the winter principle [ze_kraken & jess]

Jess Incognito

Edgepeasant
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Modern Fiction, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Historic/Period. I'm quite versatile and open. More prone to original content than fandoms, though base inspiration is welcome.
You have no business meddling with this.

No, no - that wasn’t entirely fair. Of course he wasn't sure anyone would expect him to be fair on this. Please do not contact me about this again. Too simple. I don’t care if you visit, but I don’t want to see you. That wasn’t right either; give an inch and she'll take a mile. He couldn’t very well say any of this in a message, nor did he really wish to come across so dramatic no matter how angry it did make him.

“Coffee?”

But he didn’t want to talk to her in person either.

The waitress leaned in to pour without waiting for an answer, expecting the usual.

“No,” Thomas finally croaked, snapping out of a daze, “Sorry.” He moved to pull the mug away and she tilted the carafe upwards without splashing a drop, the weight of her upper body settling sinuously back on her hips. She pursed her lips and they stared at one another for an extended moment.

“Juice, then?” she was forced by the silence to ask, her voice thick and low, gesturing with the carafe.

“Water’s fine,” he said, feeling it was somehow a poor answer, like all of his internal conversations with imaginary versions of people he knew. "Two, though, please," he remembered.

She responded monosyllabically, “ ‘Kay,” and shuffled off, her shoes scuffing along the tile floor.

Tom hunched over the table a bit, the full weight of his forearms resting on the cool metal surface. He tapped his thumbs together impatiently. According to the time on his wrist, he was still early. Truth be told, he’d hoped they would both be early so that he could leave sooner, but now he’d have to wait with only himself to blame. His leg bounced absently, the heel of his shoe clacking the tile floor every other tap or so.

Through the window, daytime waned. No direct light hit the lower levels and the city lit up for evening, but a familiar hazy orange hue dripped down from sunset hitting glass and metal far above the street. The diner was only moderately busy - far past lunch and not quite dinner. Thomas stopped bouncing his leg when he made eye contact with a prickly looking woman at a two seater in the wide aisle. The door opened from the street, scraping the tile gently, and he looked up expectantly, but it still wasn’t Catlow.

He focused his mind on the task before him, pushing down the quagmire of his present personal life and its inane conversations. He leaned over sideways and from his coat pocket pulled a small tablet, which brightened automatically in hand. He rubbed the thing against his pant leg to clear away the smudges and cradled it in one palm as he scrolled through notes with the other index finger. It wasn't long, however, before square one reared its ugly head once more and he was reminded that he personally saw no correlation in any of the data that led to this new task force in the first place. And why put resources towards damage of property cases when there was murder afoot elsewhere in New Angeles? That was the common rhetoric among the police force, anyways.

In data, a clone was a clone, a piece of property. In the physical world, though, a clone was...serving him water with more enthusiasm than he deserved, even if it was pushing product.

"Two H2Os - perfect with a krill-cake special, y'know," the waitress said, delivering the two glasses of likely over-chlorinated water. "It's enough for two, I promise."

"I'm just gonna hold off for my friend," he said quietly.

She nodded sagely, turning on her heel, "Just think about it, hon."

In the physical world a clone was almost human - just not human enough. He found himself staring at the void the waitress had inhabited moments before, beyond which he met the stiff glare of a still pricklier looking woman. His leg ceased bouncing a second time. He hadn't realized when it started again. Sorry, he mouthed diffidently, on the verge of murmuring, but nothing came. He rotated in his seat, looking back at his small tablet.

 
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 Background Music
"I thought last time we did this, we agreed to leave politics at the door," he said, even as his face was buried in his tablet that cast a faint pale blue glow in the otherwise dark apartment building.

Vivian huffed as she threw her legs over the edge of the bed and vaulted into her pants, jostling them into place along her waist as she cast a glance over her shoulder. He still laid there, eyes never straying from the glow of his screen. It shone its light along the outline of his face - chiseled and straight-edged in a way Vivian knew was the result of cosmetic gene therapy - and gave it a sinister contrast of brightness and shadow. She might have called his expression disinterested, but as she continued examining it in the time it took to don her shirt and button it she supposed hallow might be a better descriptor. Their encounters usually ended like this, not that she minded: he was just one of several coping mechanisms, not that she would ever tell him that to his face.

"Politics," she finally said, drawing his attention from the pad. "I was not aware it was political to take offense at being told you're almost as good as paying for a Companion."

His passing attention became an intent focus, and his pad clicked off as he shifted over in the bed to look at her. She struggled to make his face out in the darkness, but she could see the steely glint in his eyes that he must have thought was intimidating.

