Dead in the Water (Dark Heresy IC)

[Thragka]

The first thing Enoch did when he was finished reading the cards was to quickly gather up the Tarot deck, slide them back into their leather wallet and slip it into his robes. Only then did he remember to breath.

"These are foul scenes," he said to the others. "I shall need to see a body to be sure ... but indeed there may be the taint of the Warp in these murders. And they are not the end, but a means to some other end; but what that may be, I cannot tell."

There was something else on the tip of his tongue, trying to find shape, an idea that needed the right words to be said. "And yet ... I think we are not the only players in this game. There is ... someone else? Another hunter, perhaps, that seeks our quarry." He shook his head, and then shrugged.

He took a cup of recaf and sipped it slowly, more so that the bitter taste would drag his attention back to the physical sensations of his body and the Real, than for any desire to actually drink it. Clutching the cup in his bony hands, he followed the detective to the War Room. "The map, then. But I would like to visit the morgue after."

[Destro_Yersul]

Annie

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The photos, having been taken at autopsy, didn't say much about where the people in them had died, but the how was obvious enough. Nobody could live when their organs looked like THAT. The photos had all been taken from the same angle, and no attempt had been made to hide their contents. These were for the police files, and their chirurgeon seemed to know what he was doing. Certainly better than the underhive sawbones back on Scintilla.

Mouse

Taking her leave from the others, Mouse found her way back down to the front desk. Sergeant Haas was still there, filling out some paperwork with an autoquill. "Back so soon," he said, without looking up. "And without the others. I take it you want something, then."

There was a pause as he scratched out something on his form, initialling the change. "That, or you're just the first one down."

Not Mouse

"Of course." McKaren said, leading the way back out of his office. "Morgue's attached to the precinct, but it's a bit of a walk to get there. I'll take you down later, and hopefully doc Morton won't be busy with anything."

The Detective pushed open a door marked 'Conference 3' and stepped inside. The room had been given over to one large central table, on which was arranged a series of crime scene photos with careful labels. One wall had an overhead map of the hive, with sixteen red pins pushed through it, string ties leading from the pins to more photos, with more labels. Each pin had also been labelled with two sets of numbers. Another wall featured a schedule with names and dates. A battered voxphone had been mounted near the schedule. Unlike McKaren's office, this room had no windows.

"This is where most of the planning happens," McKaren told them. "We've been putting together a strategy for response and confirmation of more cases in this string."

[UncleWolf]

Mouse

The adept takes a seat on a corner of his desk and sets down the untouched mug of ReCaff in her hands, handle turned towards him. "A few things, yes, but I also figured you'd likely enjoy a cup before we get started." She admits with a small smile as she slips her hands into the sleeves on the opposite arms of her robes. "That, and you were cut off earlier when you were trying to explain the intricacies of the policies regarding firearms. I would like to hear the rest of what you were saying."

[Thragka]

Enoch stepped over to the wall with the map of the hive, reading the labels on the photos, slowly taking in the locations of the pins, trying to spot if there were any obvious patterns.

Spoiler: OOC

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Int test to recognise whether, say, the murder locations from a BIG EIGHT-POINTED STAR or the like: Int37 - (1d100)[68]

[Destro_Yersul]

Mouse

The sergeant looked down at the empty mug he'd pushed off to one side. "Suppose I could use a refill."

Taking the proferred mug, he took a sip. "I think I got past the number of ordinances. Thing is, people here aren't used to seeing guns, they're used to NOT seeing guns, and one look at the structure of this place should tell you why. I guarantee the more legally-minded citizens are going to start reporting it. If it gets reported, it comes to us, and since we can't verify if it's you or not without sending somebody to look or trying to find the right camera feed, it wastes our time and resources tracking down firearm violations that we can't do anything about."

Enoch

The various labels on the map wall were at first indecipherable, but there was a careful method to them. They'd all been labelled to the same standard, with numerous abbreviations to save space: "Vc" meant "victim," all of whom had their own number based on the order they happened. The labels by the pins were based on location in the hive - sector and level, since otherwise it would have been impossible to geolocate something on a 2d map of the very much 3d space inside Adraxis. The photos that had been arranged by the wall, interestingly, included mostly location shots of buildings and rooms, plus one head shot with the obvious backdrop of an autopsy table for identification. The psyker himself couldn't make anything of the pattern, if there was one. None of the victims had lived very close to each other, so there weren't even any clusters to consider.

