“Crash Kills 6, Wounds 12 in Accident

  Tragedy struck yesterday evening when a Hovertruck accident led to the deaths of several in downtown Buulon…”

  Lucy stared at the news article pulled up on her Pad, eyes glazed over in thought. She’d memorized its contents years ago, yet she found it was good to go over it again every now and then.

  Mom and Dad had gone to dinner with some friends while she stayed home with Marie. They’d been having a great time, Lucy’s caretaker spoiling her with all sorts of treats she usually wasn’t allowed to have. Lucy had gone to bed that night the happiest girl in the world.

  She woke up an orphan.

  The police had told them that a Hovertruck had struck her parents’ Hovercar midair. The truck driver had lost control of the vehicle, barreling through a red light and into the side of their car. The impact was so violent that it had destroyed her parents’ car engine, sending them hurtling to the road below. Her mother had been killed instantly by the truck’s impact, while her father may have survived until they hit the ground. He had been an Epsilon class Enhanced, but that hadn’t been enough to save him from a crash this violent. That said, there were some questions about how the accident had happened in the first place. Wouldn’t Dad have been able to react quickly to this sudden danger?

  That question was answered in the autopsy, where it was found that Dad had a noticeable amount of Quaela in his system at the time. It was a powerful party drug, favored especially among the Enhanced for its ability to affect them despite their significant poison resistance. It explained why he might have struggled to avoid the danger or deploy his Psionic Capacities to survive. Normal people typically found it difficult to get their hands on, since it was highly illegal. But Jonathan Hardgrave was a known gambling addict and broadly pegged as a degenerate by the neighbors, and their family had a good income on paper. The police could easily chalk this incident up to him partying too hard, along with the error made by the truck driver.

  As Lucy thought, her chest grew heavy, dark clouds of grief settling on her ribs. Suffocating her. She thought about how far Dad had come before he died. How he’d turned his life around from when she was a little girl, refusing to even enter a casino for a whole year before the accident. The stigma from those earlier days lingered, however, just as the debts had. While police were quick to write this off as a DUI-related tragedy, Lucy didn’t believe her Dad had been dumb enough to make this kind of mistake. She’d decided to dig deeper.

  The first thing she’d checked was security footage from the restaurant, which she’d accessed with a neat little “network investigative technique” (she’d hacked their system). Unfortunately, Lucy couldn’t see the whole dinner from the angle that she had. She did manage to note her parents’ company that night and had done her research on each one of them. It didn’t take long for her to laser in on a chief suspect.

  John Cominski had been her Mom’s boss at the Ministry of the Treasury. As she thought about him, Lucy pulled up the profile she’d put together on the man. The sandy-haired, blue-eyed bureaucrat stared back at Lucy with an impish grin that only made her frown in anger. John was a notable scion of the Cominski family, a middling servant family of the much more prestigious Korta Clan. He had a spotless reputation and was primarily viewed as a gregarious and hardworking civil servant. Cominski was clean as a whistle and the last person most would suspect of foul play.

  The same couldn’t be said for his cousin. Mark Amrine was the black sheep of the middle-class merchant family on Cominski’s mother’s side. Amrine had been attracted to the criminal life from an early age, getting booked for selling drugs at the tender age of 14. Rumors on the Network said he’d become involved with the Marcovi Family, a subsidiary family of the dreaded Khazari Clan. As an intergalactic criminal organization, the Khazari acted as an asset security and management organization for some of the Galaxy’s top Mafiosi. Known as “The Underworld’s Bank”, they provided a wide array of criminal services that were surprisingly trustworthy in an industry known for its schemes and betrayals.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Amrine had never been booked for anything criminal since turning 18, yet the rumors seemed apt. Lucy had turned up pictures of him meeting with known Marcovi agents. But beyond them, she had video of him meeting with Cominski. Lucy knew for certain that Amrine had gone to Cominski’s house just a few days before the death of her parents. Why was the Treasury Department’s golden boy so mixed up with his criminal cousin? Had he slipped something in her father’s drink? Had the Marcovi Family conspired to kill her parents? If so, why?

