In Absinthia

by Alexandra Christian

  Cage nodded. “Yes, the cops we heard talking in the café seemed pretty confident that it was a scorned lover type thing.”

  Sigerson laughed then choked on the smoke from his cigarette. “A scorned lover did not do this. That must be one of Tuggingham’s ridiculous theories.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  Sigerson threw the remnants of his cigarette into the fire. “The most obvious is the discrepancy with time.”

  Cage nodded and nudged Phoe. “See. Told you.”

  “But less obvious is the psychology involved, which I doubt Tuggingham or any of his goons has any idea about whatsoever. Scorned lovers do kill, this is true, but they don’t usually ritualistically disembowel their victims. Putting aside all the other victims, Arabella’s killer was skilled with a blade, much like the killer or killers he was emulating.”

  “You think it’s a man?”

  “I’m almost positive,” Sigerson said. “There aren’t many women who could hoist Arabella up on a fly system that way. At any rate, whomever did this knows how to disembowel people with efficiency. He would have to know something about human anatomy.” Suddenly, Sigerson froze. For several seconds he stood there, staring into the darkness unmoving, barely breathing. “No one speak,” he whispered.

  After a time, he nodded and collapsed in his chair. He lit another cigarette and took a sip of his tea. A smug grin crossed his features.

  “Well?”

  “In the morning, I’ll need to go to the morgue. You’ll go with me of course.”

  Cage and Phoe looked at one another. “Why?”

  “We need to find out what was taken from her.”

  Twelve

  Cage was annoyed by Absinthia’s morgue almost before they walked in. The colony had nearly every building that was available in Victorian London, including the morgue at the Royal London hospital. What passed for a morgue anyway. “This place is like fucking Disneyland for dead people,” Cage grumbled.

  “Be nice,” Phoe warned through gritted teeth.

  “I can’t help it. You do realize that none of this is real. The body is probably grossly contaminated at this point.”

  “You have to give them a small break, Cage. Absinthia is a tourist colony. People aren’t supposed to die here.”

  “But surely people get sick.”

  When the doors opened, Sigerson stood in the foyer waiting. He was a bit more put together this morning in his tweed coat and stylish curls. Cage could have sworn he caught Phoe stealing a lusty glance in Sigerson’s direction. “Where have the two of you been? I’ve been waiting for ages.”

  Cage glanced at his pocket watch. “It’s barely nine o’clock.”

  “We’ve no time to waste. They’re shipping Wittrock back to Earth this afternoon.”

  In a flurry of coattails, Sigerson whisked them down the hall and into an ancient stairwell. Up to now, every place they’d been in Absinthia was pristine. That was part of the reason Cage hated the colonies, but this stairwell was the exception. Mold clung to the walls in green streaks, giving off a deathly stench. The stairs were narrow and uneven. So much so that Cage had to grab Phoe’s arm twice to keep her from tumbling.

  When they reached the morgue, it was really little more than an unfinished basement with a couple of gurneys. Like the stairwell, it was dank and dirty. There was no telltale stench of antiseptic that usually lingered in hospitals. In fact, the smell of drying blood and rot was so intense they could taste it.

  The body of Arabella Postlethwaite was lying on one of the bare metal gurneys under a flood lamp. She had been stripped completely nude, and as they approached they could see the extent of the poor woman’s injuries. Phoe held her handkerchief over her nose and mouth, almost hiding in Cage’s shoulder. “Dear God,” she whispered. “What kind of monster would do something like this?”

  The girl’s body had been split down the middle in a line from her breasts to groin. Though the examiner had not sewn her up, he had tried to put her back together as much as possible. The intestines that were arranged so gruesomely at the theater, lay beside her, but still were connected inside. Like the woman in the alley, Arabella was missing an eye, and her face had been slashed almost to the point of being unrecognizable.

  “That is the question, Miss,” Sigerson replied. “Is the person indeed a monster, beyond reason? Or perhaps there is purpose.”

  “Can I help you gentlemen?” The three of them turned and a prim young woman in a long dress covered by a leather apron stood staring with her arms crossed.

