by Michael Blakeney
90722.23
Immediately Following Dressing-Down: Two
-=Flashback, 2357 Current Timeline=-
90722.23
Immediately Following Dressing-Down: Two
-=Flashback, 2357 Current Timeline=-
The first thing Gem did upon reentering the ambassador’s residence was to find his bathroom and to clean his dried blood off her hands.
The walls were purely white and the red was such a vicious contrast, almost as much as the shock of the cold water as it hit her skin. She quickly seized hold of the elegantly sculpted, and seemingly untouched bar of soap which sat in a seashell shaped dish beside the liquid soap dispenser at the sink and began to furiously grind the surface of the bar into her fingernails.
Even though there was no visible blood beneath them, she felt unable to truly get her hands clean until she'd scrubbed them almost to the point of breaking them off. Still, she continued to jam the soap against her fingertips until she'd almost split the nails from the cuticles.
It took several minutes of rinsing after she'd finished scrubbing, under water that was now as intensely hot as she could stand before she finally felt they were once again close to clean. Even though her skin burned and her nailbeds smarted, at least now in some small way she felt like herself again.
Using a towel from the rack nearby, she dried her hands, and then picked up the bar of soap and put both it and the towel into the recycling unit to dispose of them.
She ran her hands up and down the sleeves of her shirt nervously.
“Okay,” she quietly said as she turned around, still trying to bring the world back into sharp focus and to put her mind on the here and now. “We have to secure the crime scene and notify the agency.”
“Nah…I don’t think so.” Michael dismissively replied, trying to lighten the mood as he continued to hold the recently injured Gem upright with one hand.
“What do you mean, you ‘don’t think so’?" Gem incredulously inquired as she started stepping forward quickly enough to show him that she didn’t feel she needed him holding her up and almost quickly enough to show her falling down. “We can’t just leave him here.”
“I wasn’t suggesting leaving him here. I was thinking I’d take you home and you’d have a rest after your...adventures..." he paused and gave her a slight,
sideways smile. "Which must have been exhausting. Then I'd come back here and have a look around. Knowing though that you’re far too stubborn to agree to that I was going to suggest that we both look around.” He corrected with a much fuller grin, but it was having little effect. “I just don’t see any need to call it in. He’s under the care of the agency. Pretty soon they’ll figure out something’s wrong and send someone regardless of what we do.”
“That’s right,” Gem mused with suspicion, eyeing Blakeney carefully for any mistake he might make and feeling she was onto something here. “He is under the agency’s care. It’s strange that with all the other information you have access to you didn’t know he was here.”
As skeptical as she felt, Gem would never look at something and have some indefinable feeling tell her anything beyond what she could find by thinking the situation out. Thinking was all it took to tell her there was most certainly something not quite right with Michael Blakeney.
First, no matter what story he may give, he was hardly the type Galloway would send in the interests of discretion. He may have had the advantage that no one would spot him as an agent, but that was exactly the point. He was nothing like any agent she’d seen before.
The first requirement of any agent was the ability to blend in when they had to. If you couldn’t do that then you could never be risked being sent on a Jump for fear that you’d be seen and do more damage to history than you could fix. Yet whenever Michael was in the room she found her eyes drawn to his charismatic ease of movement; to his warm, somehow simultaneously innocent and devilish smile and, quite strangely, to the light in his eyes.
Gem was very good at dismissing sights like that. If she couldn’t stop watching him it was clear to her that this was a sign he was completely incapable of blending in anywhere.
“I know it may be hard to believe, but even I have my limits.” Blakeney replied without even missing a beat. “Anyway, don’t you want to have a full report waiting when they arrive? It would be much more efficient. Very... sensible.”
He said that last word with just the correct intonation to make sure she knew he was teasing her about it.
Gem saw nothing wrong with sensibility, but didn’t find it as irritating as she thought she should when he used that tone. Sensibility was a part of who she was and she knew she should have been more offended by how he trivialized it.
