Coruscant Noir

Part 1: Conversation

Written by Sailor Fere

Flickers of light periodically lit the darkened room, casting ephemeral shadows on too many pieces of mostly-obsolete electronic junk and one scrawny body. Reflected in said body's pair of slightly glazed eyes was the source of the light, the beginning of a holoprogram well over a decade old.

An older Hapan gentleman strolled into the shot, speaking in a distinguished voice as he moved. "A young, driven scientist with a promising future seems to vanish from the galaxy without a trace. What could have happened to such a dedicated up-and-comer? Did she flee a life in science to avoid scandal? Is she involved in top-secret work? Or, perhaps, could it be..." His walk stopped in the direct center of the shot. "Foul play? Join me tonight as we examine the disappearance of Dr. Alya Toblue. I'm your host, Langford Modini, and this is Unresolved Enigmas."

As Langford Modini spoke his introductory monologue, his scrawny viewer's pale lips moved in exact synch with his words. This was probably the ninth time she had seen the program in one-third as many days. Every word of Modini's narration, every overdone gesture by the dramatization actors, even every name in the closing credits list was seared into her brain. All of this memorization had taken up so much room that she could no longer remember the last time she had slept. This was hardly the first time such a thing had happened, but the way every cell in her body ached made her suspect that this particular episode was far and away the worst yet.

Her eyes drifted from the holoprogram to the dancing shadows on her wall. As Langford Modini recited his exposition on Alya's prestigious academic history, she stared at the shadows, a slight frown weighing on her brow. She felt a little off, as if some part of her deep down was wound as tightly as it could go without snapping.

"... By the time Alya graduated from the esteemed private academy, two full years ahead of her peers, the galaxy's top universities were already courting her heavily," Langford Modini said. "She accepted a full scholarship to... Honestly, Lega, didn't you ever learn that it's impolite not to look at someone when they're talking to you?"

Lega Toblue tried to whip her head around to face this unexpected stray from the script, but the air around her felt as if it had been replaced with a thick liquid. Her movements lagged, a motion that would have normally taken half a second instead seemed to last several minutes.

When she was finally looking at the holoprogram again, Langford Modini was smiling politely, his hands resting comfortably behind his back. Strangely, Lega's peripheral vision was entirely black and white. Where the world of color and the world of grey-scale met, an extremely thin, orange line separated the two. The line appeared to be moving at a glacier's pace, expanding into the color territory and inexorably towards Langford Modini, leaving behind the same images in black and white. It reminded Lega of a sheet of paper as its edges burnt towards the center.

Even stranger, Lega was completely unafraid. It was an unfamiliar feeling.

Langford Modini shifted slightly, moving his weight from one side to the other. "I thought you might prefer to talk directly. After all, you've already heard what I have to say on the subject," he said.

Lega was silent for a moment. Langford Modini simply looked at her, waiting patiently for her to make a move. However, the grey-scale world was anything but patient, continuing its slow, conquering spread.

Don't ask the question, Lega. You know the answer. Don't do it. There was a short pause after that thought made itself clear. "Am I dreaming?" she blurted. The moment the final syllable slipped from her traitorous tongue, Lega cringed.

Modini chuckled slightly. "I know you well, Lega, and that includes all your dreams. Do I look like Chapel to you?" He shook his head and continued, "Besides, we both know that you have to sleep to dream, and you haven't done that in -"

"I get it already!" Lega snapped.

"Then let's move on," he said, a twinkle in his oddly familiar green eyes. "Break out your umbrella, because I feel a brainstorm brewing."

Lega sighed heavily, dipping her head slightly in a tired nod. "Yeah, I know. It's just... I don't even know where to start looking for the answers to all the questions I have. It's so overwhelming."

"Then start with the concept you're most certain about."

Lega frowned, her eyes squinting in intense thought. After a moment, she broke the silence with a simple, quiet utter: "Bernd."

Modini tilted his head slightly. "What about him?" His inflection was peculiar - less like a question posed out of curiosity and more like a catalyst to propel the conversation forward.

