Chapter Text
The rain fell like knives. She had no umbrella. The car door slammed shut behind her. Forbodium loomed in the night, a giant's two black arms, fists clenched at the storm.
Puzzle pieces fell like bits of the sky. Anger, adrenaline, triumph, fear. It was all over, ending. It surged up in her like a fire, her head was ablaze. Lightning turned the sky white, a shadow darted from a high window. She flew down the cobblestones (Brianne d'Nom size seven violet leather upper eight centimeter stacked heel) like a nightmare. Is this what a cat feels like? Pupils big and black as an inverted sun, everything in high contrast high relief.
No—dread, ice cubes rattling in her chest. A predator can't feel regret. What was causing it? That wasn't how she felt, not when it happened, but she can't reason with what's happening.
The castle was filled with yellow-green curls and wisps. It was hard to breathe but she skimmed the stairs like a howling wind. All over, all ending, twenty-five corpses avenged and twenty-five families notified and twenty-five funerals absolved. She felt responsible, didn't she? But for what? She hadn't put those people in the ground. The reasoning fell short—her case, her suspects, her barely-there evidence. She felt responsible, she relived it, it pushed against the backs of her eyes.
This is where it happened. Time and fear and sickness welled up around her, puddled yellow-green at her feet. History made translucent layers of itself, photo negatives stacked on top of each other. The stones melted into mud under her heels. The sky pulled away with a dolly zoom. Forbodium is where Lola Bieze lived, squat and rambling and half boarded-up, crammed into a dark alley between a curry house and an abandoned shack. Bieze hid from them in the kitchen, her pimp's stolen pistol in her hand, her daughter stashed away in the bedroom.
She kicked in the door (Hattie Couture size seven black patent ten centimeter wrapped fabric heel) and shrapnel flew, splinters dancing through the air like snow. Her chest burned, red soaked through the front of her blazer. Wood stuck out of her like a stake, threatened to pierce her heart.
He was standing there in the dark hallway. A black morning coat, iron-gray waistcoat, plum-colored cravat, ridiculous silk hat. Keelan, young, blond, smiling under his mother's crooked nose. He wasn't supposed to be there, in Lola Bieze's hallway. That's not how it happened. None of this was right. But she couldn't change it. The Makepeace boy raised his arms to her, clad in pristine violet gloves.
She never shot him. Her hands were empty. She couldn't have shot him. She wanted to scream it out loud.
A sharp crack echoed in the room, rippling the yellow-green air. Blood poured down his temple and into his left ear. His eyes rolled up into his head, brilliant and white as the teeth in his still-present smile. He didn't fall over when he died, still standing, still smiling, still reaching for her.
It was hard to breathe. The gas hurt her lungs. Her vision blurred and the room filled with dead young men. Allison stood behind her with the gun raised and streaming green smoke. She was doubled, both her faces cold and emotionless and flecked with blood and brain.
Her throat hurt from the gas, or maybe the screaming.
---
He stumbled over a curb.
Lucas squinted into the grey, misty morning. He was flying down a sidewalk, beneath street lamps still lit with halogen orange. Sweat and condensation beaded down his back, under his shirt. He must have just passed his fourth kilometer.
Though his legs stung and his feet had unerringly kept him off the street and out of danger, he had no ready idea of where he was. This wasn't his neighborhood, to be sure—the buildings were too modern, too posh. He didn't see another living soul. Even the cabs were gone.
His neck twinged when he turned his head to gather evidence. He must have slept rough. On the couch. A settee, actually, that's what the Prof had called it. The word "settee" unlocked the rest of his memory—his building was closed, he was staying at her flat, she lived on the second storey behind a metal door. All the rooms smelled like lavender and smoke. He'd woken up in the night to muffled shrieks.
The last bit concerned him the most. He tried not to put too much effort into recalling the path back to her building, letting muscle memory transport him there. This seemed a relatively safe neighborhood, and he didn't recall hearing stories about her unpleasant neighbors.
And there was her metal door, recessed into a stone alcove, shining with rain. He stopped here, stretching out his tingling calves. Unless—that hadn't been her screaming, had it? The thought chilled him. If she'd been in any danger, surely she would have—but maybe it was just a rough night? He couldn't remember in what state he had left her flat, and maybe she was still asleep.