"I know you're one of those clones rights activists," he said, trying to lace his voice with the same steel he had his gaze and falling short. "Bit on the nose, if my company found out-"

"If you want to be a good corporate stiff, I suggest you stop hitting me up and keep sticking it in those Companion models, then," Vivian interrupted. "I'm going. Lose the number."


It was raining when Vivian exited the apartment building out on to the street below, and she stopped for a moment to admire the way the lights and holograms from the advertisements lining the walls of the apartments above her reflected out from the fresh puddles. Her breath fogged in the chilly air as she flicked her wrist up, pulling up an augmented reality display only she could see emanating from her watch. He had, with no surprise to her, not lost her number. She flicked the notification aside, noting the reminder for her meeting with Thomas later that afternoon. Dead clone, was it?

Early. Too many distractions. Need a clear head.

Vivian's wrist slid down by her side, and the display vanished as quick as it had come as she queued up a taxi with a quick flick up and to the left of her eyes. It arrived a few minutes later, hovering down to street level, door opening automatically at her approach as it verified her user ID. It was a sleek thing, rain sliding gracefully down its almost entirely glass exterior. Its engines thrummed and whined as it swayed in place, and once inside Vivian shook herself dry across its plain and uncomfortable plastic interior.

"Take me home," she said, and the cab acknowledged with a quick flash of green light and a pleasant jingle.

The route to Vivian's apartment flashed along the windshield before adjusting out to an augmented display along the car's route. Gracefully, the car began to rise into the air and take Vivian to her destination. She examined her case notes mid-flight, sparing glances to the cityscape of New Angeles around her as the taxi ferried her along. When she arrived, the cab deducted the fare from her account as soon as the door opened and she stepped out to the concrete below. No sooner than when both her feet touched down did the cab shut its doors and shot off.

Vivian's apartment was nothing memorable. One room and a bathroom, comprised of a narrow hallway kitchen complete with fridge and microwave and a wider space that housed a twin bed and couch lined against one another. A small television set, a plain metal bar that would case the image up along the wall, stood atop a decrepit entertainment stand. She changed into fresh clothes after allowing herself a quick burst of chlorinated water from her shower and continued reviewing her notes until her pad notified her that, in combination with the wait for a cab and traffic conditions, now was the time to leave.

Another quick cab ride and Vivian stood in front of the diner, a favorite of Thomas's she recalled as she stepped through its automatic front doors. The diner was largely empty, for which Vivian was thankful. She spotted Thomas mid-apology and slid into the booth opposite him. He had already ordered them waters. How kind, even though she knew he detested needing to rely on an outside investigator for help. He looked spic and span as usual, but his impatience was written clear upon his face in the slight frown that tug at the corner of his lips and the way his brow had furrowed ever so slightly. Vivian could feel the vibrations his jittering leg sent up along the support beam of the table separating them.

By contrast, Vivian looked haggard and tired. Bags hung beneath her eyes, and her hair - usually well-kept and vibrant - was frayed and frizzed. Haunted came to mind, she supposed as she examined her reflection in a stainless steel napkin dispenser to her left, before casting the thought aside.

"Hi, Thomas," she said flatly, voice trailing as they were interrupted by the waitress.

"What can I get you 'hun?" The clone asked, all smiles and annoyingly programmed friendliness.

"Just a coffee, I think," she said, reconsidering as her stomach grumbled and she realized she had not yet eaten. "And krill cakes, I think."


 

Vivian slid into the booth before he'd even noticed she'd entered the diner. Right on time, he thought somewhat dully. Thomas pushed his back into the seat, straightening his posture compulsively and setting the small tablet face down on the tabletop.

The waitress raised a tempting eyebrow in his direction when the krill cakes were ordered, “And you?” He truly wasn't hungry, but he didn’t want to take up a seat for the cost of purified water.

"Formula, please,” he said curtly. The nutrient shake would hold him over at the least. She nodded and turned around to check on the few other occupied tables. The diner remained thankfully low volume, the other few patrons sufficiently absorbed in their own conversations.

“Afternoon, Vivian,” he said, swiveling his gaze back to the detective. She looked tired - less vibrant than usual. Maybe she wouldn't insist on going over every single detail they didn't have on this one. He looked at her for a brief moment, unable to make small talk with that unfair thought floating in the back of his mind. He sipped his water instead. Their meetings were typically straight to the point anyway.

