With Aster’s Slate undergoing PATET’s scans and fixes in preparation for his investigation, Laith focused on tracking down the Cassia Grove’s relatives. It was early morning still, and he had a good couple of hours before the club opened. He wanted to dig as much up as he could before dropping by Nymphaeales to search Cassia Grove’s office now that the warrant had arrived. What was it that had her so distracted and bothered on the day of her murder, according to her business partner?

A quick search revealed that all of her relatives currently resided in Novus Atlantis, her place of birth. Their details were not listed on the PATET database, considering they had never traveled to Heliopolis, and Laith would have to request that information from the Novus Atlantian authorities, should they be willing to comply. There was little doubt they would be, in any case. One of their own murdered in Heliopolis, widely hailed as the safest city in the world, was certainly to capture their attention and curiosity. They would want answers, and he needed this information to give them those answers.

At least, he hoped it would help. He sent a request for the full range of information on Cassia Grove, trying to cover all of his bases just in case.

Detective Laith Alazraq

Homicide Division

Heliopolis Police Department

City of Heliopolis

Private Citizen Information Request:

To assist in the investigation of the murder of Novus Atlantian citizen and Heliopolitan resident Cassia Grove, we request the following information about the deceased:

◇ Biographical history: Cassia Grove

◇ Criminal record: Cassia Grove

◇ Financial history: Cassia Grove

◇ Contacts for living relatives: Cassia Grove

◇ Medical and health records: Cassia Grove

Please be advised that this is an ongoing murder investigation. The information requested herein would be best provided as soon as possible. More details pertaining to the case have been attached to this request, and must be handled with discretion. For further information, please contact Captain Olivia Fox of the Heliopolis PD Homicide Division.

With that out of the way, Laith moved on to more pressing issues. Nymphaeales would open soon, and he wanted to be there when it did, now that he had clearance based on the warrant he’d been provided. He was eager to search her office and see if he could find anything, so he wasted little time in calling his Camino Forest to the front of the building and rushing out to meet it. The Floats were closer than the Hills, but still a good quarter of an hour away from the police headquarters.

He arrived just as Nymphaeales was opening for business. He found it odd that a recreational club with such an exclusive clientele opened so late in the morning; surely, there would be some members who would prefer to visit it before heading off to work? Or perhaps it was the lunch hour that was most popular for the club. Either way, when Laith stepped out of his car and watched it roll off into the heavily forested parking lot, he noticed that he was quite alone.

Fleur Verdi, as usual, was present. It seemed she spent most of her time at Nymphaeales. Did she have a life outside of her work? There had been a wave of workaholism earlier in the century, but that had quickly been squashed in favor of more sustainable working practices. Some people, of course, simply would not be told. Others worked jobs in which they had naturally long hours when the need arose. Nevertheless, it was a law that all employees be allowed to head home after a five-hour working day. It was a law Laith suspected Fleur Verdi often disregarded – possibly why she got along with her former boss.

“Welcome back, Detective,” she greeted him at the front gates. “We received word this morning that you have a warrant to search Cassia Grove’s office. I expected you’d be here bright and early. Please, follow me,” she said, gesturing for him to follow her into the giant radiant-cut jewel half-buried in the grass. “Her office is on the topmost floor,” she explained as they stepped into the same elevator that had led them downstairs into Aquarius just the day before.

“Are all the walls made of glass?” he wondered as they passed the levels.

“Yes,” Ms. Verdi replied with a quick nod. “It creates a sense of walking within a giant diamond, with light cascading in from all corners of the building. But the glass does provide some privacy and division, as I think you might see. Some of the glass walls are thicker than others, and light refracts differently through them. Not everything is visible through these walls, and each was positioned carefully in the designing and construction of this building to ensure that there are still barriers keeping spaces divided from one another.”

They stepped out of the elevator and into a wide hall littered with armchairs with tiny side tables. In the middle of the hallway was a receptionist’s desk, yet again another moss table, this one adorned with blooming flowers of red, pink, and orange. Fleur Verdi continued to explain as she gestured for him to follow.

“In fact,” she was saying, the clack of her blue heels somehow a touch more distinct in this hallway, “the different refraction indices of each surface allow for us to store different amounts of energy. The thicker the glass, the more energy can be stored. Of course, the glass used is not simply any photovoltaic material; it was specially made for the purposes of this building. It also creates a naturally heated environment, and since the climate in Heliopolis is quite Mediterranean in nature, we use much of the additional heat harnessed as energy in its own right – outside of winter months, of course. These are two ways the building remains energy self-sufficient.”

“It sounds very efficient,” Laith commented as he strolled along behind her. “I’ve always enjoyed learning about the creative ways in which so many structures in Heliopolis remain self-sufficient and sustainable.”

