The Quicksand Singularity ArQive: Array.init:0

A0T5.5 Clean House (Abridged)

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A light drizzle cast the cobbled streets in a misty lucence Ullifrikh would, on any other night, have found equal parts eerie and beautiful. As his car glided to a stop, he couldn't help but think of how the old eccentric would have been out in the middle of the night, slipping and sliding over icy streets with his prehistoric analogue camera. In pursuit of that ever-elusive one perfect shot, he would, invariably, have found himself yet again at Old Sawbones' surgery being treated for exposure. Frostbite had already nipped off a few of the old man's fingertips, to say nothing of certain appendages best left off official records. Sighing, Ullifrikh engaged the vehicle's landing gear. No point putting this off any longer.

The door to his car slid open and he stepped out into bone-chilling cold. He donned his hat and raised the collar on his woolen overcoat to block out the wind as best he could. Even for a native of Yaanis-5, winter in the South was a fierce and ferocious beast. His breath came in great puffs of smoke, which quickly coated his beard in a fine dusting of hoarfrost.

"Boss," Deputy Jaaing greeted as Ullifrikh approached.

The young woman lifted up the police tape to let him through before following him toward the stately rowhouse where Old Man Jaafarek lived.

"Lovely place," Jaaing said, "whole town's straight out of a postcard."

"Mmhmm," Ullifrikh grunted, walking up the steps to where Detective Læfeln was waiting.

New blood. Detective Inspector Læfeln was their first. County South Alfar-Hakvidr was too rural until recently for there to have been any need of detectives. Two deputies and a sheriff had been sufficient for centuries. But with the opening of a new titanium mine and its attendant mills and manufactories near to Dagalr Village, South Alfar-Hakvidr had seen a significant influx of population. Before the Governor's Quarterly Restructuring a few anno back sent them a dozen fresh reinforcements from Alfarsstvo, Ullifrikh, Jaaing, and Kulður had been overwhelmed.

It had been an adjustment for many of the transfers, but Ullifrikh was happy to have them, and most were happy to be rid of Alfarsstvo. From stories Læfeln and his compatriots had told—when Ullifrikh could get them to say more than a few words—Alfarsstvo had seen its better days. Dagalr Village had too, now that he thought of it.

Miners and factory folk, they were a rough bunch. Most of the work was done by drones, robots, or other heavy machinery, but these were still businesses that lived on their margins. Collecting what the diggers left behind was hard but necessary work, and even the machine operators couldn't escape the dust and sweat, forced down into the tunnels and shafts by necessity of maintaining signal.

Like soldiers, the hard and dangerous work they did made them a hard and dangerous bunch. As much as business was booming in Yna Dagalr Industrial Zone, so too were crime rates. No place was void of black markets and the seedy individuals whose stock and trade was the illicit, not even rural South Alfar-Hakvidr. Only matters of degree separated one land from another.

What had happened here...the last time Ullifrikh had been called to a scene of this manner of crime was before his tenure as Sheriff, nearly a century and a half ago. Degrees of separation, he mused. Even rural South Alfar-Hakvidr was not immune from this.

"Boss," Læfeln greeted as he ushered Ullifrikh in.

"Tvørrim's beard," Ullifrikh swore, seeing the state of the door.

"Right?" Læfeln reacted.

"You ever see something like this in Alfarsstvo?" Ullifrikh asked, assessing the foyer.