Poison

The faint artificial moonlight casted highlights on every edge of the courtyard. It allowed me to trace the path that the guard walked. The courtyard took up half the surface area compared to the Basilica, which still meant that it had a sizable bit of land. A couple of statues and open viewing gardens were in immediate view. Between the fences and flowers, I had a good amount of cover.

Monitoring his route, I had to wait an uncomfortable amount of time to get out of sight. Once it was safe, I lowered down and crouched low. I was only going to have the chance to look in one of the buildings. So I just took the nearest, which was slightly larger with what looked like two floors.

I still felt my heart pounding in my chest as I approached the door. A quick check back showed them nearly out of sight and mostly obscured. This was going to be my only chance. I put the glove on the door and prayed.

A couple of seconds later the green light appeared. The door slid open and I burst in not even considering there might be someone inside. I hid around the wall until the door closed. A sigh came out of me as I felt a slight easing of my pressure.

And then I remembered I was in an unknown room with no clue if I shared it with anyone. At a glance, the room was simple and small with a table in the center. Around the walls, cabinets and shelves covered most of the blank space. It looked like a workshop by the judge of things.

Nothing that useful, so I went up to the second floor. B didn’t detect anyone, so I didn’t have a late night worker. Slowly coming up the stairs, it looked much like the first floor, just more machinery rather than shelves. I guess this was where thorough exams took place.

Once I fully came up the stairs, I could see the table was occupied. I looked to B almost instantly as I went back down the stairs. However, he shook his head. “What do you mean?” I said in a low voice.

“I’m not detecting any sound from them. Not even a heartbeat or bio-pump.”

I paused with the realization of what that meant before I could even say it myself. “They’re dead?”

“I think so.”

Pulling back up the stairs, I peaked at the table to get any sort of hint of movement. Nothing. But maybe they were just asleep. If they didn’t move I could get closer. I hurried the rest of the way to the table.

Just as I was about to check for vitals, I saw their face. “B, it’s the woman from the park!” I leaned over trying to see if she truly was dead as B claimed. I pulled on my jacket to look at the screen. The map showed no ID at my location, just the guard still making their rounds. How’d they die?

I looked around to see if any of the equipment remained running still. Nothing seemed to be active and I couldn’t risk that otherwise. With my glove, I touched the arm of the woman to see if any of the circuitry remained active. Most of the bio-circuitry required energy converted from what the body created to keep functioning. But depending on how long it had been they could still have a lingering charge.

B jumped down to add in the investigation. Scanning through fried connections and dead superconductors, I kept flipping through. There was so much damage. Even if things were powered, I’m not sure much of it could still function.

How long after they captured her did this happen? Was the berserk state the cause of the damage to her augments? The stress limits should have been high enough to take the burst that I saw. Yet nearly everything was in an unrepairable state. It was like it just gave out all at once.

If it had been stress damage from overexertion it should have only been a few locations of damage. This almost looked like something attacked systematically everything in her body destroying it from the inside.

What could possibly do such a thing?

B finished and turned around to face me. “There’s nothing still functional and not a watt of power left. Either they drained her or she’s been dead for a long time.”

“Or whatever caused it, burned through all of the power.”

“Possibly, but we don’t even know what this is. It’s just damaged everywhere.”

I nodded tracking the pathways with the relic. Each circuit I found had the same damage. It was consistent, which didn’t fit with stress damage as well. I felt pretty confident ruling it out. And strangely, I could trace the damage from system to system through the augments. It ran down the biotubes reaching every piece of technology in her body.

Every technology in her body.

“Hey, can you see what’s still natural in her?”

“It’s dead like everything else, more so.”

“But is it just cell death or can you see anything else?”

“Right, I follow you.” He turned back and hopped up on the body. A cloth covered it up, so he remained separated from the corpse. I continued to scan through the dead tech, but there really wasn’t going to be anything more I could find. It all was the same.

A few moments later, B popped back to me. “It’s unaffected. There were signs of stress and damage from critical augments failing, but in expected ways.”

“Then whatever happened attacked only the bio-circuitry and nothing else. Could a computer virus do that?”

“Theoretically, but this consistently I don’t know. This was a full system attack and fast.”

Full system attack, it made the whole thing even more confusing. A virus would normally target something specific, that’d be the point of it. Attack the weak point or whatever critical within its programming. It’d achieve the same goal as destroying everything, in the sense that the woman would be dead.

And it still didn’t answer the most important question. If this was the same thing that Louise had and the other guy, why would they be targeted? Louise could potentially be a case of blackmail, but that’d assume someone had an issue with the House. It all felt completely random. And random didn’t answer a thing.

I needed something tangible to use. However, the alert went off on the relic. Less than a minute remained. Dammit! I had nearly nothing. But I couldn’t be caught.

We left behind the corpse and snuck back out to the courtyard. The guard thankfully had moved on to another part of the Basilica. With a quick leap, we escaped the Basilica without a trace. A dash into the alley, I quickly scaled up the building.

Upon the roof, I knelt down to overlook the Basilica once more. It had long since been that minute now. It remained silent. I could finally ease the heavy beating in my chest. It was going to be a bit before I could calm down, but I think I could stop feeling the panic constantly.

I felt B hop on my shoulder. “They know something…”

“Or they’re trying to understand it.”

“They knew enough to take the woman. And they’re saying nothing. No public statement, no warning about potential threat. Nothing!”

“You’re assuming nefarious intent where we have no reason to believe that yet.”

“It doesn’t feel right. They’re hiding something.”

“Your gut.”

“You have intuition as well, B.”

“I have statistical probability, not intuition.”

“Statistically I think they’re lying about something.”

“It’s possible, but you’re going to need more proof before you start accusing the Basilica of not having the interest of the town at heart.”

I begrudgingly nodded. We found next to nothing on that excursion. And nothing tied any of it together in a way that made sense. There were the coughing fits I’ve seen multiple times and now the berserker state. The death of the woman could have been anything for all I knew, as B would tell me probably. It could be caused by whatever created the cough and rages or unrelated. For all I knew the Basilica killed her to hide evidence.

The woman’s augments were so thoroughly destroyed there was nothing left to get from it. But like B said, that had to imply dark implications about the Basilica. It could just be the end result of what’s afflicting people, which made understanding it even harder.

“We’re going to need to start talking to people. Someone has to know that woman and give us a connection.”

“As long as we’re not breaking into the Basilica.”

“Not anymore, would be too much of a risk. We’ll look in the town for answers. Anything that can get us clues to helping Louise.”