UPDATE
I didn’t discontinue the project! Here’s chapter 14! This one took me a solid month to finish, mainly because school got into the way.
Hope you enjoy!
Chapter 14
Onua and Lewa bent over the corpse of the dead Turaga of Stone and carefully brushed it with a specialized powder. Upon applying the powder, a whole set of fingerprints were uncovered on the mangled and now unidentifiable body.
“Wait a second, there’s something off about these fingerprints,” Onua said. “Lewa, have a look.”
The Toa Nuva of Air bent down to look at the body when suddenly a blast of cold, hard ice struck him square in the back. He was instantly knocked over and just narrowly avoided falling on the body. Moments later, Onua was also knocked over by a blast of ice.
The form of Kualus, Toa Hagah of Ice, loomed over them, spear still frosting.
“Sorry Toa, this is government property. You can’t conduct unauthorized investigations. It’s against the law,” Kualus said. He began to walk away.
Onua sat up and gingerly rubbed his head. The bolt of ice had struck him hard, but at least some of the pain was canceled out due to his immense strength and higher tolerance for pain than his brothers.
“Well, is it really against the law if you’re part of the government?” he asked.
Kualus turned around. “Huh?”
Onua brandished his ID badge. It had a picture of him, and the title “GOVERNMENT AGENT.” He handed it over to the Toa Hagah of Ice for inspection.
Kualus glanced at it briefly before handing it back to Onua. “I’m assuming Lewa and Pohatu are government agents as well, right?”
“Yes, they are,” Onua said, glancing at his two brothers that accompanied him on this little investigation. Lewa had not regained consciousness, and Pohatu was standing off to the side facing the other direction, refusing to look at the mangled and disformed body of someone he held dear.
“Must have hit him too hard,” Kualus softly muttered under his breath as he walked away.
Lewa groaned and sat up. He glanced to the side to see the soulless and eerie gaze of the dead body meet his eyes. The Toa of Air quickly recoiled in disgust and stood up.
“Ouch … What in Mata Nui was that?” Lewa said.
“Just an unwarranted warning from the government,” Onua replied flatly. He then turned his attention back to the corpse of Turaga Onewa. As much as he hated to look at it further, he still had to carry out the investigation.
“Lewa, there’s something off about the body,” Onua said, peering over the corpse. “There’s two gunshot wounds in the head and one in the back, but … there aren’t any bullets. Also, weirdly enough, there are fingerprints on the body, all over. Is this making any sense at all? I mean, it would make sense if the body was shifted here to be disposed of, but then that would mean there has to be traces of blood or other bodily secretions in another place not too far, and I haven’t seen that. Especially if a firearm was the weapon of choice for this murder. Surely there must have been some leakage of blood.”
“I notice that too,” Lewa said. He focused his attention on the wound in the corpse’s back, trying his best not to faint due to sheer disgust. “It seems the wounds are also deep too. That means the bullet must have gone in with more force than normal.”
“That also means there must have been a louder sound produced when the gun was fired, which means it was not just some regular, ordinary handgun that was used in the murder. It must have been some high end rifle of sorts,” Pohatu said, speaking up for the first time since they arrived at this spot.
“I remember hearing a loud crack in the city square, just before the Council Building Riot, when Nuhrii was killed. It’s very likely these two murders could have a connection, which the timeframe in which these events happened is indicative of. Pohatu, I think you should head to the mortuary to take a look at Nuhrii’s body and see what happened. You’re obviously not in the mindset to tackle this part of the investigation,” Onua observed.
“Maybe I should do that,” Pohatu replied. He walked away from the scene where Onua and Lewa lay over the body.
“The fingerprints also look-seem really strange. They don’t look like a Dark Hunter, Toa, or any other higher being could have done this. They are small in size, which means it could have possibly been a Matoran or a Turaga that had done it,” Lewa remarked. “Why anyone would kill Onewa is beyond me.”
“Perhaps it’s because Onewa was one of the rulers of New Atero? This murder, as well as Vakama’s and Nuhrii’s must have been politically motivated. But that doesn’t explain why the killer would target an opposition leader first and then a member of the ruling party. Or maybe, the culprit has a higher motive in mind. It’s highly likely that the person responsible works within the central government, especially since the weapon used in Vakama’s murder was a bomb made of highly expensive, rare exploding Kanoka only available within the government. After we finish collecting evidence here we should head to the council building and ask the couriers.”
