“What, the, fuck!?” Captain Ko could be heard the moment he got out of his car.

“Hi Captain.” Marcus had no choice but to greet his captain with a smile: “How are you doing? How’s the family?”

“My wife’s nagging my fucking ears off, thanks for asking.” Captain Ko threw his cigarette butt on the ground and crushed it with his right foot: “What are we looking at here?”

“We counted at least sixty bodies, there’s definitely more.” Dr. Flemmings came over wiping sweat from her forehead: “The number’s sixty because that’s how many skulls we found. But by the number of rib cages and leg bones, there’s gotta be plenty more.”

“Cai, you found this site right? How the fuck did you even find this?” Captain Ko shook his head and stepped into the ring of police tapes: “And, just to confirm, you haven’t told anyone about this, have you?”

“No, absolutely not sir.” Marcus immediately shook his head.

“Alright.” Captain Ko walked to a pile of bones placed on a plastic tarp with some skulls cleanly arranged into three rows on the side: “This sucks. We don’t have the resources or the manpower to investigate something of this scale.”

“So, we’ve gotta ask the city for help?” Marcus sighed: “Can’t say that I am surprised, sir.”

“Captain, if you don’t mind, I can call my captain and ask him to lend you some men. No promises, but I think they have some people and resources to spare.” Dr. Flemmings nodded: “Something of this scale - it’s gotta be very serious. But I just can’t for the life of me think of any case that would fit into this. Something horrible must have happened.”

“This is Poison City, it wouldn’t be the first time something terrible happened right under people’s noses.” Kevin walked over slowly, with a skull in his hands and slowly putting it on the tarp: “Sorry Captain, but - ”

“Yeah, yeah. ” Captain Ko waved his hand: “I know more than you think and I am not one to deny that.”

“But do you happen to know something about this, Captain?” Dr. Flemmings asked.

“... I’ll need to recheck everything.” Captain Ko thought for a moment then shook his head: “More than sixty dead, something tells me this is not as malicious as you might be thinking. What’s your estimation on the age of the bones again? Thirty years? Thirty years ago the city’s planning was all but a huge mess. I wouldn’t be surprised if this used to be a massive graveyard.”

“It’s possible. But that likelihood is not very high.” Kevin shrugged: “The civil planning was a mess, but this place was quite far away from the mountains and the old ruins in the east, so I wouldn’t say people would just start burying their dead here.”

“And the burial is - well, very interesting as well.” Dr. Flemmings nodded: “From the roots we can tell all of these bodies were buried under some kind of vegetation, but as you can tell, there are not many trees here.”

“Which means that at least for the people who built this house and the houses around the area, they had no idea there were burials here.” Marcus nodded: “If we assume that they were not so greedy as to blatantly ignore this factor.”

“And - is that a valid assumption?” Dr. Flemmings looked at Marcus and asked.

“This is the South-Eastern District, so I doubt anyone would be so brazen.” Captain Ko sighed: “Of course, this is only the theory. We should check with the builders of all the houses around here to confirm.”

“When do we expect to hear from the city?” Kevin asked.

“I don’t know, to be honest with all of you.” Captain Ko rubbed his temples then took another look at the skulls being placed on the tarp: “It’s getting to election season in the city, players in the city council have their energy and their funds focused elsewhere. But, Cai, since you called this in, you are in charge of this for now, use whatever resources you deem necessary. I know you have a ton on your plate, but do enough groundwork so that when the city sends their men on this. And - use your best judgment on which cases to prioritize. Let me know if you need help.”

“And considering it’s almost the anniversary. I doubt they’ll have time to dig into this anytime soon.” Kevin shrugged.

Everyone went silent, including Captain Ko. Marcus knew exactly what Kevin was referring to: the 15th anniversary of the cruise ship accident on Lake Aqiu. A sensitive subject to bring up, obviously, but possibly relevant.

“I’m afraid you’re right, Kevin. But still - ” Captain Ko let out a long sigh: “What can you do?”

“Sir? ” Just this moment, an officer called out to Captain Ko: “We just found something.”

Marcus followed Captain Ko and the officer to the biggest sinkhole. There was another officer working inside, and with his flashlight pointing at a particular corner, Marcus was able to see what caught their attention: it was some kind of stone tablet. It was smooth and shaped somewhat like a piece of tombstone, with some almost unintelligible symbols carved on its surface.

