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“Are we really sure about this?” Lynne asks, shifting on her feet as she looks at Kamila, asleep in the Psync chair. “I mean…”
“You’re already veeeeeery familiar with her,” Cabanela says. “So your Psync compatibility is eeeextra high. Don’t sweat it, ‘kay?”
“But…my first case?” she asks. “On something like this?”
There are only a couple suspects in this case. It should be open and shut. Either the father or the daughter did it. The only complications are their emotional entanglements with all of this. Cabanela had singlehandedly dragged this case under the SIU’s purview, despite it being a pretty straightforward case according to the initial investigation. The chief’s worried about Cabanela’s involvement in all this, especially after something he mentioned happening when Jowd stepped away from the force, but Lynne’s just as wrapped up emotionally in all this, so who is she to disagree? Jowd’s the reason she’s here now. She doesn’t want to think he’s a murderer either.
“For what it’s worth,” Sissel says, “I don’t think it’s a bad idea to get a closer look. We could always be missing something.”
“Right,” she replies.
“She’s ready.” Pidge gives Lovey-Dove a couple scritches from her perch on his head. “Get on in there, Lynne. She won’t stay asleep forever.”
She nods, exiting the control room and entering the Psync room. Kamila’s peacefully asleep in the subject’s chair. Lynne pauses, brushing back a strand of Kamila’s hair from her head. Alma’s dead. It might be the fault of her hero. It…could also be the fault of the child beneath her.
Only one way to find out.
She takes a deep breath and approaches the other chair. She relaxes. The visor lowers onto her.
“Now, remember,” Pidge tells her from the other side of the glass. “You only have six minutes in Somnium. Do not stay any longer.”
“Of course,” she says. She might never have Psynced before, but every Psyncer with the SIU knows that. They drill it over and over during training. Six minutes.
The machine hums to life beneath her.
When she opens her eyes, she’s in a facsimile of Kamila’s house. In front of her is…
Actually, who is that?
“Don’t worry. I predicted something like this might happen. After all, it’s not like I’ve piloted my Somnium form yet.”
She recognizes that voice.
“Sissel?”
“I took this form from your memories,” he explains. “You had only a few memories with this man, and I thought it would be better if I took the form of a stranger rather than someone you knew.”
“Okay.” She still can’t shake an unsettling feeling, though. “Let’s do this, then.”
“Somnium scan: activate!”
There aren’t too many mental locks. Lynne can do this. She can.
“It’s awfully dark in here, isn’t it?” she asks. “Let’s turn on the light.”
Sissel nods. He flips the light switch at the front of the hall.
The fan turns on, too, lifting up the box to reveal a cake.
“A…cake?” Sissel asks.
Mental Lock 1: Time to celebrate!
“It was her mother’s birthday,” Lynne answers. “That’s when it happened.”
“That’s awful,” he responds. “That makes this whole murder thing make even less sense. Why would someone kill her on her birthday?”
“Look at the fan,” Lynne says, instead of answering.
The box keeps rising and falling as the fan spins.
“Kamila’s known for doing stuff like this,” she explains. “It’s not really surprising that she has a Rube Goldberg machine in her dreams…”
“She must be pretty smart, then,” Sissel remarks.
“Yeah,” Lynne answers. “She is.” She looks back at the fan, and then spots a green ball on the table near where the box is rising and falling. “Hey, Sissel? Could you pick up that ball?”
“Got it,” Sissel answers. “What do you want me to do with it?”
“Uhhhh…if Kamila was building this, what would be the next step?” Lynne muses to herself. “Come on, Lynne, think!”
“What if I stuck it up here?” Sissel asks. He reaches up to place it on top of the ceiling fan.
“Hold on, are you…taller than me?” she asks.
“I believe in this form I would be taller than you, yes.” He shrugs. “Though seeing as I don’t think we can really coexist in the same place at the same time, the point’s kinda moot.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” she says. “Besides, aren’t things that should be impossible in reality possible here? That’s the whole point of why these things can’t be admitted into evidence.”
“Sounds about right,” he answers.
As the box lifts up, the ball falls from the ceiling fan into a bowl, hitting a series of statues.
Mental Lock 2: Happy Birthday to You!
“That sounded an awful lot like the melody of ‘Happy Birthday’, didn’t it?”
