I appreciated the mock analysis at the academy, but right now I wish to call in sick. Lazaros indisputably vindicated my name and nobody seemed to recall making me a suspect.
The voice of my senior rang through the skull as he tucked his arms behind him pacing with daunting steps with a profound ray on his face. The mock examination wasn't going to be typical. I acknowledged while scanning his expression since he stood tall in his crisp FBI uniform.
"The superiors have seen your training over the three months and are astonished at how generously you all have excelled. And due to the crises the country is encountering we're short of professional agents. So, the practical training this week will be different, real." He said, without any alteration in his expression.
My ears caught the surprise sigh behind and ahead of me. They didn't need to show surprise at the situation of the country.
The senior continued his speech with a conclusion;
"Good luck!" He said, nodding his head at the populace and stepping away with another senior agent.
Surrounding me were fifty trainees from my Batch, Batch C. Competitive air swarmed our midst and I suddenly didn't want to participate. Real practicum meant genuine blood in the scene, and I wasn't ready for an actual blood encounter.
My limbs ushered me into the training grounds, and I strode towards the shooting range. I'd passed the stage fraying a headset, so I picked up the gun and looked at the target. From the middle with a number one figure indication to the last number, ten. Behind the numbers, the target retained another six targets. A single bullet had to pierce them to hit the bottle at the end.
It was crafty. I'll have to observe the board from afar and target the weakest spot before shooting, to avoid a hindrance blocking the bullet from reaching the bottle.
My closest shot to number one was shooting at number four. It was an accomplishment knowing ⅔ couldn't aim for that number.
Three boys and a lady also stood at the shooting range, the lady had a headset on. Their guns aimed at the numbered board and they tugged the trigger.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!.... Bang!
The scores were depicted on the scoreboard above, and I twisted my head to check the score. My score stood high as I took second place by hitting number three.
"Again!" An agent said.
The five of us aimed at the far board again and pulled the trigger, blasting at the boards three times, simultaneously. I had keenly looked at the board before I pulled the trigger, the far board had seemed to have been closer.
Every trainee paused as their assigned devices chirped. I grabbed my phone from my bag and opened it. It's a message from the superior. An investigation location. Mock investigation. We were paired in a group, a group consisting of four trainees. Names mentioned.
Great. My thoughts were wrapped with sarcasm.
__________
As the sky darkened so also the footprints on the ground faded off view. I stepped closer to the deserted house holding my torchlight with two ladies and a male behind me.
The house wasn't abandoned, but one would think was due to the overgrown grasses and creaking of opened windows which seemed broken.
"Is it a murder case?" One of the females asked as they walked into the house.
"It wasn't written on the description," The male said.
The four of us had different specialities; The two females specialized in prints of any kind and anthropotomy. While the male and I were event analyzers.
"It's a woman." The male said upon reaching towards the corpse. He inspected her body searching for cues.
I could tell it wasn't a murder case, more like a suicidal case as I noticed the lack of wrangle on her expression. There wasn't any injury or a stab, but a distressed emotion. Her face expressed it wasn't a recent corpse, but the description indicated it was a four-hour-old dead body.
"I don't think this is the right corpse," The brunette said, her knees down at the corpse as she touched the skin. "Her face is liquefying." She lifted her body and walked behind the male.
Placing fake corpses in a fake investigation is a bit tricky since finding the actual fake corpse becomes difficult. Most times it would be concealed under a vault, behind secret doors and many hidden spots. After searching for a long time and seeing no other corpse they'll be forced to accept it as the right corpse. But today was different. It wasn't hidden in secret places but in the kitchen.
The relaxed emotion on her face, as I followed, seemed to be done by the killer as he'd modified her expression after eliminating her. The swift slay on her neck screeched professionally. The blood on her wasn't real blood, which wasn't right. But I was thankful for that.
"The killer took her unaware." The male said, pointing at her fingers which held remnants of vegetable slices and a few vegetables beside her on the ground. "He couldn't have passed through the front door since the dog would've barked to alert her since he literally wasn't holding a gun." They had walked past a dead dog in the ground, a stab hole in his skull.
Crouching beside the corpse, my eyes reeled through the body of the dead woman with attentiveness. The blood spill on the floor was too low for a throat-slayed four-hours dead woman. Even the dog with a holed skull had more bleeding than her. With gloved fingers, I shifted the apron to the right side of her breast and carefully unbuttoned the shirt she had on.
There was a gap in her chest and a missing heart. The cut on the chest seemed done by medical personnel as to how uncluttered it was. Her blood stain didn't touch the shirt she was wearing despite being slayed at the neck, which leads to two conclusions; The woman was laid unconscious and her clothes extracted before slaying her neck and cleanly cutting off her heart, or he changed her clothing after everything.
My limbs flowed to the laundry basket knowing if the killer was as intelligent as I am presuming, the clothes changed on her would be in the laundry basket. But the killer appeared to have been smarter since he left them inside the washing machine.
