"We have all night to clear this place of our tracks. Lucius and his men will find the corpse and, looking at the state in which the body is reduced, will deduce that Dr. Hudson's killer also killed Dr. Klein, or perhaps they will try to give other explanations. The important thing is that they don't find anything that can lead them to us. Now get up and give me a hand, start by taking your jacket off the floor" Layton firmly replied, holding out a hand to the girl and helping her stand up.
"I... I don't understand... how did you drive that monster away? The... the ultraviolet light from your flashlight... the one you use for biological traces on surfaces... was it the one that scared the alien?" Faith asked again, who couldn't stop thinking about what had happened, trying to connect the pieces.
"Yes, apparently it was particularly sensitive to UV-A light... it was as if his eye was undergoing some kind of chemical reaction... it was terrified..."
"And now? Where is he now? What would we do if it came back again?! The air duct could take him anywhere on the Voyager and... oh, no..." Faith said, interrupting her own words.
"If it managed to get into Klein's body, he could get into anyone's body, yes..." Layton continued, trying to react pragmatically to the girl's reasoning.
"We must absolutely warn the Captain and all the security men! They need to know there's an alien being on board, we can't manage something like that! We are just two janitors!" the girl exclaimed, who altered a phase of confusion to one dominated by agitation and nervousness.
"They must know, yes... but we cannot say that we have been here and that we have violated the quarantine of sector C as well as countless laws. Think about it, you said it yourself... we are just two janitors, who would believe us? We would immediately be suspected of killing both Klein and Hudson by hiding in this restricted area and turning off the cameras! We have no alibi, we must study the situation well..."
"Fuck... fuck it... what a mess... we shouldn't have... we shouldn't have gone this far down here... it was a problem that the security men would have solved on their own! But what if they didn't notice? What if Tyler really let Klein die just to steal his role as the first doctor on board? That alien would run around Voyager and rip us off one by one! What a fucking mess..." Faith said, walking back and forth around the room and compulsively touching her head as if she was going haywire.
"Hey... hey!" Layton interrupted, grabbing her by the shoulders and blocking her movements, forcing her to look him in the eye.
"No one will find out that we have been here and we will somehow be able to spread the news anonymously... Lucius and his men will be forced to investigate and solve the problem, finding the real culprit in the murders. I'm sick of mentoring you! Do you have that odorless disinfectant? The one we use to sanitize bathrooms..."
"Yes, I do..." Faith replied, pulling out a small bottle containing a transparent liquid from one of the side pockets of her work pants, handing it over to Layton.
"Well... now you and I will clean all our tracks, including those on Klein's body, if they are still visible... we can use the UV-A torch to verify that we have done a good job... we will do it as soon as possible and immediately after... we'll go to the office, use the key to open the desk drawer and find out what's in there, since that piece of shit that tried to kill us, just talked about that damn drawer again and again!" Layton said, exposing his plan to Faith and clarifying her ideas.
"All right... okay... let's move then, give me one of those rags" she replied, who without saying whether or not if she agreed with the plan, merely obeyed orders, trusting Layton, who until then had managed to unravel himself in difficult situations.
Combining the normal torchlight with that of the UV-A smaller one, the two janitors began to clean every corner of the room they had touched or approached.
Starting from the sleeping area, including the floor under it, to the wardrobe and the rest of the room.
The blood around Klein's corpse was left on the ground and when Layton approached the corpse, capping his nose to resist the stench of rot, he simply cleaned his wrists, which he had gripped forcefully shortly before trying to free himself from the grip.
With incredible speed, being used to doing that kind of work, made even more efficient by the haste and fear of being discovered, Layton and Faith cleaned up all their tracks in the room in just over 15 minutes, taking care not to overlook any details.
"I'm done down here... light up the area with the flashlight, let me check if anything is still visible" Faith said, pointing with her hand at the area she had just cleaned.
Layton pointed the torch at the wall to which the girl had leaned and discovered that there was no sign of Faith's passage.
"Perfect... now let's get out of here quickly!" he exclaimed, whose gaze fell towards the blood prints left on the wall by that strange alien with tentacles, leading up to the air duct, still open.
"It seems quite obvious to me to understand that something has crawled inside that black hole in the wall... I doubt Tyler and Lucius can't figure it out themselves..." Faith said, picking up the last rags soaked in disinfectant and exposing her thesis, having now calmed down.
"Yes, I think we will be able to indirectly warn them that something unprecedented has happened in here. The air duct is too tight for a person, not even a small one. They will see the trail of blood and understand... we did a great job, now let's go" he replied, grabbing the metal object used as a weapon and the plastic sphere of the globe.