“It did…” Sissel frowns. “I guess we have to keep assembling the machine, then. What’s usually here?” He touches a metal pole. “You’ve been to their house before, right?”
“You can literally access my memory,” she says. “That appearance is literally pulled from one of my memories. Yes, I’ve been to their house before? Kamila’s like…nine years younger than me, Jowd used to…” She frowns. “They’d pay me to babysit her when I was a teenager.”
“Oh,” Sissel says. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to dredge up anything.”
“Lynne, you have five minutes,” Pidge announces.
“Let’s get to work. This is some kind of spinning toy, we have to find the part that spins.” Lynne looks around. “Check the floor, maybe? Or under the table.”
Sissel lifts the tablecloth. “Kamila?”
“She’s shaking…Sissel, can you give her a hug for me?”
“…sure,” he answers. He folds Kamila into an embrace, but she doesn’t stop trembling after Sissel lets her go.
“Oh no…” Lynne frowns. “How are we supposed to help her now?”
“I think we just have to finish the job,” Sissel says, “and make sure her machine works.”
“Is the spinner under there?”
“I think I see it.” He emerges out from underneath the tablecloth with the metal part in hand. “Yes.”
“Put it on the pole, then,” she says.
“Three minutes left,” Pidge warns. “You’ve used half your time up.”
Sissel puts it on the pole. The last statue falls, hitting the toy downwards. As it spins back up, it opens up a lighter, which lights the flame of the wall Cupid’s arrow.
The arrow fires, and hits a set of party poppers.
Mental Lock 3: Lit the fire.
“Oh…” Lynne looks up at the gun on the wall. “Oh.”
“What are you thinking?”
The cupid continues to fire its arrow, but the party poppers aren’t sounding anymore.
“Look at the wall,” Lynne says.
“Why do they have a display gun there?”
“Take it down,” she says. “Check if it’s loaded.”
Sissel gingerly takes down the gun and opens the chamber. “It is. Do you think it’s always been loaded?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t…think they’d keep a loaded gun around Kamila? At least…I hope not.”
“So that means someone must have loaded it.”
“Look at the trigger. There’s…”
“A fuse attached to it,” Sissel says. “The gun will fire if it’s gone.”
“…so…do you think Alma died because of Kamila’s machine?”
“Well, it obviously wasn’t on purpose,” Sissel says, gesturing to where Cupid is still shooting at party poppers. “Depends on how true this Somnium is.”
“But still…that means it doesn’t have to have been Jowd.”
“It opens up possibilities, yeah.” Sissel closes the chamber and places it back into the frame.
“I think…we have to rotate Cupid,” Lynne says. “To fire the gun.”
Sissel reaches over and turns the wall decoration. Cupid’s arrow fires in the other direction now, lighting a candle which lights the fuse which fires the gun. A specter of Alma is standing there now. Her body falls to the ground.
Kamila runs out from underneath the table. “Mom! Mom!” She shakes the body. “Wake up!”
AWAKENING: A new cause discovered.
Lynne springs out of the Psync machine as soon as the visor comes off her head and runs over to Kamila. Kamila blinks.
“Lynne…?”
“It’s me,” she confirms. “I’m here. Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Kamila says. “I…slept pretty peacefully, actually. I thought it was going to be worse when you said that you and the people you worked with wanted to see into my dreams for any clues.” She rubs her eyes.
“That’s right,” Sissel says. “The subject lacks all memories of Somnium.”
“We need to talk to you a bit,” Lynne declares. “About what we saw in there. Don’t worry, we’re not going to show you. And we’re not going to put you in an interrogation room or anything. You’ll be right up there with Cabanela and Pidge.”
“Can I see Lovey-Dove?”
“Sure,” Lynne answers, “but touching might be another thing.”
“Okay.” Kamila follows her back up into the control room.
“Did you make a machine to celebrate your mother’s birthday?” Lynne asks, once Kamila is settled in a spinny chair and she’s stroking Lovey-Dove’s feathers, the bird having flown over to her lap.
“I…did,” Kamila answers. “At first I thought the noise was the party poppers, but then I heard…that was when I heard the body…”
“Did you put that fuse on the gun?” Lynne asks, kneeling down so that she meets Kamila at eye level.
