The Forgotten City

by Nina D'Aleo

  She grimaced at a sharp twinge in her knee. The idea of pain relief called to her, as it always did around this time. She liked to believe that one dayturn she would be strong enough to resist, but she had gone way past the point of making any more hollow promises to herself. Croy touched a hand to the pendant around her neck, a shaped piece of metal John L had given her. It was shrapnel from a Dray ship, from his maiden voyage as a Fleetsman. It had been a simple water run that had turned into a massacre, only John L and one other Fleetsman surviving. Though he’d fought in hundreds of battles against the Dray after that, he’d said it was always the one that woke him screaming from his sleep.

  When they were near to the others, Darius called out.

  “Oi.”

  Twelve faces turned their way, reflecting back a mix of emotions. Controllers Knightsbridge and Newton and their trainee, Micken Kisslefish, stood up at the end of the jetty. Kisslefish grinned, Newton’s face darkened and Knightsbridge walked out to meet them, extending a hand to Darius.

  “Mister Darius DeCavisi. How are you, my friend?”

  “Fine,” Darius grunted. He grasped Knightsbridge’s forearm briefly, but didn’t smile or meet his eyes.

  “You ready for tonight?” Knightsbridge asked. He crossed his arms over his bulging chest and the seams of his shirt strained. The man had a fetish for undersized clothes, with fabric that rode up in ways and places that couldn’t possibly be comfortable. Croy highly suspected it had something to do with trying to make his muscles look as big as possible, but his overplay reeked almost as much his body odor.

  Darius nodded.

  “It’s going to be a good game,” Knightsbridge continued. “Their centerstrike is out with ankle-swell. That means their whole left half defensive is going to crumble like wetwood. We’ll kill them.”

  Croy stepped past the men and Knightsbridge gave her a sideways glance.

  “Knightsbridge,” she said. He muttered a reply, which might have been hello or equally likely go to hell.

  She kept moving until Micken Kisslefish came at her with his grin. The young trainee had an oversized mouth and seemed to be in a permanent state of awkward over-excitement. Croy doubted he was old enough to shave, or to even grow a good crop of body hair for that matter, and could only guess, by his purple cloak, that he was the son of some Purple Wing who was indulging his kid’s fantasies of becoming a Controller. Personality defects and defective breeding aside, Croy didn’t have any serious problems with him. At least he listened and wanted to learn. He also wrote down everything she said and went around quoting her to people – a very flattering annoyance.

  “Controller Croy!” The trainee launched in, parchment pad and charcoal roll in hand. “We’ve got a real live one today, don’t we?” His nose plugs made his voice even more nasal than usual.

  Croy glanced past Kisslefish to the end of the jetty. Her eyes found the corpse and she said, “Not exactly.”

  Someone had chained a dead girl between two anchor poles. The body bobbed half-submerged in the water. Newton was squatting beside the corpse and three Sketchers stood nearby scratching charcoal images from different angles of the scene.

  Croy approached the body and Newton looked up at her with ice-blue eyes, several degrees too intense for comfort. He’d asked her out just after Roth left her and she’d declined – perhaps a bit too bluntly, taken off guard by his sudden, close, interest. Now both he and his partner, Knightsbridge, were harboring an obvious grudge against her. She just wanted to move past it and keep things professional, but they were holding on, as though no woman had the right to reject them. Newton pointedly stood and went to join the men, and Croy took over his place beside the body.

  The girl was young – she placed her at maybe 14 to 16 annums. She was nude, her skin blanched of natural color, blue in patches and covered in goose bumps, not from the cold but the retraction of hair follicles after death. She also noted some swelling and wrinkling, especially around her hands. Croy stood and grasped one of the anchor poles. She leaned out, trying to see the corpse side-on. The girl’s head hung low, her blue lips slightly parted, eyes staring, long fair hair floating in the water. Her arms were outstretched on either side of her body, the chains wrapping around her forearm and wrist. The binds had ripped her skin, but there was no blood, even from the wounds that were above the water level, which suggested to Croy that she had been tied there post-mortem. She leaned back in and glanced at the Sketchers. They had stopped their rapid strokes and stood watching her, hands blackened from the unset charcoal they used.