Lucas took the stairs as quietly as possible, though his legs screamed with the effort, and opened the door into her home with professional silence. But he needn't have bothered after all, because there she was.
There she was. The small table in the dining room was overlaid with pages from today's paper, a cup of deep red tea staining a ring into the editorial pieces, a crystal ashtray holding down the sports page. Alcyone was absorbed with what looked like page two of headline news, a cigarette between two long fingers sending curls of blue smoke into the air. Her long bare legs were tucked up under her, red curls stuck out at all angles, her yellow eyes were ringed and dark and hard.
In only a glance he could tell she was wearing—well, she wasn't wearing—she was very nearly—
"You do this every morning?" She remarked coolly, jamming the cigarette into the ashtray. The paper sagged in her hand when she reached for the tea. Bare white shoulders, long long expanse of skin from throat to collarbone to the low edge of a powder-blue bra cup—
He physically turned away, unable to see or think or even parse an answer to her question. He heard her snort. "Please, do you expect to have a conversation with me by way of the back window?"
"I don't wanna be rude," he muttered, edging past her with a carefully guarded gaze. Not that rudeness was something she ever cared one jot about, but it felt weird to—he couldn't just—he didn't feel right just ogling the Prof. He kept his mind on the bag of his clothes at the foot of the settee. "Could—er, do you wanna—"
"If you're suggesting I cover my shame, I must ask you to remember whose home you're standing in." The paper rustled in her hand. "And really, Lucas, there's no need to play at revulsion."
There was a smirk in her voice he couldn't tolerate. He glanced up from his duffel bag for a fraction of a second—her eyes were on him, from around the edge of the paper, and she gave him a knowing, dangerous smile.
"I'm not playing at nowt." His ears burned.
"Shall I pretend to stumble so you can catch me in your young, strong arms again?" She laughed, merciless. "Detective Constable Baker! My virtuous knight." One slender hand pressed itself to her forehead, and she faked a swoon.
A hot wave of a panic swept over him. The train last night. He thought she hadn't—but that had been the other Prof, so maybe—
"That were an accident," he stammered, feeling uncomfortably like a kid squaring off with the school yard bully. If the school yard bully were a model-tall, wild-eyed redhead in only her knickers.
"Ah, and I suppose you're accidentally blushing now," she replied gleefully. "And all the over-long, wistful gazes, those were surely accidental."
He snatched up his clothes as fast as he could manage, stumbling to his feet. Of course she had figured it out. Who was he kidding thinking he hide something like that from Inspector Layton?
She was on her feet as well, moving to intercept him at the entrance to the hall, another smile on her face—the kind of smile a cat would make before catching the canary. "The bathroom is on the right," and she jerked her head in the general direction, never taking her eyes off him, the smile growing wider as his blush deepened.
"You're enjoyin' this a little too much," he accused her, though his tongue felt thick in his mouth.
She was standing far, far too close. Her eyes glittered like yellow diamonds. "Your bashfulness is rather more appealing than I thought it would be."
And if he weren't positive she was badgering him just for the sake of being... well, herself, he might even have enjoyed it a little more. "Listen, Red, I don't want--" Soldier on, old boy, ignore the heat in your face. "I don't want your, er, sister to know about..."
She quirked an eyebrow.
"To know how I feel, about..." God, it was like trying to find something to cling to after your ship sank. "I don't want to ruin t'professional relationship or owt, so you can rib me as much as you want if you promise not to tell her."
He watched her eyes move across his face, flickering like candle flames. What she was looking for, he couldn't say, but the smile was replaced with her usual mask of condescension. "And ruin all this fun we're having? Of course not." Her words were full of sharp, bright ice, and she returned to her chair at the table, snapping up the cigarette in her hand.
When he exited the bathroom, showered, dressed, and wary, she had changed into a heavy turtleneck, ubiquitous shrink-to-fit jeans, and a smooth, calm expression. Though relief flooded into him, he couldn't lose the suspicion grappling at his heart.