She’d certainly never been one given to so called woman’s intuition or the even less desirable ‘going with one’s gut’. Of all the parts of the anatomy, why anyone concluded that their stomach was where all the best judgment could be found was beyond her. She wondered at times whether they actually believed that their skipping lunch or other stomach altering actions could have some impact on how much they could trust those around them.
Of course, she thought, as far as the man in front of her went it would be an improvement if he would make more decisions even that high up in his body.
However whether it was Blakeney’s easy charm, the desperation for answers now rather than later or her still slightly throbbing head injury Gem actually found herself feeling like she should go along with what he wanted. As a matter of personal pride she would later become entirely convinced it was the third.
Surveying the scene before her of Braylan’s small yet expensive private accommodation it seemed unlikely they would be disturbed unless Braylan had the misfortune of having two assassins targeting him today. Also, since every second was a second in which vital evidence could be lost she decided that her first priority should be to attempt some sort of preliminary investigation while they wait, especially knowing how likely it was that as soon as other agents arrived she’d be replaced by someone not nearly as attentive as she was.
She really needed to find out what had happened.
The moment she’d become Braylan’s last call it’d stopped being possible that she could have simply avoided getting involved in the investigations of whoever was officially assigned to this and so she might as well make the most of it while she still had the chance.
“Fine,” she grumbled. She removed two pairs of latex gloves from her pockets and proceeded to give one pair to him and snap the other onto her hands. She indicated an area she doubted would have much evidence through movements of her head. “You can go look around over there.”
Michael found it amusing and couldn’t help but stop to ask, “Carry these around with you everywhere you go, do you?”
Gem pretended not to have heard him as she began to search for the assailant’s point of entry into the building.
-=/\=-
They’d looked through different rooms, every other room in fact, and found no sign of how the killer had gotten in. Finally, Gem accepted that there was really no doubt of where she needed to go next. It wasn’t long before she once again had Braylan’s body in her sight.
As soon as Michael saw where she was heading he decided it was best to ignore her suggestion about where he do his investigation as he followed her close behind.
As she stepped into the room where he was seated it was like crossing an invisible barrier into a different world. Her movements became slower and her footfalls became respectfully softer as she approached the corpse slumped across the desk where life once had been.
As much as she tried not to let anything like this effect her, there was something about seeing a man she’d known, even one such as Braylan, so instantly and easily become empty which just couldn’t be entirely shaken off.
Especially not when she felt it was her own damn fault.
Michael didn’t miss the pained expression on her face but thought it better not to say anything just yet, as they both ignored the rest of the room and headed where they knew they must.
“At least we have an exact time of death.” She said with hidden sadness as she stood examining the body. “The last thing he did was try to call me.”
“I know, I’ve been keeping track of his calls.” Michael replied. “That’s why I knew to come here.”
Gem just nodded her acceptance of this as she considered the best way to approach the body.
Normally she’d have taken pictures first but given she had limited time and that she’d shaken him around in her initial panic, she didn’t see the point.
Though she’d been there before him it was Michael who first moved towards the body and she was just left to watch as he knelt down and brought his hands up to examine the small opening to the long and deadly wound in his back. Gem found it remarkable how professional and careful he was being.
A small, almost perfectly circular pool of blood had soaked through Braylan’s jacket. In fact Gem felt like she’d washed more than that off her hands. In a way the small amount made it worse; death had come so easily here.
Though feeling slightly useless standing back, dispassionately Gem considered that it was possibly a good thing to let Michael go first. It left her a chance to keep an eye on him and now more than ever she knew she couldn’t easily trust him. She wanted that trust to be there, more than she could admit, but that didn’t mean she could force it to exist.
“It’s a single clean wound; the work of a professional.” He announced, though neither of them had doubted that from the way the man had moved.
“Any ideas about the weapon?” Gem asked, knowing even from here it must have been a knife that was thin but long. It was the type of weapon which was easy to conceal but required an experienced hand.
