Page 49 of Neon Flux

“So what have we got here, boss?”

I heard Maddox’s teeth clench as he took in the scene around us, and Tex adjusted his gloves as he walked ahead into the space, tugging at the wrist to pull them on tight, the leather squeaking.

“Forensics has already been through here and catalogued everything, so take a look at whatever you need.”

“You going to explain what I’m looking at here, Tex?” I sidestepped as a glob of…something…fell from the ceiling where I had just been standing.

“This was the home of Beaufort Renard, CTO of POM industries,” Tex responded, straightening the lapels of his tetracarbon jacket.

“Was the home?” Maddox asked.

“He doesn’t seem to have much need of it anymore,” Tex said, waving his hand to various viscera around the space.

“Shit, you’re saying all of this is the CTO? What the fuck happened?”

“That, Cyanos, is what we are here to figure out.”

This guy had been blasted to bits, that much was obvious. No piece of him bigger than a tooth was left.

“Any residuals of explosives found?”

Tex clipped us the files from his Vysor, and I scrolled through.

“Shit, Tex, I thought with this being a high-profile kill you would’ve put the A-team on this. The nerds didn’t find anything on site.” Maddox grunted in affirmation as he scrolled through the limited report as well.

“Cyanos, you can be assured that the very best assets were used. In fact, two different teams swept the space and came to the same conclusion.”

I flicked off my screen and looked around the space again. “Nothing?”

Tex nodded. I walked around, keeping my shiny dress shoes out of the piles of gore. It reminded me of a scene I’d seen as a kid—one of my mom’s idiot boyfriends had gotten himself blown up trying to cook some new version of Vector. He’d only been missing his top half, and the wall behind him had looked just like the patterns of blood here.

Maddox let out a long whistle behind me, back near the center of this open-concept monstrosity. “Is this what I think it is? I thought it was destroyed during the Italian revolts in ’57.”

Tex chuckled. “Funny how so many lost things find their way into the homes of the wealthy.”

I didn’t know what was so impressive about the hunk of marble both men were gazing at—an old-school angel with his spear raised over some chick who looked like she was having the time of her life. But what did I know about art?

I walked over to the bar near the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the Green District. Now this was art. In Neo Stellaris, a view was something you couldn’t even pay for most of the time, not with the amount of megabuildings blocking any skyline.

I peered through the cabinet window, looking past the blood. Damn, some of the alcohol this guy had was older than me. Luckily, he’d had the decency to have his cupboard closed when he exploded. I swung the glass door open and grabbed one of three crystal-cut highballs and poured myself some of his good stuff.

“That’s disgusting, Cy.” Maddox grunted, still taking pictures of the room.

“What? Not like he’s going to drink it. Tex said we could touch whatever.” Maddox rolled his eyes.

I turned and saw the lines of gore moving away from me, radiating like the rays of the sun just touching the horizon outside the tainted windows.

“Just trying to get into the vic’s mindset. He was standing right here when it happened.” I raised my glass in a mock salute to the recently departed. It caught the dying sunlight and burned down my throat with notes of peat and honey. Damn, thiswasthe good shit.

“Forensics confirms that,” Maddox said, still looking through the files on his Vysor, his eyes defocused from the reality around him.

“Any glass shards found in this mess?”

“Yeah, a few. Why?”

“This is exactly what Renard was doing when he got blasted to high heaven,” I replied, taking another swig.

No residuals of explosives, no forced entry, nothing on the security footage. That five million was slipping out of my fingers. No wonder boss wasn’t leaving this to the NSPD idiots.