  “Hello, Violet.” Sigerson stepped forward and made a big show of bowing to kiss the back of her gloved hand. “How wonderful to see you again.”

  “I took a sample of Miss Postlethwaite’s stomach contents with that hand,” she said, her tone as dry as a bone.

  Cage had to swallow a chuckle as Sigerson snatched his hand back. He tried to wipe it casually on his trousers. “Charming as always, Vi.”

  “Cut the crap, Shercroft. What do you want?”

  “What makes you think I want something?”

  Violet pulled the enormous goggles perched on top of her head, settling them over her eyes. “You’re never polite unless you want something. And don’t call me Vi.”

  “Vi—olet,” Sigerson stammered. “I’m hurt that you’re so suspicious of my affections.”

  “No you aren’t.”

  Cage cleared his throat, shoving Sigerson aside. “If we could skip the rom-coms for the time being.” He offered his hand to Violet. “I’m Macijah St. John, and this is my partner, Phoebe Addison. We work for the IU.” He caught Phoe’s sideways glance and knew he’d be answering for this little lie later.

  “Pleased to meet you both,” Violet replied, giving his identification a once over.

  “We’re here looking into the Ripper murders,” Phoe explained.

  “You and everyone else,” Violet said. She gestured toward a small window set under the ceiling. Photographers and onlookers were crowded around the window on their knees trying to see the body.

  “We were hoping that we could examine the body before you closed her up,” Sigerson said, pulling out a magnifying glass.

  “Forget it.” Violet pushed him away. “The last time you came in here examining bodies, I nearly ended up on the slab.”

  Before Sigerson could reply, Phoe moved him aside with a calming hand on his arm. “Miss—”

  “Emerson,” Violet replied.

  “Miss Emerson,” Phoe continued. “This case has caught the attention of the Interplanetary Union. You and I both know that if they begin flooding Absinthia with agents, it will spook the tourists. Macijah and I are trying to avoid that.”

  Cage couldn’t help smiling. Phoe was so damn diplomatic, but since becoming involved with him, her diplomacy had taken on a firm edge that suggested her kindness had limits.

  Violet sighed and looked over her shoulder. Finally, she gave an approving nod to Sigerson and handed over her goggles. “You were never here.”

  “Of course not,” Sigerson said.

  “And if anything blows up, I will tell them that you snuck in here.”

  “Understood.”

  As soon as Violet was gone, Sigerson pulled on the goggles and adjusted the focus. “Mr. St. John, perhaps you could do something about our audience?” He gestured to where the tiny window was full of prying eyes.

  Cage looked around for something he might use to block their view. There was nothing that would quite do the job, but desperate times called for desperate measures. He pulled his autopistol from the shoulder holster under his coat. He brandished it where the onlookers could see and then fired a couple of shots that bounced off the bars over the window. The crowd screeched and scattered.

  “Nice, Cage.” Phoe shook her head. “No one will notice that.”

  “It was the most efficient way I could think of to get rid of them.”

  Phoe scoffed. “It’s the most efficient way I can think of to get Tuggingham’s
idiot brigade in here.”

  “Any policeman worth his salt would thank me.”

  “Yeah, he’ll be sure to thank you while he’s slapping the binders on your wrists.”

  Sigerson slammed his fist against the gurney. “Do you two mind? You’re interfering with my ability to think.”

  Phoe poked her tongue out at Cage. Her mirth was short-lived as she approached the body. Sigerson was crouched over it, Violet’s goggles magnifying his eyes and lighting the way. He carefully moved aside the flap of skin that Violet had peeled back to expose the organs. Phoe stood beside Cage, obviously trying to seem unaffected, but the more Sigerson poked around, the tighter she held Cage’s hand. Every so often, Sigerson would heave a sigh and shake his head as if he wasn’t finding what he was hoping for.

  “Anything amiss?” Cage asked.

  “Everything is amiss,” Sigerson replied. “This woman has been torn apart, seemingly for no reason at all.”

  “Do psychopaths need a reason?” Cage asked quietly.

