Just a taste - The Harvester of Faces

(This is the opening of the novel I just started writing. Bear in mind this is just the first draft--it could change considerably. Anyways, as always, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts--jfe.)

Detective Greta Olsen stood at the mouth of the alley and breathed in the stink radiating from it.


Smells could be important, she'd learned. While they had the technology to record every other aspect of a crime scene--indeed, she was standing there on the sidewalk with her team and a growing crowd of spectators while a holocam recorded where the victim's corpse, along with all of the debris and any possible evidence, were situated, to a ridiculous precision--one thing they still could not capture for later study was the smell.

So, she stood there while the forensic tech next to her--his name was Jennings, she knew, a young man fresh off an internship--was using a hand-held device to guide the floating camera down the alley while it recorded the scene, and she breathed in the stink.

Trash. Urine. Vomit, A faint, floral scent, like some sort of cleaner, maybe. Decomposition. All of these she smelled. Harsh, faintly burning chemical smells. Smoke.

"Detective? Are you all right?" The question came from the hard-suited Corporate Security Tech standing next to her.

She turned to regard him--or her, it was hard to tell, as the suit's speakers altered the voice to remove gender indications and anything else that would make it identifiable--and nodded. "I'm fine." she said. She could see her face reflected in the faceplate of the suit's helmet--her brown hair getting shot through with gray, bags under her green eyes, her lips too thin. She tried not to think about the suit's sensors recording her respiration, pulse rate, and other vitals, as it was capable of doing, and sending all that back in an encrypted data stream to some server miles away and probably deep underground.

The hard-suit was the latest generation, she knew, much more expensive than the department could afford, each suit costing several millions of dollars, but each also making the wearer invulnerable to small arms fire, able to withstand incredible extremes of temperature, and via extensive servomechanisms made the wearer much stronger, faster, with quicker reflexes, than he or she would be normally. That is not even considering the considerable weaponry designed to be used with the suits--enough to take out her team and everyone else she could see standing there, along with most of the vehicles and the buildings. She found the things terrifying. She found anything she couldn't bring down with a bullet from her nine millimeter sidearm terrifying.

"The victim is Dr. Kellam Baner." the hard-suit said.

"Who found him?" Olsen asked.

"A homeless person. He was looking for a place to sleep, settled onto the ground right next to Dr. Baner's body, noticed that he was dead, and called 911."

"So, how did you get here so fast?"

The security tech didn't respond and she nodded, not surprised. "Baner works for your company?" she asked, deciding not to pursue the matter for now.

"Yes. He is a researcher in our microbiology department."

"I see." she said, glancing over at the tech operating the camera. "How much longer?" she asked.

"Almost there." the tech said, squinting at the screen, finally pushing a button on the panel. "Let me get a little more, just to be safe." he said, maneuvering the camera, recording, recording, recording . . . "That should do it. We can go in now."

"Finally." she said. She turned back to the security guard. "Have you been in there?"

"Yes. I went in to confirm that it was him."

"The homeless person knew him?"

"No." the security guard said. "I was ordered to come here because we received a report that body had been found in this alley. Dr. Baner had been reported missing. This location is only four blocks from the lab where he works. I came and saw that it was him."

"And then you called us." she said.

"That is correct." the guard said.

"Dammit." she muttered. "Did you touch the body? To check for a pulse or anything?"

"That was not necessary." the guard said.

"I know you can pick up body heat and life signs with that thing but did you really trust it so much to not check to see if your own guy was still alive?"

"It was obvious." the guard said. "As you will see for yourself."

"Fine." she said, glancing at the forensic techs and the other officers assigned to help her with this case. "Okay, grab your kits. Let's go in."