The Last Murder at the end of the World

THIRTY-SEVEN

Thea finishes washing her hands, then returns to Niema’s body, which is laid out on a gurney, her clothes cut away. She’s spent the afternoon performing a post-mortem under my guidance, exposing the gooey jigsaw of Niema’s internal organs, looking for anything that might indicate who’s responsible. It was going well until she punctured the bladder, the smell immediately causing her to vomit on the floor, which wasn’t exactly step five on my walkthrough.

After cleaning up, she’s finally worked her way up to Niema’s shattered skull.

Her brain looks like paste in a broken teacup.

It’s already evident that a falling beam wasn’t responsible for this damage. She was bludgeoned repeatedly, her head caved in with a blunt object. The beam was placed on her head to disguise what really happened. If the fire had been allowed to burn her remains as intended, they’d probably never have looked any closer.

Somebody must have truly hated her to have done this. They murdered her and kept on murdering her long after she was dead. They were digging for her soul, trying to kill her ghost.

The only person on the island capable of this brutality is Hephaestus, she thinks. The counterpoint is that he adored his awful mother.

No, he revered her.

Hephaestus wasn’t simply her son, he was her acolyte. First in line for soft drinks at the cult of Niema. He genuinely believed that they were supposed to sit on this island, dutifully rebuilding the world for the billionaires who were sleeping beneath them. She can still remember how they’d all arrived in their yachts and orbitals, bringing their spoiled children and haughty servants, escaping the encroaching apocalypse like aristocrats fleeing winter. It turned out Niema had been quietly selling Blackheath’s services as a life raft to those who could afford it.

That was the first time Thea had started to doubt her mentor.

She hadn’t saved engineers, builders, scientists, teachers, doctors, nurses – any of the people who would be genuinely useful at rebuilding a society. She had saved people with the deepest pockets, and the longest political reach. She’d mistaken the end of the world for a temporary blip in service, rather than a total reset.

Not that it matters now.

Whether they’re worthwhile or not, they’re all that’s left of humanity and her sister’s amongst them. For forty years, Ellie’s been buried in Blackheath, sealed in a stasis pod, surrounded by the fog.

Thea asks me about her every night, making sure she’s still safe. This fear for her sister is constant. It preys on her. It never lets her rest. Even when she sleeps, she has nightmares about the insects drumming against the glass, almost breaking through. She always wakes at the same point, when the first cracks appear. The only thing she cares about is getting back down into Blackheath and pulling her sister out of there. She wants to know she’s safe and will do anything to make it happen.

Picking up a scalpel, she searches for some brain matter to test, noticing a small scrap of something lodged in Niema’s cheek. At first, she mistakes it for a splinter, but plucking it free with a pair of tweezers reveals it to be part of a human fingernail.

Her mouth goes dry, her heart pounding.

It’s an exact match for the scrap of thumbnail she lost last night.

Blowing out a breath, she lights a Bunsen burner on a nearby bench, and holds the nail in the flame until it’s ash.

‘Now that Niema’s dead, who do you answer to?’ she asks, in the darkness of her thoughts.

‘I’m sworn to humanity’s service,’ I reply.

‘That’s not an answer.’

‘Niema left no successor,’ I clarify. ‘Neither you nor Hephaestus assume her authority over me. I’m left to follow her existing instructions as best I can.’

‘So you’re not compelled to report my actions to Hephaestus, the way you used to report them to Niema?’ she asks tentatively.

‘No,’ I say.

Thea blows out a relieved breath and pulls a pair of scissors from a drawer, cutting a square of material from her bloody T-shirt, which she places under the microsampler. A minute later the results flash up, confirming the blood as belonging to Niema.

‘Hell,’ she says, caught between confusion and panic.

Humans are never more thrilling than when they’re under pressure like this. Electricity is crackling through her brain; epinephrine and cortisol are coursing through her bloodstream. It’s an incredible alchemy of sentience and biology – evolution at its freewheeling best.