“I could guess.” Michael replied absently, knowing that he had neither the training nor the time to give a proper answer.
“Don’t bother.” She snapped, more coldly than she’d intended. Gem had never been one to guess.
She noted that Michael’s eye seemed to suddenly be caught by something before he quickly returned to his normal, artfully careless expression. He shifted around on the floor just seeming to get a better angle but Gem could have sworn he was trying to block something from her.
“You know there’s no need for both of us to be here.” He casually commented, pretending to be fully focused on Braylan.
“I’m staying.” She insisted, certain now there must be something Michael was keeping from her.
The more she observed his movements, the more familiar something about him became. Life was like a game of chess and even when that game is friendly one must study the opponent’s style of play.
Though he may appear to be the type who’d make foolish mistakes and to never think more than a couple of steps ahead, he played far too well for that. Every move Blakeney made had the same basic elements of misdirection, surprise and the revelation of information exactly when and only if it became necessary. This was exactly what she’d do; exactly what she’d been trained to do when she had to hold something back from those around her.
As Michael moved around to the other side of Braylan, still seeming to block her, Gem leaned down where he’d just been and looking closer at the wound she immediately began to realize there was something wrong with the blood. It was subtle but it was definitely there.
“The pigmentation is completely off.” She commented with confusion, looking at Blakeney out of the corner of her eye. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?”
“No.” Michael immediately and absently replied as he looked through Braylan’s pockets.
Gem realized he showed far too little surprise for him not to have noticed it before. He had clearly decided not to tell her. Whatever the blood meant, he wanted to hide it from her. It also meant he had to be lying to her about much more than that.
She wondered how many times he’d lied to her already, and her instinct was to call him on that right now. However whatever anger she may have felt was softened as she remembered he had also just saved her life.
It was clear that whatever he was keeping back that somehow and for now their causes were the same. As long as that was the case then she decided it was much better to keep him around. At the end point of her intense, complicated and heated internal debate over this, she found that she was very relieved to have been able to reach that decision.
Gently Michael removed a small object from Braylan’s jacket pocket.
“What do you make of this?” he asked, throwing the small cream colored cube into the air then catching it before presenting it to Gem.
“I don’t recognize the design but I’d say it’s a data storage device.” Gem replied, indicating the matching symbols on the screen before Braylan and on the side of the device, suggesting somehow this device had been wirelessly connected to the communication console. “He must have been planning on sending me whatever’s on here.”
“Then whatever it is it must be important. What do you say we hold on to it?” Michael started to put it in his pocket but seeing Gem’s disapproving look he changed that and placed it on the desk. “Or not.”
His eye once again seemed to have been caught by something before he moved around then stood up and looked to Gem, saying, “To be honest, I’m really not sure there’s much we can do here without risking damage to the body.”
Gem noted that he seemed to be in a hurry to get her away from here, and Michael figured out quickly that she’d realized this.
“Hold on.” She said, suddenly noticing a small bump on the back of Braylan’s neck.
As she moved towards it Michael seemed to tense up but could do nothing except watch as Gem gently ran her finger along it, noting just how unnatural it felt, like there was something under his skin. Michael had hoped to avoid what he knew was about to happen.
The contact with Gem seemed to trigger something as a low hum began emanating from the ambassador’s neck.
Gem and Michael both quickly stepped back as a ring of light began to pass down Braylan’s body. The thin blue light passed rapidly down from the top of his head throughout his body and each point it passed seemed to change.
It revealed beneath, an orange pigmentation to his skin and all his features seemed to warp into something not quite right. His nose grew into a different shape and his ears folded back along his head. When it was finished an entirely alien being was left in the ambassador’s clothes. She knew now why his blood looked so wrong.
This man, who’d been one of the single most influential figures in Federation politics, was an imposter.
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Lt. Commander Michael Blakeney
Temporal Investigations
Lt. Commander Michael Blakeney
Temporal Investigations