Something Puzzling

  “Where are you off to?” asked the Sergeant as Ian got up from his seat and headed to the door.

  “I’ve got to meet a mathematician, he might have a lead for me,”

  “Where?”

  “Tuks campus, see you later,”

  “Shouldn’t I come with?”

  “Might as well, I guess, but I’m driving,” said Ian.

 

            Half an hour later they were at Tuks campus. There was no parking on campus, as Ian knew all too well, so he got a parking spot in a shopping centre two blocks away and the two Scorpion officers walked to the campus.

            Once there, Ian made his way to the mathematics building while the Sergeant went off to some other faculty building. The hallway to the professors office was decorated with suits of armour at regular intervals, a somewhat out of place theme for a predominantly Afrikaans university.

            He could hear muffled voices as he approached the heavy wooden doors. He knocked. No answer. He knocked again and heard the shuffling of feet, then something fell to the ground.

            Ian broke the door open and found the professor lying on the ground. Over him stood a man wreathed in smoky shadows, a strange device in his hand which was covered in blood. Ian looked down at the professor, noticed the wound at the back of his head, and reached for the two swords at his back.

            As he did this, a man burst in from a door on the other end of the room. He first noticed the shadow-man, then Ian, then the dead professor. He appeared to be unarmed.

            The shadow-man disappeared into nothingness, as if he hadn’t been there, leaving the two other men to stare at each other. Neither of them moved, until the other man turned tail and ran through the door he had come from.

            Ian chased after him, wondering if it wasn’t an Others agent. This hallway was decorated much in the same way as the other. Ian noticed he wasn’t going to catch the man, so he seethed one of his blades, grabbed an ornate battle axe from one of the suits of armour and flung it at the man. He just barely missed, but the man fell to the floor to avoid the axe. This gave Ian time to close the distance between them.

            The man jumped to his feet, grabbed another battle axe from one of the other suits and swung at Ian as he approached. Ian sidestepped the blow and tried a stab at the man, who dodged it and retaliated with a chop at Ian’s exposed left arm.

            Ian managed to manoeuvre his off-hand blade in between the axe and his skin, although the shock of the blow still buffeted him. He broke the haft of the axe with his right sword, struck the man in the face with his pommel and cut at him with his left sword. But the man was too quick and the blow Ian landed ended up being a light scratch that cut through the man’s clothes and the first few layers of skin.

            The man looked around but saw no way around Ian, so he dove out the window behind him. He did a combat roll as he landed and continued on sprinting. Ian considered following but knew it would be futile, the man had a good lead and was somewhat faster than Ian. Instead he headed back to the office of the professor.

  “So that’s three,” said the Sergeant a half hour later as the forensics team finally showed up.

  “Yeah, but at least it’s not our worries anymore,”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Special Agent,” said the Colonel as she entered the room.

  “This is the third such murder, it’s got nothing to do with us,”

  “This is the second cybernetics killing,” said the Colonel.

  “No, the professor wasn’t augmented,”

  “He was, as of five months ago,” she said and pointed at the dead man’s hand. Only now did Ian realize that it was a mechanical hand. “Boating accident,”

  “So that’s two dead cyborgs, which classifies it under the ‘Computers and shit’ category, so it’s our worry,” said the Sergeant happily.

  “Yes, and it’s still your case. You say you were here when he was killed, Special Agent?”

  “Yeah, well sort of,” said Ian, “I came to see the professor because he knew some of the people who had worked on the NDI, the device used to kill him,”

  “NDI?” asked the Colonel.

  “It’s a very big flash drive used to download people’s minds. It was meant to copy info, but unfortunately it kills the person it downloads from. Very experimental. Anyway, came in, the Shadow killed the professor and then some idiot burst through that door. The Shadow disappeared and I chased after the idiot. Only he escaped,”

  “Others?”

  “No, he could barely handle a battle axe. I was surprised he didn’t take off his own head,”

  “Then who was it?” asked the Sergeant.

  “No idea,”

 

            Connor fell into the back of the van, panting. He had just run four blocks to get here and the wound on his chest burnt like hellfire.

  “Drive!” he commanded Abigail.

  “What happened?”

  “Just, drive!”

            Abigail started the van and pulled into the traffic. Connor examined the wound. It wasn’t deep but it hurt like it had been a cut to the bone. He opened a floor panel and retrieved a first aid kit, removing the disinfectant and bandages he started administering his own wound.

  “So, are you going to tell me what happened?”

  “The Scorpion with the two swords, what his name, Ivan? Jan?”

