VANTABLACK

Forward had nothing. None of the hidden cameras she’d uncovered were damaged or tampered with. At least, not visibly. The magic used had left the physical parts of the device squeaky clean, which surprised her. She didn’t think the culprit of this crime could wield it that well, that it was a curse outside of his control…

Not that she was supposed to know that.

As far as anyone knew, she was as in the dark as the rest of them—and she would be wise to keep it that way. The last thing she needed was for the wrong animals, for smart animals, to start asking questions.

With the cameras yielding no information and the scents from the crime stale or nonexistent, Forward marched up to the door of the house and stuck her head in. “Did you find anything, Disk?”

“Not really,” Disk said from somewhere in the house, “This security footage can be restored a little, but not much, the rest is just normal stuff you’d find on a personal computer. But…”

“But what?”

“Apparently the family here was feuding with someone called ‘Exabyte’.”

“What’s an exabyte?”

“It means, a lot of bytes, a lot of storage. An incomprehensibly high amount, actually. It’s not a bad title. I imagine getting named Recycling Bin would feel horrible, though.”

“What, why did—does that have something to do with what you found?”

“Exabyte gave that cat, the one who died,the title Recycling Bin. It made the whole family mad, because apparently, their child was supposed to be named after her dad, Graphics. The mom was Processing.”

“And I guess that means she was supposed to be Unit?”

“Exactly.”

Forward snorted. “Why go and give her a name like that, then?”

“Exabyte is… very punitive, I guess? These messages imply the two disliked each other.”

What a jerk, Forward thought. She knew, realistically, that this Exabyte person didn’t have anything to do with what happened here. At least, Forward hoped that was the case. There would be a whole other can of worms to deal with if it were. Still, she played along. “So are you thinking Exa is a suspect or what?”

“Maybe. Exabyte could’ve been worried about being called out for her actions and hired an assassin to kill or scare the family.”

“There’s no way the punishment for that was worth this to avoid.”

“There are some crazy animals out there,” Disk said, “Well. Is that carriage still out there? We can leave now.”

“Yeah it should be.” Forward backed out of the doorway to allow Disk to leave.

At the same, Rewind came flying towards them, and landed hard on the roof of the house. “I’ve got some weird news, guys,” he said.

Disk made a face. “Weird how?”

“I talked to this kitten,” Rewind said, “she said she saw Parsley—that’s the name they call the victim around here—just get up and walk away right after her death. She followed the wolf who killed her, even!”

Forward’s stomach sank. 

“Well, that…” Disk muttered, “I suppose it could be possible. Maybe a mage is behind this.”

“Sure, but why follow them?” Rewind asked, “If I had just survived a brutal murder attempt I would be running in the other direction as far as possible!”

“Mind control?” Disk said.

Forward licked her lips, wanting this discussion to be over. “I’m sure a detective will know more.”

“I guess,” Rewind said, “I’ll go see if the carriage driver is up for a night shift.”

💙

The carriage driver was technically up for a night shift, but was not pleased to be doing it. The choice came down to the fact that there were no houses small enough to fit such a large, burly cat, and they didn’t want to sleep outside. Not even with a wolf bodyguard.

With that settled, they left. Much to Disk’s chagrin, they were headed to meet with other detectives and temporary investigators, rather than back to their homes. Forward didn’t mind, mostly because she didn’t have an official home to return to when this was all said and done. When she did have one, it was a client’s and not her own. And in her experience, nobody rich enough to afford a bodyguard had a house big for a wolf to stick her head through, much less waltz inside. She was also, at best, lukewarm towards her clients (when she didn’t outright daydream about eating them alive). There was no incentive to hang around them except for when given specific instructions or in terrible weather.

The walk was more tedious than difficult, at least for Forward. There was nowhere with houses big enough to accommodate either of them, so they were forced to trek on long into the night. If the serval was getting weary from this, they were too proud to show it, and they definitely weren’t about to ask Forward to spend some time hooked up to the carriage either.