  “All done?” she asked them.

  “Yes, Controller,” their lead replied.

  “Alright.” She spoke to trainee Kisslefish, who had come to stand right behind her, breathing down her neck. “Let’s drag her up.”

  “Ah,” Kisslefish said, then for once his cheery demeanor slipped. “You mean … with our hands?”

  Croy couldn’t help but smile. She turned away and heard an ouff as Darius shoulder-barged the trainee out of the way. Her partner glanced at the corpse then averted his eyes over the dark, rippling water around them. He hated dealing with the young ones, especially the girls. Once, under heavy alcoholic influence, he’d spoken to Croy of a girl friend from his childhood who had died badly after being attacked by a bunch of smuggler teens. He hadn’t given any real details – except one line that had haunted Croy ever since – They made her into an animal – the way she was screaming. Croy had tried to ask him about it the next day and he’d pretended he had no idea what she was talking about.

  “Excuse me, Controller Croy.” A small team of Collectors clustered around them. “We’ve taken water samples, particles, fabrics and prints. Is there anything else you’d like us to get?”

  Croy shook her head. “That will be all.”

  They nodded and moved away, heading back along the jetty. Croy heard Knightsbridge intercepting them to ask, “Did you get prints?”

  “Yes,” one of the Collectors replied.

  “Particles?”

  “Yes.”

  “Water samples?”

  “Yes, and fabrics.”

  “Well, I want metals and minerals as well,” he demanded.

  “Controller Croy said she doesn’t need anything else,” the Collector replied.

  “Well, Croy is not primary here, is she?” Knightsbridge snapped. “I am.”

  “Jackass,” Darius muttered beside Croy.

  “Leave it,” she murmured back.

  She dragged her chain cutters out of her kit pack.

  “Kisslefish,” she said. “Hold here.” She indicated the girl’s shoulder.

  The trainee squatted down and gingerly gripped the corpse.

  “Oh … it’s cold …” he said.

  “She …” Croy corrected. “She is cold.”

  Kisslefish looked at her, not understanding for a moment, but then it clicked. “She,” he repeated, and something shifted in his gaze – a realization – a sadness. He looked again at the girl and repeated softly, “She …”

  “Looks like she’s been here for two to three turns” Croy spoke to Darius, judging the putrefaction.

  “Kisslefish, up!” Knightsbridge barked behind them. He grabbed the trainee by the shirt and pulled him away. Croy noted the kid’s calmness. Kisslefish might have been a Purple Wing, but he took getting pushed around surprisingly well. It made her think he was used to it.

  Knightsbridge shouldered in beside Croy, trying to make her move over, but she held her position. She cut the chains around the girl’s arms and they dragged her up and out of the water, laying her on her back on the jetty. The Sketchers moved around, recording the victim in the new position.

  Croy’s eyes were immediately drawn to the girl’s injuries. Aside from the chain damage, she had significant bruising on her wrists, ankles and high on her inner thighs. There was one deep stab wound in her stomach and numerous shapes and lines – random unintelligible symbols – carved into the skin from her neck t
o lower stomach.

  “Whoa,” Kisslefish uttered, staring at the carvings.

  “Does this guy have to be here?” Darius said, irritated.

  Newton gave him a look that said yes, unfortunately, he does have to be here.

  Croy studied the symbols. She didn’t recognize any of them.

  “I’m thinking stab wound was COD,” she said.

  “COD?” Kisslefish asked.

  “Cause of death,” Croy told him, and the trainee wrote it down.

  “Based on what?” Knightsbridge demanded.

  Darius hunched in and studied the injury. “Looks like a flat blade – most likely a 6 fable.” He took a knife out of a sheath on his belt and held it up against the wound. “No – too wide – maybe a 5 or a 5-and-a-half, but the angle’s not quite right for that either.”