"The report we sent over to you came in yesterday," he said, referring to the few pages of call transcripts and less than informative notes made by the responding officer. "Stale scene - the crime likely occurred elsewhere and the body just dumped in that alley. Our pathologist suspects the clone expired at least 16 hours before being found by a tenant in the building, but that tenant claims they'd been through the alley around 8AM and saw no body. So the body was dumped at least 4 hours after the crime."

If she'd read the report - and Thomas knew she had; Vivian was nothing if not dedicated - then she knew this already, but this type of regurgitation was standard.

"Didn't make it down there personally until this morning, but there wasn't much left over to see," he added dryly, "So that's all of it so far." Cases like this made up the bulk of their work together - destruction of random clones. There had been an uptick in this kind of crime in the past year, but for their little task force, successful charges were few.

It couldn't be filed under random acts of violence because the body had been dumped instead of left at the scene. Someone wanted it to look like some back alley crime and maybe it was, just not in this alley, which, in their book, automatically filed it under not-some-spontaneous-back-alley-crime. The report contained some additional information from the clone’s registration ID - employer, dwelling, no infractions.

"I'll bet the employer already has another at work," he speculated, swirling his water glass around in a pool of its own condensation, "Insurance confirmed coverage was cost of replacement only, so there's no motive there."

Thomas sighed lightly through his nose, looking to Vivian for her take.


 

"Expired," Vivian said, rolling each syllable around her mouth before letting it slide out in a tone of disdain. "We use the same word to describe the death of a living being as you would for that bottle of soylent that's been sitting in your fridge for six months."

When first Vivian and Thomas had started working together, such remarks would have succeeded in getting a rise out of Thomas, but as Vivian's eyes gave him a quick scan she found - with only a shred of disappointment - that would not be the case today. No, Thomas was all formality this afternoon, even if that formality had let slip some of his agitation at her less-than-punctual arrival. No matter. A job was a job, and she owed Thomas the same level of courtesy he had shown her.

Which we both know I've done nothing to exhibit that I don't deserve, she thought ruefully, clearing her throat.

"Still," she continued as if never having made the prior comment. "Whoever did this knows enough to try and hide the body in an alley, but not enough to know that clones rarely wander about dark alleyways in the middle of the night. Not even people do that, and they're not biologically leashed to their post."

Vivian consulted her pad and pulled the case notes up to her contact lenses, glancing up and to the right as she scrolled through them. The waitress came back with their drinks, along with a promise that the krill cakes were on their way. Vivian nodded in acknowledgement, too absorbed in the reading to do much else.

"Says here," she said, dismissing the case notes and turning her attention back to Thomas, "that the clone was shot through the base of the neck, too. There were other gunshot wounds, but that strikes me as unusual. It could be a million-to-one shot that the killer managed a shot clean through like that, but there's a certain precision here."


With a click to her pad, she projected the case notes over top of the table. Among them was a fully rendered silhouette along with each of the reported injuries the clone had sustained marked in red. Reviewing case notes in such a way in public was rarely allowed for ongoing investigations, but Vivian and Thomas' work settings for their pads allowed for only their eyes to see the augmented reality display. As Vivian was preparing to point out the injury in question, a plate of krill cakes was suddenly laid atop the torso of the clone.

Annoying, she twitched, forcing her best appreciative smile.

"Thank you," she said, sliding the plate to the side, nabbing a krill cake for herself and offering one to Thomas as she continued.

She waited for the waitress to be out or earshot before resuming properly.

"So, normally I'd chalk this up to some idiot wanting to have some fun destroying corporate property or trying to stick it in something where rape charges aren't applicable. Only, there were no signs of sexual distress caused according to the pathologist's report, and this one bullet wound is messing with me. It might be I'm reading into things, but this one's a lot cleaner than the others. And how many random shootings do you see where the bullet wounds in the chest are from the front, but the ones to the neck are from the back? Looks to me that whoever did this executed the clone at short range, or possible from afar that part isn't so important. What is important is that I think when they dumped the body they shot it up more to make it look more sloppy, along with this act of dumping it in some alleyway."

Vivian paused to catch her breath and munched at her krill cake. It was better than most bottom-rate faux-food in the area, and even though she knew almost everything in it was fake she could not help but feel like it was as close to the real thing people at the turn of the millennia might have enjoyed by the beach during the summer. That, and water that was not several more miles inland and filled with plastic.

"So, in actionable items," Vivian said, realizing she had lost her point in there. "We need to check with the employer, get the activity logs for that clone on the day of the, ahem, expiration and get a detailed ballistics report on what might have been used to inflict those injuries. Agreed?"


 
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Thomas folded his arms down on the metal tabletop. Resisting the urge to sigh, he raised his brow and replied casually, "Just reading the report." It was a half-hearted defense, but non-aggressive. Anyway, none of the things in his fridge were that old, he didn't think.