  Phoe cleared her throat, wiping at her mouth. Cage observed that her hands were shaking as she did this. Any second, Phoe was going to be violently ill. “Indeed,” she croaked. “Perhaps killing for the trophies is all that this killer requires.”

  Sigerson shook his head. “There is method to this madness. A-ha.” He turned and pushed the goggles aside. “Everyone keeps referring to this bloke as the Ripper. As in Jack the Ripper. Brilliant, really. Because his crimes seem to mimic the Whitechapel killer from all those years ago. The people of Absinthia are assuming that these crimes are put on by the colony for entertainment. Much like the masquerade balls and the excursion trips. However, calling this man the Ripper is a bit of an insult to one so brilliant.”

  Cage scoffed. “Brilliant? I’d hardly call whoever this is brilliant. Deranged, maybe.”

  “Of course, he’s deranged,” Sigerson agreed. “But he wasn’t always deranged. Jack the Ripper, whoever he was, behaved like a mad dog. He had fits of frenzy fueled by an extreme hatred of women. Nothing about him was calculating. It was a spontaneous urge. Our Ripper is no such man.”

  “What makes you say that?” Phoe asked, her voice thin. Cage wound an arm around her waist, and she leaned heavily against his side.

  “This Ripper is choosing his victims carefully. Each of them has something in common that we must discover. But it’s something not easily seen. If you look at Miss Postlethwaite’s body, it appears that he was enraged when he attacked her.”

  “But you don’t think so?”

  “Of course not. He was working quickly, opening her up in that tiny window of time between acts of the play, but nothing about his work is sloppy. He knew what he was looking for.”

  “Which was?” Cage asked.

  Sigerson opened his hand and showed them a small, copper box. Blood still clung to the sides of the cube. “What I’ve been looking for in all the other bodies.”

  “What is that?”

  “This is a hive.”

  Phoe wrinkled her nose. “A hive? Like for bees?”

  Sigerson nodded. “Exactly like for bees.”

  Cage took the small box from Sigerson and wiped the blood on the edge of his overcoat. The box was about the size of Cage’s thumbnail and made of copper that had begun to oxidize, turning a shiny green. He ran his thumbnail along the side and a tiny opening appeared. “I’ve heard about these, but I didn’t think they really existed.”

  Phoe stared over Cage’s shoulder. “Some kind of new tech?”

  “A hive is an implant for nanobots.”

  “I thought that nanobots were injected under the skin,” Phoe stated.

  “Most are,” Sigerson said. “You need something healed, the doctor injects a few nanobots under your skin and they eat the infection. They die and are passed out of the body through the kidneys. But Machine’s new golden boy, Dr. Albert Reeves, is trying to get these hives past the medical association.”

  “What do they do?”

  “It’s simple really,” Cage carried on. “It’s a sort of nest for the nanobots that can be implanted in the body, allowing them to live inside the host indefinitely.”

  “Miss Postlethwaite has made no secret that it is her intention to be young and beautiful forever.” Sigerson pulled an eSlate from his pocket and brought up a holovid of Arabella.

  “No one loves a bag of old bones.” Arabella’s voice was like the tinkling of a wind chime in the dank morgue. “Through technology, and with enough money, we can all live forever. And what could be better than that?”

  “Lovely girl,” Phoe sneered. Her nose was turned up in disapproval. “All the real problems in the world, and this woman wastes millions of dollars in the pursuit of a fountain of youth.”

  “Kind of ironic that she was killed, when you think about it,” Cage said. “No magic pill could save you from being torn limb from limb.”

  Sigerson nodded. “She made headlines earlier this year when she volunteered to be the first human test of using hives and nanobots as a means to halt the aging process. It was all over the news.”

  “What does any of this have to do with the Ripper?” Cage asked.

  “This,” Sigerson said, snatching the hive back from Cage, “is our connection. Every single body has had some kind of biomechanical enhancement.”

  Cage peered past Sigerson toward the ruined corpse on the table behind him. “I don’t see anything that screams mechanical.”

  “That’s what he’s taking. He’s stealing the biomech parts.”

  “But why would he do that?” Phoe asked. “And how does he know? I mean, Arabella’s nanobots are microscopic. Everything’s on the inside.”

