The Human Heart [COMPLETED]

Connect the Dots

How fascinating it is to watch a mute person die in sheer agony. Where desperate cries and shouts would have usually filled the room, the only noises escaping her mouth are creaks and guttural sounds indicating that she would be screaming if only she had been able to.

It was wrong to shake the tube and hold it so carelessly. The content, quickly turning into dark blue foam, has taken mere seconds to cover her face and eat away whatever lies between the surface and the bare bone underneath. That she tries to get rid of the substance with her hands is foolish considering that it only spreads over to the rest of her body as well, but her situation is helpless anyway. Figuring out what kind of acid this is would take too long, and it's unlikely a counterpart to cure its effects can be found here.

Michael, too dull to understand the chemical process that has lead to this incident, blames it on the blood and frantically waves around the stained knife in his hands, and his face turns uglier with every second that he bears his stupid grin. "Anyway. Who wants to try next? Our mute here was too stupid obviously. Mr. Clever here! Why won't you show us how to do it better, eh?"

Considering their time limit, it might actually be about time for him to end the kindergarten. Careful not to step into the dark foam that has spread on the ground where the mute has dropped the tube in her death struggles, Chishiya heads to the other side of the table and opens the drawers.

Esterase-lipase tests, dipsticks for peroxide, chloride, lyphan-stripes... Everything that a chemist could dream off. All Chishiya needs to define water, though, is a simple pH test strip. The tricky thing about acids is that they don't necessarily have a certain scent, and that was all the mute had done to eliminate some samples.

"She was not completely wrong, but she didn't think it through." He puts the test strip into the jar, and it turns deep red the moment it touches the substance. "This liquid here isn't water at all. It's highly acrid. Only because it is colorless and doesn't smell, it can be easily mistaken with water. But the pH test tells us otherwise."

Most of the other players are still eyeing the mute's body, and his stubborn is the only one to avert her gaze from the acid's massacre on the floor. She seems to have recovered from the shock of being cut, although she doesn't feel comfortable with what happened afterwards either. Compared to the peaceful solution of the first room, the laboratory came along with quite an amount of blood.

"So upon mixing the acid and the blood, she caused a chemical reaction that killed her?"

Her voice is still trembling, but at least her mind isn't too clouded from the most current events. Chishiya doesn't know how blood would cause acrid substances to turn into such deadly foam though, and the remaining time is not enough to find out. However the mixture didn't turn blue immediately, it happened after the mute had shaken the tube for the contents to diffuse properly. "I can't tell exactly how the blood came into play; it rather seems like a chemical reaction has been highly affected by the concussion."

A reaction that Chishiya won't allow to happen again as long as he's the one holding the jar. Taking out the remaining test stripes, he turns towards the other translucent liquids and tests them one by one. The one leading to the mute's death has been the most acid one; the other liquids are either lightly acid with a pH-value between 3 and 6 or alkaline, turning the test stripe blue. One of them results in a 7, neutral, and given that it has neither a scent nor color, this is most likely to be the water. Chishiya pours a bit of it into another tube and adds some of the blood. It mixes perfectly when he sways the tube slightly, and it doesn't change the color to anything other than pink.

Convinced that he has created the right mixture, Chishiya takes one last look down at the floor. The mute has been a handsome woman, fascinating with her sharp wit and incapability to speak, but now she's a disgusting mess of protruding bone and eaten away flesh. Such a shame that one of the useful players was imprudent enough to die like this.