[Thragka]

Enoch spent a moment looking at the schedule of names and dates, checking that the murders had in fact been as regular as McKaren claimed, before stepping over to the table of crime scene photos and examining that.

[UncleWolf]

Mouse

Mouse can't help but smile slightly at that. "I can carry the shotgun beneath the robe with just the butt sticking above the collar. I wore it this way to make sure word got through to the local gangers that someone new was in the Hive. Someone that they will want to stay away from. After all, wearing such a gun right in the open shows that they are afraid of little, especially if it's in defiance of local laws." She points out before standing and unslinging the shotgun and shield from her back, setting them both against the desk gently. "That said, I do request that should you ever get reports of someone firing a trio of shots into a hard surface or into the air, that you send aid as quickly as possible. On many worlds it is a sign of distress, so it would be prudent to keep such a method in mind." Finally she pulls a few straps and buckles on her robe, opening it before taking it off and setting it down as gently as possible, mindful of everything that's hidden within. "Just how many people carry firearms here anyway? At a guess. And are there any other groups sanctioned to carry such?" She asks as she reslings her shotgun on her back, adjusting the strap so it's held tight against her armored body glove. Only once that's finished will she put the robe back on, adjusting it to settle exactly how it'd been before except this time it has the shotgun's butt sticking above the collar, hiding the rest of it.

[LeSwordfish]

Annie leaned in close to the pins, placing her finger on the first, and then tracing one to the next, following the killer's footsteps. "Something ****ing wierd for sure."

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Any pattersn when you go though temporally?

[Destro_Yersul]

Mouse
"How many gangers did you really expect to find in Governance?" The sergeant said, raising an eyebrow. He tried his best to avoid watching Mouse change, she noticed, bodyglove or no. "All of the rakehells and shivjacks tend to stay further down, closer to the tangle of hiding places and far from the constabulary."

The sergeant shrugged. "As for who's authorised to carry firearms? Pretty much nobody without influence. Senior Arbitrators might get away with a sidearm, and the Mechanicus, or your lot, can get away with whatever they like. Though, the cogs don't like bringing guns down here, by my understanding. Too much risk of damage to something important or otherwise sacred to them. Maybe a couple of the more eccentric upspire nobles would own guns, but I doubt many of them carry the things. Trust me. You run into anyone down here carrying something bigger than a cheap stubgun? They've got some friends in very high places indeed."

Not Mouse
The schedule on the wall wasn't, as it turned out, for the murders. Rather, it was the schedule for the constables and detectives assigned to work them. McKaren's name was near the top, and it looked like the detective was putting in quite a few hours on this case. Looking at the killings in chronological order, Annie didn't find it hard to appreciate why. Everything about the placement seemed random.

The crime scene photos, naturally, were for the murders. They went into less detail on the bodies than the autopsy photos Enoch had seen earlier, but more detail than the few photos pinned by the map. They covered the crime scenes and all the evidence that had been collected from them. Possessions of the victims were prominent, including credsticks and the ocassional valuable accessory. Robbery could be crossed out as a motive, but robbery was already unlikely enough just from the methods on display. Looking over the photos, Enoch was able to piece together a reasonable picture of each crime scene. The layouts of the apartments differed, but they were all small, firmly hab-class dwellings. Perhaps a little more upscale than most, given the outward facing windows.

[LeSwordfish]

"'Ang on. They all got outward-facing windows? Like, onto the water?"

[Thragka]

"So it would seem," said Enoch passively. He hadn't really been listening to Annie, but then he realised what she'd said, and his brow furrowed. "... All of them?" He checked.

"Is there any other link?" he muttered aloud. He started comparing the victims' possession, looking for anything that might indicate shared interests - religious icons or charms, ID cards, gamepieces. Books? Probably not, he guessed, if these were hab-class workers - sometimes Enoch found it difficult to relate to the interests of the common man.

[UncleWolf]

Mouse

"None right off, but that doesn't mean word doesn't spread." Mouse points out, finishing adjusting her robes after strapping her shield to her back. "People will hear through friends, relatives, and so on. If there's anything that can travel faster than a ship in The Immaterial, it's a rumor." She adds with a wry smile. "Now, onto my other reason for coming down here. I would like to go to the Evidence room and examine something related to the killings that have been going on. I believe you should have some items from an accountant stored there."