  “But she was all over the ’net talking about how she was actively seeking technological youth,” Cage explained. “She was an easy mark.”

  “All right, kids. Playtime with corpses is over.” Violet stalked back down to the morgue, shooing them toward the door. “Hurry up. My boss will be here any second.”

  Violet practically beat them from the building. She was right, though. If the IU found out that Phoe and Cage were using their badges to interfere on cases in the colonies while they were deactivated, Maurice would have a stroke. The pencil-dicked bureaucrat would have their heads on spits.

  “So are you going to tell us?” Cage asked when they reached the sidewalk outside.

  “Tell you what?” Sigerson asked.

  “How you figured out that the killer was taking biomech out of his victims? How that was the connection?”

  Sigerson shrugged. “That’s easy. Because he took them from me first.” He rushed out into the street to hail a cab. “Hurry up, now. We’ll need to question Wittrock before he’s taken back to Earth.”

  Cage grinned and offered his arm to Phoe. “Shall we?”

  She rolled her eyes and followed Sigerson, leaving Cage standing on the sidewalk.

  Thirteen

  Phoe had never felt so ill used in her life as she dragged herself up the steps of the pension. She and Cage were out all day chasing ghosts completely without reward. After examining the body of Arabella Postlethwaite, Sigerson had insisted that they all go to the police station to question Jasper Wittrock, the former lover and castmate of Arabella. Tuggingham had been resistant to let them in, but after a few calls to Maurice that involved begging, apologies, and promises not to expect any pay, Cage and Phoe managed to buy themselves a few minutes with the suspect. Though uninvited, Sigerson tagged along. At the end of their talk with Wittrock, Sigerson determined that while Wittrock was clearly mad; his only crime was being in love with a fickle harlot.

  “Yes, the two of you should go inside and get some rest,” Sigerson droned to Cage. “Tomorrow, we’ll need to go through the files on the previous murders. I need data. Autopsy reports, possible suspects, associations…”

  Phoe whipped around, stopping at the landing with hands on hips. “Pardon me?”

  Cage, evidently sensing that she was about to explode, ch
uckled nervously and laid a calming hand on her wrist. “Sigerson was only suggesting—”

  “I know what he was suggesting,” Phoe snapped, jerking away from him. “Over the course of the last two days, I’ve witnessed a horrific murder, had a spirited run across town where all my clothes burned off, aroused the suspicion of the police, examined a dead body, and questioned an insane murder suspect. And in case you hadn’t noticed, Macijah, I’m on vacation. Now we’re supposed to spend our day tomorrow in the basement of a grimy police station staring at autopsy photos?”

  “Sounds like an excellent way to spend a holiday to me,” Sigerson mumbled.

  “Shut it,” Phoe and Cage shouted in unison.

  “Phoe, I know it isn’t exactly how you envisioned our getaway to Absinthia.”

  Phoe laughed so loudly that it scared passersby. “No, Cage. This actually is exactly how I envisioned our getaway to Absinthia. That’s what infuriates me the most. You can’t leave the job behind for a single month.”

  Sigerson cleared his throat. “I think I’ll, ah—go. Now.”

  “You act like I’m doing this on purpose.”

  “Aren’t you?” Phoe put her hands on her hips.

  “I didn’t ask for those women to be murdered.”

  “No, but you don’t have to get involved. You could let it go this once.”

  Cage made a noise somewhere between a growl and a sigh of exasperation. “People are dying, Phoe. And the body count is rising. Is it not our responsibility to help?”

  “It’s our responsibility to cooperate. We’ve done that. End of story.”

  “Do you think you two could possibly not have a domestic in the street?” Sigerson gestured to the small crowd that had gathered to watch the two of them go at it.

  “Stay out of this, Copper-top,” Phoe snarled. “This is all your fault anyway.”

  “My fault?”

  “You’re the one snooping around crime scenes and dragging us all over the colony.” Phoe marched down the steps, jabbing Sigerson in the chest with an angry fingertip. “Everything was going along fine until you showed up. So why don’t you get out of here?”