Onua finished speaking and sat down to meditate for a second, trying to make sense of what was going on. He finished his contemplation a few seconds later and opened his eyes.
“Lewa, we should collect the fingerprints. We need to send them to the forensics department as soon as possible. We have absolutely no time to waste.”
The two Toa Nuva dusted the entire body and transferred the prints they found onto a clear film, which they carefully wrapped. Onua handed it to a nearby Ga-Matoran CII agent and asked her to drop it off at the forensics laboratory. He also handed his mobile contact pincode on a small strip of paper along with the fingerprints to her and told her to ask the forensics lab to send the results to that number. He saw the Matoran leave on her bike, and then turned around to face the Toa Nuva of Air.
“We - we - we should really leave now,” Lewa said. “I don’t want to look at any more dead bodies.”
“After all is said and done, we should give Onewa and Vakama a proper burial. They don’t deserve to be stuck in a mortuary as any other random dead person,” Onua sighed.
“We’ve already done two burials,” Lewa said, sadly. “Even then, I still don’t have a sense of closure. None of us really know what became of Tahu, and Gali’s body was never found.”
“How many more do we need to do?” Onua murmured, tone grim.
The two Toa signaled for a Matoran to come over with a body bag in hand. They watched as the Matoran inserted the corpse into the body bag, tied it tightly, and hauled it out of sight.
Before leaving, Lewa and Onua glanced one last time at the Turaga that was now no more, wrapped tightly and being hauled off to an unknown afterlife. Their hands rose up to their masks in one final salute.
“Farewell, Turaga Onewa.”
“May I gain access to the morgue?” Pohatu requested. He was speaking to the De-Matoran at the mortuary front desk.
“Not if you have a valid reason to do so, Toa Pohatu,” he replied, sternly. “My sincere apologies for refusing a Toa Nuva, but that is government law. I’m afraid you cannot.”
Pohatu presented his government ID card to the clerk, who quickly glanced it over.
“Satisfied?” Pohatu snapped, immediately regretting his tone.
“I - uh - yeah, you can go,” the De-Matoran stammered, taken aback by the tone of voice.
“Sorry, De-Matoran, that came out more rudely than intended. My apologies,” Pohatu quickly said. The De-Matoran nodded in acceptance and beckoned for a Su-Matoran escort to come. The escort led Pohatu down to the basement, which contained all the bodies of all sorts of beings, Dark Hunters to Toa to Agori. They were all neatly locked away in drawers to prevent the smell from coming out.
The escort walked over to the desk and turned on his computer. He quickly opened up a master list of every identified body currently occupying a locker.
“Tell me which locker you need opened,” the Su-Matoran grunted. Pohatu could clearly tell that the Matoran hated his job, and understandably so. He then remembered that almost 70 percent of the city lived in poverty and that they had to take up all sorts of occupations to make ends meet.
He scanned the list until he found a 6 digit code with the name Nuhrii printed next to it.
“Locker 652817, please. I need the locker opened. Also, I need to examine the body.”
The Su-Matoran walked down a long corridor and unlocked locker 652817. Underneath the padlock read a sticker that read “Nuhrii.”
“Here you go,” he said, as he pulled out the drawer fully.
Pohatu looked down at the Ta-Matoran’s body. It was wrapped in a thick white sheet, which he began to pull back. Upon closer inspection of the bare body, Pohatu noticed that the Ta-Matoran’s armor and Kanohi were removed. What lay there was his bare body, biomechanical parts completely exposed.
He noticed a bullet wound in the chest that sank really deep. It pierced his heartlight clean and damaged much of the surrounding organ and wires that connect it.
He was one-shotted for sure, Pohatu thought.
The Toa of Stone bent over and looked inside the wound. Blood that was dripping from the wound dried in its tracks, leaving the trail still plainly visible. Upon examination he noticed the bullet was still there. He had no doubt the bullet penetrated his chestplate.
He turned to his escort. “Can I borrow a forceps, please?”
“I’ll get one, wait for a sec,” the Matoran grunted. He handed the forceps to Pohatu and watched. Pohatu carefully inserted the forceps into the wound and gently pulled out the bullet. He set it aside on the table and put a glove onto his armored hand.
