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2020-11-04
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Nightwatch

Summary:

Fandom: Original
Rating: FRT-13, C, K
Pairing: none
Disclaimer: This is an original work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any opinions or views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the author and are used for story-telling purposes only.
Many thinks to my beta, Suz, without whom this would be just drek and dren.

Work Text:

Nightwatch
by A. X. Zanier

"For the night was not impartial. No, the night loved some more than others, served some more than others."
-- Eudora Welty

 

The body was disturbingly clean. Arms out to the side, legs spread, and a look of peace on the face, as if captured in a moment of sweet repose. That is until you noticed the wounds. The carotid artery on both side of the neck had been slit lengthwise from collarbone to jaw; the radial artery in both forearms had been opened from elbow to wrist; and finally both femoral arteries had been split wide for four inches. The cause of death would certainly be exsanguination, even though there was no blood to be found anywhere on the pale, nude body.

As with all the others, he was lying within a pentacle, head, arms, and legs in each arm of the star. The points were connected to form a pentagram, and then the entire shebang surrounded by a circle, which also touched the points of the star. To top it off there were runes written wherever there was available space.

It was only one of the more confusing aspects of this case. There had been some form of ancient writing at every crime scene: Sanskrit, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Ogham, and a half dozen others. The majority of the victims had been male, all had been adults - the youngest, a female of twenty-five, the oldest a sixty-two year old male. The bodies had been found in locations varying from a beach in the southeast sector, an office in the lower midwest sector, a luxury apartment in the northeast sector, to here and now; a busy park in the lower northwest sector. A jogging path that was reputed to have been very popular on this warm August night lay not six feet from the body with only a screening of bushes blocking the view. No one questioned had noticed the body, the elaborate artwork, or the people who must have placed it here.

Exactly like at all the other crime scenes.

Dara Ti Jarnell, Inspector for the International Security Council, pulled her regulation hand comp from its holder at her waist and turned it on. She shifted about the body, taking care not to disturb anything, and began taking scans of the area, capturing it from every angle so as to create a three hundred and sixty degree image. She checked the individual images, rescanned two that simply hadn't come out with the detail she required and then stepped back, outside the circle cordoned off by the local security agents. Once she, or one of her colleagues, was called in, everything stopped until she cleared the scene. Instantly, their people moved in, the forensic team first, to take their own scans and begin the more detailed analysis of the crime scene. Anything they learned would be shared with Dara, though except for specifics about the victim, she was pretty sure of what they would discover.

There was a distinct advantage to having an ICS badge. For example, the hand comp, unlike most, which only had access to local or specific nodes, had a direct connection to the full Net, able to access all but the very highest security nodes at the touch of a button and an access code. Tech had jumped forward dramatically during the Reconstruction after the Fall. The 2009 pandemic human-avian bird flu, nicknamed the Shanghai Surprise, coupled with several global natural disasters that had literally changed the face of the planet, caused the complete and total breakdown of governments worldwide and had ultimately resulted in the deaths of three billion people in just eight years; The Great Fall indeed.

The Reconstruction had taken a score of years to achieve any noticeable success and for a decade afterwards deaths had still exceeded births, reducing the overall population even more and leaving the world a far less crowded place. Yet, for all the advances, the improvement in the quality of living for everyone - there were no poor, no famines, no third world nations - people still killed each other.

Humanity, it seemed, was incapable of learning from its own past.

Dara walked back to her vehicle, leaning against its side as she reviewed the scans in more detail, and compared them to those at other crime scenes, making notes and observations as she did so.

She just about jumped out of her skin when a voice spoke beside her.

"What language is that? The lettering looks almost Cyrillic."

She knew that voice, District Security Agent Nicolas Corrigan, one of the few locals who didn't find her investigation on behalf of the ICS intrusive.

"Aha, the mystery of who called me in has been solved." She wiggled a finger, adjusting the focus of the screen remotely. "It could be. Its one of the scripts we haven't identified yet. It's certainly not the current version of the language. That much we know."

"Well, you are the expert. How'd you..." He wiggled his fingers in imitation of her. "You're not wearing remote interfaces."

'Oh, bloody hell,' she thought, angry with herself for just doing what came naturally. She'd forgotten the damn interfaces at her apartment as she'd been out enjoying a late dinner when they had called her in. "I, um, had them implanted. Kept losing the damn things, and even the ICS has limits to how many times they'll replace a piece of tech." She made a motion using two fingers and the screen changed accordingly.

"That must be new, I haven't heard anything about it. Tobin is such a tech-head, he's usually talking about new toys months before they're available." Agent Corrigan sounded far more curious than suspicious.