[Artemis97]

Joss frowns at the map, trying to form a mental picture of the unfamiliar hive-scape. When the windows are mentioned, he wonders aloud. "The windows are all sealed, though. It could not possibly be an entrypoint. A viewpoint, however? Possible. Would the killer swim up to the window and do... whatever magic it is he's doing." The feudal worlder waved a hand, dismissing the thought. Magic, or the Psyker's arts, were beyond his comprehension. He took a careful sip from his mug, thinking. "Our quarters has a window." He points out, his frown deepening.

"Where were each of the victims found in their apartments? Within view of the window? Is there some way to travel out there? A... what is it called? Like a spaceship, but for underwater?"

[Destro_Yersul]

Mouse

"It's my experience that gangers tend not to mingle with the habbers much, but you're the expert." Haas leaned over, pushing a button on the vox by his desk. "Warren, one of our friends up top wants to see the evidence box from Victim 14."

The comm buzzed for a moment, before a voice came through on the other end. "What? Oh, yes. Send them down."

Nodding, the sergeant pointed down the hall. "Third left," he told Mouse. "Warren will probably meet you at the door. If he doesn't, bang on it a couple times."

Spoiler: OOC

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Any more questions for the sergeant before you continue?

Not Mouse

"Yeah, they did, actually." McKaren scratched his beard, doublechecking the photos. "You can't open those, though. They're sealed shut, and I wouldn't recommend swimming, either. A lot of the stuff in the water is bad for your health, if you take my meaning." He tapped on one of the photos. "They were all within sight of a window, though. If a psyker could do this with just line of sight, it might work if they had a pressure suit, or one of the scubs off a deep-mining rig. You think that's possible?" he asked, glancing at Enoch.

To Enoch, the possessions of the various victims looked distressingly mundane. There were no books, the assorted icons of devotion to the Emperor, for the most part, appeared to have been made in different places. Some of them had matchbooks with the same logo on them, usually accompanying a half-full pack of lho sticks. Most of them had carried an ID card of some form or another. About half of those looked like standardised citizen IDs, while the rest appeared to be workforce cards issued by specific employers. All of them had credsticks and old-fashioned metal turnkeys.

[LeSwordfish]

"You can bust someones heart through their ribs, you can bust their heart through glass. This aint, like, a stabbin'"

Annie glanced at the window as if daring a spook in a diving rig to arrive outside. "Maybe this aint a human thing though. Some kind of spook fish. Anyone gone missin' when swimmin?"

"Course, if it is human, lot of fuss ter pop some random civvies. Get in a suit or a shuttle, head out there, kill Joe Pukeface and go home happy? Nah, gotta be a reason."

[Thragka]

Enoch shrugged, and nodded his agreement to Annie. "It could be done that way. Though it seems a lot of effort. But as Ms Lee says, the death is not the goal."

He tapped a couple of the photographs, indicating the matchbooks. "These matches. This logo. Relevant, or just a common brand?"

[UncleWolf]

Mouse

The woman smiles and gives a grateful nod. "Thank you, Sergeant. Enjoy the Caff. Maybe once this is all over we can share a flask of amasec and share stories if we have the time." She proposes as she heads on where indicated. She actually has a bit of a bounce in her step when she walks now, actually cheerful now that she has a problem she can work on instead of being chained to a desk in a dark library. Even if this was just a red grox, she didn't mind. She was out, about, heavily armed, and actually got to stretch her legs and mind a bit.

[Destro_Yersul]

Mouse

"Maybe. Time's a bit short, with what's going on here."

Officer Warren was, as it happened, waiting for Mouse by the door to the evidence room. A thin, somewhat pinched-looking man in a carefully pressed uniform, he reminded Mouse more of an Administratum quill-pusher than an officer of Imperial Law. It was probably this that had led to him running Evidence, instead of being put on recruitment posters. He ushered Mouse through the door, shutting it behind them. Evidence was full of barred shelves, the wire-mesh doors secured to them held shut by tiny locks. The light was dim, and while windows had been included in the room's design, they were narrow and high-up, looking out onto the underside of the floor above rather than any great oceanic vista. One box had been placed on a metal table in the center of the room, next to a small pair of scissors and a dataslate.

"Victim 14," Warren said, indicating the box and then pushing the dataslate towards Mouse. "Sign here, please. All access to evidence must be logged."