“Yes, it is is fascinating,” she agreed. She slowed to a stop at the end of the hall, in front of a sealed glass door. The words engraved on the door read: CASSIA GROVE.

“So, this is her office. Has anyone been inside?”

“Impossible,” Verdi said with a shake of her head. “None of the offices can be opened with anything other than the Slate of the person to whom they belong. Or – in this case – if they are overridden by PATET in special circumstances.”

“And you’re quite certain that there is absolutely no other way in or out of this office otherwise?”

“Yes, quite,” Verdi replied confidently. “It was a security measure created to ensure that no wandering guests would find their way into our administrative floor and carry information out to our competitors. Cassia was very particular about this point. She wanted the security of the company to be extremely effective.” She adjusted her glasses and nodded at the door to the office beside Cassia’s. “That one is my office. If someone truly did make it up to this floor, they would have to avoid being detected by the receptionist, any of the other employees in their offices, and myself. And even then, they would not be able to gain entry into Cassia’s office.”

“Good,” Laith said, pulling out his Slate. “The office is just as she left it, then.”

“Without a doubt,” Ms. Verdi replied as he waved his Slate in front of the office door sensor. “I shall leave you to your investigation, Detective. Should you have any further questions or need my assistance, I will be in my office next door.”

“Thank you, Ms. Verdi,” he said as the door was infused with a green light. The muffled click of the lock being automatically opened could barely be heard, even in such a quiet environment. Pulling on a pair of gloves, he pushed the door open, and Fleur Verdi disappeared into her own office.

☀️ ☀️ ☀️

Cassia Grove’s corner office was similarly decorated to her home office – apart from the glass walls that overlooked the splendid gardens, tennis courts, and outdoor natural pool of Nymphaeales. He could imagine her sitting at her desk every day, surveying her little kingdom from atop her throne. She had a good vantage point to see almost half the club from where she sat, and he supposed that was a purposeful decision.

It was also very neat. Nothing seemed out of place at first glance. The desk, which looked like one solid block made of polished wooden planks from the front, had on it, very neatly arranged, a tablet like the one Fleur Verdi walked around with, a stand for a Slate, and a decorative inkwell from which a rose gold stylus sprang out. There was what seemed to be a panel in the middle of the desk – possible for Cassia’s surface computer – and Laith pressed it gently, watching the screen reveal itself as the panel receded into some hidden place within the desk.

Laith walked around the side of the desk and found two drawers on either side of the area in which the chair slid into. He opened them, one by one, and searched their contents. The first included a set of headphones with a music hub, a neck massaging device, and a wound-up adjustable skipping rope. The second below it had a solar-charged power bank that was still in its box, a range of Slate-activated locks, and a packet of bio-degradable sanitary wet wipes. On the other side of the desk, the top drawer had a pack of sanitary pads, a folded-up handwoven tote bag, and a toothbrush and toothpaste set. But it was the bottom drawer that had the most interesting find.

At first, there wasn’t much out of the ordinary with the fourth drawer. It had a spare change of clothes, an unopened tub of refillable hand cream, and a small refillable bottle of painkillers with only three pills left. Laith lifted the clothes out of the drawer to get a better look at the rest of it, and saw a small, black, rectangular item in the very back of the compartment. He reached in and pulled it out.

The object was immediately identifiable, though he was surprised to find one here, of all places. An X-letter was a means of communicating with someone completely outside of the system. In other words, communicating with someone without PATET reading, listening, or watching what you’re saying. I was a small device the size of one’s thumb, but could play audio messages, project written messages, and even, in some cases, a video or image. They ran almost completely on body heat.

Laith scrutinized the X-letter, turning it over in his hands. No identifying marks or names. The companies that made these items often didn’t want to stamp their logos or names on them, for the simple reason that it had become well known now that anyone who used X-letters was using them because they were up to something they didn’t want recorded. There were always the few that just wanted to have some privacy, but he’d heard from his colleagues that X-letters were the primary ways through which criminals would communicate with each other, send word to each other. They were easily destroyed, the messages were easily erased and recorded over, and each X-letter had a self-destruction mechanism that had them quick-degrade after just a few years.

And Cassia Grove had one in her desk drawer, hidden away from sight.

Curiously, Laith wrapped his hand around the small device and waited patiently for his own body heat to power it. He didn’t know how old it was, but he hoped it still contained whatever message it had originally contained. It could point him towards a new lead.

After a few minutes, he released the X-letter and tapped the little button jutting out from one side. The little device lit up, and a small light projected from its rectangular surface. Laith turned it over so that the projection was facing the table. A message was revealed, and he read it carefully.