"Whoever did this knows enough to try and hide the body in an alley, but not enough to know that clones rarely wander about dark alleyways in the middle of the night," she said.

Thomas tilted his head from one shoulder to the other, musing on her point. "Could just be some sadist looking to hurt something," he said bluntly. It had happened before. They still had to catch the guy of course. Even with the city's mixed politics on clones' rights, this sort of thing was looked at with as much concern as a child stringing up dead cats - the potential for worse.

He smiled at the waitress until she turned and left. Thomas liked to think the other patrons thought they were playing cards or something, but their low voices and long pauses were likely more conspicuous than that. The nutrient shake was superlatively bland, but nothing a heap of sweetener couldn't fix. He quietly peeled the lid back and shook the metal canister over the open cup while Vivian pulled up the report visuals.

"Yeah, none of it adds up as-is," he agreed as she laid out her reasoning on that neck wound, "But in what situation would anyone essentially execute a clone and then hide it?" he asked rhetorically, in a world where clones at the end of their usefulness could be discarded for nothing. He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck in thought. It almost pained him to add to the mystery, because it all snowballed into a more complicated case than he'd wanted at the moment. He felt inward shame for hoping that his weekend would clear up in the way of just letting this go. He tentatively reached for the krill cake she'd offered to distract from that thought.

Thomas stared at the visual on the table as she laid out her to-do's. "Agreed," he conceded after a moment, "I'll let the tech know to move forward with ballistics analysis." He was slow to continue, still trying to decide if he actually wanted to deal with his inconvenient personal problems that evening or his inconvenient job. "In the meantime, the second shift manager might think less about parting with first shift workforce info." He was counting on communication being low between shifts. "And you can see the scene, see if anything new catches your eye."

Plus, there was the possibility to catch a different tenant walking by who may have seen something, a stall vendor across the road who hadn't been at work that morning - you never knew what you'd find.

"If you've time today," he said, gesturing with an open palm.


 
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"I've got plenty of time," Vivian said, knowing the qualifier was just a bit of polite maneuvering on Thomas' part - as if, somehow, she were not as liable for a failure to perform as he was, even if she was just contracted help. "Cleared the rest of the day for work, most of the night, too. Let me call us up a ride..."

She crossed her arms, then, and swiped aside the shared augmented reality display across the table, watching with a bit of giddy satisfaction as it vanished into nothingness at the edge of the table. Severing the connection between hers and Thomas' device, she called up a cab for two as she continued to munch at her krill cakes. The taste faded into an echoed feeling along her tongue as she set the pick-up and drop-off destination, mind already churning through what Thomas had briefed her on. Vivian adopted an aloof, distant air as they waited in awkward silence for the cab and her thoughts stirred.

Once the cab arrived they stood and departed, fees deducting from their accounts as they stepped out onto the pavement outside. This cab was slightly larger than the one Vivian had arrived in, and in considerably worse condition. It was a stretch to say this was fit for two people, and once inside, both she and Thomas crammed shoulder-to-shoulder, she regretted the decision to offer a ride together. She remained rigidly in place as the cab took off, chartering them to the business district marked in the case file as the scene of the dumping. In an attempt to distract herself from the high probability that others had used this cab for intimate moments at high speeds in the air, and how the cab had also likely gone months without a proper sanitation judging by the grime that had built up along its seats and amenities, she pulled out her PAD and flicked through the case notes on the alleyway and its immediate surroundings.

Not quite the scene of the crime, she supposed, finding it unlikely still that a working clone was enjoying a night on the town and wandered off into an alleyway.

The cab slipped through the sky, zipping past high rises and slums that seemed to exchange every other block or so as the various, criss-crossing pockets of New Angeles gave way to yet more sprawling urban development. Vivian had never thought much of it, as her childhood in Brasilia had acclimated her to concrete and glass and holo-adverts to such a degree that on the rare occasion she was left in even a remotely quiet district of the city she felt great unease. The Americans at her university had always commented on the energy New Angeles had, but she had detested the images of rolling fields and wide spaces they had described.

Case. She reminded herself, finding her gaze - and attention - drifting from the PAD to the cityscape beyond.

After a little under half an hour of less-than-focused attention on her PAD, the cab touched down at the pair's destination. Vivian stepped confidently out onto the concrete, long coat flapping in the exhaust of the cab as it took off the moment Thomas did the same. Her PAD notified her lenses that the payment had been deducted, and she nodded, heading to holographic police lining to their right. Overhead, more autos whined and revved their engines, and the ground was no less crowded with more traditional autos and the rare instance of a piloted car. Shoppers went about their lives, clutching bags, checking their social feeds, talking obnoxiously loudly on their PADs.