"Newish, I guess you could say." She shrugged. "I do have access to tech most won't see for years," she said as a none-too-subtle reminder of who she worked for.

"True. Very true," he agreed, letting it drop right there, for which she could only be thankful.

While sensitives had become more accepted during the Reconstruction, very few advertised their abilities. Within the ICS, she was known as one such - it was why she'd been assigned this particular case - but for personal dealings, she worked very hard to present an air of normalcy, especially since having joined the Echelon.

The least advertised piece of info regarding this case was the fact that every crime scene reeked of power. And power combined with death fell under the auspices of the Echelon's Watchers. That she had already been assigned to the case by the ICS was a fact not lost on her superiors. Trouble was, she hadn't yet had any luck ferreting out the why of the murders, much less who had committed them.

Agent Corrigan was still scrolling through the various images relating to the case, as if hoping to see something that no one else had since the killings had begun in February. "How did you know the next victim would be here in Far Tilden? Or even in the lower Northwest District for that matter?"

Another question she would have to dance around. You don't tell a savvy District Security Agent that members of a semi-secret council of sensitives had scryed for the location of the next murder in hopes of preventing it. So she did what had become very good at when Agent Corrigan began questioning her or subjects best avoided; prevaricated. "An educated guess."

He snorted in amusement, clearly not believing her for a second, and returned the hand comp. "Technology has its uses, but sometimes you just have to follow your gut... or nose."

Dara shut off the comp and slid it back into its holder. "What do you mean?"

"All the victims have been bled dry, yes?"

"Yes. Since we never found any blood at the scene, we theorize that there were killed elsewhere and then placed at the final locale before rigor set in." That information was not a secret by any means, even though she was certain it was incorrect. It just didn't feel right to her, but it wasn't as if she had any other theories to work with. She knew Agent Corrigan's record and reputation and was more than willing to listen to any thoughts he may have on the matter.

His response was short and significant on many levels.

"Then why do I smell blood?"

 

'Then why do I smell blood?'

Dara had double-checked her scans and confirmed that, even in the parts per billion, there was no trace of blood onsite. And yet, somehow, Agent Corrigan had led her deeper into the park, the underbrush becoming swiftly denser, and directly to a trail, subtle, but that had, until now, gone unnoticed. There were no footprints - a judicious use of power could have easily taken care of that - and nothing, not so much as a thread or hair for the forensic team to make use of, and yet... and yet he led her unerringly to an ancient service road, well hidden from the casual passerby, that had clearly been used recently. A vehicle, a lightweight electric model designed for off-road use based on the tread signature, had been parked here for some time.

His little show would have been more than enough to convince her, but he just had to include a tell portion, stating, mystifyingly, that he thought there had been four people with the vehicle. He then gave her a look she simply couldn't decipher and asked, 'You can sense the energy trace, can't you?' in such a way that it damn near convinced her that he knew she was a member of the Echelon.

It was in that instant that she decided to dig deeper into Nicolas Corrigan's past.

Six hours later, Dara sat down in front of her Net terminal in her ICS-assigned apartment and waved it to life. She then entered a series of passcodes that would gain her access to a variety of databases not available to the general public, including those of the Echelon, which had an impressive library of rare and esoteric books collected from well before the Fall. She had a feeling she was going to need them.

Still, she began simply, reviewing Agent Corrigan's recent past to begin with, his time with North American Security, NAS in the vernacular; his adult schooling - exemplary, but not exceptional - and his tenure at Nightwatch, a private security company used by many international businesses, and from where he'd been recruited into NAS. Before that he'd worked a series of odd jobs, all of which were on the fringes of the security field: nightclub bouncer, personal bodyguard, and other similar professions. Prior to that his records were... thin. Just the very basics: district of birth, pre-adult schooling, he'd been advised to pursue a History major, but had chosen security work instead. That in itself was strange; most followed their recommendation, as there was often a personal preference on the part of the student for said profession.

The lack of early life details struck Dara as very odd, for unless someone was living off-Net, which did occur occasionally either by choice or by circumstance, your entire life was stored within the Net. She tried a variety of search parameters, but came up with the exact same information time and time again.

She requested his birth certificate and got two for her trouble. At first blush, they were identical, right down to the palm scans, which wasn't possible, because if the original had been lost, the reissued copy would not have had the infant palm scan. She tried to access a current palm scan for Agent Corrigan and got an error message instead. Considering things even as mundane as the monetary stipend a person received were based directly upon ident, which included palm, retinal, and DNA records at the minimum, and regulated by the Net, there was virtually no way to steal, lose or imitate an individual. Group idents, like those for a company, had occasionally been stolen or lost, but it was rare. Even those few who lived off-Net had their idents recorded in the system somewhere. Agent Corrigan couldn't have become and NAS agent without a valid ident.

