into two separate rooms; a preparation area and a room with a large ICU which Catherine was hooked up to, unconscious. In the room was a woman with long, rather shaggy brown hair, wearing a white lab coat and filling out notes on a clipboard, as well as a balding middle-aged man bustling about with various medical supplies. As the female looked up from her work, she eyed both Alan and Zapper warily.
"What are you doing here?" she asked them both, a trace of suspicion in her voice.
"My name's Cale LeRoi," Zapper addressed her as. "This is my colleague Mike Anderson. We're friends of Catherine's."
The doctor eyed the two of them for a moment, before muttering "Good enough". She struck Alan as being somewhat paranoid. It was then that he noticed her name tag, which read 'Dr. Tanya Burton, Neural Specialist'. He immediately suspected that Rigden might have had a point about her.
"How's Catherine?" Zapper asked. "Is she going to be alright?"
"It doesn't look good," Burton replied. "Her consciousness is deeply withdrawn."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Zapper asked, looking confused.
"It means her mental processes," the doctor replied with a sigh, "her memory, and the basest building blocks of her personality are inaccessible."
"You mean she's in there, but you can't reach her?!" Zapper stated, sounding slightly panicked.
"That's the best case scenario," the doctor replied as calmly as she did before. "We haven't yet diagnosed her psychic damage." Zapper now looked distinctly uncomfortable, and he released a deep sigh. He looked behind the doctor towards the ICU chamber with a worried expression. Alan stepped forwards towards the doctor.
"Is she going to be alright?" Alan asked.
Burton shook her head. "It doesn't look good," she replied. "She's still in triage. We're going to just have to wait and see."
"What's been done for her?" said Alan.
"Well," replied Burton, looking very irritated, "I'm not doing anything while I'm standing here talking to you two. Why don't you let me get back to work?"
"Just one more question," Alan quickly cut in. "How did the Reaper do this?"
"It's hard to tell," Burton replied. "She had some minor contusions on her head; nothing fatal, but you never know with head injuries. We won't know anything until we can get a data angel in there to do some digging." This statement seemed to snap Zapper out of his apparent reverie, for he turned away from Catherine's room to address Dr. Burton.
"You can get a data angel into the consciousness of someone with a coma?!" he said. "I didn't think that was possible!"
"I'm not sending anyone in there," Burton forcibly stated, "until I can fully map her psychic damage. Now if you don't mind..."
"I mind..." Zapper muttered.
"How did Catherine survive the attack?" Alan quickly asked, prompting Dr. Burton to give him a very hard look.
"Honestly, who knows?" she replied, rather nonchalantly. "Maybe she fought him off. More likely someone or something interrupted the Reaper before he could finish." With that, she turned and walked straight out of the word, her heels clicking onto the floor rather forcibly. Alan could tell that they had managed to wind her up the wrong way. Perhaps they shouldn't have peppered her with questions.
As Dr. Burton headed down the hallway, Zapper headed into the ICU chamber, while Alan stayed to talk to the man, who he presumed was the attending nurse.
"You both here to check on Ms. Powell?" the nurse asked politely.
"Yeah," Alan replied. "She looks pretty bad. Is there anything you can do for her?"
"She's in good hands," the nurse replied, looking back towards the door to the hallway with a rather annoyed look at his face. "Though she'll be in even better hands once Dr. Burton allows us to treat her. There's no hope for her at the rate we're going. We haven't even established completely what's wrong with her, let alone begun to treat it. We've downloaded megabytes of fragmented memories, sensations, but not much that helps us at this point."
Alan just looked utterly clueless. He had no idea what it was the Medicog did exactly. It was a brand-new facility, and a lot of its functions still hadn't been made completely public. Also, what did they mean by 'downloading' memories? Was that even possible?
"There is something that might help though," the nurse added. "There's an image on one of the monitors showing something we retrieved from Catherine's short-term memory. She saw the person who attacked her, but... it's so weird, and it's still indistinct. Catherine's going to have to help us fill it out. We need to piece together her memory of the Reaper and all the sensations she associated with him, or her."
