Blood
Power is the only voice of reason in a world fraught with chaos. The rules of reality are written by those who wield it best.
Lights illuminate the otherwise dark parking lot as we roll up beside the last of the troopers. Several of the men and women in black uniforms glance our way but must recognize Percy’s patrol car because they immediately look away.
Or they recognize me. Percy’s well-liked in the department. Well-decorated. Gorgeous. Talented. Et cetera.
Me?
“God,” I hear a grumble as we pass the group of officers standing near the entrance to Hotel Calvary. “Maybe this freak show will outdo the shit upstairs.”
I glance at Percy, but being a Mech, rather than a Remnant, her hearing isn’t enhanced like my own. I could say something. I should, actually. Percy would want me to.
But it’s five in the fucking morning and I don’t need to clean the blood out of my clothing today.
And the mounting voices and dancing shadows are worsening by the moment.
“Why don’t you talk to the young lady at the front desk,” Percy says as we step into the dingy front office.
The entire thing looks like it’s straight out of a detective movie. And, trust me, I’ve watched a dozen or so in the last few years. Yellow wallpaper peels from walls that look as dilapidated as the front desk. It sits in the corner, sort of like a half wall, trailing back into a back office.
Despite that, though, the young lady at the desk has to be roughly in her early twenties. Her terrified expression shifts between the two hulking officers before landing on mine. She almost stumbles back over her chair as I approach the desk.
I glance behind me to see Percy nodding to the stairs where the body must be. I give her a thumbs up before turning back to the receptionist.
“I’ll take it from here,” I say to the two men who are an inch or so shorter than me. They do, however, have a hundred pounds of muscle on me.
It wouldn’t matter, but they sure seem to think it does. There’s a tense moment where I wonder if they might actually try something, but then one grunts. His buddy seems to be able to translate brutish as he turns on his heel and follows him out the door.
“Thank you,” the young woman says meekly. She cowers a little less when I move to the desk.
“I apologize for their inability to treat you like a human,” I smile, doing my best to remember that I, too, am probably terrifyingly inhuman looking.
“They’re cops,” she shrugs, then her blue eyes widen adorably. “I mean—”
“I’m a PI with the department,” I say, grinning. “I get it.”
She nods, shoulders dropping a little.
“Were you the one who found the body?” I ask softly, watching her face.
She nods, her expression tightening. “I was doing my normal check-ups and the door was open. I—”
A shiver quakes her little body. “I was expecting something like sex or something weird…”
She looks down at the desk, her eyes unfocusing.
“The room was rented to—” she looks back up at me, her gaze tense. “I didn’t tell the other two. I told them I couldn’t—”
“Whatever you tell me,” I say softly, pulling a dChip from my jacket, “I promise I’ll pretend like I found it on my own.”
She nods, taking the identification chip. The small, quarter-inch disk flashes “Arya Skovsgaard, Private Investigator, NCPD Affiliate, Tier 1 Utilitarian Remnant, Death Affliction.”
“Death…” her voice peters out as she glances back up at me.
“I’ll talk to the deceased,” I say softly. “They’ll get their final say.”
It doesn’t take much to drudge up the bitterness in my voice. The power itself, while insanely useful, has been nothing but nightmare after nightmare for a decade now. It’s a wonder I haven’t lost my goddamned mind.
Well. Maybe I have, if the leering shadows behind the woman are any indicator.
Even a week ago, they’d been amorphous at best.
“Her name was Mara Anders,” she says quietly, staring at the chip. “At least that’s who the room was rented to.”
“Did she say anything to you when she got here?” The name rings of familiarity.
“No,” the young woman says, shaking her head. “She was quiet. Came in, paid in advance with cash and went upstairs.”
“And no one suspicious came in?”
This time, the woman looks contemplative for a few moments. Then she shakes her head with a miserable expression.
“A lot of people are suspicious, Ms. Skovsgaard,” she shrugs. “No one that stood out. She only did because her eyes were weird.”
“Weird how?” I ask, leaning forward.
“Like...” the woman looks into mine. “Like yours.”
“Silver?” I frown, trying to understand the clear omission in her words.
