NIGHT SEARCH FOR CORPUS 2: OPEN TO ALL

[major-ocelot-2u.livejournal.com]

Ocelot paced and champed at the bit in the hall of the East Wing, twirling his guns and scowling at nothing.

The hall should be filling up soon.

The ALL PERSONNEL had gone out over the loudspeakers, and every unit was expected to report. He had also personally contacted his counterpart Major, his first Lieutenant, and after hesitating, sent a CODEC to Gurlukovich.

"Imanov seems to be indisposed. If he shows up with the AP bulletin, I'll have him follow me in second point. If he doesn't, Sergei, I need you."

It would be good in two ways, thought Ocelot. First, he could observe Sergei's command ability without the stomachache of putting him out front in direct conflict, and two, Sergei could be relied on.

Always.

"If Imanov shows up, I'll have him lead a second party. Either way, Serhyoza," he added, "I'll need you by my side."

As he waited for Raikov and his men to appear, he counted the diamond in the tiles with a furrowed brow.

Inwardly, he scoffed at his own impatience.

What's the hurry? Dead things tend to stay dead. Not like he's going anywhere.

How had they missed it?

Had he been selecting his victims only from non-essential personnel?

Ocelot made a short, audible noise of frustration.

If the killer had gotten ahead of them this much, he could already be selecting his next victim.

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[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

Rakitin's breath deserted him in a soft sigh.

"As ready as anyone gets," he said, quietly and without bitterness.

The grotesque and horrible held its own fascination. Ippolit couldn't look away. There were ways to make it useful, and a job that had to be done.

Nika looked strange, facing the dead man in the floodlight that turned everything into a a scene cast in pale clay, hand outstretched like a prince speaking to a skull. I knew him.

No limbs. Maybe farther into the cave, where the shadows were deeper. They would have to look. The face was left intact, this time. Little enough else for company. Only enough to betray that it had once been a man.

Something nagged at Rakitin. A snowflake of wrong among the avalanche. Something about the lay of the netting.

He stepped forward, looking a question at Nika, who nodded wordlessly.

Can't cry in the graveyard. Leave it to the ghosts.

With careful, mechanical motions, Rakitin unwound the netting.

"Genitalia removed," Rakitin said, without inflection.

[nikanor-liadov.livejournal.com]

"And unaccounted for," murmured Liadov. "They're not in his mouth, comrade."

He looked up.

"No one? No idea as to who this boy is?"

Everyone stood quietly by, and then Ocelot, grimacing, forced a brief, incisive look at the corpse's face.

"It could be....there's a scientist in one of the East Wing labs that might look like that."

He scowled.

"I can't say for sure. I don't pay them much attention."

Isaev was nodding slowly.

"That, or...there's an apprentice mechanic I've seen on the..."

He trailed off, retraining his features.

"...in the weapons hangar. Major Raikov or Ocelot could assemble all the mechanics for perusal. Or all the scientists...sir."

Liadov raised an eyebrow at being called sir, but let that, and whatever Andrei had almost slipped up on, slide.

Ocelot was smirking.

"Yes, I certainly could. Thank you for this re-iterating of my administrative powers, Lt. Isaev."

Nika laid the boy's head gently back against his chest, as if he were putting him down to sleep.

It was a habit, his handling of recent victims as if they still lived. He'd never been a clinician, so he hadn't had the hours of contact to come to that callousness yet where you necessarily saw dead meat as no more than meat.

Rakitin had, clearly.

Nika could see the deliberate veil that came over his guileless eyes, the detachment that gave him an almost dreamy expression, but not unfocused- no, more like the grinding dreams of a Hannibal at the gates of Carthage, balancing on an unruly elephant.

It may well have been the Lieutenant's only artifice.

"We have a lead on where to seek him," Liadov said quietly. "Is there anything else you're seeing?"

Rakitin's fingers roamed the boy's body lightly, like a lover, expert and precise, and his eyes followed them without passion.

Here, the unassuming pathologist was in his element, and suddenly he was remade into a man of brusque and quiet confidence.

Fascinating, thought Liadov absently, where some of us find our Samsonic prowess.

"...Any yellow roses?"

Nika realized he couldn't examine the scene and keep notes of his own and Polya's findings at the same time.

"I usually have my secretary in the field," he remarked, "but we were traveling light."

He pulled a small metal-encased and hinged notebook out of his pocket. It contained all his field notes from the last twenty or thirty investigations. It was lamentably well-seasoned in bloodshed.

Once a case closed he never turned the pages back.

Now he held it up.

"We need someone to take notes."