The Time Traveler's Odyssey

A Dreary Scene

It was a grey, rainy day in London when Detective Emma Vyncent came across the most unusual crime scene she had ever seen in the back alley of a fairly upscale bar called "Slow Note." Before her, behind the yellow tape that held off curious pedestrians was a woman in a black trench coat that hid her slim figure and a blue dress that was up to her mid-thigh and flattered her form very well. However, the trench coat did nothing to hide the gaping gunshot wound in the woman's chest, right where her heart was. She was dead upon the arrival of the ambulance, and seemed to have been killed hours before-around the time that the bar would be at it's busiest, which meant two things: anyone at the bar the night before could be a suspect, and there was a very slim chance of any witnesses, seeing as the back alley was never used except to throw trash out into the giant dumpster. Any smokers lit their cigarettes out on the front step of the bar, and it was too loud at prime time for anyone to be able to hear a gun going off in the back.

Emma sighed and walked closer to the girl to investigate the scene, and greeted the coroner Dr. Maura Rizzo, who was looking quite befuddled, but also extremely fascinated.

"How are you today, Maura?" Emma asked as she crouched down beside the brunette. "What's up with the weird expression?"

Without replying, the coroner pointed at the deceased woman's eyes, which had been open when the police had arrived. "Look at her irises, and tell me I'm not the only one who thinks something is off."

Curiously, Emma peered into the woman's eyes. They had the typical clouded over look of someone who has been dead for a while, but they didn't look like normal dead person eyes... Emma frowned, and looked closer into the brown depths of the unnamed eyes of the deceased. Suddenly, she keeled back in shock. "Her pupils! They're gone..."

Dr. Rizzo nodded. "I've never seen anything like it, and I'm assuming something, maybe an unidentified drug was the cause of it." She pulled out a small black wallet and opened it to reveal the deceased woman's license on the inside flap. "See here? In this picture, her pupils are still there."

Emma frowned, and took the wallet from her coworker. Lucy Bennett, age 22, brown eyes, height 5'7", vision 20/10, the license read. The woman had long, reddish brown hair, and was smiling in the picture brightly. The license picture looked as if it were taken when she was eighteen or so. How ironic, Emma thought, while peering down at the immaculately clean driver's license. Better than perfect vision, and now her pupils somehow disappeared. I'm guessing something more than just drugs was involved for such an unnatural thing to happen.

Emma was quickly snapped out of her mental processes however when Dr. Rizzo called over an constable and gently took the wallet from Emma's hands. "Lieutenant Darakos, would you run her license through the system to see if she has a criminal record-specifically involving drugs? I want to know if some of the post mortem symptoms she has are self-inflicted."

The lieutenant nodded and walked away after taking the wallet, and Dr. Rizzo continued to examine to body. Noticing that one of the dead girl's arms was laid across her stomach with the sleeve pushed back, the coroner decided to investigate further and moved the arm away from the body to examine the side that wasn't visible.

"Well that's interesting," she remarked, raising her eyebrows. She looked over to Emma and signaled for her to look at the dead woman's forearm. There, burned into the skin was a word neither Emma nor Dr. Rizzo had ever heard of, but sounded vaguely familiar.

Incido, it said, and merely reading the word gave Emma the chills from her head to her toes. Incido, she thought, where have I heard of that word before? Incido...incido... Unfortunately, recollection did not befall her, and she was yet again taken out of her reverie by Dr. Rizzo.