Chapter Text
Part I
OST God is an Astronaut - Worlds in Collision
Chapter 1
Year: 2026, autumn
The office was quiet. Most of the detectives had already headed home; only in the far corner did Sergeant van Dijk speak in hushed tones to the new intern. What was his name again? Bambang paused for a second but immediately shook his head. It didn’t matter. He’d ask again tomorrow.
His gaze fell once more on the contents of the folder lying on the desk. The harsh lamplight picked out the faded photocopies of old photos: Asian features, faces lifeless and bone-white, as if dusted with flour, the traditional Chinese garments splattered with mud. Three women, two men, and one old man.
An old case. Unsolved. One of those that hits the population like a sudden wave of horror, gets chewed over by the press for months, and then slowly fades into nothingness. Only those who directly participated in the investigation team dredge it up from time to time over a glass of something strong. Not the first glass, and certainly not the second. Failures are always hard to remember.
A sour-bitter taste settled on his tongue; his throat tightened for a moment.
How old was Bambang when they found the first body? Thirty-two? Now he is almost forty. And this case—the first serious case of his career—still hasn't let him go.
There had been too many of these quiet evenings—nights when the usual office hum died down, and he would pull this folder, filled with secretly squirreled away details, from the safe. He lost count long ago. He would stare into the photographs, the forensic reports, the site surveys, the questionnaires from the local Chinese diaspora until his eyes blurred, his thoughts turning to static. He hoped to find that one missed connection, the link that would allow him to reopen the case and sink his teeth back into it with all his strength, accumulated experience, and unspent rage—until the monster who created this nightmare was finally caught.
"Bambang, I'm heading out," a low voice interrupted his self-flagellation. "Are you going to hang around much longer? The workday is… well, long over. Your wife is going to greet you with a wok at the ready."
"My wife is on the night shift. I'll be greeted by cold rice in the rice cooker and yesterday’s rendang in the fridge. Go home, Floris," Bambang dismissed him. "You’re the one going home to two screaming infants. You think it’s some big mystery why you’ve suddenly started working late just to read the news? We’ve all been there. But have some mercy on Jacqueline; she’s already drowning out there with your loud duo."
"I know, I know," Floris muttered, rubbing his short-cropped hair, looking embarrassed. "But I'm at the end of my rope. Two months. Two whole months chasing these transient pickpockets, and not a single result. They jump from village to village, province to province, randomly, as long as there’s a train station. Maarssen today, Putten tomorrow, Kropswolde the day after. But their base of operations is clearly here. Timmerman gave me a proper dressing-down last week—thankfully behind closed doors and in his usual detached manner. I get home, my head is numb from lack of sleep, and then comes round two—complaints wrapped in a hormonal storm."
Bambang didn’t pursue the topic; he just shrugged. Everyone has to solve their own problems. Advice is rarely wanted, and everyone's experience is different anyway. Poking into someone else’s family with your opinion is just a quick way to ruin a working relationship.
"Go home," he repeated, glancing at his colleague’s slim figure, already encased in a solid black cycling suit. "The ride will clear your head. It’ll all settle down. As for the pickpockets... Public Relations has been informed, and they're on it. The TV people finally aired the segment in the evening news. Our risk group is the elderly; they might miss church on Sunday, but they watch the news religiously. Tomorrow, bring me all your notes. We’ll sit down and see if we can come up with some new tactic. It’s time to give our guests from 'sunny India' a proper slap on the wrist so they don’t come back. I’ll talk to Timmerman too. He’s new and still clings to his chair too tightly. I’ll explain, gently, that Rotterdam has its own specifics and how they differ from Limburg. If he gets it—great. If not—we’ll have another new boss in six months."
A slightly cheered-up Floris finally threw a tiny backpack with a change of clothes over his shoulder, gave a lazy two-finger salute to his temple, and made a brisk exit. Fifteen minutes later, Sergeant van Dijk and the intern also left with a quiet "goodnight." Bambang realized he had been staring blankly at the file for half an hour, an empty void in his head. The anger fueled by old memories had cooled, leaving only a hollow bitterness. It was time to go home.
The drive home usually takes about fifty minutes. First, navigate out of the city, then onto the high-speed motorway—half an hour of the quiet hum of tires, the soft darkness of an autumn night, and the indistinct mumble of late-night radio. And then, he is home. On any other day, this unobtrusive, lulling background allowed him to relax, to flush the day’s hustle from his head—the daily chores, the anxieties of a lead detective, the small and large dramas of others, the lives he touched in the line of duty.
Usually, but not today. He told himself he wouldn't touch this folder again for a long time—tonight had bled him dry. Dragging these old ghosts back to the surface was getting harder with every attempt. The case simply felt heavier in his hands each time he put it back in the safe.
But no. Thoughts obsessively continued to revolve around the few facts they had managed to gather seven years ago. All the victims were of Asian descent. All were dressed in surprisingly detailed, perfectly executed copies of traditional ancient Chinese garments... All were found buried at a depth of one to two meters in fresh graves, their hands and feet bound, with coarse black sacks over their heads.
That was it, essentially. No documents were found on them. Not a single one had ever been identified, though the detectives in the task force had run themselves ragged trying to find even the slightest lead. Nothing.
