MEHR Chapter 54 Snippet 2 (Patreon)

~[h+]~

Ramsus shut the echoes away before he experienced the really nasty part, and he found himself back inside the Eatery's stasis chamber. He was a little unnerved by the slumped body of the prostitute-turned waitress, too neatly placed between the stacks of pork substitute and vegetables. Not because he feared dead bodies, far from it — they usually made him feel hungry — no, what disturbed him was the quiet. Usually, the freshly dead were not silent, they raged and cursed the loss with such intensity that the echoes could be felt for days. In Delphi's case, however... there was simply a quiet resignation, as if she had always known she would not die well.

Yes, it disquieted Ramsus that there were people that simply did not rage against the dying of their light.

*How brightlu did I rage, when I was speared through the heart?* he wondered.

"Well?" asked Yang, pulling Ramsus away from his thoughts. "What have you observed, Mister Tenma?"

Ramsus came up with some rubbish worthy of Arthur Conan Doyle, plausible enough to make it sound like he had gleaned the fact that this was not the scene of the crime through extremely keen observation and deductions, and that had seemed to be enough for Yang. It was actually quite difficult for Ramsus to tell: after all, the real Yang was aboard the Agamemnon, and only the faintest of echoes of his thoughts came through the machine avatar.

"Perhaps we should visit Ms. Delphi's apartment?" suggested Yang.

"All we'll find there are falsehoods," replied Ramsus, as he walked away from the scene. Yang's mechanical avatar followed him. "Someone's trying to frame Jensen for murder, after all. If I am correct and Delphi's apartment was the scene of her murder, then any connection to her and Jensen has been erased."

"Then our next destination is clear: Let's play Rudy Cullen a visit, shall we?"

~[h+]~

Frost's aircar had been halfway to the upper wards when Jane had finally figured out how to set her suit back to default. As it turned out, all she needed to do was ask Burroughs politely, and exclude certain words from her request, words such as 'fuck', 'bitch', and variations of 'motherfucker'.

"Fucking finally..." she muttered, relaxing into her chair.

"You are entirely welcome," said Burroughs, before winking out on Jane's arm display.

"Wow," said Frost, at the wheel of the aircar. "I see Hein programs his VI with some of his sense of humour."

"No shit. So, where are we headed all of a sudden?"

"I managed to get this Rudy Cullen's address from an old FAI contact. I figure, since Jensen had some interest in not-quite-legit beef, Cullen just might give us some valuable info."

"Gotcha..." Jane acknowledged, and then said nothing for a while, letting an awkward silence crawl into the x3m's cabin before finally asking, "So, where's your minder?"

"I have no fucking clue," replied the would-be Spectre, frowning. "Tigris said she needed to take care of something, didn't say what, then left me out here without so much as a number. I'm kinda hurt, really."

"...kinda convenient your FAI contact came through when he did, isn't it?"

"Yep, that it was."

"So what's his name? Your contact, I mean."

"Codename's Spooky. Rest is classified, you understand..."

Jane looked away at that moment, hoping Frost missed the look of recognition on her face. " Yeah, I get it...." she said. Our Spooky?! What the fuck is going on, here?!

"So anyways," said Frost, pulling out a gun. "It's a trap."