Waterstrider

Spacedock, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Fourthmonth, 1634 PTS

Aechs sighed with a burbling chuff as he inspected the premises of the building, a fully sealed environment suit having to fully enclose his body due to the poison and intense miasma levels still present within the area.

As members of the Justice Office’s crime scene investigation unit, they had been dispatched to the scene where according to the eyewitnesses who had reported it, a Seiyal woman had gotten into a fight with a bunch of armed Celans inside of a Celan restaurant that catered to tourists.

When they had arrived, it had quickly become apparent that the restaurant’s dining area was filled with a haze of highly illegal miasmic poison. They had needed to wait another fifteen minutes while someone brought the pair of environment suits over.

Aechs hated the stuffy things, and was usually glad to only need them once or twice a year. Today, it seemed, was just not his day.

His annoyance had turned into a full on headache when he actually entered the room and noticed the large, bleeding lesion on the surface of reality. He had never before had to deal with something this dangerously illegal, and wasn’t excited about the idea, much less the need to move close to the thing and inspect it.

His partner, Whai, laughed as they inspected the dining area.

“We see scenes like this all the time, but the poison mist and the glowing crack floating in the air are certainly new.”

Aechs sighed.

“Personally, I wouldn’t call this a matter to be all that excited about.”

He squatted down as he inspected the entire area. By several toppled tables there were five Celan corpses, a mix of Korlove and Jobu. They were wearing body armor and holding rifles, and had no visible wounds, not that this surprised Aechs given how strong the poison in the air around them was. The concentration was so intense it was extraordinarily illegal. Based on the readings, if it were to get any more poisonous he almost felt that it might prompt one of the gods to punish the offender personally.

“It’s not often we have to deal with two entirely different types of illegal technology on the same day, much less inside the same building,” said Whai. “Looks like a Seiyal and some Celans fought here, and both decided to use their trump cards.”

He turned back towards Aechs before continuing.

“Probably the Heirs of Ottrien and the Hadal Clan again, right?” he asked.

Aechs shrugged noncommittally.

“Maybe. But we need to be sure.”

“Ha! I see what you mean. Sure, it was some random gangsters who are entirely unaffiliated. I Imagine that pretty soon they’ll offer to pay us to look the other way and find some poor scapegoat, as usual.”

“I’m serious, Whai. We can’t just take bribes on this one.”

Whai laughed in response.

“Since when do you care who’s actually at fault? ”

Aechs shook his head and pointed at the floating lesion by a door marked ‘employees only.’

“This isn’t a normal fight between gangs. If they find out that we covered something like this up, we’ll be sent to the prison moons to mine dust for twenty years.”

Whai grinned down at his partner.

“They could always just not find out. Imagine how much we could force the Celans to pay us if they want to keep this quiet.”

Despite himself, Aechs considered the idea. The allure of potentially tens of thousands of serite certainly attracted him to Whai’s proposal, but in this case the risk would be far higher than usual.

“I don’t know…” he said, not sure if he was speaking to himself or to his partner.

Whai clapped him on the back, ambling his way closer to the lesion.

“Just think about it,” he said.

Aechs sighed, following his partner.

As he approached, he gained a better sense of the lesion and the area surrounding it. The lesion still slowly spat gouts of multicolored miasma onto the ground beneath it with a quiet hiss. The area that the miasma was impacting had begun to warp. The floor tiles had risen up and reshaped into an odd misshapen structure that almost looked like a young art student’s attempt at an abstract sculpture. It was covered in sooty gray dust that formed odd shapes on the structure’s surface. Similar structures had formed from the door frame around it, reaching out as if they were trees trying to reach sun rays.

Whai squatted next to it, trying to understand the object’s shape, but having trouble due to the wash of feedback in his senses produced by the highly concentrated miasma in the room.

“You know,” he said, “I feel like it would have been better to get people from any other species to make sense of this thing. I can barely sense a thing near the lesion. Sometimes I do get jealous of the ability to see things.”

Aechs finally walked over, yanking Whai back.

“In Gys’ name, man! Don’t stand by it, you might become like that,” he said, pointing at the structures.

After a moment of consideration, Whai nodded.

“Probably a good idea.”

He lifted one hand to his chin, and was annoyed when it was repelled by the oversized visor.

“Hey, Aechs?” he asked.

Aechs looked over.

“What?”

“How do they even make these things?”

Aechs frowned.

“What, the lesion?”

Whai nodded.

“I’ve heard them mentioned before, but I don’t think there’s ever been one on the station until now, at least as far as I’m aware. I’ve heard only Celans and ascendants can make them?”

Aechs thought about it for a moment before responding.

“The Osine can probably make them as well. It’s a banned technology entirely though, If I remember correctly,” he said. “Our scientists haven’t figured it out yet, and the Pantheon has told us not to try. They’re very dangerous, and once you make one, it will never go away.”

“Makes sense. Hey, maybe we can turn this into a regular payoff. Threaten to do an inspection of the premises if they don’t give us money every so often.”

Aechs laughed, amused at the idea.

“How Fulstovan of you.”

Whai smiled in response. Scanning the room for any other evidence. His senses flagged on a counter over which the kitchen could be seen. He pointed at it.

“Hey, if we hop over that we should be able to get to the back rooms without needing to go right by the lesion.”