Lega gave a nearly imperceptible nod. She pointed a long, thin finger at a poorly stacked pile of discs at the other side of the room. "Research," she stated. "Granted, most of the information I've found has been about Alya Toblue, since she started gaining awards and public awareness so early in life. Apparently she even had her own regular article called 'Alya Questions Answered' in a science-themed children's holomag when she was a young teenager. Terrible pun, surprised she put up with it." She paused, frowning slightly. "Uh. What - what was I talking about?"

"Your exposition before getting to Bernd backfired," Modini said.

"Right," Lega muttered. "Yeah. Sure." She used her index fingers to rub hard circles over her temples. She gave Modini a glance and noticed that he was now completely free of color save for his strange light green eyes. "Most of the files are about Alya. However, I was able to find an old personal interview with Bernd when he was the right-hand man of Alya and Amani's father. Most of it's just about how proud he was to be working for a geneticist like Asa Toblue. But he let something important about his true nature slip..."

Modini raised an eyebrow.

"In this interview, Bernd made a disturbing off-hand comment about his past during the long answer he gave to the question 'What is it like to work with Asa Toblue?'. At the end of his response he said, and I quote directly, 'Asa is an amazing man. If it wasn't for him and his firm belief in second chances, I'm not sure which poison would have killed me first: guilt or alcohol.' I suppose either the interviewer was uncomfortable pursuing that comment or Bernd did not want to expand on it, because the subject was promptly dropped."

Modini crossed his arms, looking thoughtful. "You can't leave well enough alone, though. You found what he was hinting."

"'I know you well, Lega.' You weren't kidding," Lega muttered snidely. "You're right. I did. It was hard, since it happened so long ago, but I found the news item he was vaguely mentioning."

"And?" Again, it was a statement with as much curiosity as a dull rock.

"And... and it's a long story," Lega said quietly.

Modini shrugged. "I've got as much time as you have."

Lega looked him deeply in the eyes. Finally, the story came, flowing from her lips in a waterfall of information. Not once did she break eye contact with him.

Years ago, when Bernd was just a grad student, he was supposed to pick up two important people from a routine checkup at a doctor's office. He was late. To pass the time, they went into a nearby shop. Only a few minutes later, the shop was violently robbed by a young criminal possessing a deadly weapon and the terrible combination of being both unable to command said weapon properly and to care who got hurt in the process. Despite this, there were only two fatalities: 24-year-old Subira Naitik and her 5-month-old daughter Perdita.

When the authorities came to his home to notify Bernd of the loss of his wife and daughter, the reason behind his tardiness was made clear. It seemed Bernd had been leading a double-life. His public self was a brilliant young scientist, always professional and prompt to appear before his superiors for meetings. However, in the few hours that were not occupied by his work, Bernd's attention was split between two warring interests: his wife and baby or his whiskey and brandy.

Some days he was a model father and husband, joyfully playing the little games that such a tiny infant can handle, games like "Daddy Exploits Dita's Lack Of Object Permanence" otherwise known as peekaboo, or intently listening to every detail of his wife's long day. Some days he shut himself off in his study with more than enough dark bottles and became completely dead to the world and entirely unreliable for anything. Some days Subira would go so far as to have half of her belongings packed before Bernd's attention swung back to her and Perdita, and at the end of these beautiful days all of her things were back in their usual place.

On the day that Subira and Perdita were killed, Bernd was found so drunk that it would be several hours before he was sober enough to understand the severity and finality of the situation. Bernd and Subira, unable to choose between their respective options, ultimately had their minds made up for them. No more choices.

"Asa Toblue stepped in shortly thereafter, though the two year gap between the deaths and Bernd's hiring by Asa implies that the road to get him mentally stable must have been long and rocky. Seems like Asa had his eye on Bernd for quite some time, intending to snatch him up to work for him as soon as possible. But I suspect he had at least one more reason," Lega said, finally breaking eye contact. She looked down at her hands, which had fisted themselves tightly against the loose fabric of her pants. "I did the math," she continued quietly. "Amani Toblue was just under two months older than Perdita Naitik. I imagine that chord must've been sour when it struck."

The silence that followed made the stuffiness in the air even more oppressive. Modini frowned, his eyes cast slightly slightly downward, dimpled chin resting in the nook between his thumb and forefinger. "I see where you're heading with this," he said quietly. "You think Bernd never made a full recovery, do you?"