  “Ian,”

  “Yes, that one, he happened. The asshole threw an axe at me!”

  “Too bad he missed,”

  “You know you’d miss me if anything happened, you’d have no eye candy while on assignment,”

  “What happened to the professor?”

  “I haven’t got no idea. Some shadow-man killed him,”

  “Shadow-man? The Others don’t have that kind of tech,”

  “No, they don’t. And they also don’t have NDIs,”

  “Shit, serous?”

  “Yeah, downloaded the professor just before I got there, then poof, disappeared,”

  “We’ll need to run this by the counsel before we make our next move,”

 

            Ian was on his way home when his phone rang. At first he thought it was Danny checking to see why he was late, but the number was blocked.

  “Hello?”

  “Dragon, its Oracle, can you talk?”

  “Yeah, I’m only driving,”

  “Good, that’ll be enough interference. Look, I’ve been asking around the Augmented community, and it seems this isn’t really a new thing. For the past year, Augmented people have been disappearing. Only a few have been found, all with the same wound at the base of their skulls. And it’s not only in South Africa,”

  “What do you know about experimental cloaking tech?”

  “No, you’re not looking for someone that can go invisible. They call this…thing the Shadow,”

  “They?”

  “People like you. People that walked in on it killing an Aug,”

  “What about Robert, though, he wasn’t an Aug,”

  “No, but he had a wealth of useful info inside his head,”

  “Including keys to Betsy, damn it, I knew we should have shot that damn thing down when we had the chance,”

  “You might still get that chance again. Listen, one more thing before I go, when last did you speak to Devon?”

  “I spoke to him this morning, why?”

  “What has he told you about Melisa?”

  “Well, nothing today, but he’s already told us everything that she had told him,”

  “How sure are you?”

  “I trust Devon with my life, what are you getting at, that Devon is keeping something from us?”

  “Not something, someone,”

  “Impossible, I saw her body,”

  “Corpses can lie, Dragon, you know that better than anyone,”

  “That was different, she was in danger,”

  “But if Hugo found out he’d never forgive you or Ed,”

  “It would kill him,” Ian agreed. “But that’s why we staged her death,”

  “And Devon couldn’t do the same?”

  “But why?”

  “Melisa’s told him something, something he hasn’t told anyone else. If I were you, I’d find out what it was,” Oracle said and ended the call.

            When Ian arrived at the house, Ed, Danny and Aaliyah had already set the table. They had hoped that JR would join them, but like the night before he came to fetch his food and retired to his room.

            The two couples stayed up for a while talking, some of it about the wedding, some of it about the day’s events. Before long, Aaliyah dragged Ed off to bed and a few minutes later Danny did the same to Ian.

            As was his pattern these days, Ian headed up to the roof to stare out at the city in the early morning. He was deep in thought, a million things going through his head. Who was this Shadow? Who was the man he had chased? What was Devon hiding? Was Ed the new superhero known as the Black Arrow?

            All these things raced through his mind but he had no answers.

  “Hey, dude,” he said instinctively as he heard someone coming up the stairs.

  “Ed’s not up here? I” asked Aaliyah.

  “No, I thought he was with you. I was actually just about to go and check,”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t have advised that. Unless you wanted a sneak peak at what’s under the hood,” she said winking, “Though I don’t think Danny would be happy,”

  “Flesh is flesh, it’s what you do with it that matters,” said Ian. “Where is that kid?”

  “What’s going on?” asked Danny as she poked her head out Ian’s room.

  “Ed’s missing,” said Aaliyah.

  “Missing as in?”

  “Not in the house,” said Ian from the ground floor.

            He checked the garage, Ed’s car was there, as was his own and JR’s. Aaliyah’s car was outside, next to Danny’s. Ian reached for his phoned, scrolled until he found Ed’s number and tried phoning him.

  “Answer the phone, Superducky, answer the phone,”

  “Hi, you’ve reached my phone, but I’m not near it at the moment-”

  “Damn it!” Ian swore and ended the call. “I’m gonna kill you, Ed, if someone else doesn’t do it, I will,”

 

            Ed opened the front door as quietly as possible. He didn’t want a repeat of what happened three weeks ago when he had gone to pick up JR and Bernard from the police station.

            He closed the door behind him and heard the distinct sound of a knife being pulled out of the knife block on the kitchen island. This time he was ready. Ed threw his right hand in the air, no need to bend with right middle finger in towards his palm.

  “Better,” Ian said and switched on the lights. Ed noticed that he wasn’t in a good mood, no doubt because he had left without telling anyone. “Explain, and black arrows had better not have anything to do with this,”