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, Lucy suspected she was being irrational. “This is the grief talking.” It said, “You’re being silly. Not everything is a conspiracy.” There was some sense to this voice, but Lucy wouldn’t forgive herself if she didn’t at least investigate things.

  That was why today was so important.

  She was looking over all this past evidence in the car as Marie drove her to Matterhorn Academy. It was the third-to-last day of Lucy’s summer classes. She didn’t need any remedial lessons, but Matterhorn Prep allowed you to sign up for college-level courses over the summer. This would allow the students to learn new skills and earn college credits, though these weren’t Lucy’s primary motivations.

  Marie dropped her off at the computer lab, and Lucy barely said goodbye before she raced off to class. Nerves put a slight jump in her step as she half-bounced her way down the well-lit, white hallways of the school’s technology hub. The class’s teacher was a sweet older man by the name of Markos Grier, so short he barely came up to Lucy’s sternum. Grier was waddling into the classroom just as Lucy reached the doorway, and he gave her a big grin before stepping aside and letting her go first: “After you, Miss Hardgrave.”

  Lucy responded a little too brightly, her voice cracking as she said, “Thank you, Professor!”

  The older man had developed a great affection for his best student, and Lucy felt her stomach turn over when she thought about it. That trust and love were things she’d need to take advantage of.

  The class itself was interesting, but Lucy was too distracted to pay attention. She spent the entire time lost in thought, constantly turning over a rehearsed script in her mind. Finally, the class ended and everyone began filing out. Lucy deliberately lagged, waiting for her opportunity. As per usual, Professor Grier was the last to leave, and she fell into step next to him as they walked out. To Lucy’s surprise, the Professor was the first to speak up, blinking owlishly at her and asking: “You were awfully quiet in class today, Miss Hardgrave. Is anything wrong?”

  Lucy plastered over her surprise with a simple grin in response: “Nothing’s wrong, Professor! Nothing at all!”

  He looked at her steadily for a while before answering with a small smile of his own: “That’s good. I’m glad to hear that.”

  They kept walking in silence for a few minutes as Lucy drummed up her courage. As they came to the building’s exit, she looked through her bag and gave an exaggerated yelp of surprise: “Oh no!”

  The Professor stopped and turned around, brows furrowed in worry: “What’s wrong?”

  Lucy looked up, smiling in a way meant to convey embarrassment: “I seem to have forgotten my Pad. I think I left it back in the classroom.”

  She looked back in worry before looking at the Professor, gauging his reaction. He took on the look of a doting grandfather, giving her a wry half smile: “Quite unlike you to be forgetful as well, but if you don’t want to share your troubles with a silly old man, that’s okay. You can go back and get it. Just message me when you’re done so I can lock up.”

  He hit a button on his Pad, unlocking the door remotely. Lucy gave him a wave and a ‘Thank you!’ as she dashed off. But as she grew closer to the lab, Lucy grew more somber. Once inside, she made a beeline to Professor Grier’s terminal. Lucy hadn’t taken this class just because the Professor had a good reputation. Markos Grier was involved in writing software for the Imperium’s spy satellites. He had access to data for all the satellites in the Akaadian system, including Tryptar. Lucy had gotten his password by looking over the man’s shoulder, and now she signed into his account and pulled up the data from her home planet. She’d grown up in Tryptar’s capital of Buulon but wasn’t looking for data on herself. She was looking for any satellite that might have been present over John Cominski’s house on that fateful Eightmonth day.

  There. Satellite #118 had been in the general neighborhood at precisely the right time. Lucy tapped into the footage recording, zooming in on Mark Armine's greasy face and hunched shoulders as he parked his Hovercar and walked up to the Cominskis’ three-story suburban house. Lucy had figured out that Armine had paid for this visit thanks to the security cameras in the local area, so she already knew this part. Yet unlike those cameras, this satellite had ears.

  As Cominski walked out to greet his cousin and usher him inside, Lucy turned on the satellite’s audio.