"How does anybody recover fully from a complete psychological breakdown?" Lega stated. A sad shake of the head followed. "No, it's too malignant. It leaves little traces floating around in you forever. You might live in 'remission' for years, but eventually those little specks - those memories - are going to clump together again and you relapse. Maybe if you're lucky therapy or pills will blast those pieces apart again and the cycle can continue."

Modini's frown only grew more pronounced. "You sound... sure of this."

The response was in Lega's head immediately, but she caught it before her tongue could make it public. The thought still lingered in her mind, a slither and hiss in a poorly lit corner of her consciousness. It's good to prepare for the inevitable.

She shook her head violently, perhaps in an effort to break apart a clump of her own malignant specks. "Forget it. My point was that I'm sure Bernd wasn't as healthy as he appeared. I think Aleksei knew that."

Modini's green eyes brightened, brows raising. "Oh?"

"I remember something he said in the holo..."

Aleksei's deep, soothing voice slowly waltzed through her mind. Echoed. You look like a very respectable, distinguished gentleman, not the sort who would participate in anything illegal. You would be absolutely perfect for the job.

"... I think it was blatantly false."

"How so?" Modini asked.

"Bernd was a big man, with some fairly severe features. He certainly didn't have the grandfatherly bearing Aleksei implied," she said somewhat absently. After a short pause, she continued, conviction stronger. "He definitely lied."

"But why would he lie? Unless... "

He didn't need to continue. Lega felt the accusation hang thick in the air, could almost taste its bilious grease on her tongue with each breath she took. Then, the images flashed in the back of her mind: Aleksei trying to play peacekeeper between Alya and Amani, Aleksei understanding Carwyn's decision to stay with his wife, and...

And the last one surprised her. The memory was very old and had been hidden far, far away in a little dead-end alley in her consciousness. Had it been a tangible object, it would have been covered with years of dust, withered and yellowed with age and neglect. Still, she could just barely make out the contents of this long forgotten crumb of her past.

Her considerably higher pitched humming was completely devoid of pattern or tune, a song with nowhere to go and all the time in the universe to get there. Platinum blonde hair hung over her field of vision, obscuring the open computer terminal in front of her. A small, slightly chubby hand disentangled its fingers from the wiring it had been examining to tuck the stray hair behind her ears. Seconds later, the hair fell back down and the hand returned it to its rightful spot. Again, the hair fell; again, and perhaps more fiercely, the hand pulled it back. The third time the hair fell, the humming turned into a long growl of frustration mid-note.

Her little hand was halfway up when she felt the big hands intervene. Strong but gentle, they took her wayward hair and coaxed it into a little ponytail at the base of her neck. She turned, looking up for what felt like miles, to finally see his face as he towered over her. The bright lighting of her unusual home shone vibrantly from the ceiling, casting a slight shadow over his down-turned face. This, combined with the age of the memory itself, had the effect of reducing the vast majority of his face to an indecipherable blur. The only clear feature she could make out was the soft smile on his lips.

"What do we say when somebody does something nice for us?" asked an unseen female voice. Alya's surprisingly warm voice.

She turned back to her computer, little hands thankful to dive back into the wiring with no further obstacles. "T'anks you, 'Lecksy!" her considerably higher pitched voice crowed.

His deep chuckle rumbled far over her head, not unlike thunder, followed by an amused, "You're quite welcome, Lega."

And with that, Lega found herself once again in the present, back in her currently colorless world. She brought up her hands and stared at how overly thin and elongated her twelve digits were. These spidery hands used to be pudgy with baby fat? She brought her hands up and buried her fingers in her choppy, self-cut hair. This hair used to be long enough to tie back? She quickly did a few comparative measurements in her head and came to the conclusion that Aleksei had to have been approximately six feet tall, give or take an inch. Even with the hypothetical given inch, that was only a handful of inches taller than her current height. That man used to tower over her so greatly that he seemed more like a biological mountain than a human being?

It felt more like she had just seen through the eyes of the Lega Toblue of some distant parallel universe than her own from nearly a decade ago. Everything about the memory seemed so overwhelmingly unfamiliar and strange, and Lega simply could not process it.

