Chapter 35

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We arrived at Socrico University a while later in our new gear. Knowing that everything we said, heard, and observed would go straight to Sten was unnerving, and we entered the open grounds in silence.

Passing under the arch of the decorative gatehouse, we entered a gravel courtyard the size of a surface football pitch. Old, regal sandstone buildings clustered around it, narrow archways leading to the rest of the campus behind this impressive front. The buildings towered over us in a sweeping U-shape like a palace, complete with spires and mini battlement-style finishes against the grey-tiled roofs. Real flowers had been potted carefully in baskets, and they swung gently in a brief but welcome breeze.

The campus was quiet, those who were awake already in their lectures. I led Alex through an archway and down a random path, praying I would soon see something that was obviously a research laboratory.

"There's a PRB over there," he said when we were almost at the end of the gravel.

I pushed my glasses further up my nose and looked to the side. A black robot with a rifle was standing at the entrance to a fork in the path. "Oh, good. You can do the talking."

We approached the PRB. Alex flashed his warrant card. "Police. Take us to the crime scene."

If I'd asked it the same question, it probably would have taken me to the moon.

The PRB led us down the path. For a while, it seemed to be taking us away from the rest of the campus towards nothing at all, until the ugliest building I'd ever seen came into view.

It looked like something that had landed in an ashtray. We didn't have many concrete structures in the city, but this was one of them, and its discolouration over time had only made its appearance worse. It had the same ungainly structure as a twenty-first century block of scraggly offices, only much squatter. The enormous sign hanging over its doorway marked it clearly as our destination. Socrico University Research.

Alex looked at me as we approached the automatic doors. "Ready?"

For the investigation of my lifetime? Not at all.

***

When we were wearing our forensic suits, we passed through a huddle of scientists standing outside a room marked as Lab S. Inside, only one civilian remained among the rows of white tables. She was standing at the far end, beside an office closed off with electro-tape. Young and pale, she alternated between chewing her thumbnail and glancing inside the crime scene.

We left the PRB and strolled across the room towards her. I dug out my warrant card. "Excuse me, ma'am. Would you like to --"

Her eyebrows, drawn on so that they were as thick as slugs at one end and thin as a pinprick at the other, shot upwards. "Oh, they said -- they said you'd want to talk to me and I should, like, wait here? Those robots?"

I exchanged a glance with Alex. "You found the victim?"

"Lonn," she amended. "I was the first one here. I just -- I knocked on the door to his office, just to say good morning, like, he's usually here before everyone else, and I always say good morning, so --"

"We'll need to have a look around first," I said firmly. "Then we'll come back out and talk to you."

She nodded fervently, golden earrings swinging. "Okay. Can I wait just here?"

"Sure." I ducked under the electro-tape.

The office was small and full to bursting. A desk stood in the middle of the room, covered in notebooks, scraps of paper, and chemical stains. A shelf of old-fashioned lever arch folders stood in the far corner, but the rest of the wall space was filled with cluttered lab tables. One had been upturned, tipping glass beakers and hundreds of papers onto the floor.

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