“Powerful,” she whispers. Her eyes study mine.
“Ah,” I say, leaning back on my heels. “A Remnant.”
The young woman’s expression doesn’t change as she nods quickly.
It’s a look I’ve gotten a lot. Most people react to me in one of two ways.
One is fear. Fear that manifests as anger, bitterness, cruelty, or some other projection of a man with an inferiority complex.
The other is something like curiosity. It, too, changes with context.
But the look on this woman’s eyes is clear. She sees me as a Remnant. Entirely disconnected from humans. Entirely different.
“Alright,” I say, rapping my knuckle on the counter. “And your name?”
“Livy,” she says softly, eyes dropping back to the wood.
“I’ll be in touch if we have any more questions,” I say, backing from the desk.
“Arya,” I hear Percy’s voice from the top of the stairs. Turning, I freeze as I see her face.
Horror is written over her features, skin pale despite her tanned complexion. Wordlessly, I take the stairs two at a time.
The ugly peeling yellow walls continue up the stairs and to the narrow hallway running the length of the building. Hotel Calvary clearly isn’t exactly worried about the appearance of their one and only floor.
With six rooms along one wall, it isn’t hard to tell which of them was Mara’s. Or, rather, was rented under a Mara Anders. Two officers stand with their backs to the wall on either side of the door. A tech stands near the door, taking photos on a camera with “DAEMON” printed on the side.
Percy turns to face me again, her pallor not at all clearing in the few minutes outside the room.
“How bad?” I ask softly, watching her eyes crease even further.
“Just—” she breathes out sharply. “Just different, I guess.”
I nod and make my way past her, standing just beside the tech, taking advantage of my height to see over his shoulder.
And—my god.
The flow of Affliction outside filters through the closed blinds, bathing the room in an eerie red glow. It makes the desiccated corpse with hands and ankles tied to the bedposts that much more harrowing. It’s splayed out with only a towel covering it from the chest down.
The body looks like someone sucked it dry of insides.
Ribs are visible through the cotton fabric of the towel; jagged lines of bone mark the cave of the abdomen.
Cheekbones poke through taut skin along its eyes and mouth.
The eyes, though, remain. Their reddish hue not at all diminished like the rest of it.
It’s Mara Anders, alright. At least, the person using that name.
“Goddamn,” I swear under my breath. “That’s fucked.”
“That was my assessment, too,” Percy says from behind me. She walks toward the head of the bed, stopping half a foot away. “The NCPD chip in her arm identifies her as Mara Anders.”
So not a pseudonym.
“She’d been tagged?” I ask, glancing at the woman’s face again. She was as unrecognizable as anyone else I’d met, arrested, or fought in my time as a PI. Even in my off-time, I hadn’t ever seen the woman—she was as indistinguishable from Eve.
“Her last arrest put her in the highest level of security clearance required for more information. You know how it works,” Percy says, studying her DAEMON Pad.
I sure did. Because I’d spent nearly ten years doing everything I could to avoid being on that list. Or any list, really. Arya Skovsgaard was, indeed, on RISE, but she was the only one.
“Fyre,” Percy whispers passing me the tablet. “A Tier 4.”
I take the device, turning it to face me. The RISE system was just a fancy way to keep track of the people who were unlucky enough to have been arrested or detained for their powers. It always claimed “safety” for the Remnants, but it was always about control.
Known Associates: Bloody Mary, Beowulf, Morgana, Azazel
“Oh shit,” I grunt, reading Fyre’s associates.
“Same,” Percy says, her face looks gaunt with the light of the room. “I don’t like those names.”
I don’t like the idea of facing them myself, but Percy’s only human. Her own body has been through so much in the line of duty.
“Can you read her?” she asks, sidling closer to me. Her nearness and warmth send a thrill through me despite the setting.
“Sure,” I say, voice hoarse.
I step closer and realize there’s no smell. There’s nothing, actually. No scent of death or decay. The entire scene is grisly and demented, but the woman herself doesn’t even look dead, minus the way her body looks vacuumed out.
As before, I place my gloved hand just above where her towel meets her upper chest.
Darkness.