Alan now felt like he had a headache coming on. This was a bit too much for him to take in. He knew he would have to let Zapper explain it all to him later.
"What are Dr. Burton's plans for treating her?" he asked the nurse, hoping that this guy would start talking some modicum of sense. Unfortunately, the nurse just shrugged.
"If she has something in mind," he said, "she hasn't told me about it. She's blocking everything except the most conservative treatments! We've started to assemble data on the patient's past, we're maintaining life support, that's it!" By now Alan was glad that Zapper wasn't here to listen to this. He was too busy holding Catherine's hand in the next room, looking deeply troubled. Alan didn't think it was possible for Zapper to care so much about a person.
"She doesn't know what to do?" Alan retorted. "I thought she was the best in her field?!"
"One of the best," the nurse muttered. "I don't know what it is about this case! There's something here she's not telling us!"
"Have the cops said anything?" Alan asked.
"Not to me," the nurse – who Alan saw by the name tag was called 'Gabriel' – replied. "Dr. Burton's the attending physician, although I have noticed that scary-looking detective who checked Powell in. He keeps coming back. He and Burton got into it yesterday."
"You mean they had a fight?" Alan asked, his eyebrows raised.
"That's an understatement," Gabriel replied with a low chuckle. "They were about ready to kill each other. Dunkelzahn knows what it was all about."
Now that was interesting to Alan. What was all this about? Just what was it about Catherine and this whole Reaper case that got both the detective and the doctor at each other's throats? He suspected he would have to keep an eye on those two.
"There's still one thing I don't understand," he asked. "How can you download and rebuild someone's brain, especially their memory?"
"Well, the brain's like a series of computer codes," Gabriel explained as if he was talking to a particularly impulsive toddler. "Like all computers, it's possible to hack them, which is what we do here at the Medicog. We assemble all the data we can about the patient's past; life experiences, food she likes to eat, favourite movies, information on who her friends were, stuff like that. We upload all that back into her brain, and hope that it triggers enough associative reactions to restore her memory."
"Woah..." Alan replied, still looking dumbfounded. "I'll never cease to be surprised by what technology these days throws at me." Then his expression became more sceptical. "All technology has its limits though. What are the odds of it working?"
"It's all still an experimental treatment," Gabriel replied, "but so far the success rate's been very high. I mean, we may not retrieve everything, but we sure get around 90% or so."
"What can we do to help?" Alan asked.
"If it's the Reaper you're after," the nurse replied, looking grim, "dig up everything you can about him, especially anything Catherine knew about the case. Of course -" he broke off for a second, allowing a small laugh "- none of it's going to be of any use until Dr. Burton allows us to send a data angel into her brain, but we'll worry about that later. If you'll follow me, I'll show you what we've got so far..."
He showed Alan over to a computer monitor near the entrance to the ICU. On the screen was an indistinct, blurry shape. Alan couldn't for the life of him make out what it was. All he knew was that the answer to the mystery was somewhere in that image. Was it possible to make it clear and catch the killer?
Alan also noticed that there was a holographic journal in the room. Peering around, he noticed that the nurse had wandered off to attend to business elsewhere, so Alan decided to have a peek. When he switched it on, a video of three people began to play, dated just a couple of hours ago. One of them he recognised to be Dr. Burton, while another was Gabriel.
"Our options are pretty limited here," Gabriel said. "I'd try direct cortex stimulation. It's risky, but there's a chance of it working."
"It's too risky!" Dr. Burton replied. "We could lose her that way!"
"Well we could try inserting data angels for a diagnostic," the third person, a female nurse, stated. "There's no risk in that."
"I disagree," Burton retorted. "We've no idea what's left of her natural defences. The trauma may have made them even harder to penetrate!"
