Chapter 9:

Jin Yurinhalt was afraid of death.

Faustic


Jin Yurinhalt was afraid of death. She had no idea why; her career had the lowest survival rate in the country, she had seemingly no chance for future promotions, and she had no family left in the world. Did she see some value in her life? Perhaps in some utilitarian way, for one reason or another, she determined that staying alive was better for the world. She was a good Runner, and she had saved a lot of lives. No doubt she would save many more should she continue living.

Regardless of the reason, it was absolute and certain that Jin, the last daughter of the Yurinhalt family, did not want to die.

She realised it the moment Betty charged at her, claws flashing and jaws wide. She had reached straight for her gun, levered it right at the homunculus’s face, and if a sniper had not done it for her, she would have pulled the trigger. She would have killed Betty.

Would have. Standing over the homunculus’s corpse, the gravel road coloured an oily white like sea foam, she did not feel like a witness. She felt as though she had plunged a knife into the creature’s stomach herself; felt the heft of the weapon, the momentum of its weight when she thrusted it. The resistance of her flesh pulling away, the squish and tear of shredded organs. She could feel the warmth of her final breath.

She killed Betty.

“Someone grab the boy!” Séquard barked. Even suspended, his voice commanded more respect than any other Runner’s. More respect than Jin’s. “And grab a medic too, he’s bleeding!”

Before he left to go help, Séquard turned around and gave Jin a cold glare.

All of the other Runners and soldiers were rushing to help the boy, giving him blankets and coats and calling for a hot cocoa. In that busy panic, Betty’s corpse laid in the open, untouched. No one so much as covered her with a tarp to spare her some dignity. And why would they? She was just a homunculus.

“Colonel?” Chang held her shoulder. “Are you okay? You haven’t moved.”

Jin batted his hand away. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

With both hands, she gave herself a light slap. She didn’t have time to be caught in a daze. Orders are orders, she reminded herself, and she still had a job to do.

Jin put on a pair of gloves and approached the corpse. It was imperative she analyse as much of the body as possible as soon as death occurs. Within hours, blood circulation ceases, muscles stiffen, and body temperature plummets. By tomorrow, Betty’s organs would have liquefied. If she wanted to get an accurate assessment of the homunculus, now would be the best time to–

Ms Yurinhalt, you’re compartmentalising.

Jin shook the voice out of her head. It was the last thing she needed right now, not when she had so much to do.

She began with the two jaws, their dual lines of teeth. Each one had to be measured and categorised. Halfway through counting the incisors, another pair of hands reached down to help.

“When you said you could send that homunculus to the menagerie,” said Chang. “Was that just a ploy?”

“I just blurted out whatever came into my mind.”

“It wouldn’t have worked.”

“I know.”

“It killed a man. There’s no coming back from that.”

“I know,” she repeated, louder.

“Then why?”

“Why what?”

“Why try so hard,” he asked. “We could have sniped it from afar. Saved all that effort.”

“I don’t know, Chang. Sometimes you say things because they feel right in the moment, and sometimes feeling right in the moment is all that matters.” She pulled open the homunculus’s lower jaw. “There’s no point discussing it anymore; it’s all in the past now.”

Jin paused at the sight of the new line of teeth. She ran a finger along the lower incisors, double-checking them in her head, murmuring the details to herself.

“Colonel?”

“Hold on.”

The cold wave of doubt came crashing through her. She thought back to the start of the investigation, the display of the crime scene, of Samuel West, desperately hoping to find some error in her memory. With each detail, that cold wave grew in size until it all came crashing down on like a tidal wave.

“Fuck,” said Jin.

Walking through the Bureau’s morgue, Jin couldn’t help but remember the meat hangars in Boil’s slaughterhouse. Not in the sense that they had the same design, but that they smelt almost identical. It was the smell of meat. Not rotting and foul and infested with maggots and swarmed with flies, but just meat. Raw meat. The metallic smell of iron and the sour stink of preservatives.

If she just closed her eyes, she could almost believe she was walking through that same cold fridge again, rows upon rows of hanging carcasses around her, bits of the ribcage poking through bare flesh. Puddles of curdling lymph, sticking to the soles of her boots.

Jin stopped in front of a wall of lockers. She pulled open the latch and immediately, warm air blasted past. She only realised the air stunk because Chang was gagging behind her. She smelt nothing.

“Oh god.” He lurched over. “I really hope you have a good reason for defiling the dead.”

“I’m doing the forensics team’s job for them.” She pulled out the tray, holding something covered by white tarp. Jin tugged the sheet off, and a corpse stared back. Its skin was a putrid beige with dry blood pooling underneath, giving it a bloated texture like a water bubble about to pop.

Samuel West, auto mechanic, age forty-three, had seen better days. The reason his remains were in such a ghastly state was because neither his ex-wife nor his son wished to see him. Thus, his body was to be held by the Runner’s Bureau until it was decided he had no scientific or investigative value remaining, in which case he was to be buried in a closed casket.

“Chang.” Jin tilted West’s chin up to get a better look at his neck wounds. “Can you run me through the coroner’s report?”

Chang was covering his mouth and nose with a handkerchief. “Death by blood loss. Esophagus and abdomen was torn apart. Various parts of colon, small intestine, liver, gallbladder, stomach missing.”

“I want details on the bite marks.”

“Standard class B. See for yourself.”

Reconstructed schematics of the jaw appeared on her interface, red lines on a black background. They were lucky to find such a clean bite on the body, allowing for cleaner 2D and 3D diagrams.

Jin swiped the schematics to one side and brought up pictures of Betty’s jaws on the other. One by one, she compared each tooth, every canine and every incisor. They were similar; scarily so. In fact, most of them were exact matches, down to the grooves of the bone.

Yet, there were sparse mismatches. Slight misalignment, so minute that most would consider them errors of the photography. The angle of one tooth, the size of another.

No, she told herself. She was being paranoid. Seeing things that weren’t there.

“You know, for having so much doubt,” a familiar voice spoke. “You already know the answer.”

“You know the answer,” she said, checking the abdominal wounds. “I don’t.”

“Jin, there’s no you and I. There’s not even a ‘we.’ Everything I think, you think. My conclusions are your conclusions.”

“Humour me then.”

He sighed. “Homunculi are your specialty. You know them as well as a blacksmith knows the hammer or a weaver knows the loom. You are both butcher and vet.”

“I don’t remember you being so verbose.”

“This wasn’t a homunculus, Jin.”

Jin Yurinhalt glanced back. She met his eyes, still blazing green.

“This was human,” said Faust.