Clandestine pursuits

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

All clear. Good.

Initially, Ippolit had despaired of ever slipping past all of the fortress's watchful eyes. However, careful observation had revealed that there were often short gaps in the patrols, just long enough for a man to slip through, if he was quick. He had bought himself some extra time with an item he had found in the storeroom, wedged between a splintering crate and the wall. Ippolit sometimes saw things other people didn't.

A glance around the corner confirmed that the soldier whose route went by these particular offices was indeed neutralized for the time being. Honestly, he couldn't see what was so engrossing about women in black garterbelts, though it did also contain an interesting story about aliens by a man with a name like a fish.

Ippolit darted down the hallway, his hand moving to the other object his earlier foray had borne, nested safely beneath his coat. He'd been very careful not to ruin the shape. C3 was, after all, pliable.

The door was unlocked. Ippolit smiled to himself. The Colonel's reputation would be enough to keep most intruders at bay.

Ippolit kept his eyes straight ahead and his mind on the objective, refusing to be distracted by seeing in what kind of environment a man like the Colonel would live. There was no time to fall into a trance.

Withdrawing the object from his pocket, he held it up to his eye, examining it critically. He adjusted a few of the petals, ensuring that they were well defined. Detail was important.

Alone in the center of the massive desk, the small shape was striking. Delicate among brutality, artistry among ruthless efficiency, dangerous and, if he said so himself, beautiful. A single white carnation. Forming it had been difficult, but Ippolit had a dextrous bend, and, besides, the symbolism was ideal.

Fascination.

Deed done, Ippolit made his escape, taking care that his egress was unobserved.

By the time he arrived at the more populous parts of the fortress, he let himself feel a giddy tingle of relief. It was only a gesture, but it felt like a victory.

He even had an alibi.

Rakitin strode toward Liadov's office, ready to take on the day's interrogations.

Comments

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

With the adroitness of practice, Ippolit ignored the mental image of the Ocelot major with an armful of flaxen game birds and addressed the issue at hand.

"The patterning of blood suggests that the limbs were removed shortly before death. The face and genital apparatus, shortly after. No blood stains at the site; the operations were conducted elsewhere. The bones were sawn off cleanly. Surgically."

Ippolit drew in a long, silent breath.

Conducting the autopsy had been...difficult. He'd seen his share of dead bodies. A few other people's as well, he would guess. Stabbings, shootings, poisonings, strangulation. It was rare that it got to him.

But this...

Some would call it inhuman. The worst was that it was the most human thing there was. Animal brutality he could handle. That was sane. Killing in rage was rational.

The attention to detail. The obscene parody of care. The long, tender knife strokes flensing the flesh of his face from the bone.

It had crawled into him like a stench, suffocating him, gagging him like a corpse's stiff fingers down his throat.

Alone in the cold room with the dead man, Rakitin had begun to shake.

And then...something strange. Nothing had changed, but it was different. As though something in the air had shifted, not precisely relief, but an interruption in the procession of pain. Like a cool hand on a fevered brow.

His nausea had subsided, and Ippolit felt, for the first time in a very long time, as though he were not alone.

Where there had been horror, there was solemnity. Where there had been revulsion, there was sorrow.

There was a dignity to a man's death that no other could rob from him.

The rest of the autopsy, carried out with clinical exactitude and steady hands, had felt like funeral rites.

Ippolit had felt a strange, fleeting urge to place coins over the dead man's eyes.

"Petechiae and bruising on the unburnt portions of the neck suggest strangulation as the means of death. Time of death is estimated at five hours before the explosion."

As though thought could summon, as he spoke, he felt that even flow of calm sadness descend again, like mist after a night of rain, or a friend's hand on his shoulder.

"Blood and urine test positive for sedatives. This would explain the apparent lack of a prolonged struggle, though the severity of the burns makes it impossible to be certain.

"In the anal cavity, there was a yellow rose."

[nikanor-liadov.livejournal.com]

Liadov frowned.

"That's awful," he said, flatly.

He had long since stopped infusing the sentiment with emotion. However, that didn't make it any less genuine.

In his line of work it was a liability. His sanity could afford either empathy or sympathy, in moderation. Not both, and not oceans of salty remorse.

Rakitin didn't say anything.

"When you live next to the cemetery, you can't weep for everyone," Liadov said, grimly.

Sometimes he wished he could.

But he knew that if he started, he might never stop again.

He raised his head, carving impassivity onto his features with an icepick.

"What manner of sedatives? Was there alcohol?" He paused. "What I'm getting at comrade, is do you think he ingested them willingly but unwittingly? Or was he injected?"

The type of sedative and the presence of alcohol would do a lot to suggest whether he'd been slipped a mickey, or if Rakitin had found an injection site on any of the remaining corpus, that would tell them it had likely been a surprise attack.

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

Ippolit felt a flash of sympathy steal up on him, entirely unexpected. He wanted to put a hand on Nika's arm and tell him that everything was all right. That there was someone, somewhere, who wept for everyone who couldn't afford to.

Resignedly, Ippolit wondered whether his mind had broken or merely bent.

No call to advertise it, in any case. Not, he thought vaguely, to someone who seemed to constantly be sizing up your weaknesses, judging whether or not it would be worth his time to leap for your throat.

"Yes," he said instead, softly and with sorrow. "It is."

Rakitin pushed his thoughts to business, like a Viking shoving a funeral barge away from the shore.

"The sedative was a kind most often administered through injection. No needle marks were apparent on the parts of the flesh that were intact. But most of it...wasn't."

Ippolit's lips pressed into a thin line.

"If we had the missing limbs, I might be able to tell for certain."

Something that had been nagging at the back of Ippolit's mind chose that moment to rise to the surface.

"Has any attempt been made to find them? They can't have been easily disposed of. Burning is a possibility, but it takes extreme heat to destroy bone. A foray out into the jungle to bury them would surely have been noticed."

[nikanor-liadov.livejournal.com]

Liadov paused, thoughtfully.

"That's a good point, Rakitin."

And it was.

Something he should have thought of.

"The body was stuffed in a barrel, which exploded when the greenhouse went down. There were no signs of the missing appendages nearby."

Nika nodded, the idea gaining ground in his mind.

"They must be somewhere."

Then he frowned.

"There's an incinerator on the grounds that would seem like an obvious place for someone to try cremating them. But you're right- it's probably not hot enough for green bone. I bet they're stashed somewhere. We should turn over the grounds."

If they didn't find them now, as soon as the weather warmed up they sure as hell would.

Nika gave an unconscious shudder.

You never got used to the sweet dead smell of flesh.