"Floor five. Miss goodie two shoes, if you'd be so kind as to point us towards the room?" Blondie chastised as the group eventually reached the fifth and final floor of the building.
The doctor narrowed her eyes at the nox as she walked up the stairs behind him. She'd never been one to judge a book by its cover, but right now he wasn't giving her very many options. Silently, she moved to the front of the group and began leading them to where the suspected room was. There was a nagging feeling in her gut that told her what she was about to do was a very bad idea. She had to consciously keep telling herself not to look over her shoulder, but much like the others, she wasn't in much of a position to be running away. It seemed like her job depended on this.
"So... you knew this irva?" Vex asked the kugraw as they walked. His eyes turned to look down at the vett'iri.
"I did, yea."
"Do you know why someone would've wanted to kill her?"
Salvo's jaw twisted from side to side as he thought very carefully about his next few words. Vex could sense he was hiding something, although that was to be expected.
"When you work in my field you tend to make a lot of friends. A lot of enemies too. Seems Tanora was on one of their lists. Shame. She made the best waffles."
Ava's ears perked up as she listened closely to him, "What line of work? Don't tell me you're a bounty hunter too?" She asked, her last few words clearly not as enthusiastic as the first.
"No. I trade in information, not blood. That's all you really need to know, fuzzball," he smirked. Ava's eyes narrowed.
"Right..."
The dahmak led them down a corridor that turned left when they reached the top of the stairs. There was a row of doors on the right side of the hallway all with numbers on them.
"T-This one over here. Room 563," she stuttered. The group all approached the seemingly innocent door with senses on full alert. The doctor hung back a little and let the others go first. She had an extremely bad feeling about this.
"C'mon angel, nobody likes a stranger!" Vex chirped. She grasped the doctor's coat and yanked her towards the rest of the group, the dahmak yelping slightly as she did so.
"Hey, looks like this is the right room," Ava stated with a tone of curiosity on her tongue.
"You know that for a fact?" Blondie asked as he pulled out his revolver.
Ava turned to him with a raised brow and a frown. She gently lay her hand on the door and to the group's surprise it opened with no resistance at all.
"Those doors are normally locked from the inside. Seems our uninvited guest forgot to cover his tracks," the mowlin explained.
"Since when were you an expert on locks?" Blondie grumbled.
"I know how to get what I want," Ava smirked.
Salvo impatiently pushed past them both with two pistols in his hands, "Alright enough talk, let's find this basta...rd."
The door opened to what the group could only describe as a war zone.
The entire room had been torn to shreds. A wooden coffee table was shattered, splinters lying all over the room. A mattress was propped up against the right wall with lacerations everywhere. One of the curtains had been ripped from its housing and the balcony door was wide open. There were cracks in the walls, paint being stripped from them. Objects scattered the floor, books, lamps and clothes were thrown about like it was a child's room.
"Well then. Our guest clearly didn't care much for etiquette," Blondie jested.
"Murderers seldom do..." The doctor quietly muttered. It didn't take her long to pull her gaunt out and begin snapping photos of the trashed room.
"Architects light, what the fuck happened here?" Ava asked. She held her pistol tightly, ready for an attack at any moment.
"I don't think I wanna know..." Vex replied.
"You two, go check the bathroom. See if you can make yourselves useful," Blondie ordered, pointing to Vex and Salvo.
While neither of them were ones for taking orders, another fight was the last thing they wanted right now. They both nodded to each other and stepped into the relatively small bathroom on the left side of the room. It wasn't in much better condition.
"Watch your feet," Salvo stated as his eyes caught onto shards of glass that were strewn all over the place. The bathroom mirror was completely shattered. Then something caught Vex's eye. There were small drops of blood staining some of the glass fragments. She knelt down to investigate further.
"Well clearly whoever your friend was, she didn't go without a fight. This isn't irva blood."
Salvo's eyes narrowed as he knelt down next to her. "She never was one to give up. Good find. Hey, doc! You might wanna take a look at this!" He called.
The dahmak's ears twitched as she heard Salvo call to her and she made her way to the bathroom.
"Watch where you step, but we got blood here. Can you tell us what type it is?"
She gently knelt down between Vex and Salvo, her eyes focused on the red stained glass. She picked up one of the shards with her gloved hands and inspected it. Vex and Salvo watched as she worked. Vex couldn't help but find the way she thoroughly inspected every edge of the glass shard rather fascinating.
"Well?" Salvo asked rather impatiently.
"The killer isn't a vett'iri or an irva. That's all I can tell you right now. Give me a few seconds and I might have some more information."
Back out in the main area of the room, Blondie and Ava were scanning every millimetre of the apartment for any sign of clues that could help them. It wasn't going particularly well until Ava began fumbling around with the mattress. Her keen eyes picked up on a slit near the top. That wasn't unusual considering the mattress itself had been torn to shreds. It was what was under the cut that caught her eye.
