Air-car 3-0-2 dipped into the alleyway, rattling windows and smacking the ground hard with its rubber skirt. It was one of many that had landed. Out of it stepped a troupe of peacekeepers led by a woman in a slightly more decorative uniform. “Detective Minh, they send you all the way down here for this?”
“Murder is a big deal—dispatch told me this was a really big deal.” They spoke as they walked closer to the body, which was being outlined and photographed. Detective Minh ushered them away for a moment for her to speak to her colleague privately. “This guy looks familiar, is it—?”
“It is. Mr. Beaufort, General Atomics.” He chewed his lips. She looked at the corpse, not a mark, or so much as even a stain, in sight. “Okay, let’s make sure this alleyway is secure, we can’t have this getting out too soon. Lock it down, and fast.” He agreed and ordered a cordon of the area. The public could know that something big could happen—but not to who it was happening to.
“So, what do we know, Sergeant?” The Sergeant called over his field medical examiner. “Ask him.” They both turned as he reached them. “Male, fifty-two, no history of health conditions. No exterior trauma, no signs of a struggle, and all of his possessions are still on him.” She squinted at him. “So he wasn’t: shot, stabbed, bludgeoned, choked, poisoned, or struggled in any way? He just… dropped dead?”
“That is my current assessment. SADS. Spontaneous death with no underlying cause—happens from time to time.” He bent down and put on a pair of nitrile gloves. He prodded about the body, lifting up its arms, and checking down the shirt. “See. There’s nothing, ma’am.” Hearing it was difficult to believe, seeing it was somehow even more so. “Got any more gloves, let me have a look.” She was supplied the gloves, and the examiner moved to let her take his position.
She looked over his body. Her badge clicked. Background radiation—slightly elevated, but nothing harmful. But it caused her to triple check the examiner’s work, and inspect further. The eyes, the mouth, the nose. She tilted his head and shone a penlight into his nostrils. From the outside, you could see nothing, but deeper within the nasal cavity was a small, powdery layer of dried blood that she retrieved a sample of. The same would hold true for a swab of the back of his throat. “Either someone tried their best to clean this guy up, or something weirder is happening here. Find anything in the surrounding area?”
“There hasn’t been a comprehensive search, but I can order one.” She nodded. “Do that, I’ll make a report with the examiner back in the squad car.
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“Alright, let’s check all around here. Anyone not needed for the perimeter, get searching.” A half-dozen peacekeepers left their line after some minor squabbling from the remaining line-members. They dug through boxes and bags and dumpsters. The Sergeant opened a dumpster, and got scratched across the face by an alleycat that jumped past him. “Sonuva—someone catch that rat!” The commotion caught the attention of Detective Minh and the examiner. The cat settled next to the corpse of Mr. Beaufort. A faint blue shimmer rippled through its orange fur. The medical examiner quickly snatched up the cat as it attempted to paw at the corpse.
“Where’d that cat come from?” He turned to the Sergeant, the cat still in his arms. “From that dumpster about five feet over there.” Both of the men were focused on the dumpster, while Minh stayed his gaze on the cat. The blue was now fading, but it was still there. “I’ve never seen an orange cat with blues.”
“Heh? Oh, neither have I, Sergeant?” He shook his head. “Nope. But it seems to want to be next to the body for some reason.” Detective Minh had the body placed into a body bag and zipped up as the cat struggled to get free. Even with it contained, the cat continued to sit next to the bag. It was changing once more to a blue hue—The blue deepened—violet at the edges. “Think he had some kind of genetically altered cat?”
“Doubt it, that’s something he’d be flaunting if he had it.” No more ideas came to mind. They just looked at the cat, and then the bag, and then back again. Nuclear City’s golden boy. Zipped in plastic. “We should probably get him out of here. It’s almost rush hour, and autopsy is going to have their work cut out for them on this one.” The Sergeant whistled over a paramedic team to transport the body.
The cat protested, but was not allowed in the air-car ambulance with its obsession. As the air-car lifted, the peacekeeper's presence slowly drifted out of the alley. She turned to follow—then she realized that her badge had gone silent.
Detective Minh did not leave. She stayed where she was, in front of where the outline was. She stared out to the edge of the alley where the cat stayed, upright and unmoving. Its eyes were fixed upward to where the clouds parted from the air-car that took Mr. Beaufort away.
“Headquarters, this is Detective Minh. Send Environmental to the alley where my air-car is at. Car 3-0-2. We’re going to have a disaster on our hands if my hunch is right. Make sure they do it quietly, we don’t need mass panic.” She clicked off her radio and approached the cat. It was fading back to its orange color, only a few faint streaks left on its head. She sat next to it, but it didn’t look at her. She looked into the sky with it as the city woke up.
