A crimson haze clung to the air inside the cramped apartment module. Detective Victor Thorne stepped beneath the flickering neon tube light, watching dust motes swirl through the glow. The metallic tang of blood hit him first – a smell he had never quite gotten used to, even after a decade of homicide work on Olympus Station. The gravity here was about Mars-normal, a gentle 0.38g spin imparted by the station's rotating superstructure. In the lower gravity, blood didn't settle into puddles quite the same as on Earth. Instead, it had splattered in slow, arcing patterns across the wall and floor, forming surreal constellations of gore. Thorne's cybernetic left eye automatically adjusted, sliding through light spectra and highlighting the viscous droplets in luminescent green overlays.
He took a long drag on a cigarette – an expensive habit, given real tobacco had to be shipped from Earth – and let the smoke coil from his lips. Station regs frowned on open smoking, but the detective liked the ritual. It steadied his nerves amid the carnage. Through the haze, he surveyed the body splayed on the floor. What was left of it, anyway.
The victim was male, mid-thirties by the looks of it. Or had been. His chest was a torn-open cavity of meat and shattered rib implants, organs glistening under the harsh light. A pair of cybernetic arms lay twisted beneath the torso, servos still occasionally twitching with residual energy. Thorne grimaced – the killer had ripped those augmented arms clean off. It must've taken tremendous force or a monomolecular blade. Either way, the scene was personal – overkill beyond any simple motive.
"Jesus…" muttered Officer Lina Rios, one of the station security first responders. She stood at the doorway, one arm braced against the frame as if ready to bolt. This wasn't the tidy sort of death they usually saw in orbit – accidents, decompression, maybe a clean burn from an industrial laser. This was raw, intimate brutality.
Thorne exhaled smoke and knelt by the body, careful not to float off-balance in the lighter gravity. His augmented knee joint hissed softly – a reminder of the last time he'd tangled with a perp who had more muscle than sense. Now that knee was top-grade titanium. It never ached in the cold, unlike his flesh one. Small mercies.
He activated the scanner in his cybernetic eye with a thought. A HUD flickered, feeding him data: body temperature, estimated time of death, traces of foreign DNA. The victim's face – what remained – was intact enough for an ID match. His internal system cross-referenced station records and within seconds projected a translucent ID card image above the corpse's face.
"Jacob Halley," Thorne read aloud, the name tasting familiar. "Age 34, occupation… systems engineer for Arcadia BioSystems." A corporate man, then. Arcadia BioSystems – he knew the name from somewhere in the station's tangled corporate web. The logo of that biotech firm glowed in the AR display next to Halley's face: a green twin-helix design.
Officer Rios stepped gingerly inside. She avoided looking directly at the body. "Arcadia BioSystems… They run the medlabs in sector 12, right? Gene therapy, cryo, that stuff?"
Thorne nodded slowly, eyes narrowing. Arcadia had a solid reputation on the station – cutting-edge research, big government contracts. Not the sort of outfit to have an engineer torn to pieces in a slum apartment out on the station's Rimward Ring, where gravity was lowest and life support often glitchy. What was Halley doing out here, far from the corporate suites and the polished labs?
"Maybe slumming with a lover? Or a deal gone bad," Thorne murmured. He noted the cheap plastic furniture, the stained walls. This flop wasn't Arcadia luxury housing. It was barely above a maintenance closet. Halley had no business here, unless it was secret business.
He stood up, brushing ash from his rumpled coat. He wore an old-style trench coat – an affectation, perhaps, but one that concealed his shoulder-holstered pistol and the bulge of his cybernetic arm nicely. Rios watched him expectantly, waiting for direction.
"Secure the scene," Thorne said. "Forensics bots en route?"
Rios nodded. "ETA two minutes. We already sealed the corridor."
"Good." Thorne stepped away from the corpse, careful not to smear any blood spatter. In the reduced gravity, his steps felt floaty, dreamlike, but the magnetic soles of his boots kept him grounded. He paced the small living room. An overturned chair, and… he crouched, picking up a shattered syringe capsule. The label was smeared with blood, but he could make out a few letters: "—lux". Pollux? A drug name, maybe. He pocketed the fragment in an evidence bag.
"Detective, take a look at this," Rios called. She had inched closer to the body now that Thorne had given the go-ahead. Her gloved hand pointed at the victim's neck. Thorne leaned in.
Halley's throat had a deep incision, almost surgically precise in contrast to the brutality of the rest. The wound was clean, a single slashing line that had nearly decapitated him. So, two modes of attack: one frenzied and one clean cut. Thorne's mind sorted possibilities. Two attackers? Or one attacker who started with a precise kill stroke, then mutilated the body after? Perhaps to send a message, or out of rage.
He wouldn't get answers here. Not yet. The forensic drones would gather data for later analysis. Time to canvass and check surveillance.
Thorne straightened, joints clicking softly. "I'll head back to the precinct, see what station cam feeds picked up. You stay with the body until the drones finish, then get the report to me ASAP."
Rios looked relieved to have a task. "On it, Detective."
Thorne made his way out, ducking under the tape strung across the doorway. In the cramped hall, a few curious residents peered from behind doorways – pale faces in dim light, quickly withdrawing when his gaze swept over them. Olympus Station's lower ring wasn't a friendly neighborhood; no one wanted to get involved.