"I'm sorry about the dearth of food in the kitchen," she told him from the table, grey-blue and serene. The ashtray had disappeared. The tea was pale and creamed. The paper was neatly collected and rolled. "Breakfast has always been my least favorite meal of the day."
"Me too," he offered, watching her for any signs of... awareness.
"Will you be ready to head to the office soon?" She smiled the same patient little smile he'd always seen before.
He relaxed in an instant. "Aye. Now I haven't got a good excuse to be late, have I?"
---
Lucas tried to avoid physical contact in the subway, which ultimately proved an impossibility. He hoped his actions at least looked the very model of platonic friendship.
"I apologize for my sister's poor behavior earlier," she told him as they approached the front entrance to the Yard.
"O-oh?" His heart began to race.
She nodded, tucking a strand of auburn hair behind one ear. "It was quite... disorienting, to realize I had been undressed for so long." No discomfort showed in her features.
"Ah! Well!" He lowered his volume to a whisper, nodding as nonchalantly as he could manage to the front security. They made only a cursory glance at his visible badge before returning to their papers. "Nowt I haven't seen b'fore, right?"
She gave him a curious look. "Have you seen me undressed before?"
The guards looked up with renewed interest. Lucas must have turned five shades of red. "That's not at all what I meant!" He hissed.
Alcyone tapped her chin with her fingertips. "Other women, then?"
"Aye aye, ta for finally gettin' it, please lower your voice."
"I apologize," and she dutifully lowered her volume when they passed into the hall. "I thought I understood such behavior conferred social ranking."
More hurried smiles and casual nods at coworkers when they passed, Alcyone puzzling through something he really wished she hadn't latched on to. The open offices of the Yard--the Pit, he remembered Sniffer calling it—were swarming with officers, the low rumbling buzz of professionals only on their second cuppa. It was busier than he'd ever seen it. The early morning crowd looked like a different sort, and Lucas felt a little sheepish at his chronic tardiness.
A pretty little blonde in half-moon spectacles peeled off from a cluster of desks, eyes bright when she found Lucas. What was her name again? Erin? No, B-something.
"Sich was looking for you," she let him know, fiddling with the badge at the front of her tan blazer, obviously trying not to smile when she looked at him. "DL-799 related."
"Did she tell you why?" Alcyone asked.
The shorter inspector stared up at her, as though only now realizing she were there. "I'm sorry, but it isn't my case, now, is it, Layton?" She asked hotly.
Alcyone tapped her chin again, apparently lost in thought.
"Ta, Inspector," Lucas cut in, still flubbing on her name, "we'll go track him down."
The blonde smiled at him again, a little overlong. The crew in the desks behind her began laughing at something uproariously, and Lucas watched her eyes light with fire. "This is Scotland Yard!" She shouted to the officers behind her. "This isn't the happiest place on earth! Everyone back to work!"
It was as good an excuse as any to dodge further conversation with her. Lucas darted away down the hall, Alcyone easily catching up to him.
"Have you seen Blair Dartwright?" Alcyone whispered to him.
"Ugh, that's her name, ta for—wait, no!" The nature of her question dawned on him. "What do you think I am, Prof??"
"Is this line of questioning too personal?"
"I jus' don't want you thinkin' I'm some kinda male trollop!"
"Oscar! Felix!" The telltale squeak of wheels. Florent rolled around the corner of a standing cubicle, his chest heaving, his usually sunken eyes shining in their sockets. "DL-799! Good news, bad news!"
He seemed out of breath, and Lucas didn't want to push him, but before they could so much as ask for the news Florent had done an about-face, leading them around the offices to one of the interrogation rooms.
"Second death," he informed them between rattling gasps. "Suspect detained."
"A second death??" Lucas demanded.
"Who is the suspect?" Alcyone asked with unusual heat.
Florent bobbed his head by way of apology, still breathing heavily. They continued to follow. A second death put DL-799 firmly in serial murderer territory, and it wouldn't just be an isolated copycat—it would be the Chlorine Killings or something equally pithy, as though a clever name could encapsulate the terror of multiple deaths.
