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Jonny is the one who slams the emergency meeting button, causing every other member of the Mechanisms to shamble in from their various hidey-holes. “What do you want?” Ashes groans, scowling over their cigarette.
“The Doc’s dead.”
“What?” Brian says. “She’s… immortal , how can she be— ?”
“Doc’s dead,” Jonny repeats. “I saw her go out the airlock. Which means someone pushed her out.”
“Maybe she just tripped and fell,” Nastya says.
“Into space ?”
Nastya shrugs and looks at Brian. “It could happen.”
“She didn’t just fall ,” Jonny growls. “Or maybe she did. I don’t really know. Don’t much care, except if there’s a murderer in our ranks I’d like to know.”
“We’re all murderers, Jonny,” Ashes reminds him.
“If someone is running around the ship killing our crew off willy-nilly I think we should make it a priority to identify them and dispose of them,” Jonny snaps. “Now where were all of you when Dr. Carmilla met her gruesome end?”
“She’s not really dead, there’s a 98% chance that—”
“Oh, good, Ivy’s decided to give us her alibi first,” Jonny says. “Well?”
She stiffens, eyes sweeping from crewmate to crewmate. “I was reading.”
“What were you reading?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “There are approximately 14 million different novels and novellas in my neural database, and I was processing them at a rate of 1500 words per nanosecond. At the time of the alleged murder, I might have been reading anything from “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” to, er… the last book the late JK Rowling penned before her unfortunate demise.”
“Sounds awfully detailed for an alibi,” Tim mumbles. “They say the more details you put in, the more likely you’re guilty.”
“And where were you , Tim?”
“Oh, I was in the cafeteria dumping trash,” he supplies. “Yeah, I’d eaten a bag of white cheddar popcorn and then there was a lot of that cheesy powder on my fingers and I didn’t want it to get on my gloves, which were brown, so I grabbed a napkin… three napkins, actually… and wiped off all the cheese dust and then when I went to throw the napkin and the empty bag away I saw the trash was full… there were some cracked eggshells on top I think, also some torn up notebook paper and three cigarette butts, and then I—”
“Tim if you don’t shut up I’m going to murder you,” Jonny sighs. “Ashes? Weren’t you keeping an eye on everyone? Did anyone see anything useful ?”
“I saw Nastya jump into a vent,” Ashes says, turning an accusatory eye toward the engineer.
Nastya doesn’t appear fazed. “I was making love to the Aurora,” she says flatly. “You’ve all expressed distaste when I fuck my girlfriend in common areas, so, vent.”
“I s’pose that’s fair,” Jonny says with a sour look. “ Gross … but fair. Ashes?”
“The Toy Soldier was annoying me so I was trying to kill it,” Ashes says.
“It was great fun!” the Toy Soldier declares, clapping its little hands together. “You’re getting better at chasing me, Mx. O’Reilly!”
“Your days are numbered, Pinnocchio.”
“Splendid! Fantastic!”
“ Fuck , you’re all giving me a migraine,” Jonny announces. “Or a brain tumor. Or worse. Whatever. I don’t care.”
“So… ?”
“So let’s just get the fuck out of here before Dr. Carmilla regenerates and comes back for revenge,” he says, “against whomever shot her out the airlock. Drumbot? Onward.”
“Of course,” Brian says, nodding to Jonny before marching back to the cockpit. He walks out at something of an odd angle, stilted and awkward as he leaves the meeting room. Anyone watching might think it’s just his old rusted joints betraying him, brass and copper scraping together uncomfortably.
Only the Drumbot knows the real reason— he’s attempting to hide his back from the crew, lest they see that his morality switch is set firmly in ENDS-JUSTIFY-MEANS.
In the cold void of space, Dr. Carmilla’s eyes stare vacantly ahead.