"Alright, look," Gabriel said, trying to sound reasonable, "Let's run a neural mapper program so we can assemble a profile and cortical landscape. That way we know what we're dealing with." Alan was beginning to find that this techno-babble was driving him nuts, though he assumed it had something to do with what Gabriel said earlier about hacking brains just like hacking computers; something which he still severely doubted was possible.
"You mean that hasn't been done yet?!" the other nurse replied, looking incredulous. "Why not?!"
"Because I said so!" Burton retorted. "I want her to stabilise before we introduce any kind of foreign code. Thanks for the consultation, but that's my decision." With that, Burton left in the same manner that she had left the ward just now, with that same distinct tone of finality in her footsteps. Gabriel approached his colleague.
"How much more stable does she want the woman?!" he muttered. "She's in a flippin' coma!"
"What's her problem?" the other nurse snorted. "She won't do anything. We're supposed to just watch this patient die?!"
"She's in charge," Gabriel sighed. "There's not much we can do." At that point, the journal entry ended. Whatever was going on here Alan didn't like it one bit. It was almost as if Burton was refusing to treat Catherine, but for what purpose he couldn't begin to fathom. He wondered whether or not he should tell Zapper, but the elf looked troubled enough as he stepped out of the ICU chamber. He decided to keep the information to himself for the time being.
"Okay, I'm all done here," Zapper said, shaking himself. "Let's head down to the morgue and see if Styzyack's found anything."
With that, the two of them headed down the corridor back to the elevator, and rode it down to the morgue in the basement level. Walking inside, they found the slight-of-build, grey-haired Styzyack hunched over a body on the examination table, which took up half of the lab-space. On the far wall were three body bags, which Alan assumed to contain the Reaper's victims. Zapper approached Styzyack and tapped him on the shoulder, causing the mortician to nearly jump out of his skin.
"Jesus, LeRoi!" he half-shouted. "You nearly gave me a freakin' heart attack!"
"Sorry," Zapper said quickly. He peered at the opened body on the slab. "Is this May Stein?"
"Are you kiddin'?!" Styzyack said incredulously. "You saw the crime scene! Her organs were splattered everywhere!" He peered behind Zapper and noticed Alan. "Who's this?"
"New partner," Zapper replied. "You know, to replace Catherine. Would be my luck to get the work experience boy." He quickly looked away as Alan was staring daggers at him.
"This one was married to her reaper," Styzyack sighed. "This businessman went away for three weeks and got paranoid that his wife was cheating on him while he was gone. He flew home early and shot her to death."
"Ouch..." Zapper replied. "Makes me glad that Catherine and I aren't married. Speaking of which, did you hear about her?"
"I did," Styzyack said. "I'm really sorry to hear about what happened to her. She's in good hands, though. Burton's a good doctor, and if she gets stuck she'll probably call in her secret weapon."
"What's that?" Zapper asked.
"A man named Joey Falconetti," Styzyack replied. The name triggered something in Alan's memory; wasn't his name on one of those reports that Rigden had written up? Zapper seemed to be thinking the same thing, as he muttered the name under his breath before proceeding with his questioning.
"Any luck figuring out the Reaper's weapon yet?" he asked.
"Sorry," Styzyack sighed, "but I'm completely stumped. I did every test I could think of on the bodies and a computer cross-match to every kind of weapon imaginable. Absolutely no results! It's like a cross between a veg-a-matic and a diamond cutter!"
"Come on, something must have cut them open," Zapper shrugged.
"Nothing any tests can find," Styzyack muttered. "Check the control panels by the bodies if you don't believe me!"
"Alright then, I will," Zapper stated, and he began to walk over to the bodies.
"Wait a moment," Alan called to him. "There's something else I want to ask first." Zapper just shrugged and waited, while Styzyack looked rather terrified at the prospect of Alan speaking to him.
"Who's Joey Falconetti?" he asked.
"A Matrix expert that Dr. Burton calls in on all the tough cases," Styzyack stammered. "Also known by his old handle, Falcon Eddie. He's absolutely crazy. He likes being near the bodies, though I'm surprised she hasn't called him in yet to look at Catherine."