"... there's the problem of motive... well, and means and opportunity... it might be a long-shot, but... Hey, are you okay?" So Modini had kept talking all through Lega's flashback. She looked up at him with wide eyes, noting how concern made the lines on his grey-scale face deepen.

"Uh. Yes?" she mumbled.

"It's just that the pose you're in isn't normally used by people who really are okay," Modini stated.

Lega felt her cheeks burn as she realized what a sight she must have been with her hands still buried in her hair and her elbows splayed out like bony wings. Her arms fell to her sides almost as quickly as her embarrassed gaze fell away from Modini. "I was just thinking," she said.

"Oh?"

"Yes," she stated. She lifted her head slightly to return her eyes to Modini, this time with a little spark of conviction where the confused surprise had been not moments earlier. "You're wrong," she said, voice unwavering. "Aleksei allowed himself to get too caught up in his plans to see how everything was falling apart. So did Alya. The repercussions of these flaws were too grave to pardon entirely, but they definitely weren't intentional or malicious."

Modini started to open his mouth.

"And before you say anything - Do I think Bernd is the one most directly responsible for Amani's death? Yes. I do. It's the explanation that makes the most sense, given what I know about Bernd's history. But do I think he's evil? No. I think he was crazy. There's a difference."

Again, Modini tried to speak.

"Unless you're Ren," Lega grumbled, her voice losing its earlier edge. "Or Chapel."

Modini was still for a moment, contemplating Lega with quiet intensity. Several tense moments later he asked, "Finished?" Faint amusement tinged the tone of his question.

"I... I think so," Lega muttered.

"Good," Modini said. He cleared his throat and continued, "I agree with your defense, but there's at least one very big unresolved issue with it."

Lega leaned forward and demanded, "What is it? What did I miss?"

Modini shook his head. "You say Bernd probably killed Amani accidentally. If his..." He paused, waving a hand vaguely. "'Bad history' shoved him head-first into a relapse, then it's entirely possible. He might not have even touched her. If he had fallen off the deep end and was subjecting her to a paranoid rant, she might have tried to back away in fright, only to lose balance and hit her neck."

Lega leaned even closer to Modini's holographic image. Any further and she would easily topple over. "Yes, yes, exactly," she breathed. "I don't think he ever meant to kill her at all! But that doesn't answer the question of what I seem to have missed!"

Modini sighed and quietly stated, "Carwyn Eligio and his wife."

Lega slumped back, shock on her face and posture thoroughly deflated. "Oh. That."

Modini nodded morosely. "Yes. That."

A thin, pale hand came up to rub down the front of an equally thin and pale face in a universal symbol of tired frustration. The fingers stopped over slightly chapped lips, muffling the words that tried to escape through them. "I haven't... looked into that... very thoroughly," Lega whispered, clearly picking her words very carefully.

"You should have," Modini chastised. "The timing fits, and Bernd had the opportunity and motive."

A light sheen of sweat had appeared on Lega's face the minute the subject had been breached. An already pasty and clammy individual at the best of times, in her new state of distress Lega had begun to strongly resemble the types of creatures found in pitch-black caves hundreds of miles below the surface of seas. Her throat trembled as a nervous gulp shuddered down her.

"W-well... well! Forgive me for not being enthusiastic about something that was called 'the most vicious crime on Coruscant' for two full years!" she croaked, violently forcing offense into her tone. "Two years by Coruscant standards! On any planet but Dathomir, that's the equivalent of a decade at least!"

Modini rolled his eyes. "You know that's not -"

"Wait," Lega interrupted. Modini's earlier statement had finally sunk in and Lega's brow had reflexively creased as her mind attempted to make sense of it. "Motive?"

Modini nodded and said, "Yes, it's quite clear when you really think about it. Which did Eligio choose: his career or his wife?"

"His wife," Lega answered.

"Right. Now, which did Bernd tacitly choose: his drinking or his wife?"

"His... ah," Lega breathed, realization washing over her face in a great flood. "I see."

"Good. Then you understand that if Bernd was the killer of the Eligios, that casts a lot of doubt on the 'accidental' nature of Amani's death. There's not a single aspect of the Eligio murders that could ever be called accidental, after all," Modini said.