The sunlight was beginning to fade already behind the expanse of the high rises that surrounded them, casting a hazy orange glow that cut down the streets and alleys and illuminating the heavy pollution in the air with a fiery edge highlight. Vivian approached the police line, nodding at the officer and showcasing her credentials. The human officer conferred with his biroid counterpart, following with a similar scan and check of Thomas' credentials. He let them through, and immediately Vivian set out to where a point of discovery had been laid out - the dumpster was marked off, the blood stains numbered about the concrete.

"Blood stains are not consistent with injuries," Vivian remarked dryly, pointing them out as she approached the dumpster. "They're too sporadic, too limited. This isn't the kind of blood you'd see from someone that was shot just under ten times."

Even as she said someone her thoughts drifted temporarily to last night's company, and she fought the urge to amend herself.

"Right," she said after a brief pause, shaking herself mentally. "That's inconsistency one. Dumpster..."

She approached it, peering inside to a pile of garbage that reeked of not having been taken out in weeks.

"...nothing noteworthy. Some more blood, but that could have pooled from the injuries. Did you have any more things you wanted to point out in meatspace while we're here, Thomas?"

 
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Thomas chewed on the inside of his cheek as Vivian flicked deftly through the options on her screen, hailing them a cab. He watched her for a moment, but realized it could be equated to staring, however absentmindedly, and flicked away his gaze. He started filling out the request form for the lab to let them know to go ahead with further analysis. Habit check-marked the box for Standard Processing, but he scrolled back to it later and switched it to Urgent.

His gaze flitted to Vivian, feeling self-conscious even though she was still busy and she couldn't have known what he was thinking. She also didn't care, he was certain. But still, her sheer will for consistently pointing out how she believed Clones should be treated made him want to handle this case how he would a murder. A human murder, that was. He sent the request with a flick of his thumb and returned the PAD to his coat pocket. It wasn't long before the cab arrived.

In the vehicle's cramped back seat, Thomas could feel the woman holding her muscles and posture tight. He sensed this through touch, being crammed together as they were, but the air itself seemed not to move, zapped still by their mutual discomfort. He put more effort into squishing against the side door, but tried to crane his neck over to make it look more like he did it for the view - for as much respect he could give her in that small space as possible.

He stepped out and barely closed the door as the cab rushed off to its next passenger, not even waiting for him to pass behind it. Safely behind the police line, they had more personal space from the crowd that moved on about their lives on the street. The scene still buzzed with related personnel and Vivian made a quick scan of the details.

He paced slowly around the alley, hands in his pockets. Nothing much had changed since the morning, but he was looking for something to jump out, to point them in the next direction. Alas, an investigation never was that easy.

Tom was distracted by the time she spoke. He nodded accordingly. It all added up to her initial suspicions in the diner. He glanced up the side of the building, noting a swinging blind where there had been a face before Vivian had drawn his attention away. People were always curious and truth be told, most of the time if they had information, they found their way to some poor officer holding the line and talked their ear off about the shock it was to their morning.

“Did you have any more things you wanted to point out in meatspace while we're here, Thomas?” she asked.

He chewed the inside of his cheek, mulling it over. “Neighborhood like this,” he started, “Someone’s always around. If the- victim was already dead, then what? The perp dragged them here, maybe from a car, but across at least the public sidewalk and then shot the body nine more times?” His tone conveyed all skepticism.

The detective shook his head, looking deeper into the alleyway. An unnatural square of light framed the chain link fence divide, having deflected off a few dozen windows into the depths of the street level alley. He hadn’t thought anything of it in the dimness of the morning, but now he approached it, some twenty feet from the body, about the halfway point of the block. It was locked after all and he pulled on it hard to convince himself. The chink-chink travelled back to the mouth of the alley with the slightest echo in the crevice of the mid-rise rooming buildings. He peered through a hole in the vinyl strips woven through the chainlink. It surprisingly did not look all the way to the next street over, but he also saw nothing of note in the small space there.

“Maybe not,” he turned and said to Vivian with a shrug, marking that unspoken theory as unlikely, though not impossible. “We can head over to the factory then.”

“Rojas,” he called to the two officers at the line, “Mind giving us a lift? ‘S not far.” The younger pulled her thumbs out of her belt and glanced at her peer for permission to leave. She nodded and Tom leaned around to look at Vivian, “Whenever you’re ready, then.”