Chapter 2
There was no one on the premises of the old Palpable location that night. After what happened to Markus Hood, not even the bravest of security guards risked taking the assignment. The building was calm and its grounds were quiet. Many people passed by the building going about their daily routines despite its recent history, paying the area no mind as if no one died within its walls no less than twenty-four hours ago. The tower of a building perceptively stood there, remaining easily accessible yet surprisingly undisturbed; a monolith hiding in plain sight.
Such ignorance made the Innovator’s raid all the easier…
He opened a closet door within one of the main floor offices and took a quick survey of the immediate area. The gold and white spiraling light from the pocket dimension he traveled through from the closet’s insides provided the majority of the light for him to see. The first thing the goggled guardian noticed upon entering the office was a hanging ceiling light, turned off and swaying back and forth from the small gusts of air entering the room from the Innovator’s gold and white transportation system behind him. The bulb looked new at first glance, which caused the Innovator’s gears in his brain to turn instantly. A new bulb in a building abandoned over thirty years ago was indeed something to consider during an investigation.
The second thing he noticed was the area of the office immediately below the hanging ceiling light. Mostly everything that would normally take up the space of an office was moved out of the way for what seemed to be a single chair and a gray-colored rope on the ground. Blood was present on the ground next to and on both of these items; whose blood, the Innovator was not sure of.
At least not yet, anyways.
The Innovator slid his Skeleton Key out of the lock of the closet door and closed the door behind him. Then he placed the Skeleton Key to the left side of his goggles and unlocked them with a simple twist. The lenses began to suddenly illuminate with feats of technological breakthroughs. Once the lenses of his goggles began to exhibit the use of night vision, the Innovator took a better look around the area. He watched as the items throughout the room were instinctively scanned by the unlocked goggles, cross-referenced by means of data recognition and the goggles access to the Internet.
He turned his head to the left as he waited for the goggles to warm up before using them properly, like one would do when operating a home computer. However, in the midst of such ritual, the goggled guardian noticed another closet door within the office. It was closed, yet the Innovator could see a clear path made on the floor with the boost of night vision the goggles provided. It was the only clear path outside the circle in the middle of the room. Even the entrance was a bit cluttered with office materials than it should have been. But the Innovator did not act on such an oddity. Instead, he merely gave a small smile before turning back around to lock the closet door he used to enter, and watched as the gold and white light from the vortex on the other side died down completely.
“This is Innovator to Industrial Forest,” he said aloud. “Do you copy?”
“I’m here, Abbot,” Duke said through the earpiece in the Innovator’s cowl. “You find the right room?”
“On the first try, actually,” the Innovator said with a pleasant smile. “I’m starting to believe that the bloke who beat ol’ Markus to death took him outside for the morning guard to find after he finished showing him how strong he was. From what it looks like, the police haven’t even found the room yet!”
“Why?” Duke asked. “What do you see?”
The Innovator slyly turned his head back toward the closet to his left, and then turned back in front of him to let out a playful scoff.
“Untouched evidence, Industrial Forest,” Innovator said. “Lots and lots of untouched evidence. Want a visual?”
“It would be nice…”
The Innovator smiled and pressed a button on the right side of his goggles. “Patching you in now…”
A few seconds passed before the Innovator could see a computer window appear on the upper right hand corner of his goggle lenses. Inside the window was a video feed showing Duke sitting down, facing the source of the feed as a golden light surrounded him in the background.
“Can you see?” the Innovator asked.
Duke gave a brief nod as he fixed his suit jacket upon adjusting to the rolling chair. “Perfectly,” he said. “You trace the source of that blood on the floor yet?”
“One thing at a time, man,” the Innovator said in the midst of a rather frustrated sigh. “I just activated the video feed!”
Duke gave the Innovator one of his unimpressed looks through the camera feed. “I’m sorry,” he sarcastically apologized. “For a minute there, I thought I was talking to the Innovator…”
The goggled guardian ignored Duke’s reply and approached the pool of blood by the chair and rope. He squat near the pool, making sure it was within his immediate line of vision before saying that all important command.