“I…I didn’t do anything with the gun. I’m not allowed to touch it.”
“No lies detected,” Sissel announces.
Not that she needed it.
“I know,” he continues. “I figured you could use some reassurance. Your heart is pounding.”
“Thanks, Sissel.” She takes a deep breath. “After you set up the machine, what did you do?”
“Well, I had already tested it a couple times to make sure it would work before, even including the magic string,” Kamila explains, continuing to pet Lovey-Dove. “So I set it up quickly, right before I knew Mom was going to come home. I didn’t leave the room afterwards. I hid underneath the table.” She grips Lovey-Dove’s feathers.
“Mind the plumage,” Pidge growls.
“Sorry,” Kamila says. “But…I really didn’t see anyone else there. I don’t know…I don’t know why the cupid went that way. It shouldn’t have. And…and…” She starts crying. Lovey-Dove flies off, taking back her perch on Pidge’s head.
“Do we have any tissues?” Lynne asks. Cabanela looks around quickly, and passes Lynne his scarf.
“Really?” Lynne asks, but passes it to Kamila.
She sniffles.
“I think we’re done here,” Lynne says. “I’m not going to follow this line of inquiry anymore. I’m going after the murder weapon — the real murder weapon.”
“Lynne, wait!” Cabanela calls, but she’s already out the door, heading away from the police station before he can say anything else.
“You know, you were supposed to take Kamila home,” Sissel comments.
“Cabanela can do it,” she replies, talking aloud to him. “We can’t lose this, Sissel. I don’t want to lose this lead. Jowd…Jowd’s going to get out.”
“And who exactly killed Alma, then?”
“The person who put the fuse on the gun,” Lynne answers. “Obviously?”
“And…who is that?”
Lynne stops in her tracks. “Does it matter? We have the proof that will get Jowd released. And we can get Kamila’s testimony! We know she didn’t shoot her mom, and we know that despite Jowd being a dummy about this, he didn’t either. We have the third option. And we can prove it, too! Kamila mentioned the magic string earlier.”
“Magician’s string, yes,” Sissel answers. “It has the property of being difficult to view with the human eye, and burns up incredibly quickly.”
“Mhm,” Lynne says. “That’s right.” She continues walking to her bike. “We’re going to see if we can find that gun, Sissel. I won’t accept anything else.”
“If you insist.” He pops out of her eye socket. Her bike’s been modified so that as she pedals, Sissel will get to charge a little from the power generated by her effort. Means she puts on an eyepatch with her helmet.
The bike ride to Kamila’s house isn’t very long, so Sissel doesn’t get much of a charge from it. She usually takes the long way back from work towards home to get a little extra — Sissel’s not just her crime-solving partner, after all.
“Okay, here goes.” Lynne hops off her bike and discreetly puts Sissel back into her eye socket. Gained another percent of charge — not bad. The house door still has police tape over it, but there’s only one police car inside. She knocks on the doorframe. An officer approaches from where he’s inspecting the tape of the body’s outline. She flashes her badge — the real one — at the officer.
“Lynne…from the SIU?” he says. “It’s an honor to meet an SIU officer! Come in, come in.”
She ducks into the house, moving the caution tape to make her journey easier. “What’s your name?”
“Wow, to think an SIU detective would ask someone like me for my name…it’s Kevin.”
“Got it,” she says. “It’s nice to meet you, Kelly!”
He groans. “Do…do you need anything, detective?”
“Have you found a gun anywhere in this house?” she asks. “Not Jowd’s gun. The one he claims is the murder weapon. We’ve gotten some new developments — we think there’s another murder weapon.”
“Huh,” Kieran says. “Another…murder weapon?”
Lynne looks up at the picture on the wall. “Yes. We’ve done some more investigating, and we believe that there could be an alternative gun.”
“But…wouldn’t the ballistic markings not match up?” Kenneth asks. “We already had Forensics look at that. The bullet was pretty intact in the floor, so…”
“He could have been trying to frame himself.” Lynne looks at the evidence marker that marks where the bullet hole was. She peers downwards, but Jowd must have removed the bullet that shot Alma.
…that is, as long as the Somnium was accurate.
“Why would he be framing himself, again?” Sissel asks. “It sounds to me as though you’re…putting too much faith in his innocence.”
