IV - Chapter 3

And somehow it was twelve o’clock at night and somehow, they were there again – in the police office and staring a bloody (literally, not rhetorically) yellow backpack poised on the glinting, greyish-cold metal desk.

It was Cassian who had called his mentee; the bag had been found on his doorstep, he said, and without stepping into his flat for a second he’d thumbed a call to Elliott and immediately rushed back to the office.

The yellow backpack contained the… for the lack of a better word… the decimated remains of Ms Eleanor Voss. Cassian had been white as a sheet, from shock, anger or disgust it couldn’t be told, and he’d collapsed halfway through the door. If it hadn’t been for Elliott right on the side, he would’ve crashed right into the ground.

And enough about him and them. Now on about the yellow bag.

It was that sort of bright highlighter-yellow that would stand out in its glorious ugliness even in the light of midnight. Currently, it was slightly dimmed with the blood that had dried partly on its surface.

There could be nothing done to the mesh of half-liquid and half-solid except to test if it was indeed Ms Voss (which it was), and the inspection team was currently digging away at it.

As they sat outside the inspection room (Cassian decided he wasn’t strong enough at that time of day to stomach it) Elliott kept glancing to Cassian, to the clock, then to the inspection team and the bag they were inspecting, then back again. In his expectant and anxious gaze, the clock flipped twelve and it was the third of January instead of the second.

He wondered what would happen tomorrow – today.

Thankfully, The third of January was relatively calm to them. Nothing happened except the disgusted, shocked and pitying sounds that were made when the day-shifters discovered what the night-shifters had sifted through. Elliott and Cassian crashed on the small emergency dorms in the police office.