were
designed to crawl through the bloodstream and transmit a detailed
analysis of its condition. Lastly, he opened another vial of
nano-bots beside the corpse and allowed them several minutes to
spread over and scan the immediate area.
Rees was getting drowsy by the time Morgan
spoke to him again, his whirring servos and humming circuits
lingering just beneath his voice.
“ I have completed my
examination, Detective Rees. Quite a remarkable case, I must
admit.”
“ Remarkable?” Rees asked.
“How’s that?”
“ As of this moment, I am
afraid that I still have yet to identify the victim.”
“ What? You didn’t get
anything from a DNA scan?”
“ No,” Morgan said. Rees
wasn’t sure, but he thought he detected frustration in the
digitized voice. “While it is not unheard of to occasionally
encounter an individual whose genetic code is not registered in the
national databanks, I have never seen a sample returned as
completely negative.”
“ What does that
mean?”
“ It means, Detective Rees,
that your victim’s DNA does not register as human.”
That was definitely something Rees had never
heard before.
“ How is that possible?” he
asked.
“ I do not
know.”
That, as far as Rees knew, was also a
first.
“ There are, however,”
Morgan said, “a number of unidentified toxins in the victim’s
bloodstream. It is possible that these toxins could have an adverse
affect on the DNA scan. I will need to examine the victim more
thoroughly and subject its blood to a number of tests before I can
tell you more.”
Rees didn’t bother to ask about the
implications of the corpse not being human.
The case was already weird enough.
“ What about the injuries
to the hands and face?
“ To put it simply,
Detective Rees, they are the most unusual I have ever encountered,
but they did not cause the victim’s death. He was shot eight times,
with two bullets puncturing the heart, two hitting the stomach, one
in the skull, and the three remaining bullets becoming lodged in
the spinal column. Standard sidearm nano-rounds.”
Rees couldn’t believe there were still
people stupid enough to commit murder with a modern gun. Every
firearm manufactured within the last fifty years fired a caseless,
computerized bullet that recorded the time and location from which
it was fired. The bullet also carried the registration information
of the gun that fired it and the DNA coding of whoever pulled the
trigger. There were still a few antique lead-spitters floating
around on the streets, but most of them had been confiscated and
melted down as part of the government’s crackdown on illegal
firearms.
Morgan continued.
“ The first bullet was
fired at precisely 2:33:21 AM and struck the victim’s heart. The
next six rounds were fired quickly, within a span of ten seconds,
but the bullet to the skull was fired a full five minutes later.
All eight rounds were fired at point blank range. The weapon was
fired by a Sircotin Technologies executive named George Vandum,
Vice-President of Optics Research and Production.”
That certainly wasn’t the kind of suspect
Rees had expected, but considering that the case involved a body
with melted flesh that might not even be human, he wasn’t about to
let anything surprise him.
“ Do we have a current
address on him?”
“ Yes,” Morgan said. “I
have already transmitted my report to headquarters and filed a
warrant for his arrest.”
“ Oh,” Rees
said.
“ Do you have any further
questions, Detective Rees?”
“ No, I can get anything
else I need from your report.”
“ Do you require a
hardcopy?”
Rees nodded and felt fortunate that the
department hadn’t yet made it a requirement for all officers to
have datachip implants. He was one of only a handful who weren’t
wired in any way.
Morgan reached up to the tiny computer drive
plugged into the back of his skull and produced a small piece of
plastic that he handed to Rees. He looked at it.
Case
designed to crawl through the bloodstream and transmit a detailed
analysis of its condition. Lastly, he opened another vial of
nano-bots beside the corpse and allowed them several minutes to
spread over and scan the immediate area.
Rees was getting drowsy by the time Morgan
spoke to him again, his whirring servos and humming circuits
lingering just beneath his voice.
“ I have completed my
examination, Detective Rees. Quite a remarkable case, I must
admit.”
“ Remarkable?” Rees asked.
“How’s that?”
“ As of this moment, I am
afraid that I still have yet to identify the victim.”
“ What? You didn’t get
anything from a DNA scan?”
“ No,” Morgan said. Rees
wasn’t sure, but he thought he detected frustration in the
digitized voice. “While it is not unheard of to occasionally
encounter an individual whose genetic code is not registered in the
national databanks, I have never seen a sample returned as
completely negative.”
“ What does that
mean?”
“ It means, Detective Rees,
that your victim’s DNA does not register as human.”
That was definitely something Rees had never
heard before.
“ How is that possible?” he
asked.
“ I do not
know.”
That, as far as Rees knew, was also a
first.
“ There are, however,”
Morgan said, “a number of unidentified toxins in the victim’s
bloodstream. It is possible that these toxins could have an adverse
affect on the DNA scan. I will need to examine the victim more
thoroughly and subject its blood to a number of tests before I can
tell you more.”
Rees didn’t bother to ask about the
implications of the corpse not being human.
The case was already weird enough.
“ What about the injuries
to the hands and face?
“ To put it simply,
Detective Rees, they are the most unusual I have ever encountered,
but they did not cause the victim’s death. He was shot eight times,
with two bullets puncturing the heart, two hitting the stomach, one
in the skull, and the three remaining bullets becoming lodged in
the spinal column. Standard sidearm nano-rounds.”
Rees couldn’t believe there were still
people stupid enough to commit murder with a modern gun. Every
firearm manufactured within the last fifty years fired a caseless,
computerized bullet that recorded the time and location from which
it was fired. The bullet also carried the registration information
of the gun that fired it and the DNA coding of whoever pulled the
trigger. There were still a few antique lead-spitters floating
around on the streets, but most of them had been confiscated and
melted down as part of the government’s crackdown on illegal
firearms.
Morgan continued.
“ The first bullet was
fired at precisely 2:33:21 AM and struck the victim’s heart. The
next six rounds were fired quickly, within a span of ten seconds,
but the bullet to the skull was fired a full five minutes later.
All eight rounds were fired at point blank range. The weapon was
fired by a Sircotin Technologies executive named George Vandum,
Vice-President of Optics Research and Production.”
That certainly wasn’t the kind of suspect
Rees had expected, but considering that the case involved a body
with melted flesh that might not even be human, he wasn’t about to
let anything surprise him.
“ Do we have a current
address on him?”
“ Yes,” Morgan said. “I
have already transmitted my report to headquarters and filed a
warrant for his arrest.”
“ Oh,” Rees
said.
“ Do you have any further
questions, Detective Rees?”
“ No, I can get anything
else I need from your report.”
“ Do you require a
hardcopy?”
Rees nodded and felt fortunate that the
department hadn’t yet made it a requirement for all officers to
have datachip implants. He was one of only a handful who weren’t
wired in any way.
Morgan reached up to the tiny computer drive
plugged into the back of his skull and produced a small piece of
plastic that he handed to Rees. He looked at it.
Case
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