It just wasn't possible.

Frustrated, she reached out and set her hand over the palm scanner, deciding that doing the search manually was taking too long.

::requesting neural interface:: She queried the local node directly, a trick only she and a few others could do without an actual neural interface. Was there little wonder the ICS recruited her right out of her adult-schooling?

::request accepted. how may I assist you tonight?:: was the reply in the soothing 'voice' of the system as it allocated a portion of itself to Dara.

::I've found an error with a personal ident. can you resolve?:: She did the equivalent of showing the records in question and waited for a response.

::cannot resolve, both records are valid::

'How can that be?' she mused, pushing aside her confusion to remain focused on the task at hand. :access Nicolas Corrigan's ident file and compare to the birth records::

::accessing:: There was a noticeable pause, which was a very rare event when interfacing neurally with the Net. ::idents match. there is no error::

::show me the most recent ident scan for Nicolas Corrigan::

::idents match. there is no error:: Was the immediate response.

::modify request. Show me the current ident scan for NAS Agent Nicolas Corrigan:: Something truly strange was going on here, she'd never had problems dealing with the Net before.

::idents match. idents match. idents match. idents match. idents match....::

::stop::

The system silenced instantly, and almost seemed to sigh in relief; as if thankful she'd rescued it from the loop it had become ensnared in. Clearly, it was not going to provide Agent Corrigan's ident, no matter how she phrased the request. It could be nothing more than a stray bug caught in the web of nodes; it happened now and then. A system this vast occasionally ran into problems, but Net security and maintenance often corrected errors even as they occurred. That was their job, after all.

Maybe if she approached it from a different direction entirely... She could come back to the missing ident and duplicate birth records later. ::access image ident for NAS Agent Nicolas Corrigan::

::parameters?::

Dara pondered for a moment and then decided to go for it. It'd be... amusing to see what Agent Corrigan had looked like as a toddling tow-headed three-year old. ::all available::

::accessing:: The system was silent for long minutes, making Dara wonder if this search was going to be as fruitless as the last. Instead, she received another query from the computer.

::parameter search based on name or facial structure?::

'Name or facial structure? What the devil?' The implication was that the system had found images that matched Nicolas Corrigan's face, but not his name. 'Interesting. Our dear Agent apparently has a past he's trying to hide.' Changing a name legally was not an easy task and getting it done by hackers wasn't cheap, but it could be accomplished. Sometimes even for very valid reasons. It was just that, normally, it wasn't this simple to discover. Someone hadn't covered their tracks very well. Not that she'd mind using that fact to her advantage.

::set parameter for facial structure::

::parameter set::

Seconds later images flooded her screen. ::pause::

::paused::

:parameter addition. include date, approximate is acceptable, and associated name, if available::

::parameter addition set::

::proceed:: The deluge continued.

She watched the clock instead of the images; they were piling up too fast for her to easily view anyway. Nearly five minutes went by before the flood slowed to a trickle and then finally stopped.

::search complete::

There had to be close to a thousand images on the screen. She chose one a random. A glance proved the face was indeed that of Nicolas Corrigan, but the date was pre-Fall and the name Gregory Jenkins, which was more than enough to make her do a double-take. ::sort images by decade::

::processing::

That request didn't take as long to fill and shortly the images were sorted into neat piles. Too many piles. She had little interest in checking through every single one just to feed her curiosity. ::show me the most recent and the oldest::

::processing::

This took no effort at all for the system and two images separated themselves from the pile. ::split screen please:: She hoped she didn't sound as stunned as she felt. The most recent image had been taken earlier tonight, a random shot from the crime scene after she had left, the timestamp was perfectly clear. The other... the other was not a picture in the traditional sense: it wasn't a scan, video, or digital composite. No, it was a painting, a portrait, really, of Marques Nicolai Castaneves dated 1581. She stared at it in utter disbelief.

::compare facial structure of two images::

The system did the work in seconds. ::facial structure is a match. margin of error is plus or minus point one percent::

'Well, that was unexpected,' she thought, feeling shaken to her core. Not that she was about to deny the similarity between the two men, once you got past the long curly hair and foppishness of the clothes, and the hat - especially the hat. The hat was awful. Dara began choosing images at random and having the system run a more detailed comparison of them; with the same response every time.

::facial structure is a match. margin of error is plus or minus point one percent::

It was the same person over and over and over again. Oh, the clothes and hair varied, a product of the time period, but that heart-wrenchingly beautiful face never changed.

And if that were true, if the evidence laid out before her eyes wasn't some strange glitch in the Net then...

Then Nicolas Corrigan had been alive for over five hundred years.

 

Finis