The autopsies were unequivocal: they were buried alive. They died under the weight of soil, simply suffocating. There were no fatal injuries to the bodies or internal organs, nor any signs of narcotics. It was as if they had docilely lain down, allowed themselves to be bound, and offered absolutely no resistance while the killer buried them.
This last fact only added a layer of infernal dread to an already bleak case.
Bambang gave a crooked smirk, sinking deeper into the past.
<<<>>>
Year: 2019, summer
Despite the details reeking of the occult, the investigation team initially took off with a confident start. At first glance, there were enough leads; they had cracked tougher cases. The Chinese diaspora in the country is not small, but it isn't infinite. Many knew each other, at least indirectly, or had heard of relatives, or had crossed paths. That was the first thread to pull.
"Cosplayers are definitely involved here," one of the young guys, Gijsbert Groeneboer, nodded authoritatively. Like Bambang, he had been assigned to the group more for the sake of gaining experience than out of any hope for real help.
The head of the group, Inspector Gerrit de Haan, was crouching next to the body of a girl—barely a teenager—staring with a puzzled expression at the thin silk robes she wore, now a wet, mud-stained clump.
Gijsbert was mostly thinking out loud, but the Chief heard him and took interest.
"Who are those exactly?"
"Ah, that’s probably closer to my generation than yours," the young man drawled to Gerrit, whose temples were already starting to grey, but he quickly clarified after catching an irritated look. "A fashion thing among the youth. A subculture."
The Chief’s gaze darkened further, prompting a clear answer.
"Well, it's guys and girls who love dressing up in costumes from movies, computer games, comics—including Asian ones—and roleplaying a specific character. Not necessarily a favorite, maybe just someone popular in their circle, or a particularly colorful archetype, or just a gorgeous costume. They source the fabrics themselves, they sew, they embroider. If they need metalwork or fine jewelry, there are enough specialists among them in various fields. And many know each other, obviously. Placing a specific order is hard because of the long queues, but it’s possible. Especially if you encourage the crafter with a good deposit."
"So, they might recognize each other's work or even help identify the body?" the Chief asked, with more interest but still skeptical.
Bambang stepped closer, interested in the quiet conversation.
"Look at this hanfu," Gijsbert gestured to the corpse's clothing. "This is very high-quality work, not mass-produced. My younger sister is really into it, so I'm somewhat in the loop. You can't buy this in a shop for any amount of money."
"Are you sure it’s not just an evening gown?" Gerrit clarified. "I don’t personally see much of a difference, to be honest."
"No, no. This is custom work—a traditional maid’s outfit from ancient China. I can't say for sure which dynasty it belongs to, but in the dramas my sister binges on, this kind of thing pops up often. With variations, of course, but overall, the status of this dress as a servant's garment is easily recognizable. If we show it to the cosplayers, they might recognize who made it or who ordered it. Showing them the photo of the victim might help too. Maybe they know her."
The young detective stared expectantly at the Inspector, but Gerrit remained silent, processing the new information.
Bambang also crouched down and looked closely at the dress. He touched the fabric of the hem, peered at the embroidery. His fingers felt a faint sting. Either static electricity or a frayed fiber of silver thread from the heavily worn dress. Finding more stitches on the reverse side, he tried to "read" them. Not that he could actually make anything out—Asia is vast, and this was clearly not a language he knew—but strictly on an intuitive level...
"If this is a maid’s dress, it's clearly not a common one, but someone close-ranking. There's months of hand-embroidery here," he finally said slowly, processing the sensation. "And look inside the hem," he slightly turned the fabric at the very edge of the lining toward the light of a powerful spotlight, "see these characters? The person who made this—they know their way around ancient superstitions and beliefs. This looks very much like protection against evil spirits."
Gerrit drummed his fingers on his knee and, after a second or two, nodded decisively.
"Fine. You've convinced me. There’s our lead number two. And since you two are closer to this subject than the rest of us combined, you're the ones to pull it. So, tomorrow... or rather, later this morning, start shaking this subculture of yours. Thoroughly and carefully."
The task force and experts began to pack up around them. The photographer was carefully stowing equipment at the edge of a small clearing where they had barely managed to park the cars. It was lucky there was a narrow dirt road nearby, laid by the park rangers for their own needs; otherwise, they would have had to carry everything on their backs. Including the dead body on the return trip.
Bambang was about to step away when Gijsbert, still crouching next to the body, quietly called out to him.
"Doesn't anything seem strange to you in this picture?"
Bambang looked at him, bewildered.
"Don't we have enough strangeness already?"
Gijsbert was kneading a clump of greasy, sticky soil in his fingers.
"The ground."
"What about the ground?" Bambang asked, now getting irritated.
He had only known this guy for a few hours, but he was already being driven crazy by the man's mood swings. One moment he’s talking non-stop, dumping a pile of useless details on you. The next, he’s speaking in riddles, and it's next to impossible to squeeze an extra word out of him.
"The. Soil. Is. Wet," Gijsbert repeated syllable by syllable, as if speaking to some dimwit, his thin blonde brows, almost invisible in the darkness, furrowed in thought. "We’ve had a drought for seven weeks. The canals have dried up, river shipping is blocked across all of North-Western Europe. The forests are dying, fires everywhere, people are banned from watering their gardens. And yet, the ground is wet."
In that moment, staring at the moisture-saturated clump of mud in his colleague's fingers, Bambang felt a distinct cold shiver run down his spine. And the night chill had absolutely nothing to do with it.