He couldn't blame them. People who poked their noses in too far often ended up like the mess inside that apartment.
As he walked towards the maglev lift, his mind churned. Jacob Halley. The name resonated. Had he seen it in a case file? Maybe a minor complaint, or an incident at Arcadia BioSystems? Corporate labs had their share of hush-hush accidents.
The lift doors opened with a chime, and he stepped in, selecting the security deck. The compartment began to move along the station's curvature, artificial gravity shifting subtly as it transitioned between spin sections. Thorne rubbed the bridge of his nose, where a faint scar traced above his eyebrow – one of the few on his body that wasn't accompanied by an implanted alloy replacement. He'd kept that scar as a reminder that he was still human, still vulnerable.
Moments later, the lift slid to a stop at the Olympus Station Security Bureau headquarters. Thorne stepped out into the harsh white lighting and sterile air. The precinct was abuzz – hovering drone cams zipping overhead with data chips, clerks and officers tapping at consoles. Even in the age of AI assistants and predictive surveillance, real detective work still thrived in these corridors of composite and steel.
He headed straight for the surveillance hub. "Fischer," he barked as he entered. A tired-looking analyst with a cranial implant wired into a console glanced up.
"Got something, Vic?" Fischer asked. Everyone here was on first-name basis; formality died out in deep space where survival often trumped protocol.
"Murder on the Rim. Apartment 6B, sector D4. See if any corridor cams picked up movement around the time of death." He checked his eye overlay for the time of death estimate: around 0200 station time.
Fischer's fingers danced in the air, manipulating holo-screens. "Let's see… got a ping from a door camera near that unit at 0217, motion detected." He zoomed in on a feed. Grainy footage materialized – the station's cheaper districts didn't get the best quality cams.
On-screen, a figure stumbled out of the door to 6B. Thorne leaned closer, heart rate ticking up. The man was coated in blood. Even in murky resolution, it was evident – his shirt soaked dark, hands slick and dripping. The man turned briefly toward the camera.
Thorne sucked in a breath. The face was unmistakable despite the smeared gore: Jacob Halley. The dead man was seen walking out of his own apartment, under his own power, drenched in blood.
Fischer cursed, "Is…is that our vic? Walking out alive?"
Thorne's flesh hand gripped the edge of the console. It couldn't be Halley. Halley was lying in pieces in that room. But the image… It was him. Same brown hair, same angular profile. The feed showed the man – Halley? – lurching down the hall, clutching his side as if wounded, then vanishing around a corner where the camera coverage ended.
The two men exchanged a bewildered glance. Thorne felt a prickle at the base of his skull, where metal fused with bone. This job rarely gave him the creeps anymore, but watching a dead man walk away from his own murder scene – that did it.
"Run facial recognition cross-checks on all departure logs and sector checkpoints," Thorne ordered, finding his voice. "If Jacob Halley passed any other cams, I want to know." Fischer nodded and set to work.
Thorne stepped back, mind racing. Was it possible Halley survived somehow? Unlikely, given the gore left behind. Or was the body in the apartment not Halley at all? But the DNA and prints… his scanner had confirmed identity on site.
Unless the identification was wrong. Or faked.
He felt an uneasy tension coil in his gut. One thing was certain: either Jacob Halley had an identical twin in the wind, or something far stranger was going on. And on Olympus Station, where corporate secrets ran deep and science blurred the edges of reality, "stranger" could be very strange indeed.
Thorne thought back to obscure cases in his past, conspiracy theories he'd dismissed. There were always rumors – illicit gene hacks, rogue clones, experimental androids. Officially, human cloning was banned decades ago due to ethical outcry and fears clones would lack individuality or be treated as disposable. The United Nations had condemned it worldwide, and no legitimate company would dare openly break that law. But here he was, faced with a dead man and the same man apparently on the run. The impossible was on his screen, and it demanded an explanation.
His cybernetic eye whirred softly, refocusing. He realized Fischer was talking. "—should I alert station-wide patrols? Put out a notice to detain Halley for questioning?"
Thorne shook off his daze. "Not yet," he said slowly. If Halley – or whoever that was – got wind the police were after him, he might vanish for good. "Quietly send a unit to check Halley's company and listed residence. And… keep this off the public channels. We don't know what we're dealing with."
Fischer pursed his lips but nodded. "You got it, boss."
Thorne turned and left the surveillance hub, a storm of thoughts brewing. He paused in a quiet corner of the corridor, away from prying eyes, and lit another cigarette with trembling fingers.
A dead man was alive. Or an alive man was dead. Either way, reality was splintering into a nightmare of doubles and doppelgängers.
He took a drag, the ember casting a brief red glow on the steel wall. The detective had seen a lot of horrors in his years – dismemberments, cyber-psychotic rampages, even an incident with a feral AI on the cargo decks. But this felt different, like stepping over the threshold into a dark mirror where nothing could be trusted.
One thing Victor Thorne knew for sure: he was going to get to the bottom of this, no matter how deep and twisted the rabbit hole went. And if Jacob Halley had a twin ghost walking around Olympus Station, Thorne would be the one to confront it.