Lega said nothing for a moment, simply staring at the irritating hologram with large, glassy eyes. She shook slightly, telling herself mentally that it was only due to the sweat on her skin chilling her. As she forced that rationalization through her head, Modini gave her an especially sour look. Still, she had one last straw to grasp, so she seized it with all her might.

The accusing finger she thrust at Modini lost most of its dramatic impact as her entire arm quaked slightly. Despite this, her voice came out surprisingly strong as she asked, "How do you know it was Bernd at all? What if somebody else killed the Eligios, and it's just coincidence that Bernd found the bodies?"

Modini's faintly sour look transformed into one that was much more thoughtful, and the impatience that had crept into his demeanor visibly drained away. "Even so. I don't believe coincidence has anything to do with this," he said quietly. "So therefore..."

Something was throbbing in Lega's head. A slow but steady rhythm, completely out of sync with her worryingly rapid heartbeat, pounded around her temples. The pain did no favors for her steadily weakening concentration and nerve, so it was no surprise that the hostile emotions within her grew all the more agitated. The start of Modini's second statement acted as a catalyst, the psychological equivalent of somebody yelling 'RIOT!' in a mob. Lega's emotions accepted the invitation without hesitation.

She screeched, "Would you stop that?! I know damn well who you are, so you can stop making those coy little hints! It's not cute! You're not clever! I'm not clever! SOMEBODY here is not clever!"

The dull ache suddenly transformed into a sharp stabbing pain in the back of Lega's head, as if a needle had been jammed into the base of her skull. Her eyes instantly clenched shut as he drew in a miserable hiss through her grinding teeth and gripped the sides of her head as if that was the only thing keeping it from bursting open.

She cracked open her bleary, tear-stung eyes to an odd sight. Her sense of color had returned, albeit in strange splotches of random shape and size. They were scattered about with little apparent pattern, save for the fact that there were just a few more splotches located in the periphery of her vision than in the center. One center splotch, easily the largest of them all, was located directly over Langford Modini's head and the surrounding area. However, where Modini's face should have been looking at her in glorious holocolor, there was instead a dark blue background with blurry, incomplete white text slowly drifting upwards. From his shoulders and down, Modini's grey body was untouched by the incongruous color and its illegible text.

Even though she could not read it, Lega instantly recognized the writing as the end credits of Unresolved Enigmas. Had she really been in the conversation for an hour?

"There's something wrong," Modini whispered. His voice had changed in both style and location. It now sounded as if he was speaking directly inside Lega's throbbing head, and the voice itself was slightly higher pitched, faintly androgynous, and younger. It was as if Modini's gentlemanly tone had met another, much more familiar one and the two had merged into a single voice. "Can't concentrate..."

"What do I do?!" Lega shrieked.

The pain was becoming more intense by the second. The spots of color began to move, swelling and shrinking with abandon, sometimes sliding tubular extensions of color out into the grey like strange pseudopods.

"Truth," the voice inside Lega answered. At this point, it bore no resemblance to Modini's whatsoever, and was so quiet it was nearly inaudible. Then it murmured an address that Lega recognized as the apartment the Eligios had shared.

Lega's squinted eyes glanced at her floor. A discarded pen was lying a few feet from where Lega cowered. Fighting against the pain, she moved her hands from her head and reached a trembling arm out towards the pen. She grabbed the object and brought it up to write shakily on the palm of her other hand.

The moment the final letter was sloppily written, the pain reached a terrible crescendo. Lega slumped back, and for a blessed minute all she knew was darkness.

Several moments later, a lid cracked open, revealing a trace of a pale green, bloodshot eye. It and its twin opened further, finally settling in a half-lidded position. There was a slight tapping that sounded like it was coming from miles away, but she didn't care enough to pay it any attention.

The world was fully grey once again.

Lega lay on her back directly beneath her skylight. She flinched slightly as she realized that something on her palm was tingling. She eased the offending hand up to just an inch from the tip of her thin nose and read the shaky writing scrawled across her palm. She croaked, "What a case."

Her arm flopped back to her side and she resumed her staring match with the still dark skylight. What she now saw made the sides of her mouth quirk upwards ever so slightly.

"Fog's rolling in."

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