Once Mouse had signed, Warren took up the scissors and snipped the red mud-tape holding the box shut. "I have work to do. Evidence does not leave this room unless authorised by the Captain." His piece said, he ghosted off between the stacks of evidence, retiring to a small office near the back. Between rows of boxes, Mouse could see him hunched over a cogitator terminal. The box he had left her with was filled with small black ledgers, and little else. An annotated list of other items belonging to the same victim, and their current location, had been placed on top of the ledgers. The list was short, mentioning only a handful of personal effects, including a knife, and what looked like another two boxes worth of the black ledgers. Checking the first book in the box, Mouse noticed that they had been arranged by date, with the most recent ones first. The writing inside each was tiny and cramped, consisting primarily of numbers in red and black ink.

Spoiler

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Roll Literacy to sort through the books if you're looking for anything specific. If you want a more general idea of what the accountant was accounting for, roll Logic instead.

Not Mouse

"Spookfish are harmless," the Detective said. "Get a few reports every month of someone being startled by one, or insisting the damn things are watching them. Nobody's died or gone missing yet. As for swimming, you don't do that here without protective equipment, and it's not exactly a recreational activity. Water'll kill you if you stay in it too long."

As he was speaking, McKaren walked over to where Enoch was to look at the matchbook photo. The detective scratched his beard, picked up one of the images and peered at it, trying to make out more detail on the matches, or just buying himself time to search his memory. "It's not a brand," he said, "It's a club. Think it caters mostly to the artistic set, which none of these people were. Could be they just liked bad poetry. We checked it out, but the owners came up clean. I can get you the address, if you want a closer look."

[LeSwordfish]

"If they aint the artistic set, 'ow come they got the matches?" Annie asked. "That address might be pretty 'andy. An' the results of that check you did."

[UncleWolf]

Mouse nods to the man as she signs. It didn't bother her that he wasn't the poster-boy sort, after all she didn't exactly look like the type either. Well, not any more. She admits to herself, reaching up to scratch at the itchy implants in her skull before settling down to look over the ledgers slowly, wanting to see what he was accounting for at first. It'd be best to get an idea first before looking for anything specific.

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Logic Test: (1d100)[68]vs60

[Thragka]

Enoch raised his eyebrows at Annie in appreciation, which made his brow furrow around the focusing band. For such an ... uncouth-looking specimen, she was pretty clued-in.

[Destro_Yersul]

Mouse

The ledgers, somewhat unfortunately, contained little in the way of labels to explain what all of their numbers meant. The red numbers were probably deficits, but there wasn't anything in the latest book to explain whose deficits. The numbers weren't large enough to belong to a large establishment or interest, but they were far too large to belong to the accountant himself. A man who lived in a mid-spire apartment wasn't likely to have thousands of anything to throw around, but the operating budgets of your average noble-owned venture frequently reached into the millions. It was all very odd. The further back Mouse went through the ledgers, the smaller the numbers got. Many of them were unfinished, instead of just one, and the notations in the beginnings were different for all of these. Seperate accounts, perhaps? Anything that wasn't a number had been written in a form of shorthand with which Mouse wasn't familiar.

Not Mouse

"Bad poetry," McKaren suggested again. "Or they stopped by for a drink and had run out of matches. Bad lho habit will burn through those pretty fast. I'll get a copy of our results run off. Back in a tic."

Leaving the room, the detective left them waiting amidst the various records from the different crime scenes. He wasn't gone long, though, returning with a manila report folder and a slip of parchment. The folder contained background checks for Saul and Vanna Tarsus, the owners of the Darkroom Club. Neither of them had ever committed a major crime, certainly nothing against an Adeptus establishment, though Saul had some ties to gangers from several years ago that appeared to have been severed. There was also a spire blueprint included for the Club itself. It looked like it had a stage and seating area instead of a common dance floor, plus several private rooms in the back.

[LeSwordfish]

"Couldn't hurt ter stick our heads round the door and ask "any bugger exploding hearts in here?"" Annie ruminated. "Nobody got a better idea?"

[Thragka]

"It seems the place to start," Enoch agreed. "Though perhaps we can be a little more subtle, hmmm? And I still wish to examine the deceased, in the morgue, before we leave."

[Thanatos 51-50]

"It's certainly a common thread, and common threads cannot be ignored," Gabe agreed, having sat in studious silence throughout the meeting, playing with variable in his head to make this whole thing seem focused, instead of the seemingly random killings.
Because randomness would mean something terrible.
"Every hunter has a home den, and they range out from there. If many of our victims have visited this establishment, then our hunter may very well have, as well. You looked at the staff, no? Did you look at the regulars?"