“Scan.”
Through the inside of his goggles, the Innovator could see the technology embedded in his lenses begin to scan the blood on the floor. It made a digital copy of the blood before moving to the left side of the lenses. Within the middle of his line of vision, the Innovator watched as hundreds of pictures of human beings shuffled in front of him, trying to find the owner of the blood on the floor. Soon, the image of Markus Hood appeared, with the word “match” blinking in red letters underneath.
“The blood definitely belongs to Markus Hood, alright,” the Innovator informed Duke, who could be seen through the video feed leaning on one side of his desk with an arm resting on his chin. “And that just makes this whole case of whodunit all the more mysterious…”
“How so?”
“Well,” the Innovator said eccentrically, “for starters, there weren’t any cuts on Markus’s face when they showed it on the news earlier today. I’d imagine the only way blood could’ve come out of his facial region was through his mouth, but there’s usually a trace of saliva mixed in.” The Innovator rubbed his chin in thought. “But this…this is pure blood; nothing mixed with this but the dust on the floor. And there’s a lot of it, too…as if something was cutting him; slitting him before he got the beating of his lifetime…”
That was when the Innovator took notice of the rope near the chair once again, looking at it a bit more thoroughly. The rope was a grayish color from the angle he stared at it, free of loose fibers upon observing the twine. The Innovator found that strange, specifically for an object known for unraveling after a certain amount of uses. Then there was the blood it was saturated in. It belonged to Markus Hood; the goggles proved that much. However, it was its lack of absorption that made the Innovator all the more curious. So he reached for it with his right hand, after noticing it tied in a rather strong double knot upon further inspection. Then he felt the weight of the rope, and it was that combined with what his goggles revealed about it upon its cross-referencing that left the Innovator absolutely appalled.
“And I think I know how…”
Duke leaned in closer to the camera, trying to get a better look at the Innovator’s current first person point of view. “…What, you mean the rope?”
“I mean the wire rope, Industrial Forest,” the Innovator said slowly. “The steel wire rope…covered in Markus’ blood and skin cells, tied by hand in a strong double-knot as if it were a mere shoelace.”
Duke found himself frowning in fear. “B-But that’s impossible…!”
“We live in the impossible every day, Industrial Forest,” the Innovator informed. “You were the one who theorized that an In-Human possibly had something to do with this, after all…”
Duke sat back in his chair, still sporting a look implying that he was rather spooked. “I know,” he said in the midst of exhalation. “I…I guess I just wasn’t expecting to be right. Not about this…”
The Innovator nodded in understanding as he returned to his upright position. It seemed that being right was somet
hing both the Innovator and Abram Guy knew a lot about, even when they didn’t want to be. It was something the both of them considered more of a curse than a blessing, due to the fact that being right about most things came at the cost of seeing the causes and effects of the correct theory in question escalating to massive heights; escalating to horrific heights.
Such abominable phenomenon was indeed something Abram Guy had his fair share of witnessing during his tenure as the Innovator. He witnessed the repercussions of dangerous drugs, alloys and technology falling into the hands of madmen. He witnessed men gain the strength of gods and demons alike. He witnessed the tall tales and ghost stories of innocent adolescence made real and perverted beyond all recognition. What Duke had felt merely moments ago was a simple taste of the Innovator’s endless dinner buffet, who up until now had no help in its consumption and digestion. So to help his friend and assistant build up his tolerance to the repercussions of being right, the Innovator gave Duke a simple supplement to help him get through the rest of the night in the form of five words.
“You get used to it…”
The Innovator found himself staring off in the distant corners of the darkened office; his previous thoughts on Duke’s surprise causing him to dwell on his past activities since he first created the Skeleton Key years prior. However, the time he
The Innovator: In Plain Sight -- Free Preview Page 4