"There's no print," The dark girl said. "No fingerprint on any object or a fucking footprint that he was present here. And definitely no lip imprint." Her head turned to the male. "Are you sure it's murder?"
I almost snorted tauntingly. Of course, it's murder. "Who else would cut out her own heart with deep concentration and slay her throat like a paper cut?"
"Then whoever the murderer is didn't torch anything, not even the woman, and doesn't have feet."
The only trace the killer was here was the curved hole in her chest and the lack of blood on her dead body.
As I observed further, my nose caught the faint smell of something. An undead. My face contoured with annoyance as I rose from the ground and turned to face the ground.
"This isn't the right body either," I said, didn't give them any explanation and walked further into the house. The lack of blood on her had left me puzzled at the start, and I thought maybe that was a trick on the investigation. But upon catching the faint smell I knew it wasn't.
But since when were blood-deranged suckers neat at leaving no rough edges?
That's when I realized it was a real body with an emptied blood system. Fake blood was spilt around her to make her appear fake.
"I was thinking the same thing. The body looks too real." The brunette said. "Or was this what Agent Mars meant by 'Real'?"
"Maybe," The dark-skinned girl said, narrowing her brows with confusion.
"Her name is Lisa White, divorced." The brunette said reading through her file. "Owns a baking shop which opens at 6 am and closes at 8 pm." She raised her head from the file glancing at the group. "Can't see any bells,"
The group sauntered further into the house, the creaking sound increasing with each step. Then decided to single out, and still communicate with the assigned devices.
I roamed down the hallway holding my gun just above my torchlight. I walked through a door into a room that had items like a storage room, and as I walked inside the door shut itself behind me.
This should have startled me but it didn't. My heart wasn't thumping how I would have expected it to pound inside its cage. I noticed the creaking sound in this storage room wasn't chiming from the window or the door but from the floor. I leaned to the ground and knocked my knuckles on it. And it drummed. Something was underneath my feet.
I dipped my gun into my gun bag, held the torchlight between my shoulders and raised the carpet. A wooden squarely closed route came into view. Lifting the wooden cover, I seep my torch inside the hole. Noticing nothing I hopped inside, and the above cover closed after me. Underneath the house was another door at the side and I pushed it open.
"I'd begun wondering what's keeping you," A voice I knew too well filled the cramped darkness. He sits across a table and has coloured cards in his palm. Across him was another statuette sitting. They seemed to be playing the card together, only the figure wasn't alive. The figure's head was inclined to the side as his eyes held a dearth of life and his skin held a faded pale gleam.
I ran a quick inspection through the room before settling my eyes on Lazaros. "What are you doing here?"
Without lifting his eyes from his card, Lazaros replied, passing the card to the dead man. "Helping you." He dropped his card and picked up the dead male's card and passed it to himself. "A thank you would be appreciated, Rome,"
"Did you kill that woman in the kitchen?" The question blunted off my lips before I could think it through. Lazaros was the only infected person I knew who was sane enough to do stuff smoothly.
Proceeding with the card, he responded with bored enthusiasm. "I wanted something from her but that would only be achieved when she's alive. So no, I didn't." He started again after hesitating for a few seconds. "I actually rescued you and your friends' lives. I had to go through the trouble of sucking the blood without leaving fang marks on her. Cutting open her heart and flushing it down the toilet. All this is to prevent your claws and fangs from penetrating your friends. I think I deserve a thank you."
But I didn't thank him yet, rather shoved him with a wary look. "If you didn't, Then who did?"
"A little banny."
"A girl?"
Lazaros glared, dropping his cards with a snort of annoyance. He twisted to look at me. "And you couldn't ask your system?"
That's the moment I realized the server had been very quiet since the woods with the Bear. As I opened my mouth to speak, Lazaros beat me to it.
"Oh, I forgot. Made a few adjustments after adding some proposals. So, it should be coming back humming in-" He checked his watchless wrist. "-days."
"Which girl?" I pressed, not liking the mischievous smirk playing on Lazaros's lips.
"Need a piece of advice? I wouldn't trust ladies too much if I were you." He enunciated, without tuning down his amusement. He bent to the table and picked back his card. "You can watch if you like, I rescued this buddy just in time before he turned to ashes, poor soul. Now we're having fun." He passed a card to the corpse and picked the corpse's card and passed it to himself. "Too bad it's not a real corpse."
"I need the body back. I have a team upstairs looking for it."
"Bring the team down here. Then we can play a game of whose fangs sank first." The gleam in his eyes made me feel uneasy. "Or we can go up there and play. Either way is fine with me." I could see the hunger in his eyes and he wasn't even trying to hide it.
Before I could reply I heard my name from above, probably from the door of the storage.
"Quinn?"
"I don't think he's this way."
"He isn't at the other side either,"
"And his device has disconnected."
Lazaros's smirk transformed into a grin. "Dinner's here," Then he chuckled, noticing my marred expression. "I'm not eating them, Roman," He declared. "Take the corpse and go do your thing." He stood up from the chair and stepped aside. His voice exacerbated as his face toughened. "I've got a banny to warn."