That’s strange, there’s a bullet in Nuhrii’s body. Onewa and Nuhrii were killed by likely the same type of gun, and the wound in Nuhrii’s chest and Onewa’s back have the same dimensions, Pohatu said to himself. Interesting. Onewa’s body didn’t have a bullet inside it, and had a separate wound in the head. Whoever murdered Onewa took out the bullets but forgot to do the same for Nuhrii.
Pohatu carefully picked up the bullet and held it up to the lightbulb nearby. What he saw almost knocked the wind out of him.
“ MADE FOR THE RCF: PROTECTING CIVILIANS FROM EVIL SINCE 3075.”
“You think Sarda’s last visit would show up on the courier logs?” Lewa asked Onua, while walking. The two Toa were headed to the central office of the courier department wing in the Council Building.
“We don’t even know if the package was authorized or not, especially since it came from the government itself. It could have been a covert delivery, for all we know.”
“That’s against the law, though.”
“Yes, I know, any package coming straight from or to the government must be approved by both the censor and courier departments. I think we should check on the courier logs, especially since the courier logs are constantly updated as to which courier leaves and arrives at the building. If no one else knows, this is our only resource.”
Lewa and Onua arrived at the central office. At the front was a Ta-Matoran wearing a shiny new noble Kanohi Calix.
“What can I do for you Toa?” he asked politely.
“We need to check the courier logs, urgently,” Onua demanded. “We’re government agents investigating a high profile case. We have no other option, I’m afraid.” Onua and Lewa showed their ID cards to validate their claim.
“Alright then, step this way,” he responded. He led the two Toa to a dark room with a giant telescreen attached to the wall. Next to the telescreen was a computer with a constantly updating spreadsheet.
Onua sat down at the computer desk, opened up the command console, and began to type on the keyboard.
He began to type in the command console a few lines of code with the specified filters, and then hit enter.
Onua and Lewa stared at the screen, completely taken aback. What they saw on the screen went completely against their predictions.
1 result
Specified Timeframe - 00:00 to 10:30
Sarda - Building Exit
Unknown Destination
Not verified
08:44 Departure from Security Checkpoint 7
“So … Sarda did show up on the logs,” Lewa remarked. “But we know he delivered the bomb, and all packages leaving or entering the Council Building must be cross checked. This is not adding up.”
“How can a package containing a bomb go undetected? Our X-ray machines are usually strong enough to detect such a thing!” Onua exclaimed.
“Maybe it’s not the verification itself, but who DOES the verification,” Lewa replied after a few moments of speculation.
“Who does it though?” Onua asked.
“I think we should check the CCTV footage to find out,” Lewa answered. He beckoned for the Ta-Matoran to enter the room, and ushered him to sit down at the desk.
“Can you open up the CCTV footage from 08:30 to 09:00?” Onua asked the Ta-Matoran.
“Sorry, I cannot,” the Ta-Matoran informed him. “You only asked for the courier log, and it was my responsibility to give only that to you.”
Lewa grabbed the Matoran on the shoulders. “Listen, firespitter, it’s not a choice. It’s an order. The city’s fate is at stake here.”
The Matoran, obviously frightened, backed off and put his hands in the air. “Fine, I’ll do it,” he mumbled. “It’s important to you, I guess.”
He opened up a program on the computer and played the CCTV footage from security checkpoint 7. It clearly showed a Ta-Matoran in conversation with two RCF units, and then leaving shortly after. Onua noticed that the package was not thoroughly inspected by the RCF units.
RCF DRONE 1: Where are you headed?
SARDA: Turaga Vakama. Turaga Dume asked me to deliver an important package to him.
RCF DRONE 2: Suspect cleared. Exit and re-entry authorized.
“The fact that the drones did not bother to check the package … it worries me,” Onua said.
“The RCF is probably in on this plan,” Lewa said. “They did not even bother to check the package after Sarda stated that it was from Turaga Dume. Either the packages coming from the Turaga are not properly scanned, or Dume or one of the Turaga is under this entire scheme, since the RCF is under their joint control.”
Just then, Onua’s mobile device buzzed with a notification. He pulled it out and clicked on it. It was as if they were uncovering surprise after surprise today, because the results of the forensic test of the fingerprints came out.
Interestingly enough, he also received the same text message from Pohatu. I guess the same fingerprints were planted on Nuhrii’s body, he thought. This is definitely a framed case.
He opened up the message.
Fingerprint forensic test result:
1 match found
Defilak, Le-Matoran.