“As far as we knew, the only other person who could have done it was Kamila,” Lynne answers. “And he would never let Kamila get arrested. Not for killing Alma. He…he would give himself up, that stupid idiot.”
She doesn’t want to let herself cry. Not now, and not because Sissel said something in her head.
“It’s alright, Lynne. It would…it’d be improper to miss anything just because we know them personally,” Sissel says. “I’m trying to remain impartial. Someone has to, under the circumstances.”
“Detective Lynne? Ma’am?”
Oh. Right. She forgot Keith was there.
“Sorry,” she says. “Um, the gun I’m looking for is pretty old-fashioned. Not like a police-issue one, or even one you can buy at a store. Um…it looks wooden, and I think the metal parts should be brass?”
Somniums aren’t inherently real, but that doesn’t mean they’re all lies, either. Everything in a Somnium has to stem from somewhere — Kamila couldn’t have constructed the appearance of a gun she’s never seen.
“Sissel,” she asks, “can we x-ray the floor?”
“Do you really think he stuck it underneath the floorboards?” he asks in response.
“Could be anywhere,” she answers, “but I think that’s probably the place we’re least likely to look.”
The left side of her vision completely changes. She closes her right eye and walks around the floor, avoiding disturbing the evidence as much as possible.
“There!”
Lynne stops walking and looks directly in front of her feet. She can see the little metal highlights on the gun more clearly than the rest. The outline stands out to her like a sore thumb.
“Sissel, how do we get this open?” she asks.
“You should be able to get it open with your hands,” he answers. “It seems as though the floorboard is a bit loose.”
“Okay.” Her vision goes back to normal, and she opens up her right eye. “Hey, Kaiden, could you get me a pair of gloves?”
“Sure thing. But that’s not my name,” he says.
“What is it again?” she asks. “Sorry…”
“No, it’s okay,” he says. “It’s Kevin. You don’t have to remember that, though. Officers like me are dime a dozen.” He scratches the back of his head. “I’ll get you those gloves right away, ma’am!” He fires off a salute at her. A moment later, he comes back with a pair of latex gloves. Lynne snaps them on and tries to get underneath the floorboard.
“Got it!” she declares, holding up the gun. It’s a miracle. “Hey, Sissel, can you see anything?”
“I can,” he answers. He zooms in her vision for her, and they look closely at the gun together. “See those?”
“Those are…scorch marks. They must have come from the string Kamila uses.” Lynne looks over at Kevin. “Could you get me an evidence bag? I gotta get this back to HQ. Cabanela’s gonna want to see this.” She grins. It’s the evidence they need. Sure, she still has to get forensics to fingerprint it, but…she’s making progress. And besides, unless the person used gloves to tie the string on — which would be pretty hard — there has to be some kind of clue to who set the gun there.
“Yes, ma’am!” He hands her a bag. “How did you find that so quickly?”
“I thought it might be under the floorboards,” she answers. “So I was looking for ones that might seem loose.” She deposits the gun into the bag. “Thanks, Kevin!”
He sighs behind her as she leaves and says something she doesn’t quite catch.
“Lynne…”
Lynne offers him a sheepish smile. Cabanela looks down at the evidence bag. Sissel flicks his gooey tail back and forth from where he’s sitting on Cabanela’s desk. “Sorry for ditching earlier?”
He sighs. “I diiiiiiid drop Kamila back off at your place. You saaaaaaid she was staying with you, right?”
“That I did!” She lets out a nervous laugh. “Thanks, Cabanela. As a present…I brought back the real murder weapon?”
He holds up the evidence bag. “This suuuuuuure does look like the gun that was in Kamila’s Somnium.”
“I think Jowd must have hid it. That way suspicion wouldn’t fall on Kamila.”
“We still haven’t found the bullet that was fired from that gun, in any case,” Sissel declares. “The only bullet found in the crime scene was definitely fired from Jowd’s gun.”
Cabanela snaps on a pair of latex gloves from a box on his desk. “Let’s take a look, shall we, baby?” He cracks open the bag and lifts out the gun, opening the chamber. “Looks like there was one shot fired. One of the bullets is gone. It’s stiiiiiiiiiiiill not solid until we find that bullet, but I’ll go on ahead and tell the officer over there to get searching for it.”