Alcyone caught the door for Florent, and he veered inside, stopping at the dark two-ways to catch his breath. The two detectives waited patiently, Lucas snatching a glance or two at the man sitting alone in the room, already trying to grab for connections. Soft profile—chinless, big brown eyes—with his meaty hands cuffed in front of him, tugging at the collar of a crisp blue button-up. He looked old enough to be Allison Baster's father--maybe a man who fell in love with Lola Bieze even while she was incarcerated, and followed her instructions out of devotion?
Sich had finally calmed his breathing enough to find the updated case file for them. "The second body was found on an LBC studio lot." He retrieved the file-folder from the bag on the back of his chair. "We're running toxicology now."
"Toxicology?" Lucas passed the file to his partner, who dove into it immediately. "But it were chlorine gas, weren't it?"
He pulled his grey face into a grimace. "It's complicated. We don't think the gas is what killed him. Action's on the scene right now investigating, but he found this guy, Obadiah Sessions, confessing to everything and sent him to us. Insisted Al should do the interrogation."
She gasped, a quiet "oh!" escaping her lungs. Her eyes brightened like a power surge. "Excellent. Excellent." The smile widened, sharpened in an instant. She shut the file with a snap and pressed it into Lucas's chest. "At least that chest-beating gorilla knows how to properly delegate."
He shied away, pulling his hat down over his eyes. "Why are we interrogating if he already confessed?"
Sich was watching Alcyone with a keen look. "Beats the hell out of me. Action thinks you guys can get more info out of him."
"Disable the cameras for me, Florent, dear." She pinched her tongue between her teeth in a dirty grin, sliding out of her white jacket. "In ten minutes he'll be confessing to Ferdinand, Lincoln, and Caesar."
Lucas could have sworn he heard Sich muttering "yikes," and he raised his hands in defense. "She's joking. I'm sure she's joking."
"Real funny. Follow up with Action when you're done with the stand-up." Sich let himself out, head down and shoulders hunched. The door to the interrogation room flew open with a bang. Lucas caught sight of red hair disappearing around the door frame. She was certainly eager to get started.
Alcyone took up both chairs opposite Sessions, propping her foot where Lucas should be sitting. He stood behind her against a corner, frowning, idly flipping the file papers.
"Good morning, Obadiah." She grinned at him, drumming her fingers on the desk between them. "Is it fine to call you Obie?"
Sessions stared at her, jaw a little slack, brown eyes freely roaming her stretched-out form. Lucas grit his teeth.
"You're a bit funny for a detective." He spoke as though his tongue were just a touch too big for his mouth.
"Oh, do you think so? The show hasn't even started yet." She dropped her leg, bent over the desk, her hands clasped and her teeth bright in the dark room.
"So you were in LBC studio 4 yesterday during t'incident?" Lucas asked, aimlessly leafing through the papers, searching for bits of info that stuck out to him.
"I did it," Sessions drawled. The chain stretched between his hands, both flat on the table, heat marks from his palms slowly creeping along its surface. He seemed implacable, completely unmoved. "Like I told the ovver officer, I killt Enochs and I don't care none if you lock me up for good."
Enochs? He lifted page after page. Dustin Enochs? There was the victim profile, and shots of the crime scene—a beautiful young man with dusky skin lay motionless on a cot in a crowded dressing room, windows shut, cleaning bucket by his feet. It was unmistakably Dustin Enochs, the up-and-coming LBC actor. He raised his eyebrows and glanced at Alcyone, who was busy pulling a thread from her sleeve.
"W-why Enochs?" Lucas had never had direct interaction with the young man, only his witness statements from the infamous Blaise O'Glory case. He seemed a bit mercenary, but not, well, murderable.
"He 'ad it comin', innit?" The suspect's tone was dark, ominous. "Been in a thorn in our side ever since he got this big role. Rose-scented candles only. Yella Smarties only. Bottle water at 20º only. None of us blokes allowed to look'im in the eye, only the birds." He fixed Lucas with a watery brown stare. "I couldn't take the insult anymore."