A tiny part of the cloth was protruding out in a square shape. She would've missed it entirely had she not been actively searching for it. She quickly looked over her shoulder to see what Blondie was up to. Thankfully, he was messing around with some broken drawers and had his back turned to her.
With gentle hands, she slipped her finger in through the tear in the cloth and managed to whisk out a tiny square shaped device, no bigger than the width of her finger. She gave it as close a look as she could. It appeared to be some sort of electronic chip, like a memory card or something along those lines. But she'd never seen one like this before. It didn't look compatible with any of the devices she was used to, certainly not her gaunt.
Deciding that it might be useful later on, she quickly pocketed the device and went back to searching.
Back in the bathroom the dahmak had pulled out a small white device that looked like a virus testing kit. She then rummaged through her messenger bag until she found what she was after. A small black stick with a white cotton tip.
Very gently, she began rubbing the cotton onto the blood, making sure to get as much of it on there as possible. She then pulled out a small glass eyedropper from the sash on her chest and placed the head of the cotton tip inside it. Closing the lid, she swirled it around for a few seconds, making sure the blood was covered in the liquid inside the eyedropper.
Vex and Salvo watched on with fascination as she then squeezed the eye dropper three times into a small panel on the device.
A small blue bar on the side began to fill up. Once it was full the tiny electronic screen on the side of the device began flashing a 'K' symbol. That seemed to tell the doctor all she needed. She quickly packed her devices back away into her bag and stood up straight.
"Kugraw," she stated.
"Kugraw blood?" Vex asked. The doctor nodded.
"Well then. That narrows it down. I guess..." Salvo muttered as he rubbed the back of his head.
"It's a lot easier to find one Kugraw than it is to find someone when we don't even know what species they are," Vex added. The three of them promptly exited the bathroom and met back up with the nox and mowlin.
"Well? You find anything?" Blondie grumbled.
"Yep. We're looking for a kugraw," Vex exclaimed.
As the rest of the group talked, the doctor felt her gaunt vibrate slightly. Likely a message from Kardan. She carefully stepped to the side of the group and had a look at what he had to say. To her surprise, it wasn't from Kardan but rather Fennik, one of the guards.
'Hey Erica,
Managed to pull some of the security footage for you. Caught someone, a kugraw. Looks to be male, hard to tell by the clothes they're wearing. Hope this helps :)
Stay safe.
-Fennik'
Attached to the message was a video file.
A small smile spread across the dahmak's face. At least someone was on her side.
Wasting no time she brought the video up and had a look. However it didn't take long for one of the others to notice her.
"Hey... uh... doc? Whachya got there?" Salvo asked with intrigue. The rest of the group all turned to look at her. A shiver suddenly ran through her spine as all eyes came to rest on her.
She soldiered through it though as she moved back in the room and extended her arm out for the rest of the group to see.
"Security footage. One of the guards pulled it for me. Take a look."
She played the video and everyone watched with keen focus.
Her heart began racing as everyone crowded around her, she never was one for gatherings; especially not with complete strangers who could kill her in an instant if they wished. But there was nothing she could do about it right now. Her tail curled around her legs and she hunched over slightly but still remained standing.
The quality of the video on her gaunt wasn't great, but it was good enough. The camera showed a view of the hallway that was just outside the room, the one that they took to enter. The timestamp on the bottom of the screen showed that the time of recording was roughly fifteen minutes ago. The crew all watched closely, waiting for something to happen.
It took a few minutes but eventually a pair of figures appeared on the screen. They came from the stairs, just as the group had. By the looks of it there was an irva and a kugraw, however it was difficult to tell due to the clothes they wore. Though thanks to the blood sample they were fairly certain that it was in fact a kugraw. The two of them seemed to be talking to each other as if they were friends, it didn't seem like there were any hostile intentions.
The video showed the pair enter the same room the group was in now, closing the door behind them. A few minutes past with nothing much happening. The doctor was about to turn it off when suddenly more movement caught their eye. The door to the room opened ever so slightly and what looked to be the hand of an irva poked through for a few seconds before being yanked back inside by something.
"Looks like they weren't a happy couple after all..." Vex winced as she watched.
"There's no such thing," Blondie huffed.
After the door closed again the hallway was silent for about three more minutes before the camera showed a group of five people walking up the stairs and entering the hallway.
The doctor's heart dropped as she watched the five of them on the camera enter the room.
Everyone was now on high alert. Blondie spun around and pulled his revolver out. Ava grabbed her pistol and knives. Salvo took out both his handguns and Vex readied her mace. The doctor was the only one without any way of defending herself.
"Oh slag... that bastard never left did he?" Salvo grimaced, looking around the room.
No-one said a word, everyone was scanning every corner of the room. Suddenly Ava spotted something.
"Hey, look. The roof," she whispered. The group looked up to where she was pointing. There was a section of the panelled roof that had been slightly shifted. Blondie's eyes narrowed.
"The bastards' still here."