"What do you mean?" Alan asked.
"Of course!" Zapper exclaimed, nearly making Alan jump.
"What?!" Alan half-shouted in irritation.
"That's where I've heard that handle before!" the elf exclaimed. "He was the one who first published a paper about his theories of human-to-human decking! He was kicked out of his old college for such ideas; all the professors claimed it was unethical to hack the brain, but somebody must have been listening or this place wouldn't exist!"
"Dr. Burton usually calls him in on cases that require brain-hacking for medical purposes," Styzyack chimed in. "Memory loss, deep comas, that sort of thing. I'm surprised he's not here already. Though like I say, he gives me the creeps."
Once again Alan felt his head begin to hurt. He knew that people like Zapper got incredibly excited by this kind of techno-babble, but he felt it was driving him insane. Still, this Falconetti seemed pretty deeply connected to Dr. Burton, and if she hadn't already called him in he may be able to explain why.
"Where can we find him?" Alan asked the mortician.
"He's a hard man to find," Styzyack sighed. "Dr. Burton usually meets him in the Matrix. Apparently he's got his own space on there, and she meets him there."
Alan nodded. That was Zapper's department; it looked like some hacking was in order.
"Now can we get a look at those bodies before the day is out?!" Zapper asked, irritably. Alan just nodded and walked over to the three slabs against the far wall, while Styzyack put down his tools and joined them. Next to each slab was a control console, which the three of them looked at one at a time, starting with the middle body.
"I tapped the nerve memory of this one," Styzyack explained, "and fed it into the simulator so I could re-enact the attack." He pressed a few buttons on the control console, and immediately a holographic image projected out just above the body, displaying what looked like a set of internal organs. As they watched, there was a sudden flash of light on the display, and instantly the organs disintegrated.
"Fuck me..." Zapper muttered, looking incredibly ill. "It's like she swallowed a fucking grenade." Now looking queasy, he hobbled over to the victim on the left, with the others joining him, neither of them looking very well.
"Here's an isolation of just one of the organs from this body," Styzyack commented, once again activating the projector. This time it showed an image of a human heart. "The lines indicate the many cuts made to it, but that's not the strange thing. Just watch." As the three of them watched the display, a series of lines appeared, criss-crossing the heart in different directions. Alan immediately noticed what was strange about this.
"They all appeared simultaneously," he exclaimed. "How's that possible?!"
"It isn't!" Styzyack exclaimed. "No creature's hand can move that fast, and it was like this for every organ in the body!"
Now Alan started to feel his stomach churn. He really wasn't sure he wanted to see what had happened to the third body, but joined the others on the right-most slab anyway as Styzyack switched the projector on. This time, the projector showed a metahuman torso, and as they watched a line stretched from the right-hand shoulder down towards the left below the chest before stopping just above the groin.
"Notice the path of the cut," the mortician said. "Not one centimetre off-line, like a seam was undone! No metahuman could have done this!"
"Not even trolls?" Zapper asked.
"Not even trolls," Styzyack replied. "It's not just strength though; it's precision. He's cutting through skin, muscle, bone... It's impossible that this cut could be so neat! I'll tell you what else was weird; there were no traces of fabric in the wound, and this body's clothing was intact. There was no trace of mana residue either that our psychics could detect at any of the crime scenes, so we ruled out magical means. How was any of this possible?!"
Zapper and Alan looked at each other worried. It looked like Catherine had had a very lucky escape; this creature seemed to be beyond even the strangest things this world could throw at them. If no magic was used, what else could it possibly be? Styzyack looked like he was about to collapse.
After saying their goodbyes, Alan and Zapper left the Medicog.
"I think I need a drink after all that," Alan said. "Though that's probably not the best idea; I feel like I want to throw up."
Zapper didn't hear him. He was hunched over in a nearby alleyway, and Alan could hear horrendous retching sounds coming from it. Alan couldn't help wincing; this case seemed to have shaking Zapper up more than he thought possible of the elf.