“Tombstone?” Dr. Flemmings asked.

“Too small.” Kevin shook his head: “Looks like something else - like a plaque, or - ”

“Or some kind of inscribed record.” Marcus scratched his jaw: “I don’t know, this is all a little - ”

“Culty?” Dr. Flemmings sighed the scoffed.

“I was going with paranormal, but yeah culty could work.” Marcus nodded and exchanged looks with Kevin: “What’s it say there? Anyone recognize it?”

“Some kind of ancient language, looks a bit like Lumeragraph. ” Dr. Flemmings shrugged: “If it is, then only a few people in the city could actually read it.”

“Lumeragraph, nobody’s spoken it for at least a few hundred years right? And how can we get access to them?” Captain Ko took a quick picture of the tablet with his phone: “Anyone from the university?”

“Yeah, I will give you a list.” Dr. Flemmings sighed and shook her head: “But, since all your officers seem to have everything handled, I need to head back. I have a meeting in the city in… less than three hours. I’ll send my notes over soon.”

“Thank you, Doctor.” Marcus and Captain Ko both bowed gently toward the doctor.

“Thank you, Dr. Flemmings, before you go, I have something I would like your professional opinion on.” Kevin walked over with another piece of bone in his hand, quite different from the others, this piece was dark and semi-transparent, not unlike the amberized roots growing on the bones.

“This is - a shin bone?” Dr. Flemmings was immediately intrigued: “I don’t think I’ve ever seen bones like this. I think we need to send this over to a lab in the city to see what could have happened.”

It took almost two hours before all the officers on site managed to complete the preliminary processing of the scene. Marcus and Kevin headed back after the first hour, for they had already been onsite since before and they would need to run some tests on some of the evidence collected.

“Hey, Shrevas, Keryn, how’s it going?” When they got back to the precinct, they found both Detective Pahaik and Detective Lance were waiting by the door to the forensics lab.

“What happened?” Detective Pahaik seemed to have aged a few years, his eyes were red, the stress and anxiety of the reparations team case seemed to have weighed on him quite heavily. Detective Lance did not seem much better - she had bags under her eyes, her hair was untrimmed and she seemed even more silent and unwilling to talk today.

“Marcus found something, it’s like a hidden mass grave of some sort.” Kevin shook his head: “But don’t worry, your stuff’s still fine, we should hear back from the city labs anytime today.”

“Mass grave?” This news raised the eyebrows of both Shrevas and Keryn: “What the hell? How did you even find that?”

“I - well, just my damn luck I guess.” Marcus shrugged.

“Yeah, I suspect it’ll hit the news very soon.” Kevin led the two exhausted detectives into the lab and his office and turned on his computer and started checking the request he filed on behalf of Detectives Pahaik and Lance.

“Pending” the blue letters made the veins on Shrevas’ forehead jumped and throbbed: “What the fuck? I thought it’s gonna be ready by today?”

“Let me check. Usually it wouldn’t take this long.” Kevin frowned and clicked into the icon on screen.

“Due to high demand for resources from the Poison City forensics lab, this analysis report is running late. Please check back later for further status updates.” Marcus read the explanation out loud.

Both Shrevas and Keryn grunted, Shrevas started pacing in the lab, and Keryn sat on the table on the side, staring at Kevin’s screen: “Kevin, anyway to rush this for us?”

“Will try again. But no promises.” Kevin rubbed his temples: “Sorry, guys.”

“Anything we can do here? It’s just some fingerprints and DNA samples, for god’s sake.” Shrevas asked.

“Yeah yeah yeah. Thanks for reminding me, I actually borrowed some time from the city’s fingerprint matcher.” Kevin smacked himself on the forehead and said: “This is an idea thanks to Mick. Marcus, you might wanna take a look at this as well.”

Kevin pulled up another tab on his browser, which had a few clickable items listed. He then proceeded to click on a few of them, all of which showed “no match”, which caused Shrevas to grunt again. And finally, there was one item that showed “match”, with a picture of a blood stained cloth. Marcus recognized this - it was the same fabric of Carl Benson’s shirt, clutched in the hand of Lydia Mu.

“Matched: Lydia Mu.”