[Destro_Yersul]

Not Mouse

"Subtle might be a good idea," McKaren agreed. "We couldn't really get a list of everyone who goes to the place. Owners had no reason to ask for names, lot of the time, and the rest of the time they didn't get addresses to go with them."

Turning, he beckoned for Enoch to follow. "You wanted to see the Morgue, right? Follow me."

The Morgue turned out to be deep within the precinct house, far below the level of McKaren's office. The steel grey and green sea-filtered light of the station above gave way to sterile white and harsh flourescent luminators as they descended. Knocking on an unmarked steel door, the detective poked his head in. "Hey, Doc, d'you have any of the serials still here? Offworld Investigators have arrived, and they'd like to see one."

"Last one hasn't been sent yet," came the reply, and McKaren waved them in.

"I'll leave you here," the detective said. "I've got paperwork to get back to. You've got my number if anything crops up, hm?" Then he was gone, hastening back up the stairs and leaving them alone with Doc Morton.

The Morgue and autopsy room was the same sterile white as all the halls down here, and Medicae-Chirurgeon Morton's white coat would have matched, if it wasn't speckled with the red of undried blood. The doctor was a tall, thin man, hunched over his operating table in a manner eerily reminiscent of an oversized spider. He had a pair of wire-rimmed round spectacles perched on the end of his long nose, and his left arm had been replaced at some point with a bulky augmetic featuring an assortment of medical attachments. The one presenty active was a rather sharp looking scalpel, which the doctor was using to make a v-incision on his current 'patient.'

"You'll forgive me for not shaking your hands," he said cheerfully. "Mine are a bit full at the moment. Never a dull moment down here. The one you're looking for is in drawyer five, on the wall there." He gestured with the scalpel. "Hope you haven't eaten recently."

[Thragka]

"Thank you, Doctor," said Enoch, imitating the chirurgeon's cheer, even if he didn't feel it. Walking over to the drawers, he leaned his staff against them, out of the way. He paused for a moment, just to take a breath, and then slid drawer five open.

He steeled himself against the sight of the body. Looking at the slides had been one thing, but actually seeing the mutilation in the flesh - oh, Throne, shouldn't have thought that - was not a little disturbing. He swallowed hard.

After a moment or two, he seemed to come back to the present. Again he took out the leather wallet, and carefully withdrew the Tarot deck, holding the cards high above the desecrated flesh. Shuffling them, he stared deep into the empty human vessel, sending his mind out to caress the horrid wounds, and gently laid some cards down on the slab, wherever there was room beside the corpse.

Spoiler: OOC

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Since Enoch believes he might get a clearer understanding by actually examining the body, I'll do the same as before: going to Invoke, and try to manifest Glimpse.

Invocation off 52 (WP 42 + Psyfocus) (1d100)[15]

Manifesting Glimpse with 3 dice. Target number 18, +4 WP bonus, additional +4 if the Invocation is successful. (3d10)[1][7][1](9)

Forbidden Lore (Psykers) to examine the body. Int 37, with a +30 if the Glimpse was successful. I will spend Fate if necessary.
(1d100)[100]
(1d100)[40]

[Destro_Yersul]

Not Mouse

The body, despite the chirurgeon's warning, was less disturbing than they might have expected. For one thing, it was mostly covered by a plastic sheet, and for another, the autopsy incisions had been sewn up. Morton was good at his job, it seemed. Enoch had seen the autopsy photos, and if he hadn't he wouldn't have been able to tell that key organs were missing by the body's outward appearance. That said, it was still a dead body, lent an unnatural greyish colour by a combination of death and the clouds of billowing condensation spilling out of the drawer's refridgeration unit. The cold void between the stars had claimed this soul already.

Perhaps that thought was distracting to Enoch, but the psyker couldn't get a clear reading on the cards this time. It was all cryptic, moreso even than normal. Still, he came out of it reasonably certain that the man on the slab had been killed by sorcery.

[LeSwordfish]

"Guess that at least means it aint some kind of fancy cogger thing." Annie said. "Weren't exactly a surprise, though, were it?"

[UncleWolf]

Mouse

Mouse sighs as the numbers just muddle around in her head, unable to form them properly in her mind. She'd have to look over them again later at her own leisure and with any luck it'll come to her in time and repetition. The Adept shakes her head, clearing the too-many numbers from it before looking at the shorthand. She takes a few moments to take in the entire picture before running her fingers along it, trying to decipher the language.

Spoiler

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Literacy Test: (1d100)[59] vs 60