Forward wouldn’t offer if she wasn’t asked first. It was their loss, because sizing the carriage up, she figured it would feel like a feather, though it probably wouldn’t be great for her spine if they improvised a harness for her tail…

It was dawn when they finally saw another, larger town in the distance. The buildings here were still too small for Forward—whenweren’t they?—but there was more than enough space for a tall serval, a monkey, and a puffin. It was also a fair bit more complicated than the scene of the murder, with multiple story houses inlaid with decorative woodwork. A waste of a nice forest, more like.

The serval went ahead to drop Disk and Rewind off at a hotel and Forward was left to her own devices.

She went to bed on the roof of someone’s house. She figured she weighed about as much as some snow, so the structure would be fine, and she had observed the (suspected) local law enforcement. They wouldn’t or couldn’t do much but politely ask her to leave.

Which is what happened in the morning.

She woke up surrounded by mid-size carnivores, all at least a head shorter than her, most more than that.

“Ma’am,” the largest among them, the carriage driver, in fact, said in an exasperated voice, “You have to get up from there. You’re wanted at the hotel.”

Forward yawned, stretched, and climbed down from the roof she’d selected. She thanked the homeowners, who gawked at her from their front lawn, for the elevated bed, and marched off to go sit in front of the hotel. She wasn’t sure why she was needed there, but she was getting some money out of it, so there she was. Sitting in front of a tiny hotel. Fun.

Her ears were angled backwards, firstly to keep up her aggressive appearance, but also because it provided her a clearer sound of what was happening inside. She could hear between five and eight creatures inside. A door locked. There was muttering about safety, her name was brought up, and at last, what she wanted to hear, what she wasn’t necessarily supposed to hear, was discussed. The walls were thick enough to keep out a normal animals’ ears, but not hers.

At first they skimmed over things she already knew from Disk and from reading the report she was given, then the others took their turns. Three deaths had occurred so far, all in the same area of Media, all in short amount of time. The victims were Parsley (Recycling Bin), Veedu (a nicknamed derived from VDU, whatever that was), and Forceps. None of them were (obviously) related to each other.

“Do we know the history on these animals?” Disk asked.

“We know that Par—that Recycling Bin—had been given her title by someone called Exabyte as some vengeance towards her mother before her death,” Rewind said.

“Veedu had been fired from his position as…” a stranger spoke, paused, tapped a screen, “…delivery boy? The details on why are unknown at the moment.”

Another stranger added, “Forceps was a doctor. From what I gather he’d recently lost a patient, but we also don’t have many details on that at the moment.”

“So that’s the only thread connecting them all?Are we to assume the murderer is a serial killer going after unfortunate people?”

“Maybe it’s a twisted sense of justice, like the murderer thinks that the animals they’re killing are too miserable to live or something.”

“What happened to Parsley was cruel, Exabyte was wrong to do it. And I’m sure the others were upset at their situations as well, but upset enough to even begin to justify killing them for it? That wolf is mad, if that’s their true goal.”

Forward was surprised they’d gotten so close so quickly.

“Is that actually what we’re going with?” Disk asked, “That this is a serial killer, killing animals who had something bad happen to them recently?”

More strange voices piped up.

“Internally, yes, but to the public… We ought to keep this under wraps until we get a clearer picture,” someone said, “Imagine the hysteria a conclusion like that would cause.”

“This motive, if it’s true, will make finding and protecting potential targets difficult. Since this seems to be a mage, perhaps we could get some specialists to patrol smaller towns and villages?”

“How do we know the murderer won’t just pivot to places that are less heavily guarded when they see our reinforcements?”

“But you can’t just let those other people die because they happen to live somewhere with less animals,” Rewind said.

There was a beat of silence.

“I suppose… we’ll just have to spread them out across all of Social Media? Somehow?”

A heavy sigh.

“We ought to start drafting the message we’re going to send about this,” Disk said, “There’s going to be some important animals who want answers. And maybe they can give us more information in turn…”