It was just a matter of vengeance for a bunch of perceived slights? Lucas eyed him again. He spoke roughly, calm for a man under pressure, but his gaze grew ever more strained, glassy. Sessions was squinting between the two of them. The whole thing already felt at odds with the previous murder—if the Prof's guess at Bieze's involvement was correct, why a high-profile target like Enochs after hitting a nobody like Garner?
Alcyone had been silent, unusually so. The trademark Miss Hyde Interrogation Techniques were late in coming. She planted a red trainer on the edge of the desk, rocked back, dangled her head over the edge of the chair. Her yellow eyes were hard and glittering, smile gone from her face.
"Baker, remind Obie what he does for a living, if you can call it such a thing."
He sighed, and flipped to the front page. "It says Set PA."
"A production assistant expects us to believe he killed his own actor on-set for something as petty as yellow candies." She continued rocking, scowling at him upside down.
"I did kill Dustin Enochs," Sessions insisted, his eyes very narrow and bright. "I warn't gonna take any more'a his—"
The front legs of her chair landed with an echoing crash, and she rocketed to her feet, slamming her hands on the desk. Her hair fell wild about her face. Sessions jumped away from her, cuffed hands flying to his stiff blue collar. They looked reversed--the implacable madwoman, the startled civil officer. "Tell me how you did it!" She demanded. "I'm not interested in any simple confession!" One hand raised in a tight claw around an imaginary neck, fingers trembling with tension. "Tell me about the look on his face when he saw it was you, the recognition in his eyes even as the light within them died away!"
Sessions leaned as far away from her as he could, his eyes slits in his soft face, sweat glittering on his forehead and jowls. Lucas took tentative steps forward—he'd never had to interpose himself between her and a suspect, but it always paid to be cautious.
"What shade of purple were the bruises beneath your fingers?" She continued, her voice reaching a fever pitch. "Did you hear the celery-crunch of his trachea?" She slammed her hands on the desk. "The gurgling in his lungs? Did he try to scream your name, or did the last of his breath rattle out of him like dry beans in a coffee tin?"
"Y-yeah." Sessions had turned a grey-green, quivering, revolted. "Yeah, alluh--that."
"You left him a grey, stiff corpse in his own room," she cried, in that potty, half-enraged, half-exulted way. "You crushed his throat over Smarties, because that's what cold, implacable men like you do!"
"Yeah," he agreed, slightly renewed, his voice raising to match hers. "Yeah, I... I wrung 'is neck! For me and the boys! For what he did t'Bella!"
Lucas paused, and referred back to the file. "Bella Lovely?" He clarified. The actress convicted in the Blaise O'Glory case—the actress who'd had an affair with Enochs.
Alcyone collapsed back in her chair, the frenzy passed. With one hand, she reached up to the file, and without looking pulled it to the third page. "Baker, remind Sessions of the cause of death," she ordered, her voice back to a low simmer.
He checked it, and double-checked it. "Er... respiratory depression."
"From?"
"Possible overdose of sleep medication. No... no signs'a struggle."
Alcyone planted her chin in her hand, pinning Sessions under her stare, her silence somehow more painful than the usual pointed words. He glanced back and forth between the two of them, slowly coming up to speed.
"Well, I did alluh that after I drugged 'im," he assured them with his previous calm.
Alcyone was on her feet without deigning to respond. The look he'd seen that morning passed over her again, her eyes dimming a little and her mouth a straight line. It was disappointment, he realized. "Another of Lovely's pathetic remnants," she spoke only to Lucas. "Action is wasting our time. Get this fake out of my sight."
"I ain't no fake!" Sessions roared. He was on his feet quicker than a man of his size ought to be, rounding the desk, big and bristling as an angry bear, hands in big sweating fists. He was too close too fast. Alcyone took a step back, unguarded shock on her face. "You tell them I did it, or Bella'll never—"
Muscle memory carried him forward. Lucas was in the man's space in an instant, arm around his neck, dragging him in a headlock to the back wall. Sessions's big body hit it with an echoing slam, his eyes shut tight.
"You're off for murder but about to get it for assault of an officer," Lucas informed him in a low voice.
Tears squeezed out of the corners of his eyes. "I just... I just want Bella to see..."