  Croy took his word on it – he was the weapons expert. Her eyes swept the rest of the body. She spotted something and her skin prickled. She picked up the girl’s wrist. It was branded with a deathcode. This body had already been to the Crematorium and been checked in by the Morticians.

  “Darry —” Croy called her partner’s attention to it.

  Darius leaned in closer, putting a hand on Croy’s shoulder. She felt his warm breath on the side of her face. Newton eyed them and his frown deepened.

  “Why would someone steal a corpse from the Crematorium, mutilate it, then dump it?” Knightsbridge asked.

  “It wasn’t dumped, it was positioned,” Croy said.

  “Question still stands,” Knightsbridge insisted.

  “So you answer it, then!” Darius shot back. “As you pointed out, you’re primary here!”

  “I’m just asking,” Knightsbridge said, with a much milder tone.

  Croy looked at the victim’s face, thinking. The girl’s eyes were death-glazed, but still she saw they held some sadness. More than that – despair, confusion. Looking at the girl, Croy sensed fear, she sensed things had been fundamentally wrong. The girl had felt trapped, terrified – and hadn’t completely understood why. Her eyes shifted back down to the wound and she said to Darius, “Could this be self-inflicted?”

  He narrowed his eyes and moved around to view the injury from different angles.

  “You’re right,” he confirmed. “She stabbed herself.”

  Croy stood up. She glanced at the Sketchers and said, “Can I have an image of the victim as she was found?”

  “Right here, Controller Croy.” The Sketcher closest to her stepped forward and handed her a picture of the body chained to the peer. Croy held it up and studied it. Knightsbridge shuffled around beside her to look as well.

  “Arms outstretched, head above water level … water … why water?” Croy asked.

  “To wash away the evidence?” the trainee suggested.

  Croy shook her head. “To purify.”

  “To purify what?” Newton spoke up.

  “Her suicide, perhaps,” Croy said.

  “Makes no sense,” Knightsbridge argued. “If someone wanted to wash away what this girl did, for her sake or for their own, why would they jack her body from the Crematorium, slice it up and tie it to the end of a pier?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just a theory,” Croy said. “But I know where we have to start.”

  Darius swore and Croy nodded. If “creepy” was a place and had a face it would be the Crematorium and its clan of Morticians. A shiver ran over her back. Knightsbridge and Newton had suddenly gone very quiet.

  “Where do we have to start?” Kisslefish asked, looking between them, too green to get it.

  “You guys are primary on scene – do you want to go?” Croy asked Knightsbridge, not without some quiet satisfaction.

  The musclebound Controller cleared his throat and spoke in a voice a few octaves higher than usual. “I’m not finished my initial assessment. I believe in thorough investigation before running off on a crazy hunch.”

  “Well how about you continue on with your initial assessment,” Darius said, his anger exploding. “and we’ll go off on our ‘crazy hunch’ and solve the case for you. How about that?”

  “Darius, I wasn’t talking about you,” Knightsbridge said, backpedaling.

  Darius laughed in his quiet way that had nothing to do with humor.

  “You really don’t get it, do you? If you’re talking to Croy, you’re talking to me. If you hate her, you hate me. She’s my partner! There’s no divide between us!”

  He turned and strode back up the pier toward their draggers. Knightsbridge stared at his back, wide-eyed and speechless.

  “Can I have a close image, face-up, and a full body with these marks visible?” Croy asked the Sketchers. They handed her the set of parchments and she folded them into her pocket, then spoke to Knightsbridge and Newton. “When the baggers get here, tell them to take the body to the Tower morgue for an in-house autopsy and to put a guard on it.”

  “You think someone is going to try to take it again?” Knightsbridge asked, incredulous.

  “Probably not – but if they do, I don’t want to be the one to explain it to VP – do you?” The mention of their boss was enough to quiet any further argument.

  Croy slung her kit pack over her shoulder and headed after her partner. Kisslefish looked longingly after her. It was pretty obvious the kid would rather be with them than Knightsbridge and Newton, and she didn’t blame him, but Darius had too many disciplinary marks against him to be allocated a trainee. That and he really didn’t have the patience for it.