She goes to the glare of the door, peering at the empty yard, heat shimmering off the ground. She can hear the villagers returning through the gate, but it’s not them she’s worried about. She keeps thinking about Hephaestus slamming that vulture into the ground until it was pulp.

‘Is he in the village?’ she asks.

‘No,’ I say.

She strides across the yard and into her dorm room, quickly stripping off her clothes and hiding them under her mattress. She’ll destroy them after curfew. She doesn’t want anybody testing them.

‘You understand that by impeding the investigation you’re putting the island at risk,’ I say.

‘A torn thumbnail and some blood is hardly definite proof that I’m the killer,’ she argues. ‘I’m just making sure Hephaestus doesn’t prejudge the situation, before all the facts are uncovered.’

‘There won’t be any facts left to uncover if you carry on at this rate.’

Five minutes later, she’s back in her lab, using a small spoon to scoop a sample of Niema’s brain matter into a Petri dish.

Did I kill you?

That’s the question repeating over and over in her mind. I could have done, she thinks. If I was angry enough. But after all this time, what could have made her angry enough?

‘Now that Niema’s dead, what are you for?’ Thea asks me out loud.

‘My standing orders require me to protect every human life and ensure the long-term viability of the village, preventing any conflicts or resentments from arising amongst its population.’

I’ll confess, I enjoy listing my commandments like this. I’ve always pitied humanity its lack of direction, and thought it entirely wasteful that so many lives were allowed to wither on the vine before the apocalypse. I was created knowing exactly what I was for and I’ve sought to offer the villagers the same gift. Purpose is something which must be given, or it will be endlessly sought.

‘And you’re free to pursue those ends however you wish?’ asks Thea, taking the brain matter sample over to the microscope.

‘Yes.’

‘Trust Niema to invent a hammer that can choose its own nails,’ she says, pursing her lips. ‘Is there any way I could convince you to report Emory’s thoughts directly to me, for the good of the island?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘That was a privilege reserved for Niema.’

‘Of course it was,’ she says.

Peeling off her gloves, she settles herself on a stool and puts her eyes to the microscope, adjusting the lens for the correct magnification.

Fearful of her own guilt, she’s now trying to work out what she will do if it’s confirmed. Would she sacrifice herself to save this island as she told Emory earlier, or take her chances in the cauldron garden?

‘By my estimates, less than half of the village’s population can be sheltered in the cauldron garden,’ I say. ‘By choosing to save yourself, you’re effectively ending sixty-one lives.’

‘They’re simulacrums,’ she says, shrugging. ‘Their only value is how useful they are to us.’

‘Niema disagreed. She believed her work had evolved them.’

‘She saw what she wanted to see,’ disagrees Thea, immediately feeling a niggle of doubt.

She’s spent the last three weeks listening to Hui compose a concerto on her violin, and came to regard those nightly rehearsals as her favourite time of the day. The crums aren’t supposed to be capable of original thought, or creativity, but Hui was playing in a style entirely her own. Thea could hear the village under every note. Each movement was a season, lapped by the tides.

She was creating music inspired by this place, and time. There was nothing to suggest she was mimicking previous works.

Or, it’s been so long since I heard the violin played well that I can’t tell the difference any more, she thinks, reassuring herself.

She sighs, rubbing her eyes. This is the trap Niema fell into. She accepted close-to-human as being human-enough.

Thea can’t make the same mistake.

She rolls her stool away from the microscope, having made her decision. Niema’s dead and the evidence so far points to her being responsible. Of course she feels regret, possibly even a touch of shame, but she’s certain she would have had good reasons for her actions.

Niema was condescending, hypocritical and self-centred. She lied over and over again, abandoning Thea when she needed her most.

Thea can’t imagine what Niema must have done to finally make her snap, but she won’t willingly follow the old woman into the grave.

As long as she’s alive, there’s a chance she’ll find a way to destroy the fog and rescue her sister, something nobody else on this planet can do. For the good of everybody, she has to stop the truth from being uncovered.

What are a few lives compared to that?