Aechs agreed with the idea, and so the two of them quickly hopped over the counter, making their way into the kitchen. Inside, there were a pair of corpses that looked to belong to cooks lying on the ground. Their lips and shirts were bloody, as if they had been coughing blood all over themselves.

“More poison victims,” he said.

Whai nodded, suddenly having acquired a more professional aura.

“Different from those on the floor outside, though. Those did not seem to be coughing anything up.”

Aechs thought back, and realized that his partner was right.

“A different poison? Or maybe the Seiyal killed them physically,” he suggested.

“Could be,” said Whai, “We’d have to send samples to a lab for analysis.”

They both chuckled at that, knowing there was almost no chance of that happening. Even if they did bother to do so, they knew that the lab technicians wouldn’t actually run the tests for months. They were simply paid less for government requests than they were for work done privately.

After seeing nothing else of note in the kitchen, Aechs made his way to the door, peeking out. It opened into a small hallway. As a crime scene investigator, Aechs had a lot more experience with hinged doors than most Staiven, but he still found them odd. They were simply annoying and inefficient. When they were opened, it was still in the way, rather than recessed into one of the walls or ceiling. He found it annoying.

He expanded his senses into the hallway. To the right was a closed door through which he could sense the lesion. The back of the door almost seemed to be slowly squirming, its surface traced in odd spiral patterns. Across the hallway were another pair of doors that he assumed to be Celan bathrooms based on the symbols by each one. To the left, there was a closed hatch that was more in line with a proper Staiven door. On the ground was a slender Celan man lying dead on the floor. He was tied to a chair, and like the corpses in the kitchen, his front was covered in blood that had clearly been coughed up. One of his legs was stretched out near the door, and was showing slight protrusions, early signs of being warped due to proximity to the lesion. Aechs carefully slid the foot further away.

“Hey, Whai?” he said. “Take a look at this.”

His partner quickly sensed past him, frowning as he inspected the corpse.

“Hmm, tied up? That’s odd. Why would there be a Celan tied up in a front for the Heirs?”

“Perhaps he was a traitor? The Seiyal tried to rescue him and find out some secret about the Heirs that he wanted to leak?”

Whai nodded in agreement.

“That’s probably it, and then he ended up dying in the fight. There’s probably more evidence behind that hatch.”

“Likely,” replied Aechs.

As they moved to inspect the hatch, Whai got a ping on his terminal. He paused, curiously lifting the misshapen mass to find out what the matter was. It was a message from his contact in the Heirs. He smiled, showing it to Aechs.

“I was wondering when we’d see this.”

There was an offer of fifty thousand serite each for the two of them to only report the miasmic poison and not the lesion.

Aechs smiled, considering the matter. Usually they were paid at most twenty to thirty thousand to hide important matters, and this was certainly far more than that. It made him consider actually taking the risk and covering it up.

“What do you think?” he asked.

He suspected he already knew the answer, but wished to hear it anyway. Perhaps a part of him wanted to be convinced.

“I think that we should see if the Hadal Clan makes any offers,” replied Whai, grinning widely.

Aechs couldn’t help but laugh at his expression.

“On that at least, we agree.”

They continued on, inspecting the bathrooms and the storage room, not finding anything of note except more poison. It was clear that some of it had to have been poured down the vents. A mobile filtration unit would need to be brought in to cleanse the place, as miasmic poisons of this level did not tend to disperse naturally, able to remain in a room almost indefinitely despite the natural airflow of the station.

Half an hour later the two of them stood back in the dining area, still without the expected response by the Seiyal. Whai turned to Aechs in confusion.

“Do you think it really wasn’t them? Who else could it have been?”

‘Either it wasn’t or they’ve already talked with the courts about a prepared scapegoat. Either way, They don’t care whether or not we report the miasmic poison. It might even be that they didn’t even recognize the lesion.”

Whai nodded.

“I’d buy that. In Teiklan’s name, those brutes know so little about the world.”

Aechs nodded in agreement. Of all the races with a large presence on the station, the Seiyal had by far the lowest understanding of technology on average. It was almost not even funny how little they understood things that the Staiven found obvious.

“Well, in that case,” said Whai, breaking the silence. “Do you think the Celans can hide this well? Because if so, I’ve got some new purchases calling my name.”

“You know,” said Aechs, smirking. “We can probably pretend the lesion was produced later, if they can hide it until at least fifthmonth, preferably even later. Let’s tell the Celans that the Seiyal offered sixty thousand to reveal the truth, though.”

Whai gave him a look, and they both laughed so hard that their throats burbled with mucus.

Teiklan: [The Pantheonic god of innovation, Teiklan is one of the sources that have driven the Staiven to become the most technologically advanced mortal race in the region, at least insofar as they are aware. Teiklan is often used as a major symbol within corporations, though he is mostly worshiped and revered by the engineers and scientists rather than the actual leadership of the organization, who are much more likely to worship Fulstovis or Estrivai. Still, his influence cannot be understated, as his church gives out even more grants for developing new technologies than the government does. At least one Teiklan worshiper can be found on the board of almost any corporation, often having been one of its earliest investors. The biggest embarrassment for Teiklan is the fact that he was unrelated to the creation of the calculation engines, and his church has never ceased to lobby for the rights to examine them since the time that the Seer first revealed their capabilities.]