Four more uniformed officers crashed through the door, barking orders, pulling the man out of Lucas's hold. Sessions was hauled away with little trouble, soon leaving the two detectives alone in the reverberating quiet of the interrogation room. Alcyone stood with a hand on the back of her chair, face hidden behind curls and shadows.
"Well, that were the most interesting thing of the week, for sure," Lucas said finally. He dusted his hands on the legs of his trousers.
She looked at him from behind a curtain of red, her eyes like molten gold. "I had him," she insisted.
"Aye, but I got'im," Lucas returned, grinning.
She sighed and shook her head back and forth, tossing her hair, adjusting the thick neck of her sweater. "What a spectacular waste of resources! I should have known Action's incompetence would shine through somehow." She pushed her red hair behind both ears, and gave him a lascivious wink. "I'll leave you to the debriefing."
His ears burned. "What d'you—" But she bent at the waist, one hand at her stomach and another covering her eyes. "Come off it, Prof, you can't keep goin' back and forth like this."
She straightened, smoothing her hair. "It isn't always my decision," she murmured.
He cringed, placated only slightly. "Let's get back to t'office and give this new file a once-over."
Alcyone barely had the energy to take her coat, and left it hanging limp over her arm. The cold restraint of professionalism kept him from offering her an arm. He reviewed for her the events of the interrogation, and she came to the same conclusion her sister had moments ago. "He was hoping to impress Bella Lovely."
"I'd hoped t'ave heard the last of that one." He grimaced. If Enochs had been mercenary, Lovely was downright sordid, and she'd taken too much a liking to Lucas during that investigation last—had it really been over a year ago now?
As if mirroring his thoughts, Alcyone sighed. "Some people tend to attract trouble." Her tired eyes flitted down the hall, and she sighed again.
DCI Rex Action was striding towards them, masculine and handsome and contemptible. He smiled, wide and sparkling, and saluted them with a file folder. "Just the team I was waiting to see!"
"We're in high demand," Lucas remarked, flat.
Action presented the file to Alcyone with a bow and a flourish, going so far as to tip his hat to her. "My dear inspector, DL-799 is expanding, positively exploding, and just when I feared the trail was going cold."
"We finished interrogating Obadiah Sessions," she informed him, demure. "I'm afraid it wasn't a successful lead."
"No? Ah, well." His smile never faltered. "I thought him a bit batty, if I'm to be at all honest, but we must treat all murder confessions with equal gravity, mustn't we?" He tapped the file in her hands with a square finger. "The results of my investigation at studio 4, and I've compiled the data into one of those little chips you treasure so much. Do give it your best! We've a serial murderer at large now! Ah, but—" Action had been about to leave, much to Lucas's relief, only to turn at the last minute and grasp one of Alcyone's hands in his. Her eyebrows lifted, the most surprised he'd seen her in a while. His hackles went up immediately. "On my way here, the commissioner herself asked me to send you in when I saw you. Something of utmost importance, I'm sure."
"I'm sure," she agreed, though the softness had fled her voice and she was left soundly oddly robotic.
He released her and gave another bow, marching past them down the hall. The inspector sighed, rubbing her temple. "At this rate, I'll never see the inside of the Mystery Room today. Will you become familiar with the new information before I return?"
"Aye, you can count on me." But his blood was growing icy and his fingers felt stiff when he took the file. "The commissioner, eh? What... what d'you think she wants?"
Alcyone shook her head. "I hope she forgives me if I'm rather more interested in returning to my work than discussing—oh, I need to manage this headache." She was rubbing her temple again. "A few minutes, Lucas."
They parted ways, and Lucas was left with the twisting feeling in his stomach. Just days ago, the commissioner had asked him about the Prof's capability, if he felt she were ready for more. And he'd—
He'd given her the best answer he had. Lucas straightened up, adjusting his hat. There was no reason for all this guilt. He'd still done the right thing. And who's to say the commissioner would take his advice so seriously, anyway?
There was a second element he'd forgotten though, and maybe it was his unusually close proximity to her that day that made him remember. What was Miss Hyde going to say about all this? The thought of her anger left him cold.
He unlocked the Mystery Room himself for the second day in a row, slapping the file against his thigh.