“Or we could ask Jowd,” she says. “He’s probably the one who hid the bullet in the first place. After talking to you, I was going to see if I could get the gun to Forensics for analysis.”
“I’ll go on ahead and handle that,” Cabanela says. “You just head on home for the night, baby. Got it?”
She looks down.
“I’ll make sure she does,” Sissel says.
That night, she dreams of the park she used to go to a lot when she was younger. Sissel’s there, there’s a large fountain, and all she can remember when she wakes up is the final image — herself, with a shard of something in her eye, getting blood all over the grass.
When she wakes up, she fumbles for where Sissel’s sitting in his charger.
“Good morning, Lynne,” he says. “Pleasant dreams?”
“I…I don’t think so,” she says. “Were you actually there, or was that just my brain making stuff up?”
“That depends on your perspective, I think,” he answers.
…very helpful. She tries to think back on what she could have been dreaming about. She remembers — she lost her left eye when she was thirteen, in what was probably some heavily traumatic incident she can’t remember anything about. She’s only had Sissel for a few months.
“You know what I mean,” she just says in response.
She’s pretty hopeful for the day, she thinks, as she locks her bike to the rack, right next to Cabanela’s.
And then, when she gets into his office, he looks pretty dejected.
“Lynne, baby…you miiiiiight have messed up. Big time.”
Sissel does a flip out of her eyeball. Showoff.
“What do you mean?” he asks. “What did Forensics find?”
“They found evidence that the gun was remotely fired, sure…” Cabanela frowns. “But the only fingerprints on it are Kamila’s.”
“The killer could have been wearing gloves.” Lynne places her hands on the desk. “It’s not— it’s not impossible. We just need to keep looking. We can show that the machine was present in the house and that’s what led to the gun being fired. And that— and if Kamila didn’t put it there, then…”
“Lynne…” Sissel crawls onto her hand, trying to be comforting. She appreciates it, but she can’t treat this like they’ve already lost. There has to be another way.
“Have…have you talked to Jowd?”
Cabanela shakes his head. “Nnnnnnnnope. But if you wanna, you’re sure gonna get the opportunity to. I got the chief to get him in from the detention center, if you wanna speak to him. He’s in the interrogation room.”
Lynne grabs Sissel and shoves him back into her eye socket. He reconfigures himself to face the right way so she’s not looking at the back of her eye or something. “Thanks.”
“Noooooo problem,” he answers, and she rushes for the interrogation room.
“Hi, Jowd.” She pulls out her chair. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
“I think we can afford to skip the pleasantries, Lynne.”
Jowd may have quit the force a long time ago — it has to be almost ten years now, hasn’t it? — but he undoubtedly still remembers these kinds of circumstances.
She reaches to flick off the video camera that records audio and video. She knows there’s another one that records video for surveillance — but she doesn’t want their conversation recorded. Not now. She’ll probably catch some flack for it later, but she can always turn the camera back on later.
“Pidge can access all the data I record,” Sissel points out. “Are you sure this is wise?”
“Yeah,” she answers. “I just don’t want this getting to the chief straight away.”
Jowd has an eyebrow raised at the gesture. “Are you sure that’s protocol?”
“I thought you wanted me to cut to the chase,” she answers. “Cabanela and I have been looking into Alma’s case. You’ve— you’ve heard about what the SIU does, right?”
“Not all of it. Just that you have an experimental machine to use in investigations,” he answers.
“Well, we used it on Kamila yesterday,” she says, “and we got new info from that. It was her surprise for Alma’s birthday that did the killing. All that matters is who loaded the gun.”
She reaches to turn the camera back on. It won’t be a seamless recording, but hopefully the fact that she did turn it back on will mean slightly less of a penalty for her.
“We found out yesterday during our investigation that the shot which killed Alma was not fired from your gun,” she says. “Or at least — not the pistol turned in you have registered to your personal license. We haven’t checked this one’s registration yet, but…we’ve found that there is a bullet missing from where it was loaded. A round was fired from it. We also found evidence that it was tied to Kamila’s machine. The person we’re looking for is the one who tied the string to the machine. Now…for both Kamila and you there were far easier ways to kill her. If Kamila knew about the gun, she could have just shot Alma normally rather than setting up the machine. And you…well, we already know the simple option for you. Cabanela and I— we’re not happy with the simplest solution. And I’m sure you know…it’s not true.”
