Inquiry

"I have officially seen it all", the CSI said as he waved his hand in front of the bodyguards' faces. The bodies had been standing there since the night before. It almost seemed like the guards were actually alive. The only thing disputing that was their pale faces and the lack of life in their eyes.

"The cuts are so deep and yet they are almost invisible to the naked eye. I probably wouldn't have known without the magnifying glass. The blade that made these cuts is less a millimeter in thickness at the cutting edge. Either that or it was a steel wire" he said to the detective.

"It couldn't have been a steel wire. The assassins would have had to sneak up on them from behind to use that. But the possibility of a knife doing this is also not viable", the detective muttered.

"Why do you say so, sir?"

"Look at them. Do they look like they were attacked? It looks like one moment they were alive and guarding the door and then the next they were dead. They probably didn't even know they had died until they saw the gates of heaven"

"Stan!", someone yelled from inside Gonzalez's apartment. A bearded man poked his head out the door. "You have to see this" he said.

Stan, the detective on the case, walked into the apartment. He froze. The room was a mess. Body parts lay all over the ground, some even stuck to the walls and on the furniture. A thick smell of coagulated blood hung in the air.

Stan steeled himself and continued into the apartment and walked up to the bearded man. "What's the issue?" he said.

He saw what was in the man's hand. It was a sliced bullet. He took it from him and examined it. It was a perfect slice, no bumps or ridges.

"Again, what's the issue?", Stan said after looking at the half-bullet for some seconds.

"Look at the surface of the bullet, see how smooth it is. It's almost like that's how it was made. So much precision" the man replied.

"Are you really this surprised by a sliced bullet?"

The man pointed at the dozens of half-bullets all over. Most of them similarly sliced vertically down the middle.

"Again, Rick, Are you really surprised by the bullets?" Stan asked, "Did you not see the three men in the hallway, standing as if they're engrossed in a conversation about tits"

The CSI entered the apartment at this moment. He just finished his basic report on the bodyguards. He had ordered for the bodies to be packed. He was coming in to check the situation inside and he just saw the rather artistic carnage.

"This place looks like a Mortal Kombat arena. You know, fatality and all. Probably brutality, lol", he said as he walked into the room. " We might have to just pack up everything and take them to the lab. I can't even say which arm belongs to who" he laughed.

"Do that. And get all the security footage from last night, we need to see what exactly happened", Stan said "And please... Don't laugh at dead men. It's rude"

Rick, who was standing at his side shook his head and said, "I already checked with the management. They said there have been some malfunctions with the cameras. I feel like they're bullshitting me but they said, 'Around 8 last night, a lot of cameras on the 11th and 9th floor scrambled for about fifteen minutes. There was also an instance when the elevator cam scrambled for a short period, it scrambled as it passed the 9th floor and stayed scrambled till it went down to the ground floor. Also the cameras on the 10th floor didn't scramble until exactly six minutes after the 11th floor scrambled and three after the 9th. But the elevator was scrambled four minutes before the 10th'. That was literally the explanation they gave me, which is bullshit cos I would imagine that an assassin would just walk into the control room and turn everything off if he really didn't want any evidence of him to be left."

Stan lowered his head and rubbed his temples. "You could have just taken me to see the footage for myself", he sighed.

"We can go check it out while Rick looks for fingerprints and does other nerd things." beardie said.

Just as they were about to step out of the room, Stan received a call from the precinct. There was another bloody death. It was the man from the news who allegedly abused his wife, Dr. Stones. He was found dead in his house about half an hour before.

"Rick! Don! Let the others take care of the rest. We have to check out another death. Chief said we should handle it personally. Let's move" Stan called back into the apartment.

The three of them walked out of the apartment and into the elevator.

When they got on the elevator, Don started talking again, "Apparently, from the footage they have, three people got on this elevator when it stopped on this floor just before the camera scrambled. Two women and a child. There were two more people already in the elevator at the time. But when they got to the 1st floor and the camera cleared up, none of them were inside the elevator. The entirety of the ninth floor was scrambled so I don't know who got off there. And the footage of the 8th floor around the time seemed a bit blurry. Four people got off at that point, but the camera couldn't distinctly make out their features" he stopped as other people got on. Wouldn't want to alert the assassin to their investigation if he was still here. 😉

Silence remained until they go off at the ground floor. Don was about to begin talking again but Rick stopped him. "Dude, stop talking. We can check the footage out when we get back, we would have to do it even if you explained the whole thing. And neither of us is particularly fond of your voice"

They walked up to Stan's car. It was a black mustang with three white stripes on the top side. It was a rather old ride, a 2016 model but it was relatively well maintained.

They got in and Stan drove over to Dr. Stones residence. They were not the first to arrive as the chief was already standing outside barking orders.

Stan gave a wry smile as he got out of the mustang. The other two followed behind him, bending down as the crossed below the yellow tape.

"What took you so long? Did you want the corpse to start rotting before you start your investigation??!!" the chief greeted them with a harsh tone.

"We're here now, let's see what happened" Stan said without stopping as he moved towards the house.

As he entered he saw another bloody scene. It was less chaotic than the previous one but it had its own 'aesthetic beauty'. The body was lying on the ground in a pool of its own blood. The hands were on its head, pulling the hair. Its eyes wide open but almost entirely covered in a layer of blood. In fact, it seemed like the whole body was covered in a layer of blood, almost like he bathed in it.

The skin was torn open in many areas, but not in a blade slice kind of way. It looked like the skin was stretched until it gave in and snapped, the muscles and bones were clearly visible underneath. Some of his innards were poking out.

"Seems like I need to start bracing myself for every crime scene with the way things are going" said Stan as he looked at the corpse.

"I assume this isn't anything like you've seen before, right?" the chief asked.

"He looks like he was going to hulk out but then died mid way... ", Don stated

"Lol. More like Ant-Man was inside him and started expanding but stopped midway." Rick replied with a fascinated smile on his face.

The chief snorted and said, "What do you think is the cause of death?"

"I think he died of a haemorrhage" Rick said matter-of-factly.

"Oh yeah, Rick? Tell me, what was your first clue?" the Chief said, his tone dripping with sarcasm.

"He had coconut juice in his eyes" Rick replied while rolling his eyes.

"We should pull out his medical records", Stan said, stopping the chief from retorting.

"Good idea. He might have had a virus and maybe skipped a few pills. In which case we should quarantine everything and everyone here till we ascertain what exactly happened" the Chief said.

Stan squatted over the body and looked it over again. He didn't think this was about missing a few pills. As a matter of fact, he was almost certain Dr. Stones took something, probably as an experiment. People everywhere were doing idiot things like that ever since the first mutant emerged. He would still have to wait for the autopsy report.