  She found her partner sitting on his dragger, smoking a tigaro, simmering. She climbed on her own ride and looked back down the peer. Knightsbridge was ordering the Collectors around and Newton stood instructing Kisslefish on something.

  “Why here?” she spoke aloud. “Why bring the body here? There’s other water, contaminated, but more accessible.”

  “Guy’s a jackass,” Darius fumed about Knightsbridge.

  “Forget it,” Croy said.

  “Forget him! Who does he think he’s talking to? Crazy hunches? Who has the most closed cases and the most arrests of all time?” Darius said. “You and me! Everyone knows it. We walk into any place, anytime, and people move aside for us!”

  “I don’t think this is about our reputation,” Croy said.

  “Everything is about reputation,” Darius argued. “You turned Newton down, so now they’re trying to save face by pushing you, but I’m going to bash their heads in if they don’t quit.”

  “Let it go, Darry. It really doesn’t matter,” Croy murmured, feeling the heaviness pressing inside her again.

  “It matters,” Darius said, “to me – you matter.” He put his hand over hers on the handlebar of her dragger, but only for a second.

  In her mind she was meeting Roth for the first time. He was a Conference assistant who had helped her and Darius drag Miriam Stover’s body, stiff with rigor, off the crusher spikes where she’d been impaled after jumping off the Saint Lawless Borough suspension bridge. She was a canker-grass addict and stank of incense. Their eyes had met over the corpse … beginning at an end … there was never any chance … Croy swallowed against feelings of painful sadness, manifesting as a dull throb in her chest – sadness because it was over, sadness because she had to start all over again and felt as though she had no emotional energy left. What sort of person was she even looking for? She glanced at her partner. There were feelings there for sure, there always had been an undercurrent, but she had never acted on it – afraid to make the first move and end up looking like an idiot, or worse, damaging their relationship. He was all she had in the world.

  Darius revved up his dragger and took off, flying toward the circle of light at the top of the Filter. Croy pushed aside all the distracting thoughts and followed. They were going to the Crematorium, where she’d need all her wits about her, and then more.

  Chapter 7

  Copernicus

  Aquais

  Scorpia (Sirenseron)

  Death had always sp
oken to Copernicus. From its silence, he heard echoes of the past; he saw answers in the bruises and blood. But these crime scene holograms told him nothing of patterns, of purpose or reasoning, fetish, fanaticism or passion. The images just hung in the air, together in time, yet fragmented. He knew there was a connection. He felt it, like a word on the tip of his tongue, a memory on the edge of remembering, but he couldn’t see it. He clenched his jaw so tightly he tasted the bitter venom from the fangs behind his teeth.

  The confines of the transflyer prevented him from stepping back for a wider overview of the holograms open all around him. Santana, a former United Regiment commander, now leading what was left of the military force – renamed the United Resistance – had asked them to attend this crime scene at one of the UR refugee camps, but after the fight-in announcement, they hadn’t had the time, so Santana had sent through these images for his opinion. Copernicus understood that hunting killers and bringing them to justice wasn’t his job anymore, but also that it had never really been just a job.

  The first row of shots were grainy surveillance pictures, taken by a slow rotation spyer, approximately five minutes apart. They showed a scullion-gypsy family of four reuniting after losing each other during the war. The overwhelming relief, the joy, on their faces was so real and intense that Copernicus even felt it stirring inside him. In the next image they were all still hugging, heading toward the room where the mother and daughter had been staying. In the shot after, through the partially open door of the room, the family were standing, their poses strangely rigid, their heads hanging low to their chests. The final image: they were all dead. Santana’s team had taken post-mortem shots, clearer holograms of the blood splatter and the injuries – three cut throats and one fatal stab wound to the heart; three murders, one suicide. Mother as the killer. Before dying, she’d scratched an X into her own forehead.

  The transflyer bumped as Diega pulled up for landing inside the storm-break tunnel on the western side of Palace Sirenseron, as Jude had recommended. From growing up in the Palace, he knew that going in from the west would give them a chance to survey the rest of the grounds from a height advantage in case of ambush.