Annihilation: Love Conquers All by Saxon Andrew, Derek Chiodo Page A

her readings with a different unit. Her brow was furrowed as she commed army headquarters for information and went back to her readings. She noticed that two more floaters were moving toward the crime scene. “Maybe someone else can make sense of this,” she thought. She had just turned nineteen the week before and knew she was young and had only eight months experience, but she had taken a lot of time to study crime cases to learn her craft. She had never read about anything that came close to the readings she had just made. Inspector Sinclair walked up to her and asked her to report her findings to Chief Inspector Connor as soon as she finished her analysis. She gathered her materials and walked toward the man who was head of all continental security. She had already taken three readings, and taking more was not going to change them. “It is what it is,” she thought. “Be sharp,” she commanded herself again.
     
    “John, what do you make of this?” Chief Inspector Connor asked Inspector Sinclair. “Do you think one person did this? Do you have the video footage yet from the cameras? Which one do you think was killed first?” He rattled off question after question.
     
    John Sinclair, Inspector Connor’s second in command and an eighteen-year veteran on the force, said, “Slow down, Esa. The medical technician is electro-probing their brains now to determine the exact time of death. Also, since this looks like it was done in hand-to-hand fighting, I’ve called my liaison with the military and they’re going to send a Lieutenant Colonel Ortiz, who is an expert, and I believe that’s his floater that just landed over by the medical sled. I’m having monitoring service send the video from the cameras to your floater’s computer and it should be here in less than two minutes.”
     
    John suddenly held his communicator to his ear and said, “Okay. If you think it’s necessary, then come on.” He then turned to Chief Inspector Connor and said, “Major Daniels is coming down here in person to discuss the video footage that was taken tonight.”
     
    Inspector Connor raised his eyebrows and John said, “I know. It’s highly unusual that the head of city monitoring would take the time to visit a crime scene. For that matter, I’ve never heard of him leaving his surveillance duties for any reason. He should be here momentarily. He also says that a Sergeant Garcia will be joining us in about ten minutes.”
     
    “I haven’t ever heard of him going to a crime scene, either,” Inspector Connor said, “so there must be something very unusual that happened here on the video tonight. John, I want you to bring the medical technician as soon as she gets her readings, then get Colonel Ortiz and Major Daniels and meet me over at the wall where all this happened. Tell Jack to bring Sergeant Garcia over when he arrives.”
     
    “Yes sir,” John said.
     
    Esa stood at the wall where four men had lost their lives. He slowly walked from body to body, looking at how they fell, trying to piece together how this had taken place. He looked up the wall of the towering building, but there was solid crystal as far as the eye could see. It would be almost impossible to break one of those windows, and there were no crystal shards around the crime scene. The pieces just didn’t seem to fit. There had to be more information. “These men were poorly dressed,” he thought. “Unfortunately, most criminals today are similarly dressed; poverty is a cruel mistress.” Then he noticed John approaching with the others.
     
    “Inspector Connor, this is Danielle Ash, the medical technician who took the readings for time of death,” John said.
     
    Inspector Connor thought she was rather small for the type of work she did, especially having to move dead bodies. She was only five feet four or five feet five, slim build, and quite pretty, almost too pretty, with sparkling blue eyes. There was something about her eyes that spoke of