“I’ve confessed to the crime,” Jowd says. “I intend to plead guilty in court. Nothing will change.”
“Because you won’t let it,” she answers. “The SIU was founded to investigate cases where something was wrong. A locked-room mystery where the only person not locked in the room couldn’t have done it? That’s the sort of thing the SIU is especially equipped to take on. I know— I know you might not trust me with this. This is the first big case I’ve ever handled since I joined the force. But if you don’t trust me…please. Trust Cabanela. He’s trying to look out for you.”
Jowd shakes his head. “As far as the record is concerned, I was responsible. I see no reason for any of you to continue the investigation.”
Lynne reaches up to flick off the camera again.
“And as far as the record isn’t concerned?”
“Lynne, what the hell were you thinking?”
“I was thinking we weren’t going to make any progress as long as he thought his word was going to be taken officially.”
“I have all the data recorded anyways,” Sissel says. “The video camera in the room can prove that nothing happened, and if you’d like the audio recording, I’m sure I could pull it up on your computer fairly easily. And Pidge has access as well, since my data is backed up to the cloud.”
“He didn’t tell me much anyways,” Lynne says. “Not after that. He talked a little about the incident that caused him to leave the force, and that it was only justice that he turned himself in for someone’s murder, at the very least.”
“As I said, I do have the recording, if you’d like to view it.”
Cabanela grumbles. “Not here, Sissel. I’ll ask Pidge about it later. Lynne…”
“I know it’s not exactly proper,” she says. “But…he wouldn’t have told me the truth otherwise. Sissel recorded the whole thing. You can send his recording up to the chief, if he really needs it. I did it to earn his trust. You can— I’ll take whatever punishment you think is right, but I did what I had to do, and no harm was done.”
Cabanela sighs.
“I get him wanting to protect Kamila,” Lynne says. “I don’t want her to get locked up for this, either. She doesn’t deserve that. But…he doesn’t either.”
“I’m starting to think that maaaaaaaybe I shouldn’t have assigned you to this case,” Cabanela says. “I’m pulling you from the investigation. There’s that punishment you wanted, baby.”
She frowns. “But sir—”
“Nnnnnnnope. Yoooooou were the one who said you’d take whateeeeeever punishment I thought was right. And this is it. Go home for today, Lynne. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Fine. Sissel, we’re leaving.” She grabs Sissel and puts him back in her eyeball. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Cabanela.”
“You’re not really going to abandon the investigation, right?” Sissel sighs as she mounts her bike.
“Of course not,” Lynne answers. “What do you take me for? I’m heading to the park. Back where it all started. Maybe…maybe I can get some insight into what happened to me, too.”
“You mean…what Jowd said earlier?” Sissel pulls up the footage.
“You lost your eye that day, too. What took place during that incident…was my fault. Not just that man’s death…but that, as well.”
“Yeah. That.”
“Well…”
“Sissel…you have access to my entire brain. Do you know what happened?”
“…”
Lynne hops down from her bike as they arrive at the park. She keeps it rolling instead.
“You do know what happened, don’t you?” she pushes.
“It’s not very distinct, if it helps,” Sissel says. “I can only see what you see. If your memory is unreliable, then I don’t have access to that information either.”
“…good to know,” she mutters aloud. She arrives at the fountain. “This place…was where I dreamt about last night.” She pauses and looks at the top. She walks further down the path, and there’s a large crater, with a large rock inside. A little informative placard reads “Temsik - Rock of the Gods.”
“Lynne, I’m getting some weird readings off of this.”
She looks up from the crater. “Weird like how?”
“I can’t identify the form of radiation coming from it,” Sissel answers.
“Radiation?” She frowns. “Is it interfering with any of your functionality?”
“No,” he answers. “Doesn’t mean it’s safe for you, though.”
“Right…” She backs away from the crater. “Still, they wouldn’t have left it in the park if it was dangerous radioactive waste or whatever.”
“That’s right,” he answers.
“You know…”
Lynne turns around.
“I didn’t expect you to come back here, after all these years.”
That face…she’s seen it before.
“Sissel?”